History
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HST363_1_BiologicalOldRegime2.pptxThe Biological Old Regime
Praying for enough, let alone growth
Topics
Working with Sources
The biological old regime
A world of limited good
Economic growth is non-existent or transient
Empire as a political system for the world of limited good
Ancient/medieval/early modern trade circuits
The division of labor and pursuit of comparative advantage in a world of limited good
Working with Sources: Key Aspects of Interpretation
Written (texts)
Who wrote it?
When and where was it written?
What type of document is it?
Why did they write it (audience, circumstances)?
Point of view?
What is believable and why?
What can we learn from it?
Strengths?
Limitations?
Keep these things in mind as you do the readings and answer the prompts. They all point to the importance of:
Context
Contingency
Comparison
Change over time
Defining Terms
What do we mean by Biological Old Regime?
World of Limited Good
Annual surplus beyond needs of subsistence very small
What do we mean by an empire?
Multiethnic
Multi-confessional
Multicultural
Metropole, periphery and dilemmas of imperial rule
Empires c. 1450
Biological Old Regime
Up until 18th century, humans everywhere lived within this same set of environmental constraints to the generation of wealth.
World existed within “biological old regime”
Very little surplus wealth generated
“Pie” is finite. The only way you get a bigger slice is by taking it from someone else.
This is a “world of limited good”
Europe exists on the periphery of global commerce. Global wealth largely concentrated in Asia.
Eight Circuits of the 13th-Century World System: Get to know this well
Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 34.
Thinking about Empire
By 1450, much of global commerce shaped by break-up of Mongol empire and replacement by others
How did empire’s work?
This was a system for getting more pie by taking it from someone else.
Extracting revenue and recruits
Trade as low hanging fruit; Mongols and others had an interest in promoting it in order to tax it.
Coopting local elites vs. direct administration; work for us and have your titles confirmed, or die.
Incorporating local custom: little effort to impose universal laws beyond those related to revenue and recruit extraction.
Administering a huge territory is very expensive
> efficiency = > centralized rule = < toleration = > chance for rebellion = > cost
Eastern Hemisphere c. 1500.
Old World Trading Circuits Refined
Polycentric Trade
Each circuit had a predominant group, but no single group controlled it all
Force not used to keep goods flowing—no rules on what must be sold or purchased where and from whom
Ships sailed w/ goods w/o naval escorts, as all had an interest in good outcomes.
No one party attempted to dominate trade—corner the market
Trade a conduit for cultural, technological, and commercial exchange—protected from danger for the mutual benefit of all parties involved
In decline from 16th century onward, and we must figure out why
Indian Ocean Trade Products
SO—what was happening in bulk of these trading circuits c. 1450-1500?
Ottoman Empire
Capture of Constantinople and end of Byzantine Empire in 1453 by Sultan Mehmed II
Initially content to leave trade to foreigners, as revenue derived from land taxes. But, by 1502, Venice pushed out of Eastern Mediterranean
1516-1517 Conquest of Egypt and Syria gave Ottomans control over remaining trade routes to Indian Ocean Basin
Slaves as soldiers (yeni cheri or Janissaries)
Allowed Ottomans to build an army > than themselves
When volunteers thinned, shifted to devshirma (selection) system in Balkans
Less resistance to gunpowder revolution—using firearms
Created a distinct and cosmopolitan culture
Osmanli language distinguished elites (askeri) from commoners
Elite lived off of land grants exempt from taxes
A tolerant empire at the same time as European kingdoms were becoming less so
Sultan provided justice for all, esp. elites, Elites administered local justice and collected taxes for Sultan, rest of the population—Christians, Muslims and Jews—paid taxes
Southwest Asia
Old World Trading Circuits, 13th C
Where’s Europe in all this?
THAT, is the question—how Europe developed within the world economy from a periphery to a guiding center, from an economic backwater covetous of Asian goods to imperial metropole.
By mid-15th century, this position on the edge has become untenable.
By end of 16th century, Europe’s position on the way to becoming much improved.
15th-16th Centuries
European elite access to Asian goods difficult
Distance makes things expensive
Asian economies largely autarchic—self sufficient. They generate most of what they need.
Europeans have little to offer in exchange that China and the Indian subcontinent don’t already have.
By middle of 15th century, the situation for Europe was even more desperate, as the decay of the Mongol empire and the final Ottoman victory over Byzantium rendered delivery of Asian goods over land even more difficult/expensive
15th-16th Centuries
The 15th and 16th centuries changed all of this:
Rounding the cape of Africa opened up Indian Ocean basin to European style “armed trading”
European boats armed with cannon could control shipping lanes
Discovery of Western Hemisphere opened up other possibilities
Import substitution (e.g. you could grow coffee and sugar in S. America and Caribbean rather than purchasing it in the East)
Silver discovery: Finally gave Europeans something Asians, particularly the Chinese wanted/needed
15th-16th Centuries
The so-called “age of exploration” that you all heard of in grade school (Vasco da Gama through Columbus, etc.) was thus less about any innate human curiosity, but rather about trying to find an end run to Asia that would avoid doing business with the Ottoman Turks (whom the Europeans feared) and open up the riches of the Orient.
Thus, from 15th century on, we see the beginning of a shift in the center of the global economy from the East to the West as Europeans ventured out into the world to gain access to Asian markets, bringing with them new ideas about trade and property that they combined with traditional imperial extraction.
