means like the early Near East, Greece, and Rome; “medieval” means like Feudal Europe; and “modern” means like the post-Renaissance West. Only a slight variation of this universally accepted pattern brings us that most stultifying of all historical generalizations, the Marxist stereotype, according to which history is an inevitable, unilinear progression from the slave state, through feudalism, to capitalism, and on to the Socialist utopia.
The ancient-medieval-modern division of history is a useful generalization for handling Western history, and even the Marxist theories make some sense in the Occident. But neither stands up if we look at History as a whole, that is at the non-Western preponderance of man’s historical experience. Similarities in the ancient stage, as we have seen, may have existed throughout the world, though there is considerable doubt about the Marxist generalization that slavery was the foundation of production at this time. When we come to the medieval-feudal and modern-capitalist stages, however, these Western generalizations break down completely. There are no such stages in most of Asian history.
Let us look at post-classic China for a moment to see how different the pattern is. After a decline and fall of the Han Empire that resembles the collapse of Rome to an extraordinary degree, China succeeded in recreating its old imperial unity, but on a much higher technological level. In place of the pale misshapen shadow of Rome that flitted through European history under the name of the Holy Roman Empire, China recreated its own Rome, bigger, stronger, and richer than ever before. When the so-called dark ages hung over Europe, China was living through one of its culturally most creative periods. By the time feudalism was at its height in Europe, China had developed a highly sophisticated urban society that in many ways was closer to what the West was to know in the nineteenth century than to any earlier phase of our history.
Realizing how badly China and most other Asian countries fit into the Western historical stereotypes, some scholars, particularly those of Marxist background, have devised a separate category—Oriental despotism—to describe these non-Western societies. This is at least a step in the right direction, and I for one applaud Wittfogel when he looks at Europe from the vantage point of this Asia-oriented concept and points out which areas or epochs in the West, such as Rome, Byzantium, and Russia, have shown signs of approximating this non-Western norm.
Only when we accept the fact that Western feudalism, far from being an inevitable part of normal historical progress, was in fact a decidedly peculiar European phenomenon, are we at
