GLOBAL HISTORY

GLOBAL HISTORY

A Short Overview

Noel Cowen

Polity

Copyright © Noel Cowen 2001

The right of Noel Cowen to be identified as author of this work hasbeen asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

THE CLASSICAL ERA

Part I The Primary Concern 17

1 Global Odyssey: Searching for Subsistence 192 Civilized Centres: Settlements Become Permanent 283 Rulers and Myths: Preconditions of Stability 35

Part II The Political Prospect 45

4 Hostile Encounters: the Threat from Outside 475 Communication Network: Paths to Coexistence 556 Global Response: the Spreading of the Empires 61

Part III The Religious Factor 73

7 Creeds of Empire: Conformity and Allegiance 758 Crossing Frontiers: Faiths and Universalism 819 Division and Decline: Propaganda for Salvation 89

From Classical to Modern 97

THE MODERN ERA

Part IV New Beginnings 105

10 Movement of Peoples: Nomads and New Settlers 10711 Economic Breakthrough: New Bases of Subsistence 11412 Church and State: Twin Pillars of Stability 122

vi Contents

Part V Wider Identities 135

13 Centuries of Empire: Global Impulse Renewed 13714 Tools of Empire: Technology of Expansion 14815 Creeds of Empire: Ideologies on the Move 155

Part VI Global Tendencies 165

16 The World Economy: From Crisis to Growth 16717 Hostile Encounters: Civilizations at War 17518 Communication Network: Search for Coexistence 184

Conclusion 194

Bibliography 198

Index 208

Acknowledgements

My first and heartfelt acknowledgement is to my son Robinwhose belief in this project has been constant for twenty-fiveyears. From the international sixth-form Atlantic College inWales he won a Fairbridge scholarship to the University ofWestern Australia to study philosophy, politics and history.Searching through the current literature on the philosophy of history, Robin felt bound to report: ‘The central goal toafford a total explanatory account of the past is now veryunsympathetically regarded.’ But he added his opinion that my theory was ‘eminently plausible’. His subsequentcommitment was to the foundation of sound education inprimary schools in Australia and England. But his interest inmy plausible enterprise never wavered, and in correspond-ence and recorded discussion he injected something of theintellectual rigour of his M.A. thesis in philosophy into thenarrative I was piecing together.

Born in the naval and military town of Chatham duringone of the worst episodes of the Great War, as I grew tomanhood I learned with mounting horror of the sheerwickedness of the Battle of the Somme. In my last years atschool and as a young newspaper reporter I was increasinglyaware of the new chapters of wickedness that threatened areturn to global conflict. I registered as a conscientious objec-tor at the onset of the Second World War, and in its after-math I was recruited to a small team at the Ministry ofEconomic Affairs to help explain our economic plight. When

viii Acknowledgements

the Ministry was merged into the Treasury I worked on prob-lems of reconstruction in an emerging global context. I learntabout the stern economics of recurrent crisis and our depend-ence for survival on international political cooperation andthe definition of common goals for war-ravaged nations.Stimulated by Toynbee’s A Study of History, but unconvincedby its core arguments, I sent him some criticisms and somethoughts of my own. In his reply he said ‘the more of us havea go at it the better.’

With this encouragement I began an extensive programmeof reading which has never really ended. My plan was toeschew theory for the time being and search the works ofspecialist historians for detailed factual accounts of particu-lar civilizations. My debt to them is enormous, not only forthe knowledge and insight they have given me but also forthe pleasures of wandering in their enchanted garden. TheCity of Westminster library responded with zeal to mygrowing lists of books, which they bought or borrowed whenthey were not available on their shelves. I welcomed theopportunity to move to the Ministry of Education and toprofit, thereby, from the scholarly wisdom of H.M. Inspec-tors, one of whom in particular was seeking to arouse aninterest in world history in the secondary schools. Teddy (E.E.Y.) Hales had published a number of historical worksand was currently working on curricular ideas based on dis-cussions with international educationists. We discussed therelevance of this background to my studies.

In an article I published around that time I first spelt outthe global dimensions of my work, referring to ‘the globalview’ which was discernible in ‘the unfolding of the regionalsequences’. After discussing ‘the ends pursued in turn by manthe wanderer, man the settler, man the conqueror and manthe worshipper’, I turned to ‘the global situation’ takingshape and asked if there were any signs of a common direc-tion emerging. In discussions with Robin I undertook severalreworkings of my material and in the 1980s I concluded acomparative treatment of classical and modern civilizationswith a summary of increasing global trends against the back-

Acknowledgements ix

ground of technological and financial innovation. Drawingthe strands together, I wrote that ‘the essential conditions fora sustainable civilisation of global dimensions in the futurewould be, on the analogy of the past, the material means to sustain its population, a system of government to givesecurity and stability, and a supportive ethos widely enoughrecognised and upheld.’

I had by then retired from government service and couldspend more time on research, notably in Exeter Universitylibrary and in the university library in Perth, Western Australia. Shortly afterwards I became aware of an explosionof interest in world history in the United States. I joined theten-year-old World History Association, studied the Journalof World History, and visited the States to talk about mywork. I was well received and in 1996 I was invited toaddress the final plenary session of the annual internationalWHA conference. Although illness prevented me fromattending the conference, this American connection hadseveral further consequences. The first was that I wrote anaccount of modern American civilization compared withmodern Japanese civilization, showing correspondencesbetween both and with the early modern and classical civi-lizations. The second consequence was an interest in whatwas becoming known as ‘global history’, which appeared tobe the history of the concept of globalization. Applying thisnotion to my account of civilization I wrote a new shorterstudy entitled ‘Civilisation and Globalisation’. The third consequence was that I attended the 1997 Anglo-AmericanConference of Historians on European Peoples and the Non-European World. Encouraged by the conference document,which called for guidelines and big pictures of world history, I sent a copy of the synopsis of my book to the organizer, Professor Patrick K. O’Brien, the retiring directorof the London Institute of Historical Research. In his replyhe thought I had ‘lighted on two organising or ordering concepts’.

In 1999 I realized the relevance of my studies to what Pro-fessor David Held and his colleagues were describing as ‘the

x Acknowledgements

globalization debate’ and I sent a copy of my book to PolityPress. The prompt and positive response I received fromDavid Held and the suggestions subsequently forthcomingfrom Polity readers resulted in substantial revisions and addi-tions. The book now published is the product of half acentury of study, welcomed by Toynbee in its early stages,supported by my son Robin throughout, and given recogni-tion at the end by David Held and Polity. My wife Helen hasbeen a sympathetic and long-suffering participant in thisobsessive enterprise and to her this final outcome is grate-fully dedicated.

The author and publishers would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

Cambridge University Press for the map on p. 128 from I.M.Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (1988), p. 243;

Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd for the map on p. 62 from N.G.L.Hammond, The Genius of Alexander the Great (1997), p. 126;

Octopus Publishing Group Ltd for the maps on pp. 98, 140 and146 from Philip’s Atlas of World History, pp. 44, 112, 115. Copyright© George Philip Ltd, 1999;

Oxford University Press, Inc. for the map on p. 84 from Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts andExchanges in Pre-Modern Times (1993), p. 34. Copyright © 1993Oxford University Press;

Random House Group Ltd for the map on p. 20 from C. Stringerand R. McKie, African Exodus, Pimlico (1996), p. 169;

Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, butif any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will bepleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

Introduction

The time frame in which to locate the global history ofmankind was effectively shown by two academic eventswhich occurred in the late 1980s. In 1987 an internationalconference in Cambridge of specialists in human evolution,archaeology and molecular genetics found evidence that therewere anatomically modern human beings 100,000 years ago. There was wide support for the view that, following anexodus from east Africa, their descendants went on to occupyall the continents of the Earth.1 At about the same time aresearch project on the global forces now shaping our liveswas being formulated in an application to the Economic and Social Research Council. The results have now been published in a book on global transformations in politics,economics and culture, which reaches the conclusion thatglobalization ‘is an idea whose time has come’.2 Betweenthese two parameters, where are meaningful guidelines to bedrawn?

The answer I believe lies in a significant shift in worldhistory studies in the last quarter-century. Three strands inparticular have come together, one from the study of civi-lizations, another from the concept of world-systems, and thethird from the idea of global history. Together they map outa course across the millennia.

The leading exponent of the first strand is William H.McNeill, an early associate of Arnold J. Toynbee who in afamous study treated civilizations as separate but related

2 Introduction

entities.3 After the appearance of the last of Toynbee’s twelvevolumes in 1961 McNeill set out to improve on him ‘byshowing how the separated civilisations of Eurasia inter-acted’.4 Finally he concluded that ‘a proper world historyought to focus primarily upon changes in the ecumenicalworld system, and then proceed to fit developments withinseparate civilisations . . . into the pattern of that fluctuatingwhole.’5 From McNeill, therefore, we have the idea that civilizations in themselves are a valid field of study, as wellas the interactions between them.

This fitted well with a study of the modern world-systemby Immanuel Wallerstein, the first volume of which had beenpublished in 1974, arguing that world-economies were‘divided into core-states and peripheral areas’.6 His particu-lar concern was that in the sixteenth century ‘there came intoexistence what we may call a world-economy.’7 This propo-sition has led to a vigorous debate on whether such a systemhad a history of 5,000 years or was the latest in a series ofworld-systems, each with a changing structure. Implicit inthis debate is the idea that regional interactions have gradu-ally developed to the point where we can meaningfully talkabout a global world system.

The third strand became visible in the late 1980s with dis-cussions across a wide range of disciplines on what werebeing called ‘global issues’. Among these forums was aninternational conference at Bellagio in Italy in 1991 and thepublication in 1993 of a collection of essays linked by theidea of ‘conceptualizing global history’.8 In 1999 the conceptwas given detailed and authoritative treatment in the bookmentioned above on global transformations in the contem-porary era. Emphasizing the need to look beyond the modernera, to offer an explanation of a process ‘which has a longhistory’, this study called for an ‘analytical framework offer-ing a platform for contrasting and comparing differentphases or historical forms’.9

Introduction 3

Civilizations

The study of civilizations became very popular after the FirstWorld War in response to publications by Oswald Spenglerin Germany, Arnold Toynbee in Britain and Pitirin Sorokinand others in America. Continuing up to the years of theSecond World War, such works were a reaction againstnational histories, a reaction which had begun to appear inthe second half of the nineteenth century. During that centurythe idea had been entertained that a science of history andsociety might be possible that was akin to the natural sci-ences. An international effort emerged to give status to thestudy of sociology, in which the parts of a society could beseen as cohering into a unity, an integrated system with a lifecharacter of its own.

Among those who explored this idea was the Frenchscholar Émile Durkheim, who was deeply distressed by thewar of 1870 with Germany and the consequences of defeatand social breakdown. He argued that society existed independently of particular individuals, maintaining itselflike an organism. In Germany after the 1914 war OswaldSpengler applied this concept to large complexes of political,social, economic and cultural elements passing through cyclesof birth, development and decay. He believed that westernsociety was in irreversible decline. Sorokin, for his part, was expelled from Russia for opposing Bolshevism andfounded the department of sociology at Harvard, where he wrote at length about the crisis of western society and about civilizations and cultures that in their balances of values and conditions had distinguishable life cycles ofgrowth and decline. His four volumes of Social and CulturalDynamics appeared between 1939 and 1941. Between 1934and 1961 Toynbee published the twelve volumes of A Studyof History in which he identified twenty-three civilizations,described their life cycles and looked for principles that governed their lives. While much of this elaborate edifice has ceased to command support, the study of civilizations

4 Introduction

has received a new lease of life in the contacts between them,including economic exchanges and technological and culturalborrowings.

World systems

By the 1970s, however, a new perspective on world historystudies was emerging, with roots in the intense battles of the American student rebellion of the previous decade and a background in the revolutionary ideologies of what wasbeing called the Third World. The projection of world socialhistory offered by Immanuel Wallerstein in the first volumeof The Modern World-System in 1974 appeared to respondto these influences with a comprehensive theory that madesense of actual world events. His strategy was to identify thesocial system in which capitalism had grown as a worldeconomy, thus differing from political empires which weredominated by strong centres. This, he hoped, might enddebates about the comparability of societies and the degreeto which generalizations could be formed about them. Hefound it necessary to trace the history of the capitalist worldeconomy from the sixteenth century, because that was whenit began, believing that if societies went through stages so didthe world system. Changes in sovereign states could then beexplained as consequences of the evolution and interactionof the ‘world-system’.

In 1989, when his third volume appeared, covering thesecond era of great expansion between 1730 and the 1840s,Janet Abu-Lughod published a book called Before EuropeanHegemony. This argued that between 1250 and 1350 manyparts of the Old World began to become integrated into asingle system of exchange, and that an even earlier worldsystem (excluding northern Europe) had existed some twothousand years ago. McNeill, however, writing a forewordto papers on the world system in 1993, gave the opinion thata market that embraced the whole world could only ariseafter 1500 with the arrival of global shipping.10 The argu-

Introduction 5

ment was already shifting towards a global history, withantecedents that included Wallerstein’s system. It wasperhaps no accident that in looking for an intellectual baseWallerstein had turned to Fernand Braudel, who had coinedthe phrase ‘histoire globale’.

Global history

Braudel, who had shifted from civilizations to world systems,wrote of ‘histoire globale’ in the sense of there being noboundaries to the subject, and in 1972 he called for a historywhose scope would extend to all the sciences of man, to the‘globality of the human sciences’. In his account of theMediterranean world in the sixteenth century, and in histhree-volume account of civilization and capitalism from thefifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, he combined a broadvision with a meticulous attention to detail. These immenseworks appeared between 1949 and 1979. They were limitedto the premodern world, and primarily to economic history,but they had established the concept of thinking globally,which for him was ‘the only form of history capable of satisfying us now’.

What this might mean remained uncertain, not least in thecontext of what were seen as Three Worlds (capitalist, com-munist and uncommitted), the subject of a would-be defini-tive account in 1984.11 Five years later the Berlin Wall waspulled down, and in November 1990 the end of the ColdWar was formally proclaimed. By the end of the century adifferent world was ten years old, as a new internationalsystem of global integration began to give substance toBraudel’s vision. During that decade significant attemptswere made ‘to develop a more comprehensive explanation of globalization which highlights the complex intersectionbetween a multiplicity of driving forces’.12 In 1995 MichaelGeyer and Charles Bright, writing about world history in aglobal era, argued that the central challenge at the end of thetwentieth century was ‘to narrate the world’s past in an age

6 Introduction

of globality’. This would not ‘refuse or jettison the findingsof world-systems theories or of a contemporary history ofcivilizations . . . But the practice of world history in a globalage does reconfigure the field in which these paradigms aredeployed.’13

An overview

This book is a contribution to the process of understandingworld history. Benefiting from an analysis developed in thestudy of civilizations and world systems, it offers an overviewof global history in terms of the three groups of problemsthat have the greatest impact on historical change. These arethe economic problems of subsistence and surplus, the politi-cal problems of stability and security, and finally the religiousor ideological problems to do with our understanding of self,society and salvation. It is the argument of this book that thiscore group of problems provides not just a perspective onworld history, but an insight into some important parallelsbetween civilizations.

In comparing civilizations it has become clear that there have been parallels in terms both of stages of growthand the key problems that have been faced at each stage.These parallels suggest a framework for the study of civiliza-tions that consists of three phases (formation, expansion, limitation) and the interplay of three factors (economics, politics, belief). The underlying theme is that, while all thefactors are important in all the phases, their relative impor-tance changes from one phase to the next. Thus, in the for-mative period the economic factors of subsistence and surplusare paramount; in the period of enlargement the politicalfactors of power and control are paramount; and in the periodof limitation the ideological factors of belief and commitmentare paramount. Given this changing pattern of emphasis, the other factors are generally seen to provide more of a supportive role.

Introduction 7

This relationship between phases and factors provides aframework for studying civilizations separately, for tracingsimilarities between them, and for comparing which of thefactors of economics, politics and belief had the most signifi-cance at each stage. Throughout the experience of the civi-lizations, economic, political and ideological factors have ofcourse always been present, but what is significant is that firstone and then another became more important in relation tothe main problems of the time. When a movement of peoplesleads to settlement and surplus there are some common con-sequences. With better living the population increases, withmore consumption there is need for more material resources;to secure them and defend them the frame is enlarged. In timethe enlargement of the frame creates new problems: the rela-tionship of the expanding periphery to the centre, and ofexpanding societies with each other and with more mobileor nomadic groups. New political structures are attemptedand some succeed, providing for a time a common rule over diverse peoples. When the imperial structures becomeoverextended there is political breakdown; cohesion isachieved less by means of politics and increasingly by meansof ideology or religion. This common experience, which isfound in the classical civilizations as much as in early modernand contemporary civilizations, may be represented in asimple grid (see overleaf).

A further theme of this study is that technology has a keyrelationship to all the factors, although it is first and mostobviously seen in relation to economics and the tools andtechniques necessary to sustain settlements and cities. Theterm is used throughout in its broadest sense to include anymeans, processes or skills of a technical nature to achieve par-ticular ends. As such it includes the making of pots as wellas the technical aspects of controlling behaviour or spread-ing knowledge.

The themes and the framework just outlined allow for thekey developments in the history of a civilization to be out-lined in the space of a paragraph. In the case of American

8 Introduction

civilization, for example, the first colonists faced an immedi-ate need for adequate and continuing subsistence. With thecreation of a surplus above that level, more permanent set-tlements became possible. This required not just a produc-tive economy but also a durable political structure and anideological commitment. Precisely because these became partof the American experience, the enterprise succeeded. But inits very success lay further problems: the political problemsof relations between the centre and the parts, and betweenthe new nation and other nations. These problems dominatedthe history of America from the Declaration of Independenceto the outcome of the Civil War. They were resolved by politi-cal means, but with the help of industrial technology and anideology which overruled divisive tendencies. In the twenti-

Phases Factors Key problems

Formation Economic Problems of subsistence, surplusPolitical and specialization, including theIdeological tools and techniques needed for

production, distribution andexchange within and betweensettled regions

Expansion Political Problems of authority and securityEconomic and the relationship between theIdeological core and periphery areas as well as

frontier issues which require amilitary and most typically imperialsolution

Limitation Ideological Problems of identity and cohesionEconomic as political and military structuresPolitical begin to break up, leading to

attempts at spiritual/ideologicalallegiance within and beyondimperial boundaries

Introduction 9

eth century, however, separatist tendencies again engaged theAmerican people as they tested the limits of their growth inideological causes.

In common with all the earlier civilizations, America’s hasencountered a recurrent tension between movement and set-tlement, becoming in the process a frontier society dottedwith townships. At all times in all the regions there has beenboth the ongoing search for subsistence in varying habitatsand the desire to make permanent the particular relationshipsbetween peoples and their homesteads. The settlers in the first civilizations, and centuries later in the early modern civilizations, no matter how committed they were to theirpermanent centres, were nevertheless impelled to go beyondthem: at first prospecting for raw materials, then in a needfor security behind extending frontiers, and finally in the missionary motivation of the would-be universal churches.This recurrent pattern has been an integral part of globalhistory: through the sequences of the regional civilizations,and in the interactions between them and with peoples still following a nomadic path. In all the phases and in allthe factors there have been encounters with other societies.There have been patterns of exchange and exploitation, pat-terns of conquest and military rule, and patterns of mission-ary conviction and endeavour. Exchange, conquest and beliefhave been the recurrent modes through which human soci-eties have influenced each other and their common globalhabitat.

It is within the sequences of the civilizations, and in themanifestations of the factors which govern their corporateexistence, that the tension between movement and settlementhas repeatedly thrown up global tendencies. These have allin essence been attempts to resolve the tension on an ever-widening scale, achieving patterns of coexistence between thesocieties while each sought to preserve the harmony and driveof its own heritage and aspiration. When these attempts lostmomentum and foundered there were periods of lost direc-tion and fading vision until the sequences could be re-enactedand the balance of the factors restored.

10 Introduction

The narrative

The structure of the book reflects the argument. In part I, thefocus is on the resources, on the economic needs whichimpelled our distant ancestors on their global odyssey and,many millennia later, laid the groundwork for permanentcentres. I show how rulers and myth-makers providedsupport for the primary concern of an economic surplus. In part II, the political structures become all-important in resolving the problems of hostile encounters, and keyimprovements in the networks of communication (highways,alphabets, coinages) provided the means to harness the globalimpulses of the empires. In their success however lay theseeds of their decline, and they paid the price of overexten-sion. It was then, as related in part III, that the spiritualimperative took over, in a renewed search for common pur-poses which overran the political frontiers.

In part IV, the story is resumed in the further massivemovement of peoples which occurred between the end of theancient world and the beginnings of the modern world.Between the two lay several centuries of economic arrest ordecline and the loss of stable political structures. In theprocess continuity suffered, as in the break between classicalMediterranean civilization and a new civilization to the northin western Europe. In a similar way there was a breakbetween classical civilization based on the north China plainand a new civilization based on the river system and coastalarea in the south. These two new civilizations, which I havecalled early modern, began around the same time as civiliza-tions based on the fertilization of the eastern Slavlands by theVikings and the Arabic fertilization of the Middle East. Inthese four regions economic advance, supported by alliancesbetween political and religious leaderships, led to new civi-lized centres which drew on the experience of the past, butmore significantly on their own technological innovation. Inpart V, the global impulse is resumed in the empires of the

Introduction 11

Chinese, the Russians, the Muslims, and the western Europeans. Advances in the tools of empire, particularly inshipbuilding and weaponry, prepared the way for industrialrevolution; and revolutionary ideas, of nationalism and ofprogress, moved out disturbingly along the seaways. Finally,in part VI, we look at the global systems of the modern era,the evolution of a world economy, the hostile encounters ofthe last two centuries, and the communication networks weare still busily creating.

The global history of the last millennium is based on acomparison of the early modern civilizations of China,Russia, Islam and western Europe, all of which in the twen-tieth century reached phases of limitation. Their empiresfailed to command the commitment of their diverse peoples,and despite the improvements in communications, intensivepropaganda and military power, they all experienced crisesof growth. This was a global phenomenon in which two more modern civilizations have increasingly played a part as America and Japan have moved towards expanding hegemonies. Entering into a world economic system alreadytaking shape, they have become leading promoters of multinational enterprise and global communication. In thiscontext, a brief overview of global history must take intoaccount the interrelated roles of the six modern civilizationsin a global model rather than a Eurocentric one.

While using for convenience the familiar terms we knowas civilizations and empires, I have tried to avoid giving thema reality they do not possess. It was groups of people aroundthe globe who found ways of resolving problems that enabledsome core areas to achieve permanence as the basis for highachievement in the arts of living. From the core areas, knowl-edge of the achievement spread widely and there was contactbetween groups. There were hostile encounters and meansfound to deal with them. But the solving of problems, theachievement of better living, the spread of knowledge, andthe hostile encounters, were all the work of people, of peopleworking together in groups for common ends. If from time