Andre Gunder Frank asks us to re-orient 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.

貢德・弗蘭剋，西方著名學者，加拿大多倫多大學社會學係教授。1929年生於德國柏林。1957年畢業於芝加哥大學，獲經濟學博士學位，1978年獲巴黎第八大學政治經濟學國傢博士學位。曾在歐洲、北美和拉丁美洲多所大學執教。弗蘭剋一直緻力於世界體係史、當代國際政治、經濟和社會運動的研究，為依附理論代錶人物之一。