Untitled

The Problem of the "Early Modern" World
Author(s): Jack A. Goldstone

Source: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient , 1998, Vol. 41, No. 3
(1998), pp. 249-284
Published by: Brill
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THE PROBLEM OF THE "EARLY MODERN" WORLD
BY
JACK A. GOLDSTONE
(University of California-Davis)
Was there an "early modern" world? From a glance at book titl

think there is a well-defined period in global history that cuts a
and is recognized as "early modern." According to literally hun
umes covering Europe, North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, China
and the New World,') these societies either had their own "e
periods, or were part of an "early modern" world. Moreover,
major universities have established centers or programs for the s
Modern History."
However, I would now argue that we (for I include the title o
own books) have fallen into a terrible error when we use the term
ern." In a word, the "early modem" world wasn't. That is, it wa
way "modern," and certainly not an "early" form of modernity.
the Holy Roman Empire, in a famous aphorism, was neither Holy
an Empire, so I would now say a rigorous review of evidence wou
the "early modern" world was neither "early," nor "modern," alt
arguably, in its trade relations, a single "world."
"Modernity" as a Historical Term and a Sociological Term
"Modernity" has many guises. It marks a historical period in Eu

colonies, roughly from the late eighteenth century onward. By 1750,
ing intellectuals of Europe were convinced that there was an idea
man-a man (not yet a woman) who saw himself as an intellectua
individual, believing in the findings of experimental science, and
ability of theological and political freedom. These intellectuals joi
1) For a sampling, see Brotton 1998; Cook 1994; Coward 1988; Goldston
and Pole 1987; Kirby 1990; Kunt and Woodhead 1994; McClain et al., 19
Ropp 1981; Schwartz 1994; Subrahmanyam 1990; Totman 1993; Wee 1993
? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 1998 JESHO 41,3

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250 JACK A. GOLDSTONE
defend the superiority of "modern" t

1850, with industrial expositions and
colonies, most of the populations of t
ing in a new, "modern" age.
In the arts and architecture, the ter
stylistic break with the past: departing
art in painting and sculpture, and fro
and concealment of functional struc
later and shorter period, beginning in
ing the first three-quarters of the tw
modern" art; just as there was no bat
erns." Western art styles progress f
to the Neo-Classical; indeed in one of
"modern" historical event-the French Revolution of 1789-was announced not
by modern art, but by J-L David's neo-classical paintings. Thus some schola
prefer to see "modern" art as essentially the art of the twentieth century.3)
But "modernity" is also a sociological term, and it is there that we can find
the roots of the idea of the "early" modern. Sociology was born in the year
1780 to 1860 in the works of Henri de Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Joh
Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, and Alexis de Tocqueville. Living at the core of the tra
sition to modern society, these thinkers sought to identify what was "modern
about their societies, and how they had become so. By the early twentieth ce
tury, in the work of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the problem of the or
gins of the modern world had become the central problem of sociology.
Sociologically, it is fairly easy to define a "modern" society. It is one
which religion is a lifestyle choice, not an inescapable and uniform disc
pline, and in which belief in science has largely supplanted belief in active spi
its and miracles. It is one in which most consumer goods are produced b
mass-production facilities powered and lit by fossil fuels and/or electricity
rather than by craft production in households powered and lit by muscle, wate
wood, dung, or tallow, and in which transportation is powered by engines-o
land or water-rather than by wind or animal power. It is one in which gov-
ernment is designed by men to meet their perceived needs, rather than accept
as sanctified by immemorial tradition.
While this list may, from today's perspective, seem straightforward, just
few decades ago defining "modernity" would have been anything but easy. Th
was because there were different prevailing notions of what constituted "th
2) Swift 1909; Hazard 1963.

3) Copplestone 1985.

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THE PROBLEM OF THE "EARLY MODERN" WORLD 251
modern," depending on which theory of social change-Marxist or

ist-one was committed to use. The above sociological definition of
society is basically functionalist, drawing on the work of Talcott P
sought to interpret and synthesize key insights of Durkheim, Weber
European masters.4)
"Modernization theory" is now somewhat in disrepute, as the ve
sented by Parsons had an air of inevitable progression from an undiffer
universal "pre-modernity" to a holistically different, but similarly
"modernity," in which European societies led the way down a p
other societies would follow. We now recognize this version of mo
as Eurocentric and misleading. There is no universal "pre-mode
rather a wide range of societies with distinctive cultures and stru
went through their own historical development over centuries or
before and after Western contact. Moreover, even countries that h
modern industrial technology and discarded traditional governmen
dominant role of religion do not simply become homogeneously "m
some have become communist, other highly capitalistic; some hav
autocratic, others democratic; some have remained highly religious,
become severely secularized. Moreover, many of these differen
continuities of culture across the pre-modern/modern divide, or par
tingencies of history that were given no place in modernization the
modernists" have therefore argued that "modernization" is itself an
myth, and it is the essential variety and uniqueness of different so
matters and should be central to social theory.5)
Nonetheless, no one can seriously deny that methods of productio
of government authority, and the dominance of religion in daily li
dramatically in the West following the Revolution of 1789 in Fran
Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centurie
and that such changes have been spreading around the globe e
David Washbrook points out that "only a sociology of profound in
could regard [modern-day] Japan, the United States, France and Sc
as 'essentially' the same."6) True enough, but only a historian with
myopia could regard the economies, levels of per-capita energy pro
consumption, forms of government, and even modes of dress in the
day societies and not see that they are enormously more simil
other in these respects than they are to the same societies two-and
turies ago.
4) Parsons 1937, 1977.

5) Said 1978.
6) Washbrook 1997, p. 412.

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If one grants that the societies that e

were themselves diverse and had prior
on which these modernizing changes we
societies differed greatly depending on
contingencies of their history, and that
for assuming that "modern" changes w
to what came before, then I would argu
of history, just as the earlier adoption
social stratification-the complex of cha
lithic revolution"-is a fact of history.
There was yet another view of "mode
nated historical writing for many decad
history represented a progression of m
dal to capitalist, with each stage domina
sition marked by violent expropriation
years, Marxist interpretations of key ev
nant perspectives, in European histo
the transition from feudalism to capit
English Revolution, Albert Soboul's a
Thompson's narrative of the rise of th
sweeping histories of Europe from the
Marx's message that the "modern worl
feudal barons was challenged by bourge
ern capitalist economies and replacing
proletariat.8) This Marxist view was als
Chinese scholars in their own view of t
Of course, it became clear almost as s
launched that the "transition from feu
short-term event. Although as Tocquev
completed the task of abolishing the rem
in the French countryside, feudalism had
point of European feudalism, with large
binding their loyalties to superiors thr
economy, and serfs wholly bound to th
7) Marx and Engels 1967.

8) Hilton 1990; Hill 1961; Soboul 1975; Tho
9) Fu and Li 1956; Tsukahira 1970.
10) Tocqueville 1955, pp. 19-20.

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the century-and-a half that followed the slow recovery from the Blac
By the beginning of the sixteenth century, market economies, state-li
cal structures dominated by a central government under a King, and
of serfdom had spread across most of Europe west of the Elbe. Yet it
until well after 1850 that a truly "modern society," with a work forc
nated by an industrial proletariat, and governments dominated by b
politicians rather than by titled nobles and aristocrats, was the norm
Western Europe. The period from 1500 to 1850 (or perhaps to 1832 in
1848 in France and Germany, and perhaps a bit later in Italy and Sp
thus neither clearly feudal, nor clearly modern, but an age of transiti
revolutions. Although some scholars, noting the consolidation of pow
monarchical central governments, called this the "Age of Absolutism,
far as it was a period of rising bourgeois power, of laying the founda
the "modern" world to come, it could with justification be labeled th
modern" period, and so it was.12)
Now the essence of "modernity" in this view lies in the mode of pr
of modern society, namely "capitalism." But since industrial capitalism
proletariat were not evident on a significant scale before 1850, what
mode of production that prevailed from 1500 to 1850, since classical
ism, with its local non-market economy, had also passed from the sce
answer was that a form of capitalism was growing from 1500 to 1850
"merchant capitalism," or "proto-industrial" production, in which goo
produced for markets, and in which profits were made by market tr
commodities, and accrued mainly to non-members of the dominant cla
latter were still feudal (e.g. mainly rentier) in their economic outlook a
tices."3) What was defined as characteristically "early modern," then
form of society in which markets were an active source of profits to mer
who ordered their affairs rationally in order to pursue profits, in a mann
ferent than the still "feudal" (e.g. concerned with rank and honor) n
Moreover, governance was neither "modern" (e.g. dominated by b
politicians) nor "feudal," (e.g. decentralized and dominated by ind
lords), but centralized and partly bureaucratized, albeit under the dire
traditionally-sanctified monarchies and their noble ministers and officers.
We thus come to one crucial problem in the use of the term "early
and its application to world history. "Early Modern" derives from a p
sociological theory of history that privileges modes of production in c
11) Beloff 1962.

12) Tracy 1976.
13) Wallerstein 1980; Berg 1985; Kriedte, et al., 1981.

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izing and powering history, not from

such as the rise and fall of major poli
tures, which are commonly used to p
societies than post-1500 Europe. Mo
arises because this particular sociologi
marily through contradistinction from
no exact analogue (or even close analog
Europe. Thus if we apply the term
Europe, we are doing one of two thin
(1) We are simply using the term-wi
to label a particular span of years, rou
the "EM" period in world history is ju
historical time of 3.5 centuries, like "
time. However, when we do this, what
tory, or the histories of various worl
This use of the term would ignore all
periodization in history, such as chang
all global societies except that of Wes
For example, in Chinese history some of
lennia were the expulsion of the Mong
Ming dynasty by the Manchus in 164
1911. The date 1500 in Chinese hist
1587, "A Year of No Significance."'4) A
Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, an
none of these events has anywhere nea
millennia of Confucian patterns of rul
decades. What portion, if any, of the
Qing rule should be singled out as "ear
East the key turning point in control
Constantinople in 1453, and the end of
War I, with the secularizing Kemalist
centuries of Ottoman rule, what part i
lems in dating its key transitions. Whe
In 1547, when Ivan the Terrible suppr
Czar of Russia? In 1682, when Peter th
begins its enforced modernization? Or
of serfdom in 1861? Certainly Russia d
14) R. Huang 1981.

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the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. So how do we date the "earl

period in Russia? We have at least three possibilities: 1547-1917, 16
and 1861-1917, none of which corresponds well with the canonical "
ern" period in Europe.
That is not to say the years 1500-1850 do not have some reso
global history.
These years roughly embrace the period of Latin American coloni
Spain and Portugal, from Cort6s' conquest of the Aztecs in 1521 t
independence in 1822. In India, they nicely bracket the years from
of Mughal rule in 1526 to the final victory of the British Raj in the
1857-58. In Japan, although the initial turning point lies at the end
teenth century, not the beginning, historians increasingly are usin
"early modern" as an English code for what Japanese historians call
period, from the unification wars begun in the 1560s by Nobunaga
end of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868.15) Indeed, trying to find
causal element behind these temporal configurations, some histori
pointed to the rise of firearms c. 1500 and considered the rise of t
Portuguese, Ottoman, and Mughal empires and the Tokugawa Sh
marking an era of "gunpowder empires."'6)
Still, the problem with using "early modern" simply as a code to
period 1500-1850 is that China, Korea, Southeast Asia, Russia, the M
and Africa are, in effect, left out of the account. For these regions
1500-1850 do not denote a particular regime or cultural era. As Ya
has recently argued "Defining early modernity according to a 'west
of periodization leads to common problems in Japan, China, and all
Thus, at very best, "early modern" is a code that has some, but ce
global, application to world history.
(2) Far worse, however, and more dangerously misleading, is wh
when we attach meaning to the words "early modern" and apply th
in world history. If we take the words in terms of their intended m
demarcate a stage in economic and political development, then spe
society as "early modern" is to say that society had clear elements
ern" society beginning to emerge. A fortiori, if we speak of an "ea
world," that suggests that over large portions of the world differe
shared some key elements of "modern" society, and were actively in
to modernity.
15) Wigen 1995.

16) Hodgson 1974; Parker 1988, 1991; McNeill 1982.
17) Yabuta Toro, in Rekishi Hyoron 1993, cited in Wigen 1995, pp. 13-14.

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Is there, then, such a thing as an "ear

nical development that at some point
of the globe; and how closely tied is
societies?
What is "Early Modern?"
It is interesting that among most current scholars of the major European

revolutions, the Marxist approach which privileges relations of production and
conflict among economic classes has been largely discarded. Recent work on
the English Revolution8) and on the French Revolution'9) does not discount
economic factors in motivating social protest, but presents the major cleavages
that led to revolution as cultural and political, and presents the transition to
"modernity" in terms of political culture (Baker) or relations between people
and their government (Kishlansky). Nonetheless, many scholars continue to use
the term "early modern" in terms of its Marxist criteria, rather than in terms of
some other viewpoint, such as one based on the more functionalist account of
"modern" given above. This has remarkably powerful implications, for search-
ing for an "early modern" stage of development based on Marxist criteria often
gives diametrically opposite results from using a more functionalist view.
If modern society is marked by the combination of consciously constructed
authority in lieu of traditionally-sanctified rule, modest or minimal religious au-
thority, and the extensive application of factory mass-production powered
by fossil fuels and electricity, then we shall look in vain for truly "modern"
societies prior to 1850 in England, and prior to 1900 or later elsewhere in the
world. Certain elements of this combination do appear elsewhere. Consciously
designed constitutional authority among landed citizens is evident in ancient
Greece, although it coexisted with slavery.20) Elements of constitutional au-
thority also existed in medieval townships and the Swiss cantons of the twelfth
century, and in the later Venetian Republic. Nonetheless, we do not consider
the constitutional governments of 2500 years ago, or of 500-700 years ago, to
be "modern," or even "early modern," because these societies showed no other
signs of progress toward full "modernity" in the following centuries. Religious
freedom and minimal or modest religious authority appears sporadically in the
18) Hirst 1986; Kishlansky 1986, 1996; Russell 1990.

19) Furet 1981; Hunt 1984; Baker 1987; Doyle 1990.
20) The constitutions of Solon for Athens and Lycurgus for Sparta are the best known,
but constitution-making was an extensive activity in Greece in the sixth and seventh cen-
turies B.C., viz. Forrest 1966.

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late Roman Empire, and again in Muslim Spain, but remained rar
late seventeenth century, when the Netherlands and England
American colonies enshrined freedom of religious practice. Still, de
gious freedom for individuals, no historians consider late Rome
Spain to be "modern," or "early modern." It is even difficult to co
Colonial America to be "early modern," in the sense of being clea
road to "modernity," for at the time of the Salem witchcraft tria
authority and the power of the King still remained paramount,
that the American colonists should write republican constitution
themselves free citizens were almost a century away. Finally,
made extensive use of coal in a variety of factory processes, to th
Hartwell speaks of an eleventh century "Industrial Revolution" in C
some scholars would push the origins of "early modern" China b
A.D.22) Yet here we would have an entire millennium between th
"early modernity" and the beginning of fully "modem" China c. 1
also note that although modern factory production powered by ste
road transportation appear in substantial degree in late Czaris
the grip of religion and traditional authority (as shown by the g
dependence on the personal whims of the Czar, and the Czar's
on the religious charlatan Rasputin) void any efforts to call pre-
Russia a truly "modern" country.
In addition, the modem Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offers an inter
ple of a country that clearly is technologically "modern," yet rema
wholly traditionally-sanctified modes of governance. Also in the
we find the Islamic Republic of Iran-again, a technologically adva
ety, and with a recently created constitutional government that aro
revolution against monarchical rule. Yet the dominant position of
and of the clergy in Iran has moved some scholars to declare that
a modernizing revolution, and that Iran is neither fully modern no
the clergy and Islamic law remain so dominant, on its way to bec
short we have in Saudi Arabia and Iran two countries that exploit
technology, yet are rarely considered to be fully modernized.
In sum, individual elements of "modernity" may appear in a sc
places, but such individual elements in isolation do not necessarily
ety "modern," or even "early modern." If by "early modern" we se
a society that was simultaneously progressing toward fossil-fuele
21) Hartwell 1962, 1966.

22) Fairbank and Reischauer 1989, pp. 116ff.

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economies, constitutional government,

of daily life, we do not find such societ
nineteenth century Europe and America
is already upon us.
It is true that England is something o
sion settlement of 1689, England had a
gious tolerance and constitutional gove
coal for home and industrial heating sin
England, prior to 1689 the potential stil
ment and the establishment of an authori
incited the 1688 revolt against James II
not find steady progress toward the com
stitutional governance, and religious f
that are so often taken to be a substant
The belief that "early modern" is a sen
1850 rests on the belief that no other
between feudalism and capitalism, an er
dominated by merchant capital and pro
to check for the existence of "early m
simply seek for markets, merchant cap
market-oriented) production.
This, in fact, has been the most comm
modern" to non-European societies. S
been remarkably successful in demonst
markets, merchants, and market-oriented
ars have perhaps been too successful. W
practices in eighteenth century Japan,
tury Java, and even of an entire capita
basin in the thirteenth century. Perha
"early modern" business practices in lan
least from Greaco-Roman times, and e
operating in Anatolia not in this era, b
In eighteenth century Japan, the activ
and social dominance, of the major urb
known.24) But commercial interests also
In 1780, a commentary on an uprising
23) Nef 1932.

24) Vlastos 1986.

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had supported peasant demands to be allowed freely to pursue rur

mented the fading of the civil and military arts, and that "nowad
both abandoned and profits are pursued (emphasis added)."25) Much
thirteenth century China, the Southern Song enjoyed a golden age
and economic dynamism-although many scholars would date the
commercial expansion even further back, to the Tang-Song divide
century, and its rapid expansion of iron and coal technology.26)
Jan Christie details the activities of "highly capitalized merchants a
associations (banigrama)" during the Javanese trade boom of the
eleventh centuries.27) During this period, Java's overseas trade exp
dramatic changes in consumption and in the domestic ceramics a
industries, oriented to increasing profits. Indeed, Janet Abu-Lugh
mented the activity of active trade networks of international an
merchants throughout the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia in th
century.28)
While finding such extensive profit-oriented activity by merchants and pro-
ducers in the tenth to thirteenth centuries A.D. in East Asia may not be sur-
prising, what is startling is the recent uncovering of similar practices stretching
back to the ancient world. The trade "boom" of the sixteenth century pro-
claimed as the onset of capitalism by Wallerstein and other early modernists
is actually just one of a series of booms in international trade-earlier ones
include the tenth-thirteenth century boom noted above in Java and China, and
associated with the Chinese commercial expansion of the Song and the Mongol
unification of central Asia; the seventh-eighth century boom associated with
spread of Islam; and the second century B.C.-second century A.D. boom asso-
ciated with the peaceful eras of the Roman and Han empires. Indeed, some
scholars have argued that similar pulses can be traced back to the Bronze Age.29)
Aside from the question of whether international trade can be traced back
this far, it is certain that profit-seeking by merchants and peasants, and the use
of market-oriented credit and leasing strategies, can be identified in documents
regarding ancient Egyptian land-leases, and the partnerships of Assyrian traders
operating in Anatolia. Christopher Eyre finds letters dating back to the Pha-
raonic Middle Kingdom, as well as lease documents from the Graeco-Roman
period, that show a fine balancing of lease terms, access to capital and water,
25) Quoted in Bix 1986, p. 115.

26) Feuerwerker 1992, p. 766; Zurndorfer 1997a, p. 462; Wong 1994; Hartwell 1962.
27) Christie 1998.
28) Abu-Lughod 1989.
29) Wigen 1995, footnote 48; Curtin 1984.

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and paid labor arranged to produce ma

Klaas Veenhof similarly finds that Old
trading posts in Anatolia, and thus o
Assyrian ruler, developed sets of rules
including credit, "bearer notes," transf
deal with insolvent creditors.31) Norm
logical findings from the early Old Ba
show "profound economic changes that
Ur III empire. Land was rented, bought
accumulated, inherited, and disputed in
and temple-estates managed great plot
show the extensive degree to which ent
For example,] temples leased fishing ri
for their own profit (emphasis added).3
While this scholarship has been stunni
that the world outside Europe someho
production, or an unchanging "Asiatic
tion-how can merchant practices in iso
trade, which are found as far back as
as to be found throughout Asia from t
fully "early modern?" After all, the evide
would mean that Asia was "early moder
mainly feudal. Thus the "early modern
Asia, which Europe joined as a latecome
discovery of such practices in ancient A
as well as in tenth century China and
what sense does it make to talk of an "
thousand to four thousand years? Can
Assyria, Graeco-Roman Egypt, tenth ce
were in "transition" to full modernity?
much in common with, say, eighteenth ce
tury France? It increasingly appears tha
simply pegged on the existence of prod
the "early modern" period will cover all
30) Eyre 1997.

31) Veenhof 1997.
32) Yoffee 1995, pp. 297-298.
33) Frank 1998.

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ilization and written records, and lose any meaningful connection to

distinctive about the "modern" world.
Historians thus seem, in searching for "early modern" history, to be caught
between the Scylla of finding it nowhere and the Charybdis of finding it every-
where. If we define "early modern" societies as those clearly transitioning
toward the fully "modern" in respect to government, religion, and technology
they are almost nowhere to be found. Even in Europe, it took major revolutions
that simultaneously disestablished religious authority and formally replaced
monarchy with constitutional regimes, along with a transformation of the basi
structure of production, to create "modern" societies. Similar wrenching transi-
tions were required in Russia (1917) and China (1911 and after). Elsewhere
particularly in the third world, modern societies developed only in the wake of
throwing off colonial authority. Although modernity emerged in some cases
without such major transformations (e.g., Canada, Switzerland), the transition
from non-modern to modern-societies typically occurred in a dramatic and
short-term change, not in a 350-year period of "transition."
On the other hand, if we define "early modern" societies in the Marxist fash-
ion of societies with market-oriented production and profit-oriented mer-
chants, then we find such societies almost everywhere, from ancient Assyria
and ancient Egypt to Song China to the early Muslim Middle East, to sixteenth
century Europe. There was, by this definition, certainly an "early modern
world," but it had little or no necessary connection to the "modern" world, and
began very early indeed!
In other words, "early modern" can mean almost nothing, or almost every-
thing, and as such, is a wholly meaningless term. It developed out of the need
to fill in a space in the Marxist theory of stages of history, where it fills the
gap between feudalism and industrial capitalism in Europe by interpolating
commercial practices that have been widespread from the earliest days of com-
merce, while erroneously concluding that those practices represent something
new, something essentially Western, and something closely tied to the emer-
gence of "modern" societies. In fact, none of these latter propositions are valid.
Thus the term "early modem" is founded on a series of errors, and has no use-
ful application to world history.
The Advanced Organic Societies
Nonetheless, if there are common social practices to be found among merchant

from ancient Assyria to Song China to sixteenth century Europe, it is worth
bracketing the issue of transitions to modernity, and simply asking if there is,

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
in fact, some social formation that i

represent a common stage of politica
tory. I believe that there is, and that
called the "advanced organic societies
Wrigley coined this term to point o
for cheap energy, all societies were
biomass from crops that could be co
draft animals, and forest wood that
industrial processes. The problem wi
and water-power that supplemented t
muscle power from draft animals w
could feed, and wood fuel from fores
grow and how much land could be
exploitation of virgin forests on a v
States, and Amazonia) can give the t
but we have seen that even these vast resources reach their limits in two or
three generations.
In contrast, the amount of energy stored in large coal-fields (or, a for
large oil-fields) completely dwarfs the energy available to strictly organic
eties. As Wrigley pointed out, the classical economists-Adam Smith,
Ricardo, John Stuart Mill-were cognizant of the efficiency gains to be
from economic specialization and free trade, but remained extremely p
mistic about the chances for sustained long-term economic growth. Ric
insistence on diminishing returns was based-as surely as Malthus' gl
predictions of famine-on the belief that the economy was in the last an
dependent on the yield of the land, something that could not be indefi
increased. (Even our modern agriculture, which has attained remarkable
tained growth, depends for that growth heavily upon inputs of artificial
izer that are obtained from inorganic feedstocks. About one-third of the p
content of the current global food supply comes from non-organic fertilizers
Thus, although advanced organic societies could grow mightily through expl
tation of efficiencies of manufacturing and trade, such societies would inevita
reach a limit to growth when they fully tapped their arable land and fore
most of history, when land was abundant relative to labor, this was
significant check on economic growth; rather the main check on that gr
was inefficient organization of manufacturing and limits on trade. Thu
34) Wrigley 1988, pp. 60ff.

35) Smil 1994, p. 190.

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
importance of Smith's treatise on The Wealth of Nations. But by th

century, land was increasingly becoming the scarce factor in p
certainly in Western Europe and China. From that point on, thos
that could overcome the organic "limits" by tapping into a virtuall
energy source, by learning to mine and utilize coal on a vast scale
and industrial processes, started to dramatically pull away from ev
advanced of the "organic" societies.
In short, the transition from advanced organic societies to "mo
eties, which could experience sustained exponential growth, depen
in part on exploiting fossil fuels. No society which did not begin to
claim to be solidly "on the road" to modernity. Nor was this a sm
term transition. In Europe, c. 1200 A.D., one hundred percent of pri
came from human and animal muscle, and wind- and water-mills; i
ninety-five percent of primary power came from these same sourc
1900 only forty percent came from these inorganic sources.36) Mo
this respect, came on with a rush.
Wrigley gives as his key example of this the nation of Holland.")
enteenth century, Holland dominated the European economy. Exp
power and peat deposits, a detailed division of labor and significant
ical innovation, immense stores of capital and sophisticated marke
rowing and trade, and an internal and international transport syste
canals and superior cargo vessels, Holland was the European leader i
finance, textiles, shipbuilding, brewing, and sugar refining. Yet de
enormous leads, Holland soon lost its position of European leadershi
this was because of its high wages, or lack of accessible coal depos
cause of a preoccupation with finance instead of manufacturing rem
able.38) But what is certain is that Holland was relatively late to in
lagging behind Belgium and even Germany. There is certainly no
believe that Holland, on its own, would have made the leap to mat
technological "modernity."
What are we to make of the Dutch experience of the "golden age?
if any European society deserves to be called "early modern" by ou
teria of using fossil fuel, having designed a constitutional regime, a
religious freedom, then seventeenth century Holland would qualify
use of peat for industrial heating processes as an early form of tap
fuel resources). During this period of precocious or early moderni
36) Smil 1994, p. 226, figure 6.1.

37) Wrigley 1988, pp. 57-60.
38) DeVries 1974; Mokyr 1976.

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was indeed the dominant European pow

standards, technology, and trade. Yet
tions of the Dutch experience: (1) Du
was the only state in Europe that has
as attested by the substantial gap be
many areas of capital, technology, gove
exceptionalism of Holland argues stron
teenth and seventeenth centuries ther
Europe or "early modern" world; ind
Holland's exceptional achievement and
fiat to regions that did not share it. (2)
smoothly lead to a modern and domi
modernization was abortive. When peat
seemingly obvious step of switching t
and capital-intensive growth.
If "modern" societies are distinguished
output per capita, Holland's early mode
tury. We can grant that Holland was a
on several counts-it not only had "liber
tions, it also made some use of non-or
this society was not "early modern" in
economic development that led inevitab
Equally striking cases of high levels o
ment without steady progress toward m
Japan. China's technological achieveme
invention of gunpowder and the compas
addition, as Zurndorfer rightly points
ern" in the Marxist sense of undergoin
the tenth century.40) Wealthy merchan
work of trade along the Silk Road and
whirl of commercial activity that woul
accounts were based on) a few centuries
almost 1000 years of commercial dev
manufacturing, internal transport net
households producing grains, beans, co
large urban centers.41) Yet what progre
39) Needham 1954, Elvin 1973, 1996.

40) Zurndorfer 1997a, pp. 462, 465.
41) P. Huang 1985, 1990; Pomeranz 1993.

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remained, and had even become more orthodox, in its Confucian ri

technology remained fully organic, with its earlier vast exploitation
continued, and its government, of course, remained based on a tradi
rial system which, despite its often-efficient semi-meritocratic bureauc
operated on the basis of imperial omnipotence. To call China "earl
from 960 to 1911 may be inappropriate, even anachronistic. But t
an advanced organic economy over this millennium, or even longe
quite accurate.
Similarly, if we look carefully at Tokugawa Japan, we see an econ
is rich in trade, in agricultural production, and had a standard of li
bly higher than that of eighteenth century Europe. But it was not
economy. Population was controlled for much of the Tokugawa
infanticide and birth spacing; and while metallurgy reached fabul
of skill in the production of steel swords and armor, and craft skill
tectural wonders in the use of wood and silk testify to the ability
craftsmen, there is no evidence that fossil-fuel powered factory p
much less constitutional government or religious freedom, were und
to the "opening" to the West forced on Japan in 1858.43) Again, t
cannot maintain that Tokugawa Japan was in an "early" stage o
"modern," it was certainly an advanced organic economy.
Just as modernity requires more than simply technological adva
however, I would like to suggest that an advanced organic socie
more than just commercial markets and a division of labor. S.N. E
has pointed out that a major transformation of social organization
across the globe during what he called the "Axial Age." This era, ro
500 B.C. to 700 A.D., was marked by the emergence of the major w
gions.") During the following centuries, religious institutions became
more than alter-egos for state authority. Instead, a transcendental s
acquired an elite of spokespeople that existed in formal tension wit
and its bureaucracy. To be sure, individual religious authorities (e.g
in many European monarchies) could still hold positions in the secu
ment, the church generally upheld and cooperated with the government
king or emperor often took the role of supreme head of the chur
theless, there remained a separate hierarchy and organization of th
"experts," not directly under state control-the Catholic Church in
Europe, the Confucian gentry and Buddhist monasteries in China
42) Ropp 1981, p. 47; Ho 1967, p. 192; Liu 1990.

43) Hanley and Yamamura 1977.
44) Eisenstadt, S.N. 1986.

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the brahminic order in India, the Islam

mosques, waqfs, and universities in the
Church in Byzantium and later Eastern
This religious/state differentiation was
elite that included members whose we
sources in religion, government, militar
diversified economy and society. Although
ian, with a predominantly peasant popu
culture, a centralized and, at least, semi
on the regular collection of taxes, and s
tic and international. In addition to the
Japan), the "gunpowder empires" of th
ify, as do most European and Asian an
onward, if not far earlier.45)
Indeed, it seems certain that large-sca
first in Asia-certainly in the Islamic s
from the tenth century (or perhaps som
the twelfth century, which abandoned
tem for one based on commerce and com
Empire in Anatolia from the period of
century,47) while the first such societ
Italian states of Venice and Genoa, fo
France under Frangois I and Spain und
We thus can begin to periodicize world
from the neolithic revolution to the "an
Babylon, Persia, the Hellenic Era, Rom
and State were not clearly separated an
homogenous in the basis of their wealt
state, warring-states, and republican g
nated global politics for over four tho
the fifth and fifteenth centuries, the
dal societies (decentralized congeries of
45) Arjomand 1984, p. 94, points out that "

domination in to caliphate and rulership had
1991, p. 126, adds that "the postclassical 'gu
Persia, and Mughal India-all practiced the de
authority ... the Byzantine[s] evolved a very s
and a clerical hierarchy, each recognizing the
46) Zurndorfer 1997b, p. 388.
47) Diehl 1957; Runciman 1956.

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and labor, with limited urban centers and manor-centered econo

bureaucratized and centralized government collecting taxes i
national currency), or to more advanced organic societies, in wh
grew more diversified, and the economies more commercializ
vanced organic societies spread and endured for 500 to 1000 y
parts of the Old World, and for several centuries in the New W
these many centuries almost all of the advanced organic societies,
siderable economic growth, specialization, and market activity, sh
of becoming "modern," in the functionalist sense described above.
society-one of those that had only recently, since perhaps 1530,
advanced organic society-suddenly.burst forth and changed all th
ing rapidly from 1689 to 1848 to create the first fully modern society
and partly in consequence, assembling the largest empire the worl
This was England, followed in the space of a few decades by s
European neighbors.
Europe's Peculiar Path and the Emergence of Modern Society
The tendency in most prior studies of the emergence of the mo

has been to see it as something that builds in Europe, and spread
Whether this occurs through military technology (McNeill), econ
throughs (Rosenberg and Birdzell, Landes), the slow accumulation
tal advantages (Jones), superior institutions (North, Hall) or the d
global trading networks (Wallerstein), the "rise of the West" is s
evitable process of progress, fueled by Europe's internal competit
ity, resources, or "modern" approach to science and technology,
irresistible.48) Moving steadily from overseas conquest and coloniz
sixteenth century in the New World, to pushing back the Turks a
colonization into Asia into the seventeenth and eighteenth centurie
to becoming the workshop of the world and carving up Africa in the
century, Europe's progress to world domination seems like one sm
process. Every European victory-from that of Cort6s over Moctez
of Spain over the Turks at Lepanto, to that of the Dutch in the E
that of Austria over the Turks at Vienna, to that of England over
and Nawabs in India, to that of Perry and the United States o
interpreted as a "European" victory, as if there was a single "Euro
who orchestrated a vast global campaign.
48) McNeill 1982; Rosenberg and Birdzell 1986; Landes 1969, 1983; Jone
1990; Hall 1985; Wallerstein 1980.

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
But I would argue that this is very m

the perspective of a mid-twentieth ce
States dominated the global economy. L
the nations of Europe were a group of
other apart in fights over some of the
est territories on the globe, minor play
by the advance of the great Asian soc
As Geoffrey Parker has pointed out, in
lowing the discovery of the New Worl
had managed to conquer only the spar
the Americas (in the latter assisted m
sub-Saharan Africa, and some parts of
pelagoes.49) No doubt these outposts we
the rise of the British Raj from 1757,
remotely close to falling to European c
Looking at the world as late as 175
Portugal had failed to vault them into
indeed Spain's position had fallen co
locked in a series of costly wars; the c
States and Canada were weak and perip
divided, and Austria was losing territo
Dutch continued to play a role in the E
by the English, Chinese, and Japanese
ing to the north, but in the south was
of its defeat by the Ottomans at Pruth
In contrast, China under the Qing was
south, and prosperous. Japan was un
peace, and enjoying perhaps the highe
try in the world.50) Both China and Ja
with nothing to offer their advanced e
from the silver mines of Latin America
turmoil from the Janissaries, nonethe
almost fifty years in the eighteenth c
perity and was able to regain some of
Vienna in 1683."51) Only India, disinteg
49) Parker 1991, p. 163.

50) Hanley 1983.
51) Karpat 1974, p. 90.

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ripe for outsiders to exploit its internal rivalries, was weak enough to
European domination.
And why should it have been otherwise? After all, the Chinese an
civilizations had been advanced organic societies for many centuries, f
than most European states, which emerged from feudal chaos on
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By 1750, what British visionary wo
foreseen their nineteenth century queen as Empress of India? Half a
before Napoleon's exploits in Egypt, and even longer before steam-p
gunboats or railways, what European strategist would have foreseen a
coalition imposing humiliating terms of defeat on the Emperor of Chi
carving up Mesopotamia and the Middle East into European protectora
In short, something dramatic happened in a very short time, such t
tween 1750 and 1850, the global balance of power dramatically altere
"happened" is that most western European countries, exploiting the r
a peculiar set of chance results, occurring mainly but not wholly in
became "modern;" and against such societies the advanced organic soc
Asia were simply overmatched.
Modern societies not only enjoyed the significant technical advant
steam-powered warships and locomotives, built with cheap steel, but
nearly unlimited cheap energy for production. Using that energy to turn
umes of cheap cotton goods and metal tools, England and later Europ
invaded that of Asia, first in the Ottoman Empire and India, and later
Yet this was not their only advantage. In the course of the seventeen
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most European countries had gre
formed or revolutionized their governments, reducing the power of th
and traditional elites and increasing that of both the secular governm
independent entrepreneurs. The pursuit of rational means to increase p
the opening of state and business careers to talent, rather than the fo
of traditional government and economic practices by elites with old-f
training and largely hereditary recruitment, meant that Western nati
more efficiently led, more creative, and more flexible in the confron
Western and Asian powers. In the nineteenth and twentieth centurie
major Asian power either underwent a modernizing revolution, or b
subject territory of modern Western (or in the case of Korean and T
modern Asian) nations.
What was this transition to modernity, and how was it accomplish
52) In fact, in 1783 Edmund Burke asked in Parliament "Could it be believe

entered into existence [in 1727] that on this day... we should be... discussing th
of those British subjects who had disposed of the power.., of the Grand Mo

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
have already alluded to part of the s

England, the Netherlands, France, an
reins of government and the economy
and recruited elites, and allowed the
technically-trained and entrepreneur
elsewhere (Goldstone 1991), the mater
not exceptional. Much the same cause
the seventeenth to nineteenth cent
revolts in Asia, from the regional rev
of the Ming Empire in the seventeen
nineteenth. What differed was the ou
such revolts were interpreted as revealin
ditional virtues, and the need to rein
social practices. As a result, in the aft
Qing empires social hierarchies were
became more powerful, and "new" k
only leading to errors and deviation f
ditional-state. The result was several
Asian societies, but at the price of a r
and economic structures of the advan
In the West, however, these revolution
is why, in fact, they are today called
rebellions of Asia). There, the failure
pointing to the need for something new
society, as evidence that the older m
interpretation harked back to a redem
but also drew on Enlightenment id
developing views of natural rights an
institutions were modified in ways t
social groups. This was not always th
and the reinforcement of traditiona
Hobbes' views had triumphed over th
between King and Parliament might h
it turned out, in northern Europe at
and Church to shape and control socie
In the Netherlands, after the succes
called this fact part of "our age of wonder

in the first part of the eighteenth century.

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
dom and an oligarchical form of republican government paved the

Dutch Golden Age. In England, not so much as a result of the civ
1640-1660, but of the Revolution of 1688-89 which followed from
solved legacies of the civil wars, religious toleration was establish
the permanent role of Parliament as guardian of the liberties of the el
the potential excesses of the King. The entrepreneurial talents of
Scots Protestants and sectarians emerged in the next century to pr
to the crest of the world's manufacturing economies. In France, th
of 1789 permanently weakened the hold of Church and King, alt
Restoration after 1815 meant that it was not until the Second Re
Empire that France's development as a fully modern nation went
In Germany, a series of reforms beginning with the Prussian Refor
of 1807-1812, and continuing with Prussian responses to the Revo
1848, accomplished many of the same ends, if more slowly and inc
Still, these changes in government and society, however necess
not have been sufficient of themselves to launch the dominance of the modern
West without the development of steam power, and more generally of inorganic
power for locomotion, smelting, brewing, heating, brick-making, glass-making,
and a hundred-and-one other industrial processes. Without inorganic power, all
of Europe might have simply progressed to look more like seventeenth century
Holland-healthy, prosperous, advanced in the use of organic technologies, and
competitive, although far from dominant, in competition with the major Asian
societies. Europe would have been more free than Asia, but would never have
achieved centuries of exponential economic growth, and thus not become fully
modern, without greatly advancing its exploitation of coal.
Now, the origins of the Industrial Revolution are such a complex field that
I can do no more here than offer my own interpretation, with minimal de-
fense.53) But it seems to me that the exploitation of coal power was a happy
chance, a concurrence of diverse trends in English history that happened, by a
rare and perhaps one-in-a-million conjuncture, to produce the rapid develop-
ment of steam-power. One portion of that concurrence was cultural, one por-
tion was technological, and one portion was environmental/geological.
The cultural key we have already mentioned. Without the various strands
in European thought and culture that led to "liberalizing" outcomes in several
European revolutions, European economic and social history could well have
been "frozen" in its traditional forms, much as Spain, Italy, the Ottomans, and
53) For a good survey of the difficulties of the explaining the Industrial Revolution, see
Mokyr 1985.

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China were after their seventeenth ce

after the technological advances of E
moved rapidly to seize and develop t
past ways of doing things, until they w
em nations around them and forced to modernize to survive.
Clearly, the non-liberalizing advanced organic societies had great interna

stability. The partnership of state and church, even as separate bureaucrat
hierarchies, was enormously potent. The diversified portfolios of tradition
elites in the military, government, church, and agrarian economy met their need
for prestige and power. And the advanced organic economies provided suff
ciently well to allow substantial growth of their populations, and hence a me
ingful family life for ordinary peasants and workers. To "rock this boat"
investing in wholly new technologies would have offered considerable risk
for rather uncertain gains. It is no wonder that such societies not only persis
for tens of centuries, but even resisted the adoption of modern technology when
other nations' modernization had made it available to them.54)
The liberalizing advanced organic societies, however, were far more open t
risk-taking.") They opened the way for new social groups to rise by unorth
dox ways, if the payoff was sufficient. Moreover, the ability of the state,
church, or traditional elites to squelch new ways of thinking or new mode
of economic activity were formally limited.56) Thus, if into such societies, th
found its way a new source of energy, or a new way of organizing productio
there was little to stop its rapid development.
The second portion of this novel combination was technological, and i
volved a combination of heating, boring, pumping, and digging. Britain ha
cold damp climate, and its agriculture and fuel needs on a moderate si
island led to heavy demands on its forests. Japan faced similar pressures, a
facing a fuel shortage in the sixteenth century, engaged in careful forest ma
agement.57) But Britain had another resource that could be used for heating a
that was coal-lots of it, fairly near the surface, in thick seams that were re
ily mined. Since the sixteenth century, therefore, England had used coal f
heating, and from the Auld Reekie of Edinburgh to smoggy London coal-fir
warmed British hearths, especially in the major cities.
But surface coal too could be exhausted, and digging deeper ran into prob
lems: ground-water filled the mineshafts, and had to be pumped out or min
54) Parker 1991; Elvin 1996.

55) Brenner 1983; Goldstone 1987.
56) North 1990.
57) Totman 1989.

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had to cease. Fortunately, English craftsmen were fairly ingeniou

Thomas Newcomen developed a very crude, very inefficient, very c
ing engine that operated by heating water to steam whose expansio
a pump. The Newcomen engine was so bulky, and so inefficient, th
have been useless anywhere except someplace that had a virtually
supply of both cheap coal and water-such as the mouth of a deep
mine."58) The Dutch had found windmills a superior and wholly adeq
of pumping their levies clear, and it was just the chance that Englan
using coal for so many centuries, and now needed a way to pump
mines that held exactly the fuel needed for the clumsy Newcomen
machine, that made this a reasonable solution.
Once in place, however, the Newcomen pump made it possible to
shaft mines, which raised another problem-how to move coal from
face along a tunnel back to the mine shaft for transport to the sur
another idea that would have been impossibly expensive in almost
setting was useful-lay a short track of wood or iron rails, and run a
those rails back and forth from the mine-face to the shaft. The basis for the
railways thus was also laid in England's coal mines.

Once in regular use, the Newcomen engine became subject to tinkering an
improvement. Two major breakthroughs were achieved by James Watt. On
was the introduction of the condenser, which made the engine self-contained
it recirculated the water that was heated to become steam; the other was t
introduction of precision boring of the cylinders (using equipment developed for
manufacturing canon) that made the engine reasonably efficient. With furth
refinement, the steam-engine became useful for locomotion on land or wate
and for powering a wide range of construction and manufacturing machiner
The third portion of this unusual combination was environmental/geologic
England had a climate and limited forest area that led it to use coal from
early era, taking it to the point where it was desirable to exploit deep-sha
mines. This was desirable not only because the coal was in the ground in suff
cient quantity, but because it was readily transportable to points of use. Beca
some of the largest deep coal deposits were near Newcastle, on the sea, and
because England was blessed with a wealth of navigable rivers, the coal cou
be taken cheaply in bulk via barges from the mines to most points in Engla
that consumed it. Imagine if such deep coal deposits existed only in the blac
forest in Germany, or in the Massif central of France, or central Scotland. Ev
if you got it out of the ground, how far would you have to transport the c
58) Mokyr 1990, pp. 88, 90.

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
by oxcart before it could be shipped

you can't conceive of a railway to car
power or cheap iron rails, both of wh
production of bulk coal.) Even a jour
bulk goods was often more expensiv
location of England's coal was doubly
the sea.
By contrast, China's coal was concentrated in the north and was far inland.
Though this coal had been used extensively during the northern Song, these
regions were lost to China when the northern portion of the empire was con-
quered. The shift of China's cultural and commercial centers to the south and
east during the Southern Song era was never fully reversed, and by the time
China recaptured its rich coal lands, they were so far from the main commer-
cial centers of Chinese society that their massive exploitation would have been
hopelessly expensive.
Once cheap coal became ever more plentiful in England, as deep mining was
extended, a revolution could be extended to the production of metals. Although
the value of iron and steel as tools and weapons had been recognized for mil-
lennia, as long as the smelting of ore depended on using wood or charcoal for
fuel, iron would remain expensive and scarce. Wrigley points out that "as long
as the production of 10,000 tons of iron involved the felling of 100,000 acres
of woodland, it was inevitable that it was used only where a few hundred-
weight or at most a few tons of iron would suffice for the task at hand."59) The
tensile strength of steel makes it not only a fine weapon, but a fine material for
tools, and for products ranging from watch springs to building construction. But
where the use of steel is enormously restricted in an organic economy by its
cost, the use of coal to produce iron and steel from ore allows the production
of such materials cheaply and in bulk, to the point where construction of rail-
way systems or fleets of ships weighing thousands or even millions of tons can
be undertaken without fiscal or ecological disaster.
Cheap heat from coal does more than drastically increase the production of
metals; cheap heat allows brick-making, brewing, glass-making, and a hundred
other industrial processes to be carried on with large supplies of cheaper fuel.
And cheap bricks and cheap glass make for far cheaper construction of homes
and factories, while cheaper metal tools of all sorts aid even traditional craft
processes, at the same time that metal and metal-reinforced machinery aid in
factory production. Even agriculture is affected, as the use of tile drainage (the
59) Wrigley 1988, p. 80.

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
larger volumes of cheaper tile pouring forth from coal-heated cer

opens up land, while steam-powered threshing equipment saves lab
cessing the land's bounty.
The Newcomen engine, therefore, started an enormously producti
Cheap coal made possible cheaper iron and steel. Cheap coal plus
made possible the construction of railways and ships built of iron
coal, and powered by engines producing steam. Railways and ships
sible mass national and international distribution of metal tools, te
other products that could be more cheaply made with steam-powe
reinforced machinery than was possible with muscle-powered woo
or workshop tools. And of course, modern railways and ships made
to move men and weapons in volumes and at speeds unimaginable
societies.
In short, once you take a society open to innovation and entrepreneurs

and start it down the road that begins with a wretchedly inefficient steam pu
clearing water from deep-shaft coal mines, you have opened the doors to
becomes, over the course of four generations, an inorganic and recogniz
"modern" economy.
Note, however, that there was nothing necessary or inevitable about this tra
sition. Quite the contrary. In the sixteenth century, the basic political and
nomic systems of the advanced organic economies of northern Europe wer
significantly different-except in being much smaller and far inferior i
range and quality of goods produced-from those of southern Europe and
Islamic and East Asian civilizations. True, England and the Netherlands a
France had parliaments or representative institutions; but so had Castile i
cortes, but like the Republic of Rome, that was readily extinguished. W
mattered is that in some nations, the world-wide revolts and rebellions o
seventeenth century, due to particular cultural frameworks prevailing am
certain elites, produced liberalizing regimes, overturning the grip of governm
and religion on society and breaking the monopoly on power of traditio
elites. These events help break the solid stability that gripped most adva
organic societies, including those of major Asian civilizations, which for
next two centuries remained resistant to economic and political change.
one of these liberalizing societies stumbled into a technological/geologic
environmental conjuncture that put it on the path to developing an inorg
economy, the way to modernity was open.

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
Toward a New, Non-Eurocentric World
The assumption that history from 150

"Europe" as a whole, a dynamic "early
modernity, has grossly deformed our v
progressing toward modernity during
not, what was "wrong" with them? If
two conditions had to apply elsewhere.
of Europe simply had no impetus or ca
ing, stagnant, fossilized, a view we fin
we have only recently come to realize
these centuries Asian civilizations und
their market networks, developed n
cotton and ceramics, and greatly expa
economies.
The other possibility is that these societies had a normal impetus to gro
but that something in them was "blocking" that capacity; a lack of capit
science, of markets, of agricultural productivity, or perhaps an excess of
lation, or of government regulation and interference. Unfortunately (or f
nately for non-European societies), none of these blockages can be docume
as sustained. China and India had great concentrations of capital in the h
of merchants; both had substantial accomplishments in science and techno
both had extensive markets. Eighteenth century China and Japan had agr
tural productivity and standards of living equal or greater than that of con
porary European nations. As to excesses of population, Japan clearly contr
its population, as (we now know) did China; the vast "overpopulation" of
sical Asia is an anachronism from the late nineteenth and early twentieth
turies.60) Government regulation and interference in the economy were m
in Asia, for the simple reason that most economic activity took place in
markets run by merchants and local communities, and was beyond the rea
the limited government bureaucracies of advanced organic societies to reg
in detail. Cultural conservatism did keep economic activities in these soc
on familiar paths, but those paths allowed considerable incremental inno
tion and long-term economic growth.61) Although neither hypothesis now
empirically solid, for a long time, Europe's development was seen as "norm
and non-Europe as pathologically "stagnant" or "blocked."
60) Lee and Wang 1997.

61) Goldstone 1991.

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
It is clearly time to abandon these notions, along with the whole

"early modern" period in European or world history. The curren
term "early modem" to describe a vast array of societies and civili
spans that range from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century at b
hopelessly Eurocentric and mode-of-production focused version of
a world that is culturally, politically, and economically diverse and
by European patterns of change, and at worst is quite falsely tel
What we have from roughly the fifth or sixth century onward is a wo
dal and advanced organic societies; and by the sixteenth century
feudal societies are gone from Eurasia, having developed into advan
societies with centralized and bureaucratic regimes. Prior to the
century in England and Holland, and the late eighteenth century i
States and France, none of these are modem in any way. True, tow
of the 1500-1800 period these relatively small societies-rather tin
"Europe" or the "world"-become liberalizing advanced organic soc
then, taking what is by world standards an extremely peculiar p
way to modernization in the following centuries. But for most of the w
even by far the greater part of Europe, there are no "modern" soc
or otherwise-before the nineteenth century.
What shall we call the period from the sixteenth to the nineteent
in which there is considerable organic economic growth around th
hardly any progress toward true "modernization," and even that o
only a few tiny outposts? Perhaps the most accurate answer would
the period from 1500 to 1800 as the period of AOS; a period in w
world's major regions (except parts of Africa) were dominated by
ganic societies. Some of these had their roots going back man
others had just emerged. But in this period, the AOS were clearly
throughout the world. The period from 1800 to World War I cou
more legitimately be called "early modern" if we wished to find a
term. This is the period in which the first modern societies emerge
global dominance, although many major countries such as China,
the Ottoman Empire still had their modernizing revolutions ahead o
period from World War I to the present would then be the "moder
until such time as the world is recognized as having become "pos
In this view of history, there is nothing pathological about Asia
AOS period. Instead, parts of Asia and certainly China have a sub
over Europe, whose feudal period lasts to the beginning of the A
62) Owens 1997.

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
while China has already enjoyed man

ety. Instead of reading history backwar
can then read history up to at least
a period of considerable global unity
needs to be understood and appreciate
bility of the diverse advanced organi
their varied patterns of social, author
pacity for economic growth.
The departure of England, and later
then something that needs to be expl
a long-marked different path, but as
shift-a jump or quantum leap, if you
tions (say 1730 to 1850) creates a fun
the AOS. At the beginning of this p
thinkers was that growth would b
ment (notably France's philosophes).
of European social thinkers from J
unlimited.
Now, I do not mean to say that mo

than AOS. That is a judgement call, a
presume to make. There have been b
societies, feudal societies, advanced
And there have been peaceful, artistic
dal, AOS, and modern societies. We have much to learn about the bases for
social stability and prosperity, and it is clearly a matter of differences that can-
not be summed up in the differences between the ancient, AOS, and modern
kinds of social organization.
What is clear is that "modern" societies and AOS are different, and that most
AOS can go on for centuries without in any way becoming modern. In terms
of world history, then, it is the Asian societies that represent the common, ordi-
nary, "normal" case of the persistence and growth of AOS. Europe is the
"sport," or the "exception." If this should come to be accepted it would mean
a dramatic inversion in the manner in which we study Europe. The Weberian
model of global history was to study Europe first, then draw comparisons by
looking at Asian societies and asking why "they" were not like Europe. But if
Europe is the sport or exception, this is scientifically backwards. The correct
way to study global history is to understand the AOS first, and once these are
well-understood, then we can turn to Europe and try to understand how por-
tions of Europe were unlike the "normal" AOS, and turned on to their peculiar
path. In other words, a detailed understanding of Oriental societies is required

144.82.8.56 on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:17:17 UTC
before we can hope to understand what made Europe's eighteenth

teenth century development distinctive.
This would be a dramatic change in the study of world history. B
make the role of JESHO in historical studies more central than ever
thought as we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of this journal.
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The Problem of the "Early Modern" World

Author(s): Jack A. Goldstone

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3632414

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Was there an "early modern" world? From a glance at book titl

"Modernity" as a Historical Term and a Sociological Term

"Modernity" has many guises. It marks a historical period in Eu

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 1998 JESHO 41,3

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defend the superiority of "modern" t

2) Swift 1909; Hazard 1963.

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modern," depending on which theory of social change-Marxist or

4) Parsons 1937, 1977.

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If one grants that the societies that e

7) Marx and Engels 1967.

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11) Beloff 1962.

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izing and powering history, not from

14) R. Huang 1981.

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the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. So how do we date the "earl

15) Wigen 1995.

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Is there, then, such a thing as an "ear

What is "Early Modern?"

It is interesting that among most current scholars of the major European

18) Hirst 1986; Kishlansky 1986, 1996; Russell 1990.

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21) Hartwell 1962, 1966.

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economies, constitutional government,

23) Nef 1932.

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had supported peasant demands to be allowed freely to pursue rur

25) Quoted in Bix 1986, p. 115.

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and paid labor arranged to produce ma

30) Eyre 1997.

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ilization and written records, and lose any meaningful connection to

The Advanced Organic Societies

Nonetheless, if there are common social practices to be found among merchant

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in fact, some social formation that i

34) Wrigley 1988, pp. 60ff.

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importance of Smith's treatise on The Wealth of Nations. But by th

36) Smil 1994, p. 226, figure 6.1.

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was indeed the dominant European pow

39) Needham 1954, Elvin 1973, 1996.

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remained, and had even become more orthodox, in its Confucian ri

42) Ropp 1981, p. 47; Ho 1967, p. 192; Liu 1990.

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the brahminic order in India, the Islam

45) Arjomand 1984, p. 94, points out that "