Customer Reviews

Strange Parallels: Volume 2, Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800-1830 (Studies in Comparative World History)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Disclosure: Prof. Lieberman and I are friends. I had the privilege of reading the manuscript of this book prior to publication.


In this outstanding book, Victor Lieberman presents a framework for thinking about Eurasian history across almost 2 millennia. The periodization essentially begins after the formation of relatively large, relatively powerful empires in the Mediterranean, China, and India around the first millennium of the Common Era. It terminates with the 19th century globalization that occurred under European hegemony. Lieberman's focus is state formation, though this term fails completely to capture his rich integration of political, social, religious, and economic history. This book is also a rigorous and creative extension of volume 1 of this pair of books, which focused on mainland Southeast Asia, specifically the history of societies that evolved into modern Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

In volume 1 of Strange Parallels, Lieberman developed a fascinating and cogent model of state formation and development. Each state began with a "charter polity" drawing basic inspiration from an earlier, powerful center of civilization. In mainland Southeast Asia, the charter polities were inspired by Indic civilizations and China in the first millennium. These charter polities grow and then decline. The charter polities were followed by a series of successor states of increasing power and degree of social integration with the interregna between states becoming shorter and shorter. This model is now extended across Eurasia. As examples of this process, Lieberman focuses on France, Russia, and Japan. The French charter polity is the Frankish/Carolingian state whose inspiration was Imperial Rome and Russian charter polity is the Kievan state inspired by the Byzantine Empire. In a pair of outstanding chapters, Lieberman traces the development of the French and Russian states. He shows very well that the overall pattern of state development and collapse/reinvigoration is analogous to events in mainland Southeast Asia. French and Russian history exhibit similar overall patterns of increasing state power, vertical and horizontal social integration, expanding literacy and cultural uniformity, relative homogenization of religious practice (often accompanied by relative subordination of religion to the state), and expanding domestic and international market participation. As with mainland Southeast Asia, interregna between states become shorter and shorter, presumably a reflection of the increasing human capital produced by the increasing complexity of states and societies. Lieberman is very careful not to force events into conformation with his model. He is very clear on important differences between these societies, the contingent nature of events, and that increasing power and complexity of states is a relative phenomenon. His thoughtful narrative and analyses are very convincing.

Remarkably, this overall pattern is not only qualitatively similar across Western Europe, Russia, and mainland Southeast Asia but also chronologically coordinated to a surprising degree. The flourishing of charter polities and their successors occurs in approximately the same centuries. The periods of decline are also similar. The European "Waning of the Middle Ages" that begins in the 14th century is paralleled by similar events in Russia and mainland Southeast Asia. Climate change, such as the beginning and end of the Medieval warm period, may be a major actor. The Little Ice Age of the 17th century may be another example. Lieberman provides a great deal of sophisticated discussion about the question of synchronization and complex possible interactions between climate, social changes, the role of international trade, and other factors. For example, the globalization of trade in the early modern period resulted in massive flows of silver from Japan and the Americas across Eurasia, and particularly to China. The resulting monetarization boosted economic activity and state power across Eurasia, though also generating some stresses due to the rapidity of social and economic changes.

There is also a very interesting discussion of Japanese history. As with the other societies discussed, Lieberman argues well for his basic model of charter polity and increasingly vigorous successor states with shorter interregna. The timing here, however, is somewhat different, at least until the early modern period where some synchronization with other Eurasian societies occurs. Lieberman suggests that climate trends in Japan were different than in mainland Eurasia, and if correct, Japanese history provides an important exception that proves the rule to his model for synchronization of state-social development across Eurasia.

In a second major conceptual innovation, Lieberman divides Eurasia into 2 major zones; the protected zone and the exposed zone. The latter includes China, India, Southwest Asia (roughly the Iranian plateau, the Middle East as we usually use the term, and Anatolia). These regions were "exposed" by virtue of direct, continuous, and crucial interactions with the pastoral peoples of Inner Asia, the vast sea of steppe and grassland from Manchuria to the Carpathians. The direct influence of Inner Asian peoples on China, India, Iran, Anatolia, and surrounding regions constitutes a decisive difference between the exposed zone and the protected zone. The latter encompasses the wide range of regions-polities geographically insulated from Inner Asian peoples, including Japan, mainland Southeast Asia, Island Southeast Asia, and Europe. Lieberman argues for his basic model of state-social articulation for the exposed zone societies but with crucial differences imposed by the effects of conflict and interactions with Inner Asian peoples. These interactions have considerable power in explaining the different trajectories of Chinese and Indian history, and the histories of protected zone societies. For example, in India, the periodic irruption and conquest of Indian states by Inner Asians had 2 major and interesting effects. Inner Asian dominated empires probably prevented the development of a European-style indigenous state system. At the same time, Inner Asian domination of India and the existence of powerful traditions associated with the Persian-Islamic cultural patrimony precluded the development of something like the Qing state where the Manchus had to adopt Chinese models to govern.

Lieberman extends his model of the protected - exposed zone in a particularly interesting way to deal with the effects of Europeans in early modern India and island Southeast Asia. He argues well that in important respects Europeans were the logical equivalent of Inner Asians in India in terms of their impact on political and social development in India. In island Southeast Asia, European imperialism transformed a protected zone into an exposed zone.

Like volume 1, this book is a pleasure to read and is based on a remarkably comprehensive exploration of the historical literature. My brief review can't do justice to the rich nature of the narrative and analysis. The individual chapters on France, Russia, Japan, China, etc., are outstanding overviews. It can be read very profitably as a stand alone book, though I recommend reading volume 1 first. I predict that this book will be regarded as a landmark in comparative history.

Given that the synopsis of the book provided by the " Product Description " plus "Book Description" is fairly accurate, I will only point out that Lieberman has written an impressive work of great importance in the field of the history of World History. Lieberman finds common cycles of administrative integration and disintegration that were increasingly synchronized over time. Although he does not give a single-factor explanation for this synchronization, his model provides a common vocabulary for political, economic, and cultural analysis that can inspire all comparative world historians. To make his case for the strange parallels Lieberman seems to have read everything. The meticulously documented argument is daunting. For a single individual, it is a massive synthesis. It deserves to be highly recommended. However, I recognize that, because of the author's style, the book is often somehow dry, not engaging: certainly it will not become a best-seller. So my rate is between 5 (content) and 3 (pleasure).

I will also suggest reading the following books (whose scope is amazingly global) in addition to Lieberman's splendid work: 1) Economy: 1.1 "Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium" by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke; 1.2 and 1.3: "The world economy. A millennial perspective" (2001) plus "The world economy: Historical Statistics" (2003) by Angus Maddison (a combined edition of these two volumes appeared on December 2007); 2) Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 3) Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 4) Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 5) Political Thought: 5.1. and 5.2: "The West and Islam. Religion and Political Thought in World History" plus "A World History of Ancient Political Thought" by Antony Black; 6) Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and 7) War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat.