An Introduction to East Asia
WITTFOGEL, KARL A.
An Introduction to East Asia The Far East in the Modern World. By Franz H. Michael & George E. Taylor. Holt. 724 pp. $9.25. Revieived by Karl A. Wittfogel Director, Chinese History Project,...
...And they do not minimize Mao's dependence on Moscow...
...The states of Europe had their officials, but their functions were limited...
...of course, the supreme center of Far Eastern culture, China...
...Obviously, the two authors have written an extremely useful—and decidedly original—book...
...In the first part of their study, the authors discuss Far Eastern conditions prior to the impact of the West...
...industrial society...
...For this kind of society there was no parallel in the history of Western Europe...
...Speaking of the institutional background, Michael and Taylor make it clear that, as distinct from Japan, traditional China was not a "feudal" society, as the Communists misleadingly maintain, but a specific variant of a bureaucratic society...
...Wherever Americans went, they took with them, in a world largely ruled by monarchies, the hated doctrine of republicanism...
...1 began to explore the great and strange civilizations of East Asia...
...Rejecting the much publicized attempt to depict the Chinese Communists as "Maoist" heretics, they show that, since its creation, the Chinese Communist party has faithfully carried out policies outlined by Lenin and the Comintern for Communists operating in '"backward, colonial and semi-colonial countries...
...In a world economy dominated by monopolistic trade practices, they operated as independent merchants backed by a nation demanding freedom to trade and reciprocal commercial opportunities...
...And they reveal the Communist support for the indigenous anti-imperialistic struggle as a first step toward the establishment of n new type of (totalitarian) imperialism and a new type of (total) colonialism...
...To put the issue sharply: China, like the Near East and other regions of the Orient, suffered not from an excess but from a lack of those feudal conditions that, in the West and in Japan, favored the rise of a multi-centered, democratic...
...the Russian Far East, Korea, the islands of Japan...
...Using a historical and institutional approach, Michael and Taylor explain the major changes brought about by the impact of Western imperialism...
...In no way can their role be compared with that of the bureaucracy of China, which managed the Government, the Army and the economy, which upheld the ideology...
...They have ventured to survey, within the confines of 700 information-packed pages, the forces of East Asia that today figure so importantly in the world scene...
...Americans took with them, wherever they went, the ideological dynamite of the American Revolution...
...the countries of Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma and the Malay Peninsula...
...China had no feudal lords or feudal relationships, no military aristocracy, orders of chivalry, no serfs bound to the soil, no fiefs, no entailed estates, and no hereditary status groups...
...and which dominated both state and society...
...The modernization of such a society raises problems that cannot be equated with those confronting post-feudal Europe...
...Revieived by Karl A. Wittfogel Director, Chinese History Project, Columbia arid Washington Universities The authors of this impressive publication, Franz H. Michael and George E. Taylor—both professors at the University of Washington and both prominent authorities on Far Eastern affairs—have set themselves a stupendous task...
...the island groups of Indonesia and the Philippines," and...
...Speaking of the many-faceted impact of the West, the two authors stress the far-reaching effect of the American Revolution on East Asia's internal and international relations...
...Michael and Taylor do not minimize the oppressiveness of the Communist regime by falsely identifying it with the long-enduring despotism of imperial China...
...In the second and third parts, they show how, on the basis of these conditions, the East Asian countries have responded to the two most fateful events in their recent history: the expansion of the Western powers before and after the Industrial Revolution and the spread of Communism...
...Nor was there anything in China to parallel the institutions of early commercial capitalism in the West...
...The Far East in the Modern World is a milestone in the realistic interpretation of China and her neighbors...
...The dimensions of this task are apparent as soon as we visualize the number and the cultural complexity of the countries involved...
...In the early days of the Republic...
...Speaking of the spread of Communism in such countries as China...
...I onlv wish 1 had had a book like this when, as an enthusiastic young student...
...Michael and Taylor view the Far East as comprising all the lands that lie east of India, "the border lands of Inner Asia, Tibet, Turkestan, Mongolia, and Manchuria...
...The many aspects of this development are presented in broad and illuminating frames of reference...
...There were no free cities, no independent merchant class, no free competition and no popular participation in government...
...In an age of privateering and piracy, of convoys and blockades, they fought for freedom of the seas...
Vol. 40 • January 1957 • No. 1
