Anti-Eurocentric Approach

A new strand in Transition debate is the anti-Eurocentric approach. They have brought forth a new kind
of understanding of Transition Debate. In the broadest sense, Eurocentrism is held as the implicit view,
that societies and cultures of European origin constitute the "natural" norm for assessing what goes on in
the rest of the world. The anti-Eurocentric writers seeks to debunk the European superiority over eastern
cultures and propose to highlight the contribution of the Rest of the world in the emergence of
Capitalism.
The perspectives of some of the important anti-Eurocentric scholars has been discussed below:
James Blaut in his book " Colonizer's Model of the World"(1993) has critiqued most of the theories
proposed to explain the dominance of the West based on "Eurocentric diffusionism". These are proposed
in the form of either of the following basis: 1) Biological Argument 2) Environmental Argument 3)
Rationality and Rational institutions 4) Technological Argument 5) Societal Differences. Blaut criticized
each of these arguments as factually incorrect or simply racist that seeks to uphold that progress for the
rest of the world resulted from the diffusion of European civilization. He does not find any difference
between the two regions until the 15th c. According to him, the chance discovery of America after 1492
that accelerated economic development and hence Capitalism in Europe.

E. A. Wrigley argued that no amount of advance of capitalist type could lead to change to the new type of
economy. They could increase production to a certain limit, but it was not enough to propel Europe out
of Medieval cycles of crisis. The labour used was exhaustible and subject to the law of diminishing
returns. These he called 'organic economies' which used organic sources of energy like human, cattle,
coal etc. A change of property relations just converted it to 'Advanced Organic Economy'. But
fundamentally the economy was still the same. The significant change came only with changes in the
sources of energy when it changed to "mineral based Energy sources' This increased the production as it
allowed the use of machines. He also suggests that the breakthrough happened by chance because
England happened to have coal in abundance. It was not peculiar to the European Capitalist structure or
European Capitalist relations.
John M. Hobson in his book "The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization" points to technological
superiority of East over West during Medieval period and ideas were diffused from east to west, but the
trend was reversed due to colonisation and western appropriation of eastern ideas. Hobson is insistent
that East enabled the rise of west through process of diffusion and appropriationism. Easterners created
a global economy and communication network after 500 BCE along which more advanced resource
portfolios travelled across to the west and western imperialism after 1492 led the. Europeans to all
manner of Eastern economic resource to enable the rise of west. More importantly, he. traces an eastern
origin to everything that is uniquely European like the Compass, Trade routes, printing press etc. In the
first phase, the development of the West from 500-1800 depended on dissemination of Eastern advances
and assimilation by the West. This was the period of Oriental Globalization when the world economy was
dominated by East. In the second phase, from 1800 onwards colonialism began. It allowed the West to
appropriate all the economic resources of the East, which enabled the rise of the West.
David Landes has argued that there is a good reason for Eurocentrism because it is the West and not the
East that ultimately triumphed. Hobson agrees but concludes by saying that although the Europeans
played an active role in developing their own fate yet the East cannot be undermined. At the same time,
he cautions against Occidentalism, in which the East is privileged and the West is denigrated.

Kenneth Pomeranz points out that the idea that Europe and the rest of the world are separate worlds
and that Europe developed, became superior and globalised the rest of the world and then dominated it
is faulty. He says that before the beginning of capitalism, the world was not disconnected parts. A global
economy already existed and economic differences between the advanced regions were unimportant till
the 18th century. In fact, eastern regions like parts of China, Japan, and India may have been more
advanced than Europe. Thus, between 1100-1800, the most advanced regions of the world were not
concentrated in Europe. However, in the 18th c. Europe began to move ahead due to accidental factors
such as availability of coal and iron ores in proximity, accidental discovery of Americas, use of state
sponsored armed force in trade.
Pomeranz stresses on the importance of colonies in shaping European colonialism Pomeranz stresses on
perception of interacting systems in Europe benefitting more than other does not justify calling that part
the "centre" and assuming that it shaped everything else.
Henry Heller in his book "The Birth of Capitalism: A twenty-first Century Perspective” aims to re-establish
the superiority of Marxism in explaining the transition against the revisionism that has swept the
academy over the last three decades. Heller calls attention to how Political Marxists avoid the problem of
the transition itself. As he points out, Brenner makes it seem as if the stalemated class struggle in the
English countryside transformed feudalism into capitalism overnight. The presumption apparently is that
free markets and free wage labour emerged immediately in rural capitalism.
Heller shows, free wage labour really emerged in nineteenth-century England when the labour
movement undid the myriad restrictions on workers’ labour mobility. He draws on Chris Harman’s epic
People’s History of the World to argue that capitalism could have broken through in several feudal and
tributary societies around the world. He shows that the development of the forces of production in these
societies enabled the development of protocapitalist relations of production, but in each case, except
Holland and England, the old ruling class and its state was able to prevent the emergence of the new
system.
On the basis of above account Heller develops an explanation for why the West triumphed over the East.
He argues that up until the eighteenth century, the Eastern tributary powers, especially China, were
actually as developed as the capitalist West. It took the Industrial Revolution for the West to finally
outdistance and then conquer the East.
Conclusion: We are now aware of how Eurocentric debate influences the transition debate.

What do you understand by the term Eurocentrism? How far Anti-Eurocentrist perspectives have helped
us in new understanding of transition from feudalism to capitalism? Discuss.
or
What do you understand by the term Eurocentrism. How far Anti-Eurocentrist perspectives have helped
us in the making of the new world? Discuss.
or
What do you understand by the term Eurocentrism. How far Anti-Eurocentrist perspectives have helped
us in underlining the role of the rest of the world in the transition debate? Discuss.