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success on some unifocal cultural or religious traditiona have tended to fail dismally.

The establishment of European military hegemony over Asia and Mrica has been
well discussed in the history of the modern world what the history syllabus of the University
of Cambridge used to call when I was a student there in the 1950s "the expansion of Europe"
(evoking the image of metal in heat). Along with military superiority, the economic dominance
of Europe was amply reinforced by Europe's industrial and economic power, which was by

then also firmly established. This led to various tributes to "Western values."

Even within Euripe. industrial success came first to some economies (like Britain
and Germany) and not others. and on that basis theorists. most notably Max Weber (no less).
wrote in the hey day of that tradition that it was protestant ethics that made such a success of
some of the European economies. However. already by the time Max Weber's thesis was
getting better known. the Catholic countries such as France and Italy were beginning to do
very well (quite a bit better than Britain. which kept slipping in the European league of
economic development). So the thesis was promptly changed from the advantages of

protestantism to that of Christianity and Western values in general.

Then, however. Japan broke through with an unprecedented record of economic
expansion. As a result. the Eurocentric view had to adapt itself further to include Japan in the
world of provileged cultures. Spectific Japanese norms. traditions and values from the martial
Samurai heritage to its family centred business traditions began getting very special and
favourable attention. In the first half of the twentieth century, the contrast took the form of

asking why Japan was "the only non Western country to have become a major industrial
nation?,,7 And more specifically: "Why did modern industrial capitalism arise in one East
Asian society (Japan) and not in another (China)?"s

But then things moved further. Some Asian countries and regions other than Japan
such as South Korea. Singapore. Taiwan. Hong Kong started doing very well. and the identi-
fication of Asian successes had to be extended to them too. So the Samurai had to give way to
shared traditions on the eastern edge of Asia. This development has more recently been

followed by mainland China itself becoming a country with very fast economic growth, with a
rapid transformation of its economy towards modern industrialism. So the theses now shifted
to special virtues of Confucianism a cultural tie that was seen as binding together China and
Japan and much of East Asia. A lot of the reading of Asian values has taken the form of
identitying them with the teachings of Confucius.

7F.v. Moulder. Jiman. China. and the Modem World Economy : Toward a Reintemretation of East Asian
Develop-ment (c. 1600 to c. 1918) (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 1977). page vii.
'N. Jacobs. The Origin of Modern Capitalism and Eastern Asia (Hong Kong. 1958). page ix.