The Indian Ocean in Eurasian and African world-systems before the sixteenth century

Journal of World History

Volumn 16, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 411-465

  Beaujard, Philippe ^a  

^a ÉCOLE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC HISTORY; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; INTERNATIONAL TRADE; TRADE FLOW;

AFRICA; EURASIA; INDIAN OCEAN;

EID: 33244496695     PISSN: 10456007     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jwh.2006.0014     Document Type: Review

References (204)

1. On the Mediterranean, of. F. Braudel, vol. 1, La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l'Époque de Philippe II, 9th ed. (Paris: A. Colin, 1990), p. 253;
2. and Civilisation Matérielle, Economie et Capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe Siècle, vol. 3, Le Temps du Monde (Paris: A. Colin, 1979), p. 12.
3. K. N. Chaudhuri, in Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), explicitly modeled his work on the Indian Ocean after Braudel's La Méditerranée.
4. On the unity of the Indian Ocean, cf. M. N. Pearson, The Indian (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 5.
5. E. Morin, Science avec Conscience (Paris: Fayard, 1990), pp. 244-245, 252. A system is more than the sum of its parts, but is also less than the sum of its parts
6. (ibid., pp. 241-243.
7. I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, vol. 1, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century [San Diego: Academic Press, 1974], p. 8).
8. An explanation is to be found out not only at the level of the whole but through the interactions between and within the parts, which constitute the whole. Morin undertook to transpose the theories of the chemist Prigogine in the anthropological field. Cf. I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (London: Heinemann, 1984).
9. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos and the New Laws of Nature (New York: Free Press, 1997).
10. A. G. Frank and B. K. Gills, eds., The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? (London: Routledge, 1993).
11. Before Frank and Gills, cf. K. Ekholm and J. Friedman, "'Capital' Imperialism and Exploitation in Ancient World-Systems," Review 4, no. 1 (1982): 87-109.
12. As part of my efforts to avoid Eurocentrism, I employ the terms "western Asia" and "eastern Asia," in place of the more usual Near East (or Middle East) and Far East.
13. A. G. Frank and B. K. Gills, "The Five Thousand Year World System in Theory and Praxis," in World System History: The Social Science of Long-Term Change, ed. R. A. Denemark, J. Friedman, B. K. Gills, and G. Modelski (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 4.
14. The "surplus" represents the difference between what has been produced and what has been consumed by the producer. On the concept of value, cf. infra.
15. It seems to me that a certain level of integration is reguired. For Frank and Gills, "mere' trade makes a system, " but they speak also of a "regular and significant trade" (Frank and Gills, "Five Thousand Year World System," p. 6).
16. Braudel, Civilisation Matérielle, vol. 3, p. 20.
17. Following Hansen, it is possible to define city-states as "self-governed cities which consider themselves as political units" and are recognized as such by the other political units of the region. These cities may be independent, or dependent through diverse modes (within a hierarchical ensemble of city-states, within a federation, as a tributary of a macrostate, and so on). M. H. Hansen, "Conclusion: The Impact of City-State Cultures on World History," in A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, ed. M. H. Hansen (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2000), pp. 606, 608-609.
18. M. N. Pearson also underlines the key concept of "littoral society" (Indian Ocean, pp.37-41).
19. J. Friedman has pointed out that "the wave of discourses on cultural hybridity consist of the analysis of cultural elites and their discourses. [...] the ideology of hybridity is primarily an elitist discourse in a world that is otherwise engaged in the opposite. Hybridization and balkanization are two simultaneous processes of the global shift in hegemony" ("Concretizing the Continuity Argument," in Denemark et at., World System History, p. 147).
20. The concepts of "fringe culture," networks, and hybridity get their full meaning only if they are analyzed at the level of the whole through a systemic approach that goes beyond a holistic perspective, as the latter "expresses only a partial and simplifying vision of the whole." Pascal had already expressed this "new paradigm brought by the idea of system: 'I consider as impossible either to know the parts without knowing the whole, or to know the whole without knowing each of the parts'" (Morin, Science avec Conscience, p. 240).
21. Unfortunately, we do not have quantitative figures to determine the level of integration of the various parts of the world-system for the eras that concern us here. Establishing a direct measure of commercial volume is also, of course, impossible. We must therefore rely on the indices to be found through archaeological excavations and ancient writings. They allow us to estimate size and intensity of exchange networks and follow their expansions and shrinkages (cf. J. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A. D. 1250-1350 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1989], p. 368).
22. The number and size of the principal cities, and their localization, provide precious indications as to the general direction of activity (growth or decline) and the internal structure of the world-system (A. Bosworth, "World Cities and World Economic Cycles," in Civilizations and World Systems: Studying World-Hisiorical Change, ed. S. K. Sanderson [Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 19951, pp. 206-227). In addition, other methods, such as palynological studies, ice core analysis, and dendrochronology are useful because they allow for the reconstruction of historic climatic and environmental conditions, which in turn can be compared to demographic, economic, and political trends.
23. G. Algaze, The Uruk World System: The Dynamics of Expansion of Early Mesopotamian Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
24. The network may have reached all the way to East Africa (C. Chase-Dunn and T. D. Hall, "Comparing World-Systems to Explain Social Evolution," in Denemark et al., World System History, p. 106) if the copal necklace found in a tomb at Tell Asmar (near Baghdad)
25. and dated to 2500-2400 B.C.E. can be proved with certainty to come from Zanzibar or its environs (C. Meyer, J. M. Todd, and C. W Beck, "From Zanzibar to Zagros: A Copal Pendant from Eshnunna," Journal of Near Eastern Studies [1991]: 296-297).
26. Some scholars, such as J. Philipps ("Punt and Aksum: Egypt and the Horn of Africa," Journal of African History 38 [19971: 437), have expressed doubts about this origin.
27. B. K. Gills and A. G. Frank, "The Cumulation of Accumulation," in The World System, p. 82.
28. Chase-Dunn and Hall's attempt to compare the size of the empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt shows two very different growth rates for the period 2500-3000 B.C.E. and opposing trends from 2000 to 1500 B.C.E. ("Comparing World-Systems," Fig. 4.9, p. 106). This opposition in terms of political integration nevertheless does not exclude synchronism on an economic level.
29. Frank and Gills ("Rejoinder and Conclusions," in The World System) trace the beginnings of the Eurasian world to the third millennium B.C.E., but they do not offer "proof" of definite cycles (with phases of growth and decline) until after 1700 B.C.E. Wilkinson meanwhile dates the origin of his "central civilization" to 1500 B.C.
30. (D. Wilkinson, "Central Civilization," in Sanderson, Civilizations and World System).
31. A comparison of the cycles put forward by Frank and Gills with Chandler's data (Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census [Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987]) demonstrates well he difficulties faced by scholars for the period before of the Iron Age very difficult obstacles (bosworth, " World Cities and World Economic Cyles ").
32. I have stressed that, owing to the limits of archeology and the paucity of texts, we can ascertain only general tendecies and sometimes chains of dependency. Ongoing debates on the chronologies of the third and second milienniums B.C.E clearly show that the phases of growth and teraction for certain zones put forward by authors such Fracnk and Gills can often be taken only as mere Ancient Near Eastern Chronology [Second Millenium B.C.], " Akkadica 119-120 (2000).
33. and D.T. Potts, "Tepe Yahya, Tell Abraq and the Chronology of the Bampur Sequence," Ivanica Antiqa 38 [2003]:1-11).
34. The complexity of earlier scripts matched the limited number of their uses and of their users; simplicity and efficiency of alphabetical scripts transformed not only their social function but also the relationship of the individual with the different spheres of power.
35. The archaeological discovery of cloves at the site of Terqa on the central Euphrates, at a stratigraphy dated 1700-1600 B.C.E. - if it can be verified-would, however, point to contacts between the Austronesian world and the western Indian Ocean from 2000 B.C.E. G. L. Possehl, "Meluhha," in The Indian Ocean in Antiquity, ed. J. Reade (London: Kegan Paul, 1996), p. 190.
36. Evidence of these interconnections includes the introduction of barley, wheat, and sheep into China in die third millennium B.C.E. and the appearance of horse-drawn chariots in China in the second millennium B.C.E. Silk, which has been found in the Sapalli tombs of Bactria (ca. 2200 B.C.E.) probably came from China (A. A. Askarov, Sapallitepa [Tachkent: Fan, 19731]).
37. On China in the second millennium B.C.E., cf. L. Liu and X. Chen, State Formation in Early China (London: Duckworth, 2003).
38. Cf. figure 10.8 in Chase-Dunn and Hall, Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), p. 219.
39. Frank and Gills ("Five Thousand Year World System," p. 12) hold that a simultaneity in phases can be discerned between eastern and western Asia from the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. In my opinion, even if an interconnection did indeed exist between eastern Asia, India, and western Asia from the sixth to fifth century B.C.E., the relations do not display the regularity and intensity that characterize a system; for this period it is difficult to demonstrate synchronous evolution in the various regions, whereas it can be shown for somewhat later periods.
40. Africa was only gradually incorporated into the spheres of interaction or the Eurasian and African system(s): Egypt and its hinterland, the coast of the Red Sea, and the horn of Africa from the second millennium B.C.E. in a system centered on Egypt and its hinterland, North Africa from the second millennium B.C.E. in a Mediterranean space, East Africa and its hinterland around the first century C.E. (or a little earlier) in the global world-system that takes shape in that time, sub-Saharan Africa from the seventh century at the latest (but perhaps from as early as the first millennium B.C.E.) in the Mediterranean, and Egypto-Nubian spheres.
41. See also I. C. Glover, "The Archaeological Evidence for Early Trade between South and Southeast Asia," in Reade, Indian Ocean in Antiquity, p. 368.
42. and W. H. McNeill, "World History and the Rise and Fall of the West," Journal of World History 9 (1998): 129.
43. The inconsistencies in Phase B 9250/150-100/50 B.C.E.) put forward by Frank would argue against the existence of an Eurasian and African world-system for this time period (the Mediterranean and China were enjoying economic expansion while Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and perhaps India - in the second century B.C.E. - were experiencing some level of decline). But maybe Asian unified space was taking shape at that time (cf. J. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times [Oxford: Oxford University press, 1993], p. 29). If the regularity and intensity of exchanges must be taken into account, it is obviously difficult to establish the threshold at which the integration of several world economies will allow them to constitute a single world-asystem. Further, the available historical aadata are frome the first century C.E., and this might introduce a bias to the analysis.
44. But see C. Edens on this point (cf. infra).
45. Cf. C. McEvedy and R. Jones, Atlas of World Population History (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978),
46. and Bosworth, "World Cities and World Economic Cycles."
47. B. K. Gills and A. G. Frank, "World System Cycles, Crises, and Hegemonic Shifts, 1700 B.C.E. to 1700 C.E.," in The World System.
48. But from the beginning of the Christian era, phases of growth that have been recognized are in accordance to the periods delimited by Bentley, Old World Encounters, pp. 26-28.
49. The nature of the recession that occured in the middle of the seventeenth century is still being debated (cf. infra).
50. Various authors have underscored China's pre-eminence in the world-system, cf. W. H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Forces and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), chap. 2, and
51. McNeill, "World History and the Rise and Fall of the West," pp. 219-220;
52. A. G. Frank, ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998),
53. and especially T. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 20 Vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959-1998). Some scholars have placed an emphasis on the role of central Asia and its nomadic herders in the system's dymanics. I would argue that central Asia - even when it attained political ascendancy in the thirteenth century - was only dancing to the rhythm set by other players.
54. I agree with Frank (ReORIENT) - as against G. Arrighi ("The World According to Andre Gunder Frank," Review 22, no. 3 [1999]: 336) - that demographic growth and economic gains went hand in hand
55. Braudel (Civilisation Matérielle, vol. 1, Les Structures du Quoddien, p.17). argued a similar point: "if men become more numerous, there is an increase in production and trade." Besides the role of the demographic pressure, political power can force farmers to increase their labor input and to transform the use of land, but this is more likely to happen in periods of global growth of the system.
56. It is process of growth,however, that tend to give rise to innovations. The use of inventions takes place only when it becomes profitable to invest in technological development. If it is true that a certain demographic density is necessary to allow for the development of more efficient transport, I do not agree with the position of Chase-Dunn and Hall ("Comparing World-Systems," p.98) that demographic pressure of is generally at the root of technological progress and is the reason for political expansion. In the case of agriculture, the spread of plants occured during moments of increased trade. In the seventh and eighth centuries, the Arabs transporred as far away as Spain fifteen types of vegetal spicies from the Indian peninsula. In the tenth century, the Sung dynasty promoted the introduction of rice varities from Champa, which made possible two harvests per year. However, while innovations in manufacturing, the realm of science, and "techniques of power" occur most often during moments of economic grow, or at the beggining of growth, it appers that innovations in agricultural domains also take place during phases of decline (indeed, because they provide solutions).
57. For the relations between demographic pressure and technological change, see E. Boscrup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure, new ed. (London: Earthscan Publications, 1993).
58. Cf.H. P. Ray, The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 11;
59. on Buddhism and Hinduism, Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean;
60. and on Islam, A. Wink, "'Al Hind': India and Indonesia in the Islamic World-Economy, c. 700-1800 C.E.," in Comparative History of India and Indonesia, vol. 3, ed. P. J. Marshall et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), pp. 33-72.
61. Self-government is one of the main characteristics of city-states. Not all of the city-states have developed democratic institutions but "even in monarchies, the percentage of the population involved in the direction of the government is much higher than in other types of states" (M. Hansen, "The Concepts of City-State and City-State Culture," and "Conclusion: The Impact of City-State Cultures on World History," in A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, p. 18 and p. 607).
62. These trends are even clearer in the economically growing Europian continent from the twelfth century. The discovery of Greek and Arabic philosophy and sciences (eleventh through twelfth centuries) is a prelude to the development of corporations and autonomous universities (self-governed) and to the initiation by R. Bacon and other scholars of the experimental method in sciences (thirtheenth century). Republican institutions of Italian city-state allow the individual - within certain limits - freedom of thinking and freedom of enterprises, which will develop in the fifteenth century during the Renaissance.
63. The development of the state (internal and external) can result from different factors: growth in population and in production and commerce, increases in social complexity and innovations. Competition between city-states and state probably explains part of the technical progress at the time of the crossbow in the fourth century B.C.E. It led to the ascendancy of the Qin state in the third century B.C.E.
64. Imperialist expansion might also represent "an alternative to the domestic redistribution of riches, " a sort of release valve for social tensions.
65. "Investments in socio-political complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns... Once a complex society enters the stage of declining marginal returns, collapse becomes a mathematical likelihood" (A. Tainter, The Collapse of Comlpex Societies [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], pp. 194-195).
66. The model I describe differs in several ways from that of Chase-Dunn and Hall ("Comparing World-Systems," p. 98).
67. Here, I can offer only its outlines. It is indeed likely that there exists "a plurality of logics," but all the same I hold, as against Wilkinson, that there is a "systemic logic" (D. Wilkinson, "Civilizations, World Systems and Hegemonies," in Denemark et al., World System History, p. 78).
68. One example of possible other interactions is that linking the environment to technological innovations (for example, in eighteenth-century England, deforestation led to technological increasing rarity and value of wood, which led to the use of charcoal in blast furnaces). Frank and Gills ("Rejoinder and Conclusions," p. 305) have called for a new reading of world history that would take into account how "world system development both altered and was in turn altered by the natural environment," but they have not really pursued this line of inquiry.
69. K. Ekholm and J. Friedman ("'Capital' Imperialism and Exploitation in Ancient World System," in Frank and Gills, The World System, p. 73 n. 19)
70. and I. Wallerstein (Historical Capitalism [London: Verse, 19831, pp. 59-60) have noted the high military price of maintaining hegemony.
71. These migrations appear to be tied to increased aridity in central Asia, the south of Russia, and northern China during this period (R. Brown, History and Climate Change: A Eurocentric Perspective [London: Routledge, 2001], p. 73).
72. W. H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York: Anchor Books Editions, 1998).
73. S. C. Chew, World Ecological Degradation: Accumulation, Urbanization, and Deforestation 3000 B.C.- A.D. 2000 (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira, 2001).
74. Nevertheless, the rise in the density of population often induced technological innovations in agriculture that brought about improvement in soil fertility, thereby initiating a new cycle of economic growth (Boserup, Conditions of Agricultural Growth, pp. 21-22).
75. G. Bond et al., "Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate during the Holocene," Science 294, no. 5549 (December 2001). 2130-2136;
76. Feng Sheng Hu et al., "Cyclic Variation and Solar Forcing of Holocene Climate in the Alaskan Subarctic," Science 301 (September 2003):11890-1893. At Arolik Lake in Alaska, "increases in temperature and moisture apparently corresponded to intervals of elevated solar output and reduced advections of ice-bearing (cooler) surface waters eastward and southward in the North Atlantic. Conversely, decreases in temperature and moisture corresponded to intervals of reduced solar output and increased advections of North Atlantic ice-bearing waters."
77. Gills and Frank have remarked on these phenomena of desynchronism that, they argue, allow for the restructuration of the world-system. "It is precisely because some regions and states get out of phase that the transformation and development of and in the system can take place" ("World System Cycles," p. 149).
78. They postulate that the rise of certain powers at a moment of global crisis stems from the weakening of others, but I do not find this to be sufficient explanation. Why, precisely, is one state better positioned for ascent than another? Chase-Dunn and Hall (Rise and Demise, pp. 149, 221, 224;
79. "Comparing World-Systems," p. 107) have likewise nothed that South Asia and Southeast Asia have "dynamics...less tightly (coupled) to the emerging Afroeurasian world system" than other regions such as China or western Asia. Growth and decline of states in Southern Asia occur often in opposition to those of Chinese and Indian empires.
80. Wilkinson shows that subregions of the Eurasian continent are often out of sync during phases of slowdown in the world-system ("Civilizations Are World Systems!" in Sanderson, Civilizations and World Systems). A final example of desynchronism: the expansion of Byzantium from the late ninth into the tenth century.
81. For reason still debated: threat from the Mongols, fear of a massive outflow of copper cash through trade, reactions against the excessive costs of Zheng He's expeditions, environment problems (deforestation due to excessive shipbuilding).
82. The work of T. Chandler should today be revived and improved upon. The evolution in the number and size of cities with more than forty thousand inhabitants shows an abrupt increase in 1400, which can be attributed in large part to die fact that the data used by Chandler are more consistent than for preceding periods. It is nevertheless remarkable that the data collected by Chandler show a decrease in size for the twenty-five biggest towns in in the world between 100 and 361 C.E. During this period, the Han, Kushan (ca. 200), and Parthian (226) empires disappear.
83. A. G. Frank, "Bronze Age World System Cycles," Current Anthropology 34, no. 4 (1993):387.
84. Chase-Dunn and Hall ("Comparing World-Systems," p. 91) contend that the core/periphery distinction does not necessarily imply hierarchy, but the mechanisms of the world-system itself would seem to contradict this possibility.
85. Gills and Frank ("Cumulation of Accumulation" and "World System Cycles") have not sufficiently explained the mechanisms that assured the transfers of surplus in ancient times.
86. In effect, India was generally a core with multiple centers (cf. supra). Rome and its empire formed another center or "core" for the first cycle of the system. Western Europe acquired the status of a center again only at the end of the fifteenth century in the ancient Eurasian and African world-system and in a new system that had as peripheries North and West Africa and the Americas. As cores, Egypt and western Asia were sometimes separate, sometimes united.
87. On the "development of underdevelopment" and "unequal exchange," see A. G. Frank, Le Développement du Sous-développement (Paris: Maspéro, 1970);
88. A. Emmanuel, L'échange Inégal (Paris: Maspéro, 1973);
89. and S. Amin, L'échange Inégal et la Loi de la Valeur: La Fin d'un Débat (Paris: Anthropos, 1981).
90. In this regard, I do not share the reservations of Chase-Dunn and Hall, "Comparing World-Systems," p. 91. Ancient Mesopotamia, which these authors cite, in fact provides a good example of this process, as it was exporting textiles and metal goods.
91. Moreover, because cores control commercial routes and markets, gains in their industries' productivity do not bring about a decrease in profit for their manufactured goods; conversely, the profits from gains in productivity that occur in peripheries are recouped by cores.
92. Versus M. N. Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 116,
93. and P. Sinclair and T. Hakansson, "The Swahili City-State Culture," in Hansen, A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, p. 475.
94. From the sixteenth century, the African inland was a hinge between the two existing world-systems. At the center of the slave trade networks, Africa provided the West and the East with slaves. See the map of the slave trades published by C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, L'Afrique et les Africains au XIXè Siècle (Paris: Colin, 1999), p. 190.
95. Moreover, earlier evidence for links established through the African inland are cowries, which represented a well-established currency in West Africa from the twelfth until the nineteenth century (C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, personal communication). These shells - which came ultimately from the Maldivian islands - were found even earlier at Awdaghust (western Sahara) in levels belonging to the ninth through tenth centuries (J. Devisse, "Commerce et Routes du Trafic en Afrique Occidentale," in Histoire Generale de l'Afrique [UNESCO, NEA, 1990] p. 450).
96. Unlike S. Amin ("History Conceived as an Eternal Cycle," Review 22, no. 3, [1999]: 308), I believe that core-periphery relations in periods before the sixteenth century are already "defined in terms of economic exploitation" (although not uniquely so).
97. Wallerstein and Amin have unnecessarily assumed that politics and ideology dictated die economy before the end of the fifteenth century in terms of a "tributary system." Indeed, the notion of "a tributary age" (ibid., p. 316) before 1500 runs squarely against the historic facts.
98. M. Horton and J. Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), p. 102.
99. Cf. also E. A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves: Changing Patterns of International Trade in East Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975);
100. and A. Sheriff, "Trade and Underdevelopment: The Role of International Trade in the Economic History of the East African Coast before the Sixteenth Century," in Hadith 5: Economic and Social History of East Africa, ed. B. A. Ogot (Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1976), pp. 1-23.
101. Ivory was not only a by-product of elephant hunting, and searching for gold was not just an occasional activity to exchange gold for cloth. See The Book of the Wonders of India, which speaks of Africans working like ants in galleries, and Abu al-Fida', who quotes Ibn Sa'id (beginning thirteenth);
102. G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century (Oxford. Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 15, 24.
103. Cf. also Portuguese accounts about the Manica country and the chiefdoms of Amçoçe and Mazofe (Mazoe) in 1512 and 1573, W. G. L. Randles, L'Empire du Monomotapa du XVe au XIXe Siècle (Paris: Mouton, 1975), pp. 81, 122.
104. Pearson himself acknowledges an export of ten tons of gold a year from the coast of Sofala before the end of the fifteenth century (Indian Ocean, p. 84).
105. Cf. the effects of long-distance trade on the construction of hierarchical societies as in the Limpopo area and Great Zimbabwe between die twelfth and fifteenth centuries. According to M. N. Pearson, the Swahili and foreign merchants were able to make their "huge profits" without any recourse to exploitation. Instead, "Overall, the advantage lay with Africa.... Africans could work as much or as little as they wanted" to extract gold and acquire imported products that "were discretionary rather than necessities in their agricultural and hunting lives, except for cloth on the plateau." Thus, for Pearson, cloth is bought only for protection against the cold. It is not tied to social status, about which Pearson has little to say anyway. Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders, pp. 117, 124.
106. Moreover, it is certainly erroneous to consider that in the sixteenth or sixteenth century, "the traders from the [East African] coast had to try and create a market de novo" (ibid., p. 113). Exchanges h ave been developing between coast and interior for more than a thousand years. If it was so difficult for the traders to sell their products, how did they manage to make such "huge profits"?
107. It is as if the razzias for slaves carried out by coastal groups did not inflict any harm or social damage on the peripheral societies. These razzias probably are just part of the "benign" effects of the trade mentioned by Pearson (Port Cities and Intruders, p. 119). The effects of the slave trade were all the more devastating because women probably formed the larger number of slaves. On the East African coast, women play an essential role in agricultural production.
108. A. Sherratt, "Envisioning Global Change: A Long-Term Perspective," in Denemark et al., World System History, p. 121.
109. For the case of Southeast Asia, see P.-Y. Manguin, "The Amorphous Nature of Coastal Politics in Insular Southeast Asia: Restricted Centres, Extended Peripheries," Moussons 5 (2004).
110. Cf. for example Ibn Battuta on Kilwa: "They are devoted to holy wars because their country is near pagan Zenj" (Ibn Battuta, Voyages, vol. 2, De La Mecque aux Steppes Russes [Paris: F. Maspéro, 1982], p. 90).
111. Cf C. Chase-Dunn and T. D. Hall, "The Historical Evolution of World-Systems," Sociological Inquiry 64, no. 3 (1994): 271.
112. Some ports, however, that served as warehouses and crossroads had practically no hinterland and owed their success entirely to their strategic geographic location. This was the case for Hormuz and Malacca.
113. I therefore disagree with Bosworth who sees a "tension" between land and sea routes and argues for the existence of cycles that alternated between silk routes by land and spice routes by sea (Bosworth, "The Evolution of the World-City System, 3000 BC to AD 2000," in Denemark et al., World System History, p. 282).
114. Building on Julian Steward's notion of "cultural ecology" (Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1955]),
115. J. Diamond uses data from archeology, history, genetics, and molecular biology to argue that environmental conditions gave rise to the development of agriculture and conferred a decisive advantage on Eurasian societies (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies [New York: W. W. Norton, 1997]).
116. I. Wallerstein, "World System Versus World-System: A Critique," in World System: Five Hundred Years, pp. 293-294;
117. and Chase-Dunn and Hall ("Comparing World-Systems," p. 92) also contend there was "no movement in raw materials" in ancient times.
118. Cf. L. Casson, Periplus Maris Erythreai (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989).
119. Cf. R. T. J. Cappers, "Archaeobotanical Evidence of Roman Trade with India," in Ray, Archaeology of Seafaring, pp. 51-69,
120. W. Z. Wendrich et al., "Berenike Cross-Roads: The Integration of Information," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46, no. 1 (2003): 46-87.
121. B. K. Gills, "Capital and Power in the Processes of World History," in Sanderson, Civilizations and World Systems, p. 146.
122. Wallerstein, Modern World-System, vol. 1, pp. 41-42.
123. J. Schneider, "Was There a Pre-Capitalist World-System?" Peasant Studies 6, no. 1 (1977): 20-29;
124. P. Peregrine, "Prehistoric Chiefdoms on the American Mid-Continent: A World System Based on Prestige Goods," in Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, ed. C. Chase-Dunn and T. D. Hall (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 193-211;
125. Chase-Dunn and Hall, Rise and Demise, pp. 13-14.
126. For Southeast Asia, see, for example, R. S. Wicks, Money, Markets, and Trade in Early Southeast Asia: The Development of Indigenous Monetary Systems to AD 1400 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992).
127. L. Dumont (Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective [Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986], p. 27) writes, "There is no doubt about the fundamental conception of man that flowed from the teaching of Christ: as Troeltsch said, man is an 'individual-in-relation-to-God.'"
128. Cf. also M. Augé, Génie du Paganisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), p. 139, about the figure of an individual human destiny shaped by Christianity. "Salvation, Transcendence and the Mystery,"
129. Augé continues (ibid., p. 14), "are essentially absent..." from paganism. The importance of the individual was established in schools of thought from Hellenistic times (e.g., Cynics, Epicurians, Stoics).
130. Dumont holds that Christianity's emphasis on the individual reached its peak with Calvin during the Reformation: "the individualist value now rules without contradiction or restriction" (Dumont, Essays on Individualism, p. 57).
131. H. P. Ray, The Winds of Change: Buddhism and the Maritime Links of Early South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, 1994);
132. D. Lombard, "Y a-t-il Une Continuité des Réseaux Marchands Asiatiques?" in Marchands et Hommes d'Affaires Asiatiques dans l'Océan Indien et la Mer de Chine: 13e-20e Siècles, ed. D. Lombard and J. Aubin (Paris: EHESS, 1988), pp. 11-18.
133. As M. N. Pearson underlines it ("The Indian Ocean and the Red Sea," in The History of Islam in Africa, ed. N. Levtzion and R. L. Pouwels [Athens: Ohio University Press; Oxford: James Currey; Claremont: David Philip, 2000], p. 44), "the hajj is a remarkably efficient method of integrating the worldwide [Muslim] community."
134. See S. D. Goitein, "From the Mediterranean to India: Documents on the Trade to India, South Arabia, and East Africa from the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries," Speculum: A Journal of Mediaeval Studies 29 (1954): 181-197, for the networks linking Egypt and India.
135. e Siècles?"in Lombard and Aubin, Marchands et Hommes, p. 197.
136. As but one example, Mahmud Gawan was a learned man and horse merchant whose family originated in Gilan. He served as a minister in the Bahmani sultanate of India while his brother, Ahmad, was based in Egypt. One of Ahmad's sons did business with India while two others, Koranic scholars, lived in Mecca. On the importance of diasporas and networks that bypassed "ethnicity" and nations, see also P. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
137. Goitein, "From the Mediterranean to India," p. 197.
138. For example, cf. Ray, Archaeology of Seafaring, pp. 188-189, 192.
139. Frank and Gills, "The 5000-Year World System: An Interdisciplinary Introduction," in The World System, p. 46.
140. Here I am in agreement with Frank, at least for the periods preceding the eighteenth century. Frank holds that it is illusory to try to distinguish a qualitative difference in phases of the world-system based on modes of production. There was never a progressive succession of modes of production; instead, the various types of modes could be operating simultaneously, in different combinations and relations. Indeed, Frank goes so far as to say "This received conceptualization has continued to divert our attention away from the much more significant world systemic structures and processes" (ReORIENT, p. 331).
141. Chase-Dunn and Hall (Rise and Demise, pp. 212-213, and "Comparing World-Systems," p. 101) make reference to the "oscillation between state-based and private capitalist accumulation."
142. Chase-Dunn and Hall, Rise and Demise, p. 47.
143. Gills, however, argues, "the entire Eurasian world-economy/system of the thirteenth century was perhaps already 'capitalist' (and perhaps even that of) the tenth century" ("Capital and Power," p. 139). It does, in fact, appear that capitalism played an increasingly important role from one cycle to the next.
144. The city-states of the Malaysian world in fact appear much earlier (P.-Y. Manguin, "City-States and City-State Cultures in Pre-15th Century Southeast Asia," in Hansen, A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, pp. 409-416),
145. as well as the city-states of the Swahili East African coast (Sinclair and Hakansson, "Swahili City-State Culture").
146. Manguin, "City-States and City-State Cultures."
147. Hansen, "Concepts of City-State and City-State Culture," p. 16. Hansen proposes to use this term "country-state" or "macro-state" instead of "territorial state."
148. Braudel, Civilisation Matérielle, vol. 3, p. 88.
149. Cf. M. Morineau, "Eastern and Western Merchants from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries," in Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era, ed. S. Chaudbury and M. Morineau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1999), pp. 116-144.
150. S. Digby, "The Maritime Trade of India," in The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 1, C. 1200-c. 1750, ed. T. Raychaudhuri and I. Habib (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 155.
151. C. Edens, "Comments" on the article of A. G. Frank, Current Anthropology 34, no. 4 (1993): 408.
152. The end of the Spring-and-Autumn period and the Warring States period (fifth through fourth centuries B.C.E.) might represent another example of growth in a time of intense competition. I do not, however, agree with Edens's rejection of Frank's causal tie between volume of trade and levels of urbanization. Regarding the first point, Friedman goes further than Edens when he writes "centralized empires were often a symptom of slowdown or even decline.... Expansion is most often and systematically linked to political decentralization" (J. Friedman, "Comments" to the article of A. G. Frank, Current Anthropology, 34, no. 4 [1993]: 409). He disputes the idea that the decline of an empire serves as evidence for a B phase in the cycle (slowdown). Available data, however, would seem to support Frank.
153. K. N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilization in the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 256, 387.
154. Gills, "Capital and Power," p. 139.
155. Ancient Egypt offers an example of growth being directly instigated by actions of the state, through its technological innovations (the invention of writing, irrigation, etc.) and especially through its efforts to stimulate demand (D. Warburton, "Before the IMF: The Economic Implications of Unintentional Structural Adjustment in Ancient Egypt," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 43, no. 2 [2000]).
156. Burma provides a good example of the contradictions that can arise between the development of religious entities and state interests. Periodically, in phases of "purification," the state seized the wealth that had been amassed by religious orders. From 843 to 845, the Chinese emperor likewise confiscated the belongings of Buddhist monasteries.
157. Ibn Battuta notes for example die warm welcome given to traders by the lords of Kulam and Calcutta, but also the practices of extortion and piracy inflicted by local lords of the west coast of India (Voyages, vol. III, Inde, Extrême-Orient, Espagne et Soudan, pp. 206-207, 213-214).
158. Lombard, "Y a-t-il une Continuité," p. 117.
159. Also Aubin, "Y a-t-il Interruption du Commerce," pp. 88-89.
160. Aubin (ibid.), however, makes reference to "condottieri merchants," "who were both viziers and military leaders."
161. M. Gaborieau, "L'Islamisation de l'Inde et de l'Asie Orientale," in Etats, Sociétés et Cultures du Monde Musulman Médiéval, ed. J. C. Garcin, M. Balivet, T. Bianquis, H. Bresc, J. Calmard, M. Gaborieau, P. Guichard, and J.-L. Triaud (Paris: PUF, 1995), p. 456.
162. Indeed, the merchant Ibn al-Kawlami became governor of Cambaye through the auspices of the sultanate of Delhi (Ibn Battuta, Voyages, vol. 3, pp. 102-103).
163. S. Digby ("Maritime Trade of India," p. 52) gives the example of the Tibi family, which played the role of kingmakers in the Pandya kingdom of South India at the end of the thirteenth century.
164. This situation contrasts with that of Europe, which accounts for the fact, according to Y. Lacoste (La Géographie du Sous-développement, 5th ed. [Paris: PUF, 1982], p. 270), that it was in Europe that capitalism emerged as the dominant system and paved the way for the Industrial Revolution.
165. Braudel, Civilisation Matérielle, vol. 3, p. 44. Marx also expressed that the "biography of capital begins in the sixteenth century."
166. G. Arrighi, "Capitalism and the Modern World-System: Rethinking the Nondebates of the 1970s," Review 21, no. 1 (1998): 127-128,
167. and The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times (London: Verso, 1994), chaps. 1-2.
168. Frank and Gills, however, do not support this interpretation. According to these authors ("Rejoinder and Conclusions," p. 304), the Americas were a periphery to a core situated in Europe, but the latter was not the core of a discrete world-system.
169. The gold and silver from the Americas only "(permitted) the Europeans to participate more actively" in exchanges in the system (Frank and Gills, "Five Thousand Year World System," p. 7).
170. Yet, elsewhere, Frank (ReORIENT, pp. 277-279, 316) does describe a world-system centered in Europe.
171. This debate ties in with the question of whether European states of the sixteenth century were qualitatively different from other states and if the logic of the system changed with the rise of modern Europe. It could be argued that the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, before England, represent the first example of a capitalist state. But, asks Braudel (Civilisation Matérielle, vol. 3, p. 161), "Can the United Provinces be called a 'state'?" The East India Companies, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, offer a good example of association between state and capitalism.
172. "M. Mazoyer and L. Roudart, Histoire des Agricultures du Monde du Néolithique à la Crise Contemporaine (Paris: Seuil, 1998), p. 313.
173. The discovery of silver mines at Potosí (Bolivia) in 1545 and at Zacatecas (Mexico) in 1548 would, in the decades to come, greatly augment the silver supply in the trade circuits of the ancient world. Access to this silver, along with gold, enabled Europe to compensate for its commercial trade deficit with Asian states. The influx of precious metals also became a factor for growth in production and commerce in the Eurasian and African zones.
174. The notion that mass education can provide a structural base for technological innovation was developed only in the twentieth century.
175. L. Dumont, Essays on Individualism, p. 92.
176. In addition, see the "Bill of Rights adopted by certain (American) States and particularly that of Virginia of 1776" (ibid., p. 93).
177. J. E. McClellan III and H. Dorn, Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 292.
178. D. Christian, "Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History," Journal of World History 11 (2000): 25.
179. It is noticeable that the emergence of rational thinking in Greece took place in the context of city-states that developed democratic institutions. The Mohist Chinese wave of logician thinking appeared at die same period (fifth through fourth centuries B.C.E.), but it will not have die same posterity, because of very different political and social contexts (within a strong central state marked by Confucianism). As in the Greek cities of antiquity, some freedom of thinking along with liberty to conduct business existed in Sung China, with different kinds of limitations (the importance of external threats nevertheless constituted an inhibiting factor for growth in both cases). Freedom is restricted in Ming China by state power, based on a neo-Confucianist philosophy; in the Muslim world, by religious power itself.
180. Lacoste, La Géographie du Sous-développement, pp. 269-270.
181. According to Lacoste (and to Marx), it is the unique character of the European feudal system that explains the creation of a revolutionary bourgeoisie, the triumph of its ideology, and the advent of capitalism as the dominant mode of production. Open to question, however, is Lacoste's contention that "in a country without feudal structures, merchants did not constitute a bourgeoisie," but were part of ruling aristocracy (ibid., pp. 260, 267, 273).
182. Likewise refutable is Lacoste's assertion - made in order to fit with Marx's "Asian mode of production" - that there was no private ownership of land in Asia. For the Tang, Sung, and Ming, cf. J. Gernet, Le Monde Chinois (Paris: Armand Colin, 1999), pp. 230, 275-278, 360.
183. Frank, ReORIENT, pp. 301-306.
184. Before broaching the topics of population increase and the resulting imbalances, Frank puts forward a seemingly paradoxical argument. The assets of Asian cores were also the source of their weakness: the growing supply of silver resulted in "increased purchasing power, income, and demand on domestic and export markets in the world economy. That presumably increasingly skewed the distribution of income, which could have led to constraints on effective demand and growing political tensions" (ReORIENT, p. 267).
185. But why would the influx of money be extremely beneficial to Asian economies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then suddenly become nefarious in the eighteenth century? The argument makes sense only if it assumes a reverse in the cycle, induced by growing demographic pressure and a decline in the levels of profits. Frank emphasizes the unequal distribution of income in Asia, which I mentioned above. Other authors see a phase of decline in the seventeenth century, but the character of the recession of the mid-seventeenth century is still under debate. Was it a global event affecting the entire world-system or a more localized recession? Was it a slowdown at the end of a long phase or the second phase of a Kondratieff cycle? Frank (ReORIENT, p. 231) today rejects the idea of a generalized economic crisis in the seventeenth century.
186. However, there was a decrease in the population of the ancient world between 1600 and 1650 (McEvedy and Jones, Atlas of World Population History;
187. C. Clark, Population Growth and Land Use [London: McMillan, 1977]) and a global decrease in temperature in what is called the Little Ice Age (1640-1705).
188. Moreover, "in the period 1640-1650, the white metal from America no longer arrived in Spain in large quantities" (F. Braudel, "Monnaies et Civilisations de l'Or du Soudan gra l'Argent d'Amérique: Un Drame Méditerranéen," Annales-économie, Sociétés, Civilisations 1 [1946]: 20).
189. According to Frank, Europe has (only) taken advantage of the weakness of the Asian cores in the eighteenth century, thus managing to acquire a dominant position, which leads I. Wallerstein to say ironically that "Frank proves the European miracle" ("Frank Proves the European Miracle," Review 22, no. 3 [1999]: 365-371).
190. Considering the existence of only one world-system in the eighteenth century, which is Frank's view, we are led to ask ourselves why this B phase (phase of decline) that he describes (a B phase valid "at least for Asia," says Frank, ReORIENT, p. 259), brings about a general demise in Asia and a spectacular upturn in Europe.
191. It seems to me necessary to think of the competition between two world-systems, the old Eurasian and African one (maybe truly in a B phase before the Industrial Revolution) and a new one centered on Europe (and then North America) - a situation that Frank himself seems to describe (ReORIENT, p. 283): "While the Europeans were gathering strength from the Americas and Africa, as well as from Asia itself, Asian economies and polities were also becoming weakened during part of the eighteenth century - so much so that the paths finally crossed."
192. Hansen "Conclusion," pp. 612-613.
193. The United Provinces after 1579 provide a more recent example of a federation (ibid.)
194. "Republicanism and federalism represent major aspects of the modern state which have their roots in the cultures of city-states. Before the end of the eighteenth century, they were practically only to be found in the city-states(ibid., p. 616). When they eventually managed to emerge (in India, Southeast Asia, but not in China), Asian city-states were not able to impose their ideology to the regional states.
195. Chase-Dunn and Hall ("Comparing World-Systems," p. 108) predict a collapse circa the "year 2020."
196. Some experts think that oil supply could stay at reasonable prices in the world until 2030, but "these forecasts are not the most probable" (P. Testard-Vaillant, "Pétrole: Les Raisons de la Tourmente. Pourquoi les Prix Flambent-ils?" Le Journal du CNRS 178 [2004]: 19).
197. I. Wallerstein, "The World We Are Entering, 2000-2050 (32 Propositions)," in The World We Are Entering, 2000-2050, ed. I. Wallerstein and A. Clesse (Amsterdam: Dutch University Press, 2002), p. 22.
198. "The modern world-system (which is a capitalist world-economy) is in a structural crisis and it will not be able to go on functioning under the historic way it took. The system enters a chaotic period of transition towards something different" (ibid., p. 17).
199. "The crisis of the system disfavours the survival of the capitalist world-economy as a historic system." "During this period (of chaos), there will be a political struggle about the nature of the system which will follow" ("Introduction," in World We Are Entering, p. 7).
200. "La Décroissance, 2004, p. 2.
201. Cf. N. Georgescu-Roegen, La Décroissance: Entropie, Écologie, Économie (Paris: Sang de la Terre, 1995).
202. S. Latouche, Survime au Développement (Paris: Mille et Une Nuits, 2004).
203. I. Wallerstein, Utopistics, or Historical Choices of the Twenty-first Century (New York: New Press, 1998),
204. and "Introduction," in World We Are Entering, p. 8.