You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Containing previously unpublished material, a review of the legacy and work of Andre Gunder Frank
"Frank shows how Marx and Weber got it all wrong. A fundamental rethinking of the rise of the West and the origin of the world-system. Absolutely essential to understanding world history."--Albert Bergesen, University of Arizona "The great virtue of this stimulating book is its relentless push to redefine our framework for thinking about the early modern economy. . . . A benchmark study."--R. Bin Wong, University of California, Irvine
Examines underdevelopment in Asia, Africa and Latin America through the analysis of unequal means of production and trade relations within the process of capital formation. Analyses how differential transformation of productive, social and political relations have led to capitalist development, and challenges classical and neo-classical development theories, international division of labour, doctrines of comparative advantage and free trade, etc.
This controversial book challenges existing world-system theories, and the Marxist approach to capitalism and the modern world. It offers new theses on the cycle of world economy.
Originally published: Monthly Review Press, 1967.
Andre Gunder Frank was a path-breaking scholar in several disciplines over an illustrious and contentious 50-year career. First amongst his many important works is the book ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age, which sought to correct a Euro-centric world view of the development of the global political economy. Frank passed away in April 2005 while working on this new book, a sequel to ReORIENT. In this book Frank shows many of the myths of European industrialisation, hegemony and capitalism which have hidden the fact that Asia remained a serious power not just into the 18th century, as Frank himself argued in 1998, but well into the 19th century as well. When Frank passed away his colleagues rallied to finish this book and it is presented here as his final major statement.
Most of Andre Gunder Frank's early work on the nature of underdevelopment focused on one continent: Latin America. Here he broadened his canvas and traced the world-wide effects of the process of capital accumulation from the period just prior to the discovery of America to the industrial and French revolutions. It is Frank's thesis that the world has experienced a single all-embracing, albeit unequal and uneven, process of capital accumulation centered in Western Europe, which has been capitalist for at least two centuries.