Using world - systems to narrate world history

 

 

What is clear is that Wallerstein's world -systems narrative is not a world history narrative. Wallerstein provides an historico - logical explanation of how the modern world came to be all inside the modern world - system, by recounting the internal history of that system. His focus is thus on the emergence, development and growth of that system from small beginnings in Europe to encompass the entire globe by the mid nineteenth century. But for the first three centuries of this narrative, Wallerstein's world - systems narrative does not tell us anything at all about the major part of the world. It is only from the around 1840 on that Wallerstein's world - systems narrative becomes a world history.

 

So the question that arises from this is: can a world history be constructed that uses the world -systems paradigm, but is more than an account of the immanent and historical logic of the modern world - system? How can the narrative of the modern world - system be incorporated into a narrative of world history?

 

The starting point I think is with an early observation of Wallerstein's, that more than one world-system can coexist, and that indeed that has been the norm for most of human history. The dominance of the modern world - system over the entire globe is unique and unprecedented in history. So I want to approach the history of the world since around 1500 in terms of multiple world systems initially.

 

World - systems are characterised by a unitary division of labour across the system, devoted to the production of necessities, with all production processes linked by commodity chains. (This is discussed in another post here). Theoretically it should be easy to determine the numbers and boundaries of the world -systems existing at any one time. The problem is that data has never been collected for such an exercise. (Now that would be a worthy project for a research institute, if funding could be found). So for the moment we are driven back on intuitive reasoning from anecdotal evidence.

 

I am taking as a starting point the map of the "eight commercial circuits of the thirteenth century world system" from Janet Abu Lughod's book Before European Hegemony. Now I will state upfront that I have a number of methodological criticisms of the book, but those can be discussed in another place. Abu Lughod did undertake a substantial project of research and reading, and did attempt to model the flow of commodities in the old world, albeit based on impressionistic rather than quantitative analysis. There are two further provisos to be made:

 

1.       Abu Lughod wrote about the period 1250 - 1350, and I am concerned here with around 100 - 150 years later; and

2.       In her narrative the thirteenth century world -system collapsed after 1350 due to the impact of the bubonic plague in Central Asia.

 

That said, here is the map:

 

 

 

 

 

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Abu-Lughod>

 

 

My suggested development of this for the late fifteenth / early sixteenth century would be:

 

1.       A North sea / Baltic sea circuit, at this stage possibly peripheral to 2) below but from which the modern world - system will develop;

2.       A Mediterranean world - system, running from Portugal to Cyprus, extending northwards into the Germanies below the Main River, eastwards to Bohemia and Hungary and including the Maghreb, extending to West Africa (Songhay and Mali), with the core located in the Maghreb;

3.       Egypt, possibly extending into modern day Sudan;

4.       Ethiopia;

5.       The Indian Ocean littoral, including Arabia, the Persian Gulf, South Asia, across to Malacca and Sumatra and the east coast of Africa to Mozambique island;

6.       Iran and central Asia;

7.       China, East Asia including Japan, and South East Asia to Java;

8.       Muscovy / Russia

9.       The Ottoman empire including the Levant and the Balkans.

 

My evidence for this is at this stage inchoate - it is an anecdotal and impressionistic intuition gained from decades of reading history. But I would suggest it as  a starting point for research anyway. One area that is open to significant revision is the areas 2 and 3 and 3 and 4. If Egypt (the granary of the classical world) was still supplying grain to 2 and / or 4, then those areas all need to be merged. In either case, the core would then be Egypt, with the Maghreb possibly fulfilling a semi peripheral role to the European Mediterranean littoral.

 

So far so good. Assuming my breakdown holds, it should then be possible to construct a world historical narrative that focuses on the interactions among these world - systems, and how those interactions contingently intersect with the internal cycles and trajectories of each world - system. The narrative of the modern (European world - system) would thus for example develop the peripheralisation of the European Mediterranean lands, the attempt to break out of this peripheralisation by an alliance of Genoese capital and the Portuguese state seeking direct access to, and control of, the critically important source of gold in West Africa; the other Genoese enterprise to establish direct contact with the source of luxury goods for elite conspicuous consumption in east Asia, which leads to both the Portuguese protection racket in the Indian Ocean world - system and the fortuitous stumbling over the New World. The contingency of this underpins the attempt by the Habsburgs to build a world -empire, which comes to grief in the bankruptcy of 1567, laying the stage for the absorption of the old Mediterranean world - system into world - systems 1 and 9.

 

In India this period sees the reverse of what happens in Europe. In India a multi polar world system is transformed into a classic world - empire by the Moguls, detaching northern India from the Indian Ocean world -system and absorbing the central Asian periphery from the Iranian system. The Indian Ocean world - system continues to operate with the core in the south Indian peninsula. The strength and wealth of this system is shown by its ability to absorb the piratical incursions of the Portuguese and the century long protection racket the latter impose on the system.

 

Of particular interest however is the linking of the entire globe into a unified circuit of with the opening of the port of Manilla in the 1580s and the institution of the Acapulco -Manilla galleon route. Once the VOC begins trading with both the Indian Ocean and East Asian world - systems the mass of silver that had flown into Europe in the previous century starts to move east to pay for imports of luxury goods. Silver also flows to the east Asian system via the Manilla route. Essentially over the next century, Spain hauls silver out of Peru and Mexico and the bulk of it ends up in China, either directly, or through an Indian circuit first. This phenomenal flow of silver east is well accounted for in the work of Gunder Frank in "ReOrient" and in various articles by Dennis Flynn. (It is also the reason why the shipwreck gallery in the city of Fremantle, in my state of Western Australia, has such large displays of sixteenth and seventeenth century Mexican silver coins recovered from Dutch shipwrecks along the West Australian coastline.)

 

At this point I am writing of this circuit as an exchange of precocities between world - systems. But this is the interesting point. China (and South Asia in second place) had highly monetised economies in this period, and the Chinese was the most liquid and monetised economy in the world until the late eighteenth / early nineteenth centuries. (The work of Bin Wong and Ken Pomeranz is brilliant on this - I need to write about them at another time). Chinese currency was based in silver, and large quantities of silver were needed to keep minting coinage. This if course is why China is the world's "silver sink" from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. So for China, silver is actually not a precious or luxury commodity, but an essential bulk good, a necessity. Does this therefore mean that China was the core of a global world - system from around 1600 onwards? Following the logic of commodity chains of production I think we have to say yes!

 

So what does this do to my narrative? It suggests that once direct commercial contact is established with China in the last twenty years of the sixteenth century (and direct was still at arms length - Chinese authorities would not permit foreign vessels to carry good to Chinese shores, and most exchange occurred at Manilla when the annual Chinese fleet called) the emerging European world - system (with its extension into the Americas and the west African littoral) was rapidly absorbed into a Chinese centred world - system. Europe in that system should be seen as a semi - periphery, sourcing materials (mainly silver, later also plantation crops from its American peripheries and providing basic manufactured goods in turn, while conveying silver the Chinese core and receiving high value manufactured items in return (e.g. silks, porcelains, tea, lacquer work). A lot more detailed empirical work on the flow of commodities and the reconstruction of commodity chains in the areas discussed here needs to be one to make the argument stick, but this outline is worth pursuing.

 

I want to explore some other aspects of this construction later - the English construction of an Atlantic economy in order to compete with the privileged position the Dutch hold as a link in this hypothesised China centred early modern world -  system; the actual "great divergence" between Europe and China circa 1780  - 1840; the position of South Asia in this world - system especially given it was the supplier of the highest quality cotton textiles to Europe in this period, again in exchange for silver; and the whole theoretical issue this historical reconstruction raises of sub systems within a system. Arguments to be developed.