Frank-Landes Debate, Page 10
David Landes: Alright. Look, on the timing, we do disagree. Gunder feels that Europe really catches up and passes suddenly, he uses that word repeatedly, suddenly, around 1800, late 18th century, say, with the industrial revolution. I would agree that the industrial revolution does, in fact, increase the gap between Europe, Western Europe, particularly, and the Asian civilizations.
Questioner 2: What predicted the gap? Income levels or...?
David Landes: Income levels, yes. Product per head, that kind of thing, okay? It obviously made a huge difference. And, you know, all the estimates we have and guesstimates, `cause that's the best we can do, would argue rough equality in the early 18th century and then it opens up. But I would also say, and here Adam Smith would agree with me, that Europe is gettin' wealthier over the centuries before that. Because Europe is on a different track and that China, which was no doubt the wealthiest of these Asian civilizations, is not gaining in wealth over that period. So, you have two problems in timing. One, to fix some date at which one passes the other. But from the point of view of understanding, you have to look also at rates of change and who was changing faster and who was growing faster. If you don't take that into account, you don't understand the process. Now the other thing. What was your second thing?
Questioner 2: You said that culture explains the change according to change.
David Landes: Oh, yes. Culture is not fixed. There are people who tend to think of it as fixed and so on. But this clearly is not true, the US today has a very different culture from what it had when I was a boy and if I think to my father and grandfather, I mean, things were very different then. And so, yeah, there are some things that have stayed and some things that have changed and I made the point explicitly that, in order to create an industrial work force, you had to change the culture of those people. They were not ready from their experience on the land, to simply work at machines in factories. You had to tell them.
Questioner 2: Well, what causes change in culture.
David Landes: Well, you had a strong financial incentive, you needed a work force and you were willing to bring people in and teach them. And what you do to begin with, in which case is a good one, and I always tell my students this. I say, you have a society which needs people to work in the mills. The men don't want to do it. You gotta to get children and women because they can't say no. You get children from the poor houses, because they have to do whatever their told, and you get women because women are used to doing what they are told. And so, the early factories, are to a greater extent, made up of women and child workers. And, then, there are men doing things like moving the goods, loading, unloading, transport, that kind of thing. Even doing farm work, the early mill owners actually would set up farms to keep the men busy while the women were working in the mill. Yeah, so, you have an incentive when you have that. The Asians didn't have that problem. They had much lower labor costs. They did a lot of the work in the home. Alright? And in the home, you know, the women helped, the men helped and that was that.
Andre Gunder Frank: Now you're talking too much.
David Landes: Don't talk.
Questioner 2: It's not culture if it can change.
David Landes: Oh, no, the culture creates all kinds of habits, you see, and you ought to change these habits. You don't think that matters, oh, boy does it matter.
William Fowler: Let's give a chance here, Professor Frank.
Andre Gunder Frank: May I add my three Smithian cents worth here to this? The incentives? Where did the incentives come from? They came from the competition with the East and South Asians and the fact that the Europeans were one losing market share to them. And, secondly, were, at least, relatively losing their only means that they had to compete previously which was the American silver. And here is what our friend has to say about that - “The discovery of America, however, made a most essential contribution. By opening a new and inexhaustible market to all the commodities of Europe, it gave occasion to a new division of labor and the improvements of art, which in the narrow circle of ancient of commerce, could never have taken place for want of a market to take off the greater part of their produce.” Now, what market? One: the market of Europe has become more extensive and he goes on to say how it became, even in Eastern Europe, that had no direct contact. “Secondly,” secondly is what he says, “secondly, America is itself a new market for the produce of its own silver mines, the English colonies are altogether a new market. Thirdly, the trade to the East Indies, by opening up a new market to the commodities of Europe, must necessarily, tend to increase the annual production of European commodities. The East Indies is another market for the produce of the silver mines of America,” etc., etc., etc... If I had time to read you the whole... He's taken my watch, huh? But, I, you can have it.
David Landes: Let me look at it.
Andre Gunder Frank: Well... He's the clock maker.
David Landes: Yeah, let me look at it.
Andre Gunder Frank: So... One, Smith said there was a world economy and there had been for a long time. He recognizes that it is the competition in the world economy that drives, that generates the incentives that you finally come to that then impact on culture. Which you're... That's right, culture, is also derivative and institutions are derivative. But that's, of course, in total contradiction with your main thesis, that culture and institution are the independent variable which is total... I won't qualify it... Better not... Whereas Smith, that's what Marx said also and Weber and all these guys. But Smith, long before them, knew that was a world economy in which there is this competition. That his famous business about the division of labor and the extent of the market and, he said, the extent of the market means that there have to be exports and the exports were to the Americas, within Europe itself, and to East Asia and the source of all of this, as Smith recognized, was the American silver that the Europeans plundered from the Americas, without which, they would have been one hundred percent totally out of business. It has zero point zero to do with European culture or with European science or with European anything. It has everything to do with how it is that the world economy generated these incentives and, incidentally, for three centuries, it generated more incentives, to which the Asians were able more to respond with the inflow of American silver in Asia and Professor Nicola di Cosmo, if he would be so kind as to say what it did in Manchuria, which was a minor critique of his in my book that I didn't show how the American silver opened up the Manchurian market more than the European market. For three centuries, the American silver opened up the Asian market much more than the European market and, in fact, you claim the European guns could, from the Portuguese, gave the Europeans access to the Asian markets at one hundred percent, no, sorry, that's ninety percent false. Because they never got more than ten percent of any of the Asian market even in Southeast Asia where they penetrated the most. Whereas in East Asia and the China Sea, they penetrated zero, except for a little bit.
David Landes: What are you talking about?
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