This book situates the evolution of capitalist economies along Asia's Pacific Rim after the Second World War within broader global, political and economic changes. Specifically, it charts their growth at the interface of periodic crises and successive waves of restructuring, and links changes in the world economy to shifts in regional dynamics in east and southeast Asia. It suggests that while the expansion of Japanese corporate networks was crucial to the emergence of the region as a low-cost exporter to the world, the reintegration of China into the world market will free the region from...

This book draws upon the histories of societies based on wet-rice cultivation, such as India and China, to chart a pattern of social evolution and state formation different from Eurocentric notions. Professor Palat argues that production conditions in wet-rice agriculture did not favor large farms and that the absence of a political relationship between capitalists and rulers led to the absence of monopolies which generated the surplus that facilitated capitalism. The density of commercial linkages within the Indian Ocean world-system led to commercialism without capitalism and the large...