Johan Goudsblom - The Course of Human History: Civilization and Social Process

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The Course

of

Human History

Kevin Reilly, Series Editor

THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS
Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali
translated by Claud Field, revised and annotated by Elton L. Daniel

LIFELINES FROM OUR PAST
A New World History
L. S. Stavrianos

NATIVE AMERICANS BEFORE 1492
The Moundbuilding Centers of the Eastern Woodlands
Lynda Norene Shaffer

GERMS, SEEDS, AND ANIMALS
Studies in Ecological History
Alfred W. Crosby

BALKAN WORLDS
The First and Last Europe
Traian Stoianovich

AN ATLAS AND SURVEY OF
SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY
Karl J. Schmidt

THE GOGO: HISTORY, CUSTOMS, AND TRADITIONS
Mathias E. Mnyampala
Translated, introduced, and edited by Gregory H. Maddox

WOMEN IN WORLD HISTORY:
Volume 1Readings from Prehistory to 1500
Volume 2Readings from 1500 to the Present
Sarah Shaver Hughes and Brady Hughes

MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA TO 1500
Lynda Norene Shaffer

THE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY
Economic Growth, Social Process, and Civilization
Johan Goudsblom, Eric Jones, and Stephen Mennell

The Course

of

Human History

Economic Growth, Social Process, and Civilization

Johan Goudsblom, Eric Jones,
and Stephen Mennell

First published 1996 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1996 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The course of human history : economic growth, social process, and civilization /
Johan Goudsblom, Eric Jones, and Stephen Mennell.
p. cm.
(Sources and studies in world history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56324-793-3 (hardcover : alk. paper).
ISBN 1-56324-794-1 (paperback : alk. paper)
1. Culture.
2. Civilization.
3. Progress.
4. Social evolution.
5. Social change.
6. Economic development.
I. Jones, E. L. (Eric Lionel)
II. Mennell, Stephen.
III. Title.
IV. Series.
HM101.G675 1996
306dc20 964547
CIP

On the Cover: Ancient Gerasa with modem Jerash (N. Jordan) in the background.
Courtesy of Kevin Reilly, Series Editor.

ISBN 13: 9781563247941 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9781563247934 (hbk)

Contents

Kevin Reilly

Stephen Mennell

Johan Goudsblom

Johan Goudsblom

Johan Goudsblom

Eric Jones

Eric Jones

Stephen Mennell

Stephen Mennell

These essays offer routes to world history that are rarely traveled by historians. They are high mountain roads, from which one can see great distances. The authors call these broad vistas long-term historical processes. The essays are the product of an unusual collaborationa seminar on Very Long-Term Economic and Social Processes, taught jointly at the University of Exeter by Stephen Mennell (now of University College Dublin), Johan Goudsblom (University of Amsterdam), and Eric Jones (University of Melbourne). Johan Goudsblom and Stephen Mennell are sociologists, influenced by the historical sociology of Norbert Elias. With Elias they revisit and revive the great traditions of Victorian social evolutionists Herbert Spencer, Edward B. Tylor, and Sir Henry Sumner Maine, and the historical sociology of Max Weber, all of whom pointed a way to world history a century ago.

Johan Goudsblom, who has previously written in Fire and Civilization about one of the most formative developments in human history, here discusses agrarian regimes from the neolithic revolution to the modern era. The dominant social process of these regimes, Goudsblom argues, is to create first priests and organized religion and then soldiers and military regimes. Skipping across millennia, he urges us to be guided by phaseology as well as chronology but to be warned that dominant trends often produce countertrends.

Stephen Mennell deals directly with the work of Norbert Elias. He explores the utility of Eliass notions of civilizing and decivilizing processes for an understanding of world history. While Elias concentrates on European, especially French, history, Mennell offers a framework for comparing these long-term social processes in European and Asian history.

The third author, Eric Jones, is an economist and economic historian, already familiar to world historians for such works as The European Miracle and Growth Recurring. In the latter work and the essays here, Jones suggests a new paradigm of economic history. Instead of marking all history from the vantage point of the Western Industrial Revolution, Jones suggests a focus on the ways in which extensive growth has become intensive growth in a number of different historical societies, including Song China and Tokugawa Japan as well as early modern Europe.

Essays like these argue (to use Goudsbloms formulation) the value of conceiving of the human past not in terms of the names and dates of individuals but in terms of impersonal stages or phases. These essays remind us that greater detail does not always produce greater knowledge. Jones, for instance, points out that the array of historical research on British industrialization has informed us only of fellow passengers, correlates, not causes of economic growth. Further, an exclusive study of Britain has distracted our attention from the larger issues of economic growth that only a comparative approach can grasp.

Not all issues are resolved here (nor could they be). To conceive of the past as stages or phases is not entirely consistent with the emphasis on process. The most venerable stage theory of world historyhunting/gathering, followed by agricultural, followed by industrial societyis crucial to Goudsblom but challenged by Jones. All authors agree, however, that historians need phases that are not fixed and processes that are not constant. Similarly, while Mennell looks to Asia for civilizing processes on the European model and Jones explicitly rejects the European model of industrialization, both authors recognize the need to avoid the Eurocentrism of the founders of historical sociology. Together these essays stimulate us to look at the entire course of human history, sometimes in a fresh new light.

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