AE2

Unit Nine: Towards a Global Order II: Global Commerce and Culture 9.1 The (Almost) Global Market: Afro-Eurasian Webs

One important task of world historians is to investigate the various structures that tied the world together in previous periods of time. We are used to thinking in the 21st century about “globalization,” imagining that this process of integrating the world economically – and to some degree politically – was a relatively new phenomenon. And one of the things that world history can teach us is that these webs of interconnectivity – whether regional or global in scale – have a much longer and more varied history than we sometimes imagine. So we need to begin looking at some of the ways that the Afro-Eurasian world was joined together in previous time periods. Significantly, these connections not only operated on an East-West basis, but also joined North and South. Exchange and trade were the key mechanisms connecting the Afro-Eurasian world. These are the important categories that historians have employed to understand and to evaluate the strength of global connections before globalization. That said, how did this trade work? What types of exchanges characterized these premodern webs? It is useful to imagine these connections as what one historian has called a “network of exchange and communication” that demonstrate the growing significance of long-distance trade. Trade, communication, and exchange had two significant consequences. Trade changed the political structures in place, and trade facilitated the spread and transformation of certain religions. Long distance trade, such as the trade relationships proliferating along what came to be known as the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean – helped shape the political institutions and states through which this trade was conducted. The trade of commodities like salt, spices, incense and perfume, as well as the most significant commodity: silk – helped change the practice of politics along the trade routes. Trade helped generate political change and consolidation – wealth generated by controlling and taxing trade, or by extracting tribute from merchants helped generate political consolidation and in some case expansion. Long distance trade also shaped the history of religion. Trade was a significant factor in religious transformation, conversion, and spread. As different religious and cultural traditions came into contact with one another, religions changed and transformed – some religious principles and practices were weakened and disappeared; others extended their reach, using trade as a mechanism to bring their principles to new populations of people who could be converted. In other cases, religious traditions were blended, creating what one historian calls “syncretism,” or a blurring of religious boundaries with a synthetic set of traditions located in the middle ground. Long distance trade – perhaps best exemplified by the historical experiences of people living along the trade routes known as the Silk Road – set in place three important historical transitions. First, trade created an integrated Afro-Eurasian world – a globalization before globalization. Second, long distance trade helped fabricate new types of political structures that were built upon the wealth generated by economic exchange; and third, long distance trade created a matrix within which religious change, transformation, and conversion was carried out. 9.2 Social Structures and Global Commerce

Long distance trade and global commerce had many ramifications. The Afro-Eurasian world was integrated; trade impacted the strength and vitality of various political entities; and trade also provided a way for religious change and transformation – and in some cases

conversion and synthesis – to develop. But long distance trade also had important social and cultural ramifications.

One of these social changes is seen in the creation of a distinct class of people – merchants – who because they could be transitory and who seemed to violate a range of standing moral taboos were often viewed with suspicion. That said, merchants often formed a distinct social class, and this social differentiation was reinforced through certain mechanisms that merchants developed in order to make their ventures more profitable. One way that historians have analyzed trade in this period of time is to investigate the ways that groups of merchants worked together. One strategy that merchant groups used was to create long chains of settlements. Merchants would migrate to far-off locations, and establish a trading outpost, in which they would remain essentially alienated from host society. The other strategy was to continually move from one location to another, constantly trading along the way. The first of these strategies is significant because over time, these trading outposts became more highly specialized and complex, and merchants from the same group often developed webs of interrelated business interests that historians have called a “trade diaspora.” What they mean by this term is a group of merchants united by kinship or place of origin who settle independently in different areas, but who still trade with one another and retain an affiliation. These communities of merchants that made up a trade diaspora remained significant over long periods of historical change…Perhaps tenuous at first, these trade diasporas could harden over time, forming the foundation of deeply entrenched and powerful merchant networks.

A second change developing out of new forms of long distance trade – and by extension the trade diasporas of the premodern world – is seen in important economic terms: integration helped break down the economic self-sufficiency of a region. Trade, in other words, meant that there was not only a wider variety of commodities available in any particular area, but it also meant that those connections could intensify over time, becoming vital to the economic health of a region.

A third consequence coming out of the creation of global commercial networks was the creation of a set of conditions conducive to the spread of diseases through the human population. While disease outbreaks had characterized human settlements for millennia, the enhanced networks of communication and trade made the spread of disease not only more frequent but also across a wider territory. In this way, the Afro-Eurasian disease pool was created at the same time that the Afro-Eurasian world was integrated. And as we will see, trade networks and disease outbreaks were closely matched. As traders and merchants moved commodities from one area to another, they also brought diseases with them. And as we will see, the Silk Road was a prime conduit for the transmission of disease from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. 9.3 Silk Roads I: Theory

The Silk Roads were a main source of overland trade and communication between the Pacific and the Mediterranean for roughly 1,000 years. These connections that linked the Afro- Eurasian world joined Chinese merchants to those working in the Mediterranean, in the Persian gulf, in North Africa, in the Indian ocean, and even in South East Asia. This broad network of traders, most of whom bought and sold goods that they transported over only a small section of the overall network, created what is called a relay trade – a commodity might travel long distances before reaching a resting place, passed from merchant to merchant until it reached the hands of a final consumer.

Silk was a key commodity in this network, one that fundamentally shaped what one historian has called the “commercial integration” of the Afro-Eurasian world. The silk road, and the path that silk would take from where it was produced in China to where it was consumed, was built upon preexisting frameworks for trade. In other words, a whole series of individual trade routes existed; silk was a commodity so in sought after that it transformed these individual trade segments into a more cohesive and unified structure. The Silk Road produced two important transformations – it connected nomads, transforming their societies and political structures, and it transformed the nature of urban trading centers throughout the network. The Silk Road transformed the life of nomadic groups. Both marauders and pastoralists saw their lives change when the trade connections of the Silk Road created new opportunities and made new commodities available. The Silk Roads changed the lives of nomads by creating conduits between them, initiating forms of exchange between and across cultures that had not existed previously. The diffusion of ideas and technologies – not to mention commodities – meant that the structure of nomadic society changed. Groups living and working on the “rim” of the network found consistent and willing trading partners in the interior of the network. This partnership joined the coasts with the arid steppes, creating a form of economic exchange that bridged pastoral and agricultural societies. In other words – farmers and shepherds found trade to be a way of forging commonalities. These types of connections were important and persistent. Gradually, more sophisticated and complex social arrangements developed to anchor the ends of the silk roads – we see groups like the Romans and Hellenes in the West and the Han dynasty in China shaping the flows of commodities back and forth across the network as a whole. We see with these groups how the Silk Road helped shape political geography. The middle east rose in importance due to its geographical position at the crossroads of trade. We also see China extending its cultural and economic influence into Korea and Southeast Asia. India too would contribute much to the ways the Silk Road operated, and we will se how South Asian cultural influences were transmitted along the Silk Road. But perhaps one of the most interesting outcomes of the Silk Road centers on its impact on urban settlements. Trade on the Silk Road helped build massive urban settlements. Described as “caravan cities” by historians, these cities developed along overland trade or caravan routes and they exhibited a vibrant economic, cultural, and social life. Petra, for instance, was a city carved out of rock catering to the needs of travellers and merchants. Over the span of four centuries (roughly 200 BCE to 200 CE) it displayed a rich cultural existence and even had a theater that could seat 10,000 people at once. Another richly vibrant city, Palmyra (now in Syria), was built upon cloth and weaving trades, and it demonstrated the reach of Hellenic culture and how it was blended with the cultural traditions of the near east. Much of its beautiful architecture – once one of the world’s great treasures – was systematically destroyed when the city was occupied by the Islamic State in the course of the Syrian civil war. 9.4 Silk Roads II: Practice The Silk Roads developed as a medium of commodity exchange. The so-called “silk economy” that joined Eurasia developed in part because of the fact that silk was an extremely useful material. Silk was used to make clothing that was far more comfortable than wool – cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It could be used to craft bags, even ones that could be used to transport liquids because silk can be waterproof. Silk thread is extremely strong and could even be woven into ropes that had a very good weight to strength ratio. Silk was even used

as armor – if woven tightly enough it can blunt a knife, arrow, or sword attack. Silk cloth was even used as a durable form of communication – by painting on it, one was able to use silk as an extremely long-lasting medium of communication. Silk, in other words, was an extremely useful commodity, one that was sought after throughout the Eurasian world. In this way, silk – which was spun from silk worms living on mulberry trees in the north of China – could forge a long range economy. The silk economy and the silk roads generally had important implications. One of these implications was the way that silk exchange helped in the process of state formation. Political units along the silk roads were strengthened through their connections to a tribute economy as well as direct exchanges with merchants. In China, especially, silk helped form a vibrant administrative and urban apparatus. The silk roads were also a conduit of religious expansion – religion and trade followed one another along the silk roads; these exchanges allowed cross-cultural conversions but also the fabrication of scenarios conducive to religious syncretism or blending. In other words, as people from different faith traditions came into contact with one another in the course of their participation in the silk economy they were presented with opportunities to convert others to their faith or to blend their religious traditions with those of others. We see evidence of this trend, for instance, with the spread of Buddhism. Buddhism followed the trade routes as conduits of religious change. Beginning in India and the Kushan Empire, Buddhism spread beginning in first century, CE to China and to Central Asia. Christianity too spread along the silk roads from the Mediterranean basin east to central Asia. The spread of both Buddhism and Christianity was ultimately blocked, however, when these faiths came into contact with Zoroastrianism in the Iranian plateau. Indeed Zoroastrians were able to use the silk roads themselves, spreading their ideas to China and to the Mediterranean. 9.5 Sea Trade I

The overland trade routes of the silk roads were only one form of trade and mobility in Eurasia. The seas provided another form of trade, communication, and cross cultural exchange. We need to focus for a moment on two areas of sea trade: the red sea and the Indian Ocean. Transit in and through the red sea was innovated by Arab sailors trading spices and precious metals. These Arab sailors would trade up and down the red sea, taking goods to the ports of South Asia and to the Arabian landmass. One of the critical ports in this trade was the city of Alexandria, which sat at the nexus of the red sea, the Mediterranean, and the River Nile. In this way, goods and commodities were transmitted across the eastern Mediterranean and from there throughout Arabia and the horn of Africa. The red sea trade was a natural conduit to the larger trading zone of the Indian Ocean. Trade across the Indian Ocean was important because it connected East Africa, the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Trade across the Indian Ocean was seasonally determined by the trade winds generated by the monsoon cycle. Monsoons blow from the Southwest from October to April – allowing traders to make the voyage from East Africa and the Arabian landmass to South Asia. The winds then shift, blowing from the Northeast from April to October allowing traders to make a return voyage. This variation in the wind patterns allowed circular trade throughout the Indian Ocean to follow predictable seasonal patterns. Travel across the Indian Ocean was facilitated by new methods of navigation as well. Sailors navigated by celestial objects, using the positions of stars to chart their locations. Their ships, called dhows, employed large sails that could be rigged in different ways to take

advantage of the winds to carry commodities on the long haul across the Indian Ocean. This transit up and down the red sea and across the Indian Ocean – and then back – provided another form of connection across the Eurasian world. Instead of just a single overland route, this trade made it possible to think of a water route connecting China to the Mediterranean. 9.6 Sea Trade II

Sea trade within the Red Sea or across the Indian Ocean were only part of the ways in which humans carried out long distance trade over waterways. There were also robust connections between groups of people carried out across the Bay of Bengal and throughout the Java and South China Seas. Indeed, there were strong trade routes connecting China, Southeast Asia, Borneo, and the islands now making up Indonesia. These sea trading routes helped facilitate the growth of strong governments, particularly in the Malay peninsula and in Sumatra because trade was funneled through a narrow passageway known as the Straight of Malacca, a pinchpoint in the trade that made it possible to tax ships making their way through the Straight. The Straight, which had long been a fertile area for pirates to seize cargo, also helped facilitate the creation of strong tax-levying bureaucratic states in Java and Sumatra. Water trade in Southeast Asia, which followed the great river networks of the Mekong and Iradaddy systems, was based not on mass population migration but on trade diasporas. These trade systems, like the case in Sumatra and Java, had political consequences such as the growth of the power and status of the Khmer empire with its central metropolitan nexus at Angkor. These river networks also facilitated the spread of Indian culture across the region, and it was through those conduits that Buddhism was introduced to the region along with texts written in Sanskrit. In Sumatra, the growth of cosmopolitan cities like Palembang went hand in hand with the growth of Malay power, which was often based on a blending of local religious traditions with Buddhism. But Buddhism was not only religious tradition imported to Southeast Asia through trade with Indians. Hinduism made an appearance too. The temple complex of Angkor Wat – the largest religious structure anywhere in the premodern world – was built based on Hindu principles and later incorporated into Buddhist traditions. And later still, these trade networks continued to exert an influence over cultural forms. When Islamic traders arrived, they too began to convert locals to their religious principles. 9.7 Overland Trade I

The Silk Roads and sea trade in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and in the Bay of Bengal were two mechanisms that helped forge the Eurasian world through trade. There was also a third mechanism at work that performed the same cultural and social work: caravan trade in Africa that joined sub-Saharan Africa with the Mediterranean.

One factor that helps explain the development of trade networks in Africa is the economic and regional diversity of Africa. The coastal areas bordering the Mediterranean had access not only to the material wealth of the Mediterranean world but also commodities that were produced there like cloth and glass. Commodities from Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa – things like copper and salt – were highly prized, along with crops like millet and yams. That said, the introduction of the camel to the trans-Saharan network was the key development that reconfigured the Sahara from a barrier to commerce to a “sea” that could be traversed.

Caravans of camels joined the disparate regions of Africa, and helped generate commercial connections beginning around 300 CE. Scholars report that the camel caravans could number as many as 5000 camels. The most important element in this trans-Saharan trade was

gold, which was transferred by camel across the Sahara to the coastal region of North Africa. Gold was perhaps only slightly more important than the trade in human beings, however. The trans-Saharan slave trade provided a significant source of captives for the coastal regions of North Africa and the Mediterranean. This trade network, as we have seen in other contexts, created a foundation for political consolidation and state formation in sub-Saharan and in west Africa; one important result of this trade demands to be highlighted. In west Africa, trade helped increase the social complexity and hierarchy of those societies. It is also important to note that the significance of the slave trade and of slavery shouldn’t be discounted, but I want to remind you that the form of slavery was different than what would develop later in the Atlantic world beginning in the 15th century. 9.8 Overland Trade II

The overland trade route across the Sahara, which linked the sub-Saharan regions with the coastal areas of the Mediterranean, created a trans-African trading network in gold, salt, dates, and slaves. This commodity exchange proved to be transformative to the people living and working along these trade routes. The changes adhering to these developing networks were perhaps most apparent in the growth trade cities like Timbuktu, located in modern day Mali. The city of Timbuktu was located on the Southern edge of the Sahara, and it was therefore a terminus for the camel caravan trade across the desert. Timbuktu was also, however, integrated into a west African trading network that connected the Senegambian coast to cities in the interior of the continent like Timbuktu and Gao. In this way, the city served a useful dual purpose – connecting the interior of the continent with the west coast of Africa and serving as the end of the caravan line across the Sahara. Visitors to Timbuktu, like the great Muslim traveler of the 15th century Leo Africanus, were stunned at the wealth on display in the city. More than just a vibrant hub of commerce and trade, the city also concentrated wealth within its borders. Equally significant, the city was also a nexus of learning and scholarship that bridged the various cultures of west Africa and the trans Saharan region. The city’s library, which housed thousands of rare manuscripts, was a highpoint of education in the medieval period. Sadly, the wealth of knowledge accumulated in the city was partially destroyed in 2013, when rebel forces occupied portions of the town and destroyed this intellectual heritage of humankind. That said, many of the Timbuktu manuscripts, including priceless copies of the Koran, were safely relocated to the city of Bamako in Mali, thus preserving aspects of the important historical record of a vibrant and important trading and cultural center. 9.9 Disease and Global Networks The silk roads, the sea trade in the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal, and the trans- Saharan trade helped forge a Eurasian world. The connections and exchanges that were a part of this world let us glimpse a world system that bridged continents, cultures, and faiths. But these connections that joined various parts of the world together were not without their risks. Just as commodities and religions were transmitted through this network, so too were terrible diseases. And the cities that were the beating heart of the network as a whole were particularly susceptible to diseases brought there by trade or religious mission. These emergent diseases were particularly devastating because as disparate areas of the globe were knitted together through trade, populations of people were exposed to new pathogens to which they lacked natural immunity.

To give one example of how disease followed the trade networks, consider the case of the city of Constantinople – now Istanbul – in the sixth century CE. The so-called plague of Justinian, named for the Byzantine Emperor, is one example of the problem. Constantinople was located at a very strategic point, bridging Europe and the Middle East and sitting on top of trade routes connecting European market in the Mediterranean with the silk road. The city was thus an important nexus of trade and commerce, a place at which people from all throughout the global trading network congregated. In 541 CE, the city began to experience an outbreak of disease, now thought to be the bubonic plague. The disease, it is thought by scholars now, was brought to the city of Constantinople by traders from Egypt – thus indicating the ways that the entire Eastern Mediterranean ultimately became part of a single disease pool. The outbreak in Constantinople of the “plague of Justinian” was awful. After the disease arrived in the city, it quickly spread. At its height, the plague killed between 5,000 and 10,000 residents of Constantinople each day. From there, the plague spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean, carried by traders and religious missionaries. By the time the disease outbreak subsided the following year, 542 CE, perhaps 25 million people living in the eastern Mediterranean had died. 9.10 Pros and Cons: The Global Market and the Local Producer/Consumer

The silk roads, the over sea trade in the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal, and the trans- Saharan caravan trade together formed an Afro-Eurasian world. This world, which would come later to be simply be called the “old world,” united all of the world’s population except those living in the Americas. This system had its benefits to be sure. Valuable commodities like silk – produced in China but in demand throughout the system – indicated how local commercial practices might be attractive in far-flung locales. Other commodities – salt, gold, and slaves from Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, for instance – were equally valued. This commercial world helped transform trading cities like Timbuktu, Constantinople, Angkor, and Palmyra into powerhouses of commercial, cultural, and political activity. And it is important to recognize that this commercial vitality was built upon a foundation of regional economic variability – regions produced different things, yet there was a global market for those items.

This trading system also impacted two other areas of life. Different religious traditions spread or blended with others along the trade routes. Buddhism, for instance, was carried by traders from India to China and Southeast Asia. Christianity left the Mediterranean and was carried into the middle east. Zoroastrianism – the religion of pre-Islamic Persia – did the same. After Islam developed in the seventh century CE, it too travelled along the trade routes into Southeast Asia, North Africa, and – later – the eastern Mediterranean.

If trade helped spread religion, it also helped spread disease, and we see in the formation of a single trading zone the consequent formation of a single disease pool in which pathogens were carried from region to region by traders or by religious missionaries. The plague of Justinian, like earlier plagues affecting Athens or the cities of China, indicated the possibilities of explosive disease transmission through the networks of the premodern Afro-Eurasian world.