PRIHIS202016-V007600

Summary

This lecture explores the interconnectedness of Afro-Eurasia, focusing on the rise of global systems through trade, religion, and warfare. The spread of diseases like the Black Death played a significant role, devastating populations and reshaping societies. The lecture highlights how this archaic form of globalization spread through trade routes, impacting regions unevenly, with areas like the Americas and parts of Africa being less affected. It also touches on the blending of cultures and belief systems along the Swahili coast and the early development of African slavery in the global trade network.

Takeaways

• 🌍 The lecture's theme focuses on warfare and motion in global history, emphasizing interconnectedness in Afro-Eurasia.
• 🏛️ The Silk Roads played a major role in shaping social, religious, economic, and political structures across regions.
• 🐴 The Mongol cavalry connected Afro-Eurasia but also facilitated the spread of diseases like the Black Death.
• 🦠 The Black Death spread through the same trade routes, killing millions across Afro-Eurasia, with high population centers suffering the most.
• 📉 The pandemic devastated major trading hubs, like caravan cities and ports, leading to market collapses and the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire.
• 🔄 After the chaos of the Black Death, new political systems and phases of world history emerged.
• 🌍 Not all regions were affected by these dynamics. The Americas, isolated from Afro-Eurasia, had no exposure to the pathogens.
• 🌊 Parts of Africa, particularly west and southern regions, were less connected and thus less affected by the Black Death.
• 🏴‍☠️ The Swahili coast of East Africa became a dynamic trading zone with diverse populations, where Islam blended with local cultures and practices.
• ⛓️ The lecture also touches on the early practices of African slavery, with evidence of African slaves being traded as far away as China by the 12th century.

Q & A

What was the main theme of the second lecture?

The main theme of the second lecture was 'Warfare and Motion,' focusing on the increasing interconnectedness of the Afro-Eurasian world and the role of the Black Death in shaping global history.

How did the Silk Roads contribute to globalization according to the lecture?

The Silk Roads contributed to globalization by creating interconnected commercial, social, religious, and military networks. This growing interconnectedness is seen as an early form of globalization.

What role did the Mongol Empire play in global connectedness?

The Mongol Empire played a key role by connecting large parts of Afro-Eurasia, facilitating trade and movement, which also unintentionally spread diseases like the Black Death across these regions.

What is the Black Death, and how did it spread according to the lecture?

The Black Death was a collection of diseases, primarily spread through trade routes, transmitted by rats and fleas, devastating highly interconnected areas like China and Europe.

How did the Black Death affect populations in China and Europe?

In China, the population dropped from 120 million to 80 million, while Europe lost approximately 60% of its population due to the Black Death.

What impact did the Black Death have on global trade and political systems?

The Black Death disrupted global trade by wiping out markets and coincided with the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire, which had previously stabilized Afro-Eurasian systems. This led to political and economic chaos, but also allowed for the emergence of new political systems.

Which regions were less affected by the Black Death and Afro-Eurasian dynamics?

The Americas were unaffected by the Black Death due to their isolation from Afro-Eurasia. Large parts of Africa, particularly West and Southern Africa, were also relatively immune as they were not deeply connected to Afro-Eurasian systems.

What was the Swahili coast, and why was it significant in global trade?

The Swahili coast was a key trading region on the east coast of Africa, where Arab, Persian, and other traders established trading posts. It became significant for trading goods like gold, ivory, and foodstuffs, contributing to Afro-Eurasian economic systems.

How did slavery become integrated into the Afro-Eurasian trading system?

Slavery became integrated into the Afro-Eurasian system as Arab and Persian traders adapted African practices of slavery. By the 12th century, African slaves were being traded as far as China, often employed as household labor.

What does the lecture say about cultural mixing along the East African coast?

Cultural mixing along the East African coast resulted in syncretic cultures, where Islam blended with local African religious practices. This cultural fusion was facilitated by the migration and settlement of Persians, Arabs, and other traders in the region.

Outlines

00:00

🛡️ Warfare, Motion, and Globalization in Afro-Eurasia

This paragraph introduces the theme of the lecture: the connection between warfare, motion, and early globalization. It revisits key themes from the previous lecture, focusing on the increasing interconnectedness of Afro-Eurasia. The Mongol Empire's rise, driven by trade, conversion, and conquest, brought the Afro-Eurasian world closer, but also facilitated the spread of invisible forces like diseases, culminating in the Black Death. The paragraph highlights how trade routes also became pathways for plagues, spreading death across densely populated areas, particularly in southern Afro-Eurasia, and decimating populations like China's and Europe's.

05:02

🌍 The Aftermath of the Black Death and Emerging Systems

The second paragraph discusses the impact of the Black Death on the interconnected Afro-Eurasian system, which was shattered by the pandemic. The collapse of markets and the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire led to chaos and conflict, but also to a phase of renewal, as new political systems emerged. Not all regions were equally affected by these processes, as parts of Africa, especially in the west and south, remained relatively isolated. However, North Africa and East Africa, particularly the Swahili coast, were connected to the global system through trade routes.

10:08

🌊 Cultural Exchange and the Swahili Coast

This paragraph explores the dynamic multicultural communities along the Swahili coast, where Africans interacted with migrants from Persia, Arabs, Jews, South Asians, and even Chinese. These coastal regions became hubs for cultural exchange and syncretism, blending Islam with local religious practices like witchcraft and rain-making. The Chinese chronicler Zhao Rugua recorded these hybrid practices, emphasizing the region's rich cultural mixture. The slave trade also became significant, with African slaves being integrated into households and later shipped as far as Canton in China. This foreshadowed broader global shifts centuries later.

Keywords

💡Silk Roads

The Silk Roads were ancient trade routes that connected Afro-Eurasia, facilitating the exchange of goods, cultures, and ideas. In the video, they are presented as conveyors that also enabled the spread of diseases like the Black Death. These routes exemplify the increasing interconnectedness of the world, a key theme of the lecture.

💡Black Death

The Black Death refers to the pandemic that devastated populations in Afro-Eurasia in the 14th century. The disease spread through trade routes like the Silk Roads, highlighting the vulnerability created by global interconnectedness. This event, which caused mass death and social upheaval, is used to illustrate the fragility of early globalization.

💡Globalization

Globalization in the lecture refers to the increasing interconnectedness of different parts of the world, particularly Afro-Eurasia, through trade, religion, and conquest. The lecture suggests that the foundations of modern globalization began as early as the 14th century, with events like the spread of the Black Death being a consequence of this interconnectedness.

💡Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire was one of the largest empires in history, spanning much of Afro-Eurasia. It facilitated trade and cultural exchange but also allowed for the spread of diseases like the Black Death. The empire's eventual fragmentation coincided with the chaos that followed the pandemic, illustrating how major political systems were affected by global forces.

💡Afro-Eurasia

Afro-Eurasia refers to the interconnected landmass of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which was central to early global trade and cultural exchanges. The lecture discusses how Afro-Eurasia was the theater for events like the Black Death and highlights the varying degrees of connectedness among regions within this zone.

💡Syncretism

Syncretism refers to the blending of different cultures, religions, and practices, often resulting from global interactions. The video gives the example of Islam mixing with local African religious practices along the Swahili coast, illustrating how global trade networks fostered cultural and religious fusion.

💡Swahili Coast

The Swahili Coast is the East African region that was part of the Afro-Eurasian trade network. It saw the rise of multicultural, syncretic societies due to the interactions of Arabs, Persians, Africans, and others. The lecture describes how this region became a hub for trade, especially in gold and slaves, contributing to the broader global economy.

💡Invisible Enemies

Invisible enemies in the lecture refer to the diseases, such as the Black Death, that spread through trade networks without people understanding their cause. These invisible forces of history played a significant role in shaping the fate of interconnected societies, leading to mass death and the collapse of economies and markets.

💡Trade Routes

Trade routes like the Silk Roads connected different regions of Afro-Eurasia, facilitating the movement of goods, people, and diseases. These routes were crucial for economic exchange but also became pathways for the spread of plagues like the Black Death, highlighting the dual-edged nature of globalization.

💡Interconnectedness

Interconnectedness refers to the growing ties between different regions of the world, particularly through trade, migration, and cultural exchange. In the lecture, it is a central theme, explaining how the interconnectedness of Afro-Eurasia led to both positive developments (trade, political systems) and devastating consequences (spread of disease).

Highlights

The lecture covers global history over 700 years, focusing on warfare and motion.

The interconnectedness of Afro-Eurasian regions increased through trade, conversion, and conquest, possibly marking the beginnings of globalization in the 14th century.

Mongol cavalry linked Afro-Eurasia, creating corridors that also spread invisible forces like diseases.

The Black Death devastated densely populated areas along the Afro-Eurasian trade routes, causing massive death tolls in places like China and Europe.

The interconnected trade networks facilitated the spread of plagues, carried by fleas on rats, devastating regions like China and Europe.

The plague significantly reduced populations, with China losing around 40 million people, and Europe losing about 60% of its population.

The Black Death weakened markets and fragmented the Mongol empire, paving the way for new political systems in Afro-Eurasia.

Some regions, like the Americas and parts of Africa, were isolated from the Afro-Eurasian dynamics and largely unaffected by the Black Death.

The Americas were cut off from Afro-Eurasia after the Bering land bridge submerged, leading to isolation from technologies, cultures, and pathogens.

East African coastal regions, like the Swahili Coast, were part of the Afro-Eurasian trade network, fostering multicultural cities populated by Persians, Arabs, Jews, and South Asians.

Africa was a key source of gold, vital for injecting liquidity into the Afro-Eurasian trade system and maintaining Arab mercantile networks.

The East African coast saw syncretic cultures emerge, blending Islam with local beliefs such as witchcraft and rain-making practices.

Persian settlers built the largest mosque in sub-Saharan Africa, showing how trade created religious and cultural hybridity.

Slavery on the East African coast adapted to African practices, and by 1150, African slaves were being sold as far away as China.

The lecture emphasizes how interconnectedness led to the movement not just of commodities, but also people and cultures, reshaping regions globally.

Transcripts

Welcome back.

This is our second lecture of our tour of global history over 700 years.

The theme of today's lecture is Warfare and Motion.

To build on what we learned from last lecture about the ways in which the silk

roads, the increasing connectedness of the Afro-Eurasian theaters gave rise to new

social, religious, economic and political structures.

So, let's just go back and review some of

the main themes that we explored in the last lecture.

As you'll recall, we talked about this process of increasing interconnectedness.

There was commercial, there was religious, social, military,

and political, and we might have asked ourselves,

is this kind of map in a way,

a representation of the beginning of our globalization.

That we could say that the processes that would lead up to the interdependencies

of our current day began way back in the 14th century.

Certainly, we see the ways in which trade

conversion and conquest created conveyors, and in a sense,

I could have said that the beginnings of globalization began with the sound of

millions of hooves of Mongol cavalries,

bringing the parts of Afro-Eurasia together.

But it was these very conveyors that also served for the movement,

the motion of some invisible forces in

world history.

And so, in a sense, our story for this

lecture begins not with the thunder of the hooves.

But with whimpers.

Whimpers. Whimpers of millions and millions of

people dying from invisible enemies that they did not understand.

But this was the era known as the Black Death.

In fact, the Black Death was a portmanteau term just as the

Silk Road was a portmanteau term to cover a lot of commercial arrangements.

There were many diseases flowing through the

very same arterial structures that connected Afro-Eurasia together.

If you map on the previous representation of the commercial networks and look at the

ways in which the corridors of trade also

served as the corridors for the dissemination of disease.

You can see what happened, that it was the very interconnectedness

that created this great cataclysm that we call the black death.

And it was devastating in particular in those

most highly densely populated areas, especially along that

southern beltway of Afro-Eurasia. The germs

essentially find the viruses the multiple plagues followed the trade routes.

The pathogens were carried on ships and on the caravans, and infected all of the

hubs and those global ports along the way that we talked about in the last lecture.

Here was a scene of death and carnage that was typical of the age.

The disease was borne by rats fleas on the rats carried

the bacilli from rat to rat and then to humans and was

then the maker of gruesome spectacles of horrific proportions.

The death

rates were truly awful.

China saw its population from a height of

about 120 million people, plunge to 80 million.

Europe lost approximately 60% of its population.

Most affected were the nerve centers.

Those nodes of that interconnected Afro-Eurasian

system that we've been talking about.

The trading posts, the caravan cities, and

those global ports. Now, the Black Death was a

sign that while societies were not yet interdependent in the way our

globalization era is, it was increasingly interconnected.

These parts of the world were in contact with each

other when it was that very contact that spread the diseases.

The viruses and the plagues

could spread thanks to the migration, the movement of

the micro-fauna. And of course it would create metaphors

that would later, that we would use customarily to describe and use in later

globalizations, viruses, right? Especially to describe financial crises.

I'll get to that later in the course. Now, the black death

was a blow, then, to this increasingly interconnected,

emerging system. This archaic globalization.

It wiped out entire markets, it coincided with the fragmentation

of the Mongol empire, which had given a certain institutional ballast

to the Afro-Eurasian system, and eventually spawned

the rivalries between the descendants of the Mongol empires.

So what ensued in the wake of all of this death, was a round of chaos and conflict.

Now, as often happens in ages of great destruction.

Like this one, very often this is also an occasion for renewal.

In a sense it

cleaned the slate and prepared the way for

the emergence of new political systems across Afro-Eurasia.

In a sense it was the Mongols and then the invisible

killers that ushered in a new phase in world history.

Now not all regions were affected by these processes.

This is why it's important to

note that we're talking about connectedness, well not all parts

of the world were connected up in the same way.

Not all regions were being affected by the visible

and invisible forces of this archaic form of globalization.

There are worlds apart.

One place that was unaffected by the

spread of disease was, of course, the Americas.

Which was cut off after the land bridge called Beringia that connected

Siberia to North America was plunged under water with rising seas.

there in the Americas was the setting for a major civilizations, high

populations but no contact and therefore no borrowing

including borrowing from the pathogens of Afro-Eurasia.

Because there was no contact. And I'm going to go into that

isolation and its effects in a subsequent lecture but what's important to note is

that the Americas were not part of the broader global pool of

technologies, cultures and pathogens. Goods, technologies, and diseases.

And so in a sense, was a world apart.

There were other regions that were less affected by these Afro-Eurasian dynamics.

In fact, large parts of Africa itself were relatively immune

because they were only partly connected up with those systems, especially in

west and southern Africa. There, we see the rise of wealthy

kingdoms, that were relatively untouched by by Afro-Eurasian

dynamics, until Europeans devised a

way in which they could navigate down that western coast of Africa.

Again something I'm going to come back to in later lectures.

But in North Africa and in East Africa, the dynamic was quite different.

They were connected up.

Though not very intensively, they were nonetheless connected

up with the Silk Road and the sea lanes.

Mogadishu for instance was an important

part of that sea lane trading system that we described in the last lecture.

Indeed that whole east African coastal reason was known as the Swahili coast.

This was from the Arabic word the Sahail

which refers to the southern coast of the Sahara.

And it would be all along that Swahili coast that we see

Persians, Arabs, Jews, South Asians, Buddhists.

And eventually, Chinese migrants would set up and populate towns.

And eventually cities up and down the coast.

To trade for ivory and foodstuffs.

Bust most of all for gold.

And we're going to come back to this over and over again.

The ways in which Africa was the source of

an important commodity, which was gold, which

injected liquidity into the Afro-Eurasian trading system.

It was very important to keep that Arab mercantile trading network that

we talked about in the lecture, the last lecture, keep them going.

Of course a centerpiece of a lot of these

coastal towns and cities was in fact the mosque as

the Arab mercantile culture often dominated these settlements.

For instance, in Kilwa, a good example of this,

an island off the east coast of Africa founded by

Muslims who had moved from Persia, not, they weren't Arabs,

they were Persians built the largest mosque in sub-Saharan Africa.

The result was the creation of a lot of mixed communities

up and down this Swahili coast. Africans and migrants from the Shiraz

region of Persia created these multicultural communities.

And often produced religious hybrids between Islam

and local religious systems, and so we

can begin to see what we call

syncretic cultures emerging along these global systems.

So Islam would get amalgamated with

local understandings of witchcraft and rain-making practices.

One Chinese chronicler who visited the site would report

back to Beijing, and I'm reading here, this is a man called Zhao Rugua.

He would note that many people practiced magical

arts, herein he's referring to east Africa, and

can change themselves into birds and beasts, or

sea creatures to frighten and delude the foolish commoners.

If their business dealings with a foreign ship arises, they cast a spell

to bring the ship to a standstill, so it cannot move forwards or backwards.

And, only when the crew have consented to make peace, will they let them

go. It was testimonials like this that evoke

a world of mixture, migration, motion.

It was very dynamic region along this east coast of Africa.

So, one salient aspect of these ports on

east Africa was the ways in which Arab and Persian merchants adapted to the

African practices of slavery which meant which

included a slave, enslavement of Africans for employment

inside households. And mere Arabs and Persians

saw the ways in which African households would adopt slaves into families.

And they soon began the practice of shipping slaves that

were used as household bonded labor in Africa, shipping them

outside Africa. By 1150, we have evidence

that the connectedness of East Africa with the Afro -Eurasian trading

system yielded to African slaves being sold

as far away as the Port of Canton. Working in firms of

Arab merchants and Arab settlers as far away as China.

And this would foreshadow a great transformation

centuries later, and we see on the

fringes then of Africa the beginnings of

African contact with the rest of the world.

Creating, therefore, new belief systems, new cultures, which will

become an important theme of this course, mixing of populations.

So it's not just commodities that were on the move but

also people.

So I'm going to pause here at the end of

this first segment, give you an opportunity to collect your

thoughts, and consider how evenly, then, the spread of

the process of global connection was before the 15th century.