the agrarian question in asia - h-net...1900. readings and required texts readings will be posted in...

Time: MW 2-3:30; Spring 2015 Course Number: HIST/SAST 270.401 Location: Williams Hall 201 Instructor: Faisal Chaudhry Office Hours: T 12-1:30, W 11-12:30; Williams 809 [email protected]; (215) 898-6048

The Agrarian Question in Asia:

A Chapter in the History of Economic Thought

Course Description: Today, amidst countless reports about the ongoing move from countryside to city in the developing world, the rise of its new middle classes, and the ‘triumph of capitalism’ and ‘globalization’ since the end of the Cold War, it may seem that India and China are the leading examples of countries beginning such momentous transitions. However, the anticipation of the imminent ‘great transformation’ of these parts of the world has a much longer history. In this course, we will look at how the understanding of economic processes and change has informed their histories over a much longer term, from an early modern period in which India and China constituted the two great agrarian empire zones of Asia to the 20th-century period in which they became ‘modern’ nation states...

For more information see https://canvas.upenn.edu/courses/1270544/pages/sast-slash-hist270

Agrarian Question in Asia Syllabus (Preliminary)

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…Course Description continued

Because we will be concerned with the understanding of economic processes and change, in this course we will also survey the history of economic ideas, focusing, especially, on the stimulus that thinking about agriculture has long given to thinking about the economy. Initially, our focus within this history will center on the emergence of the canon of ‘classical economics’ (or, as it is also known, ‘classical political economy’), which we will look at in close conjunction with important issues in the economic histories of India and China. Among the questions that we will ask are ones about the connection between agrarian social structure and the structure of political economic authority, agricultural production and the production of value, the relationship between agriculture and industry, and the perceived necessity of/unique challenges posed by agrarian social transformation as a prerequisite to national development in countries that remained less than fully ‘capitalist’ by the end of the 19th century. Ultimately, therefore, in the first half of the course we will take a broad view of ‘the agrarian question,’ considering it to be important both to the formation of classical economics as well as the historical experience of the 17-19th centuries in Asia. As we arrive at the 20th century, we will then come to the agrarian question proper, which concerned the dynamics of capitalist agriculture and the attendant stance that political authorities were to take on questions about social transformation and the peasantry. In this part of the course as well, however, we will try to broaden our view as we try to understand the agrarian question in the 20th century as more than just a constitutive feature of the social and political history of Asia once Chinese and Indian nationalists and revolutionaries began more explicitly to address themselves to it. One major goal of the second half of the course will thus be to trace how questions about agriculture and the peasantry continued to serve as a prompt for stimulating new idioms of the economistic long after the so-called demise of classical political economy in the West with the emergence of a new ‘scientific’ tradition of neoclassical economics by 1900.

Readings and Required Texts

Readings will be posted in the “Course Documents” section of the website, generally becoming available for each subsequent week after the previous Wednesday’s lecture. The following books will be available for purchase at the Penn Book Center: Walter Eltis. The Classical Theory of Economic Growth. Palgrave, 2001.

Assignments and Grading

Grades for the course will be based on 3 components of 30-40% each. These are as follows: 30% Class Attendance and Informed Participation 30% 5 Reaction Papers to readings (2-3 pages each, 6% each)


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40% Take Home Final Exam Essay (10-12 pages)

Course Policies

Attendance and Participation: As a course intended for inquisitive students, especially those who have a background in the regions we will be focusing on, it will be more participatory than a traditional lecture even if still more lecture-based than a seminar. Therefore, in addition to reading and attendance, it is important that students come to class in the spirit of engaging in scholarly dialogue about the topics and materials we will be covering. (More than one unexcused/undocumented absences will result in your overall mark being docked a half-grade. For more information on attendance policies and the mechanisms that exist to report anticipated absences that can be excused see http://www.college.upenn.edu/class-attendance ) Written Work: Students are required to submit all assignments at the start of each lecture on the day of which they due. Late submissions will result in the deduction of a half letter grade for each day the assignment is late. For example, if an assignment is not handed in at the start of whatever given lecture session when it is due, the first deduction will mean that otherwise A- work can score, at best, only a B+. Should you have a documented excuse for being unable to hand in an assignment please be sure to contact the teaching staff about this as soon as possible so that an appropriate alternative can be can worked out. Urgent medical or family emergencies and religious holidays will be accommodated, though here as well you should mention such dates in advance. Plagiarism and Violations of Academic Integrity: Students should be sure to read the University’s code of student conduct, especially its section on violations of academic integrity and plagiarism. Plagiarism, which is the unacknowledged use of the ideas or works of another on a paper, is something that will be taken very seriously and that will not be tolerated. (Also see: http://www.upenn.edu/academicintegrity/.) It will result in an automatic failing grade for the assignment as well as the possibility that you will face larger consequences from higher administrative censure by the appropriate office at the University.

Schedule of Topics

I. Setting the Stage

0. 1/14: What is meant by ‘The Agrarian Question? Paul McLaughlin, “Rethinking the Agrarian Question: The Limits of Essentialism and the Promise of Evolutionism,” Human Ecology Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1998), 25-39.

1. 1/21: Three Approaches to Thinking About the History of Economic Thought Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts, 1-18. Mary Morgan, The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think (2012),


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1-38.

II. ‘Economics’ Before the Classical Economists?

2. 1/26: Discourses on Householding, Thrift, and Government Cheng Lin, Terry Peach and Wang Fang, eds., The History of Ancient Chinese Economic Thought (2014), pp. 32-45, [66-81], 99-105. S. Ambirajan, “The Concepts of Happiness, Ethics, and Economic Values in Ancient Economic Thought,” in B.B. Price, ed., Ancient Economic Thought (1997), pp. 19-39.

3. 1/28: From Aristotle to Adam Smith? ‘Economics’ in ‘the West’?

Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (Oxford 1996 [1954]), 48-70. Diana Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (2002). 132-158.

III. The Economic History of Agrarian Asia and the Dawn of Classical Economics

4. 2/2: Mercantalism as Theory & an Asia-centric Early Modern Trading World? Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, 318-355 [pp. 335-345 (top), 348-350 (top), and 353-355 you can treat as optional/omit. Just look at the sub-section headings).

Andre Gunder-Frank, Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (1998), 1-9, 52-58, [64-70], 84-92,108-117, [126-30], 158-64.

****************************Reaction Paper 1 is Due on Class 5******************************

5. 2/4: Late Ming/Early Qing China in the 17th-18th Centuries: Production and Political Economic Structure J.A.G. Roberts, A Concise History of China (1999), 134-161. Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth (2007), 33-40. Roy Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of Historical Experience (1997), 71-72, 88-95, [101-104], 113-116, [116-122].


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6. 2/9: North/South India in the 17th-18th Centuries: Production and Political Economic Structure Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (3rd. ed, 2011), 28-53. Dietmar Rothermund, An Economic History of India (2002), 1-7. Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850 (2011), 1-3, [7-16], 21-27, [34-37], 37-46, 59-71.

7. 2/11: ‘Mercantalism’ as Practice & the Beginnings of the Divergence between the West and the Rest? Ricardo Duchesne, “Between Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism: Debating Andre Gunder Rank’s Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age,” Science & Society, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Winter 2001/2002), pp. 428-63 [Jan de Vries, Review of Prasannan Parthasarathi's Why Europe Grew Rich, American Historical Review, Vol. 117, No. 5 (2012), 1532-1534.] [Joel Mokyr, Review of Prasannan Parthasarathi’s Why Europe Grew Rich, EH.net (Jan. 2012), http://eh.net/book_reviews/why-europe-grew-rich-and-asia-did-not-global-economic-divergence-1600-1850/ ]

IV. Questioning the Agrarian before the Agrarian Question: The Traditions of Classical Political Economy

8. 2/16: The French Physiocrats: Agriculture and Manufacture as a Circular Flow (& the Nature of ‘Handicraft’ Production in Early Modern India and China) Eltis, The Classical Theory of Economic Growth, 1-33, [39-41, 66-67]. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of a World Economy (2000), 86-107.

9. 2/18: Where Does Value Come From? Adam Smith (& the Wealth of Asia) Eltis, The Classical Theory of Economic Growth, 68-91, 100-105. Irfan Habib, “Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of Mughal India,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1969) pp. 32-50.


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10. 2/23: Ricardo, Malthus: On Rent, Landlordism, and (Capitalist) Agriculture E.K. Hunt and Mark Lautzenheiser, History of Economic Thought: A Critical Perspective (3rd ed., 2011), 92-124. Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect (4th ed., 1985), 67-77. Shi Qi and Fang Zhuofen, “Changes in Tenancy and Hiring,” in Xu Dixin and Wu Chengming, eds., Chinese Capitalism, 1522-1840 (2000), 130-146.

11. 2/25: Classical Political Economy as Mode of Othering, Exploiting, and/or Explaining the Non-West? On Ideologies of Imperial Self-Interest and ‘Asiatic’ Modes of Production Andre Gunder Frank, Re Orient, 12 (bottom)-20. Readings on Rationalizing Imperial Self-Interest: Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (1959), 81-93; Leslie Merchant, “The War of the Poppies,” History Today, Vol. 52, No. 5 (May 5, 2002), only pp. 1-7, [8-9] of the pdf. Readings on “Asiatic Mode of Production”: Tanigawa Michio, Medieval Chinese Society and the “Local” Community (UCLA 1985), 30-35, 53-65; Talat Ahmed, “Reflections on the Asiatic Mode of Production in India,” Edinburgh Research Explorer (2013), 1-18.

V. From Agrarian Empires to National Economies: The Long 19th Century in British India and Late Qing China & the Ascendancy of the West

12. 3/2: Peripheralization and the Making of a National Economy (1): Agricultural Commercialization and Effects on the Peasantry in India Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (2002), 311-340. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein (2000), 293-314.

13. 3/4: Peripheralization and the Making of a National Economy (2): Agricultural Commercialization and Effects on the Peasantry in China Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 341-376. Margarat Schabas, The Natural Origins of Economics (2007), 1-21.


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14. 3/16: Thinking a National Economy (1): Lamenting Stagnation and Calling for Self-Sufficiency [Background Reading: Paul Ropp, China in World History (Oxford 2010), 102-113.] Thomas Kennedy, “Self-Strengthening: An Analysis Based on Some Recent, Ch'ing-shih wen-t'I, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Nov. 1974), 3-35

W. Theodore De Bary, ed., Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. II (Columbia 2000), 223-226, 233-240, [240-244]. Serhat Kologlugil, “Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge and Economic Discourse,” Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2010), 1-10.


15. 3/18: Thinking a National Economy (2): Anxieties about Poverty and Critiques of Immiseration [Background Reading: Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 53-59, 78-85.] Steven Beaudoin, Poverty in World History (2007), 35-46, [57-67], 67-75. Ajit Dasgupta, A History of Indian Economic Thought (1993), pp. 74-79, 87-107. Kologlugil, “Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge and Economic Discourse,” 10-19.

VI. The Second ‘Scientific’ Revolution in Economics and the Extrusion of the Agrarian Question into Social Theory

16. 3/23: The Terms of Trade? Mill, Pre-Marginal Utility Ideas, the Significance of Free Trade Hunt and Lautzenheiser, History of Economic Thought, 174-201.

Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect, 204-211.

Readings on “The Imperialism of Free Trade” Debate: John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” The Economic History Review, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1953), pp. 1-15 and William Roger Louis, ed., Imperialism: The Robinson and Gallagher Controversy (NY: New Viewpoints), 1976, Preface


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and 1-8.

17. 3/25: Marx and the Limits of the Classical Tradition: Exploitation and the Question of Social Transformation Eltis, The Classical Theory of Economic Growth, 233-279, 303-308.

18. 3/30: The Rise of Neoclassical Economics in the West: Margin Utility as a ‘Revolution’ in the Theory of Value, Mathematicization, and the Retreat of the ‘Macro’? Hunt and Lautzenheiser, History of Economic Thought, 247-78. Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect, 294-308.

VII. The Persistence of Non-Quantitative Idioms of the Economistic in Early 20th Century China and India

19. 4/1: Other Economics(1): Republicanism, Nationalism, and Socialism in Pre-(Communist) Revolutionary China Background: W. Scott Morton and Charlton M. Lewis, China: Its History and Culture (4th ed., 2004), 175-195, [195-200]. Hailong Tian, “Differing Translations, Contested Meanings: A Motor for the 1911 Revolution?” in Hagen Schulz-Forbert, ed., A Global Conceptual History of Asia, 1860-1940 (2014), 43-60. R.G. Tiedemann, “Communist Revolution and Peasant Mobilisation in the Hinterland of North China: The Early Years,” in Henry Bernstein and Tom Brass, eds., Agrarian Questions: Essays in Appreciation of T.J. Byres (1996), 132-152.

20. 4/6: Other Economics(2): Anti-Colonialism, Nationalism, and Socialism in Pre-

Independence India Background: Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 90-91, 94-108, 111, 113 (bottom)-119. John Patrick Haithcox, “Left Wing Unity and the Indian Nationalist Movement: M.N. Roy and the Congress Socialist Party,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1969), 17-56.



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21. 4/8: Other Economics(3): The Agrarian Question as a Concern about Proletarian

versus Peasant Emancipation/Transition in Asia T.J. Byres, “The Agrarian Question, Forms of Capitalist Agrarian Transition and the State: An Essay with Reference to Asia,” Social Scientist, Vol. 14, No. 11/12 (Nov. - Dec. 1986), 1-43 ONLY. Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic (NY: The Free Press, 1999 [1977]), 41-51.

22. 4/13: Other Economics(4): The Agrarian Question as a Concern about the Shift from Agriculture to Industry T.J. Byres, “The Agrarian Question, Forms of Capitalist Agrarian Transition and the State: An Essay with Reference to Asia,” Social Scientist, Vol. 14, No. 11/12 (Nov. - Dec. 1986), 43-58. Sam Moyo, Praveen Jha, and Paris Yeros, “The Classical Agrarian Question: Myth, Reality and Relevance Today,” Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2013), 93-115. D.S. Nag, A Study of Economic Plans for India (1949), foreword, 10-22, [22-25], 25-27, [27-28].

VIII. The Agrarian Question and its Discontents in the Post-War Era 23. 4/15: The Development of Development Economics

H.W. Arndt, “Economic Development: A Semantic History,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Apr. 1981), 457-466. James Cypher & James Dietz, The Process of Economic Development, 3rd ed. (2008), 127-32, 140-64. P.C. Mahalanobis, “Some Observations on the Process of Growth of National Income,” in Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Vol. 12, Part 4 (1953), 307-312.

24. 4/20: Other Economics(5): Agricultural Collectivization and Maoism Naughton, The Chinese Economy, 55-74. Meisner, Mao’s China, 134-48.


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Y.Y. Kueh, “Mao and Agriculture in China’s Industrialization: Three Antitheses in a 50-Year Perspective,” The China Quarterly, No. 187 (Sep. 2006), 700-723.

25. 4/22: Other Economics(6): Gandhian Village Self Sufficiency, Indian Socialism,

and Green Revolution Dasgupta, A History of Indian Economic Thought, 137-151, [152-58]. Rothermund, An Economic History of India, 127-145. Utsa Patnaik, “Development of Capitalism in Agriculture: I,” Social Scientist, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Sep. 1971), 15-31, but only read pp. 25-28 and “Development of Capitalism in Agriculture: II,” Social Scientist, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Oct. 1972), 3-18.


26. 4/27: Other Economics(7): Planning as an Alternative to Market Allocation Len Brewster, “Review Essay: Towards a New Socialism? by Paul Cockshott and Alin F. Cottrell,” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 2004), 65-77. Ernst Mandel, “In Defence of Socialist Planning,” New Left Review, No.159, (Sep.-Oct. 1986), 5-37.

27. 4/29: Planning as Weight of the Past? Planning as Pre-Condition of the Present? Amartya Sen, “Development: Which Way Now?” The Economic Journal, Vol. 93, No. 372 (Dec. 1983), 745-760. Amartya Sen, “The Discipline of Economics,” Economica, Vol. 75 (2008), pp. 617-628. John Hoffman, “The Maoist Economic Model,” Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Sep. 1971), pp. 12-27.

***********************Final Exam Essay is Due on May 12 by 5pm**************************