2
Was There a Precapitalist
World-System?
Jane Schneider*
In his
book, The Modern World-System, Immanuel
Wallerstein
applies to Western Europe a theory
of
social change that other scholars have been
developing
to analyze the growth patterns of
Third
World countries (e.g., Amin 1974; Baran
1957;
Emmanuel 1972; Frank 1967). This theo-
ry,
rooted in global political economy, or
geo-political
economy, contrasts markedly with
the
unilineal models of social change that
dominated
social science until recently.
Unlike
a unilineal model, which posits inexo-
rable
and orthogenetic progressions from
simple
to complex, agrarian to industrial
organization,
and unlike orthodox Marxism,
too,
the new theory explains change in terms
of
forces which originate outside of any
particular
local region or nation, in the
dynamics
of world economic organization. The
unit of
analysis is no longer the evolving
regional
or national society in transition
from a
traditional to a modern form but a
world
economy, in which a few highly central-
ized
core groups mobilize energy resources
from a
vast peripheral domain.
Wallerstein makes an important contribution
to the
refinement of global political economy
by
focusing attention on two interrelated
processes
that __________________________
*
Reprinted with permission from Peasant
Studies
Vol. VI, No. 1,
January, 1977, pp. 20-29.
derive
from core-area energy mobilization and
that
may be considered critical sources of
change. The first process involves the defen-
sive
and competitive strategies that interest
groups
peripheral to a core-area generate when
they
are directly, or even indirectly, affect-
ed by
its expansion. Peripheral groups that
are not
well located from the standpoint of
geography
and environment may submit to, and
even
adapt to, external pressure. Groups
that
are more
propitiously located, however, defend
against
penetration to the point where under
some
rather special conditions a defensive
strategy
becomes an offensive one and a new
core
area evolves. Although, as Wallerstein
emphasizes,
the enormous gaps in wealth and
power
between core and peripheral populations
remain
fixed for long periods of time, the
deprivation
produced by these gaps and the
energy
drainage that sustains them inevitably
lead to
one or another form of resistance.
This, and
the counter-resistance in which core
populations
may subsequently invest, have
obvious
implications for institutional, cul-
tural,
and economic change within the regions
or
nations involved.
The second process that is inherent in
world economic
organization and underlies
social
change is the creation and maintenance
of
interdependent relationships between vari-
ous
national and regional entities. The
concept,
"regional differentiation," is the
key to
understanding this process, according
to
which particular populations come to play
particular
roles, their economic, political,
and
cultural institutions changing to meet the
demands
of specialization. Wallerstein pro-
vides a
vocabulary with which to describe this
process. He suggests that the "initial eligi-
bility"
for a particular role is often decided
by an
"accidental edge" related to past histo-
ry and
current environmental resources and
geography. Once the slight edge is estab-
lished,
the operations of the world economy
"accentuate
the differences, institutionalize
them
and make them impossible to surmount over
the
short run" (1974a: 403). In this
way,
"the
slight edge is converted into a large
disparity..."
(1974: 98). He offers six-
teenth-century
Poland as an example, relating
changes
in that country's economic (especially
labor)
organization, state institutions, and
religion
to its assumption of the specialized
role of
breadbasket for North Atlantic Europe.
To summarize, a global theory of social
change
hinges on two overlapping processes --
one of
competition between various geographi-
cally
localized populations of unequal power;
the
other of differentiation, division of
labor,
and interdependence among these same
units. Both processes have an ecological
dimension
since geography and environmental
resources
influence the assumption of particu-
lar
specializations, as well as the ability to
resist
demands posed by external dominants.
Both
are also historical in that past roles or
past
resistance leave their imprint on a
population's
resources and institutional
structure,
thereby influencing its contempo-
rary
ability to repel or adapt to new roles.
Wallerstein's
comparison of Poland with Russia
-- the
high point of the book -- shows how the
two
processes intersect. By virtue of its
accidental
edge, Russia resisted incorporation
into
the European-dominated world economy of
the
sixteenth century. Unlike Poland, it
thus
remained
internally diversified and capable of
establishing
its own peripheral domain (1974:
303-324).
From the point of view of social science,
Wallerstein's
most significant contribution is
the
suggestion that processes of interaction
and
unequal exchange might explain events not
only in
Third World areas transformed by
European
hegemony in the nineteenth and twen-
tieth
centuries, but in earlier periods within
Europe
itself. This establishes a unity of
theory
between Western and non-Western peo-
ples,
the absence of which has long been
problematic
in unilineal models of change
whose
ethnocentricisms are consistent with
their
inability to account for the disparity
between
Europe's precocious advances and other
peoples'
"lag." It will be the point
of this
essay,
however, that The Modern World-System
suffers
from too narrow an application of its
own
theory. For, although Wallerstein ad-
mires
Owen Lattimore's description of the
differentiation
process according to which
ancient
Chinese civilization "gave birth to
barbarism,"
(quoted in Wallerstein, 1974: 98),
he does
not view the precapitalist world as
systematically
integrated through the opera-
tions
of world economic forces. Because most
of the
book is dedicated to the rise of North
Atlantic
Europe as the preeminent core area of
the
world economy -- an event Wallerstein
equates
with the emergence of the capitalist
world-system
-- it unfortunately does not
benefit
from the clarity of argument and
coherence
of analysis that distinguish his
comparison
of Poland with Russia.
Wallerstein has assembled a staggering
quantity
and diversity of data pertinent to
the
development of modern capitalism. He
has
analyzed
processes of core-area expansion and
regional
differentiation that unfolded in the
wake of
this event. His account of differen-
tiation
usefully extends to a comparison of
state
formation in core and peripheral areas,
while
his discussion of forms of labor mobili-
zation
in these respective areas is complex,
original,
and stimulating. It is when they
are
measured against such examples of a global
theory
at work that the lists of factors which
he has
drawn up to account for various precap-
italist
events are theoretically unsatisfying,
sometimes
incomplete, and often confusing.
One
wants to know why, for example, his analy-
sis of
the "rise of England" does not focus
attention
on that nation's environmental
resources,
or on its essentially peripheral
status
in relation to other continental pow-
ers, in
particular Northern Italy. I will
return
to these points later on.
This essay attempts to demonstrate that
Wallerstein's
reluctance to apply the con-
cepts,
"core" and "periphery," to precapital-
ist
transformations is a product of the way he
views
the luxury trade. Before the emergence
of the
capitalist world-system (which I too
will
identify, for the sake of convenience,
with
the rise to core status of England and
Holland),
most exchanges between distant
places
involved the movement of luxuries -- of
exotic
goods or "preciosities" which were very
high in
value per unit of weight and therefore
relatively
easy to transport. For many au-
thorities,
Wallerstein among them, the differ-
ence
between luxuries and bulk goods such as
food or
timber goes beyond their transport-
ability. They are implicitly categorized as
opposites:
preciosities versus essentials or
utilities. I suggest that this dichotomy is a
false
one that obscures the systemic proper-
ties of
the luxury trade. In the following
pages,
I will first outline Wallerstein's
argument
that long distance trade in exotic
goods
was of little relevance to intra-Europe-
an
change. I will then develop an
alternative
interpretation
according to which Europe as a
whole,
and England in particular, were reduced
to
peripheral areas by this trade. I hope
that
the alternative interpretation will
prepare
the way for future analyses of precap-
italist
events within a theoretical framework
consistent
with Wallerstein's analysis of
Russia
and Poland.
According to Wallerstein, the capitalist
world-system
differs from all previous imperi-
ums,
which he describes as world-empires. He
argues
for this distinction on the grounds
that
before capitalism, the political and
economic
boundaries of empires coincided,
administrative
control being extended through
tributary
relations to the entire area from
which
energy resources were mobilized. In
contrast,
the modern world-system is a world-
economy
in which political integration is
intermittent. At its center are strong, well-
knit
and relatively homogeneous nation states,
whose
spheres of political control have not
been
isomorphic with their economic hegemony.
Rulers
of these states manifest a great deal
more
respect for mercantile and manufacturing
interests
than did the despots of precapital-
ist
states. In addition they organize a
completely
different kind of buffer between
the
imperial center and the localized popula-
tions
on whose energy this center draws. Wal-
lerstein's
elaboration of the concept "semipe-
riphery"
establishes a mutually exclusive set
of
dynamics for precapitalist and capitalist
empires,
in which the former are stabilized
through
the manipulation of middle sector
"cultural"
or occupational groups, whereas the
latter
depend for stability upon independent
political
entities -- semiperipheral states --
that
belong to neither the core nor the pe-
riphery
(1974: 349-350; 1974a: 403-404).
Consistent with these contrasts between
past
and present, precapitalist and modern
empires,
is Wallerstein's acceptance of the
view
that the ancient empires of Near and Far
Eat
were homeostatic and not dynamic (1974:
84-85). For example, although he appreciates
that in
the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries,
China
and Europe had roughly comparable popu-
lations,
and although he shares with Joseph
Needham
a respect for Chinese technological
achievement,
he nevertheless emphasizes Chin-
a's
opposition to foreign commerce and the
Confucian
suppression of early Ming explora-
tion
and maritime activity. China's overall
commitment,
he suggests, was to internal
rather
than external expansion and to the
development
of whatever surplus it had into
defensive
installations against Central Asian
"barbarians"
on the northern and western
frontiers. China blanketed, rather than
released,
the forces of expansion (1974: 53-
63).
Wallerstein's assessment of China and, by
implication,
of other precapitalist empires
suggests
why these polities do not enter
theoretically
into his analysis of the capi-
talist
transformation in Europe. Since, in
the
Middle Ages, Europe was tributary to none
of
them, none can be said to have interacted
with
Europe in ways that were relevant to
systemic
social change. Chapter one of The
Modern
World-System mentions that precapital-
ist
Europe was a "very marginal area in eco-
nomic
terms," (1974: 17) but marginality is a
concept
distinct from periphery. In contrast
to
peripheral areas, marginal ones are disen-
gaged
from processes of struggle and competi-
tion,
differentiation, and specialization in
relation
to much older and more developed
centers
of civilization.
Perhaps the most explicit statement of this
disengagement
is Wallerstein's evaluation of
the
significance of long distance trade, for
although
Europeans did not deliver tribute to
the
metropolises of world empires, they were
nevertheless
in touch with them through trade.
Wallerstein
does not argue that this trade was
ephemeral. He recognizes that it provided
employment
for thousands of people, profits
for middlemen,
and revenues for states. In
addition
it contributed to the internal strat-
ification
of entire populations, since exotic
goods
imported from afar could be utilized in
the
demarcation and maintenance of status
barriers
(1974: 306-307). But he does not
think
that these effects of long distance
trade
induced European development, either as
stimuli
or as obstacles to be overcome. On
the
contrary, as if to underscore the irrele-
vance
of the luxury trade for change, he
applies
to Asia, Africa, and the Near East the
concept
"external arena," because he feels
that
these areas bore no systemic relationship
to
Europe until the eighteenth or nineteenth
centuries,
and then on terms defined by Euro-
peans.
The distinction between periphery and
external
arena rests upon the conceptual
separation
of essential from luxury exchanges.
This is to be sure a distinction rooted
in the social perceptions of the actors
and hence in both their social organiza-
tion and their culture. These percep-
tions can change. But the distinction
is crucial if we are not to fall into
the trap of identifying every exchange-
activity as evidence of the existence of
a system (1974a: 397-398).
According to Wallerstein, trade in precios-
ities,
unlike trade in essentials, is non-
systemic. Each party "exports to the other
what is
in its system socially defined as
worth
little, and gets what is socially de-
fined
as worth much." Both partners to
the
exchange
reap rewards simultaneously. Dis-
tinct
from the profits that are made under
capitalism,
these rewards are mere "wind-
falls." One partner does not gain at the
expense
of the other (1974a: 398). Precapita-
list Europe
traded a number of preciosities
with
Asia; in particular, it exported precious
metals
to pay for imported pepper, spices, and
silk. Before the rise of capitalism, however,
primitive
conditions in transportation re-
stricted
the movement of bulk goods such as
food. Because, by Wallerstein's definition,
only
the latter type of exchange is systemic,
precapitalist
trade was a secondary factor,
one
among many, and not critical to social
change
(1974: 20-21).
How then does Wallerstein account for the
capitalist
transformation? In his view this
event
was propelled by the need to overcome
the
"crisis of feudalism" -- the wars and
plagues,
economic collapse, and class conflict
that in
the fourteenth century reduced the
population
of Europe by a third to a half. He
attributes
the crisis to a conjuncture of
prior
over-expansion, cyclical economic down-
turns,
and (possibly) changing climate. Of
these
the most important was prior over-expan-
sion. Between 1150 and 1300, demographic and
economic
growth exceeded environmental capaci-
ty,
given technologies available at the time.
Wallerstein
considers but rejects Sweezy's
hypothesis
that long distance trade stimulated
this
growth. Perhaps it was one factor, but
because
it involved primarily luxuries, it was
less
important than "food and handicraft
production,"
the multiplication of which
appears
to have been spontaneous:
...the scale of this economic activity
was slowly expanding, and the various
economic nuclei expanded therewith. New
frontier lands were cultivated. New
towns were founded. Population grew.
The Crusades provided some of the advan-
tages of colonial plunder. And then
sometime in the fourteenth century, this
expansion ceased. The cultivated areas
retracted.
Population declined (1974:
21).
This
statement suggests that an endogenous set
of
forces was at work, among them spontaneous
population
growth -- the motor force in many
applications
of unilineal models of change
(see
Cowgill 1975).
The crisis of feudalism found its resolu-
tion in
the creation of the capitalist world-
system,
two of whose central features we have
already
encountered: the regional divergence
of
eastern Europe, which under a re-gime of
highly
coerced agricultural labor began to
grow
wheat for export to the North Atlantic
core,
and the formation of strong states in
this
core. The first feature of the system
to
manifest
itself, a pre-condition for other
developments,
was, however, the "incredible
geographical
expansion" that began with the
Portuguese
discovery voyages in the late
fifteenth
century. Wallerstein has difficulty
accounting
for these voyages. The textbook
explanation
that Portuguese navigators and
adventurers
sought spices and gold satisfies
him
only in part, for these are preciosities
and of
secondary importance to an explanation
of
change. Yet the "motivations"
of Portugal
are
worth puzzling over, for they were motiva-
tions
of Europe too. Because Portuguese
expansion
followed the demographic catastrophe
of the
fourteenth century, it could hardly
have
resulted from land shortage or over-
population. Nevertheless Wallerstein suggests
that
expansion may have been motivated by a
search
for food. Europe needed surplus food
to
support increased development and urbaniza-
tion
(1974: 41-42).
Europe's search for food is well documented
in
Wallerstein's account of the transformation
of
eastern Europe into a breadbasket (although
except
for a footnote on page 218 and a brief
reference
on page 221 he virtually ignores
southern
Italy and Sicily, which were func-
tionally
specialized to produce surplus wheat
as
early as Roman times). His
documentation
of a
food quest by Portugal is less convinc-
ing. Committed to the proposition that "in
the
long run, staples account for more of
men's
economic thrusts than luxuries," (1974:
42) he
wants to find staples in the cargoes of
Portuguese
ships. There was indeed a modest
quantity
of cereals, imported from the Atlan-
tic
islands off the Portuguese coast, but this
represented
only a minor segment of the total
trade
and only one component of the island
trade
as well. Sugar imports were more sub-
stantial,
but was sugar essential? Waller-
stein
argues that it provided calories (1974:
43),
but so did honey which was widely avail-
able in
Europe. In the Renaissance courts of
Italy
the fascination of sugar was such that
it was
eaten with virtually anything and
fashioned
into decorative sculptures (Root
1971:
36-40; Tannahill 1973: 223). Sugar went
to make
rum and later chocolate, which Waller-
stein
characterizes as "highly appreciated"
drinks,
but by what criteria were they staple
foods? He also mentions dyestuffs and wine
which
other authorities would similarly clas-
sify as
luxuries (1974: 43).
It seems to me that dyestuffs and wine,
sugar
and rum, should not be separated from
the
textbook explanation for Portuguese (and
hence
European) geographical expansion. The
explorers
were searching for luxury goods,
especially
spices and precious metals, the
latter
to exchange for more luxuries from the
Orient (1974:
39-41). If wine was a useful
beverage,
then pepper was a useful spice, yet
both
also indulged the fancies of a status
conscious
aristocracy. Are we to conclude
then
that the capitalist transformation began
with a
caprice? Wallerstein is right to avoid
so
absurd a position. The way around the
dilemma,
however, is to discover the relation-
ship
between luxuries and essentials, not to
make
sugar and wine into staple foods.
In a recent article on long distance trade,
Robert
M. Adams, the archaeologist, argues
that
even in antiquity trade was a "formidable
socioeconomic
force...in spite of its being
confined
largely to commodities of very high
value
in relation to weight and bulk due to
the
high transport costs, and in spite of its
directly
involving only a small part of the
population"
(1974: 247). Rejecting the as-
sumption
that change in precapitalist society
was an
endogenous process that moved popula-
tions
irreversibly from simple to complex
levels
of integration, he proposes that we
assume
for the past as well as the present a
model
in which more complex societies "domi-
nate
weaker neighbors, coalesce, experience
predation,
develop and break off patterns of
symbiosis
and all in dizzyingly abrupt
shifts." The need to adapt to such shifts is
"the
most single overwhelming selective pres-
sure to
which societies are exposed" (1974:
249;
see also Wolf 1967). Marshalling evi-
dence
from a number of case studies, some
ethnographic
and others archaeological, Adams
argues
that there is a close connection be-
tween
predation and trade. On the surface
benign,
the luxury trade could induce massive
alterations
in technology, leadership, class
structure,
and ideology within trading popula-
tions
and in "relay" populations on the tran-
sit
routes. In addition to promoting
symbio-
sis,
trade was also "partly aggressive, and
sometimes
dangerously competitive" -- a turbu-
lent
process (1974: 249).
Adams' argument challenges the idea that
luxuries
served little purpose other than to
satisfy
the whims and desires of aristocrats
and
enable them to maintain distance from
status
inferiors. This idea is illustrated by
Wallerstein's
remark that European aristocrats
"made
(spices) into aphrodisiacs, as though
[they]
could not make love otherwise," (1974:
41)
which implies that the consumption pat-
terns
of the very rich were, if not laughable,
then
harmful only to themselves. Following
Malinowski
and Mauss on the power of the gift,
a case
can be made that luxury goods served
more
fundamental ends. The relationship of
trade
to social stratification was not just a
matter
of an elevated group distinguishing
itself
through the careful application of
sumptuary
laws and a monopoly on symbols of
status;
it further involved the direct and
self-conscious
manipulation of various semi-
peripheral
and middle level groups through
patronage,
bestowals, and the calculated
distribution
of exotic and valued goods.
A good analysis of the relationship between
gifts
and power is Luigi Graziano's comprehen-
sive
essay on clientelism (1975). Suggesting
that
the principle of the gift consists in
"the
calculated and productive use of generos-
ity,"
Graziano argues that:
One gives because in highly stratified
societies an effective way to control
conflict is to establish a network of
personal obligations; one gives, at the
same time, in order to crush clients and
rivals with onerous obligations sanc-
tioned by the personal submission of the
defaulting debtor. One gives, in summa-
ry, because this is a rational means for
accumulating power...(1975: 27).
Where
there is a clear imbalance of power, but
juridical
and coercive institutions are absent
or
weakly articulated, gift-giving performs
the
function of contract enforcement. As
Graziano
points out, the subordinate learns
that
"the only way to continue enjoying the
protection
and other resources monopolized by
the
powerful is to loyally return benefits
received. The restitution will consist of
personal
services and, in order to compensate
for
disparity in resources between patron and
client,
in compliance to the former's will"
(1975:
25).
Patron-client relations, established and
maintained
through the exchange of gifts and
favors,
contribute in different ways to the
mobilization
of energy. By virtue of the
obligations
created by his bestowals, the
patron
can often claim a portion of the sur-
plus
labor of his dependents. But patrons do
not
simply lay claim to the energy resources
of
their clients. Their most significant
claims
are levied against outsiders to this
paternalistic
tie. Often, in fact, the intent
in
constructing a clientele is to defuse
organized
opposition, class antagonism, and
class
struggle (e.g., Blok 1969, 1974).
Pitting
some against others, gift-giving
promotes
the co-optation of class enemies,
making
the patron-client relationship a force-
ful
political adjunct to energy capture.
Clientelism also operates at the societal
level
where it facilitates the mobilization of
energy
resources through the creation and
maintenance
of client states whose respective
economic
contributions may be less significant
than
their political loyalty. Descriptive
accounts
of the Chinese tributary system, for
example,
attribute to such states the same
role
Wallerstein assigns to semiperipheral
states
under capitalism. These accounts also
portray
the fundamental contribution that
luxuries
made to clientelism on this level.
For
centuries China wove a vast network of
tribute
bearing kings and princes across its
northern,
western, and southern frontiers and
garnered
their submission through "imperial
compassion,"
including the bestowal of gifts.
The
emperor or his deputies gave presents to
envoys
during their visits, upon their depar-
ture
from the Chinese court, and through
ambassadorial
missions to tributaries in their
own
lands. Gifts ranged from silver coins
and
rolls
of silk to Chinese princess brides for
rulers
(Fairbank and Teng 1941; Wiens 1967).
Many Western historians have commented on
the
lavishness and generosity of Chinese
gifts,
which often matched or surpassed the
value
of the tribute delivered to the emperor
by the
client state. Indeed, tributary obli-
gations
rarely constituted a significant
surplus,
but were instead a token sampling of
unique
local wares. Wallerstein utilizes this
characteristic
of the tribute system to sup-
port
his distinction between precapitalist and
capitalist
empires, noting that, under the
former,
tribute was sometimes a "disguised
form of
trade disadvantageous to the empire"
(1974:
60-61). In a footnote he urges compar-
ison
between "this self-defeating political
arrangement
[and] the frank colonialism Portu-
gal and
other European countries practiced on
the
overseas barbarians" (1974: 61, n. 162).
Yet, gift-bestowal was just an instrument
of
Chinese foreign policy, the crux of which
was
expansion. Over the many centuries of
its
existence,
the Chinese Empire, like other
empires
of the precapitalist world, mobilized
energy
resources, displaced neolithic cultiva-
tors,
captured metals and slaves, beyond as
well as
within its frontiers. The demographic
and
territorial expansion of the Han Chinese,
who
pushed back these frontiers, was in fact
phenomenal,
and, although it was much more
gradual
than the European expansion of a later
period,
it may turn out to have been more
enduring. For China, as for other great
empires
of the precapitalist past, the tribu-
tary
system made expansion possible. Energy
was
mobilized around as well as through it,
often
with the blessing and outright assis-
tance
of the client states, minimally with the
expectation
that there would be allies to
provide
support, including food and other
essentials,
should the empire or its represen-
tatives
be attacked. Because the tribute
system
was maintained through the distribution
of
luxuries, these goods were also "essential"
-- not
only in the narrow sense that, through
cultural
definition of tastes, people became
addicted
to them, but also in the broader
sense
that imperialism necessitated "winning
distant
people with kindness" as well as
hitting
them over the head. The same princi-
ple
applies to foreign policy today.
Precapitalist tribute systems at first
glance
give the impression that reliance upon
luxury
goods for the creation and maintenance
of
allies was indiscriminate. Anything a
potential
ally might consider valuable or,
through
court ceremonial and ritual, might be
influenced
to consider valuable, could consti-
tute a
gift capable of obligating him to the
donor. In fact, however, the various precios-
ities
that circulated in long distance trade
differed
in the degree to which they could
readily
be converted into other resources.
The greater
an object's perceived value over
both
time and space, the greater was its
potential
to bind allegiances, and thereby
promote
energy capture. Goods with high
durability,
quality control in their produc-
tion, a
widespread reputation for fineness and
integrity,
and a high degree of natural scar-
city
were -- with remarkable consistency --
among
the most coveted valuables across much
of the
Old World. Of these, gold and silver,
first
coined (in alloyed form) in the seventh
century
B.C., led the list "not so much be-
cause
they were money as because they were
treasured"
(Neale 1976: 45, 51).
Those who held gold and silver, whether
they
ruled states, religious bodies, aristo-
cratic
families, or whatever, could feel
confident
of the stability of their hoards in
the
future as well as the present, at home as
well as
abroad. As these magnates, especially
the
rulers of states, harnessed bureaucrats
and
soldiers to their service, they found them
unwilling
to accept as pay anything but pre-
cious
metals. From a very early time, more-
over,
the military capability of a state
depended
not only on numbers and weapons, but
on
having a storehouse of treasure to bribe
allies,
ransom prisoners, purchase supplies,
pay
indemnities, and so on (Grierson 1959).
In
Neale's words, "one cannot have a pig feast
with
goat meat, and Charles II and Louis XIV
could
not conduct a war" without gold and
silver
(1976: 55).
Wallerstein is aware that bullion provided
"a
monetary base for circulation within Eu-
rope"
(1974: 41), but does not fully appreci-
ate its
significance for war and diplomacy.
His
classification of precious metals as
preciosities,
and the distinction he makes
between
these and essential goods, cancel out
the few
passing references to this critical
function
(e.g., 1974: 197). As a consequence
he
overlooks an old and fascinating, and
perhaps
systemic, pattern in long distance
trade. Since antiquity, expanding empires
have
acquired precious metals and other highly
valued
luxuries, not only by plunder and
piracy,
but by exporting finished goods, above
all
cloth. Adams, for example, describes
how
ancient
Mesopotamia acquired lapis-lazuli,
pearls,
rare woods, ivory, gold, and silver
from
the "barbarian" interior of Anatolia.
The
major export to this backward area was
woolen
cloth, so much that, in addition to the
roughly
50,000 sheep it raised, Mesopotamia
imported
raw wool (1974: 246-47). Similarly,
in the
early Christian centuries, Indian
traders
extracted precious metals and spices
from
the evolving kingdoms of Southeast Asia,
whose
divine right rulers were ceremonially
inducted
into the Kshatriya caste by immigrant
Brahmin
priests. Committed to the intensifi-
cation
of production within their respective
territories,
these rulers imported status
goods,
among them beads and cloth (Wheatley
1976).
The theme of precious metals for cloth had
its
counterpart in ancient China where the
imperial
court periodically declared that
payments
of all kinds should be made in silk
and
porcelain, brocade and lacquerware, rather
than in
bullion or coin (Fairbank 1969: 75;
Servoise
1966; Yang 1952). Like India, China
was one
of the great civilizations that over
the
centuries stockpiled precious stones and
metals
against an impressive outflow of fin-
ished
textiles. To borrow Braudel's imagery,
civilizations
like these produced no metals
but
drained them from the whole world (1973:
338-339).
It should be no surprise, then, that Euro-
peans
were historically preoccupied with the
outflow
of silver and gold, (much of it ac-
quired
through trade and plunder, some of it
from
European mines), and that they too saw a
connection
between this movement and the
movement
of cloth. In A.D. 14-37, Tiberius
prohibited
wearing (imported) silk in Rome,
his
regulation, according to Needham, closely
following
a series of Chinese reforms (A.D. 9-
23) in
which gold coins were called in to be
exchanged
for bronze causing a "drain on world
gold
circulation" (1954: 109). Over the
next
several
centuries, rulers throughout Europe
similarly
passed sumptuary laws in part to
stem
the export of metals, restricting even
the
textiles produced by their European neigh-
bors
(e.g., Miller 1969: 218-20; Miskimin
1969:
149-150). In addition to providing the
coinage
these rulers needed to pay loyal
dependents
and bureaucrats, treasure was the
"sinews
of war" -- a point well illustrated by
the
predicament of the late medieval Duke of
Burgundy
who had difficulty ransoming his son
from
the Turks because too many gold coins had
been
drained off to England to purchase Eng-
lish
cloth, which this Duke had unsuccessfully
tried
to ban from his realm (Munro 1972: 53-
55).
The familiar mercantilist doctrines of the
seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries also
pointed
to a connection between cloth and
gold. Belaboring the dangers that were inher-
ent in
the export of precious metals, the more
farsighted
economists proposed that public
policy
should bolster up textile industries,
cheapen
labor and other factors of production,
and
promote the export of manufactures instead
of
bullion (e.g., Heckscher 1955: 188).
Wallerstein's treatment of the secular, if
uneven,
export of metals from Europe is con-
tradictory. In addition to citing Andrew
Watson's
reference to the "strong power of
India
and China to attract precious metals
from other
parts of the world" (quoted in
1974:
39-40), he suggests in a footnote that
readers
consult the "remarkable collaborative
article"
by Lopez, Miskimin, and Udovitch in
which
"they argue very convincingly that the
years
1350-1500 see a steady outflow of bul-
lion
from north-west Europe to Italy to the
Levant
to India" (1974: 40, n. 85). Yet
Wallerstein
cannot explain why England and
France
"complained bitterly" about this out-
flow,
nor why Europeans passionately hoarded
bullion
at the same time that they exported it
extensively
to the East (1974: 329-330). At
one
point he calls attention to the distinc-
tion
between "bullion as money" and "hoarded
bullion"
or treasure (1974: 333); but else-
where
simple formulae obscure the complex uses
of
precious metals: "the bullion flowed east
to
decorate the temples, palaces, and clothing
of
Asian aristocratic classes and the jewels
and
spices flowed west" (1974: 41) -- an
innocuous
exchange of windfalls, irrelevant to
competition
for energy among great powers.
To the extent that, contrary to Waller-
stein,
the flow of precious metals was not
benign,
but was related, however indirectly,
to
energy mobilization, it is possible to
hypothesize
a precapitalist world-system, in
which
core-areas accumulated precious metals
while
exporting manufactures, whereas periphe-
ral
areas gave up these metals (and often
slaves)
against an inflow of finished goods.
As in
the modern world-system, most areas fit
neither
of these categories but constituted
either
external arenas, or semiperipheral
"layers
within layers."
Given the hypothesized system, precapita-
list
Europe was not simply marginal to the
older,
better established civilizations of the
Levant
and Asia; it was peripheral to these
civilizations
whose development it partially
supported
through the export of metals and, in
the
early Middle Ages, also of slaves (Verlin-
den
1955). As such its trajectory of
develop-
ment
might fruitfully be compared with that of
other
bullion-losing, textile-importing areas
such as
Southeast Asia and West Africa, rather
than
exclusively with energy-gaining China as
is
often done. Another parallel to explore
is
that of
the handful of twentieth-century
underdeveloped
countries which, by accident of
geography
and environmental resources, are
well
enough situated to withdraw from external
pressure,
successfully defend against subse-
quent
penetration, substitute for imported
manufactures,
and eventually export manufac-
tures
in lieu of energy (Seers 1970).
For Europe, the hypothesized conversion
from
periphery to core took many centuries
during
which serious reversals and a great
deal of
internal competition occurred. At
various
points different regions held the
initiative
in the conversion process, and as a
result,
they functioned as minor core areas
within
Europe itself. Northern Italy, Flan-
ders,
and (eventually) England are the prime
examples. Yet the complexity which resulted
from
the simultaneous expansion of several
incipient
centers of development also had a
certain
coherence if one accepts the existence
of a
precapitalist world-system. For that
system
points to cloth manufacture as the
central
element in the transition from a
dependent
to a dominant relationship with the
Levant
and Far East. It suggests that there
were
successive, cloth-centered, European
strategies
to retreat from, then match, and
finally
to undermine the textile-producing,
Oriental
areas toward which bullion was mov-
ing. The most successful strategies over the
long
run, if not the short run, appear to have
been
based on wool -- and for good reason.
Until
Europeans finally penetrated India,
which
was not until the eighteenth century,
cotton
was an Asian specialty and, as Pirenne
once
wrote, to carry silk to an Oriental
monarch
was "like carrying water to the river"
(1909:
310, n. 2). When Marc Bloch, in Feudal
Society,
referred to the "revolution which saw
our
Western countries embarking on the econom-
ic
conquest of the world by way of the East,"
he had
in mind the explosion of export-orient-
ed
woolen cloth manufacturing in towns and
cities
all over the map of Europe (1961: 70).
Textiles figure importantly in Waller-
stein's
account of numerous precapitalist
events. But they figure as factors among
other
factors, rather than as central ele-
ments. As such it is difficult to appreciate
the
extent to which textile manufacturing, in
and of
itself, contributed to the fundamental
processes
of regional differentiation and
inter-regional
competition prior to the capi-
talist
breakthrough. Wallerstein's treatment
of the
rise of England illustrates this point.
A
presumably exhaustive presentation of fac-
tors
assembled to account for this critical
juncture
identifies textiles as "the hub
of...export
trade," but it does not assess the
significance
of England's abundant and rich
pastures
for the competitiveness of its cloths
in
foreign markets (1974: 228-235). In the
context
of analyzing the failure of Spain to
consolidate
its empire, Wallerstein many pages
earlier
alludes to the natural advantage of
English
pastures (1974: 91); and an unrelated
footnote
somewhat later quotes Bowden: "It was
England's
fortune that she possessed a quasi-
monopoly
of long-staple wool" (1974: 280, n.
268). Yet the only factor of environmental
significance
to figure as an "accidental edge"
in the
actual analysis of England's rise is
the
nation's unusual insularity.
Regarding England's relationship to more
developed,
continental European powers, Wal-
lerstein
is also unfocused. At one point he
describes
this nation as industrially back-
ward,
even in the mid-sixteenth century, and
as
having been a virtual colony in the Middle
Ages
(1974: 227). Data pertinent to these
characterizations,
however, are not brought to
bear on
the argument, but are scattered throu-
ghout
the book. A summary in Chapter One of
the
factors that produced the crisis of feu-
dalism
mentions, almost in passing, that
"within
Europe, there were at least two small-
er
world-economies, a medium sized one based
on the
city-states of northern Italy and a
smaller
one based on the city-states (sic) of
Flanders
and northern Germany" (1974: 36-37).
Although
he suggests that "most of Europe was
not
directly involved in these networks,"
subsequent
footnotes reveal that before the
mid-fourteenth
century, the principle markets
for
England's raw wool were the cloth indus-
tries
of Italy (1974: 150, n. 73) and Flanders
(1974:
229, n. 21).
Another footnote quotes Postan, who drew a
connection
between the early fourteenth-centu-
ry
"collapse of Italian finance...the breeding
of the
new cloth industry (in England)," and
the
Hundred Years War (1974: 28, n. 44).
Wallerstein,
however, does not pursue the
implications
of this note, using the Hundred
Years
War only as one of the factors that
intensified
the crisis of feudalism by forcing
states
to adopt war economies, and hence to
increase
taxes (1974: 21, 28-29). Nor does
his
analysis bring out the subsequent phase of
Italian
imperialism in England. As the devel-
opment
of the English woolen industry intensi-
fied
competition for raw wool on the conti-
nent,
north Italian cities increasingly spe-
cialized
in the manufacture of silks, bro-
cades,
and velvets, and in the transhipment of
Oriental
luxuries acquired through long dis-
tance
trade. Wallerstein, borrowing Postan's
phrase,
refers to the "precocious mercantil-
ism"
of the rising English who, in the fif-
teenth
century, squeezed out "alien merchants,
the
Italians in particular..." But
this
reference,
embedded in the analysis of the
rise of
England and coming on page 229, is
detached
from an explanation for anti-Italian
sentiment. The explanation is implicit in the
footnote
on page 40 (mentioned above) which
concerns
the "steady outflow of bullion from
northwest
Europe to Italy to the Levant to
India,"
an outflow that moved against Italian
and
Oriental wares (Holmes 1960).
In other words, The Modern World-System,
notwithstanding
its contribution to elucidat-
ing a
global economy, contains no sustained
discussion
of the relationship between the
colonial
pressure exerted over England by
Flanders
and northern Italy, and England's
resistance
to this pressure as manifested in
the
expulsion of Italian financiers and mer-
chants,
the development of an indigenous
textile
industry, the enactment of endless
sumptuary
laws, and the pursuit of war, just
as
there is no concentrated assessment of the
environmental
conditions that permitted this
relatively
small but fortunate nation to raise
both
sheep and armies at the same time.
Wallerstein contributes significantly to
the
refinement of a new theory of change by
providing
concepts and illustrations that
clarify
the two fundamental processes upon
which
applications of the theory depend: the
processes
of regional differentiation and
inter-regional
dominance, resistance, competi-
tion. In addition, by applying the theory to
Europe,
his work pushes social science toward
an
understanding of change in which Western
and
non-Western, traditional and modern,
peoples
are subject, if not to similar out-
comes,
then at least to similar laws. Overall
the
book is supportive of a position, ex-
pressed
well by William McNeill, that "surely
the assumption
of uniformity in the range of
human
behavior has more to recommend it than
any
assertion of systematic difference between
civilized
and uncivilized, rational and non-
rational,
Western and non-Western modes of
conduct"
(1974). It appears, however, that
Wallerstein's
analysis of England's transfor-
mation,
as of many of the precapitalist events
he
explores, departs from this position.
Leaving
out environmental variables of signif-
icance
to the process of regional differentia-
tion,
and failing to examine the full implica-
tions
of inter-regional dominance, it does not
raise
the question whether the rise of England
can be
understood within the same intellectual
framework
as the fall of Poland.
This essay has suggested that, to discover
laws
that apply to precapitalist as well as
capitalist
social change, it is necessary to
view
the luxury trade not merely as a stimulus
to
production, or an adjunct to stratifica-
tion,
but also as a series of long distance
exchanges
of relevance to the capture of
energy. Because before the capitalist trans-
formation,
primitive means of transportation
restricted
the flow of bulk goods, we are
inclined
to think that energy was stagnant
too. If, however, some luxuries, and in
particular
gold and silver, were readily
convertible
into energy resources across much
of the
Old World, their movement constituted a
disguised
transfer of essential goods. The
movement
of slaves (not discussed here) often
paralleled
the movement of gold, and was also
an
energy flow. Slaves ate for ten to
twenty
years
in their homeland before raiders or
traders
took them off. In effect this elimi-
nated
the difficulty of transporting an equiv-
alent
amount of food, especially as most of
them
walked from their neolithic villages to
civilization
(e.g., McNeill 1964: 28-29;
Wilbur
1943).
There is no question that slaves and pre-
cious
metals conferred status upon their
owners
and can be classified as luxuries.
But,
when the concept luxury is opposed to the
concept
utility, the power and energy dimen-
sions
of a rich man's, or a rich institut-
ion's,
"things" fade from view.
Notwithstand-
ing
their luxury status -- in fact precisely
because
they were highly valued -- gold and
other
preciosities often served a political
end,
either in war or in the construction of
great
patron-client chains. As such they were
no less
critical than food to resource mobili-
zation.
The idea that one should conceptually
oppose
luxuries to essentials is central to
The
Modern World-System. Difficult to main-
tain
with consistency, I think that it ac-
counts
for the book's confusing approach to
precapitalist
social change. Wallerstein,
however,
is hardly alone to insist on it.
Rather,
the implied opposition seems closely
related
to other dualisms that are profoundly
ingrained
in Western social thought: between
spirit
and matter, mind and body, work and
play. When placed in such a dichotomous frame
of
reference, the word "luxury" conjures up
the
profligate excesses that are suggested by
its
Latin connotations, lasciviousness and
lust.
In conclusion, I would like to propose that
thinking
about a precapitalist world-system
will
help clarify the Western intellectual
tendency
to drive a wedge between necessities
and
luxuries; the same wedge that separates
God
from the Devil. The self-confident
ideol-
ogues
of a core-area like Byzantium would not
have
felt the need to stigmatize luxuries, nor
would
culture brokers in peripheral areas
which
over the centuries accommodated to the
demands
of external dominants. But in Western
Europe
which, although peripheral, was prop-
itiously
located to resist predation, vigi-
lance
would have made sense. If so, then
Wallerstein's
categorical claim that luxuries
are
non-essential -- read dangerous and cor-
rupting
-- originated as the ideological
aspect
of a secular movement from import
restriction
and import substitution to eventu-
al
industrial development. Such a
conclusion
puts
The Modern World-System at a threshold.
While
not yet giving us culture-free answers
to such
"big" questions as "Why Europe?" and
"Why
England?," it nevertheless offers the
intellectual
tools for a new and much broader
understanding
of this part of the world than
social
science has had in the past. One
anticipates
that it will stimulate undertak-
ings,
among historians too, that will push
familiar
arguments to another level.
NOTES