Works related to the European Miracle
(1) 1998: ReOrient – Global Economy in the Asian Age, 416 pages, July 1998, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

An introduction to ReOrient, by Frank himself.
A sample of Frank's thinking, by Frank himself: a review of Western sociological thinking about China in the XIXth and XXth centuries.

Links: A.G.Frank displays a sprawling presence on the web. Apparently, his politically-correct supporters are showing great devotion, or he himself consumed much energy in his own marketing. Following are just two of the numerous links one falls across by typing his name at Altavista.
A.G.Frank home page, updated in March 00.
A site displaying various ressources and addresses
A list of Frank's works at University of Colorado's website.
At long last, some criticism of Frank is available as well, at University of Kansas.

My personal and subjective view of Frank's theories
Gunder Frank belongs to the school hoping to counterbalance the chauvinistic "The West is the Best" thinking that still dominates many Western minds by adopting a riotous anti-Western stance. His thought evolved in two phases.

First, Frank explained the rise of the West after the Great Discoveries by the exploitation of the Third World in the making (a kind of "the West is the Pest" thinking). It is true that exploitation of the European colonies in Latin America, Africa and Asia brought richness to the colonizers and misery to the locals, and that this wealth helped the West to rise. But, unfortunately, this "theory" explains nothing. The question remains untouched: why did Western Europe succeed in such a commercial colonization movement, and not the Muslim World, India or China?

Maybe comprehending this difficulty, Frank tried in ReOrient (1998) to negate the whole European miracle. Other civilizations (India and China) had always had the lead. He reduced the rise of the West to a little blump occured from 1800 to 1950 at most, negligible in magnitude and duration (a kind of "the Rest is the Best" attitude).

However, neither Frank's demonizing the West, nor his ostrich-like negationism can help in his struggle against Western jingoism: ironically, Frank's both approaches are heavily Eurocentric. An "anti-West" attitude still revolves... around the West.

It is a long way from Frank's anti-West and negationist theories to the much-needed universalist, equal-opportunity view, where all civilizations are analyzed according to common rules, without passion. Like I do in Le Secret de l'Occident, the West must be dealt with on par with India, China and the Middle East. It becomes then possible to explain, with the same rules, the European "miracle" of the second millenium, the European decline from about –200 to about +1000 and the Chinese decline from 1300 to 1900, for instance. In a similar way as the universal law of gravitation can account for lots of different trajectories: for comets falling on the Earth to planets gently circling the Sun.

Scholarship: 2/5

Theory: 1/5