R.J. Barcndsc, The Arabian Sea~ 1640-1700 (Leiden: Research School CNWS, Leiden University, 1998). vi+ 465 pp. 60 Dutch guilders Reviewed by Katherine Moseley "To the merchants and mariners of the seventeenth century the wide waters of the Indian Ocean appeared ofva~t, superhuman dimensions. An interminable time wa~ spent crossing it .... " So opens Barcndsc\u2019s Arabian Sca~\u2014a splendid account, resembling, in its complexity, color, and scale, the region it describes. Indeed, it takes us, like fellow-travelers, to the ports, ships, and mercantile communities of that great maritime arc, bounded by the Ea~t African shoreline, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and lndia\u2019s western coa~t. Ba~cd on over a decade of archival research in the Netherlands, India, and Portugal, Barcndsc\u2019s book blends social and economic history, economic geography, and institutional analysis. While synthesizing perhaps thousands of primary documents, it retains the feel of an account -- descriptive, discursive, with little in the way of generalization, aggregate data, or quantitative trends. The underlying strategy, however, seems like Braudel\u2019s: to take the reader to the scene, letting him sort through the evidence hi1rnelf for clues to interests and motives, underlying structures, and long-term shifts. There arc shortcomings: countless typographic errors, quaint wordings, rudimentary tables, the lack of an overall bibliography, and vagueness on certain points. All these pale, however, in face of the utterly convincing realism of this work\u2014its seductive combination of historical sweep, sharp insights, and rich detail. Barcndsc \u20 l 9s focus is on the la~t half of the seventeenth ccntury\u20 l 4a period of Dutch hegemony, English a~ccnt, and Portuguese decline \u20 l 4and the problematic of "European expansion" in many ways frames the book. This is far from a conventional imperial or economic history, however: it is resolutely centered on the regional economy, with minimal attention to wars, states, boundaries, or even to trade with the mctropolcs. A chapter is devoted to each of the three great chartered companies of the Indies, but the cmpha~is throughout is on contradictions and ambiguities \u2014thc impossibility of effective monopolies or central control; the ubiquity of corruption, smuggling, and "private trade"; the immense and inescapable role of indigenous traders, shippers, and financiers. The Moghul, Safavid, and Ottoman empires, along with other local principalities, also remain in the background, leaving the political demarcations of the region somewhat unclear. As in Europe, Barcndsc notes, "the cornucopia of American bullion wa~ emptied by the state on payments for a salaried bureaucracy and army" (111 ), while the sale of offices and tax fanning were milked for further revenues. Despite their actual dependence on trade, however, the Asian statcs\u2014with the exception of the Omanis\u2014tcndcd to treat commerce with some disdain (preferring, as Barcndsc puts it, "the stirrup to the ship")(p. 434). Europeans -- barred entirely from most of the Ottoman Red Sea -- were generally confined to coa~tal enclaves; Barcndsc provides fascinating detail on these, especially the stratified, more or less crcolizcd Portuguese settlements of the western Indian ports, and their subaltern strata of mestizos, converts, and la~carin troops. Other dia~pora~ of Portuguese settlers, lancados, and mercenaries stretched up the Zambezi and Euphrates, and into the political centers of the interior. More generally, the ports and sea lanes teemed with a multicultural a~sortmcnt of renegades, freebooters, "sea proletarians" ( a term from Frederick Lane), and African ( cx-)slavcs. [Page 128] Journal of World-Systems Research Barcndsc\u2019s focus then, is not only regional but maritime, and especially on the coa~twisc, inter-Asian, or "country trade." The major flow wa~ between India (producer of pepper, cloth, and diamond~, inter alia), and the Middle Ea~t (still the major conduit for bullion, along with cotton, sill,, and coffee). To both regions came smaller flows of African slaves, ivory, and gold. Barcnd~c provides especially rich material on not only the operations of the Companies, but on local-level structures and transactions\u2014ports and bazaars, Indian and Muscati merchant and banking networks, European privateers, ships\u2019 crews, the sca~onality oftradc\u2014in such places a~ Ba~ra, Mocha, Goa, and Surat. lt is the character and dynamic of this commercial system that is Barcnd~c \u20 l 9s overarching concern. ln the long run, he seem~ to argue, the more humdrum, localized trade in bull, good~ wa~ a~ important a~, and intertwined with, the long distance trade. Though the latter wa~ crucial for capital accumulation and state revenues, "[t]hc entire trade of the Indian Ocean would barely have filled one modern freighter" (p. 173). Even the old sill, route, he argues, wa~ less "a highway from Europe to the celestial kingdom" than "a succession of small local circuits of trade" (p. 134). Markets for high-value exports were limited and fragmented, beset by inadequate information and erratic fluctuations, high insecurity and protection rents ( or by customs duties, which might be even worse). To minimize risks, small-scale "peddling" and dispersed "portfolio investments" tended to prevail. Barcndsc is accordingly quite cautious on the question of a seventeenth-century "world- cconomy." The Arabian sea~, he says, did make up a regional maritime system (p. 60), but less an (integrated, hierarchical) "world-economy" than a simple "network of trade" (p. 435). And thus the transfonnativc impact of the European chartered companics\u2014 their mcrcantilist character, their superior centralization, capitalization, and power; their ability to achieve economics of scale and lower costs; and their role in forging wider linkages on a truly global scale. One might add\u20 l 4a Wallcrstcinian point that Barcndsc docs not quite make cxplicitly\u2014thc fact that there wa~ not one chartered company but several, always competing, never able to regulate, stabilize, and thus limit global commerce a~ they might have wished. By the end of the century, Bcrcndsc suggests, "the integration of the Arabian Sea~ within the \u2018modcrn world system \u2019" wa~ well underway (p. 439). Spatially, ca~tcrn and western Asia became more closely connected, a~ did both not only to Europe, but to the wider Atlantic world. A marvelous chapter, entitled "Private Deals," tells of the smugglers and buccaneers who, in defiance of mcrcantilist restrictions, pioneered the American routes, carrying East African slaves and other booty to the Bermudas and New York. "By 1700 global connections tied both \u2018Indics\u2019 together," Barcndsc notes (p. 407). Similarly, tea and other Chinese goods began to appear in significant quantities, in exchange for opium, textiles, and bullion earned in the Indian trade. Larger and more unified markets, in turn, narrowed the gap between staples and hitherto luxury goods. By the end of the century, bulk-manufactured cloth, and primary products like indigo, coffee, and rice entered massively into world-wide trade; so did labour, "not only slaves but indentured labour and mercenaries as well" (p. 5). Market integration also spelled greater cost/price competition and a "global process of product substitution" (p. 216). Indigo from the Caribbean and Guatemala displaced the Indian product, first in Italy, then in the Levant; pepper from the East Indies, shipped round the Cape, struck a blow to Western Indian exports and the traditional Levant trade. Competing supplies of New World sugar, cotton, then coffee were to follow close behind. This ongoing reorganization of world trade was led by Europeans, Barcndsc argues, above all by the English, whose multiple advantages arc explored in some detail. These included their early entry into the tea and coffee trades, the close connections they engineered between Bombay, China, and Madras, and their experience in producing textiles for the Middle East. But "paramount to the rise of the British Empire in Asia," Barcndsc argues (pp. 378-9), was their thriving "country trade," soon surpassing the Portuguese, then the Indians themselves. In the process, Bengal and Arabia prospered, but to the detriment of the Malabar Coast and the Levant. [Page 129] Journal of World-Systems Research Bullion had long drained eastward to India\u2019s "bottomless sink" (reflecting Portugal\u2019s early deficits with the region, for example). With the decline of the transit trade in pepper, the Persian and Ottoman balance of payments turned ncgati vc as well. By the turn of the century, silver began to drain eastward from India itself: "One could obtain bullion for the China-trade," Barcndsc notes, "with the sale of European commodities at Surat and Bombay ... " (p. 405). These shifts seem to have been part ofa more general decline affecting the Arabian Seas, ca. 1660-1690, to which Barcndsc alludes at several points. There were other possible culprits, howcvcr\u2014inflation and heavy taxes, plague and climate change; the possible connection to a wider "scvcntccnth- ccntury crisis" is mentioned as well. Herc, as on other major points, Barcndsc sticks to the evidential clutter, the uncertainties, of the middle ground. His book stands somewhere between Stccnsgaard and Pearson, emphasizing both the revolutionary role of European commerce and the immense importance of the preexisting inter-Asian trade. Similarly, it treads a path between Wallcrstcin and Frank, seeing the area as not "external" but still only partly integrated to a still-emerging world-cconomy\u2014a world-economy in which India, as well as Europe or China, had a major place. This world system, however, wa~ also assuming distinctive capitalist, systemic features, and under incrca~ing European control. A revised edition, to be brought out in the United States by M.E.Sharpc, promises to tell us more of the African side of the Arabian Sea~. For now, useful (but uncitcd) companion volumes might be Risso\u2019s Merchants and Faith: Muslim Commerce and Culture in the Indian Ocean (W cstvicw 1995), and Joseph Harris, The African Presence in Asia (Northwestern 1971 ). Photos and other art work would also be precious complements to a new edition, but arc perhaps too much to hope for. Such ba~ic amenities a~ an index and bibliography, however, not to speak of proofreading, should be de rigucur, along with better maps, perhaps some even showing political boundaries, trade routes, or commodity flows. This volume is a great achievement, and surely deserves the best. [Page 130] Journal of World-Systems Research Snooks, Graeme Donald. The Ephemeral Civilization: Exploding the Myth of Social Evolution. London: Routledge, 1997. ISBN 0-415-16995-X, $125.00 cloth. Reviewed by Stephen K. Sanderson Department of Sociology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This book builds on Graeme Donald Snooks\u2019s earlier volume, The Dynamic Society: Exploring the Sourcs of Global Change (Routledge, 1996). Both books lay out a general theory of human society and history known a~ materialist man, but the more recent book develops the argument in much greater detail. Snooks argues that there arc no adequate models of human social behavior, but that the two most popular ones arc ncocla~sical economics and sociobiology (more on this shocking statement later). Ncocla~sical economics goes wrong, he says, in a~suming that humans arc primarily cognitive beings who intellectualize about the world, whcrca~ sociobiology goes wrong in being too genetically deterministic and in giving pride of place to the struggle for reproduction rather than to the struggle for survival. Human social life is governed by pa~sions, not intellect, and the most important pa~sion is the struggle for material advantage, i.e., for wealth and power. To realize material advantage humans adopt one or more of four dynamic strategics, which Snooks calls the family multiplication strategy, the conquest strategy, the commerce strategy, and the technological strategy. In the process of developing this argument Snooks reveals hi1rnelfto be an old-fa~hioncd economic dctcnninist. At the ba~c of every society is its dynamic economic strategy, and political and social institutions rest on this strategy and function to promote it. Social change occurs by virtue of the unfolding and eventual exhaustion of a dynamic strategy, at which point the leaders of the society shift to the next-best strategy. As the dynamic strategy changes, new social and political institutions emerge. The dynamic strategy most likely to be found in small-scale preindustrial societies is the family multiplication strategy. Herc families hive off from other families and occupy new land. This strategy ha~ also been used by more complex societies in the settling of frontier regions, such a~ in colonial America. The most common dynamic strategy in the world of large-scale agrarian civilizations ha~ been the conquest strategy. Herc the political leaders of a society, usually in close collaboration with its economic leaders, engage in a pattern of constant war against other societies. War becomes a large-scale business, and wealth is created in the form of the spoil~ of war: land, slaves, tribute, etc. The usual rca~on that agrarian civilizations adopt the conquest strategy is that there is no real alternative. By far the greatest example of the conquest strategy is the Roman Republic and Empire. The dynamic strategists were the senators, who had launched this strategy by about the middle of the fifth century BC. Later the senators were replaced by the emperor a~ the primary strategist, a change necessitated by the need for greater centralization of the whole process of conquest. According to Snooks, by AD 138 the Romans had essentially exhausted their conquest strategy, but since there were no real alternatives to it the empire started on a process of long and slow decline. As another example of the conquest strategy, Snooks discusses the Aztecs, whose budding empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries wa~ centered around the capital city of Tenochtitlan. Unlike Rome, the Aztecs did not make use of a large slave labor force, and there wa~ no permanent army. As in Rome, war became a serious business. Merchants -- the dynamic strategists of the commerce strategy -- were greatly distrusted, but since their wealth wa~ useful to the state they were tolerated. One of the more prominent features of Aztec society wa~ its religion ba~cd upon extensive human sacrifice. For Snooks this religion symbolized the "dark spirit of conquest" that wa~ the essence of Aztec society. The Aztec conquest strategy wa~ cut short by the Spanish conquerers early in the sixteenth century before it had a chance to spread and ultimately to exhaust itself. Snooks speculates that had this not happened the Aztecs would soon have embarked on the conquest of much of North and South America. [Page 132] Journal of World-Systems Research A few agrarian societies have been fortunate enough to use the commerce strategy rather than the conquest strategy. This strategy involves the creation of wealth by producing and trading good~ over a~ large an area a~ possible. It depend~ on favorable geographical and other circmrntanccs that give a society the necessary access to markets and trade routes. Since commerce societies could not coexist peaceably with conquest societies, the former had to be beyond the reach of the latter. The greatest commerce society in all of human history wa~. of course, ancient Greece. The Greeks were not only geographically suited for the commerce strategy, but since they were divided into a number of small and independent states that were equally matched militarily the conquest strategy could not be successfully employed. The Greeks employed their commerce strategy between approximately 800 and 550 BC. An integral part of this process wa~ the founding of many Greek colonies in both near and distant regions. These colonies were important to the Greeks because "they were the means by which Greek city-states attempted to gain a monopoly over trade in a particular part of the Mediterranean" (p. 213). According to Snooks, commerce societies cmpha~izc the "beauty of rca~on" rather than the "darkness of chaos" of conquest societies, and this wa~ certainly true of Greece. Because its dynamic strategy wa~ fundamentally different from that of Rome, the political structure of Greek society wa~ also different. In Greece we find the city-state or polis, a political form ba~cd on rule by a~scmblics of male citizens rather than a Icing or emperor. As commerce expanded democracy expanded, because democracy facilitated commerce. By around 550-500 BC this strategy had exhausted it~elf and Greece wa~ forced to turn to the conquest strategy. But since it had no particular advantage in the use of this strategy it subsided into insignificance on the world stage. V cnicc in the time between approximately AD 1000 and 1500 wa~ also a major commerce society. It followed a similar path to that of Greece. It wa~ ideally geographically situated for commerce, and it followed this strategy for several centuries. Soon, however, the strategy had run its course and, like Greece two millennia earlier, it turned to conquest. But since it had, also like Greece, no particular advantage in the use of this strategy the conquest strategy failed, and early in the sixteenth century V cnicc opted for a policy of neutrality and diplomacy. The history of Europe, England in particular, over the pa~t millennium reveal~ a sequence of dynamic strategics. Between about AD 1000 and 1450 England used a conquest strategy. Once this strategy had been played out England adopted a commerce strategy. This latter strategy had itself been played out by the middle of the eighteenth century, and as a result England embarked upon what Snooks calls the technological strategy, or what I think might be more appropriately called the capitalist strategy. This involved the substitution of inanimate for animate energy and was marked by, of course the Industrial Revolution. As far as Britain\u2019s dynamic strategists were concerned, the essence of the Industrial Revolution was that it devised cheaper ways (both technically and institutionally) of producing old products, such as cotton textiles, and new products such as consumer durables, and cheaper ways of transporting those products to markets at home (by canals and railways) and abroad (by steam-driven steel ships) .... By providing ways of achieving favoured access to resources and markets other than the exhausted traditional ways of force, diplomacy, and physical proximity, the British Industrial Revolution imparted a new impetus to commercial expansion. But this time commercial expansion was the outcome of the technological rather than the commerce strategy (pp. 293-94). Despite its short history, the United States has also undergone a sequence of dynamic strategics. In colonial America the strategy followed was that of dependent commerce, a version of the commerce strategy in which the colonies were a junior partner to England. This strategy came to an end late in the eighteenth century, and the United States then embarked on a strategy of family multiplication by expanding into the Western frontier. Once this strategy had been exhausted by around 1890, the US took up the tcchological strategy. Snooks argues that the key to understanding US society is that it was the world\u2019s first mcgastatc and the first society to create a mcgamarkct. Prior to the Civil War the US was really made up of two subsocictics that were committed to different dynamic strategics. The North wanted to expand industrial capitalism into the Western frontier in order to create a mcgamarkct, but the "longrun material success of Southern strategists depended more on their economic relationship with Britain than with the rest of America" (p. 379). The Civil War was really fought over this clash of strategics, and Snooks contends that had the South won the war the US would have been divided into a number of nation-states rather than one mcgastatc. Thus, the outcome of the Civil War was essential to the preservation of the North\u2019s technological strategy, for this strategy could not have been sustained without a mcgastatc and a mcgamarkct. [Page 133] Journal of World-Systems Research In the final two chapters Snooks takes out a small crystal ball. The future, he says, will be dominated by the clash of four mcgastatcs because small nations, though they may fare reasonably well, can never be economic or political hcgcmons. European countries have increasingly recognized this, and thus have created the European Union. Snooks is optimistic that Russia, now that it has shed communism and embarked on the technological strategy, will, within a generation or so, emerge as a mcgastatc. He also foresees China as one of the mcgastatcs; along with the EU and Russia, it will join the United States as one of the four mcgastatcs of the twenty-first century. What is the possibility that a global state will eventually succeed the mcgastatcs? This is neither possible nor desirable, Snooks contends. A global state would be an unmitigated disaster because it would kill off the competition that is an essential part of the technological strategy and thus kill off that strategy itself. There is a great deal of value in this book and I urge all those scholars with a serious interest in world history on such a grand spatial and temporal scale to read it. I am in strong agreement with his materialism (even economic determinism), and much of what he says about dynamic strategics and their importance is quite plausible. However, there is also much that is problematic, some of it seriously so. For one thing, Snooks concentrates wholly on what might be called "external" dynamic strategics and totally ignores "internal" strategics. That is, he concentrates entirely on intcrsocictal relations a~ if this is the only source of wealth and power and completely ignores the forms of wealth creation that go on within societies. In large-scale agrarian societies a great deal of wealth is created simply through the surplus extraction process engaged in by landlords against pca~ants. Snooks claims that "for a conquest society the domcsti c economy is a side issue" (p. 188). Certainly conquest can bring in a great deal of additional wealth, but the domestic economy should not be relegated to such an insubstantial status. After all, what do societies do when their conquest strategy fails, or what do societies incorporated into another society through conquest do to create wcalth9 Most commonly, they (i.e., their economic and political elites) engage in surplus extraction. Snooks also turns his back entirely on the world-system perspective. There is no world- systcm, he argues, and the global economy is merely the outcome of dynamic strategists operating within the institutions of individual societies. In a sense this is true, but in another sense it is highly misleading. Once a world-system has been created, to some extent it acquires a life of its own and constrains the actions of its constituent members. Or so most of the readers of this journal would argue. Snooks also docs an inadequate job of explaining how dynamic strategics arc cxhaustc d. I have no difficulty accepting his thesis that strategics eventually exhaust themselves and have to be replaced by new strategics. However, Snook~ docsn \u2019t really do enough to show us, within the framework of his concrete ca~c studies, how strategics peter out; he merely a~scrts that a strategy petered out rather than developing the evidence to show us how and why this happened. I also have a problem understanding just what Snook~ means by the family multiplication strategy. His discussion of this strategy in The Dynamic Society seemed to make it clear that this wa~ a strategy suitable to very small- scalc societies, and yet in The Ephemeral Civilization we read that this wa~ the major strategy of American society in the century between 1790 and 1890, and we also learn of the enormous amount of wealth that the use of this strategy created. But surely family multiplication cannot be much of a wealth creating strategy on its own, let alone the level of wealth that Snook~ is referring to. Perhaps I misunderstand the family multiplication strategy, but it would appear to me that it could not create much wealth unless it were combined with one of the other strategics. For example, the expansion of the railroads wa~ a major a~pcct of the expansion into the Western frontier of the United States, but this wa~ driven by Snook~ \u2019s technological strategy ( or what I prefer to call the capitalist strategy) rather than by simple family multiplication. I also take exception to Snooks\u2019s broadside attack on social evolutionism. He asserts that social evolution is a myth, and he is out to destroy it. In using the term social evolution he seems to means some sort ofunilincar process that never reverses itself or heads off in any other direction, for he says that "sharp directional changes and reversals in institutional change observed throughout the historical record cannot be explained by an evolutionary model" (p. 8). Snooks is woefully out of touch with the literature on social evolution and theories of it. There arc many social scientists today who arc evolutionists, but few would claim that social evolution is some sort ofunilincar process that never changes course. Indeed, I have developed an evolutionary interpretation of world history (Sanderson, 1995) that takes full cognizance of the rise and fall of civilizations, societal collapse, etc. Snooks is not reading some of the literature that he should be reading. He also seems to think that social evolutionism is some sort of unitary approach, but some years ago I tried to dispel that notion (Sanderson, 1990). [Page 134] Journal of World-Systems Research One of the more startling statements in The Ephemeral Civilization is Snooks\u2019s contention that the two most influential models of human behavior have been neoclassical economics and sociobiology. I am not sure how influential neoclassical economics is outside of the field of economics itself, but I do know that sociobiology has made headway only in two social science disciplines, psychology and anthropology, and sociobiology is still highly contentious there. Within sociology sociobiology is still fiercely resisted by all but a small minority. Again, Snooks needs to acquaint himself with a wider body of literature than what he has been reading. However, more important is Snooks\u2019s own treatment of sociobiology. There have been many serious distortions of the claims of sociobiology, but Snooks\u2019s treatment is one of the worst I have seen. He claims that sociobiology is a rigid form of genetic determinism that makes humans slaves (his word is robots) to preordained forces, but this charge has been successfully repudiated countless times. Only a little familiarity with the literature of sociobiology will disabuse the careful and objective reader of such a claim. Perhaps Snooks\u2019s most serious charge against sociobiology is that, even though it claims to be Darwinian, it is in fact a distortion of Darwin. Sociobiologists distort Darwin, he says, by emphasizing the struggle for reproductive success, when in fact what Darwin was talking about was a struggle for survival, for material resources, not for producing offspring. In fact, though, Snooks seriously misunderstands Darwin and has created a false dichotomy. Not only did Darwin emphasize reproductive success, but his theory depended intimately upon it. Life is a struggle for both survival and reproductive success, and evolution cannot occur if organisms do not mate and leave copies of their genes in future generations. This is the only way an adaptive trait can spread throughout a population. What Snooks is really trying to do, it would seem, is to gain for economics a privileged position by making most important that which economists focus on, competition for material resources. This is not the only serious interpretive error committed by Snooks, for in fact his entire treatment of sociobiology is just one massive exercise in intellectual distortion. In my copyofthcbooklhavcmarkcdlongpa~sagcsonpp.110-11, 112, 113, 117-18, 121-22, 123, 124, and 125 that arc just disa~tcrs of confusion and misunderstanding. He makes such startling a~scrtions a~ the claim that animal~ have institutions, norms, and values; that animal behavior is not under genetic control; and, incredibly, that "children arc, except in human families, an unavoidable by-product of the satisfaction of sexual desires" (p. 125). Ironically, what Snooks fails to sec is that his general theory, materialist man, is not only compatible with sociobiology but makes sense only in terms of it. Why do people strive for wealth, status, and power? Because these arc the resources they need in the struggle, not only to survive and prosper, but to attract mates and perpetuate their genes. Fortunately, Snooks\u2019s discussion of sociobiology ha~ little effect on the main argument of his book, which could have been written in much the same way without much theoretical grounding at all. I recommend Snooks\u2019s book for economic historians and their fellow travelers, but an important lesson of this book is that economists and economic historians should either stay away from theories in fields significantly removed from their own or take the time and effort required to make sure they understand these theories correctly. References Sanderson, Stephen K. 1990. Social Evolutionism: A Critical History. Oxford: Blackwell . . 1995. Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development. Oxford: Blackwell. [Page 135] Journal of World-Systems Research