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Reviews REVIEWS Brendan O'LEARY, The Asiatic Mode of Production: Oriental Despotism, Historical Materialism and Indian History. Explorations in Social Structures (Basil Blackwell, Oxford/Cambridge 1989) XIV + 394 p. (ISBN 0-631-16766-8). Scholasticism and scholarship nowadays rarely meet. The former pretends to be absolutely right, the latter leaves room for the wisdom of Cartesian doubt. But Mr. O'Leary quite happily notes that the Marxist concept of the Asiatic mode of production-a much discussed topic indeed!-is a very scholastic subject. Wanting to put a definite and final end to everything one could dream of saying in the mat- ter, Mr. O'Leary himself displays a good deal of solid scholasticism. He conse- quently likes to tell us all and everything: we learn that he word-processed his study with Write Now but switched later to Microsoft Word (3. 01) on a Macintosh Plus. It's good to know, I'm sure. At a rough counting his bibliography amounts to more than threehundred titles, although he has confined himself to the literature available in English and French. One shudders at the thought of Mr. O'Leary being able to read German (and Russian!) as well. There are of course an impressive number of footnotes, more than a few http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Brill

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1991 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0022-4995
eISSN
1568-5209
DOI
10.1163/156852091X00076
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

REVIEWS Brendan O'LEARY, The Asiatic Mode of Production: Oriental Despotism, Historical Materialism and Indian History. Explorations in Social Structures (Basil Blackwell, Oxford/Cambridge 1989) XIV + 394 p. (ISBN 0-631-16766-8). Scholasticism and scholarship nowadays rarely meet. The former pretends to be absolutely right, the latter leaves room for the wisdom of Cartesian doubt. But Mr. O'Leary quite happily notes that the Marxist concept of the Asiatic mode of production-a much discussed topic indeed!-is a very scholastic subject. Wanting to put a definite and final end to everything one could dream of saying in the mat- ter, Mr. O'Leary himself displays a good deal of solid scholasticism. He conse- quently likes to tell us all and everything: we learn that he word-processed his study with Write Now but switched later to Microsoft Word (3. 01) on a Macintosh Plus. It's good to know, I'm sure. At a rough counting his bibliography amounts to more than threehundred titles, although he has confined himself to the literature available in English and French. One shudders at the thought of Mr. O'Leary being able to read German (and Russian!) as well. There are of course an impressive number of footnotes, more than a few

Journal

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the OrientBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1991

There are no references for this article.