Mark Jones II: "Emergence of modernity and normalisation of crisis"

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[ Mark Jones, Part II. ]

For example, in Chinese history some of the major turning points in this
millennia were the expulsion of the Mongols in 1368, the overthrow of the
native Ming dynasty by the Manchus in 1644, and the overthrow of the
Manchus in 1911. The date 1500 in Chinese history is, as Ray Huang says of
the year 1587, "A Year of No Significance." And while the years around 1850
see the opium wars, the Taiping Rebellion, and the intrusion of the Western
powers, none of these events has anywhere near the significance of the
overturning of millennia of Confucian patterns of rule and culture in 1911
and the following decades. What portion, if any, of the five and a half
centuries of Ming and Qing rule should be singled out as "early modern?"
Similarly, in the Middle East the key turning point in control is the
Ottoman conquest of Byzantine Constantinople in 1453, and the end of
Ottoman power occurs only after WWI, with the secularising Kemalist
Revolution of 1923. Again, of over five centuries of Ottoman rule, what
part is "early modern?" Russia too offers problems in dating its key
transitions. Where does its "early modern" period begin? In 1547, when Ivan
the Terrible suppresses the boyars and becomes the first Czar of Russia? In
1682, when Peter the Great turns Russia toward Europe and begins its
enforced modernisation? Or is Russia still "feudal" until its abolition of
serfdom in 1861. Certainly Russia does not become fully modern until after
the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. So how do we date the "early modern"
period in Russia? We have at least three possibilities: 1547-1917,
1682-1917, and 1861-1917, none of which corresponds well with the canonical
"early modern" period in Europe.

That is not to say the years 1500-1850 do not have some resonance with
global history. These years roughly embrace the period of Latin American
colonial rule by Spain and Portugal, from Cortis' conquest of the Aztecs in
1521 to Brazil's independence in 1822. In India, they nicely bracket the
years from the onset of Mughal rule in 1526 to the final victory of the
British Raj in the Mutiny of 1857. In Japan, although the initial turning
point lies at the end of the sixteenth century, not the beginning,
historians increasingly are using the term "early modern" as an English
code for what Japanese historians call the kinsei period, from the
unification wars begun in the 1560s by Nobunaga Oda to the end of the
Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868. Indeed, trying to find a common causal element
behind these temporal configurations, some historians have pointed to the
rise of firearms c. 1500 and considered the rise of the Spanish,
Portuguese, Ottoman, and Mughal empires and the Tokugawa Shogunate as
marking an era of "gunpowder empires."

Still, the problem with using "early modern" simply as a code to denote the
period 1500-1850 is that China, Korea, Southeast Asia, Russia, the Middle
East, and Africa are, in effect, left out of the account. For these
regions, the years 1500-1850 do not denote a particular regime or cultural
era. Defining early modernity according to a 'western model' of
periodisation leads to common problems in Japan, China, and all of Asia.
Thus, at very best, "early modern" is a code that has some, but certainly
not global, application to world history.

(2) Far worse, however, and more dangerously misleading, is what happens
when we attach meaning to the words "early modern" and apply them broadly
in world history. If we take the words in terms of their intended meaning,
to demarcate a stage in economic and political development, then speaking
of a society as "early modern" is to say that that society had clear
elements of "modern" society beginning to emerge. A fortiori, if we speak
of an "early modern world," that suggests that over large portions of the
world different societies shared some key elements of "modern" society, and
were actively in transition to modernity.

Is there, then, such a thing as an "early modern" stage of economic and
technical development that at some point was widely shared among the
societies of the globe; and how closely tied is it to the emergence of
fully modern societies?

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 Revolution and on the French Revolution 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 searching 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 authority, 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. Elements of constitutional authority 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 late Roman Empire, and again in Muslim Spain, but remained rare until
the late seventeenth century, when the Netherlands and England and certain
American colonies enshrined freedom of religious practice. Still, despite
its religious freedom for individuals, no historians consider late Rome or
Muslim Spain to be "modern," or "early modern." It is even difficult to
consider early Colonial America to be "early modern," in the sense of being
clearly on the road to "modernity," for at the time of the Salem witchcraft
trials religious authority and the power of the King still remained
paramount, and notions that the American colonists should write republican
constitutions and declare themselves free citizens were almost a century
away. Finally, Song China made extensive use of coal in a variety of
factory processes, to the degree that Hartwell speaks of an eleventh
century "Industrial Revolution" in China. And some scholars would push the
origins of "early modern" China back to 960 A.D. Yet here we would have an
entire millennium between the onset of "early modernity" and the beginning
of fully "modern" China c. 1911. We can also note that although modern
factory production powered by steam and railroad transportation appear in
substantial degree in late Tsarist Russia, yet the grip of religion and
traditional authority (as shown by the government's dependence on the
personal whims of the Czar, and the Tsar's dependence on the religious
charlatan Rasputin void any efforts to call pre-WWI Russia a truly "modern"
country.

In addition, the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offers an interesting
example of a country that clearly is technologically "modern," yet remains
ruled by wholly traditionally-sanctified modes of governance. Also in the
Middle East we find the Islamic Republic of Iran -- again, a
technologically advanced society, and with a recently created
constitutional government that arose through a revolution against
monarchical rule. Yet the dominant position of religious law and of the
clergy in Iran has moved some scholars to declare that this was not a
modernising revolution, and that Iran is neither fully modern nor, as long
as the clergy and Islamic law remain so dominant, on its way to becoming
so. In short we have in Saudi Arabia and Iran two countries that exploit
advanced technology, yet are rarely considered to be fully modernised.

In sum, individual elements of "modernity" may appear in a scattering of
places, but such individual elements in isolation do not necessarily make a
society "modern," or even "early modern." If by "early modern" we seek to
denote a society that was simultaneously progressing toward fossil-fuelled
powered economies, constitutional government, and religious freedom and
secularisation of daily life, we do not find such societies until
eighteenth century England and nineteenth century Europe and America; in
other words when the modern world is already upon us.

It is true that England is something of an exception; because of its
succession settlement of 1689, England had already started in the direction
of religious tolerance and constitutional government. And England had been
using coal for home and industrial heating since the sixteenth century. But
even in England, prior to 1689 the potential still existed for the
domestication of Parliament and the establishment of an authoritative state
Church; indeed that is what incited the 1689 revolt against James II.
Elsewhere in the world, we simply do not find steady progress toward the
combination of fossil-fuel technology, constitutional governance, and
religious freedom in the two centuries 1500-1700 that are so often taken to
be a substantial part of the "early modern" world.

The belief that "early modern" is a sensible adjective for the period 1500
to 1850 rests on the belief that no other term captures the period of
transition between feudalism and capitalism, an era marked by the emergence
of markets dominated by merchant capital and proto-industry. Perhaps then,
the best way to check for the existence of "early modern" societies outside
of Europe is to simply seek for markets, merchant capital, and
proto-industrial (e.g. household market-oriented) production. This, in
fact, has been the most common mode of extending the term "early modern" to
non-European societies. Scholars of all parts of the world have been
remarkably successful in demonstrating that Europe had no monopoly on
markets, merchants, and market-oriented households. Unfortunately, such
scholars have perhaps been too successful. We now have evidence of "early
modern" practices in 18th century Japan, 13th century China, 11th century
Java, and even of an entire capitalist "world system" in the Indian Ocean
basin in the 13th century. Perhaps most startling of all is the study of
"early modern" business practices in land-leasing among Egyptian landlords
at least from Graeco-Roman times, and even more, among Assyrian merchants
operating in Anatolia not in this era, but c. 1900 B.C.!

In eighteenth century Japan, the activities, indeed the increasing economic
and social dominance, of the major urban merchants of Edo and Osaka is well
known. But commercial interests also penetrated deeply into the
countryside. In 1780, a commentary on an uprising in Fukuyama han, where
poor samurai had supported peasant demands to be allowed freely to pursue
rural crafts, lamented the fading of the civil and military arts, and that
"nowadays they are both abandoned and profits are pursued (emphasis
added)." Much earlier, in thirteenth century China, the Southern Song
enjoyed a golden age of commerce and economic dynamism -- although many
scholars would date the growth of commercial expansion even further back,
to the T'ang-Song divide in the tenth century, and its rapid expansion of
iron and coal technology. In Indonesia, Jan Christie details the activities
of "highly capitalised merchants and merchant associations (banigrama)"
during the Javanese trade boom of the tenth and eleventh centuries. During
this period, Java's overseas trade expansion led to dramatic changes in
consumption and in the domestic ceramics and textile industries, oriented
to increasing profits. Indeed, Janet Abu-Lughod has documented the activity
of active trade networks of international and domestic merchants throughout
the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia in the thirteenth century.

While finding such extensive profit-oriented activity by merchants and
producers in the tenth to thirteenth centuries AD in east Asia may not be
surprising, what is startling is the recent uncovering of similar practices
stretching back to the ancient world. The trade "boom" of the sixteenth
century proclaimed 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 10th-13th 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 7th-8th century boom
associated with spread of Islam; and the 2nd C. BC- 2nd C. AD boom
associated 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.

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 Pharaonic 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, and paid labour arranged to produce maximum
gains for the land-owners. Klaas Veenhof similarly finds that Old Assyrian
traders, when operating out of trading posts in Anatolia, and thus out of
the normal "jurisdiction" of the Assyrian ruler, developed sets of rules
for a variety of commercial transactions, including credit, "bearer notes,"
transfer of commercial debts, and methods to deal with insolvent creditors.
Norman Yoffee similarly notes recent archaeological findings from the early
Old Babylonian Period (c. 2000-1600 BC) that show "profound economic
changes that were wrought in the aftermath of the Ur III empire. Land was
rented, bought, and sold in the north and property was accumulated,
inherited, and disputed in both north and south. Although palace and
temple-estates managed great plots of land ... the newest investigations
show the extensive degree to which entrepreneurial middlemen supplied them.
For example, temples leased fishing rights to businessmen who then sold
fish for their own profit.

While this scholarship has been stunningly successful in overturning the
idea that the world outside Europe somehow remained stuck in a "feudal"
mode of production, or an unchanging "Asiatic mode," these studies also
raise the question -- how can merchant practices in isolation, or in
networks of long-distance trade, which are found as far back as 4000 years
ago, and are so widespread as to be found throughout Asia from the 10th
century onward, be meaningfully "early modern?" After all, the evidence
from the 10th-13th centuries would mean that Asia was "early modern" for
centuries while Europe was still mainly feudal. Thus the "early modern"
world would be something centred in Asia, which Europe joined as a
latecomer, not as a leader or pioneer. Yet the discovery of such practices
in ancient Assyrian outposts, in Egypt and Babylon, as well as in 10th
century China and 11th century Java makes one ask -- what sense does it
make to talk of an "early modern" era that reaches back one thousand to
four thousand years? Can it meaningfully be argued that ancient Assyria,
Graeco-Roman Egypt, 10th century China, or eleventh century Java, were in
"transition" to full modernity? Can it be argued that these societies had
much in common with, say, eighteenth century England or early nineteenth
century France? It increasingly appears that if the definition of "early
modern" is simply pegged on the existence of production and trade for
profits in markets, the "early modern" period will cover all of history
from the onset of urban civilisation and written records, and lose any
meaningful connection to what is 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
everywhere. 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 basic structure of production, to create
"modern" societies. Similar wrenching transitions 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
fashion of societies with market-oriented production and profit-oriented
merchants, then we find such societies almost everywhere, from ancient
Assyria and ancient Egypt to Song China to the early Muslim Middle East, to
16th 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
everything, 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 commerce, while erroneously concluding that those
practices represent something new, something essentially Western, and
something closely tied to the emergence of "modern" societies. In fact,
none of these latter propositions are valid. Thus the term "early modern"
is founded on a series of errors, and has no useful application to world
history.

Mark Jones