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Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE-1000 CE: A Preparatory Phase

43 important questions on Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE-1000 CE: A Preparatory Phase

How long does globalization go back? Where was the first trade?

- Globalization goes back as far as 6000 years ago, the point at which one scholar has claimed to find the origin of the world economy.
- Soon after the advent of agriculture, we do see people from the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent engaging in some trade, for example seeking precious stones.

What was the big contact challenge for most regions before 1000CE? Why?

The big contact challenge for most regions before 1000CE, amid pervasive localism, was to build networks within large regions, that would facilitate trade and cultural and political exchange.

Where did most migrating groups moved to?

Most migrating groups initially moved just a few dozen miles away from their place of origin, and the long distances were achieved over time as a result of movement by many successive generations.

Name examples of rapid moves over many hundreds of miles.

Some groups of Native Americans migrated swiftly down the Pacific coast, from the Siberia-Alaska land bridge and Northwest, by using coastal vessels, reaching various parts of South America.

Did these long-distance migrations lead to something?

Long-distance migrations did not set up structures of exchange. They brought people to new places and sometimes mixed different groups of people, but the migrants did not usually return - so no durable patterns of regional reaction developed beyond encounters between residents and migrants on the spot.

What brought back and forth interactions?

Trade, over any appreciable distance, whether for gift exchange or for profit, did bring back and forth interactions.

Name examples of trade interactions before 1000 CE.

- Sea shells from the Indian Ocean reached Syria by about 5000 BCE
- Trade over a hundred to two hundred miles also developed, for example in east-central Europe (in present-day terms, from Hungary to Poland), not only for precious stones but for materials, like flint, important in making early tools and weapons.

What was the most venturesome early trade?

- It may have developed among peoples in Southeast Asia, for example in some of the islands of present-day Indonesia, where boats developed capable of navigating in sections of the Indian Ocean.
- Primitive shipping also developed in the Persian Gulf region, by at least 4000 BCE, with efforts to take advantage of favourable winds during certain months of the year to reach India and then return.
- Some of these Asian initiatives clearly reached the east coast of Africa, explaining the crop exchange between the two regions.

What were crucial developments in the emergence of overland trade?

- Crucial developments, in the emergence of overland trade, involved the domestication of pack animals. Donkeys were domesticated by the third millennium BCE, presumably near their African place of origin. They spread widely to other societies.
- Their capacity to carry relatively heavy loads over long distances, though slowly and sometimes reluctantly, was a crucial advance for land-based travel.
- For certain regions, both in Asia and in Africa, the domestication of the camel had similar significance.
- These were humble advances compared with the later technologies of globalization, but they greatly furthered connections among adjacent regions.

In which civilisations did interregional trade develop? What did they trade?

- Mesopotamia, at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, exchanged with Harappean society in northeastern India (today Pakistan). Not only goods, but artistic symbols were part of this exchange, and there may have been cross fertilization in religious ideas as well.
- Egypt began to launch shipping in the Red Sea by 2500 BCE, reaching the Arabian Peninsula (present-day Yemen) and also farther down the Indian Ocean coast of Africa.
- Egyptians received gold, ivory, and slaves from Ethiopia in exchange for manufactured goods. Trade with the Middle East emphasized spices, some of which had been shipped over from India.

What theme involves the Babylonian Gilgamesh?

The first known epic poem, the Babylonian Gilgamesh from before 1200 BCE, involves a travel theme. A ruler travels from Sumer, which is largely treeless, hundreds of miles to the interior seeking timber for his palace (the timber would then be floated downriver), and of course encounters many adventures in the process.

What is the Rig Veda about?

The early Hindu holy book, the Rig Veda of the second millennium BCE, features a story about pirates attacking an Indian merchant ship in the Persian Gulf, with Indian rulers sending armed vessels to retaliate against the pirates.

Who was able to sail into the Pacific? What happened there?

- Southeast Asians, with their superior shipping technologies, were able to sail into the Pacific, reaching and populating some of the island groups of Pacific Oceania.
- But the connections were not maintained, and a separate Polynesian culture began to develop without any further linkage with its Asian progenitor or with the many technological and agricultural advances that began to occur in Asia itself.

What did Arab merchants bring to Egypt? What did they try to convince to Egyptians?

- Arab merchants brought spices like cinnamon to Egypt.
- They tried to convince the Egyptians that they did not know where the spices came from, or that they were dropped in the mountains by giant fearsome birds and that they could be obtained only by doing battle with dragons.

What confusion was there during interregional trade before 1000 CE? Name an example.

Since goods were often trans-shipped rather than carried directly from production to use, a great deal of confusion existed about the actual sources of goods.
- Many Mesopotamians believed that items came from Dilmun that were actually produced in India, and there were many other similar misidentifications - reflecting real limits on effective contact and knowledge even amid significant interregional commerce.

What did evaluations of merchants suggest?

- On the one hand, merchants were vital to the exchange process;
- On the other hand, many societies distrusted them because of their profit motives and because they seemed to differ from the high-prestige aristocracy and state officials.

What did an Indian political handbook urge about trade?

An Indian political handbook in the fourth century urged that trade should be promoted in order for rulers to earn tax revenues and acquire materials for war, but also starkly insisted that merchants are thieves and should be prevented from oppressing the people.

What were most cities in early civilisations?

Most cities in early civilisations were in fact centers for political and religious activities, with largely local trade and dependent on taxing peasants; only a few urban areas really focused on the longer-distance opportunities.

How long did it take during the Han dynasty to travel from the capital to the most far-flung provinces?

It took 40 days to travel from the capital to the most far-flung provinces, even on the relatively good roads the state now provided.

What did Chinese leaders do to make trade easier?

Chinese leaders worked very hard to link north and south China, building canals to facilitate trade, sending colonists from the north to the south, and promoting use of a single language, Mandarin, at least in the governing class - despite or in fact because of the multiplicity of ethnic groups, languages, and cultures of the mixture of peoples that now made up the Chinese empire.

What did al the classical empires foster? What consequence did it have?

All the classical empires fostered cultural systems - like Hinduism and Buddhism in India, or Greek-derived architecture around the Mediterranean - that would provide new links, not necessarily attacking more local systems but seeking to supplement them with more over-arching styles and values.

Name a trading activity that took advantage of local specializations.

Grain growing in North Africa, in exchange for wines and olive oil from Italy and Greece - to promote greater efficiency and prosperity (and tax revenues) and in the process create a more coherent overall economy.

What social systems spread out? How did that link to globalization?

Common social systems spread out, like patterns of slavery in the Mediterranean or the caste system in India, another linking device.
Outright empires sought to provide political unity to all or at least major parts of the major civilization areas.

What did the Roman Empire involve?

The Roman Empire, building around the Mediterranean basin, now involved the whole of North Africa in regular contacts with southern Europe and the Middle East. Rome's Empire similarly involved new parts of Europe, such as France, in extensive trade and cultural exchange.

Why are the creation of the great classical empires sometimes mentioned as historical precedent for globalization?

Internal contacts within the civilisations already constituted a significant reduction of local isolation.

What did empires create that facilitated trade enormously? Which empire in particular?

The empires created infrastructure that could facilitate even wider outreach, by making trade and travel easier than ever before.
Particularly important here were developments in the Persian Empire and its later successors, given the geographic centrality of this region to potential contacts between Indian Ocean and Mediterranean networks.

What did the Persian empire consist of?

The empire itself achieved great size at least for a century, stretching from northeastern India (the Indus river region) to Egypt and Libya and the Mediterranean, though efforts to move significantly into Europe, or further south in northeastern Africa, failed.

What did Cyrus establish? What was the purpose of this?

- Cyrus established a series of carefully-spaced inns, to house merchants and travelers on their journeys, with water reservoirs, and he set up the world's first postal and message service.
- The main purpose of all of this was to facilitate communication and trade within the empire - including the movement of military forces; as with the other classical civilizations, knitting the new, vast territory together and keeping it together was a challenging task.

What happened to the systems of the Persian empire when it collapsed?

Its systems were preserved or revived by later rulers and regimes - including Alexander the Great, the revived Persian regime under the Parthians, and subsequent Arab caliphs.

What developments took place in the Roman and Chinese empire that facilitated trade?

- Chinese emperors began to build highways, at some points fifty feet wide, with trees planted alongside for aesthetic reasons. By the time of the Han dynasty 22000 miles of highway were available in China, providing internal linkages but also facilitating travel to the west, toward central Asia. A postal system was also operative, with fresh horses for messengers every ten miles.
- Rome constructed even more roads - 48000 miles worth - and also invested heavily in seaports along the Mediterranean, particularly for the shipment of grain.

What is the Silk Road?

The most famous linkage was the so-called Silk Road, which at its height brought products from western China to the upper classes of the Roman Empire - but also to elites in Persia and the Middle East and in India.

Where did the exchange of silk from China start? What consequence did it have?

- Exchange of silk from China westward began as a result of growing contacts and tensions with nomadic peoples in western China/central Asia. Chinese officials and merchants brought silk cloth beyond the country's borders as gifts to conciliate potential invaders but above all in exchange for horses, called "heavenly horses" because of their superior qualities, which had a huge impact on the Chinese military and on Chinese imagination more generally.
- Chinese manufacturing output toward other regions, stimulating not only new forms of trade but new tastes which could sustain international commerce for centuries to come.

Who used silk for what and where was it spread?

- Nomadic leaders used the Chinese-exported silks for their own adornment, but they simply could not consume all that the Chinese provided, so they began to pass the products west.
- Nomadic traders began to take Chinese products, headed by silk, and move them through several overland routes through central Asia and then into Persia, where other merchants would pick up the loads and use the excellent road network to distribute the goods more widely.
- Tastes for silk goods clearly expanded among upper-class men and women alike, with silk sashes adorning Roman togas or silk banners highlighting Persian military units.

What areas did the Silk Road link?

- Silk Road trade linked East Asia with other parts of the continent and with Europe for the first time, a major step beyond the more limited exchanges that had described interregional contacts previously.
- Silk Road routes built on regional systems that had long connected northwest India (today's Afghanistan and Pakistan) to Persia and the Middle East, or China to central Asia.

What route, other than Silk Road, served to link different parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe over long distances?

In this case, the sea - the Indian Ocean - rather than land served as vehicle, and India, rather than China, was the key player.

What improvements were being made in shipping?

The quality of ships gradually improved by the first millennium BCE, though boats made from leather, from papyrus and other materials continued to operate in parts of the Indian Ocean.
Navigators from Sri Lanka apparently learned how to use birds, taking them on voyages and releasing the creatures so that they could follow them to land.
Sailors learned how to use monsoon winds to help move through various parts of the Indian Ocean in appropriate seasons.

What constituted the core of the Indian Ocean trade?

Spices constituted the core. Chinese merchants sought cloves from Southeast Asia and India. Pepper became a crucial product. Spices, incense, pearls, and other materials from East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula blended into this trade as well, including African items like rhinoceros horn.

What happened to consumers because of these trading routes?

Consumers, though primarily wealthy ones, unquestionably developed tastes for goods that could only be brought in from a long distance.

What followed slowly?

- Technological exchange, it took years to spill over the invention of paper.
- Cultures; religions and philosophical systems remained localized for the most part.

What threatened the interregional linkages when the Han dynasty fell in 220 CE?

- Overland travel became far more dangerous because there were no more strong states to protect against marauders, and this came close to shutting the Silk Road down in favour of shorter-distance exchanges.
- Merchants from Rome or China withdrew from the Indian Ocean.

What development took shape as ambivalent implication from the fall of the classical empires?

As the classical empires deteriorated and then disappeared, with the collapse not only of the Han dynasty in China but later the Roman Empire in the west, both with ensuing disorder, several major religions began to spread more widely, their organization and otherworldly goals serving societies now in earthly disarray.

Which major religions started to spread after the fall?

- Buddhism had already begun to move beyond India, and now reached actively into Southeast Asia and into China.
- Christianity broke beyond the Roman Empire, particularly toward northern Europe but also toward additional pockets in Africa and the Middle East.
- Soon, after 600 CE, a new religion, Islam, would spread most rapidly of all.

What problem did arise in trade because of religion?

The religious rift set up cultural barriers that have not been entirely overcome even in the present day.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Globalization in World History | 9780367279868 | Peter N Stearns

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