Review of Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European
Hegemony in Intl. J. of Middle East Studies,
XXIV, 1, Feb. 1992, 128-31
                      by Immanuel Wallerstein

     Janet Abu-Lughod's book has achieved very
rapidly a well-deserved reputation as a major
scholarly work. It is an ambitious effort, and
an intellectually complex one, which makes it
sometimes intricate to follow. It seems to me
she is making three important and separate
points in this book. The first is in the
sub-title. There existed what she calls a
"world system" between 1250-1350 A.D. It
stretched from a "European subsystem" in
western and southern Europe through the
"Mideast heartland" to China via the Persian
Gulf and the "Indian Ocean system" in the
south and via a "northeast passage" as well,
thanks to the pax mongolica. The second is
that this "world system" suffered a "fall,"
which was a crucial prerequisite for the
"rise" of the West, in that it created the ne-
cessary socio-political space for it. The
third is that the "modern" system constructed
by Western capitalism "is not the only one
conceivable for a world system" (p. 364). I
shall discuss each argument in turn.
     The bulk of the space in the book and the
bulk of the empirical evidence bears on the
first point. The argument seems to me
extremely persuasive. Perhaps specialists in
each region will pick away at some of the
detail, but it will be hard to undermine the
synthetic overview. Her argument basically is
that a large number of economically-active
zones across a large portion of the Eastern
Hemisphere were moving "synergistically" and
that their "upturns were the result, at least
in part, of the linkages each region managed
to forge with other parts of the world system,
and feedbacks from that system, in turn,
intensified local development" (p. 359). This
system, if not yet global, was "substantially
larger...than the world had previously known"
(p. 353).
     This system was of course a long-distance
trading system between an "archipelago of
towns" (p. 348). But in addition to the fact
that all the units were trading with each
other, they had "begun [italics mine--I.W.] to
reorganize parts of their internal economies
to meet the exigencies of the world market"
(p. 355). It was perhaps not the first such
"world system." Abu-Lughod refers briefly to a
possible earlier version some 2000 years ago
linking imperial Rome and Han China, but says
that these two imperial powers had only
"extremely limited and indirect contact with
one another" (p. 366), unlike the more
integrated "world system" of 1250-1350 A.D. In
her explanation of the emergence of this
latter system, Abu-Lughod places a great deal
of emphasis on the key role of the pax
mongolica which "created an environment that
facilitated land transit with less risk and
higher protective rent." (p. 154). But why was
this so important? Because it enabled China to
link the northern and Indian Ocean trading
routes (p. 347). This presumably gave the
"world system" a sufficient threshold of mass
to enable it to function. One would want such
an hypothesis to be more fully elaborated, but
Abu-Lughod has at the very least pointed out
the path along which further susbtantial
research should be done.
     Finally, there is buried in a footnote
what seems to me to be another key element in
her reasoning. It seems that China had to be
politically weak enough for this to happen.
She refers to Thomas Barfield's argument that,
between 209 B.C. and the twentieth century,
there has always been a correlation between a
strong China and strong empires on the
steppes, except for the thirteenth century.
Abu-Lughod then comments: "This exceptionalism
helps to explain the rise of the world system
in that period, whereas its reversion in the
post-Yuan period contributes part of the
explanation for why the system broke up in the
late fourteenth century" (p. 150, fn. 2). I
would point out two things about this
argument. One, it seems to imply that, when
both China and steppe empires were simultane-
ously "strong," they did not trade with each
other. Is that so, and if so why? And
secondly, it suggests that the creation of the
1250-1350 "world system" was dependent on a
passing historical accident, the
non-correlation of the strength of China and
the steppe empires, without offering us an
explanation of the origin of this exception to
a correlation that otherwise holds over 2000
years. I believe this is an unfortunate lacuna
in the book. What we have is a very convincing
exposition of the emergence in this period of
a very vast trading network without a clear
argument which could enable us to decide
whether its emergence was structurally
inevitable or merely conjuncturally possible
or perhaps a pure fluke.
     If we do not have a clear picture as to
what caused the "rise" of the 1250-1350
system, we do get a clearer picture of what
elements went into its "fall." Indeed,
Abu-Lughod signals to us that this is a very
important issue for her. She says of the
system at the height of its functioning that
it "seemed only a matter of time...before the
subsystems would intermingle ever more...into
a truly interdependent [italics mine--I.W.]
world system. The basic problematic of the
book is to understand why this did not happen"
(p. 125). One element, mentioned repeatedly,
is the Black Death, for an "unintended
consequence of unification was the eruption of
a pandemic that set back the development of a
world system for some 150 years" (p. 170). But
this is not all. If the links that completed
the chain of the "world system" were the
Central Asian steppe empires and China, then
the closure of the central Asian route plus
"the reversal of China's [economic] position
[in the world]" led "to the demise of the
world system that had been developing in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ..." (p.
317).
     In a sense then, the "fall" of the East
is in fact and more specifically the "fall" of
China, "the most extensive, populous, and
technologically advanced region of the
medieval world," a world in which the Arab
world "played an important albeit a secondary
role," in which south Asia was "part of the
semiperiphery" and in which Europe had only
"begun to move into the larger arena from her
former peripheral status" (p. 317).
     This thus brings us to Abu-Lughod's
second thesis, and no doubt the one she
intended to be the central thesis: before the
West rose, and as a necessary precondition of
its rise, the East fell. And therefore, since
"the East had already substantially `fallen'
before the Portuguese men-of-war appeared in
the Indian Ocean," then "no special `virtue'
inhered in the conquerors ..." (p. 260).
Abu-Lughod is launching an attack on the
dominant historiographical myth of the modern
world, that the creation of the modern world
is the consequence of some special ability,
"virtue," cultural or ideological advantage of
Western civilization (or sometimes even more
narrowly, of English culture). She says with
some vigor that her book "casts doubt" (p.
372) on all arguments "that only the
institutions and culture of the West could
have succeeded" (p. 354) in creating the
modern world.
     Here I am entirely on her side on the
conclusion, without sharing fully the
relevance of all the evidence adduced. She
sees the emergence of the capitalist
world-economy in the sixteenth century as a
"process of tipping the fulcrum of the world
system" (p. 108). I'm not sure I'd describe it
that way. It was rather an unfortunate break
with the kind of system that Abu-Lughod was
describing, a transformation in which the
breakdown of the 1250-1350 "world system" did
indeed play a crucial role. Indeed, of course,
Abu-Lughod agrees. In describing her
thirteenth-century "world system," she says of
it that "no single participant [meaning large
geographical socio-political unit]...dominated
the whole, and most participants...benefited
from co-existence and mutual tolerance" (p.
362). She says further that the system was not
hierarchical. "Rather, cores, semiperipheries
and peripheries were...found at a number of
places around the globe" (p. 365). She
contrasts this with "the new European approach
to trade-cum-plunder that caused a basic
transformation in the world system" (p. 361).
     I think this picture is basically
correct, and would be clearer if the language
were changed somewhat. Let me restate Abu-Lu-
ghod's observation in my terminology. I
substitute for the concept "world system"
(without a hyphen), meaning an extensive
trading system over much of the globe, the
concept of "world-system" (with a hyphen),
meaning a large system that is a "world," that
is, a system that has an integrated production
system with cores, semiperipheries, and
peripheries. Then Abu-Lughod's "world system"
represents a long-distance trading link-up, on
a non-hierarchical basis, of a series of
temporally co-existent "world-systems," each
of which was internally hierarchical. The
inclusion of such a large number of
"world-systems" into one trading network was
not only difficult to achieve, but was only
made possible perhaps by an unusual
conjuncture, and in any case did not last long
(only a century according to Abu-Lughod's own
reckoning); perhaps it could not last longer.
Probably, the 1250-1350 A.D. link-up was the
most extensive one theretofore, but probably
also not the first (as her own reference to
the Rome-Han China link-up suggests).
     How then to express her second point,
that the "fall" of the East was a necessary
prerequisite to the "rise" of the West? I
think she's right again, but in a way she does
not spell out. I think the collapse of
medieval Europe, sometimes called the "crisis
of feudalism," was one vital element in the
creation in Europe of the modern world-system
(with a hyphen, this time), but not the only
vital element. For the collapse of medieval
Europe was nothing special. That kind of
collapse had happened regularly over history
and around the world. It normally led to
conquest by outside forces. Europe's "luck"
(if that is what we want to call it) is that,
at that very moment, there was Abu-Lughod's
"fall" of the East, which made it unlikely
(impossible?) for some outside force (the
Mongols, the Ottomans, some new Arab
caliphate?) to pounce upon the marginal
European world and impose a new ruling
stratum, on old principles. 
     The last constraint on capitalist
pathology was thereby removed. We have the
"rise" of the West, "the new European approach
to trade-cum-plunder." This is why Abu-Lughod
can correctly point out that it was not the
Portuguese takeover of the Indian Ocean zone
that was the important phenomenon but the
Spanish incorporation of the New World. She
sees this as a "geographical reorientation"
(p. 363) of her "world system." I see this as
the Portuguese still engaging in egalitarian
long-distance trade between "world-systems,"
whereas the Spanish were involved in
constructing a new, capitalist "world-system,"
of which the Americas were an integral part.
     This brings us to Abu-Lughod's third
thesis, "the impermanence of all systems" (p.
370). Here again I'm on her side as to the
conclusion, without sharing all the reasoning.
By calling her non-hierarchical link-up of
"world-systems" a "world system," she hints
that it is a model for a better, future
world-system (with hyphen this time). But, if
better, her "world system" of 1250-1350 A.D.
was still not very good, because the
non-hierarchical nature of the (temporary)
link-up masked the hierarchical nature of the
multiple world-systems that lay at its base.
If we move from the kind of "world-system" we
now have to the kind of "world system" she is
describing for 1250-1350 A.D., we may simply
be going from the frying pan into the fire,
which neither she nor I nor most of us want.
     Her book has the sterling virtue of
forcing all these issues to the fore. If it is
read carefully, fully, and intelligently, it
will further our collective debate
considerably. It certainly will force all
those whose scholarship deal with the separate
world-systems in existence "before European
hegemony," for example the readers of this
journal, to place them in the larger context
of the real world history of which they were
an integral part.