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ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. By ANDRE GUNDER FRANK. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. PP. xxix + 416. $55 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
We have long been indebted to Andre Gunder Frank for giving us unforgettable concepts-terms that we cannot do without, even when our "take" on them is not exactly his, and even when he has not always been their originator-to wit: "the development of underdevelopment," "dependency and underdevelopment, the lumpenbour geoisie." In ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, he now gives us the brilliant "Re-Orient," an incisive bon mot that not only steers us away from Eurocentric history but emphasizes the persistence, even during the so-called period of European hegemony, of Asia's vigor and significance.
The book is written in the classic iconoclastic and synthetic style we expect from Frank, who is so skilled a debater that he not only makes strong arguments on behalf of his own position but anticipates all possible criticisms, refuting them before his opponents have a chance to open their mouths. Like Muhammad Ali, Frank floats like a butterfly (raising all possible objections) and stings like a bee (reserving his sharpest jabs for those with whom he shares the most).
In support of his position he has assembled a prodigious amount of evidence from secondary sources, even if he occasionally distorts their findings to advance his argument or commits a rare (and excusable) blunder. (Not to be picayune but only to suggest a correction to be made in the next edition, one might point out that Suraiya Farouki is a she, not a he.) The bibliography alone is worth the price of the book, although I missed a reference to the often neglected work of Lefton Stavrianos (Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age [New York: William Morrow, 1981], which contains a long section IPP. 33-168] on the period between Woo and 1700). Inevitably, however, despite his commitment to escape primary dependence on Western sources, Frank...