StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century - Article Example

Cite this document
Summary
The article "Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century" presents a critical analysis of the articles by Huang and Pomeranz that deal with the comparison of the development of the agricultural system in Europe and China in the 18th century…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER97.2% of users find it useful
Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century"

This paper is a critique of the articles by Huang and Pomeranz that deal with the issue of development in Europe and China in the 18th century. The article by Huang is a review of the book: The Great Divergence: Europe, China and the making of the modern economy by Pomeranz. The articles deal with the comparison of the agricultural systems in each of these regions and the way in which they influenced the development of trade and commerce. One of the main criticisms made by Huang is about the way in which Pomeranz has interpreted the economic development in the two regions without any understanding of the economies of the Yangzi delta that was the primary factor of analysis by the latter. Huang argues that Pomeranz and other scholars who write about the Chinese and European economies do from the point of view of their own countries and not from the point of view of the region in question. This is known as a lack of ethnocentricity in political science. What this means is that the political scientists resort to bias in favor of their own regions and also lack what is known as perceiving the world through the eyes of the inhabitants who are specific to the region in question. This apparent blindness towards the subject area is the lack of ethnocentric bias and this means that the scholars do not judge the subject material from the point of view of the subjects themselves. Huang is even handed when he points out studies by Chinese scholars fare no better when it comes to discourse on the European region and hence it is by no means settled that there is anything specific about claims made by both European and Chinese scholars. Hence, the criticism that Huang levels at Pomeranz is borne out by the lack of objectivity in Pomeranz’s analysis about the Chinese economy in the 18th century. Huang and Pomeranz contrast the differing ways in which the Chinese and European peasants went about their occupations by listing the differences that range from simple dietary practices to differences in clothing and other facets of agrarian life. Pomeranz quotes extensively from the data on the food habits of the peasants that include their calorie intake and other parameters that proved the premise that the Chinese were no worse when it came to food intake than their European counterparts. He further compares the non-grain intake with the consumption of meat and comes to the premise that the Chinese fared badly on this count due to the fact that they were pastoral in nature as compared to the meat eating Europeans. Whereas Huang arrives at the point that the Chinese were more into labor intensive crops and methods that required more people. This brings us to the point that the population of the Yangzi delta was much more in proportion to the population of a comparable region in Europe and hence Huang’s contention about more people employed for the same unit of area holds true. The premise that the Chinese were employing more people than their European counterparts brings us to the point that one of the reasons the Industrial revolution succeeded in Europe and not in the Asian region is because of the fact that the Europeans were more inventive due to the compulsions of having lesser people to work and hence needed to innovate. The other point that Huang makes and is widely accepted among scholars is that the Chinese society was highly stratified and this led to a stifling of creativity and consequently less scope for innovation and experimentation with newer forms of methods and implements to carry out their activities. This resulted in the Europeans stealing a march over the Chinese because of the arrival of what is known as the Industrial revolution. The fact that both Chinese and European economies had a comparable stature prior to the Industrial revolution is not lost on Huang. He asserts that a process that he calls “involution” happened that drew away the yields that accrued because of the labor intensification of the land. He compares this process to the lack of technological progress that made China lose out on the Industrial revolution. The fact that Asia in general lost out on the industrial revolution when it had a comparable standing in the world with that of the European counterparts is something that the scholars on both sides have debated. One of the points that they mention has to do with the conquest of the New World by the Europeans that supplied them with cheap materials like cotton and jute. This is certainly the case with Britain which in its quest for cheap raw materials scoured the Indian sub continent for the same and ended up by colonizing the country and hence a ready made supplier of raw materials to be used as feed for its burgeoning cotton mills and jute factories. As Huang states in his review, involution can explain the great paradox of the grandeur of the ancient Chinese civilization as compared to the weakness of the modern one. This goes a long way in explaining the differential in the ways in which China progressed or rather regressed as compared to the unitary progression that Europe went through. Pomeranz uses this extensively in his analysis when he states that Europe diverged from that of the Chinese economy and the making of the modern world was made possible because of progress that depended on technological innovation and a substitution of man made labor with the machine intensive processes. However, Pomeranz’s contention about China losing out due to the factors that he mentions is not taken by Huang. As explained above, Huang resorts to a better explanation of the lack of progress by China and hence lays claim to the fact that factors other than those mentioned by Pomeranz were at work here. Huang makes the point that Pomeranz has misconstrued him when he refers to labor productivity as opposed to land productivity. The latter sets a lot of store by the fact that producing cotton products involved high paid activity for most of the week whereas Huang makes the claim that it was the lower paid activities that formed the bulk of the work leading to lower productivity and hence lower output per unit of land. Huang further makes the point that China missed the Industrial revolution because of the resistance of the family driven units of agriculture to the labor saving capitalization and resistance to economies of scale in farming. The former happened in the proto industry whereas the latter happened in Agriculture. In the concluding part of this paper, I would like to point to my preference for Huang’s analysis as compared to Pomeranz. His explanations regarding why China did not progress further than its European counterparts are solid and based on factual rather than hypothetical surmises. Huang’s arguments are in line with the studies done by several social scientists and his assertions conform to the points made by them. The points made by Huang about lower skilled workers making up the majority of the workforce and hence lower productivity in general make the point supported by data and more plausible than the points made by Pomeranz. Further, Huang asserts that Pomeranz arrives at his data by empirical methods rather than statistical measures and hence consequently, the data is open to debate. As outlined in this paper till this point, Huang’s examples bear closer resemblance to the actual situation existing in the Yangzi delta during the 18th century. And the fact that China missed the Industrial revolution due to the factors mentioned above lend credence to the theory that Europe had much more than its own ingenuity to account for the difference in the ways in which these regions developed. Another point that is made by Huang is that the modern economy as it exists today is largely an industrial based one and even agriculture when mechanized has yielded the kind of results that normal pastoral methods have not borne. Hence, it makes Huang’s point that much palatable particularly when one compares the data and the supporting evidence that he presents. They are grounded in data that is more reliable and statistically coherent. In conclusion, it is my opinion that Huang has made a far more substantial contribution to the reasons why the modern economy diverged from that of the Chinese method or the Asian method and the reasons for the same have been adequately addressed by Huang. It is my contention that more scholars need to follow Huang’s path when it relates to the study of the causes of this divergence and the way we can move beyond traditional agrarian methods of economic development. Hence, Huang’s study is more apt to be recommended by scholars studying Asian history rather than Pomeranz’s model of divergence. It is indeed a study that can appeal to the countries in Asia as they modernize their economies and follow the Anglo-Saxon model of growth. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century Article, n.d.)
Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century Article. https://studentshare.org/agriculture/1558834-analytical-reading
(Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century Article)
Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century Article. https://studentshare.org/agriculture/1558834-analytical-reading.
“Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century Article”. https://studentshare.org/agriculture/1558834-analytical-reading.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Agricultural Systems Development in the 18th Century

Was Ireland Poor in the Years before the Great Famine

According to Dudley Edwards, author of the book 'The Great Famine,' the Penal Law effected on the Irish population in the 18th century 'kept them poor' as more than half of the country's revenues were taken out of Ireland.... Many historians argued that the problem of poverty in Ireland in the 18th and 19th century was the outcome of land tenancy.... For Mokyr, violence and lawlessness constituted a major part of the Irish experience in the 19th century, including the period before the famine....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Global Trading Systems of the 18th Century

There is little debate that the 18th century was a period of intense economic growth around the world.... Sugar had a significant impact on trade in during the 18th century.... By the 18th century, tobacco was being produced on plantations by slave labor in the Americas.... The increasing trade from transportation improvements, the rise of empires, and the development of mercantilism contributed to the great increases in trade between world around the globe....
3 Pages (750 words) Essay

Development of London in the Roman Period

Londinium attained its peak in the second century, replacing Colchester which at that time was the Capital city.... Open-minded change as well as the fall from the 3rd century and beyond, equally, generated a slow-moving turn down.... Towards the edge of the third century, the Londinium was trapped on numerous occasions by Saxon bandits.... The Roman Empire began to sink in the 5th century, and by 410 AD the Roman occupation of Britain came to a dead end, subsequently, the roman city declined very fast and by the end of the century the city was almost empty....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay

Field Trip to Romney Marsh

If we consider its development during the last centuries, we realize the great influence of the agricultural practices over its evolution, as well as the natural forces of nature.... Severe oscillations of land level, alluviums, tidal erosion, artificial ditch systems, drainage of the marshlands, agricultural practices with poor human land use as well as productive use of the region have been affecting the shape and condition of Romney Marsh, in a period that goes to at least 10....
4 Pages (1000 words) Coursework

Regional Specialisation Of Markets In Europe

This essay "Regional Specialisation Of Markets In Europe" discusses that for many years the market has been evolving and each day has often been met with the urge to make the market efficient.... The urge for efficiency has led to the need to integrate.... hellip; Еhere is no much evidence to dictate if there was actual growth in the market integration because of the differences in prices of the same commodity is closely located areas....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Economic, Social, and Political Change Worksheet

Romanticism in 18th century had a big influence in the artistic platform, affecting performance in drama, arts and musical concerts.... cience in 18th century was credited to materialism and disbelief.... ollowing a shift from subsistence to commercial farming, in the beginning of the 16th century, there was improvement in livestock management, as well as introduction new rotations, which paved in a way for more production from traditional to modern practices in Agriculture (Bayliss-Smith &Wanmali, 1984)....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

Timelines of Modern World History

The Mughal dynasty ruled virtually all parts of northern India between the 16th and 18th centuries.... was the complex or built environment that characterized most agricultural plantations particularly in American South between the 17th and 20th centuries (Strayer, 33)....
6 Pages (1500 words) Assignment

Food and Drink in Society

Although this native variety was grown for hundreds of years, Asian rice was introduced into Africa by European explorers in the 16th century and has become the standard variety grown in Africa.... Rice is a powerful food, being a foundation of the diet of some cultures, an essential aspect of the economic survival of many cultures, and a source of work for numerous agricultural communities....
7 Pages (1750 words) Case Study
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us