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Containing previously unpublished material, a review of the legacy and work of Andre Gunder Frank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.
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.
The historic long term economic interconnections of the world are now universally accepted. The idea of the economic 'world system' advanced by Immanuel Wallerstein has set the period of linkage in the early modern period but Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills think that this date is much too late. They argue an interconnection going back as much as 5000 years. In The World System, leading academics examine this issue, in a debate contributed to by William H. McNeill and Immanuel Wallerstein among others.
Study of the relationships between capitalism, social structure and underdevelopment in Latin America, maintaining that the role of USA foreign investment in developing countries benefits a small Elite but impedes economic development - examines the impact and repercussions of ' neocolonialism' on agrarian structures, economic structures, nationalism, independence, trade relations, government policy, etc. Bibliography pp. 146 to 151.
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.
Originally published: Monthly Review Press, 1967.