Revisioning modernity: modernity in Eurasian perspectives

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Revisioning modernity: modernity in Eurasian perspectivesArif Dirlik

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Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 12, Number 2, 2011

ISSN 1464–9373 Print/ISSN 1469–8447 Online/11/020284–22 © 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14649373.2011.554655

Revisioning modernity: modernity in Eurasian perspectives

Arif DIRLIK

Taylor and FrancisRIAC_A_554655.sgm10.1080/14649373.2011.554655Inter-Asia Cultural Studies1464-9373 (print)/1469-8447 (online)Original Article2011Taylor & Francis122000000June [email protected] will pursue in this discussion the implica-tions of the contemporary consciousness ofglobality for our understanding of theformations of modernity, with specific refer-ence to developments during the MingDynasty (1368–1644), immediately follow-ing the Mongol invasions, which, for thefirst time, created the conditions for imagin-ing Eurasia as a whole (Smith 2003).1

Spurred on by this new consciousness,historians have turned, over the last threedecades, to an exploration of the part trans-continental interactions played in theemergence of ‘the modern world’, which inthe past had been viewed mostly as thecreation of European initiative and activity.The recognition that others had participatedin the making of modernity has challengedthe assumption, deeply embedded in Euro-modern historiography, that modernity wasa product of developments internal to Euro-pean history – which, along with the center-ing of history on Europe, is the fundamentalmeaning of Eurocentrism (Amin 1989). Theshift to an emphasis on inter-societal rela-tions in the making of modernity raises afurther question that is yet to be confrontedin its full complexity: what participation inthe making of modernity might mean forour understanding of these other societies.Did they, too, change significantly as aconsequence of these interactions, and if so,what are we to make of these changes?

Briefly, the theoretical assumption thatdevelopment is a product of the internaldynamics of societies is a fundamentalassumption of Euromodern historiographythat was to become basic to historical think-ing globally with the hegemony of Euromo-dernity. This is apparent in the spread ofmodernization discourse in its two major

variants, Marxist and Weberian, but evenmore so in nationalist historiography whichviews nations as the producers of their ownhistories. This assumption informs allcentrisms, Euro-, Sino-, or Islamo-, to namebut a few prominent ones.

What we observe presently is the break-down of these centrisms. To earlier chal-lenges to it, in theories of imperialism anddependency, or in world-system analysis,has now been added the idea of globaliza-tion, which also assigns priority to relation-ships over autonomous development inproducing historical social, political andcultural formations, conditioned by priorhistories. The temporal consequence of thisre-spatialization of history in units that tran-scend the nation-state is an insistence on thecontemporariness of all those involved inthe relationship (Fabian 1983).2 The evolu-tionary assumptions of modernizationdiscourse are replaced here with a succes-sion of structural temporalities. Rather thanmerely follow some internal logic, socialformations here are also viewed as part oflarger structures, and subject, therefore, tothe dynamic forces that make and remakethe structures on an ongoing basis. Timealso assumes a conjunctural dimension. Thisdoes not deny the importance of historicalformations such as nations or civilizations.But it broadens the scope of the forces thatgo into their making and, more profoundly,introduces greater contingency to theirhistorical formation. It also transforms theboundaries around which history is orga-nized and, at its most radical, ignoresboundaries altogether, viewing them asimpediments to historical understanding.3

This is the significance of a transconti-nental approach to modernity, which not

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Revisioning modernity 285

only opens inquiry to a broad range offorces in its making, as well as bringing in astructural contingency to its historicalunfolding by questioning whether onephase was a necessary product of an earlierphase, and suggesting, alternatively, thatstructural relationships played a part in themaking of each phase, albeit with the past asits point of departure. If it is not going to bemerely a more complex version of Eurocen-trism – of greater attention to outside forcesin the making of Euromodernity – analysisneeds to devote closer attention to the devel-opment of other parties to the relationship:in particular, in this case, to the other majorconcentrations of power around Eurasia;from Europe at one end to China and Japanat the other, with the Ottoman, Safavid,Mughal and Russian empires in between.Needless to say, from the 15th century on,the broader, extra-continental contextincluded the Americas and Australia, whichwere politically marginal but played acrucial part in the formations of modernityas new sources of wealth.

I will suggest below that as some Euro-pean societies assumed the characteristicsthat are conventionally associated withmodernity, other societies around Eurasiaunderwent comparable transformation intheir economic, political, social and culturalcharacteristics. This is recognized increas-ingly in the attribution of a common ‘earlymodernity’ to all of these societies. In thework of scholars such as Benjamin Elman,‘early modern’ is distinguished from themodern, and the transcontinental common-alities are recognized. But the distinctionalso disguises a teleology. The term ‘earlymodern’ makes sense within the context ofEuropean history written as a narrative ofmodernity, as a prelude to modernity, thepromises of which were fulfilled in subse-quent centuries – even if the transition maybe in disputation. The period described bythe term, therefore, is not merely ‘chrono-logical’, referring to a certain stretch of time(say, circa 1450–circa 1750). It also is ‘preg-nant’ (to use Marx’s metaphor for socialformations) with characteristics that are togive birth to Euromodernity. Any applica-

tion of the term to other histories introducesthis teleology as well, underlining onceagain the failure of those characteristics tosprout elsewhere. If, on the other hand, theemphasis is on commonalities among societ-ies during this time period, then Europe’s‘early modernity’ may be called into ques-tion. For we must then inquire why it wasonly in Europe that capitalism emerged, andwhether or not the global entanglements ofEuropeans had anything to do with theemergence of capitalism – and the capitalistmodernity which provided the legitimationfor Euro/American claims to the monopoly.Other possibilities that emerged during thisperiod in response to the forces of increasedglobal interactions in the end proved to beno match for the power of capital to extenditself globally, through the colonization ofthe world. Rather than being preludes to amodernity, these ‘alternative’ responses tothe condition of modernity point in hind-sight to alternative futures as well (whetheror not they concerned themselves with thefuture). These alternatives, for whateverthey may be worth, were to be suppressedby a Euro/American modernity empoweredby nationalism and capitalism.

In order to avoid teleology, the twoperiods taken as the ‘modern’ and the ‘earlymodern’ are better viewed as contradictoryrather than as evolutionary phases in thehistory of modernity. Euro/Americanmodernity was built not only on theconquest of others, but also the conquest ofits own past.4 We need to recover whatAlexander Woodside has described as ‘lostmodernities’, not for reactionary purposesof restoration or revival, but as resources tohelp out in the resolution of problems ofmodernity that have become critical. Thatmeans a prior recognition, however, thatwhat is being recovered is not something‘early modern’, or ‘premodern’ or tradi-tional, but an alternative within modernityin its initial phase. It is in this phase that itis possible to speak of ‘alternatives’, ratherthan the present, when claims to alternativemodernities are deeply compromisedthrough entanglement in capitalist moder-nity. If Europe is to be ‘provincialized’, it is


286 Arif Dirlik

in this early phase of modernity, whenEuropean modernity was one amongothers, rather than the present when capi-talist modernity, globalized, provides thegrounds for modernity globally.5

It is for similar reasons, I may note here,that it makes more sense presently to speakof a ‘global modernity’, than, say, latemodernity. The present is not just a devel-opment out of an earlier phase of modernity– ‘Eurocentric modernity’ – but also seeksnegation of the latter in its insistence onmultiple and alternative modernities. In theprocess, however, it also disguises its owngrounds in the very modernity it rejects:capitalist modernity, which is now global-ized, and transforms societies in fundamen-tal ways (which does not implyhomogenization). The two-century domina-tion of the globe by a Eurocentric modernitymay be over (although struggles over it arenot), and once again we face the prospect ofa polymorphous modernity. But this timearound, modernity is marked indelibly bythe experience of the last two centuries.Nowhere is this more clearly evident than inthe religious revivals that seek to negatefundamental aspects of what has beenviewed as modernity (which in its originswas itself a negation of religion), and do soby utilizing the most advanced practical andideological technologies provided by aglobal capitalism of which they are benefi-ciaries

There is good reason in this perspectiveto reserve the term ‘modern’ as a descriptionof the world since the Mongol invasions. Itthen becomes possible to think of ‘earlymodern’ as transcontinental modernity, tobe followed in due course with a period ofEuromodernity, which has the additionaladvantage of underlining why these twoperiods should be so different from oneanother when viewed in global perspective.Unlike modernity under European (andAmerican) hegemony, the various trajecto-ries of development during this period canthen be viewed profitably as different formsof the modern, alternatives, as it were, thatwould be foreclosed by the victory of Euro-modernity. That the paths to the future they

indicated have not been extinguished isapparent in the claims to different moderni-ties that have re-emerged with globalmodernity, the most recent phase in theunfolding of modernity. But they have alsobeen transformed beyond recognition.

Modernity, capitalism, modernization, revolution

If I may turn now to imperial China, global-ization has rekindled interest in long-stand-ing issues of Chinese development, mostimportantly in late imperial China, duringthe period that I describe as the period oftranscontinental modernity, which coin-cides with the Ming and Qing dynasties.While some historians have offered tantaliz-ing evidence of signs or even the origin ofcapitalist modernity in earlier periods,6 itwas the Ming period, from the 16th centuryon, that has received the most sustainedinquiry from Chinese historians as a periodof ‘the sprouting of capitalism’. This is notvery surprising. It was during the Mingperiod that Chinese society assumed theform and the scope in which the Jesuitsencountered it, proceeding subsequently toproject it upon the entire imperial past. Thisis the image of China in modern historiogra-phy, as well as popular references to ‘five-thousand years of history’ – an image quiteat odds with that of dynasties followingupon one another, a succession of looselycentralized states successfully unifying thecountry only to fall apart again, and a lowpopulation density. The successful SongDynasty which left a strong ideological andeconomic legacy to its successors wasloosely centralized, and shared the area laterviewed as China with two other nomadicmonarchies. It is revealing that in the first1500 years of imperial China, more than 20officially recognized dynasties ruled China(half of the time simultaneously), whereastwo highly-centralized and ‘rationalized’dynasties of great longevity marked the last600 years of imperial rule. It is quite truethat past legacies were crucially importantin politics and ideology, and that there hadbeen periods of economic efflorescence



during previous dynasties, most notablyTang and Song, but Ming was a period ofradical change. Demographic expansionalone during this period, however, wouldqualify it as a different society from those ofpreceding dynasties. What brought thisabout?

Chinese Marxist historians, in search ofa parallel development in China to that inEurope, were to uncover much new data onchanges during the Ming from the 16thcentury. Beginning in the 1930s and culmi-nating in the 1950s, a picture emerged ofMing China as a highly unified societyunder the sway of a commodity economythat showed every sign of ‘the sprouting ofcapitalism’. The usual reasoning was thatadvances in the forces of production – thatis, advances from the 14th century onwardsin agricultural technology, including bothimproved crop varieties and agriculturaltools – led to the expansion of production.This stimulated the flourishing of commod-ity economy, which in turn set off changesin the mode of production and the economicstructure of society. The changes wereevident in the concentration of property andproduction. In agriculture, concentration ofland ownership created large estates oper-ated through centralized management andemploying wage labor. Land concentrationled to large scale expropriation of the peas-antry. This created a free labor force, aprerequisite of capitalism. Some unem-ployed peasants sought livelihood as labor-ers in agriculture, while others moved to thegrowing cities to become laborers in indus-trial enterprises, small businessmen (such aspeddlers), or, at worst, vagabonds. Chinesesociety from the late Ming onwards there-fore manifested the class differentiationin agriculture that was characteristic ofcapitalism (Shang 1954: 326–332). Thedistinguished historian Fu Yiling arguedthat even where peasants continued to rentland to become tenants, the rent they paidwas no longer ‘pure feudal rent’ but cashrent of a ‘capitalist nature’. In other words,landlord–tenant relationships also assumeda capitalist form (N.a. 1957a: 52–68). Marxisthistorians observed a similar concentration

of production in industry. The large manu-factories of the time employed hundreds,sometimes thousands, of laborers. In theproduction of silk and cotton textiles, and ofpottery and in mining, Ming industries, LiZhiqin claimed, manifested characteristicsof the ‘manufacture’ stage of capitalism(N.a. 1957b: 565–608). These structuralchanges served as the basis of changes inother aspects of society, including the ideo-logical ‘superstructure’. Foremost historiansof the time, Hou Wailu and Jian Bozan,concluded that ideological struggle againstdespotism, which gained prominence inthe second half of the 17th century (theMing–Qing transition), provided evidenceof a Chinese ‘enlightenment’, expressive asit was of new contradictions in a societyundergoing capitalist development (N.a.1957a: 91–125, 338–400).7

Marxist evaluations of changes duringthe Ming were constrained by a teleologythat was grounded in the so-called five-stage periodization of history, which hadbeen the guiding orthodoxy of Marxisthistoriography since Stalin in the SovietUnion had pronounced it in the late 1930s.Having internalized this periodization asthe fate universally of all societies, Chinesehistorians since the 1930s had viewed impe-rial Chinese society as a society trapped in adeclining feudalism, which never made it tothe next, theoretically inevitable stage ofcapitalism. While many insisted thatChinese society was still feudal (or semi-feudal) as late as the 20th century, discoveryof ‘the sprouts of capitalism’ represented aneffort to come to terms with the theoreticallyanomalous development of a commodityeconomy in the context of a supposedlynatural, self-sufficient agrarian society. Thatthe sprouts had never bloomed implied,nevertheless, that imperial Chinese historyhad been a history of failure where develop-ment was concerned, or, as one historianhad put it facetiously during earlier discus-sions in the 1930s, if capitalism began tosprout 2000 years ago, and was still sprout-ing by the time of the Ming, for sure theseeds must have fallen on barren soil (N.a.1935: 207).


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The effort to discover a universal teleol-ogy in Chinese historical development ledto a misrecognition of the changes thatMarxist historians uncovered. Nevertheless,it does not justify the dismissal of Marxisthistoriography by foreign scholars whosince then have been joined by historians inChina. With some irony, the ‘discovery’ of auniversal teleology in the internal dynamicsof imperial China consolidated efforts, atwork since the turn of the century, toconstruct a linear history that would under-write the continuity and continuous evolu-tion of a Chinese nation. Additionally, whilethe question that motivated Marxist histori-ans may have been off the mark in moreways than one, it nevertheless stimulatedinquiry that was quite productive in theuncovering of important data. Their find-ings concerning changes in the Ming havebeen confirmed by historians from HeBingdi to Theodore de Bary who have iden-tified similarly deep-seated changes in Mingsociety and ideology.8 As the author of amore recent work has observed,

…the late imperial period (sixteenththrough nineteenth centuries), wassubstantively different from its prede-cessors and was characterized byconsiderable continuity in key institu-tions and socio-economic structure …economic growth and change, whichled to shifts in the composition andcharacter of the elite; an expansion ofthe educational system, produced inpart by economic growth; and the onsetof large-scale printing, stimulated byprosperity and expanded education.(Rawski 1985: 3)

Consciousness of globality in historyhas opened up new avenues of research, aswell as new possibilities in the interpreta-tion of these developments. The impact ofthe new consciousness is visible in the wayswe view Chinese history, as well as inhistorical work. During the celebrations ofthe 600th anniversary of the voyages ofZheng He to the West in 2005, the voyageswere held up as evidence of globalizingtendencies in Chinese history. Over the lastdecade, there has been a noticeable increase

in the number of publications dealing withrelations between China and the outsideworld. Globalization has stimulatedrenewed interest in world history, withimplications for the historiography of Chinaas well. The switch from revolution tomodernization as a paradigm, ironically,also has encouraged historians to gobeyond the nation both in comparativework and in the search for universal causes.Influential advocates of the modernizationparadigm in the 1990s, such as ProfessorLuo Rongqu of Beijing University,conceived of modernization not as a substi-tute for the paradigm of revolution, but as aparadigm that is capable of accounting forthe revolution, and much more besides. Heand his students sought to conceptualizemodernization to account for the particularhistorical circumstances of Chinese society,including the particular ways in which ithad to confront modernity, most impor-tantly through the agency of imperialism.What was most impressive about Luo’s(2004[1993]) seminal work, A New Discus-sion of Modernization: The Process of Modern-ization in the World and China, is the globalapproach he takes to the question ofmodernization. His ‘monistic multi-linear’(yiyuan duoxian) is quite reminiscent of theideas of ‘multiple’ or ‘alternative’ moderni-ties that have acquired popularity in recentyears in US scholarship; the major differ-ence being the place he gives to imperialismand colonialism in shaping the develop-mental trajectories of Chinese and otherThird World societies. Professor Luo’s workis continued by his students and successorsat the Center for World ModernizationProcess at Beijing University.9

Despite the recognition of multi-linear-ity in this work, it is noteworthy thatmodernization discourse in China continuesto espouse a theoretical unilinearity that issomewhat at odds with its globalizingassumptions, but in keeping with modern-ization discourse in the United States andelsewhere, as well as its Marxist predeces-sors. Development proceeds through threeprogressive phases (primitive, agricultural,industrial), each marked by a revolution in



technology. Marxism and modernizationdiscourse come together in the attribution to‘the forces of production’ of a determiningrole in historical development. Societies canthen be assigned their places on a ladderdevelopment, which seriously qualifies theclaim to multi-linearity. In this scheme,China itself remained an agrarian societyuntil after European impact, went throughan industrial stage, and is now poised for asurge forward in the next stage of ‘knowl-edge economy’. In the work of a historiansuch as He Chuanqi, alternative develop-ment is reserved for this next phase ofdevelopment (‘second modernization’, or‘second modernity’). Luo sought in his workto synthesize Marxism and modernizationdiscourse (the work explicitly addressesquestions raised by ‘the four moderniza-tions’ and ‘socialism with Chinese charac-teristics’), but an almost exclusive emphasison the forces of production opened up thepossibility of the disappearance of Marxisminto a slightly different version of modern-ization discourse. While some of his succes-sors, such as Dong Zhenghua, havecontinued to advocate greater attention tosocial, political and cultural issues, otherssuch as He Chuanqi are hardly distinguish-able from liberal and conservative advocatesof modernization abroad in his view ofmodernization as a process of leaving thepast behind toward a convergence of insti-tutional and cultural characteristics. Simi-larly, culture appears in his writing mostimportantly as a potentiality for moderniza-tion. Once the potential has been realized,societies may differ from one another, butonly on a common basis of modernity.10

In a somewhat different vein is thework of so-called ‘new leftists’, such asWang Hui. Wang’s work pertains mostly tothe realm of thought and culture rather thanpolitical economy, and is marked by anemphasis on what may best be described asthe anti-modernism provoked by the assaulton Chinese society of bourgeois moderniza-tion. Anti-modernism itself implies not somuch an escape from modernity as thesource of an alternative modernity. Never-theless, his work, as the work of others asso-

ciated with the New Left, seeks to confrontissues raised by contemporary moderniza-tion without abandoning certain legacies ofthe revolution. The confrontation also hasraised questions concerning the origins ofmodernity, and the Eurasian (in contrast toWestern European) processes that played acrucial part in those origins.11

The language of globalization hasbecome even more pervasive among non-Chinese historians of China. A recent workby Timothy Brook, devoted to interactionsbetween the Dutch and the Ming/Qingdynasties, brings globalization into Chinesehistory and Chinese history into globaliza-tion (Brook 2008).12 Of greater significance isthe increased attention in recent years toChina’s contribution to capitalist develop-ment in such works as Andre GunderFrank’s (1998) Re-Orient: Global Economy inthe Asian Age, Bin Wong’s (1997) ChinaTransformed: Historical Change and the Limitsof the European Experience, Kenneth Pomer-anz’s (2000) The Great Divergence: China,Europe and the Making of the Modern WorldEconomy, and the collection of writingsedited by Giovanni Arrighi, TakeshiHamashita and Mark Selden (2003), TheResurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 YearPerspectives. Informed by the rapideconomic development of China in recentyears, some of this work returns us to MarcoPolo-esque visions of China as the center ofthe world economy, but now viewed fromthe vantage point of Euro/American societ-ies that have far surpassed what they onceenvied. So the question almost automati-cally acquires a teleological orientation:‘why did they fall so far behind when oncethey were so far ahead?’ We might remindourselves that they might not have beenheaded in our direction at all even whenthey show many symptoms of modernity.The trajectory China follows today is notmerely a ‘resurgence’, but also a movementin a new direction as a consequence ofChina’s entrapment in the capitalist worldsystem. A work such as Frank’s, whichdenies historical capitalism but insists on a5000-year world system, returns into theclassical economic assumption of capitalism


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as the destiny of the world, but takingdetours in time through different spaces ofthe globe.13 The economistic teleology is alsoevident in the works of Wong and Pomer-anz, especially the latter, in their oblivious-ness to social and colonial relations, as wellas the part played by the state, in the inven-tion and consolidation of capitalism, there-fore suppressing significant differencesbetween the societies in question.14

This body of work, building on earlierstudies of China with less prominent world-historical claims, has done much to alterinherited views of late imperial Chinesehistory. Nevertheless, in different waysthese works suffer from two tendencies,directly opposed to one another, thatrequire critical consideration. First is perpet-uating Eurocentrism in an updated guise,which is implicit in their utilization of devel-opments in European capitalism as ameasure of development elsewhere. Theother, opposite, tendency is Sinocentrism, aprivileging of Chin, which is a product ofnationalism where Chinese historians ofChina are concerned but is equally a profes-sional predicament of non-Chinese histori-ans as well. The latter has acquired thestatus of a popular fashion in recent yearswith the hype over contemporary China,and the shallow and tendentious claims putforward by market-driven historians such asGavin Menzies. Sinocentrism mostcommonly leads to a representation ofglobal relations in terms of a China–Westpolarity, erasing the Afro-Eurasian andPacific contexts for both Chinese and ‘west-ern’ histories. Of the works referred toabove, for instance, only Frank’s escapesthis bipolar representation of globality, if ina highly qualified sense.15

In spite of claims to the contrary, muchof this work tacitly perpetuates long-stand-ing assumptions of Eurocentrism by univer-salizing phenomena and categories derivedfrom capitalist development in Europe.Equally importantly, this body of work alsosweeps under the rug phenomena that maybe crucial to explaining capitalist develop-ment in Europe. Formalistic reading ofeconomic data also leads in most cases to an

obliviousness to the importance of threecenturies of European exploration andexpansion in the creation of institutional,political and cultural conditions for capital-ism, which would appear in their maturityby the late 18th century.16 Aside from ignor-ing the part class power and State interven-tion played in the creation of the institutionsof capital (including the organization ofcapital itself in companies that themselveswere to become states), most important maybe the advantage the Europeans gained overothers during these centuries in the accumu-lation within European hands of the knowl-edge of the world, so that by the late 18thcentury only Europeans commanded aglobal vision.17 Others were to discoverthemselves anew in maps of the worlddesigned according to the dictates ofEuropean vision and power. It was thisknowledge, now backed by the power ofindustrial capitalism and the nation-state,that ushered in a new phase of modernitymarked by European (and American) hege-mony that still shapes the world despite thechallenges of global modernity.

It is interesting that discovering capital-ist development in China rephrases ChineseMarxist ideas of the ‘sprouts of capitalism’,which historians in Europe and NorthAmerica long refused to take seriouslybecause of its universalistic assumptions. Itnow enjoys a new respectability (along withConfucian capitalism) in the alleged repudi-ation of Eurocentrism. This is quite mislead-ing, needless to say, as what it doesultimately is to measure change in Chinaaccording to a standard derived fromEuropean economic modernity. The works Ihave cited above, by Frank, Pomeranz andWong, all suffer from this problem in vari-ous ways. Despite their claims to novelty,the idea that China was a match for Europeeconomically until the middle of the 18thcentury, and that Europeans operating inEastern Asia were obliged to follow localpractices, is hardly a new one, as it wasexpressed often enough even by contempo-rary Europeans themselves. Then Europejumped ahead for a variety of reasons, butnow China, having absorbed the lessons of



the contact, is zooming ahead, and is likelyonce again to become the new center of theworld economy. It is this optimistic (forChina anyway) appraisal of the present, andits supposed confirmation of a basis for it allin the ‘premodern’ period, that distin-guishes these works from earlier studies byMark Elvin and Philip Huang.18 The discus-sion of China’s development has beenconducted, and is still conducted, within aparadigm of capitalist modernity, andappears as a consequence as a failed history,a history of absence and lack, rather than asa different history, fraught with differentpossibilities. This approach, moreover, hasnot been restricted to foreign historians ofChina. It has been equally true of Marxisthistoriography for half a century, and isnow perpetuated through the new para-digm of modernization that has challenged,and is likely to replace, Marxism in Chinesescholarship. Lost in the process are thosealternatives, which call attention not only tothe economy but also politics, social andcultural organization and practices. Theconsideration of these alternative possibili-ties disappears in the economism of recentliterature, which suffers by contrast to itspredecessors in its obliviousness to socialand political organization in the making ofcapitalism – and capitalist modernity.

The problem of bringing in Eurocen-trism by the backdoor is a problem for allclaims to alternative modernities. Claims toalternative modernities seem always to takeas their referent Euro/American modernity,and in their very use of the term modern,identified even by its critics with Europeand North America, perpetuate the veryEurocentrism that they would negate. With-out a reconceptualization of modernity ingeneral – what I refer to here as differentphases of modernity – claims to alternativeand multiple modernities are condemned touniversalizing the claims of a ‘singular’modernity even in their assertions of differ-ence. More than anything, the culturalismthat pervades these works disguises theirassumption of a universality of capitalism,without which European modernity mighthave remained merely one of a number of

competing ethnocentrisms in modernity.Without placing capitalism historically, allsuch claims to difference are deceptivebecause the modernity of Europe stillprovides the point of departure for all suchclaims. The guiding paradigm is ‘develop-ment’ for which the model remains capital-ist development of the last two centuries(Rist 1997).19

There has been some resistance to thisteleology in works that have stressed differ-ence for what it is, not as some deviationfrom a proper path but as an alternativeresponse to a proliferating condition ofmodernity, which had much to do with theconstitution of local social and political rela-tions; however, we may want to place thelocal. One such work is the recent study byDavid Faure (2007) of the Pearl River Deltaarea of Guangdong, Emperor and Ancestor:State and Lineage in South China, which offersa detailed examination of the emergence ofthe modern state, and its integration withsociety, from the middle of the Ming period,within the context of the commercializationof society. This is the period, needless to say,that Marxist historians in China have associ-ated with the ‘sprouts of capitalism’.Another work, this time focusing on technol-ogy and society, is Sucheta Mazumdar’s(1998) Sugar and Society in China: Peasants,Technology, and the World Market. Influencedby the writings of Indian critics of modernityand development, such as the distinguishedscholar Rajni Kothari, this work also affirmsthe possibility of alternative modernitiesprior to their conquest by capitalism in oneform or another. The possibilities of differ-ence in modernity are also recognized inBenjamin Elman’s (2005) study of science inlate imperial China (On Their Own Terms:Science in China, 1550–1900) and AlexanderWoodside’s (2006) study of public adminis-tration and the examination system in East-ern Asian societies in his Lost Modernities:China, Vietnam, Korea and the Hazards of WorldHistory. Elman’s study is also exemplary ofthe collaboration of Europeans and Chinesein the production of modernity – albeit withthe intermediation of European intellectuals.Another work that is worthy of attention for


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its sensitivity to difference in modernity, at amore general cultural level, is RoxannPrazniak’s (1996) Dialogues Across Civiliza-tions: Sketches in World History from theChinese and European Experiences.20

What distinguishes these works is notonly that they emphasize difference, butalso that the differences they identify inChinese historical development give prior-ity to political and social relationships, aswell as cultural characteristics that werevery much entangled with those relation-ships – what we might describe broadly as‘the relations of production’, which are alsothe location of cultural and ideologicalelements that were viewed in Stalinist Marx-ism as parts of ‘the superstructure’ of soci-ety. They, too, suffer from a China/Westbinarism which, intentionally or not, erasesthe complexities of both those terms, andtheir historicity, and overshadows intellec-tually more productive spatializations thatinclude other parts of Eurasia and attendmore closely to transcontinental relation-ships. The stress on relationships, neverthe-less, points to a structured, and dialectical,understanding of modernization andmodernity not just as triumphal narrativesof economic progress, but also as an accountof a destructive process that from the begin-ning marked its success with the erasure ofalternatives to its expanding hegemony.Recalling these alternatives erased or castaside is important for understandingmodernity in more complex ways.

The Ming period in transcontinental perspective

When does modernity begin in China? Thedominant approach to the question has beento begin modernity with the political andmilitary encounter of the 19th century,which also initiates imperialism, national-ism, resistance, cultural transformation, andrevolution. This is the periodization that istaken for granted by both paradigms underdiscussion, both in China and the US. If wetake for granted the substantive definitionof modernity that derives its parametersfrom EuroAmerican models of the modern,

it is possible to argue even that China hasnever been modern, and fails the test ofmodernity even in our day, as a distin-guished historian has famously (and fool-ishly) proclaimed (Spence 1990: xxiv).

Without denying to EuroAmerica itshistorical role in the invention of the moder-nity that has created the world as we haveknown it for the past two centuries, it isclear nevertheless that this substantive defi-nition of modernity, however conceived, isinsufficient to serve as a yardstick formeasuring change in what we habituallycall the modern world, and has erased morethan it has explained, especially in the alter-native historical trajectories that weresuppressed following the emergence ofEuroAmerican modernity to global domi-nance and hegemony from the late 18thcentury. If modernity has anything to dowith capitalism, the discussion of modernityneeds to inquire further into the relationshipbetween the emergence of capitalism, therestructuring of the world, and the place init of China (among others). I mean place inboth a temporal and a spatial sense: theplace of China in the emergence of capital-ism, and the place of China in Eurasia (andultimately the globe), which is the irreduc-ible spatial context for the emergence ofcapitalist modernity.

There is no denying, contra some of thescholarship discussed above (not to mentionof the likes of Gavin Menzies whose reduc-tionism only serves to distort and trivializehistorically significant questions) thatEuropeans were to play a crucial part in theemergence of a global world-system, whichcoincided with the creation of capitalism.But this globalization was itself made possi-ble by the existence of local imperial econo-mies, ‘world economies’ in scope thatserved as constituents of contemporaryglobality, provided the lures for Europeanexpansion, and dynamized the forces ofglobalization that lie at the origins of ourtimes. This much is the nearly indisputableconclusion that recent scholarship hasyielded.

What requires further attention is theways in which the globalization of the



political economy led to transformations insuch societies as the Tokugawa Shogunatein Japan (circa 1600–1868), the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing (1644–1911) dynasties inChina, the Mughal (circa 1526–1858), Otto-man (circa 1300–1923), and Safavid (1501–1723) empires in South and Western Asia, aswell as a host of other, more localized, urbanconglomerations across the breadth ofEurasia, Africa and the Americas, trans-forming existing political systems, andcreating new ones, that would result insocial formations that were contemporane-ous with ‘early modern’ Europe, but werelaunched on trajectories of their own.21 IfEuropeans had an advantage in these devel-opments, it was in the oversight Europeanswere to achieve of these developments intheir very activities of mediation betweenthese societies.22 But the more importantquestion here is how we are to describethese societies that were the products of thesame forces that would create modernEurope, but seemingly had different futuresahead of them, had they not been forced intoa unilinear historical trajectory with thevictory of European capitalist modernity?Not to recognize to them their modernity, itseems to me, is to fall into the same fallacythat in modernization discourse deniedcontemporaneity to societies because theywere ‘backward’; in other words, different.‘Early modern’ is a possibility but it isburdened with the teleology of Euromoder-nity. A Eurasian modernity that was fraughtwith alternative possibilities may offer themost satisfactory alternative. It makes sense,it seems to me, to change our definitions ofmodernity in the face of anomalous datarather than ignore the data to protect ourconceptualizations! In this perspective, itmakes some sense to speak of a Eurasianmodernity, to be followed by a Eurocentricmodernity, which may be in the process ofyielding presently to a global modernity thatpartakes of many of the features of Eurasianmodernity, but in forms that have beenworked over by the capitalist modernity thatEuroAmerican hegemony has universalized.

The account of the emergence of capital-ism that is most satisfactory does indeed

work within these spatial and temporalparameters: the emergence of a single capi-talist world-system out of a multiplicity ofworld-systems across Eurasia, which wouldultimately center on Europe from the 18thcentury, by which time the whole globe wasbrought within the purview of this world-system.23 While there had been interactionsacross Afro-Eurasia since the beginnings ofhumankind, it is fair to observe, I think, thatit was the Mongol invasions that inventedEurasia as we know it, and it is from theMongol invasions that it is possible to datethe emergence of Europe and China (amongother empires, from the Mughal to theSafavid to the Ottoman) as we have knownthem in the modern period.

Translocal interactions across Eurasianevertheless produced different formationswithin a new Eurasian world-system. Theemergence of capitalism in Western Europewas a product of these interactions withinthe context of European society. It wouldseem that everywhere across the width ofAfro-Eurasia, and across oceans to the‘new’ lands, there was an intensification ofactivities of exchange, and appearance inincreasing numbers of independent ‘entre-preneurs’ – as landlords, merchants andlaborers. The consequences were differentin different parts of Asia, depending onlocal circumstances. Europe was to producecapitalism, and a modernity founded uponit, which would rapidly result in Europeanand American domination of the world.

In Eastern Asia, the same periodwitnessed the consolidation of empire – andthe formation of ‘China’ as we have knownit with the Ming and the Qing. Initial open-ness of the early Ming, as witnessed by theZheng He expeditions, was followed bygreater control over the borders in responseto the intensification of pressure from theoutside both on the coast and the interior(perhaps explaining the ‘defensive expan-sion’ throughout the period).

This ‘closing out’ of the world,however, did not stop significant interac-tions across the Eastern Asian world-system, including cultural interactions.Interestingly, given the importance of


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Central Asian interactions in the formationof East Asia, the Ming and the Qing evincedmore interest in this area (Mongols,Russians and other groups in Central Asia)than in the strangers that showed up withincreasing frequency and insistence on thecoast.24 Already, however, the effects of anemergent capitalist world-system wereevident (if invisibly) in the ‘sprouts of capi-talism’ that Chinese Marxist historiansobserved in the late Ming. The historio-graphical tendency (by Marxist historiansand their critics alike) to take ‘China’ as aunit of development has in many waysstood in the way of a full appreciation ofthese developments. The problem has beencompounded by a state (and by the mid-Ming, Beijing) centered view of Ming–Qingrelations with the outside world, when itwas in Southern and East Central China(the Jiangnan area) that the economic andsocial consequences of these relations weremost obvious. The authors of a recent studywrite that it was with ‘the weakening ofcentral controls after the mid-Ming that thesocial economy showed tendencies ofdeveloping into a commodity economy,and the decline of tributary exchangeallowed private maritime trade to advancelike wildfire, resulting in the embryonicgrowth of maritime economy and socialorganization within the womb of the tradi-tional system’ (Yang et al. 1997: 15). Theturn of attention to the Mongol problem inthe north may have contributed further tothis result.

Ming and early Qing China may nothave had intensive diplomatic relationswith the outside world beyond EasternAsia, but that does not change the enormousimpact on Chinese society of commercialrelations through the southern seas thatwere to bring into China the silver and food-stuffs of the Americas that would have acrucial impact on its financial structure anddemographic dynamics. These commercialrelations also stimulated migrations abroadto Southeast Asia, including the Philippines.From the mid-Ming on, Chinese overseaswere to play an important part in theChinese economy (as well as Southeast

Asian economies) as intermediaries betweenthe Mainland and the outside world (Yanget al. 1997: 15).25 The arrival of Europeans onthe China coast led to further defensiveclosure, especially as European activitiesturned from assimilation into an EasternAsian sphere to transforming it in accor-dance with needs and demands emanatingfrom Europe. By this time, the emergentworld-system was not just Eurasian but,through the Philippines, included the Amer-icas as well. Ming–Qing efforts to controlthe borders, however, prevented neither theinflow of commodities, nor the emigrationto Southeast Asia and beyond of Chinesepopulations, which also dates back to thisperiod. The transformations wrought by theemergent capitalist world-system no doubtprovides a context for the simultaneousexpansion of Europe and China, although itis important to be attentive to differences aswell: the two expansions may both be prod-ucts of an emerging global world-system,but one was empowered by capitalism, theother one a defensive expansion which, atthe very least, was not transformative in itsconsequences at any scale comparable withthe effects of an imperialism empowered bycapitalism.26

There is much that is controversial inMing/Qing history. There is broad agree-ment, nevertheless, that the Ming Dynastyfounded on the remains of the Mongolinvasions, marked new departures in thehistory of imperial China and, from themid-16th century, displayed economic,social and cultural characteristics thatseemed to be shared widely by societiesacross Eurasia.27 It was only with the Mingthat the imperial center consolidatedcontrol over what was to become Chinaproper (to which were added most of the‘outer’ areas during the Qing). The imperialpolitical system achieved coherence, and anunprecedented integration of state and soci-ety, with the institution of the examinationsystem, but even more importantly acollaboration between the state and localelites in the establishment of rules regulat-ing social relationships. The kinshipsystem, the basis of social power, also



served state interests in social control at thelocal level.28

The political transformation went handin hand with significant changes in Chinesesociety. The manorial economy that stillprevailed in the early Ming gradually gaveway to a small peasant economy by the lateMing and early Qing.29 The increasedcommercialization of society was reflectedin the development of urban networksacross the breadth of the empire, as well asin the increasing power of merchants insociety, which has led one author to suggestthe appearance of a ‘petty capitalist’ soci-ety.30 There were large-scale industries, tobe sure, large enough to satisfy both internalneeds and a flourishing export economy inpottery and silk. And there were monopolis-tic merchants, such as the salt merchantswho served as private agents for statemonopolies (Ho 1954).31 But most produc-tion remained small household production,and ‘petty capitalism’ existed side by side,and in collusion with, the ‘tributary’ econ-omy managed by the state. The tributaryeconomy was progressively monetized asthe Ming state gradually converted into cashpayments taxes that, up till the middle ofthe dynasty, were paid mostly in kind orcorvee labor.

While the state by no means stayed outof the ‘petty capitalist’ economy, this econ-omy remained largely self-regulatingthrough such institutions as guilds (gongsuo)and native-place associations (huiguan),whose emergence and spread accompaniedthe commercialization of society, andmerchant mobility (Hamilton 1985). Theemergent merchant class never achievedautonomy as a class to challenge the tribu-tary economy or to assert its power overpolitics. Rather, these structural transforma-tions issued in the gentrification ofmerchants and the commercialization of thegentry, the political class, to produce a newelite that combined in its hands political,mercantile and cultural activities and capi-tal. Its pre-eminence was visible in the emer-gence of a new urban culture, as well as inmerchant friendly transformations withinthe dominant Confucian ideology (Yu

2004).32 The literature (in the broadest sense,including popular religious tracts and ency-clopedias) of this new urban culture wasdiffused widely with the commercializationof publishing from the Ming – not onlyacross the mainland, but among overseasChinese communities as well as Korea andJapan (Brokaw and Chow 2005).33 Neitherschools nor libraries were new in the Ming,but the expanded use of woodblock-print-ing and the commercialization of publishingled to (and no doubt also benefited from) anunprecedented expansion of school librariesby the middle of the Ming Dynasty (Brook1996). Culturally as well as politically, theMing represented the emergence of animperial formation that needs to be distin-guished from the lineages of the variouselements that went into its constitution. The‘modernity’ of Ming and Qing societies hasbeen erased not only in Eurocentric histori-ography, but also in Chinese historiographyand popular consciousness in clichés about5000 years of civilization that project charac-teristics of this formation upon the remotepast, ignoring the novel historical situationof which the Ming was the product, whichendowed with a new significance past lega-cies that went into its making but only asparts of a complex totality that was quiteunprecedented in the history of imperialChina.

These developments were set back for awhile by the Ming–Qing transition, whichled Marxist historians in China to blame theQing for the inability of China to move intocapitalism. To be sure, by the late 18thcentury Qing society would show signs of along-term crisis brought about most impor-tantly by demographic pressure onresources, but social developments that hadgotten under way during the Mingcontinued apace once the Qing had consoli-dated their rule under the Kangxi Emperor(1654–1722).34 The mid-18th century maywell have represented the political apogeeof imperial history when expansion into thenorth, the north-west, the south-west andTaiwan brought China to the borders itclaims today.35 As I suggested above, weneed to distinguish the dynamics of this


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expansion from the transformative dynam-ics of empires dynamized by capitalism andnationalism. On the other hand, Qingexpansion during this period is a reminderthat when the British made their first forayinto the Qing court in the late 18th century,presaging what was to follow in the 19th,they encountered a state that was anythingbut an easy prey for imperialism.

That capitalism did not develop inChina, moreover, does not imply thereforethat the Chinese economy did not develop,or that it stagnated; only that it developeddifferently. Fernand Braudel and GiovanniArrighi have suggested that ‘anti-market’big business organization devoted to theaccumulation of capital is the distinguishingfeature of the capitalist economy thatemerged in Europe from the 16th century,consolidating its global hegemony in the19th century following the industrial revolu-tion (Braudel 1983; Arrighi 1994). Thecommercialization of Chinese society fromthe Ming onwards would produce a differ-ent socio-economic formation, one charac-terized by small-scale production in bothagriculture and industry. In the words ofRichard Von Glahn, ‘it is quite possible thateighteenth-century China experienced an“industrious revolution” not unlike thathypothesized for contemporary Japan andEurope, in which population expansion wasaccompanied by intensification of work andincreased non-agricultural production in thecountryside that, together with the develop-ment of horizontal exchange within localand regional markets, led to economicspecialization and productivity gains equal-ing or exceeding demographic growth’ (VonGlahn 2003: 201).36

These long-term developments providean indispensable context, I think, for under-standing 18th–19th century encounters. Theconfrontation between Great Britain and theQing Dynasty from the late 18th centuryonward was not an encounter between anopen modern society driven by commerceand a closed traditional empire ‘stagnatingin the teeth of time’, as Karl Marx famouslyput it, but the culmination of relationshipsthat already had a history of three centuries,

that signaled a new phase in the unfoldingof modernity, one that was driven by thenew industrial capitalism that was eventu-ally to claim the whole globe from European(and American) hegemony. From the late18th century, European imperialismempowered by the industrial revolutionwas able to force the Qing to open to theworld-system. By the end of the 19thcentury, the Eastern Asian world-systemhad been incorporated into a global world-system, bringing to completion a processthat had been under way at least for fourcenturies.

In this perspective, modernization andrevolution in the 20th century appear as partof the same process, representing internalsocial differences and conflicts that had theirlocal peculiarities but may be impossible toexplain without reference to Ming-Qingincorporation into the capitalist world-system. Similarly, nation-building may beviewed as part of an effort to contain andregulate these new forces as well as to wardoff imperialism (we need to remember thatnationalism was universalized as politicalform as part of the European expansion, andas one of its consequences). The socialistrevolution was legitimized by a promisethat socialism could achieve the goal ofnational integration, which the bourgeoisiecould not accomplish under conditions ofdependent development. But it was moti-vated also by a desire to find an alternativepath of development that could escape fromand transcend the capitalist world-system.Socialism is not to be reduced to national-ism. If it was nationalistic, it was a differentkind of nationalism that it proposed, onethat had cosmopolitanism as an integralpart.

Concluding observations

The argument I have offered above mayseem like a mere case of renaming what wehave long known, even though what weknow has been enriched considerably byresearch stimulated by globalization. Tosome extent, it is, but it is motivated also bythe need to confront conceptual anomalies



presented by historical complexities thatdaily come to light with the removal of theshadows cast upon them by legacies of ateleological Eurocentric historiography, towhich the concept of modernity has beencentral. Whether or not inflating the conceptto bring non-European societies into theinterior of modernity from its very origins isthe best way to achieve this goal may bequestionable. It is ‘moderno-centric’, touse Bentley’s term (see above), deepens thehegemony of modernity, and is open to thesame charge of bringing modernity in bythe back door that I have leveled againstother works above.

I believe, however, that the strategy isworth the risk for a number of reasons. First,despite all the objections to it, the historicalconsciousness of modernity is very muchpart of a contemporary consciousnessglobally, and the very critiques of moder-nity are informed by and are expressed inlanguage and concepts that are its prod-ucts.37 Whether or not we like it, ourcontemporary modernity, as well as theways in which we think about it, is post-Eurocentric. The cultural nationalist obses-sions of contemporary global modernitymore often than not ignore that the verydefense of alternative traditions are infusedthrough and through with the historicalconsciousness and narrative strategies thatare the products of Euromodernity. Bring-ing these histories into the interior ofmodernity is intended to challenge thehistoricism that informs not just Eurocen-trism, but all centrisms that nourish off theextension into distant pasts, the national orcivilizational consciousness that itself is aproduct of Euromodernity (I am referringhere to the terms as well as the conceptsthey imply, which are of recent vintagehistorically). Rethinking modernity in termsof transcontinental relations de-centers theproduction of modernity in its formation. Italso calls into question the historicist conceitof autonomous national and civilizationalorigins and development that is a commonassumption of all centrisms. The inclusion ofdiverse societies under the rubric of an orig-inary modernity, while it may be ‘moderno-

centric’, also renders the term into a floatingsignifier (not arbitrary for being floating),which already is characteristic of its usewith reference to the present. What I havesuggested here is to re-conceive the pastalong similar lines. On the other hand,unlike in the case of the works I have criti-cized above, my emphasis has been not on asingle standard (most importantly,economic) that may be used teleologicallyfor all the societies involved, but on differ-ence conceived in social, political andcultural terms, including difference ofhistorical trajectories that in the end wassuppressed through the exercise of politicaland military power.

In my view, the problems thrown up bythis historiography will not be resolved bydoing away with the concept, as we mustconsider carefully not only what we gain butalso what we stand to lose by its elimination.Neither is it sufficient to establish equiva-lence among all Eurasian societies by label-ing them ‘early modern’ which, whether ornot so intended, assumes the part associatedearlier with tradition (and other kindredterms). In the end, all but one of these societ-ies remain stuck in ‘premodernity’, andEurope, or Euro/America, continues toserve as the ultimate referent for the modern,as well as for history, past and future. Thepurpose of the renaming I have suggestedabove is to break this link, and open the wayto re-conceiving modernity (and Europe)differently. The next step is to identify thecommonalities across societies that justifythe use of a term across equally importantdifferences, and how the term does indeedrefer to sets of characteristics that distinguishthe modernities of these societies from theirvarious pre-modernities (the Ming from theSong, for instance, in the case of China). Therenaming I have undertaken here isintended, above all, to rescue the term fromits past associations in order to enable newhistoriographical projects. Such projectsneed to be informed by a recognition ofdifference as well as commonality in moder-nity before it came under the hegemony of ‘asingular modernity’. Hence, the suggestionthat modernity be grasped in its origins in all


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its various historical trajectories albeit drivenby global forces experienced locally: as Euro-modern, Sinomodern, Indomodern, etc,alternatives that would be marginalized, ifnot extinguished, by the hegemony of theEuromodern empowered by capitalism.Memories of these earlier alternatives serveas inspiration under contemporary globalmodernity for ‘alternative modernities’, butnow on the basis of a globalized capitalism.38

But the naming I have suggested goesbeyond mere naming in another sense.Shifting attention from a substantive to arelational understanding of modernity alsodemands a re-conceptualization of theforces that went into the making of moder-nity, and the different spatialities suggestedby different force fields. In other words, wealso need to overcome the habits of think-ing modernity in terms of the nationalor civilizational units of a Euromodernhistoriography, and shift attention to thetranslocal forces of varying reach that wentinto the making of those units in the firstplace.

I have said little above on the develop-ment or non-development of capitalism inChina, which has long preoccupied scholarsin Europe, North America, Japan andChina. That question, assuming a historicalteleology informed by Euro/Americancapitalism, has produced much knowledgeand understanding about China (and othersocieties), but also has served as an obstacleto the perception of historical difference asdifference, rather than as some lack or fail-ure. As Gary Hamilton has observed, muchof that scholarship, beginning with Marxand Weber, was intended to understand notother societies but the emergence of Euro-pean capitalism (Hamilton 1985). Ironically,in the hands of Chinese Marxist historians,too, the question served to explain failurerather than difference. It is this emphasis ondifference that has come to the fore withrecent scholarship, informed by a critiqueof Eurocentrism, and recognition of thepossibility that the same field of forces maynevertheless issue in multiple historicaltrajectories. What remains unanswered, andwill likely never be answered, is whether or

not these alternative modernities were deadends, as is suggested somewhat differentlyin the works of Philip Huang and MarkElvin, that ultimately would have collapsedunder their own weight. Despite theirdifferences, these two authors agree that theexisting modes of production had reachedtheir limits, with few signs of furthergrowth to support the demands on them ofpopulation growth and land scarcity.39 Onthe other hand, this conclusion still leavesopen the question of what might havefollowed had China not been incorporatedinto a world shaped by Euromodernity.

With hindsight, European capitalistdevelopment during this period appears tohave been one out of several trajectories ofdevelopment these interactions launched.The ‘Chinese alternative’ impressed contem-porary European progressives not only forits material accomplishments, but also as apossible model in the strivings for culturaland political modernity against the legaciesof religion and arbitrary rule. The point hereis not whether or not these images of Chinawere any more reliable than negativeimages that were also on the emergence.The point here is that as late as the 18thcentury, those whose names have been asso-ciated prominently with the articulation ofthe values of modernity in Europe (in thiscase, the Enlightenment) such as Leibniz orVoltaire, saw in China not just a contempo-rary society but one that was moreadvanced than Europe in many ways. Thesame society served an emergent consumersociety with the commodities, real or fake,that would become part of its everydayculture in the satisfaction of new cravingsfor exotica.40

It is only with the emergent hegemonyof capitalist modernity, apparent from the18th century, that Chinese history flows intothe metanarrative of capitalism, as one of itslocalized narratives (the local in this caseranging from regional national to place-based). If this seems like degrading Chinesehistory (from the perspective of thoseconvinced of its ‘exceptionalism’), it isworth underlining that European history,too, is localized in this metanarrative; as one



of the spatial formations in globalization ofcapital, albeit with a hegemonic part to playin the emergence of modernity. As I notedabove, moreover, there is a problem inmuch of the work cited above, of overcom-ing Eurocentrism only to fall into a Sinocen-trism, which is a pervasive intellectualtendency that has accompanied the resur-gence of a new round of Chinoiserie. ImperialChina did indeed play an important role inthe political economy of modernity. But itwas not the only society to play such a part.Much of what I have suggested above withregard to Ming–Qing developments is alsoobservable in other imperial systems of thetime, before they entered decline or cameunder colonial rule with an emergent Euro-centric colonial modernity.41 Conversely,moreover, long before the forceful ‘openingof China’ in the 19th century, global interac-tions played an important part in the shap-ing of imperial Chinese economy andsociety, and less visibly perhaps, politicsand culture. Indeed, it is possible to observethat one of the most egregious failures of thehistoriography of late imperial China is totreat the enormous expansion of territoryand population during the Ming as if it werejust another interesting facet of Minghistory, rather than a transformative devel-opment. As this development was inti-mately linked to ‘invisible’ relationshipsbetween the Ming and the outside world, itsvery recognition would underline the signif-icance of the Ming’s incorporation in aglobalizing world-system.

The revisioning of modernity isintended not only to bring the perspectivesof other societies to the development ofcapitalist modernity in Europe, as thismerely adds new dimensions to the emer-gent centrality of Europe, and retains aEurocentric account of modernity.42 Undueemphasis on the part China played in theprocess, on the other hand, results in aSinocentrism that ignores the ways inwhich ‘China’ was shaped by forces intro-duced from the outside, also erasing thepart played by other societies that inhab-ited the regions between Eastern Asia andWestern Europe.43 The case of China may

point to the most egregious case of thisshift in ‘centrism’, but it is not the only one.Other candidates are ‘Indocentrism’ and‘Islamocentrism’. Shifting attention fromindividual societies to their continental(and inter-continental) context underlinesthe significance of the forces, translocal andtranscivilizational, that were to go into themaking of the many modernities that blos-somed in Eurasia at the beginnings of themodern ages, the traces of which are stillvisible in the claims to alternative moderni-ties in our present.

If we are to strive toward a criticallyhistorical understanding of modernity, it isnot sufficient only to rescue its past from thelegacies of Euromodernity. It is equallynecessary to guard against a new tradition-alism that seeks in those traces a disguise forits own formation within the crucible ofEuromodernity, especially capitalism andthe nation-state. Unlike the alternativemodernities of an earlier time, the alterna-tives of contemporary global modernity arenot alternatives to, but alternatives within, acapitalist society of which Euromodernity isan inextricable formative component.

These distinctions toward a sharperdelineation of alternatives are not trivial,nor are they merely of academic interest.They imply distinctions between differenthistorical trajectories versus variationswithin a single historical trajectory that hasbeen defined by the hegemony of Euromo-dernity. Different trajectories of change atthe origins of modernity were eventuallyrendered marginal, if not erased, by theglobal victory of Euromodernity, whichwould condemn them to backwardness andstagnation. The point of recalling them pres-ently is not to return to vanished pasts, butto place the present in a historical perspec-tive that was much richer and variegatedthan has been imagined in a Euromodernhistoriography. To rescue modernity as aconcept and historical phenomenon fromthis hegemony is an indispensable first steptoward thinking modernity differently,which is crucial if we are to overcome whatwould seem to be the terminal crisis of themodern as we have known it.


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Notes

1. The unification may be symbolized by the trav-els, at roughly the same time, of Marco Polo tothe East and Rabban Sauma to the West, reachingtheir destinations. The Mongols also createdcosmopolitan centers of continental scope, whichguaranteed the spread of this consciousness. SeeGuzman (2010). In Europe, the new continentalconsciousness continued to expand throughexploration and accumulating knowledge. Whatpart it may have played in the maritime voyagesof Zheng He in the early 15th century is a matterof conjecture. It was lost thereafter, until revivedonce again by the arrival of Jesuits from Europe,only to be lost once again until the 19th century.For problems in the conceptualization of‘Eurasia’, see Kotkin (2007).

2. This contrasts with an evolutionary perspectivein which difference appears not just a differenceof space but also of time – as progressive versusbackward, for example.

3. This is the lesson of anthropologists who inrecent years have shifted attention from‘borders’ or ‘boundaries’ to ‘borderlands’, from‘lines in the sand’ to spaces of interactionsamong peoples. See, for example, Van Schendel(2005) and Harrell (1995). A historical example isScott (2009), which is important also for pointingto the historiographical fruitfulness of an anar-chist perspective.

4. For a recent discussion involving historians ofEurope, Western Asia, India and China (BenElman), see the recent roundtable on the idea ofthe ‘premodern’, IIAS (2007). For an alternativeview that insists on the possibility of non-Euro-centric uses of ‘early modernity’, see Richards(1997). Richards does not address the question ofteleology, but simply treats ‘early modern’ as aglobal phenomenon. For a discussion that ques-tions the applicability of the concept to lateimperial China, see Ng (2003).

5. For a discussion that parallels the discussionhere with reference to Latin America, deployingthe concept of ‘transmodernity’, see Dussel(2002). Japanese historians of the ‘Kyoto School’,inspired by the work of Naito Torajiro (author ofthe ‘Naito thesis’) conducted extensive discus-sions in the 1930s and 1940s on questions ofEurasian modernities. One in particular,Miyazaki Ichisada, suggested periodizationssimilar to ones discussed below. Miyazakisuggested that Europe after industrialization bedescribed as ‘post-modern’, reserving themodern for the period between the 14th–16thcenturies. For an overview of these discussions,see Miyakawa (1955: 543–547).

6. Tao Xisheng, for instance, suggested that thesprouts of capitalism may even be traced to the

early imperial period. For the different peri-odization he offered over the years, see Dirlik(1989[1978]). More influential may have been theviews of the Japanese historian Naito Konan,cited in Miyakawa (1955: 543–547).

7. Hou Wailu was the foremost advocate of aChinese enlightenment. See Hou (1981: 68–116).

8. See, for example, Ho (1959a) and De Bary (1983).The latter work, needless to say, is revealing of adifferent teleology at work.

9. See Dong (2006).10. See Research Group of China Modernization

Strategy et al. (2009).11. See the essays, especially the interview on

modernity, in Wang (2010).12. See also the contribution by Hans J. van de Ven

(2002).13. Indeed, it has become fashionable in recent years

to discover capitalism outside of Europe inearlier periods. For recent examples, see Jairus(2007) and Beaujard (2005).

14. To be fair, both Pomeranz and Wong, especiallythe latter, refer to the significance of class rela-tions. Pomeranz also highlights the importanceof colonialism in providing both resources, andan outlet for surplus labor and commodities. Butthese references remain marginal in their analy-ses in the far greater attention the authors devoteto ‘economic’ factors. Pomeranz’s references inparticular are buried under a seemingly dispro-portionate preoccupation with fertilizers andcoal. For a critique of the works by Frank andBin Wong, see Duchesne (2001–2002). HamzaAlavi has offered a critique of obliviousness tocolonialism in the development of capitalism,including among Marxist historians. See Alavi(n.d.). For an important discussion of the role ofthe state in development (within Europe itself),see Vries (2002).

15. Frank, too, having examined the Eurasian contextfor these developments, concludes that this wasa ‘sinocentric’ world economy, which is in keep-ing with his efforts to formulate a ‘5000 year oldworld system’. See Frank (1998: 127–130).

16. For a critique, see Bryant (2006).17. For a detailed examination of the relationship

between commerce, merchant political power,and the shaping of commercial policy, see Bren-ner (1993). For the systematic accumulation ofknowledge of the world, see Boorstin (1985).

18. I am referring here most importantly to Elvin(1973) and Huang (1985, 1990). Japanese andChinese Marxist historians have contributedmuch to this historiography. For discussion ofJapanese historians, see Wigen (2000). ForChinese Marxist historians, see Dirlik (1982,1989[1978]).

19. In its more positivistic deployments, moreover,development becomes something quantifiable,



that also allows for a ‘scientific’ comparison ofsocieties.

20. For an interesting account of contemporaryJapanese thinking on the formations of moder-nity, see Wigen (2000). The ‘world network anal-ysis’ Wigen formulates on the basis of thesewritings as a response to ‘world system analysis’is unduly deterministic, and ignores the possi-bility that the two approaches, combined, offerbetter possibilities of grasping a formation thatis the product of network operations, with all thefluidity and changeability of the network, butalso subject in its contours to the unevenness ofpower relations in world system structurings.These relations, needless to say, also shaped thespatialities of the political or ‘civilizational’ unitsthat made up the world of modernity in thisphase.

21. For a discussion, with emphasis on the work ofTakeshi Hamashita, see Ikeda (1996). The argu-ment in this article, as in Hamashita’s work ingeneral, has much worth thinking about, but isweakened nevertheless by its failure to addressthe question of the part played by Europeanswho already were active in East and SoutheastAsia during the period in question, as intermedi-aries between the region and the incipient capi-talism of Europe.

22. One aspect of this ‘oversight’, knowledge, isexplored in Boorstin (1985), where the authorexamines the appropriation of local knowledgesin the creation of a European knowledge of theworld, which is still unparalleled, we might add.It is only now that this EuroAmerican advantagemay be changing. Recent challenges to Eurocen-trism often seem to be oblivious to the fact thatthey are heirs to this same legacy.

23. I am referring here to the seminal work of Abu-Lughod (1991). A full development of thisapproach may be found in Braudel (1992). In thework cited above, Wigen suggests a ‘worldnetwork analysis’ as a substitute for ‘worldsystem analysis’. Networks were no doubtcrucial during this period (as they are presently).But they help refine world system analysis,rather than serve as a substitute for it. Its substi-tution for world system analysis serves nopurpose other than to disguise inequalities in themaking of modernity.

24. A recent work by several Chinese historians hasargued that increasing Ming attention to CentralAsia was actually a boon to economic develop-ment, as it led to relaxation of central govern-ment control over the dynamic southerneconomies. According to these historians, theZheng He expeditions were continuous withearlier tributary practices, and should not beendowed with too much significance in the

development of the Ming economy. It was onlyfrom the mid-Ming, the authors argue, with theturn of attention to the Mongol problem on thenorthern borders, and the move of the capitalfrom Nanjing to Beijing, that the economy of theSouth flourished. Chinese overseas, an impor-tant aspect of Ming population flows, played animportant part in these developments as theyserved as intermediaries between the southernprovinces and the global economy that wasbecoming very much a dynamic component ofEast and Southeast Asian economies. The Philip-pines and the Manila Galleon played a majorpart in these economic exchanges – see Yanget al. (1997: Introduction). For a conservativeassessment of the Manila Galleon in the Mingeconomy, see Brook (1998: 205–207). The impor-tance of a South–North perspective to graspingthese developments may be one importantreason for the sensitivity to these issues of Dutchscholars, informed as they are by Dutch colonial-ism in Indonesia.

25. See also Ho (1959b), for the demographic impactof ‘new world’ crops.

26. For Ming-Qing expansion, see Perdue (2005).Darwin (2008: Chap. 2) discusses the expansionof imperial systems (including Ottoman,Mughal and Russian) during this period overthe breadth of Eurasia, with European expan-sion through many commercial and militaryoutposts initially assuming an ‘archipelago’configuration.

27. Historians have only recently begun to acknowl-edge that for all their depredations, the Mongolinvasions across Eurasia, the Mongol Empireplayed an important part in facilitating commu-nications across the continent. In the case ofChina, the Yuan Dynasty (1275–1368) may haveplayed an important part in preparing theground for the Ming consolidation. For theMongols, see Rossabi (1992), among the author’smany works on the subject. For the significanceof the Yuan, see Smith and Von Glahn (2003).

28. For these developments, see Elman (2000),Woodside (2006) and Faure (2007).

29. See Marks (1984: Chaps. 1-2). See also Mazum-dar (1998: Chaps. 4-5), and the works by Elvin(1973) and Huang (1985, 1990).

30. G. William Skinner, in his many works, hasanalyzed the configuration of urbanization andeconomic regions in the Ming and Qing peri-ods. See, especially, his seminal article, ‘Market-ing and social structure in rural China’ (1964–1965). See also the essays in Skinner (1977). Formore recent studies of urbanization during theMing and the Qing, see Han (2009), Johnson(1993), Rowe (1984, 1989), and Naquin (2000).Some Chinese Marxist historians such as Tao


302 Arif Dirlik

Xisheng in the 1930s attributed the non-devel-opment of capitalism in China to the inabilityof cities to ‘liberate’ themselves from the coun-tryside. See Dirlik (1989[1978]). For the sugges-tion of a dual economy in collusion/conflict,see Gates (1996).

31. The most thorough study of the emergence of acommercial society, and mercantile activity, isoffered in Brook (1981, 1998). For merchants andpolitics, see Hung (2004).

32. See also Mann (1987). Especially important isgentry–merchant cooperation, often within thesame lineage organization, in the conduct oflocal affairs, including marketing activities,which Mann describes, after Max Weber, as‘liturgical governance’, or informal publicservice that was nevertheless crucial to theEmpire’s functioning. See especially chaps. 4–5.For the social and economic activities of ‘non-state’ Confucians, see Chen (2005). For changesat the everyday level, see Adshead (1997).

33. For the impact of this literature in Eastern Asia,see Salmon (1987). Confucian scholars wereextensively involved in commercial publishingactivities, and sought to bring into publishingesthetic sensibilities that also defined theirConfucianism. See Cai (2010).

34. According to a recent study, the consolidation ofManchu rule was accompanied almost immedi-ately with the ‘opening’ of the Qing to trade. SeeZhao (n.d.).

35. For Qing expansion during this period, see Mill-ward (1998), and Perdue (2005). For SouthwestChina, see Hostetler (2001). Interestingly,contemporary imperial discourse also includedthese newly incorporated areas in Zhongguo,hitherto used to cover only ‘China proper’ southof the Great Wall (Zhao 2006).

36. For ‘industrious revolution’, see De Vries (1994).37. I have discussed this at length in Dirlik (2000).38. For a recent study, focusing on ‘state systems,’

see Palat (n.d.).39. See the works cited in fn.13. For an alternative

view of development based on ‘labor-intensiveindustrialization’ with reference to Japan, seeSugihara (2002).

40. See, for example, Lottes (1991), Mungello (2005),Hsia (1998), and Jacobson (1999). Chinoiserie iseasily dismissed as a fad, and yet it also has leftlasting legacies in European material life.

41. For pertinent works, see Richards (1993), espe-cially chapter 9; Richards (1997); Washbrook(2007); Currie (1982); Inalcik and Quataert(1994), especially chapter 17. One society thatmay be mentioned in passing here is TokugawaJapan which, of all the major political systems inAsia, has already attracted much attention as aprelude to Japan as an early modernizer.

42. This is quite obvious in the case of an accountsuch as Darwin (2008), whose work fits into theproverbial ‘old wine in new bottles’, but it is alsothe case to some extent with works by Frank(1998), Wong (1997) and Pomeranz (2000).

43. See, for example, the discussion of Islam inDarwin (2008: Chapter 2).

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Author’s biography

Arif Dirlik most recently served as the Liang QichaoMemorial Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsing-hua University, Beijing. The memorial lectures areforthcoming from the Chinese University of HongKong Press under the title, History and Culture inPostrevolutionary China: The Perspective of GlobalModernity. Also forthcoming are two editedvolumes, Sociology and Anthropology in TwentiethCentury China (also published by CUHK Press), andGlobal Capitalism and the Future of Agrarian Society(Paradigm Publishers). A collection he has edited onguoxue/national studies will be published as a specialissue of China Perspectives.

Contact e-mail: [email protected]


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Revisioning modernity: modernity in Eurasian perspectives