Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T08:47:54.690Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Production, Circulation, and Accumulation: The Historiographies of Capitalism in China and South Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2019

Andrew B. Liu
Andrew B. Liu*
Affiliation:
Andrew B. Liu ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Villanova University.
Get access

Abstract

In light of the emergent “history of capitalism” field in Euro-American history, this article reviews and critically situates how the category “capitalism” has been debated within the historiographies of China and South Asia. In discussions paralleling European historiography, Sinologists and Indologists explored whether the “prime mover” of capitalism was changes in production or in circulation. The example of South Asian studies shows how, from the 1960s through the 1980s, the dominant production-centered approach—drawing upon Marxist theory—produced stories of economic “failure” in Asia. The example of Chinese history since the 1990s points to the resurgence of a Smithian circulation-centered approach that challenges the Eurocentric story of failure. Each of these approaches emerged out of distinct eras of capital accumulation in the twentieth century: mid-century state-supported industrialization and late-century deregulated globalization. The tension between these approaches points towards a more integrative reinterpretation that sees the core dynamics of capitalism as a cyclical process of “capital accumulation,” one that integrates both production and circulation-centered approaches and also challenges Eurocentric histories of capitalism. This article's conclusion provides speculative thoughts on writing the histories of capitalism for China and South Asia today.

Keywords

capital accumulationChinacolonialismcomparative historygreat divergencehistory of capitalisminvolutionlaborpolitical economySouth Asia
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , November 2019 , pp. 767 - 788
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Alavi, Hamza. 1990. “India and Colonial Mode of Production (1975).” In Agrarian Relations and Accumulation: The “Mode of Production” Debate in India, ed. Patnaik, Utsa, 132–56. Bombay: Published for Sameeksha Trust by Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Amin, Shahid, and van der Linden, Marcel. 1997. “Introduction.” In “Peripheral” Labour? Studies in the History of Partial Proletarianization, eds. Amin, Shahid and van der Linden, Marcel, 1–8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Arrighi, Giovanni. 2007. Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Austin, Gareth. 2016. “The Return of Capitalism as a Concept.” In Capitalism: The Reemergence of a Historical Concept, eds. Kocka, Jürgen and van der Linden, Marcel, 207–34. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Banaji, Jairus. 1990. “For a Theory of Colonial Modes of Production.” In Agrarian Relations and Accumulation: The “Mode of Production” Debate in India, ed. Patnaik, Utsa, 119–131. Bombay: Published for Sameeksha Trust by Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Banaji, Jairus. 2011. Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation. Chicago: Haymarket Books.Google Scholar
Banaji, Jairus. 2016. “Merchant Capitalism, Peasant Households and Industrial Accumulation: Integration of a Model.” Journal of Agrarian Change 16(3):410–31.Google Scholar
Baptist, Edward E. 2014. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 1983. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beckert, Sven. 2014. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Birla, Ritu. 2009. Stages of Capital: Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late Colonial India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc, and Chiapello, Ève. 2005. The New Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Elliott, Gregory. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bose, Sugata. 1993. Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Breman, Jan. 2013. “A Bogus Concept?” New Left Review 84:130–38.Google Scholar
Brenner, Robert. [1976] 1985. “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe.” In The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe, eds. Aston, T. H. and Philpin, C. H. E., 10–63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brenner, Robert. 1977. “The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism.” New Left Review 104:25–92.Google Scholar
Brenner, Robert, and Isett, Christopher. 2002. “England's Divergence from China's Yangzi Delta: Property Relations, Microeconomics, and Patterns of Development.” Journal of Asian Studies 61(2):609–62.Google Scholar
Brook, Timothy. 1999. “Capitalism and the Writing of Modern History in China.” In China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge, eds. Brook, Timothy and Blue, Gregory, 110–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1983. “More on Modes of Power and the Peasantry.” In Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Vol. II, ed. Guha, Ranajit, 311–49. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 2011. Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, Neil. 2012. How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? Chicago: Haymarket Books.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif. 1982. “Chinese Historians and the Marxist Concept of Capitalism: A Critical Examination.” Modern China 8(1):105–32.Google Scholar
Dobb, Maurice. 1946. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. London: George Routledge & Sons.Google Scholar
Eley, Geoff. 2007. “Historicizing the Global, Politicizing Capital: Giving the Present a Name.” History Workshop Journal 63(1):154–88.Google Scholar
Farooqui, Amar. 2006. Opium City: The Making of Early Victorian Bombay. Gurgaon, India: Three Essays Collective.Google Scholar
Frank, André Gunder. 1967. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Frank, André Gunder. 1998. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Frankel, Francine R. 2005. India's Political Economy, 1947–2004: The Gradual Revolution. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ghosh, Arunabh. 2017. “Before 1962: The Case for 1950s China-India History.” Journal of Asian Studies 76(3):697–727.Google Scholar
Habib, Irfan. 1969. “Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of Mughal India.” Journal of Economic History 29(1):32–78.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Gary G., and Kao, Cheng-shu. 2017. Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 1990. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hershatter, Gail. 1986. The Workers of Tianjin, 1900–1949. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ho, Ping-ti. 1954. “The Salt Merchants of Yang-Chou: A Study of Commercial Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 17(1/2):130–68.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. J. 1954. “The General Crisis of the European Economy in the 17th Century.” Past & Present 5:33–53.Google Scholar
Huang, Philip C. 1985. The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Huang, Philip C. 1990. The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350–1988. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Huang, Philip C. 2002. “Development or Involution in Eighteenth-Century Britain and China? A Review of Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.” Journal of Asian Studies 61(2):501–38.Google Scholar
Isett, Christopher Mills. 2007. State, Peasant, and Merchant in Qing Manchuria, 1644–1862. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Journal of American History. 2014. “Interchange: The History of Capitalism.” 101(2):503–36.Google Scholar
Kaiwar, Vasant. 1992. “Property Structures, Demography and the Crisis of the Agrarian Economy of Colonial Bombay Presidency.” Journal of Peasant Studies 19(2):255–300.Google Scholar
Karl, Rebecca E. 2017. The Magic of Concepts: History and the Economic in Twentieth-Century China. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Köll, Elisabeth. 2003. From Cotton Mill to Business Empire: The Emergence of Regional Enterprises in Modern China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center.Google Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 1998. Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Levy, Jonathan. 2017. “Capital as Process and the History of Capitalism.” Business History Review 91(3):483–510.Google Scholar
Liu, Andrew B. 2016. “Incense and Industry: Labour and Capital in the Tea Districts of Huizhou, China.” Past & Present 230(1):161–95.Google Scholar
Luxemburg, Rosa. [1913] 2003. The Accumulation of Capital. Translated by Schwarzschild, Agnes. New York: Routledge Classics.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. [1867] 1976. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I. Translated by Fowkes, Ben. New York: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Mazumdar, Sucheta. 1998. Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology, and the World Market. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center.Google Scholar
Morris, Morris D. 1967. “Values as an Obstacle to Economic Growth in South Asia: An Historical Survey.” Journal of Economic History 27(4):588–607.Google Scholar
National Statistical Commission, Government of India. 2012. “Report of the Committee on Unorganised Sector Statistics.”Google Scholar
Ocko, Jonathan K., and Gilmartin, David. 2009. “State, Sovereignty, and the People: A Comparison of the ‘Rule of Law’ in China and India.” Journal of Asian Studies 68(1):55–100.Google Scholar
Parthasarathi, Prasannan. 2011. Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Parthasarathi, Prasannan. 2012. “Indian Labor History.” International Labor and Working Class History 82:127–35.Google Scholar
Patnaik, Utsa, ed. 1990. Agrarian Relations and Accumulation: The “Mode of Production” Debate in India. Bombay: Published for Sameeksha Trust by Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Perlin, Frank. 1983. “Proto-industrialization and Pre-colonial South Asia.” Past & Present 98:30–95.Google Scholar
Pomeranz, Kenneth. 2000. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pomeranz, Kenneth. 2002. “Beyond the East-West Binary: Resituating Development Paths in the Eighteenth-Century World.” Journal of Asian Studies 61(2):539–90.Google Scholar
Ngai, Pun. 2005. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Raychaudhuri, Tapan. 1983. “The Mid-Eighteenth-Century Background.” In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 2, eds. Kumar, Dharma and Raychaudhuri, Tapan, 1–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Riskin, Carl. 1987. China's Political Economy: The Quest for Development since 1949. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rowe, William T. 1984. Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Roy, Tirthankar. 2014. “Capitalism in India in the Very Long Run.” In The Cambridge History of Capitalism, eds. Neal, Larry and Williamson, Jeffrey, 1:165–92. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sanyal, Kalyan. 2007. Rethinking Capitalist Development: Primitive Accumulation, Governmentality and Post-colonial Capitalism. New Delhi: Routledge.Google Scholar
Seth, Sanjay. 1995. Marxist Theory and Nationalist Politics: The Case of Colonial India. New Delhi: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Seth, Sanjay. 2013. “Nationalism, Modernity, and the ‘Woman Question’ in India and China.” Journal of Asian Studies 72(2):273–97.Google Scholar
Sewell, William H. Jr., 2008a. “Crooked Lines.” American Historical Review 113(2):393–405.Google Scholar
Sewell, William H. Jr. 2008b. “The Temporalities of Capitalism.” Socio-Economic Review 6(3):517–37.Google Scholar
Sewell, William H. Jr. 2010. “A Strange Career: The Historical Study of Economic Life.” History and Theory 49(4):146–66.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. [1776] 2000. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Modern Library.Google Scholar
Sugihara, Kaoru. 2007. “The Second Noel Butlin Lecture: Labour-Intensive Industrialisation in Global History.” Australian Economic History Review 47(2):121–54.Google Scholar
Sweezy, Paul. [1950] 1976. “A Critique.” In The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, ed. Hilton, R. H., 33–56. London: NLB.Google Scholar
Tyabji, Nasir. 2015. Forging Capitalism in Nehru's India: Neocolonialism and the State, c. 1940–1970. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Gavin. 2016. The Sublime Perversion of Capital: Marxist Theory and the Politics of History in Modern Japan. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Washbrook, D. A. 1988. “Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History c. 1720–1860.” Modern Asian Studies 22(1):57–96.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1951. The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1958. The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 2002. “Prefatory Remarks to Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion.” In The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, 356–72. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Wong, R. Bin. 1997. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Yu, Ying-shih. 1987. Zhongguo jinshi zongjiao lunyi yu shangren jingshen [Modern China's religious ethics and commercial spirit]. Taipei: Lianjing Chuban Shiye Gongsi.Google Scholar
Zelin, Madeleine. 2005. The Merchants of Zigong: Industrial Entrepreneurship in Early Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar