Want to know what books Kent Deng recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Kent Deng's favorite book recommendations of all time.
1
John Hobson challenges the ethnocentric bias of mainstream accounts of the "Rise of the West" that assume that Europeans have pioneered their own development, and that the East has been a passive by-stander. Describing the rise of what he calls the "Oriental West," Hobson argues that Europe first assimilated many Eastern inventions, and then appropriated Eastern resources through imperialism. Hobson's book thus propels the hitherto marginalized Eastern peoples to the forefront of the story of progressive world history. more John Hobson challenges the ethnocentric bias of mainstream accounts of the "Rise of the West" that assume that Europeans have pioneered their own development, and that the East has been a passive by-stander. Describing the rise of what he calls the "Oriental West," Hobson argues that Europe first assimilated many Eastern inventions, and then appropriated Eastern resources through imperialism. Hobson's book thus propels the hitherto marginalized Eastern peoples to the forefront of the story of progressive world history. less 
Kent DengProfessor Hobson takes it one step further, arguing that, not only was there interdependence between Europe and Asia, Europe was for a long time the beneficiary of growth and development in the East. Apart from the usual list of paper, compasses, gunpowder and so forth, there were institutions coming in from the East, such as market laissez-faire and civilian rule. (Source)
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2
Andre Gunder Frank asks us to ReOrient our views away from Eurocentrism—to see the rise of the West as a mere blip in what was, and is again becoming, an Asia-centered world. In a bold challenge to received historiography and social theory he turns on its head the world according to Marx, Weber, and other theorists, including Polanyi, Rostow, Braudel, and Wallerstein. Frank explains the Rise of the West in world economic and demographic terms that relate it in a single historical sweep to the decline of the East around 1800. European states, he says, used the silver extracted from the... more Andre Gunder Frank asks us to ReOrient our views away from Eurocentrism—to see the rise of the West as a mere blip in what was, and is again becoming, an Asia-centered world. In a bold challenge to received historiography and social theory he turns on its head the world according to Marx, Weber, and other theorists, including Polanyi, Rostow, Braudel, and Wallerstein. Frank explains the Rise of the West in world economic and demographic terms that relate it in a single historical sweep to the decline of the East around 1800. European states, he says, used the silver extracted from the American colonies to buy entry into an expanding Asian market that already flourished in the global economy. Resorting to import substitution and export promotion in the world market, they became Newly Industrializing Economies and tipped the global economic balance to the West. That is precisely what East Asia is doing today, Frank points out, to recover its traditional dominance. As a result, the "center" of the world economy is once again moving to the "Middle Kingdom" of China. Anyone interested in Asia, in world systems and world economic and social history, in international relations, and in comparative area studies, will have to take into account Frank's exciting reassessment of our global economic past and future. less Kent DengAndre Gunder Frank’s book takes a more or less bird’s-eye view over the world from outer space. He follows the flow of monetary silver after the Great Discovery [of silver in America]. Frank realised that all the dispensable silver flew from the Spanish New World and Europe in one-way traffic to Asia, mainly to China, for some three centuries. Consequently, the world accepted a single form of... (Source)
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3
The Great Divergence brings new insight to one of the classic questions of history: Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe, despite surprising similarities between advanced areas of Europe and East Asia? As Ken Pomeranz shows, as recently as 1750, parallels between these two parts of the world were very high in life expectancy, consumption, product and factor markets, and the strategies of households. Perhaps most surprisingly, Pomeranz demonstrates that the Chinese and Japanese cores were no worse off ecologically than Western Europe. Core areas throughout the... more The Great Divergence brings new insight to one of the classic questions of history: Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe, despite surprising similarities between advanced areas of Europe and East Asia? As Ken Pomeranz shows, as recently as 1750, parallels between these two parts of the world were very high in life expectancy, consumption, product and factor markets, and the strategies of households. Perhaps most surprisingly, Pomeranz demonstrates that the Chinese and Japanese cores were no worse off ecologically than Western Europe. Core areas throughout the eighteenth-century Old World faced comparable local shortages of land-intensive products, shortages that were only partly resolved by trade.
Pomeranz argues that Europe's nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal, which substituted for timber. This made Europe's failure to use its land intensively much less of a problem, while allowing growth in energy-intensive industries. Another crucial difference that he notes has to do with trade. Fortuitous global conjunctures made the Americas a greater source of needed primary products for Europe than any Asian periphery. This allowed Northwest Europe to grow dramatically in population, specialize further in manufactures, and remove labor from the land, using increased imports rather than maximizing yields. Together, coal and the New World allowed Europe to grow along resource-intensive, labor-saving paths.
Meanwhile, Asia hit a cul-de-sac. Although the East Asian hinterlands boomed after 1750, both in population and in manufacturing, this growth prevented these peripheral regions from exporting vital resources to the cloth-producing Yangzi Delta. As a result, growth in the core of East Asia's economy essentially stopped, and what growth did exist was forced along labor-intensive, resource-saving paths--paths Europe could have been forced down, too, had it not been for favorable resource stocks from underground and overseas. less Kent DengProfessor Kenneth Pomeranz’s book is more or less a synthesis of Jones and Wong. What he achieves in the book is to show the reader that Europe (Western) and Asia (China) departed from each other in terms of quality of life (everyday consumption) only after 1750. Before that date, Europe was not superior to Asia in those terms. (Source)
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4
"This bold, intellectually ambitious, and wholly original book challenges the way in which Western social science understands China. . . . It will set the standard for all future comparative and theoretical research on China."--Timothy Brook, Stanford University"This is a most extraordinary book. Wong's approach is to explore carefully similarities and differences between Chinese and European development over the long term, highlighting themes related to state-making and popular action. This is by far the most sophisticated, extended discussion of imperial and modern China in comparative... more "This bold, intellectually ambitious, and wholly original book challenges the way in which Western social science understands China. . . . It will set the standard for all future comparative and theoretical research on China."--Timothy Brook, Stanford University"This is a most extraordinary book. Wong's approach is to explore carefully similarities and differences between Chinese and European development over the long term, highlighting themes related to state-making and popular action. This is by far the most sophisticated, extended discussion of imperial and modern China in comparative perspective that I have seen."--Peter C. Perdue, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe assumption still made in much social science research that Europe provides a universal model of development is fundamentally mistaken, according to R. Bin Wong. The solution is not, however, simply to reject Eurocentric norms but to build complementary perspectives, such as a Sinocentric one, to evaluate current understandings of European developments. A genuinely comparative perspective, he argues, will free China from wrong expectations and will allow those working on European problems to recognize the distinct character of Western development. less Kent DengProfessor Roy Bin Wong’s book went a step further from Growth Recurring by using China as a benchmark to measure Europe. The difference between Jones and Wong is that the former gave both China and Europe an equal emphasis while the latter leans heavily towards China. According to Professor Wong, Qing China (1644-1911) perfected all the key sectors in the economy, including flexible and efficient... (Source)
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5
This important book compares the growth achieved in Japan and Europe with the frustrated growth in the major societies of mainland Eurasia. More broadly, it is about the conflict in world history between economic growth and political greed. Eric Jones proposes two fundamentally new frameworks. One replaces industrial revolution or great discontinuity as the source of change and challenges the reader to accept early periods and non-western societies as vital to understanding the growth process. The second offers a new explanation in which tendencies for growth were omnipresent but were... more This important book compares the growth achieved in Japan and Europe with the frustrated growth in the major societies of mainland Eurasia. More broadly, it is about the conflict in world history between economic growth and political greed. Eric Jones proposes two fundamentally new frameworks. One replaces industrial revolution or great discontinuity as the source of change and challenges the reader to accept early periods and non-western societies as vital to understanding the growth process. The second offers a new explanation in which tendencies for growth were omnipresent but were usually--though not always--suppressed. Finally, the erosion of these negative factors is discussed, explaining the rise of a world economy in which growth has recurred and East Asia takes a prominent place.
Eric Jones has written a substantial new introduction for this edition, which includes discussions of early evidence of growth episodes and the relation of these points to the Industrial Revolution, and the relevance of the East Asian "miracle" to his thesis.
less Kent DengMy research interest is in comparative economic growth and development over the long term, from Christ to the present time. There have been two big puzzles in the research field that I have been involved in. The first issue is related to the British Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century in terms of why and how it ever occurred let alone overtook the world as a growth/development model.... (Source)
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