Reading:
Candice Goucher, Charles LeGuin, and Linda Walton, “The Invisible
Exchanges in the Ancient World,” in In the Balance: Themes in Global History(Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998), 254–5.
Abstract:This short piece discusses the diseases that inevitably traveled fromplace to place along with merchants and traders since ancient times. Whetherthose diseases were spread by rat fleas, poisoned grain, insects, or fromperson to person, the spread of disease along trade routes is as old as trade. Frequently, disease had dire consequences for the human populationsin its path.
The Invisible Exchanges of the Ancient World
Far more than trade and tribute traveled along the economic roadways andsea-lanes of states and empires. Merchants carried with them not only ideasbut also diseases that were invisible to the eyes of the world before 1500 C.E. The impact of both was great. It is believed that the plague that was known asthe “Black Death,” which devastated the population of Europe between 1347and 1351 C.E., probably originated in India. It was transferred via the fleascarried by infected rats, which skillfully climbed the ropes of ships and sailedwith merchants from India to Egypt and thus into the Mediterranean. Evenearlier, epidemics (857 C.E.) in Western Europe are thought to have beencaused by poisoned grain, since the pathways of the disease followedestablished grain trade routes.
The links between the invisible realms of ideas and disease were sought bothby ordinary people and by religious writers. In the Christian city of Carthage,the bishop Cyprian wrote a tract about the plague that raged during his time(251 C.E.): “Many of us are dying in this mortality that is many of us are beingfreed from the world. This mortality is a bane to the Jews and pagans andenemies of Christ; to the servants of God it is a salutary departure. . . . Howsuitable, how necessary it is that this plague and pestilence, which seemshorrible and deadly, searches out the justice of each and every one andexamines the minds of the human race.”
New patterns of contact among peoples created new epidemiological(distributions of disease in a population) frontiers. The creation of the MongolEmpire was particularly notable in shifting the boundaries of communitiesacross a wide expanse, inevitably bringing together many peoples whoshared trade routes and communications systems. Elsewhere, climatic andecological conditions limited or increased the distribution of disease. Climaticchanges in West Africa altered only slightly the territorial boundaries ofinsects such as mosquitoes and flies that were the carriers of certain diseases. The presence of tropical conditions near the equator provided an inescapablebreeding ground suitable for the spread of malaria, which has infectedhuman and animal populations in Africa, South America, and much of Southand Southeast Asia, where high infant mortality rates represent the constantbattle with infection from ancient times to today.
Historical research continues to identify ancient diseases on the basis ofcurrent medical knowledge. The plague of Athens, for example, wiped outone-fourth of the city’s population between 430 and 427 B.C.E. The Greekhistorian Thucydides wrote that after the “abrupt onset, persons in goodhealth were seized” with various symptoms, including “in most cases anempty heaving ensued… produced a strong spasm.” Recently, the Greekword lugx (“heaving”) was retranslated to mean “hiccup,” and the symptomsThucydides described were identified as the earliest known outbreak of theEbola virus, which in the 1990s produced uncontrollable hiccupping in victimsin the Congo (Zaire).
Outline Template:
- Trade and Disease
- Invisible to the Eyes before 1500 C.E.
- ______
- “Black Death”
- ______
- ______
- ______
- ______
- Religious Views on Disease
- ______
- New Patterns of Contact
- The Mongol Empire
- ______
- Climate and Disease
- Tropical Conditions Near Equator
- ______
- ______
- Plague and Athens
- Effects
- ______
- Ebola Virus
- ______
Reading:
Excerpt from Candice Goucher, Charles LeGuin, and Linda Walton, In the Balance: Themesin Global History (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998), selections from chapter 10,“Connections.”
Abstract:
This essay explores the varieties of connections among peoples ofthe world before 1500. It looks generally at commercial, diplomatic, andreligious connections between diverse areas of the world. In so doing, itsuggests the reasons why so many individuals were motivated to makedifficult and often perilous journeys across cultural frontiers. It also discussessome of the many changes that resulted from these diverse contacts.
The creation of empires and the spread of religion were, along with trade, themost important ways in which connections were established among peoplesof the world both before and after 1500. Expanding networks of military,political, economic, and religious ties created connections among cultures andsocieties in Europe, Asia, and Africa at least as early as the time of the Roman(31 B.C.E.–476 C.E.) and Han (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.) Empires…
Traders made up the largest number of world travelers. By the secondcentury, travel by ship and caravan was adequate for both regional and long-distancecommerce. Trade moved steadily through a series of regionalexchanges between West Africa and East Asia and culminated in largemarkets where both ordinary and exotic goods were traded. Along the linesof communication connecting Asia and Africa with the Mediterranean coast,basic types of ship and sail construction, as well as navigation and caravanning routes and practices, were commonly known and used, regions borrowingfrom one another and each using what suited it best.
Between 100 and 500 C.E., the camel, the “ship of the desert,” was introduced tothe Sahara from West Asia via Egypt. The use of the camel was an innovationin African overland trade equivalent to improvements in maritime technology. The camel led to faster, more frequent, and more regular commerce. Bred indifferent sizes and structures for different terrains, the standard one-humpcamel could carry loads of up to 250 kilograms (550 pounds) while travelingmore than a week without water. Sometimes described as a difficult anddisagreeable pack animal, those who used camels paid homage to them inpoems and essays by extolling their beauty, gentleness, speed, and patience…
By both land and sea, merchants moved luxury goods and commoditiesbetween towns, regions, and continents, delaying or changing theirshipments according to shifting markets, wars, rumors, and weather. Drivenby hopes of profit, they sought out trade items that might increase theirwealth. Commodities in general demand, such as salt, which is essential toboth humans and animals but is not readily available everywhere, werecommonly traded in both regional and international commerce.
Until major improvements in production in the eighteenth century,governments commonly maintained monopolies on the production and tradeof salt. Salt was major source of governments’ finances. Salt was politically andeconomically important. In some parts of the world, governmentmonopolization of major salt deposits and the trade lines associated withthem provided the basis for large regional empires…
Everywhere, heavy and bulky items were generally confined to regionaltrade; only a few offered a large or certain enough profit to be movedregularly in long-distance trade. Governments’ interest in trading such bulkyitems as horses, essential to effective cavalry in time of war, resulted in horsetrading over both middle and long distances. For example, India was a majorimporter of horses from Central and West Asia and by the third century wasregularly transshipping them to Indonesia.
While many traders dealt in bulk goods, traversing the continents in longcaravans or sailing along their coasts in lumbering ships, others dealt insmaller quantities of more profitable luxury goods. Of these the mostcommon were fine ceramics, jewelry, woven and embroidered silks, incense,and spices. Manufactured goods originating in East, South, and SoutheastAsia were traded into West Asia, Africa, and Europe in exchange for gold andsilver. Caravan routes across the Sahara were established by African tradersin salt,metals and other commodities and across Central Asia by traders insilk. Around the seas, from the first centuries C.E., a string of ports of call marked routes from southern China down through the islands of SoutheastAsia across the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea to Africa and West Asia.
Spices, arguably the most lucrative of the global luxury trade in the periodbetween 100 and 1450, moved for the most part by sea. A world withoutrefrigeration had powerful reasons to pay high prices for pepper, cloves,cumin, cinnamon, and nutmeg, all sources of strong flavors that masked thetaste of overage meat and other perishables. Nearly all these items originatedin India and the islands of Southeast Asia. Some were traded east and northto China for ceramics, silks, and other finished goods. Much of the spice tradethroughout this period went as far west as the Mediterranean basin…
By 1000 C.E., gold and silver coins became more common as internationalcurrency than cowries. In some parts of the world, other metals, such as lead,tin, or copper, were rarer, and their scarcity permitted their use as forms ofcurrency. By assuming monopolies over both the mining and the productionof valuable metals and by establishing the weight, degree of adulteration, andvalue of metal coins, large and small states throughout the world began tomint and control currency…
Outline Template:
- Traders
- Significant Trade Routes
- ______
- ______
- The Camel
- ______
- ______
- Incentives to Trade
- ______
- The Various Goods
- Salt and Government Monopolies
- ______
- ______
- Horses
- ______
- ______
- Luxury Goods
- ______
- ______
- Spices
- ______
- ______
- Currency
- ______
Maps:
Significant Facts:
1-______
2-______
Significant Facts:
1-______
2-______
Globalization involves movement—of people, goods, cultures, etc. One of the challenges of analyzing and displaying this phenomenon is that static images and text fail to convey the historical complexities and geographical patterns.
The first step of human history involves globalization. The peopling of the planet was the first great “historical” act of our species. We are all children of the same ancestors.
The second set of narratives focuses on empires. Consider following Alexander the Great's incredible conquest of Egypt and the Near East. In this early case of globalization, commercial and cultural links were forged with military might. Consider examining how the Byzantine Empire dominated the same part of the world and how its influence was curtailed prior to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Globalization is everywhere. States, economies, and societies are increasingly integrated; flows of goods, capital, humans, and cultural objects now link us in a global web. There is little doubt that we are undergoing a process of compression of international time and space. Globalization is also nowhere. Lacking a coherent empirical or theoretical underpinning, the concept is in danger of becoming an academic “one-hit-wonder” with little to show for the attention.
What does globalization mean?
Does it represent a revolutionary change in human history?
What can we learn from similar historical phenomena and epochs?