ABSTRACT
Something of a watershed in inter-regional contacts occurred about a thousand years ago. The date, 1000 CE, is simply a convenient marker – nothing really dramatic occurred in that year, or even that century, and few people at the time would have been aware of any particularly significant alteration or upsurge in global relations. But by 1000 CE a number of key changes had accumulated, over the course of about three hundred years; and after that date the changes would solidify and amplify, justifying the understanding, in retrospect, that a fundamental transition was under way. One world historian, David Northrup, has put the case particularly
vividly: before 1000 CE, the most important factors shaping human life and social institutions were separate, society by society, with contacts playing only a peripheral role amid regionally divergent impulses. After 1000 CE, in contrast, societies increasingly functioned as a result of contacts, communications and even deliberate imitations, so that world history becomes the story of convergence rather than separation. Of course, what happened by around 1000 CE built upon previous contacts, most notably in trade relationships and the motivations they had embodied, particularly during the classical period and then amid the initial spread of the world religions. But the new patterns were not merely an automatic extension of what had already taken shape: they involved real and measurable departures. This chapter, obviously, focuses on this theme of change, but also on some crucial limitations to change. For the idea of a major break in world history, such that what went before
must be handled society by society, whereas what went after can increasingly be handled in terms of mutual interactions, has direct bearing on the issue of globalization. If 1000 CE is the turning point for inter-regional convergence, then subsequent changes, however significant, must be seen as aftershocks, resulting from the momentum of the decisive shift. And indeed, many world historians do view globalization as simply the latest version of a process that is now a millennium old. No one, to be sure, puts the label globalization on the changes that took
shape during the centuries after the end of the great classical empires.
Among other things, the networks that developed were Afro-Eurasian, not truly global – for the Americas and Pacific Oceania remained isolated from the larger inter-regional currents. But the identification of a process that involved such intense and fruitful contacts that its further development became inevitable – so that the extension to the whole world, while itself a significant further change, built on established patterns – might justify the conclusion that the effective origins of globalization really date this far back in historical chronology. After all, the voyages that brought the Americas into the global picture for the first time were intended not to discover new lands but to shorten the connections between Europe and Asia – intended, in other words, to take advantage of existing inter-regional ties. The idea of the 1000s CE as the beginnings of global linkage, in strong
contrast to previous and more sporadic connection, risks becoming a historian’s abstraction. The challenge is to demonstrate not only change, but significant change, and to show what this all meant in human terms. For not only is there no dramatic event to mark the divide between separateness and convergence; there is also no overwhelming new technology, no communications revolution of the sort we associate with more modern phases of globalization. The shift, instead, resulted from an accumulation of developments in shipping, in trade routes and in cultural outreach – and accumulation, though the basis for most major departures in history, is never as vivid as a single transformative invention or some upheaval in foreign policy or war. Happily, nevertheless, the chronological divide is not just a theoretical
construct or even an organizing device for textbooks (though that’s true too, as historians increasingly realize the ramifications of the change), for it has a concrete human face. It was only in the centuries after 1000 CE, for example, that wide-ranging
inter-regional travel took shape. Whereas during the classical period there is record, and uncertain at that, of only one trip between Europe and China, by the 13th and 14th centuries a substantial number of travelers went from Europe or north Africa to east Asia. Some were missionaries, some merchants, some adventurers or job-seekers, and there were even some entertainers involved. The world’s greatest known traveler, Ibn Battuta (b. 1304), operated in this context, with many trips from his native Morocco to the Middle East, central Asia, India, China and southeast Asia, and subSaharan Africa, logging almost 80,000 miles on his journeys overall. Travel of this sort reflected a new capacity to take advantage of established routes and contacts and a new interest in reaching out as widely as possible in the known world. It also supported further travel in turn, for some of the new adventurers, including Ibn Battuta, wrote accounts of their trips which helped a wider audience learn about other parts of the world and could spur some to outreach of their own. It was no accident that Christopher Columbus, on his own travels late in the 15th century, had with him a copy of the most famous European travel book to that point, Marco Polo’s description of his
journey to China. Long-distance travel was still the province of a relatively small number of individuals, and of course it was noteworthy that the more extensive ventures went west to east rather than vice versa; but the phenomenon was no longer simply a rarity, and that fact in turn signaled the beginning of a new era in terms of inter-regional contacts. Mapping came of age by around 1000 CE, with increasingly accurate
representations of Asia, Europe and much of Africa. Arab map-makers led the way, which reflected larger leadership in the processes of trade and travel. But map-makers from other societies joined in, based on knowledge of Arab maps and guides and on travel from their own home bases. Fanciful representations even of neighboring regions, common still in the classical period, gave way to more precise detail. Better maps, in turn, facilitated additional contacts, showing the attainability of far-flung destinations. Dependence on long-distance trade also increased, another sign of change.
Markets for Chinese silk continued to play an important role, which represented obvious continuity with the past. But the range of Chinese exports expanded, for example to include porcelain. Chinese consumers began to count on imports of tea and some other food specialties from southeast Asia. Imports of African slaves to the Middle East became a regular trade item (and ultimately, over several centuries, over nine million people would be brought in from eastern Africa). Indian cotton cloth became a valued commodity in markets as distant as Japan, gaining attention from European merchants as well by the 13th and 14th centuries. By the 14th century European interest in imported sugar (which could not be locally grown) began to surface, and would ultimately help spur increased European involvement in global outreach more generally. Some of the products now central to inter-regional trade also began to move below purely elite consumer levels, to involve wider reaches of the population. Correspondingly, some regions – for example, parts of China during the Song dynasty (960-1279) – began to depend heavily on production for the export trade. The impact of the interregional economy, with increasingly active exchanges among Asia, Africa and Europe, began to accelerate, moving beyond the levels of some surplus production and the interests of a few merchant groups. Recent discoveries of ships from the period, which sank for various reasons,
add specifics to the point about the growing range of trade and consumer involvement. The Belitung shipwreck, involving an Indian or, more probably, Arab ship, was found in Indonesian waters in 1998. It had been built according to Arab design, with Middle Eastern wood, though it had been repaired with materials from other areas. Its cargo consisted of some lead, a variety of Chinese ceramics from the Tang dynasty – mostly bowls, but also small jars, a few large basins, and some very artistic porcelains. Chinese coins were also carried. Star anise, another Chinese product, took some space, though there were no other spices. From the Middle East, possibly intended as gifts, were silver items, mirrors and other glasswares, along with
dice and some cast-iron utensils. The ship is clear evidence of the direct trade between the Middle East and China by the 9th century; the ship had undoubtedly loaded in China and was bound for the Persian Gulf. The Cirebon shipwreck, another recent discovery, involved a southeast
Asian boat, also sunk off the coast of Indonesia. Here, too, the ship had taken on goods at Guangzhou or another southern Chinese port and was heading for the western Indian Ocean with intermediate stops at southeast Asian ports. The ship contained over 200,000 artifacts, including objects for Buddhist and Hindu temples. Chinese ceramics were again strongly represented, with bowls, platters, and pitchers, but also figurines and incense burners. Colored glassware included many items inscribed in Arabic. Various jewels and ornate daggers, mirrors and bells suggest ritual objects. Items belonging to crew members suggest a multi-faith, multi-ethnic crew of Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims. The creation of a new network for interactions among different regions
depended on the confluence of several specific changes: a new leadership role for Arab and other Islamic merchants and missionaries, extending an eastwest axis from China and its neighbors to Europe and north Africa; the development of a number of additional exchange routes, running mainly south to north, that greatly expanded the geography of participation in active contacts; and the emergence of new technologies, particularly for sea travel, which both reflected and further supported the extension of effort.
