Suchergebnisse

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

The Rise of the West, the creation of the Third World, the beginnings of disparity between Asia and Europe, or whatever other phrase is used, is obviously the great event of world history; hence the attempts to explain and date it, going back to the time when the Rise was actually beginning in the later eighteenth century. The literature is vast, complex and mostly of high quality. Some of it is concerned with causation—how did 'the West' get ahead, why did 'Asia' fall back or perhaps just stay the same? Others are interested in trying to date the beginnings of inequality—when can we see the beginnings of dominance, where did this occur and in which sectors of human life was this first to be seen? The first matter is, of course, the more important for an historian. It has been argued that, in the most general way, the fundamental cause of the beginnings of inequality is the series of changes in western Europe, and at first in England, known collectively as the Industrial Revolution. I will use this term as a shorthand for these collective changes, which Marshall Hodgson called the 'Great Western Transmutation.' Put most crudely, western Europe advanced and changed in a paradigmatic way, while Asia did not. At the most, Asia kept doing what it had been doing for centuries; Europe changed basically.

The merchant who arrives in a locality unknown to him must also carefully arrange in advance to secure a reliable representative, a safe lodging house, and whatever besides is necessary, so that he is not taken in by a slow payer or by a cheat.

"Goa has never been other than fundamentally Indian …" J.M. Richards, 1982."The posteritie of the Portingales, both men and women being in the third degree, doe seeme to be naturall Indians, both in colour and fashion." J.H. van Linschoten, c. 1590."Rich on trade and loot, Goa in the halcyon days of the sixteenth century was a handsome city of great houses and fine churches… In the eyes of stern moralists the city was another Babylon, but to men of the world it was a paradise where, with beautiful Eurasian girls readily available, life was a ceaseless round of amorous assignments and sexual delights". G.V. Scammell, 1981.

In any study of seascapes, an investigation of the littoral must be central, for it is here
that land and sea meet. Is there such a thing as littoral society? Is it possible to go
around the shores of an ocean, or a sea, or indeed the whole world and identify societies
that have more in common with other littoral societies than they do with their
inland neighbors? If so, do these societies draw more on their forelands—that is, their
maritime connections—than on their hinterlands? Fishing peoples, who ostensibly
are quintessential littoral peoples, exemplify the difficulties of this identification.
While their men draw their livelihood from the sea, their women engage in processing
and marketing on land, and the whole fishing community is dependent on landbased
economic forces. Many fishing communities engage in agriculture as well as piscatorial
activity. Concepts of littoral society need to be sensitive to gradations along
the strand, from the more aquatic Marsh Arabs and peddlers at the floating markets
in Bangkok to peasants who happen to live on the coast. Three criteria in particular
need attention: location, occupation, and culture.