ABSTRACT
The career of Indian cottons is symbolic of this more interactive understanding of the entanglement between East and West. Instead of seeing present globalization just as a bigger version of the past, these ideal types point to ruptures and highlight the different ways in which cultural and political systems have stimulated global consumption. In archaic globalization, the flow of goods between Eurasia and northern Africa was connected to a shared idea of cosmic kingship, which, in turn, created a distinct logic of trade and consumption. The consumption regimes of these systems of globalization were tied to different production regimes. The almost Weberian ideal-type of archaic globalization, with its focus on elite-based connoisseur collecting, misses more popular dynamics of consumption at play already in this early phase. The problem is that consumerism is a slippery,morally charged category rather than a tight,historically helpful term of analysis.
