The years before 1914 and the First World War are often termed the “first age of globalization” (with our current era the second). But that’s a little short-sighted view, even though arguably correct in some sense.
Books such as The Fate of Rome and The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization make it quite clear that Classical Antiquity achieved some level of globalization in its corner of Eurasia. At the other end of Eurasia, the Grand Canal also illustrates the importance of trade and economic interdependence in complex pre-modern societies.
But what has been made can be unmade. One of the major arguments in Framing the Early Middle Ages is that the decline in the social complexity of the early medieval period in Europe was due in part to the collapse of the whole fiscal apparatus of the Roman bureaucratic state. Some of these weak post-Roman states were really chiefdoms bound together with personalized rule. A process which advanced the furthest in Britain and the Balkans.
And yet during the first grat maximum of human civilization in the years after 0 international trade extended even beyond the bounds of specific imperium, from one end of Eurasia to the other.
The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: The Ancient World Economy and the Kingdoms of Africa, Arabia and India focus mostly on the international aspect of the trade. Much of it is concerned with the role of conspicuous consumption among elites in the Roman Empire in driving this trade, and so the bullion drain to the east. Silk, incense, ivory, and medicines were all imported in large quantities from the east. The state benefited in some sense through taxation, but the drain on specie was a constant consideration. It is well known that Roman coinage, sometimes modified, became the standard in the southern half of India in the first centuries AD.
In a stepwise fashion, East Roman traders pushed across the Indian ocean until in 166 we know that they reached the imperial court in China. This connection seems to have been made by following the trade routes which were already established by Indians into Southeast Asia. Roman geographers were familiar with the general shape of Peninsular Malaysia, as well as Java.
Because our records from China and the Roman Empire are very good, is easy to ignore the reality that a whole network of cities existed along the shores of the Indian ocean. These cities grew up around trade and acted as intermediaries for the demand for particular luxury goods which also pumped specie out of Roman mines. But the decades after the Antonine plague seems to have been defined by multiple regressions across Eurasia, as societies dependent and expecting trade faltered when local nodes collapsed and interrupted the flow.
“short-right”
What did you mean by that?
I recall an interview Greg Cochran did with James Miller where he said international trade in the ancient world was a matter of luxury for elites, and all it brought the masses was disease.
Also encounter the argument that oil extraction rapidly immiserates ‘underdeveloped’-3rd World masses, as local-national oil revenues are necessarily intercepted by well-positioned strong-arm kleptocrats. Nigeria. Venezuela. Russia. Mexico. Brazil. Central Asian pipeline principates…Saudi royals vs. populace…
Should have said ‘further immiserates’– due, of course, to increasing wealth and power disparities.
And let’s use the word ‘commoners’ again, instead of tired mechanistic term ‘masses’. Restores sense of the the personhood and agency (however limited) of even caste-bound individuals and highlights the moral onus upon fortunate overlords.
Globalization is likely very old. With large shipping and trading networks connecting China with Cambodia/Vietnam/Thailand with Indonesia/Malaysia with Iran with Turan with Tibet with Sumeria with Egypt with Lebanon with Anatolia with Serbia circa 2000 BC.
The similarities in global standards (star names, qualities of stars, 7 days of the week, 12 months in the years, 360 degrees in a triangle, fascination with the twelve quadrants of the procession of equinoxes [2160 years] and similar use of numbers.
Too bad the history of those times is mostly lost.
The second great age of globalization might have been facilitated by Cyrus the Great. This further accelerated under Alexander the Great. The Roman trade being referred to above is a continuation of the second age of globalization begun by Cyrus the Great and continued by Alexander the Great.
The third great age of globalization was set off during the time of Umar, Uthman, Ali, Muawiyah, Yazid, Marwan and Malik.
The fourth great age of globalization was perhaps Mongol. I love me some Mongols! One of my favorite books describes how Chinese circumambulated the world during this fourth great age of globalization. Sadly this did not lead to ongoing trade:
https://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-China-Discovered-America/dp/0061564893
The fifth great age of globalization was set off by Iberian Peninsula in the 1490s during the age of discovery. This lasted until WWI.
We are now in the sixth great age of globalization.
Let us hope that sixth is the charm 🙂
I really liked “The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean: The Ancient World Economy and the Kingdoms of Africa, Arabia and India” it filled in a lot of blanks.
The role of Egypt in the Roman empire, Why the Suez canal did not come into real use until the 19th century? Where the Jews had got the money to build the second temple? Why the muslims had a very strange expansion down east africa? Why churches have incense?
Parts of history that I was utterly unaware of, Romans tried to annex Arabia (Yemen), and failed due to the Arabs unchanged behaviour, but what a, what if? of history.
And yes the realisation that south India was the Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, etc. of the Roman period, complete with bling, expats and shady security businesses.
The story of upper class guy sent to university who decided to take a gap year in India.
The whole book very interesting and understandable.
Although black pepper as a luxury good my reading of it was it started like that but ended as a commodity, which bought down the empire due to the financial games the Romans used to support the trade, which they needed more for tax reasons than pepper ones.
>Some of these weak post-Roman states were really chiefdoms bound together with personalized rule. A process which advanced the furthest in Britain and the Balkans.
What does personalized rule mean? I’m trying to imagine exactly what that would look like.