Page 83 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1860 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Wiethoff, Bodo (1963). Die chinesische Seeverbotspolitik und der private from the verb nemet’, “to become dumb”; Russians and
Überseehandel von 1368 bis 1567 [The politics of Chinese maritime Poles later restricted the word to Germans (nemtsy;
trade prohibitions and private overseas trade from 1368 to 1567].
Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz. niemcy), paradoxically the nation with whom both polit-
Wills Jr., J. E. (1998). Relations with maritime Europeans, 1514–1662. ical confrontations and economic exchanges were great-
In Fairbank, J. K. & D. Twitchett (Eds.), The Cambridge history of
China:Vol. 8 (pp. 333–375). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University est.The cultural, political, and economic development of
Press. the “west” was more advanced than that of the “east” and
tended to limit trade to the “western” import of raw mate-
rials and agricultural and hunting produce against its
export of manufactures.Thus the treaty of 944 between
Trading Patterns, Prince Igor of Kiev and Byzantium—the first formaliza-

tion of east–west trade—imposed quotas on the quantity
Eastern European of silk goods that the gosti, or traders, of Kievan Rus
could purchase annually.Although Suzdal succeeded it as
f civilization means thinking about, and acting toward, the Russian capital in 1169, Kiev was (until conquered
I“aliens” civilly, then globalization means thinking by the Mongols in 1240) one of Europe’s largest trade
about, and acting toward, potential partners globally. centers, a “Ravenna of the North.”
Both concepts come into play when discussing European A reverse asymmetry was obtained across the north–
regional economic relations, which embody aspects of south division of the Mediterranean andWestAsia.Byzan-
mutual alienation—here used in its original, general tium, and Europe generally, bought metal goods and tex-
sense of being “other,” the Latin alius. tiles from networks spanningAlexandria and Damascus to
Bukhara and Samarqand, cities that in the Middle Ages
Early East–West Trade were more industrially advanced than those of Europe.The
The “otherness” of parts of Europe in terms of geograph- Silk Road from Europe to Central Asia, along which Chi-
ical longitude originated both in two great unifications of nese, Persian, and Indian manufactures flowed, became
classical times (the Greek empire of Alexander the Great the major channel of east–west trade when piracy impeded
and the Roman empire) and in two great subsequent divi- use of the sea passages and OttomanTurks blocked Chris-
sions (that of the Roman empire into a western empire tians from the southerly land routes.However,by the time
ruled from Rome and an eastern empire ruled from Marco Polo publicized the route’s commercial attractions,
Byzantium, and the Great Schism of 1054 between the cities in his native Italy were creating new forms of enter-
Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches). prise and new products in a proto-industrialization that
Both empires made the rest of Europe “other” to them- would by the eighteenth century eventuate in western eco-
selves, and the two divisions made eastern and western nomic superiority over the East.
“other” to each of them. Whereas the boundaries sepa-
rating “east” from “west” depressed trade and barter, the Medieval Markets
later religious division—the “north” remaining Christian Meanwhile, however, much of eastern Europe and Rus-
and “south” becoming Islamic—initially stimulated trade. sia had succumbed to the Mongols. Already controlling
The explanation lies in cultural asymmetry, be the bound- China, Persia and Transcaucasia from their Central Asian
ary longitudinal or latitudinal. In its crudest form the cul- base, Tatar armies arrived on the Volga in 1236 and by
tural divide was language, merely because that of the 1240 had conquered most of the Russian principalities,
“other” was incomprehensible: Greeks and Romans which for two centuries thereafter paid tribute to the
termed them barbari, “barbarians,” parodying their Khans of the Golden Horde. The command economy
tongues as bah bah; Slavs described foreigners as nemets, imposed by the “Tatar yoke” (tatarskoe igo) influenced the