Help!

What a piece of work is a man?

How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty

In form and motion how express and admirable

In action how like an Angel, in apprehension how like a God

The Beauty of the World!

W. Shakespeare -- Hamlet

So how do we get from the Archaic to the Modern? The patterns of the Archaic World from our view seem to point out certain tendencies, certain values, those five fundamental features we described in the introduction that are different from other patterns -- the values we take for granted today -- which began to develop around 1500. But what can get us there? What is so compelling as to bring a new set of values to human populations? The simple passage of time? Our species has existed for a long time, so how and why did patterns happen to begin to change within the last five hundred years. This question is relatively recent in scholarship, as old assumptions (that people are just people wherever they are and they basically want, and expect, the same things out of life) are examined within the spectrum of new ideas. Our assumption is that people are not just people, and though each culture has peculiar habits, more significantly, they also share certain general features that informs their consciousness. And it is that change in consciousness that we describe generally as the facets of different worlds, which would need to somehow change to get us from Archaic to Modern patterns. But what could alter human consciousness? And not just with one person who can trip on some hallucinogen and claim to see into the spirit world, but over whole populations? Something profound has to happen, and we will look for the possibilities of new experience and new frames of referencing which might fundamentally change patterns of human abundance and human knowledge. And we believe the Bard was right, that for the expression of human kind to become so noble in reason, form and faculty will need to go through a profound change in order to alter the basic values of human communities.

Most Historians do acknowledge that within the last five hundred years there have been many profound changes which characterize the Modern Era. They perhaps don't try and find general patterns of human consciousness the way we do, but to each his own -- interpretation that is. Usually, these profound changes coincide with developments occurring in Europe, especially when trying to define the course of Western Civilization. Most importantly, the Renaissance is used to describe the beginnings and birth of the Modern ideal. And that may very well be true, for as we will see the Renaissance is at the very least a beginning of a new valuation of human life, and an era that sees the development of new identity systems which revolve around individual being. Not perhaps individuated, yet, but emphasizing new patterns all the same. And the Renaissance is big, it does change things, it does lead to the possibilities of a changed human consciousness, but in order to understand the possibilities of that change we need to understand first how and why the Renaissance came into being. Most scholars seem to view the Renaissance as a European event, and therefore look for causation within European development. This may be right, the Europeans may have (magically) re-invented themselves, and we'll discuss that possibility, and the traditional interpretations of other texts in the course of developing our argument. But before we do that, we'll take a little diversion to somewhere outside the European world. Our premise, for this chapter, is that change occurred, and that for change to occur new forms and new expressions must be relatable to both cause and effect in the progression of events. Therefore, it will be our contention that the changes in the European world which spawned the Renaissance were stimulated by external causes. Those causes we believe began with the rise and development of Islam.

Argument note: “How” and “Why,” as you should assume, must necessarily be based on logical assumptions. They have to make sense.

For the centuries that Europeans lived in the filth and squalor of the Middle Ages, the Islam flourished. Islam encompassed the most advanced societies in the western world in technology, in medicine, in learning -- in hygiene. More importantly over its long history, from the time of the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century to the 15th century, Islam developed possibilities which might alter the basic structures of human society, and possibly lead to alterations in human consciousness. Islam did not create the Modern World, nor are modern values a function of Islamic cultures. In fact, most of Muslim populations today live by Archaic values. But Islam did form a foundation for a change in values, both for itself and for other regions, which its growth, both cultural and economic, affected.

After initial unity the world of Islam was dominated by regional empires which were based primarily on ethnic relationships. Gone were the days of the Prophet's ideal of cross-cultural unity, and the people of Islam, like the people of Christendom fell back on what is most comfortable to the human species, corollary of Rule #3, promote one communal identity to the detriment of another. Gooooooo humans.

Islam and the Beginning of the Modern World

Islam, both as a religion and as a cultural perspective, developed in the Near East in the vacuum of power and cohesion in the Mediterranean world following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 400s. While the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire remained until the 1400s and attempted to carry on the legacy of Augustus, it was a pale imitation at its best. The Eastern Empire rarely exerted the sort of unifying dominion over the Mediterranean and Near Eastern World which Rome did, and therefore, economically and politically opportunity existed for some people or power to take advantage of the situation. Arabia formed the heart of a new empire which would grow to encompass lands from Europe across North Africa and deep into Asia. This new empire, based on Islam, would also transform the world through the introduction of new technologies, new ideas and new economic systems. These systems ultimately laid the foundation for the type of wealth and knowledge which would lead to a change in consciousness, but not in the world of Islam itself, instead the beneficiaries would inhabit the lands of the old empire, which was centered on Rome.

Argument Note: Two things: first, we have our introductory paragraph, which, as you can notice, accomplishes two things. We explain the variables we will explore, the rise of Islam and its cultural and economic impact, and also that Islam will eventually aid in the possibilities of the Modern World to come (that's our thesis, anyway). The second feature of the paragraph is thematic, a way of writing which brings a nice current to the way the words are written. Rome is mentioned in the first sentence, and then we moved away from it to describe our purpose. Then we finish with the use of Rome, not the historical empire, but with Rome as a representative concept, ebb and flow, rolling with the tide.

The second thing we need to mention, and you can keep this in mind when writing, we can't explain all there is to know about Muslim society -- and we won't -- What we need to do is bring forth information that will help us get to where we want to go, which is understanding the formation of the Modern World. Historians very often frame information through omitting stuff that does not fit with their overall argument. And that is o.k. Just make sure you do explain the relevance of the material you do use.

The Arabian region, as well the Levant and Syria, where Islam first flowered included both Christians, Jews, and animists, what our culture sometimes calls Pagans in the centuries before the Prophet Mohammed. Most of the land in Arabia is inhospitable to the formation of agricultural societies; after all, it's a desert. The desert climate of Arabia directly contributed to how and why Islam developed. Prior to the coming of the Prophet Mohammed, the tribes of the desert were nomadic.

Enter the Prophet. Mohammed ibn Abdallah, the founder and prophet of Islam, lived from 570-632 and came from a merchant family of Mecca during a time of intense trade competition between towns and clansWarfare was an endemic part of life in the peninsula where resources were scarce, and the experience of warring clans, some of whom are aligned with outsiders, the Byzantines and the Persian Sassanian Empire, most definitely colors Mohammed's early years.

Marrying well was one avenue of success in the Archaic world. Mohammed married into a wealthy mercantile family for whom he worked. Khadijah, the prophet's first wife, was fifteen years his senior, though the strength of their bond is often portrayed by the fact that Mohammed took no other wives while she was alive. The couple had four daughters which survived infancy, though neither of their two sons made it to adulthood. The only daughter who has children was Fatima, whose name will later be the inspiration for a ruling dynasty in Egypt. Being able to trace lineage, or at least ascribe heritage, to the family of the prophet will be a recurring theme in the Islamic societies, as you might expect in the Archaic World.

Mohammed managed the commercial interests of his wife's fortune. Trade brought him into contact with monotheistic Jews, and Trinitarian and monophysitic Christians, both of which had traditions of book centered religion and an Abrahamic lineage. Arabic tradition does ascribe their origin to the biblical figure of Abraham, though this tradition fell into disuse prior to Mohammed, only to be resurrected by the prophet to form the basis of his new religion.

The Sophistication of Islamic Culture

Where Islam spread, so too did a variety of ideas and products. In the diffusion of technology the Muslims introduced to the West the compass from India, and passed along their own innovation of the astrolabe, both of which would become instrumental to the new world economy which revolved around trans-Atlantic trade. Interestingly enough the Chinese had a leg up technologically on the West, but their values inhibited using it to extend their own knowledge and resource base outside a limited sphere of influence. Ah, Archaic values. Chinese Imperial policy was highly xenophobic and commerce was seen as a despicable pursuit, and so few Chinese spread westward.

One such mariner was the eunuch admiral Zheng He, who in the first decades of the fifteenth century was sent by his master, the emperor of China, on an expedition that took him to the East Indies, India and into the Persian Gulf. The Junks (Chinese ships), which were five times as large as Columbus' Santa Maria, were impressive enough, but that was all the mission was supposed to accomplish -- impress the rest of the world. Quite a communal attitude, one apparently not shared by the Arabs and other Muslims who were growing rich in trade, picking up such bargains as gunpowder and sugar from the Far East.

Besides technology Islam also caused a diffusion of learning. To keep better books the Muslims spread their numeral system. To be a good Muslim, unlike animistic peoples, who depended on divining and mythology, and Christianity, which depended upon group ritual, Muslims read the Koran which meant that converts had to become literate in Arabic. A boon for business, no doubt, as across the Trans-Saharan and Trans-Asian networks some commonality could be found in Arabic script. Muslims, therefore, established schools and universities which led to developments in science and a preservation of the geometry and philosophy of Antiquity (Persia, Greece and Rome).

Being a practical bunch, all this science also needed achievements applicable to the market place. Muslim science led to gains in chemistry, and figuring out how to make such useful items as sulfuric acid, to break stuff down, and carbonate of soda, to help when the tummy has broken down. The Muslims began and spread the first real hospital system, by which they were the first to diagnose stomach cancer, treat eye disorders, understand infectious disease, and promote personal hygiene. While the Europeans were bleeding people (to death), Muslims in Africa and Arabia were separating diseased patients into separate wards, keeping a medicinal dispensary and medical library at treatment centers, as well as using hospitals as training centers where licensed physicians taught would-be doctors. Physicians, like Razi (865-930), discovered the difference between small pox and measles which lead to different treatments on a much more sophisticated scale than the merely keeping the “Aristotelian Humors” in balance. During the Renaissance the scientific investigations of the Islamic world provided Europeans with a foundation for their own scientific investigations.

All this science and mathematics did have applications in architecture and engineering as well. Muslims, by the nature of a religion with no formal priesthood or infrastructure similar to the Catholic Church, banded together in cities, which dotted the Islamic map from Asia to Spain. The center piece of most cities was the mosque, and secondarily, palaces of the leadership. Their architecture featured vaults, pillars, domes and asymmetrical symmetry. Architecture was probably the greatest artistic expression of the Muslim world, since it was blasphemy to paint a lot of iconic images, as was prevalent in Christendom.

Argument Note: There are a lot of interesting things about the historic world of Islam that need to be included besides a direct connection to the Rise of the Modern World. The cultural achievements of Islam are important to know in their own right, but these attributes can also round out an essay topic on the connection of Islam with the rest of the West. Think as you read how you can find a place to make this information relevant? Part of the answer to that might be through comparing the cultural features of the Islamic World with what you know has become incorporated (maybe from Europe or Africa) in our society, and then maybe how that incorporation may reflect modern values. By doing this you create links between various topics and are able to show cause and effect. You should get a sense of what we mean from the following paragraphs and the commentary that goes with them.

The Empire of Islam and the Foundation of the West

By 750 an Islamic empire stretched from Persia to Spain and by the 800’s Arabs and other near eastern converts were trading with West Central Africa for commodities like gold, iron, and palm oil, and also with China for silk, spices, and new technology. The Arabs also figured out the process of refining cane, and soon began growing sugar in Persia, the Levant and on islands throughout the Mediterranean. Everyone loves sugar and the Arabs found lucrative markets for the stuff in Europe and North Africa. Of course, sugar was just one of many commodities traded in the Muslim world and though it was highly profitable was not the most commonly produced good.

Sugar, in both literal and figurative terms, however, was explanatory of two major phenomena that would eventually change the Muslim world. Since sugar needed to be grown and refined to make the best profit margin, the Muslim world needed non-Muslim labor to work the fields, and they got that labor in the overland trade on the Sahara. Into the Muslim world beginning in the ninth and tenth century came millions of slaves from East and West Africa -- and many through the imperial complexes of Ghana and Mali. Sugar, as a symbol for Asiatic trade and intercourse, also helped to create markets in Europe (which helped vault Italian trading cities like Venice and Genoa into prominence), and helped to cause an interchange, which brought new groups into the Muslim Arab world. These groups, to which we now refer, did not really come to make a buck, but rather came to conquer. Conquering hordes from Central Asia, and minor bands of ill equipped soldiers from Europe from the 11th to the 14th centuries forever altered patterns of cultural, economic and political development in the Muslim World, and arguably inhibited the possibilities of modern values being first established in the Middle East. Maybe even more interesting, without the profound alteration of the Muslim world from the 12th century into the 15th, Christopher Columbus would have never met Santa Maria.

Argument Note: Here we have a dual thesis, and maybe even a duel thesis, two ideas, and ideas that seem to be competing. But what is important is that in both we have very specific statements of purpose which lead us to arguable interpretive points. In some ways we can break those sentences down to really understand just what such a point could and maybe should look like from your professor's point of view. Notice each has a defined, and specific "Who, What, When and Where" in the statement, but let's break one down more explicitly. "Conquering hordes from Central Asia," this is a "Who", for which we could have just said Natural nomadic peoples of Mongol-Turkic ethnicity, but it certainly does not have as snappy a literary feel as Conquering hordes. "What" is kind of dually explained in the phrases conquering horde and "altered patterns," and not only that it helps to describe another essential element we need in our thesis patterns -- "How and why." We also need something relatable, arguable, and interesting which explains the "Significance" of our statement. We ought to have a reason why we are bothering to write the essay, or taking up the reader's time with our thoughts. The significance in the first thesis is "inhibited the possibilities of modern values," and in the second the same idea is expressed, through Chris Columbus as our figurative device -- though we also mean it quite literally. We could further break down the ideas behind these portions relating to significance, and explain them within the context of our paper, and particularly in our conclusion, as to how our ideas of "inhibited the possibilities of modern values" was a short term reality, related to a specific series of events, and also related to long term development. "All in a nice neat package," said Homer Simpson. But we'll let you draw your own conclusions for now

The expansion of the empire through conquest and the solidification of trade routes with Africa and Asia created an abundance of resources, which flowered in the 9th through the 12th century in philosophy, mathematics, art, and the growth of abundant cities, but it also alerted peoples on the fringes of empire to new possibilities. Nomadic peoples from central Asia, most significantly at first, the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks, and later the Mongols, swept in swords blazing into the Muslim controlled territories, establishing empires of their own. At the same time, pressure came from the West, as Europeans, who were making money with the economic expansion of Islam affecting their own markets, sponsored a series of Crusades to "take back the Holy Land," or for interpretive purposes, to get a share of the loot. And as we know with conquest, comes booty, and everybody likes booty.

The era of the Crusades is not merely an event revolving around armed men with swords and crosses attempting to secure passage to the holy sites of Christendom in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth. Actually, the armed conflicts from 1095 to 1270 entailed a much larger strategic agenda by Christendom on many fronts to combat the growth of Islam and to take control the Mediterranean economy. The Seljuks for their part helped this along by destabilizing the caliphate, and opening a window of opportunity of which the Christians took full advantage.

Spanish Christian armies began a series of campaigns that would last until 1492 to take the Iberian Peninsula from the heirs of Tariq. French Norman knights swept into the Mediterranean and seized the (sugar growing) island of Sicily in the 11th century. The first Norman King of Sicily was crowned in the early 1100s as Roger I. Not a great name for a king, but he certainly was smart enough to keep producing the agricultural commodities of the island's Muslim heritage, like grapes, olives, citrus fruit, and sugar cane. He had a little help from investment capital provided by the mercantile interests of Venice and other Italian cities, and his kingdom eventually began importing their own labor supply through the Byzantine Empire (controlled in the 11th century by Crusaders and the Venetian navy).

Venetian ships also helped to move Crusader armies to the Levant, and into Byzantine territory. The Levant was, of course, the site of major Christian holy places, like the Church of the Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and that must have been why they sailed? Yeah. The Levantine ports were also major embarking stations for goods coming out of the Muslim world, and a nice growing area for crops, like sugar. If Jerusalem had not been located there, the Crusaders, and their Italian transports, would have moved it. The motives might have been purely religious from the perspective of the Roman Pope, Urban II, who called for the initial military expedition in 1095, but the Crusades degenerated into a frenzy of wealth grabbing. In 1204 the Crusaders bypassed the Levant altogether and sacked Constantinople, after which they kept control of this most precious port for sixty odd years. Constantinople, and the Byzantine Empire, never fully recovered, and remained an entrepot of Italian investment and trade until its conquest at the hands of another Central Asian people in 1453.

The Ottoman Turks, conquerors of Constantinople, followed their Seljuk cousins into the Muslim world in the late middle ages, but did not make a splash of their own until after the greatest land empire of all time chopped up the Islamic empire at the hands of another Central Asian group, the Mongols. The Mongol chieftain, Temujin, who later took the title Genghis Khan meaning Great Ruler, was able to unite the tribal units of his people by 1206, and fashion them into a fearsome fighting force. In the early 13th century the armies of the Great Khan controlled China, and tore into the Middle East. By the time of his death in 1227 Genghis ruled an empire from China to Russia, and his successors added the heart of Islam with the capture of Baghdad in 1258.

The Golden Horde of the Mongol, as the mass of light cavalry was sometimes called, seemed an invincible, and rapacious force. And the Mongols were brutal on a scale that was vicious even by Archaic standards. Try and fight them, and if you are defeated they will slaughter your whole city. Give up and they'll just bleed you dry through taxation; probably a better option. The only thing that saved Europe from dread, devastation, and destruction was because a successor to Genghis died and the Mongol army in Hungary turned back so it could take part in choosing a new Great Khan. Japan was saved only by the intervention of a divine wind. While most of Islam fell to the Mongols, An Egyptian army was able to stem the tide at Ain Jalut in the Levant near Nazareth. In one of histories most significant battles, the Muslim armies fought off the invaders keeping North Africa safe from Mongol conquest.

By the fourteenth century, however, conquest had turned to regional competition as the Mongol empire fragmented and regional Khans sought to assert their own power. The Khan in China converted to Buddhism and the Khans of central Asia and the Middle East converted to Islam. Here Mongol power was superceded by the rising power of the Ottomans who controlled the Near East by the dawn of the 14th century. It would eventually be opposed as the main power in the Islamic world by the revival of Persian power under the Safavid Empire. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Ottoman Sunnis and the Shiite Safavids would duel over control of Iraq, and for control of the cultural voice of Islam. Of course by this time the Mongol and Turkic invasions had ushered in militaristic governments, bordering on what we might call totalitarian -- and with this the possibilities for individual emancipation, despite a growing independent merchant class, was over. No Modernity for you.

Argument Note: Sometimes you have to play to your crowd. Your professor appreciates a well turned phrase -- though usually not a colloquialism. Alliteration is a nice literary form to use every once in a while, which was twice used in the subsequent paragraph. Word patterns which start with the same sound or letter such as "dread, devastation, and destruction" (not the greatest example of alliteration), or "fashion them into a fearsome fighting force," (better) can be appealing to a reader, especially stuffed shirt professors. As a side, it was during this period that coffee from Africa began making its way into the Muslim economy. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, particularly in Egypt, coffee shops became havens for talk of rights and liberties in a way very much similar to that of coffee shops in the British colonies of North America in the eighteenth century. The Ottomans put a stop to such coffee talks.

The Grounding of the Modern Economy: Africa and Europe

The Trans-Saharan Trade Network expanded from the beginning of the 8th century under the control of the empire of Ghana. The strategic location of the West Central African empire near the great bend of the Niger River afforded the Kings of Ghana great wealth. Wealth, and its accumulation and production, is a highly significant thing -- it changes everything, and it brought West Africa into contact with the commercial world of Islam. The trade partnership of these societies increased the wealth and power of both regions through the trade of African metals (gold, silver and iron), minerals and spices, such as salt and pepper, for Near Eastern and Indian tapestries and cloth, agricultural produce, like palm oil, tubers, plantains, for finished products, and also a growing trade in human slaves, mostly for domestic service at first, but later for agricultural work in the Muslim world. Goods going from West to East, Ghana to Morocco to Arabia, and East to West from India to Arabia, Arabia to the Magreb all in a corridor of trade that was more expansive than anything anyone had ever known.

Over the next three centuries trade increased, wealth grew forming the basis of a merchant class in the Muslim world, and ideas and learning of a variety of pursuits were exchanged and expanded. Arabic and other Muslim traders of the Near East established contacts with the Far East, China and India initiating trade in spices (good as preservatives and to add flavor to food), silks and useful items, most notably gunpowder and the compass: Expanding markets, expanding technology, expanding their understanding of the geo-physical universe, but also expanding the horizons of human being.

The Trans-Asian trade brought sugar, the single most significant commodity, into the Islamic world. Over the 9th, 10th and into the 11th sugar production and distribution grew through Muslim merchants, and not just in the traditional lands of the Koran, but especially in newly conquered, formerly Christian areas, such as Cyprus, coastal Spain, and Sicily. Slavery was not a sin, but controlling the labor of a fellow follower of the Prophet was. As a labor source the Muslims relied on their trading partners in West Central Africa to supply them with non-Muslim agricultural slaves. Apart from squabbles between sects, spin-off emirates, business was good; in fact better than good, it was the envy of the world.

What brought Europe back into prominence from a long extended sleep after the fall of Rome was economic expansion. This expansion was in consequence with economic growth brought about by Islamic trade, and by the introduction into European markets of products, which were wealth creating luxury items, like sugar. Part of this expansion was initiated in the form of religious crusades. Out of these Crusades Europeans, most notably the Italians merchants of Venice, Genoa and other trade cities, were not only exposed increasing commerce, but also to the learning of the East and Byzantium.

Trade with Asia and the Middle East began in earnest during the Crusade Period through Byzantium, and then just a hop, skip, and a jump to the lands of the Great Khan and the riches of Xanadu. In Xanadu did he decree a stately pleasure dome, to paraphrase Coleridge down to his sunless sea, but it was not measureless caverns that merchant adventurers, of which Marco Polo was but one, came to find. No, this merchant of Venice more than likely established trade links by which he could market the products of foreign lands back home in Italy. His was a story not really of adventure, or exploration, but of merchant capitalism in its infancy. Overland trade with the certainly jump started growth and development in the south of Europe, at the same time Europe found it cost effective to push the Moors out of former Christian lands. It was not a coincidence that the "Reconquista," as a general term for European forays into previously Islamic dominated regions, and trade routes, came at the same time Europe became connected to the realities of an expanding market economy from Asia to Africa.

Investment and increased development in Italy certainly enhanced economic growth in Northern Europe, particularly in the cities of the Low Countries, like, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Brussels. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries would see market development in a host of northern cities, such as those in the Germanys who formed a trade alliance known as the Hanseatic League, which traded a lot of boring items such as wool, wheat, and wood. Well, other items were included metal manufactured items, textiles, and other food commodities, but the question to ask is does it get us to the Modern World, could these commodities have made the difference in changing the very consciousness of man? Let's see.

Most European economic historians place heavy emphasis on the interplay between Northern cities, such as those of the trade league named for the German city of Hansa, but the pattern of economic growth found there did not extend a new philosophy towards wealth creation, as distinct from wealth accumulation, upon which basic value structures could be changed. The modest accumulations of excess wealth made possible by the "Agricultural Revolution" mentioned earlier did cause markets to expand, and between the Hanseatics, the Low Countries, Northern France and even England, there was a tidy economy in the North Sea. These historians also connect the north with the south of Europe. The developing northern markets of the 13th and 14th century may have been bigger than ever before, but they reinforced conservative patterns compatible with Archaic values, or at least the same patterns established by the Vikings in the 9th and 10th centuries. The goods speak louder than words, according to Fernand Braudel, who lists the types of commodities traded in northern fairs: mostly agricultural goods, mostly low value and small profit, mostly subsistence oriented, with little wealth creation. What was really stirring the pot (and it was a copper kettle in which sugar could be refined, like those the Venetians supplied to Sicily in the 13th century, according to Charles Verlinden) was the development of commercial and financial systems in Italy involving more speculative cash crops. These crops didn't supply sustenance, they brought much more. Sugar, wine, olives, and goods from the East didn't keep you alive, but they did make life worth living (if you could afford these commodities and most could not).

Part of our whole idea is to seek a chain of causation to what we know will fire the Modern Economy, and help to bring meaning to the germination of new values. That economy takes hold in the Atlantic world, and revolves around non-European crops, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and tea. The wealth created from these crops changes the post 16th century world. Sugar by itself was not the most abundant commodity in Europe, but it led to an unprecedented expansion of wealth beginning with the Muslims and into the Atlantic Economy. Those Italian cities, chiefly the rivals Venice and Genoa, began trading in useless luxury items, like sugar, but practicality does not necessarily rule the market place, and those items, which would make the Atlantic economy rich, would also form the basis for the Renaissance, the African Slave Trade and the United States of America. Of course Italian commercial capitalism was made possible through the labor of others. Like the Moors before them, European operations in former Arabic sugar growing regions in Mediterranean, like Sicily, Sardinia and other islands needed a supply of labor. To placate their demand they worked through their own trade partners. Knowing nothing of the sub-Saharan kingdoms which supplied the Muslim World, the first European slave exports came from Russia through the doddering Byzantine Empire. Then in the middle of the 15th century, as wealth poured into Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Rome, the world changed -- 1453.

Interaction with the west continually weakened Byzantium, and the fourth crusade actually brought an end to the empire for a while. But it wasn't just the Europeans, sponsored by Venetians and Genoans who were after the prime bit of real estate upon which Constantinople was built. The capital of the Byzantines held sway over the waterway between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and also between the also by land between Europe and Asia Minor. The Turks wanted this land too. Mehmed II led a campaign of over 100,000 soldiers which was rebuffed for a time by the 9,000 troops under the final Byzantine emperor. He died defending one of the gates into the city from the onslaught of Ottoman warriors, but it wasn't infantry that did in Constantinople, it was cannon. Cannon adopted from technologies of the East, brought to bear military fashion on the thick walls of Rome's past glory, which had protected Constantinople since the before the 8th century. Now it was gone. Constantinople was renamed Istanbul, and the Turks became giants in the affairs of the Mediterranean. Italian investment and production in the Eastern Mediterranean was forced to find new lands, new labor sources, and new paths to the East.

Traditionally, the fall of Constantinople was seen by modern historians as a great boon to Western Europe, because Greek scholars who carried on the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions fled westward and revived old school Greek learning among the monks of Italy and France. Of course, many of the thinkers in Western Europe were already familiar with Plato and Aristotle through the writings of Averroes, and other Spanish scholars, like Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher who lived in Moorish Spain. Besides, living standards and accumulation of wealth had grown in the Western Europe that by 1453 extensive resources were already being devoted to science, art and philosophy. Byzantium's scholars fleeing west was hardly what made 1453 the most important year of the last millennium. Instead it made possible the founding of America. Yes, that America.

But before we make the American connection we want to backtrack a bit to explain a little about the Italians of the late Middle Ages and their connection to economic growth. Always looking for new markets, the conquests of the Muslim empire brought them into contact with the peoples of Southern Europe, especially Italian city-states of Venice, Genoa, Florence and Pisa. Merchants in these towns bought into the Trans-African/Asian trade and sold commodities throughout Europe. The sale of exotic luxury items helped kick-start, and provide serious value, for peripheral trade networks to the North and West, particularly in Belgium, but also in England, France and the Germanic States.

Certainly the communal mind of the Archaic Italian merchant was not to be out done by the Infidel. The mercantile states of Italy soon wanted a larger share of the market, and as they grew more powerful economically they were able to enhance their military and naval capacity (even if they had to pay mercenary forces to accomplish their objectives), enough so that they moved into the sugar growing regions of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Italians possessed capital, but did not have a labor supply, and they were not in any sort of economic, political or otherwise relationship with the Arabs labor source, West Central Africa. Not to fear, the Byzantines were able to supply the Italians with slaves from the Crimea. We already explained this part, but what was really interesting is that all of this commercial activity was creating new business forms; commercial capitalism was developing financial capitalism -- banking, insurance, stocks, bonds and exchanges, eventually anyway.

To make their economic endeavors more efficient, and to increase profits, the Italians created a sophisticated banking system to facilitate capital investment. One of the most important, and most powerful, was the Medici family of Florence who helped propel Italian hegemony over the Eastern Mediterranean and over the sugar market. The brain behind the operation in the middle of the 15th century was a financial genius by the name of Bartholomeu Marchione. Marchione was not the only financial officer involved in the expanding trade centers of Italy. Hundreds of other men managed the financial matters of several Venetian, or Genoan, or Pisan family concerns. Marchione's task was to make sure that investment and dividends kept flowing, just like the flow of slaves from Byzantium, and growing trickle of sugar to the markets of Europe. He also scouted for new areas to set up operations, sending Italian seafarers throughout the Mediterranean to set up shop. This is capitalism in its infancy, and at its finest: research and development, investment strategies, market development, labor procuration, profit management (creative bookkeeping), and reinvestment (hide the profit). It was all going so nicely.

Then came 1453. No more Byzantium, no more labor supply and no more holdings in the Eastern Mediterranean. But the beauty of capitalism is that it does not have to be limited by a particular physical boundary. Marchione knew he could set up anywhere but in 1453, the Turks had limited his interests to the West. In fact the Venetians wouldn't totally secure the Mediterranean from the Turks until the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 -- if then. But Italian investors, most notably Marchione were aware of possibilities, and he found his answer because of what the Portuguese had been up to for the previous 50 years.

After unifying their Kingdom and defeating the Moors by the 1300s, Portugal was looking seaward to get some of those exotic items, and build wealth through trade for itself (well at least for the monarchy). The efforts were spawned through the stunted ambition the youngest son of King John I (r. 1385-1433). If you are the youngest of four heirs to the throne, you better find something to do. Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), as this son is known to history, devoted his life to navigation and geography, and built a school and observatory to train sailing men. The efforts of Henry culminated in the development of the caravel, an ocean going vessel with a wide hull more suitable for open ocean sailing than the sleek galleys of the Arabs and Italians. Muslim centers of learning, since conquered in Spain and Portugal, also provided a rich supply of charts and maps from antiquity. Henry undoubtedly knew what the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians knew ... the earth was round. Unfortunately, sailors under Henry were based their assumptions of earth's continents on the Hellenistic model of the astronomer Ptolemy, who did not include the Americas in his cartographic predictions.

Henry was kind enough to list out for posterity his reasons for setting men adrift on the deep blue sea, as recorded during the reign of his brother Eduardo: zeal for the service of God and the King, establish trade with populations of Christians in Africa (if findable), oppose the Moors, look for Christian allies, make converts, the “Inclination of the Heavenly Wheels,” which Henry believed to be the most important of all, though exactly what he meant is lost. If we examine these reasons we can get a sense of some of Henry's Archaic values, and the motivation of the Portuguese in general.

And so Henry's sailors began the most popular dance of the 15th century, Portugal’s Caravel Crawl. Of course it wasn't a dance, like dancing in a club, more so circular jaunts out into the unknown and then back again. Each time the loop would expand until the ship sailed into something. These forays into the Atlantic paid dividends as the Portuguese were able to find uninhabited and inhabited semi tropical islands, great for growing, olives, grapes, other fine Mediterranean products, and oh yeah, sugar. In 1419 the caravels found Madeira, in 1431 the Azores with the Canaries coming shortly thereafter. By 1455 Henry’s sailors had navigated well down the coast of Africa to Cape Verde and the islands adjacent, and in 1460 they reached the Bight of Benin. Both in Benin and Cape Verde the Portuguese established trade contacts with local Kings, just as they attempted to do each place they stopped along the way. The Kings liked European glass, cloth, and goods, and the Portuguese were thrilled with the Africans gold and silver, palm oil and spices. There is evidence that the first slave trading took place around 1434 with North African Moroccans, since at this time evidence first appears of African slaves, mostly as household servants, arriving in Portugal. Most of the principalities the Portuguese encountered were only secondary or tertiary contributors to the Trans-Saharan markets, though as trade increased over the centuries, commerce was siphoned off the Sahara in favor of the costs.

But here is where our story gets interesting. You can almost picture Marchione and others like in him no less, sitting in a dark candle lit villa in Florence pouring over business reports and other news. He hears of the fall of Constantinople and without a panic he began negotiating leases with the Portuguese King to put his new found lands to good (tasting) use. The system of Italian sugar production would soon turn Portugal’s new island empire into paradise ... or rather sugar plantations. He sent several of his lieutenants to scout the area, set up the necessary cultivating and refining equipment, and gain access to a labor supply while he set up the financing in his new digs in Portugal. Several Italian investors began taking up residence in Portuguese cities, and they weren't there to learn the language. Portugal was the center of operations from which sailors from Italy and Portugal maintained markets, and secured labor contracts with African princes. One such seafaring corporate drone was a Genoan sailor by the name of Cristoforo Colombo. And that should send bells off in your memory, and if it doesn't, then here goes. Ding Dong.

The Eastern Mediterranean may have been lost to the Infidel, but trade soon stabilized in the West and Portugal, and Italian investors, as well as African Kings were getting rich, not only off of the profit of sugar, but also on the backs of their African workers. By 1486 what was left of the Benin Empire began trading with Portugal, and it seems that there is evidence of limited attempts by Spain as early as 1470 to secure African trade partners and sources of slaves. The center of the slave trade was at the Portuguese Castle at Elmina off the Gold Coast, and in Benin at the Castle of San Jorge where Africans brought captures to be sold to the Portuguese. By the 1500s, since demand kept rising, the means by which slaves were procured became increasingly lawless. But don’t forget, this was not the only slave trade going on, and it was still pretty minor at that. Slaves still crossed the Sahara and went as far away as India: note in 1486 East African slaves in the kingdom of Gaur in India revolted and placed their own leader on the throne. This kingdom did not last long; however, as a new Muslim Empire called the Moguls rose in the early 1500s and unified India. And as for Spain, they were still dealing with the Muslim Kingdom of Grenada in the 1470s and 1480s to have much investment capital for sugar, slaves, and trade.

Most research by modern historians on the economic development between Africa and Portugal revolves around the labor supply because of its connections to the later Trans-Atlantic slave trade. But these economic patterns, which eventually expanded across the Atlantic in the 16th century, brought unprecedented wealth to the crowns of Portugal and Spain, and by extension a growing merchant middle-class in the port cities of Europe. And Portugal and their eventual partner/competitors, Spain (the kingdoms were merged in favor of Spain for much of the 16th century), kept looking for new markets, as well as routes to old markets, which would by pass the Middle East. An end run around the Ottomans was good for business in many ways. But these were hardly voyages of discovery in the sense of fulfilling some sort of scientific, or otherwise benign, curiosity. That's every bit as whack as the idea that these Europeans had evil murderous objectives -- from our point of view almost everything done in the Archaic World is murderous and evil. Mostly, these journeys were forays into a capitalist future.

Bartholomeu Dias sailed to the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 and Vasco de Gama in 1497 completed the task of reaching the Indian Ocean, and the lands of rugs, silk and spices. Of course the Muslim overlords of the East weren’t too happy, and sought to keep out the Infidel. A beautiful thing about the Archaic mentality -- everyone's godless (and to be smited) to everyone else. War erupted between the Europeans, and the Ottoman and Mogul Empires in 1509-1515 in the Indian Ocean. The European commander, Alfonso De Albuquerque, seized important coastal towns, Goa and Calicut, and established a permanent fortress at Macao, and the Euros won.

By 1492, the Spanish states of Castille and Aragon united by their leaders, Ferdinand and Isabella, drove the remaining Muslim rulers out of the Iberian Peninsula and added Granada to their Kingdom. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted to increase Spain’s role in the economic expansion, which the Portuguese dominated. The “Columbus” story asserts that he had been studying some of Henry’s Ptolemaic maps and was sure he could open a better route to trade with China and India across the Atlantic rather than round the Horn, of Africa that is. But Columbus was in the sugar business and it seems more likely that he knew he could sail west and find vacant islands for someone else the way Henry did for Portugal (and Italian merchant money). New lands meant new lands on which to raise ... sugar, or other high priced cash crops. John II of Portugal turned a down a proposal by Cristoforo Colombo to sail west. The ambitious Colombo had been turned down by Spain in the late 1480s, but after Grenada fell, a new opportunity for investment had arrived. The pitch was made, and the Spanish invested what they could, which was a limited amount seeing how they had just finished a war against their mortal (or immortal) religious enemy, the Moors. No, it wasn't a side deal between Columbus and the Spanish Queen, as suggested by Bugs Bunny. No, instead this was a clear policy choice, prompted by ambition, and maybe Columbus did say something about getting to Asia in trying to sell his sugar scheme. You gotta do what you gotta do. And so he set sail with the Santa Maria, the Santa Clara, and the Santa name lost to history.

In the fifty years after Columbus made that first voyage, the Spanish set up shop in the Caribbean replicating old Italian economic practices of sugar plantations. The Spanish initially tried to enslave the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean islands, but the population did not survive the process. Without hesitation, without moral reservation, laborers were shipped from Africa. The Portuguese realized the potential of the New World, and established large plantations in Brazil. To promote a friendlier business climate Pope Alexander VI divided the world between the two kingdoms by the Treaty of Tordesillas ... And America was born.

And think of this to totally get that fantasy of Columbus trying to sail to Asia. Did he ever get there? No. Most people accomplish what they set out to do and what they want is usually based on what they have previously accomplished. Columbus never went to Asia but he was involved with Sugar. Columbus never made it to Asia but he did start sugar cultivation in America. So what was his real goal all along? Sugar, of course, not Asia. And he even knew he wasn’t in Asia. He took sugar along on his second voyage, hundreds of plants to start cultivation. Why would he take it along if he thought he was in Asia where the plant originated? And if he was a merchant who dealt in trade items from India and China (as the traditional story kinda suggests) then he would really have to be the world’s all-time dumbass to think he was in Asia when he would not have seen Indian and Chinese trade items. Last thing …. Columbus knew China and India were powerful civilizations, so if he thought he was there, would he really have claimed the land on behalf of his King? Nah, he knew he was somewhere no European had ever been, a place without sugar, and a place that was perfect to establish the system he had already been part of.

More important than the finding America, if anything can compare to that, are the consequences of this economic development. Of course, the most direct consequence is the expansion of sugar’s economic processes in the Atlantic World, the development of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, depopulation, colonization, Revolution! But more significant than that, at least for the purposes of understanding from where the Modern World came, this economic expansion provided the wealth behind two very important things: the development of (an increasingly autonomous) merchant class, and huge investment in Europe's infrastructure, including investment in art and science .... You guessed it, all this sugar stuff brought about the Renaissance, and that wasn't just a re-birth of antiquities, it was the birth of the Modern.

Argument Note: You should take some time to peruse other texts and scholarly works on the causes and origins of the Renaissance. Incorporate these into your thinking as to how and why events occurred, and also you can reflect on how values might change based upon those interpretations. You will likely notice that from other perspectives the Renaissance magically appeared in Italy in the 14th or 15th century, and led to marvelous costly works of art (they don't really say magic, but they may as well).

Here's the problem: just like with politicians, most historians don't show how they are going to pay for what they promise (this is partially because historians of economics, slavery and the Renaissance seldom work together). The Renaissance took a lot of wealth, and not the kind that could be scraped together through indigenous economic practices, and established products developed in the previous 1,000 years. Art, science, architecture -- they take money, and lots of it. That money was built on changing market practices (capital investment and mass production leading to mass consumption and capital investment) based on products that produce wealth, create demand and change mentalities. Money from commercial capital adventures, like those made in sugar, not only paid for the Renaissance, but wealth and prosperity (because people like the esteem, and comfort of it) paved the way for people to redefine how they would view themselves, and, eventually, how they would view others.

List of Sources

David Brion Davis, “Looking at Slavery from a Broader Perspective,” AHR 106 (February 2001)

David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York 1984).

M.A. Cook, edit. Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East: From the Rise of Islam to today (London 1970)

Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist, 1972)

David Eltis "Europeans and the Rise and Fall of African Slavery in the Americas: An Interpretation," AHR 98 (December 1993)

R. Stephen Humphreys, Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age (Berkeley, 1999)

Joseph C. Miller's presidential address, "History and Africa/Africa and History," AHR 104 (February 1999)

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975).

William D. Phillips, Jr., Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis, 1985)

Maya Schatzmiller, Labor in the Medieval Islamic World (London, 1994)

Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (New York, 1976)

Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, "Before Othello: Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 54 (January 1997)

Charles Verlinden, L'esclavage dans l'Europe médiévale, Vol. 1: Péninsule Ibérique, France (Bruges, 1955); Vol. 2: Italie, Colonies italiennes du Levant, Levant latin, Empire bysantin (Gent, 1977); The Beginnings of Modern Colonization: Eleven Essays with an Introduction, Yvonne Freccero, trans. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1970).