World History E-Book

Steven Wallech

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1349

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

World History: A Concise Thematic Analysis presents the highly anticipated second edition of the most affordable and accessible survey of world history designed for use at the college level. This text offers a comparative analysis of great civilizations of Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas in an engaging narrative that contextualizes history instead of drowning students in a sea of facts. Themes addressed include population dynamics, food production challenges, disease history, warfare, and others. Instructor resources are available online for this text.

This new edition of World History: A Concise Thematic Analysis features a newly-designed interior organization to enhance navigation and comprehension of the material. An instructors' test bank is available online.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents — Volume II

Cover

Half Title page

Title page

Copyright page

Introduction

Unit Three: The Modern World

Chapter 18: Spontaneous European Modernization: Phase One

Simultaneous Revolutions: Phase I, New Trade Routes

Simultaneous Revolutions, Phase II: Biology and Europe

Simultaneous Revolutions: Phase III, Warfare, Politics, and Religion

Simultaneous Revolutions: Phase IV, Commerce

Simultaneous Revolutions: Phase V, the State

Suggested Reading

Chapter 19: The Differential of Power: Phase One

Ship Technology in 1500

Spain’s Rapid Success in the Americas after a Slow Start

A Hidden Agent in the Differential of Power: Disease

Native American Vulnerability

The Aztecs

The Incas

Brazil

Africa’s Indigenous Slave Tradition

The Arrival of Europe

The Sale of Slaves

Consequences of the Slave Trade

Suggested Reading

Chapter 20: Spontaneous European Modernization: Phase Two

Science, Knowledge, and Faith

The Scientific Revolution

Locke’s Philosophy and the Idea of Public Opinion

The Enlightenment

The Nation-State

The Ideology of Revolution

The French Revolution

Great Britain

Suggested Reading

Chapter 21: The Nation-State

The Central European Experience

Central Europeans and Internal Coherence

Suggested Reading

Chapter 22: The Differential of Power: Phase Two

The New Teleology

Nation-States and Industry

Suggested Reading

Chapter 23: Nation-State Formation outside Europe

The United States

Japan

Suggested Reading

Chapter 24: Internal Divisions and Contradictions

Russia

Latin America

Suggested Reading

Chapter 25: In the Crosshairs of Modernity

India

Late Imperial China: The Ming and Qing Dynasties

Suggested Reading

Chapter 26: Targets of Imperialism

Africa

The Middle East

Suggested Reading

Unit Four: Global Violence and the Postmodern Era

Chapter 27: World War I

The Illusion of Progress

The Quest for Empire and the Habits of Violence

Danger Signs in the Short-War Phenomenon

Misunderstanding the Short-War Phenomenon

World War I: Total War, the Geographic Arena of Combat, Victory, and Defeat

Suggested Reading

Chapter 28: Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism

The Soviet Union

Nazi Germany

Suggested Reading

Chapter 29: The Inheritors of Power

The United States

Japan

Suggested Reading

Chapter 30: Decolonization

China’s Republican Revolution

India

The Middle East

Latin America

Suggested Reading

Chapter 31: World War II and the Beginning of the Cold War

World War II

Mass Murder: A New Dimension to Global Warfare

The Cold War: Redefining World Power after 1945

Suggested Reading

Chapter 32: Global Decolonization

China

Japan

India

Africa

The Middle East

Latin America

Suggested Reading

Chapter 33: The End of the Cold War and the Contemporary World

The End of the Cold War

The Contemporary World

Status, Freedom, and Equality

Population Dynamics

Suggested Reading

Credits

Index

World History

This edition first published 2013 © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Edition history: Harlan Davidson, Inc. (1e, 2007)Harlan Davidson, Inc. was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in May 2012.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title

Wallech, Steven.World history : a concise thematic analysis / Steven Wallech, Long Beach City College, Craig Hendricks, Long Beach City College, Touraj Daryaee, University of California, Irvine, Anne Lynne Negus, Fullerton College, Peter P. Wan, Fullerton College, Gordon Morris Bakken, California State University, Fullerton ; Brenda Farrington, Developmental Editor, Chapman University.—Second edition.volume cmIncludes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-118-53266-9 (paperback : volume 1)—ISBN 978-1-118-53272-0 (paperback : volume 2) 1. World history. 2. Civilization—History. I. Title.D20.W355 2013909—dc23               2012037672

Introduction

TEACHING WORLD HISTORY at the college level presents an instructor with an especially difficult challenge. Unlike most historians who conduct courses in the study of a particular culture, nation, or region, those who teach World History ostensibly must have familiarity with the history of all the earth’s peoples. As daunting as such a proposition is, the matter is far more complicated. Because imparting the history of humanity within the confines of a college-level course is, of course, impossible, world historians must convey to their students an appreciation of the short- and long-term effects of human practices on local and regional environments, the interdependencies of humans, animals, plants, and pathogens, and the diffusion of ideas, technologies, and disease through trade, migration, war, empire building, and human resistance—phenomena that create cross-cultural, transnational, and transregional patterns over time.

To make things even more difficult, much of the historical literature on World History emphasizes the differences between regional cultures and local histories, leaving the instructor scrambling to find the similarities that might produce a lucid global narrative. In particular, the current generation of World History textbooks fails to succeed in conveying a unified, coherent account. Indeed, linear surveys lack a central storyline, with any potential core narrative submerged under a sea of details that simply overwhelms the student reader.

What probably explains this bleak state of affairs is the fact that as a distinct discipline, World History is only about six decades old. Begun in the 1960s as part of a slow shift from Western Civilization, World History gradually became a subdiscipline as increasing numbers of historians recognized the usefulness of a global perspective to understand humanity’s past. Developing steadily despite the vast amount of material that had to be digested and the necessary development of new mental habits of synthesis, World History finally achieved recognition as a discipline in 1982 with the establishment of the World History Association. Since then, the WHA has grown to 1,500 members, World History has become a standard general education requirement at the college level, and several major universities now offer advanced degrees in the field.

With decades of combined experience teaching World History—in community colleges and four-year institutions—we have witnessed firsthand the frustration instructors and students of world history experience with current survey textbooks. Deeming a new approach necessary, even overdue, in 2007 we brought out the first edition of World History: A Concise Thematic Analysis, the first truly concise, accessible, and affordable World History survey. Now, in response to feedback from student readers and instructors alike, we present the revised and improved second edition

In this new, second, edition we have refined the themes used to synthesize the narrative as presented in the first edition. In addition, we have made corrections to the overall presentation based on new research developed in climate history and studies recently done on farm technology. The overall effect of these changes has added a far greater depth to the entire project, producing a better integration of the material and a more thorough analysis of regional developments. Finally, in this second edition we responded carefully to feedback and specific criticisms leveled against the first edition by filling in key gaps in the original narrative and more thoroughly tying the storyline to a comprehensive vision of the world.

It will be immediately apparent to anyone familiar with the full-length or even so-called concise world history surveys currently on the market that this book stands alone: its interesting and recurrent themes—conceptual bridges that span the many centuries—give it a unique voice. Its format helps the reader see the larger picture, to conceptualize patterns over time by importing concepts from one unit to another. And while this book might not offer flashy four-color maps and illustrations, its length and price speak for themselves. Too often students are required to pay a great deal of money for a book they have no hope of finishing, let alone comprehending or remembering long much longer than in the final exam.

To achieve the brief but coherent account of global events, the revised second edition of World History: A Concise Thematic Analysis comprises four complete units: the first is long, to lay a more thorough foundation for the entire narrative (eleven chapters); the second, short and concise (six chapters); the third is of medium length, with greater attention paid to consolidating and integrating the account of modernization (eight chapters); and the fourth and final unit is the same length as the third one (eight chapters), with new material to take the narrative of the contemporary world to the present.

Unit 1 employs three scientific themes to help explain the history of the ancient world. The first theme is a biological one used to explain the symbiosis of agriculture and the parasitism of disease. Coupled with this biological theme, a second one applies several geographic concepts to facilitate an understanding of the movement of plants, animals, tools, ideas, and germs from one major cultural hearth to another. Equally important is the condition of geographic isolation, which denied such movement. A new addition to the second edition is a third theme, climate history, which reveals clearly the impact of sharp changes in global weather conditions that dramatically altered the course of human events. Finally, Unit 1 introduces the concept of culture, explaining how human creativity responded to the scientific themes mentioned above as people everywhere adjusted to the changing circumstances of life in the ancient world.

Unit 2, the middle years of world history, develops further the concept of culture, elevating it to the central theme that governs the six chapters that consider the years 500 to 1500 CE. This section also responds to a constructive criticism of the first edition concerning the location of Persian history in the global narrative. The Parthian Empire has been moved to Unit 1 and linked through a more thorough analysis of the Hellenistic experience to the role that culture played in the middle years of world history. In Unit 2, culture serves to explain how the dominant human communities of the globe expanded to their limits, while only one of them developed the potential to change world events. Hence, a broad analysis of each major civilization reveals why most of them preferred stability to change, even as one of them broke the mold of tradition to set in motion a whirlwind of change that laid the foundation for globalism and the modern era.

Unit 3 addresses the modern era, 1492 to 1914. Its major themes are modernization, the differential of power, and globalization. Focusing on European culture as the one that proactively transformed the world, this analysis of modernization considers the key institutional changes that created the nation-state in the West. In this second edition we have reduced the total number of chapters dealing with modernization by consolidating the narrative, adding a more thorough study of the differential of power, and illustrating more explicitly the link between the themes and the historical narrative. Using a comparative cultural analysis of political, economic, and military institutions to demonstrate the growing material might of Europe in contrast with the waning power of non-European societies, Unit 3 outlines the material advantages that Western peoples and cultures enjoyed as they expanded outward— and were themselves transformed by the peoples, ideas, and resources they encountered in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and Asia. Next, the theme of globalization helps explain how other cultures of the world imported many Western institutions, adapting them in an effort to survive, but ultimately sought to expel Europeans from their territories through the long and difficult process known as decolonization.

Unit 4 considers a new conceptualization of the postmodern world by revising its dates from 1914 to 2012. We chose 1914 rather than 1945 because 1914 marks the end of Europe’s political and military advantages based on the theme, the differential of power. Most historians see World War II as the natural break in the modern narrative, but this text argues that the critical moment from a world history perspective is World War I. The Great War changed the balance of power in the world and started the era of decolonization that liberated what has since been called “the third world” nations from European colonial rule. While 1945 is appropriate for European history, the authors feel it is too Eurocentric for World History. This new set of dates, we contend, returns the narrative of history back to the world and diminishes the role played by Europe as a proactive culture. This also creates a more balanced storyline, and we have decided to preserve this approach.

The Post 1914 era begins by showing how global warfare, a harvest of violence set in motion by the empire building of Unit 3, destroyed Europe’s hold over its colonies, protectorates, and spheres of influence and shifted dramatically the global differential of power. At the same time, we approached Unit 4 in a unique way. Given that 1914 to 2012 constitutes slightly less than one hundred years of world history, we strived to maintain an appropriate balance between its content and the remainder of the text. In other words, the last 99 years establishes the contemporary world but deserves no more space than does any other period of global history. Therefore, we kept the content of Unit 4 as concise as possible, even as we show that the tumultuous events leading all the way up to the state of the world today are the products of, and the conclusions to, the preceding three units.

The advantage of this long-, short-, medium-, medium-unit presentation is that it allows for a logical division of the text for use in either the semester or the quarter system. For those on the semester system, the completion of Units 1 and 2 bring the reader to the dawn of the modern age (1500 CE), the classic stopping point for the first half of world history. Units 3 and 4 complete the story in the second semester. For those on the quarter system, Unit 1 covers the ancient world, the standard stopping point in a ten-week class. Unit 2 and the first half of Unit 3 link the middle years to the early modern era (1000–1750 CE) and bring the narrative up to the formation of nation-states, the standard stopping point for the second ten-week period of study. Finally, the second half of Unit 3 and all of Unit 4 cover modernization and the postmodern age.

As mentioned, each unit features a dominant set of themes. Not only do these themes constitute the thesis for the unit under consideration, but they reappear throughout the text, providing cohesiveness and unity where none otherwise exists and making World History accessible and meaningful to student readers. On the other side of the desk, both experienced and inexperienced instructors, eager to find footholds as an otherwise unwieldy narrative unfolds, will find the use of overriding themes helpful. In short, the introduction of themes in a World History text eliminates the problem of presenting an isolated and seemingly endless list of facts, figures, and dates: the “one darn thing after another” phenomenon that gives World History a bad name.

Themes also help the reader build a comparative analysis of regional histories. Such comparisons help students grasp how human creativity produces a unique stamp on the development of distinct cultures, even as people everywhere struggle with a common set of problems. Finally, themes highlight contrasts between cultures, making the text relevant to an increasingly diverse student population, as well as useful in the new comparative World History courses.

Whether you are new to the field of World History or have taught the subject for years, it is our hope that, having tried our approach, you will agree that a concise thematic analysis goes a long way toward making a complicated compendium of human numbers, economies, and cultures meaningful to student readers.

Steven WallechTouraj DaryaeeCraig HendricksAnne Lynne NegusPeter P. WanGordon Morris Bakken

THEMES FOR UNIT THREE

The Modern World

Modernization

Globalization

The differential of power

The printing press enabled the large-scale transmission of ideas that, in turn, contributed to the development of the concept of “culture” in European thinking.

THE CREATIVE ENERGY OF CULTURE, the central theme of Unit 2, and the biological and geographical concepts of Unit 1 underlie the themes of Unit 3. Added to these three themes from volume One are modernization, globalization, and the differential of power. The creative energy of culture from Unit 2 helps explain the spontaneous process of change that transformed traditional European societies into new and powerful ones capable of imposing their will on the world. The concept of “culture” itself emerged from the intellectual changes occurring in Europe in Unit 3 that spawned a new way of seeing the world. And once this concept of culture became entrenched, Europeans came to believe that theirs was “superior” to the “backward” cultures of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This kind of thinking convinced Europeans that they not only could but should change the world.

The biological and geographical concepts of Unit 1 mesh with the themes of Unit 3 by returning to the consequences of the material advantages enjoyed by some cultures, especially in Europe, as compared to those of the rest of the world. Europe was the primary beneficiary of the vast biological resources of the Ancient Near East: the numerous domesticated plants and animals, and the development of the agricultural tools associated with beasts of burden, plus a long disease history that bestowed upon Europeans substantial resistance to the infections of the wider world before they began to explore it in the fifteenth century. Furthermore, those less fortunate peoples living in places like the Americas and Africa, which had long histories of geographic isolation, never developed military institutions to match those found in Eurasian societies. Africa did enjoy a disease barrier that excluded foreign entry into its interior until the nineteenth century, but Africans did not have a plow or wheel to help generate the food surpluses needed to feed a growing population. In addition, African states had already become dependent on foreign trade to build their political institutions; this made sub-Saharan cultures vulnerable to foreign influences. The Americas suffered a geographic quarantine that excluded its peoples from the wealth of ideas, goods, and tools that had developed in Europe, Asia, and Africa and also made Native Americans vulnerable to a biological disaster once Christopher Columbus breached their isolation in 1492.

In this unit we will see how the new themes of modernization, globalization, and the differential of power fit within the existing cultural, biological, and geographical context. Modernization refers to that extraordinary series of events that pulled Europe out of the bounds of tradition and pushed it onto a new cultural level where change was not only tolerated but encouraged. What is so amazing about this process is that Europeans were unaware of what was happening to them even as the momentum of change was transforming their cultural landscape.

In contrast to modernization, tradition generates a set of complementary practices that require people to repeat their behavior without question; they believe that their way of life is sacred and therefore holds intrinsic value that should not be changed. Despite the power of tradition, a process of change began in Europe that undermined the commitment to repeated behavior and inspired an opposing set of values that encouraged change by labeling it as progress. These changes took place simultaneously in Europe’s intellectual, economic, social, and political institutions: the Renaissance (1300–1600); the Commercial Revolution (1492–1763); the Rise of Territorial States (1494–1648); the Reformation (1517–1648), and the Scientific Revolution (1543–1687). Each of these overlapping upheavals occurred in the entrenched institutions of European culture. Once the first cycle of modernization was complete, Europe had become aware of the changes taking place, so that Europeans now sought to accelerate the process. They did so through the Enlightenment (1690–1789), the French Revolution (1789–1815), and the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850). This second cycle of parallel events created both the nation-state and a new awareness of the concept of culture itself.

Given the complexity of the European story, and its spontaneous break with tradition, a significant amount of space in this text is dedicated to the explanation of this process of change. Once one understands how this process unfolded in Europe, one can easily see how modernization was exported to the rest of the world, thereby spawning globalization. Globalization involves the use of Europeans’ growing hostility to tradition as their self-awareness of modernization took root. And if Europeans came to condemn their own traditional patterns of life, then they came to have even less patience with foreign beliefs and practices. Hence, as the people of Europe set up outposts in alien cultures, Europeans justified the imposition of their institutions on the “backward, pagan, or savage” communities of foreign lands that still suffered the “superstitions” that had plagued their traditional societies.

To accomplish the process of globalization, Europeans first had to capture the differentialof power. This theme contrasts the military and political potential of European culture with that of the rest the world. Military power determined which culture had the means to attack and defeat a foreign foe. Political power defined the resources needed by the victorious society to consolidate its hold on captured lands. Together, military and political power delineated the tools needed to invade, occupy, and change foreign cultures.

Europe captured the differential of power in the modern era, and modernization bestowed on Europe a newly integrated political entity called the “nation-state.” Building on the wealth generated by the Age of Discovery and the Commercial Revolution, Europe enjoyed the financial resources needed to fuel changes at home through empires built abroad. Using this newly won wealth to sustain the rise of the Royal Army (1494–1648), as kings fought the religious wars (1556–1648) of the Reformation (1517–1648), Territorial States (1648–1789) emerged with either a monarch or a parliament functioning as sovereign. Then, once the Scientific Revolution (1543–1687) questioned a religious explanation of the universe, and reinforced these inquiries with questions raised by the Enlightenment (1690–1789), public opinion emerged in the eighteenth century as a new force in politics.

Combining public opinion with a growing hostility toward tradition within Europe, the French Revolution (1789–1815) and the British Industrial Revolution (1750–1850) reintegrated the geographic unity of the state to create the nation. The French Revolution created the national army, a professional bureaucracy, a national tax system, and a positive political consensus, as well as the concept of citizenship. The British industrial revolution caused a demographic shift in which people moved from the countryside to the city, producing an urban hierarchy (a realignment of a nation’s cities through a national market system) and causing these migrants to learn urban skills (literacy, calculation, and critical thinking). The combination of both the French and industrial revolutions integrated the political, economic, and social space in Britain and France with public opinion to create a new internal coherence (a modern geographer’s term for the national unity of people capable of mobilizing their entire strength). This new internal coherence became the nation-state and gave Europeans an extraordinary concentration of power: they now had the ability to muster the people and resources of an entire nation, mass-produce weapons, and combine military might with a national will to take new territories and create new markets, regionally and around the globe.

Just as the nation-state grew strong in Europe, most of the other major Eurasian and African civilizations reached the nadir of their existence. While the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa had fallen under European influence during the Commercial Revolution, the Dynastic Cycle robbed China of its strength. Japan’s self-imposed isolation denied the Japanese access to military and political changes occurring in Europe, despite Japan’s own version of modernization. The Mogul Empire experienced internal decay as the Muslim rulers in India commanded some of the poorest military units in world history. The Middle East produced several powerful gunpowder empires, but once they reached the limits of their expansion under Jihad, the age-old problem of stagnation and religious rivalry between Sunni and Shiites began sapping the Islamic states of their military might. Finally, the disease barrier that had long protected sub-Saharan Africa from foreign intrusion collapsed thanks to the development of germ theory and modern medicine, which opened the entire continent to potential European exploration.

Naturally, the differential of power accelerated the process of globalization, which increased Europe’s capacity to capture foreign lands and transform the world. AS a result, modern imperialism, fueled by the illusions of progress, linked Europe’s capacity for mass transportation to a global economic system of change. Old empires, like those established by Western Europe during the Commercial Revolution, expanded to embrace all corners of the world. Central European nations, such as Germany and Italy, tried to imitate their neighbors to the west, yearning to compensate for years without access to the new trade routes developed after 1492. These Central European states planned to build empires in all the places of the world that Western Europeans had not ventured. In addition, new non-European nations like the United States and Japan, after a quick development of power, considered the consequences of not joining in this scramble for global markets and set aside their scruples to build comparable empires.

Meanwhile, non-European cultures around the world had to re-evaluate the effectiveness of their ancient ways as they failed to help people resist the modern onslaught. These traditional, non-European cultures had to consider whether they should join the United States and Japan in forming nations of their own in order to preserve what was left of their social, ethnic, and political integrity. The result was the globalization of the modernization process. Modern changes occurred under Europe’s initiative, or because of lessons learned from contact with Europeans, or as a result of a combination of both. The traditional, non-European peoples began to contemplate how quickly and how completely they should take on a modern face.

The modern (imperial) age ended with the onset of World War I (1914–18). Not only did the Great War dramatically change the differential of power globally, it also drew into question things Europeans had been taking for granted since 1492: that they were “superior” in might, intellect, and energy as compared to the rest of the peoples of the world. For more than four hundred years, Europeans had used this sense of superiority to justify taking action against tradition everywhere in an effort to reshape the world. Once Europeans transmitted the same notions of progress to several non-European nations such as the United States and Japan, they joined in, also attempting to “civilize” the rest of the world by modernizing “backward” peoples for the benefit of all involved.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world had learned enough from Europe during the modern age to begin to employ the means to resist during the post-modern era (1914–91). Hence, by 1914, the forces analyzed in this unit had thoroughly changed the face of the world because of the reintegration of European institutions through modernization, the role of the differential of power, and the impact of globalization. ALL three themes laid the foundation for the twentieth century and the postmodern world, covered in Unit 4.

CHAPTER 18

Spontaneous European Modernization: Phase One

The Process of Change Begins

Modernization challenges tradition and sets in motion patterns of cultural change that require the complete reintegration of a society’s fundamental institutions. Tradition itself is a complex set of practices handed down from generation to generation that become unquestioned behaviors because traditional people believe them to be sacred. The cultural changes set in motion by modernization challenged these traditional behaviors and eroded their sacred underpinning through doubt. Once doubt took hold, modernization raised the questions that led a society to seek innovative and transformative solutions.

These transformative solutions then caused a reintegration of a modernizing society’s basic institutions that reflected the realities of culture itself. Culture is a functional integration of those basic practices that make up a society’s economy, status system, political design, and religious and intellectual beliefs. In the case of Europe, modernization began when tradition collapsed in the face of a series of simultaneous institutional changes. These changes included a reconfiguration of European society as a result of the new Atlantic trade routes opened by Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, which fuelled economic growth that financed the contemporaneous changes caused by the Reformation, which then inspired religious and dynastic disputes that in turn opened space for the redefinition of European political society. Finally, the combination of all these massive intersecting changes accelerated existing doubts that then raised questions that European tradition could not answer.

Europe’s simultaneous institutional changes comprised an economic revolution that launched a global realignment of trade (1492–1763), while a military revolution (1495–1648) bestowed upon European monarchs a monopoly on coercion that ultimately granted them sovereignty. Meanwhile, the Reformation (1517–1648) released intense religious passions that culminated in the collapse of Catholic orthodoxy, which, in turn, fuelled religious warfare that reinforced changes already underway in the military and in politics. Also, with the breakdown of this religious orthodoxy, a new intellectual space opened for science, permitting sufficient freedom of inquiry to inspire a complete redefinition of Europeans’ understanding of the universe (1543–1687). This radical redefinition of the universe launched by science, in turn, generated an intellectual response called the Enlightenment (1690–1789) that created yet another intellectual weapon called public opinion that accelerated political change. Each of these changes complemented the others and heightened their combined effect, allowing Europe to embark upon a process of spontaneous modernization that few understood at the time it occurred. Ultimately the significance of these combined changes became clear to later generations.

Simultaneous Revolutions: Phase I, New Trade Routes

The old trade routes prior to 1492 relied on a complex system of exchanges that integrated ancient and medieval markets in Eurasia and Africa, which required trekking through numerous cultural zones, crossing an equally complex pattern of political borders, and using different vehicles to accommodate travel over land, on rivers, and across oceans and seas. During the Late Middle Ages (1300–1450), goods made their way from Europe to Yuan and Ming China (1260–1368 and 1368–1644, respectively) or to the Delhi Sultanate of India (1206–1526) and the subcontinent’s fragmented set of subordinate Muslim states. Goods thus crossed countless frontiers and passed through numerous exchanges. Few products made it all the way from one end of this commercial system to the other, while each exchange along the way added the expense of an intermediate profit to the final price when the last sale was made.

Merchants in London or Novgorod, for example, might begin the commercial process by loading their cargoes aboard ships, sail the North or Baltic seas respectively, and make their way to Flanders or the northern German coast. There the cargo would be unloaded and sold to merchants in Bruges, Flanders, or Bremen in the Holy Roman Empire. Using the Bruges route as the first illustration of an old trade pattern, the English or Russian cargo might be sold in Flanders, and new merchandise purchased and sent on to Paris and then Chalons as it crossed France. From Chalons, after more intermediate sales, the merchandise would then cross the alps into Milan and journey on to Genoa. Once in Genoa, the cargo would leave for Alexandria and the Red Sea. Since Alexandria was a Muslim city, new, Muslim merchants would handle the sale and transport the goods on oceangoing vessels as they set off for Calicut, India, while local political rulers along the route would impose heavy taxes. Arriving in India, the sales there would enable the sellers to purchase the spices for which India was famous, and a return trip would be charted.