Through The Woods

Completing the Coursera course ...
    

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Spreading The Humanism

In the second half of the twentieth century, the decades of the fifties, sixties, and also that of the seventies, were characterized by several important struggles that, in consequence, were going to change the world. What it happened? As long as the economic development created richness and new possibilities in the United States and other western societies, people started to demand new rights within its own borders and also to protest about the social situation in the others. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, the representative of the other bloc, had to cope with other sort of problems, like those of more liberty, more democracy or, even, more opened and tolerant societies. Then, the Third World experienced a little transformation in order to control somehow their natural resources to improve the economy. That’s what I can call the challenges of the three-world order.

The case of the United States is, maybe, the most important one in terms of human development. Here we have to explain a little bit how women initiated campaigns for equality and empowerment. The Worlds Together, Worlds Apart book, for instance, says: ‘Women now questioned a life built around taking care of home and family’ (p. 779). The main figure of that feminist movement was Betty Friedan, who described the ‘idealized 1950’s sub-urban home as a comfortable concentration camp’ (p. 779). Moreover, I must stressed the demands of African American people, who until those years had not the same rights than the whites and they fight to conquered them, but ‘legacies of racism and inequality were not easy to overcome. In spite of Supreme Court decisions, most schools remained racially homogeneous not only in the South but across the United States, as “white flight” to the suburbs left inner-city neighborhoods and schools to minorities’ (p. 779). Protests to end poverty, to spread education (both demands were included in the protests of Paris in May of 1968), to vote and to end the vietnam war, are other plaints of that era in the western.

Carlo Leidi, Prague, 1968

The Soviet Union, in the meantime, needed to control other kind of unrests. The main one was that of Prague, when workers and students supported Alexander Dubcêk in order to create a new model of socialism and also calling for more freedom of expression and even of debate. Later, soviet forces did a counterattack and quelled the revolt, although its spirit would remain in the air. The Prague Spring of 1968, as was baptized, inspired what other people would do later in Poland or even within Russia. I would like to emphasize the importance that had the edition of a book called 'The Gulag Archipelago’, in which the author, Alexander Sholzenitshyn, ‘repudiated the notion that Socialism could be reformed by a turn away from Stalin’s policies’ (p. 781). At the same time, the other major communist power, China, who had designed a 'Great Leap Forward' to transform the country into a big industrialized one, failed in its aims and had to deal with and severe famine which forced the rulers to think in other alternatives. Den Xiaoping would show us later another radical and different ones.

In the Third World, the more important thing could be the fact of trying to control resources like oil in order to enrich countries. Firstly, they were supposed to choose between alignment with the first world or with the second, but some radical policies took some nations to unify and empower themselves. The creation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was an example of that collaboration, which included the next countries: Algeria, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Although at the beginning they seized oil sales creating, above all, big problems to the western consumers, the result of that was that emerged more efficient ones, like Canada or Mexico, and, what was the most important issue, the strategy was backfired when they were aware that revenues flowed back to the first world banks. As a result: ‘Some of it was in turn re-loaned to the world’s poorest countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, at high interest rates, to pay for more expensive imports - including oil!’ (p. 782).

To sum up, I would like to say that this age represents the spread of humanism, understood as the need of the people to control their own lives and to create a better society in which the differences of sexe, age, race or origin don’t exclude anybody. That’s to say, a world where people have more rights, more liberties and more capacities to decide their own destiny. 

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Cold War: Kitchen Debate

Khrushchev: It’s clear to me that the construction workers didn’t manage to finish their work and the exhibit still is not put in order ... this is what America is capable of, and how long has she existed? 300 years? 150 years of independence and this is her level. We haven’t quite reached 42 years, and in another 7 years, we’ll be at the level of America, and after that we’ll go farther. As we pass you by, we’ll wave "hi" to you, and then if you want, we’ll stop and say, "please come along behind us" ... If you want to live under capitalism, go ahead, that’s your question, an internal matter, it doesn’t concern us. We can feel sorry for you, but really, you wouldn’t understand. We’ve already seen how you understand things.

Nixon: It’s a very effective exhibit, and it’s one that will cause a great deal of interest. I might say that this morning I, very early in the morning, went down to visit a market, where the farmers from various outskirts of the city bring in their items to sell. I can only say that there was a great deal of interest among these people, who were workers and farmers, etc ... I would imagine that the exhibition from that standpoint would, therefore, be a considerable success. As far as Mr Khrushchev’s comments just now, they are in the tradition we learned to expect from him of speaking extemporaneously and frankly whenever he has an opportunity. I can only say that if this competition which you have described so effectively, in which you plan to outstrip us, particularly in the production of consumer goods ... If this competition is to do the best for both of our peoples and for people everywhere, there must be a free exchange of ideas. There are some instances where you may be ahead of us--for example in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space. There may be some instances, for example, color television, where we’re ahead of you. But in order for both of us benefit ...
     

If you want to know more about this, click here: (1) Kitchen Debate - (2) Transcript

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Taking Different Paths

As you probably know, from last decades of eighteen hundreds to the first quarter of the twentieth century world economies were led by free trade and gold standard, in which social and economic progress settled. Meanwhile, imperialism and rivalries didn´t stop. As a result, the world was doomed to world war (thirty years of warfare, actually) and countries started to adapt their resources to the new context. Certainly, was the aftermath of the first world war what explains the end of the victorian boom, an era characterized by the economic interdependence all over the planet, and also by the idea that goods were manufactured in order to consume them wherever you live and work. One example of those was fordism, that spread the assembly line and mass production everywhere.

Why, finally, main economies left the previous model of economic globalization? Maybe, at this point we must study the post-war conditions. In this way, we can read the following in Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: 'Its causes went back to the Great War, which had left European nations in deep debt as they struggled to rebuild their economies and pay off war debts. To restore stability, Europeans borrowed heavily from the United States. When wobbly governments and small investors defaulted on their loans, the U.S. Federal Reserve reacted by raising interest rates. Starting in central Europe, financial institutions began to collapse. As banks fell, other lenders scrambled to call in their loans. Companies, governments, and private borrowers were soon floating in a sea of debt. The panic then spread to the world’s stock markets, which led to the Wall Street crash of 1929, which spurred more bank closures' (p. 719).

The situation was untenable and the United States enforced penalties to import and export assets, signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, and also taking the first step towards protectionism. In response, trading partners cut links and international relations started to break down. We can also read some words in the textbook concerning that worry: 'After the United States enacted protective tariffs, other governments abandoned free trade in favor of protectionism. Manufacturers cut back production, laid off millions of workers, and often went out of business' (p.720). In Europe, actually, the crisis started when an austrian bank, the Kredit-Anstalt Bank, collapsed. In consequence, diplomacy tried to arrange the issue. It failed, anyway. One example to solve it was the Paris Conference of 1931.

Patterns of Recovery

Liberal economies were, hence, put in question, claiming that the market place hadn't a self-equilibrating structure. Here, we must quote figures like John Maynard Keynes, who despite believing in the free market, also argued that it should be controlled by the state. Therefore, following these ideas, countries like the United States applied its policies to stimulate the economy. In this particular case, it was called New Deal. However, there were other kind of responses. Sometimes diametrically opposite. These replications relied on popular support to carry out its strategies, which it could be divided in hard-core command economies and medium-core command economies. In this way, the state became the representative of the common will. Let me analyze them briefly.

Collectivized Agriculture - Soviet Propaganda: 'Let's Achieve a Victorious Harvest'

On the one hand, the most relavant example of hard-core command economy was the Soviet Union, country in which the collective way gained immense importance. What did collective way mean? Roughly, collectivist policies tried to accumulate resources in the hands of the state. That's to say, everything you produce must be property of those who run the country's destiny. Private property and other individual rights were largely beaten in the name of the state. This sort of planned economy was very effective to mobilize people and technology, especially in war time. Nonetheless, it demanded much sacrificies (of all types) and the need of produce new tools caused the population, in the end, remain exhausted. In reality, things were not so easy: 'The realities behind the images (like in the poster above) of smiling farmers were low productivity, enormous waste and often broken-down machinery' (p. 724).

On the other hand, medium-core command economies like Japan and Germany did not take over the organization of production. The state was above everything, that's true, but it left some freedom for the commercial activity (always for the general interest), which was supervised but the state officials. The aim was to create loyalty and capacity to consume, but needing reliance on peripheries to satisfy their needs (great resources), so they kept the persistance in the way of empire because of primary staples for industrial recovery. Although Japan broke down, Germany, the Third Reich, was the best example of this kind of policy. Both of them were great militarized and led societies.

In conclusion, this financial crisis took countries to make decisions like to leave the gold standard and retreat into protectionism. Liberal democracies relied on the state as a key agent to stimulate economy. However, others, like the Soviet Union and Germany pushed for policies in which peoples support, expansionism and popular will played crucial roles, not only in the recovery but also in the nationalist and popular machinery.

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Dmitri Shostakovich: Leningrad

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Prophecies (Not Just Religious)

In Europe, the aftermath of the industrial and commercial revolution had different effects in the mid-term. On the one hand, we must point out the division of labor and the creation of new industries that produced novel goods to be sold in faraway places, transforming, thus, traditional economies and helping countries like England to be wealthier and also to improve the living conditions of its dwellers. Meanwhile, people moved to the cities and, consequently, societies become more and more organized around the urban. However, there were several social clashes both at the epicenter of the changes and the periphery, many times led by, and based on, prophetical movements: Islamic Revitalization, Taiping Rebellion or Socialism. I'm going to write about this sort of interactions this time.

Islamic Upheavals

To start with, I must stressed those revolts that happened in the Islamic world during this period, in which wahhabism became the most powerful religious device to deal with the european threat (as wahhabists said). Its main leader was a man called Muhammad Ibn abd al-Wahhab who claimed that every problem arabian people had was a consequence of the foreign commercial activities in the area, so ‘he demanded a return to the pure Islam of Muhammad and the early caliphs’ (pag 602). In fact, he strongly believed that Islam was at that time in a degraded state (in particular because of the polytheistic beliefs) and defended the absolute oneness of Allah (his followers were the muwahhidins: Unitarians). As a result, wahhabists spread all over the arabian peninsula and sacked important places like Mecca and Medina. It’s true that they found resistance within the Ottoman Empire, from where egyptians sent troops to defeat them (what they did), but wahabbism mantained great power and influence in the zone. Additionally, it was also important the role that played Abd al-Qadir, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abi al-Qasim and his daughter, Zaynab, in order to protect Algeria’s political and religious autonomy from french rulers.

Click above to see picture details - Map of the Sokoto Caliphate (Source: http://hlovejoy.wordpress.com/)

In West Africa, another similar movement led by Usman dan Fodio (a Fulani muslim cleric) took place in what is today northern Nigeria. Its aim was to recover the ancient credences, so ‘It attacked false belief and heathenism and urged followers to wage holy war (jihad) against unbelievers’ (p. 605). Although its principal enemies, the old Hausa rulers (ancient city-states), were known as not enough believers, ‘muslim revolts [also] erupted from Senegal to Nigeria, responding in part to increased trade with the outside world and the circulation of religious ideas from across the Sahara Desert’. Hausa rulers were finally overthrown and Usman dan Fodio created a new Confederation of Islamic Emirates better known as Sokoto Caliphate. As in the case of Algeria, here we have an important contribution from women (respecting the Sharia) in the person of Nana Asma’u, dan Fodio's daughter. Otherwise, it’s also important to highligth the transformations occurred in the south of Africa, like the Mfecane movement (forced migrations).

Taiping Rebellion

During the first half of the nineteenth century, China was suffering the impact of natural disasters, economic problems and social unrest. Because of that, the Qing Dinasty was in trouble, so the First Opium War worsened the situation: China was forced to open its lands to the global trade, harming, in consequence, its traditional economy. It was in this context that the figure of Hong Xiuquan (born in Guangzhou) appeared. He became a political prophet after having problems with the Chinese system of examinations to entry in the army and, after that, his aim was to create a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (of Christian inspiration) in response to the social injustices. In that movement ‘policies were strict: they prohibited the consumption of alcohol, the smoking of opium, or any indulgence in sensual pleasure. Men and women were segregated for administrative and residential purposes ...’ (p. 610). Although the rebels had captured cities like Nanjin, Manchus and Han elites, supported by european forces that didn´t like that perversion of Christianity, managed to defeat the rebels (Hong Xiuquan died there).

Socialism

In 1848, at the same time that Revolutions spread all over Europe, was published The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in which they 'predicted that [under Capitalism] there would be overproduction and underconsumption, which would lead to lower profits for capitalists and, consequently, to lower wages or unemployment for workers - which would ultimately spark a proletarian revolution' (p. 618). 'They were also confident that the clashes between industrial wage workers - or proletarians - and capitalists would end in a colossal transformation of human society and would usher in a new world of true liberty, equality, and fraternity. This revolution would result in a “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the end of private property' (p. 618). However, they were wrong in some of their predictions when talked about only two social classes: Capitalists and Proletarians. In fact, in 1848 and later those who did the revolution were, above all, artisans and other traders denouncing the privilegies of the aristocracy.

To sum up, I would like to finish the article with this sentence from Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: 'like their counterparts in the Islamic world and Africa, the Taiping rebels promised to restore lost harmony. Despite all the differences of cultural and historical background, what Abd al-Wahhab, dan Fodio, Shaka, and Hong had in common was the perception that the present world was unjust' (p. 610).

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The Panic of 1907

'For the past two centuries recurrent crises have shaken the banking system and financial markets in the United States. One severe crises, the Bank Panic of 1907, disrupted financial markets to such an extent that it became and important catalyst for creating the Federal Reserve and the U.S. banking system as it operates today [...]' 

Click and Read: Lessons from The Panic of 1907 (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 1990)

Flag draped Wall Street with Trinity Church in the distance (Andy Kingsbury / Corbis)

                                              
More Information: Video - John Pierpont Morgan    

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Westward Expansion

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The Enlightenment: Reason and Rights

Maybe thanks to the commerce and surely driven by science, literacy and critical thinking, european people started to view the world from another perspective, which was originated with the second half of the sixteen hundreds and was extended throughout the eighteenth century. Jeremy Adelman illustrates this shift when he talks about the consumption of tea, coffee or sugar (the old preciosities from Asia and America) in places like coffeehouses, where people exchanged their knowledges or studies and defended novel and powerful ideas. This new pattern of socialization truly modified the understanding of the individual and perhaps the world, even though states used it to defend slavery and submission later (treatment of Africans). That’s someway The Enlightenment, 'an extraordinary cultural flowering that blossomed in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries' (p. 542)

To start with, I would like to point out the role that played commerce and travel in this evolution, which was crucial. As you probably know, the trade interdependence along the whole world not only forced some countries to adapt their economies and policies to the new situation but also helped them to raise concerns and to study each other anywhere. 'They sought universal and objective knowledge that would not reflect any particular religion, political view, class, or gender' (p. 542) For instance, James Cook used his scientific expeditions in the Pacific Ocean to bring knowledge to Europe in order to study and classify it to mass consumption (fauna, flora, food, culture and so on). By the way, it was in the coffeehouses of which I talked before where this new issues were discussed. However, the spread of critical thinking did not stopped in public places, being the production of books to personal consumption (Diderot and his Enciclopedie) another important factor to understand the emergence of the new ways of thinking (Scientific Method, p. 545), sometimes quite controversial. That could be the case of Adam Smith, who criticized Mercantilism in ‘The Wealth of Nations’, or even that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau who claimed ‘Man is born good’ but ‘It is society that corrupts him’ in ‘The Social Contract’ (p. 546) and that we must link with the respect to other countries, peoples and cultures.

Zu den blauen Flaschen (Anonymous, c. 1900)

Furthermore, besides Rousseau, Smith or Diderot, it came out women like Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote, among others, a book called ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ in which she argued that they aren’t naturally inferior to men (p. 547). Was it the dawn of feminism? It's highly probable. Meanwhile, Olympe de Gauges worried about women rights and slavery, being ‘L’esclavage des noirs’ her best known play. Otherwise, after two centuries of conquest in America and commercial superiority in other parts of the world like India or China, people began to study the differences, if there were, between european people and the others, even those born of mixtures with natives. The point here was to explain the nature of ‘criollos’, ‘mestizos’ or ‘mulatos’, which nowadays we can analyze observing and studying ‘The Casta Paintings’ in places where spanish were sharing their lives with the aboriginal ones. Sometimes europeans wanted to justify their dominion with this kind of explanations, but at the end this were the basis to ending slavery. As John Locke said at its time, 'cultural differences were not the result of unequal natural abilities, but of unequal opportunities to develop one’s abilities' (p. 547) 

Moreover, the ways in which empires were using mercantilism were amply denounced, but this time not from Adam Smith’s economic perspective, but blowing on the crimes and misdemeanors as a result of this sort of commercial and military domain and exploitation which were, above all, in the hands of a few men. What’s more, Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of Bengal was accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787. Although he was acquitted in 1795, the case exemplifies the strains and different opinions of the time. 'The criticism of corruption did not come only from high intellectuals. Pamphlets charging widespread corruption, fraudulent stock speculation, and insider trading circulated widely. Sex, too, sold well. Works like Venus in the Cloister or the Nun in a Nightgown racked up as many sales as the now-classic works of the Enlightenment' (p. 546). Finally, Religion's vision also suffered some changes, because, even though many thinkers were believers, they gave precedence to the reason and defended toleration.

To sum up, I would like to say that the main benefit of the Enlightenment was to provide devices to the people in order to learn, to think critically for yourself and to create a framework in which the individual (in opposition to the State) gain more power and acquires fundamental rights. 

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Darwin's Voyage

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Faith, Silver and Mercantilism

Not only social and political changes of the seventeenth century were important, but also their causes and consequences. In this period of time, instability spread all over the world, specifically in Europe, where we must mainly look for the reasons of these important shifts. The steady increase of wealth in states like Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, England or France (especially thanks to the gold and silver extracted from the colonial lands), involved all of them, and eventually others, in serious strains, particularly in the Thirty Years’ War.

In the lectures, Jeremy Adelman often talks about the essential change from interconnection to interdependence happened during this time, that’s to say, the path through which states and regions began to be more sensitives to whatever political and economic transformation that occurred in other parts of the world. One example of this new pattern of behavior was the adjustment of China, that moved southwards in order to produce the goods that europeans needed, which they exchanged for the silver that, meanwhile, was being extracted from the Americas mines and that the Ming Dinasty decided to use for its own consumption. Later, as we will see, the crisis of this commercial interdependence will be, among others, the cause of the upheavals within China and of what, finally, will incite the arrival of the Qing Dinasty. Anyway, as you can see, at that point in time the world was already interdependent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. Let’s now explain the causes and consequences of this new reality.                                                                                    

Interior of the church of St Odulphus in Assendelft (Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, 1649)

On the one hand, we may point out some causes of this turning point. To start with, in my view, the main one was the paradox of becoming wealthy. While Europe was obtaining more richness, the competition among their states rose deeply. What’s more, they were divided into two religious groups: reformists and counter-reformists. By the way, it’s commonly said that convictions were an excuse to gain bigger revenues, and I strongly agree with this statement. The fact was that when silver, above all, became scarce, states had to deal with this threat through different replications. One of them was warfare (for instance, the long conflict of Spaniards in Netherlands), another one was piracy (Francis Drake’s actions), and so on. Secondly, besides competition, we have to stressed the fact that during the seventeenth century there was a sort of ice age, the world cooled, which caused famines everywhere and harmed seriously the harvests and the whole agriculture in regions like China (the Deccan famine in India was significant, too) where, as I said before, silver were exchanged for new goods in order to sustain its needs. The scarcity of those preciosities rebounded in the trade among China and Europe, forcing the Ming Dinasty to cope with revolts within its own borders. As you probably know, the consequence of that issue was the arrival of the Qing Dinasty, who created a new manchu state and also modified the bureaucracy and military priorities of the ancient one. In consequence, the Han majority was displaced. Finally, what was truly important was the Mercantilism, a new relationship between states and merchants. By quoting some words from the book Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, ‘the lasting prosperity of the landed interest depends upon foreign commerce’, what means that states wanted to ensure that because ‘augmenting our mercantile and royal navies, they necessarily become the means of our permanent prosperity and of the safety and preservation of our happy constitution’. So, as you can read, the aim was to enrich states and to maintain armies in order to defend the general interest of the countries, if necessary, by doing the war. One example of that was the Dutch East India Company. Russia, meanwhile starts to move westwards thanks also to commerce and warfare.

On the other hand, the impacts were crucial to understand the world that was coming. The increasingly importance of mercantilism caused the growth of important companies, which in the mid and long-term would probably have a different vision of their interests than those that previously had the states. Each state had toeholds in Asia, in Africa, in America too, but, from this moment, companies took control of the business in the name of each nation. In addition, the rivalry between europeans smash up the old dream of recreate the ancient Roman Empire. The Treaty of Westfalia (1648), closed the problems within Europe somehow, but moved them abroad, which supposed a reordering of the world. Another important point was the situation in which stayed nations like Spain who, because of the great debts acquired to fund warfare, lost its key possesions in Netherlands and political weight in the global framework after Westfalia. In the Islamic World, the Mughal empire weakened because of the trade with foreign companies.

In summary, the evolution and new behavior of global trade triggered drastic changes in the importance states gave to the monopoly of certain goods, emerging that way mercantilism. That was reflected in strains within Europe, and in the second half of the century, everywhere. If we add to the previous calamities, the answers to natural disasters, famines and discussions on religion, seventeenth century may be considered as the perfect modeler of the post-columbus world.

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The Dutch East India Company

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A Financial Crisis

Do you know the story of the South Sea Bubble?

Click and listen (BBC Radio 4)

Hogarthian image of the South Sea Bubble (Edward Matthew Ward, 1816 - 1879)

  
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From Lisbon to Guangzhou

While many people claim that the political aftermath of the black death, as well as other important tensions suffered during the thirteenth and fourteenth century, created similar patterns of behavior in all around Eurasia, in my opinion we must point out significant differences in fields like religion, commerce and bureaucracy. That’s what I will try to explain in the next lines.

On the one hand, it’s said that a leading consequence of that vacuum was the return to the ancient religious beliefs. For instance, the Ming Dinasty came back to its old ceremonies and rites in order to reinforce political and social hierarchies in China. Another example of these worries was the expansion of the islamic dinasties sharing the same core religious. By the way, during this time we can study the great role played by the faiths in the strengthening of the Safavid Empire, the Mughal Empire and, above all, the Ottoman Empire. Europe wasn’t an exception in searching the truth faith, so the Christianity was very important in the statecraft of the majority of european micro-states. Moreover, those who believe that the importance of the global trade was the result of searching new markets in both extremes and center of Eurasia, also think that its development was based in similar foundations and causes. They even say that the empires gave to the commerce the same value in exchanging goods and, consequently, they obtained equal revenues. In particular, they consider that the seven voyages of Zheng He are alike than those of Christopher Columbus. In other words, It could be believed that both series of expeditions (and also others like those of Vasco da Gama or Tomé Pires) only had the same purpose: to expand their sales network. Finally, in what concerns to the administration, the main evidence to its increasing importance was the creation of places from which emperors and kings ruled with more and more officials, buildings and devices. That is to say, with more centralized power. The Forbidden City, in Beijing, and The Topkapi Palace, in Istanbul, represented the weight of bureaucracy in the construction of these new empires. In addition, taxes helped states to earn more money with which carried out new projects or warfares and slaves became commodities.                                                                                       

A Chegada de Vasco da Gama a Calicute em 1498 (Alfredo Roque Gameiro, 1900)

However, although what I have said before was crucial in order to build up these new societies and empires, traditional and basic explanations sometimes go in the wrong direction. For example, even though rulers set up a renewed and heavy system of beliefs, is false that they behaved always identically. It’s obvious, therefore, that the tolerance and respect to groups of Jews, Christians and so on, was bigger in the Ottoman Empire than in the Persian Safavid one. Besides, we must bear in mind that the spread of the commerce between the Iberian states and their colonies had different foundations than those in China and the islamic empires. China expanded its trade network thanks to the expeditions of Zheng He recalling better times, but after the upheavals happened between scholars and eunuchs decided to stop trading that way. It’s that, one important turning point for China, because in my view is highly probable they missed the opportunity to become bigger and more self-sufficient slowing, as a result, the conquests of Portugal in that area. The islamic world, meanwhile, continued dominating the Indian Ocean and the east coast of Africa, forcing europeans to discover new ways to find alternative raw materials than those they traditionally used to buy or acquire. It was that way how they arrive to America, and the portugueses also to places like Calcutta, creating, thereby, new sea routes. Furthermore, the design and construction of the bureaucracy that emerged in the fifteenth century wasn’t so hard and efficient everywhere. Whereas in Europe didn’t exist a great empire capable to deal with enemies outside and within their own borders and to carry out big projects together as was normal in China or in the Ottoman Empire, the micro-states kept on fighting with their neighbors which meant a major problem of money and effort. 

To sum up, it’s very clear that the changes caused by the disappearance of the Mongol Empire drove the new societies to the need of creating tools of protection which they found in the religion, commerce and bureaucracy. It’s also true that this new concept of societies didn’t work the same way in each case. Some were more tolerant, like ottomans, some more coercives, like safavids. Some were more maritimes, like those in Western Europe, some less, like the post Zheng He China. What’s more significant, actually, is the fact that they didn’t move separately, but because of the other or, even, because of their own strains.

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A Tale of Globalization

Today, I posted this remark in the course forum:

For those who don't know Gonzalo de Vigo, I would like to introduce you his story briefly. He had been part of the expedition to the Pacific Ocean alongside Magallanes (on 10 August 1519). Then, during the return trip there were many storms and problems, so, as a result, appeared scurvy and other serious diseases. However, the ships arrived to The Marianas (Islas de los Ladrones), where some men were saved. One of them was Gonzalo, who spent four years living there with the natives, with whom he took the opportunity to learn their language and other customs. In the end, I think he was the only european alive. Later, when another expedition arrived to the zone in 1526, he was found in good condition and decided to work as a translator in order to help the spanish conquerors. The full story is more complex, I know, but I hope you like this sort of little resume anyway.

Source of information: Historia General y Natural de las Indias ... (Spanish)

Orbis typus universalis iuxta hydrographorum traditionem (Martin Waldseemüller, 1513)

  
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A History of the World since 1300

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