World History for International Studies PDF

World History for International Studies Duyvesteyn, Isabelle; Wal, Anne Marieke van der Citation Duyvesteyn, I., & Wal, A. M. van der (Eds.). (2022). World History for International Studies. Leiden: Leiden University Press (LUP). doi:10.24415/9789087284008 Version: Publisher's Versio...

World History for International Studies Duyvesteyn, Isabelle; Wal, Anne Marieke van der Citation Duyvesteyn, I., & Wal, A. M. van der (Eds.). (2022). World History for International Studies. Leiden: Leiden University Press (LUP). doi:10.24415/9789087284008 Version: Publisher's Version License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3454936 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). World History for International Studies   World History for International Studies Edited by Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Anne Marieke van der Wal Leiden University Press The publication of this volume was made possible by the Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University, the Netherlands, based on a teaching innovation grant. Cover design: Andre Klijsen Cover image: Earth Rising by Bill Anders, 24 December 1968 (Provided by NASA, reprinted under creative commons license CC0) Lay out: Coco Bookmedia, Amersfoort Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes themselves to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. ISBN 978 90 8728 400 8 e-ISBN 978 94 0060 445 2 DOI 10.24415/9789087284008 NUR 680 © Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Anne Marieke van der Wal / Leiden University Press, 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the publisher and the editors of the book. Contents Contents 5 Preface and Acknowledgements 7 Guide to Reading 10 About the Contributors 13 1 Introduction: What is World History? 15 Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Anne Marieke van der Wal Part I: The Pre-Modern World (< 1800 CE) Introduction 34 2 Communication: The Writing Revolution 39 Anne Marieke van der Wal 3 Trade: The Ancient Silk Roads 61 Richard T. Griffiths 4 Political Order: From Coercion to Constitution 80 Brian Shaev 5 Slavery: Capitalism & Racism 103 Joris van den Tol and Anne Marieke van der Wal 6 Religion: Perspective and Practice 127 Jochem van den Boogert Part II: The Modern World (> 1800 CE) Introduction 146 7 War: Disordering and Ordering 154 Isaac Scarborough 8 Identity: From Traditional to Transnational 174 Arnout van Ree contents 5 9 Modernity: Being Modern in a Changing World 195 Gina van Ling 10 Human Rights: Norms and Policy 215 Mike Schmidli 11 Ecology: From Local Resistance to Global Concern 233 Elisa Da Via, Judith Naeff and Anne Marieke van der Wal 12 Conclusion: World History Today 255 Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Helen Steele Illustration Credits 273 Glossary 285 List of References 290 Index 305 6 Preface and Acknowledgements To offer the student an integrated, pedagogically sound learning experience in which foundational knowledge about history, and world history in particular, is closely linked to a digital learning platform, where this knowledge is activated and stimulated – this has been the challenge we set for ourselves when drafting this book. Since the start of the International Studies bachelor program at the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University in 2012, we have been confronted with the challenge to bring all these elements together. A handbook, which met all our requirements was not available. We decided to write our own. The result of our efforts is in front of you. Research-based teaching is the mainstay of our activities at Leiden University. The sharing of our excitement and passion about research, but also the trials and tribulations involved in doing this, is what we aim to bring to our classrooms. We train our students in acquiring an academic attitude, not feeling daunted when confronted by large quantities of material, and reading and processing the material carefully in a critical and engaged manner. We would like our students to attain important academic research skills, as well as guide them in their first attempts at analysis. The competencies we train in the first phase of academic formation are focused on note-taking, summarizing, identifying an argument, understanding a debate, summarizing a debate and subsequently participating in one. We offer stepping stones for acquiring these competencies in this handbook, in a practical and accessible manner, by taking as a pedagogical starting point the different roles of the scholar. These will be presented in further detail below; by inviting students to become observers, conceptualizers and designers, we aim to trigger an active engagement with the research material. Moreover, we have integrated this with an online learning tool, part of the digital humanities, which builds on the main frames of reference for twenty-first century scholars. There is a wealth of material available in the online domain on which we capitalize to enhance the overall learning experience. The idea of research-based learning, activated by an open access and online learning environment, we hope, will lead students to attain a scholarly and critical thinking attitude. By linking the story of history to sources that the historian uses, we aim to give students a grasp of what it means to be an academic and a historian in particular. The active use of sources, accessing them, evaluating them preface and acknowledgements 7 and critically engaging with them should lead the student to gain insights into how scientists work, how they arrive at a certain result and how students can engage in this exercise of investigation, corroboration and triangulation themselves. To give shape to this handbook we have made a series of choices. History is one of four domains in the International Studies curriculum, together with politics, culture and economics. There will be a consistent echoing of these other domains in the handbook. We have adopted as a starting point ten major themes that have featured, and continue to feature, prominently in World History discussions – Communications, Trade, Order, Slavery, Religion, War, Identity, Modernity, Norms and Ecology. The justifications for the choices made also build on the pedagogical philosophy of the program of linking the local and the global. Moreover, we identify ten world regions – Latin America, North America, Europe, Russia, Central Asia, Africa, South and South-East Asia, East Asia and the Pacific – which provide our main entry points for the discussion of the themes. We also aim to do justice to that tried and trusted benchmark for historians which is chronology, the old- fashioned Plato to NATO approach. These parameters have led to a structure for the handbook in twelve chapters, covering largely the last millennium, in which these major themes are dissected with examples and sources drawn from the regions. The handbook aims to provide bridges between regions and areas of expertise to tell this story of the human experience over time. We want to focus on how local ideas and individual contacts developed, started to overlap and became globally understood and used by ever larger groups of people. In contrast to Global History, we award great importance to the local, the specific and also, importantly, bring in the regional and national focused expertise of Area Studies. Still, for historians this book has inherent limitations. The approach chosen does not allow us to do full justice to historiographical traditions and discussions of the field. For Area Studies scholars, the book will jump from one region to another perhaps too much to gain real depth. We would like to stress again that the text is introductory and an invitation to all readers to explore further, based on the small windows we are offering into these topics and wider debates. Our overall aim is to tell a story of major themes that have affected and effected changes in the human past, starting from a particular part of the world and extrapolating to describe the wider experience. The chapters aim to offer, most importantly, a starting point for discussion. Each chapter addresses one theme, which is introduced based on contemporary relevance or an example. Subsequently, the theme is explained through a local or regional lens. The historiographical debate is explained, the prevalent theories and methods are presented, followed by historic case material and sources, all within a distinct time frame. In this way, the order of the chapters will end up being roughly chronological. Each chapter will present one central primary source, which is linked to the digital platform. This primary source – there is a wide diversity across the chapters – will not only illustrate the use of sources but also demonstrate how 8 they have been used and debated among historians. The chapters will conclude by providing the student with guiding questions, as well as suggestions for further reading. In the guide to reading below, this will be explained in more detail. The endeavor of writing a new handbook would not have been feasible without the enthusiasm and hard work of the tutor team who have been teaching the ‘Global History’ course together for a number of years now. This book would not have seen the light of day without their commitment and passion to share the expertise on the pages that follow. The book has been written during a pandemic and the circumstances have not been ideal to excel academically; we worked from home, our kitchens and dining room tables became offices, we recorded our lectures, talked to our students, all while children – small and larger – as well as pets, laundry machines and parcel deliveries interrupted our trains of thought. We did persevere. The author team would like to thank the Faculty of Humanities for a teaching innovation grant, which helped tremendously to get this project off the ground. We would like to thank in particular, Sanne Arens, who saw the value in our integrated learning vision and was instrumental in the setting up of the project. The encouragement from the International Studies program board has been greatly appreciated, especially Giles Scott-Smith and Jaap Kamphuis who cheered us on. Moreover, Annebeth Simons, our pedagogical expert, helped shape the approach adopted in this book. Leon Pauw has served this project not only as a research assistant, but also with his experiences as a former practitioner i.e. an International Studies student. We would like to thank a large number of colleagues who made suggestions, read along and helped with larger and smaller sections of the manuscript, in particular: Elena Burgos-Martinez, Andre Gerrits, Jan Bart Gewalt, Bram Ieven, Jonathan London, Patricio Silva, Hans Wilbrink, and Casper Wits. For the development of the online platform, we are grateful to Fresco Sam-Sin the initiator of the Things That Talk platform at the Humanities Faculty, where our project found a home. Furthermore, we would like to thank Leiden University Press’ editorial board, editors in chief Aniek Meinders and her successor Saskia Gieling, for the trust bestowed on us. Stephen Hart and Caroline Diepeveen were indispensable to get the manuscript print-ready. The production team also deserves our heartfelt thanks for diligence and care in the process of bringing this book to print. Last but not least, this book has benefited from the uncountable interesting and inspiring classroom conversations with our students, who questioned, probed and triggered us. To the new generations of students, this book is dedicated; the world needs more engaged and critical thinkers who understand the past in order to understand the present, and hopefully the future. Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Anne Marieke van der Wal The Hague, June 2022 preface and acknowledgements 9 A Guide to Reading Each chapter of this book will address one theme. This theme will be discussed within the context of one specific region of the world. This does not mean that the theme is exclusive to this region or holds no relevance beyond this region. We simply wanted to make the theme come alive by focusing directly on real world events and practice. Within each thematic chapter, we have asked the authors to address a specific set of topics. Every chapter starts with one or more contemporary example to illustrate the importance and relevance of the theme. The academic debate surrounding it will be introduced, followed by an illustration of the main historical methodologies and sources. How has this issue been researched? Moreover, each chapter puts center stage a key primary source that illustrates the main argument the chapter tries to bring forward, and which is discussed in its own context. We have tried to make sure that the range of primary sources is wide and reflective of the practice of history today. The reader will find below a selection comprising a novel, a letter, a book, a medal, a temple, a baptismal bowl, a proclamation, a shipwreck and an epic. These sources are linked to the digital platform Things That Talk, which accompanies this handbook. Furthermore, each chapter introduces a series of concepts, for which a definition is provided in text boxes. These concepts tie in to both the study of history as a discipline, as well as the explanations and theories that have been offered by previous scholarship. They will reverberate across the International Studies program and the domains of politics, culture and economics. A historical narrative is introduced in each chapter which describes a case or elaborates on a historical example or process. Each chapter ends with a summary and brief conclusion and the discussion is extrapolated to its wider relevance and application. At the end of each chapter a series of guiding questions will be offered, which are aimed at helping the student process the material. Finally, a guide to further reading offers the student an entry point to further study the theme if they are so inclined. Each chapter has been written by a different author. We draw specifically on the expertise in the International Studies program and we have tried to do justice to the rich diversity, not only in scholarly approaches, but also in the different individual styles and manners of discussion. This, we hope, will enhance the versatility in the reading and learning experience this handbook seeks to offer. 10 The pedagogical approach this handbook has adopted, focuses on the four key roles of a scholar. When starting out in academics, new budding researchers need equipment. We offer here the main tools of scholarship: observing, investigating, conceptualizing and designing. These tools are introduced in more detail in the overview below. All the authors, all scholars with specific training and area of expertise, aim to share their knowledge about a particular debate in world history. In their descriptions, all four roles will appear but these will be different for each chapter, in content and reach. Still, all scholars, whether they are experts on the history of Chinese religion or African art, are obliged as academics to situate their research within the prior existing context and debate, to define their terms and concepts, to make clear what their main question is, to specify how they are going to research the question, and what methods and sources they will use to arrive at an answer. These roles are complementary and no good academic work can do without them. Scholars might have to go through multiple rounds of defining, questioning and researching before their design is complete. This is the core of the academic enterprise and this handbook is aimed at introducing the budding scholar to this process and inviting them to eventually apply it. Icon Roles of the Scholar: The Observer The scholar starts with observing the world. What do we see? What is interesting? What do we need to understand better? The observer describes the phenomenon carefully and precisely. Knowledge, Data & Information The Conceptualizer The scholar wants to dig deeper. How does this work? How can we understand this? What causes this pattern? The conceptualizer proposes a topic with a narrowed down scope (time, place etc.) and proposes a central question. Definitions and Questions a guide to reading 11 Icon Roles of the Scholar: The Investigator The scholar starts to think in the abstract. The investigator has to have control over existing scholarship and knowledge to make informed proposals to place the puzzle within the academic debate. Existing Literature and Debate The Designer The scholar thinks up a pathway to investigate the phenomenon in a more profound way. What methodology can we use or devise to study the problem? What sources do we need for this investigation? The designer will activate knowledge about how to dissect the topic and make this operational Methodology and Sources These icons will re-appear in the chapters that follow and will be presented in the margins, where we will signal what is happening in the chapter and where these different roles are visible. 12 About the Contributors Jochem van den Boogert has completed a PhD in Southeast Studies and focuses on theoretical approaches in the study of religion and culture in Southeast Asia. Elisa Da Vià has completed a PhD in political economy and focuses on agricultural resilience. Isabelle Duyvesteyn is Professor of International Studies, has completed a PhD in War Studies and is a scholar of contemporary peace and security. Richard T. Griffiths is Professor emeritus of International Studies, has completed a PhD in History and is a scholar of economic history, European integration and international trade. Gina van Ling is a scholar of contemporary China and a Sinologist with a focus on Media and Museums. Judith Naeff has completed a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies with a focus on contemporary Arabic visual culture and literature. Arnout van Ree is a scholar of the modern Middle East with a focus on global radical politics through the prism of the Middle East and North Africa. Isaac Scarborough has completed a PhD in International History and is a scholar of Soviet History. William Michael Schmidli has completed a PhD in History and is a scholar of United States foreign relations in the twentieth century. Brian Shaev has completed a PhD in European History and is a scholar of history of the European Union and European political parties. Helen Steele has completed a PhD in Social History and is a scholar of women’s history and modern European history. about the contributors 13 Joris van den Tol has completed a PhD in Economic and Social History and is a scholar of early modern Economic History in a globalizing world. Anne Marieke van der Wal has completed a PhD in African History and Cultural Heritage and is a scholar of early modern heritage and cultural history of Southern Africa. 14  chapter 1. Introduction: What is World History? isabelle duyvesteyn and anne marieke van der wal The aim of the chapter is to introduce the student to the academic study of history, by presenting three core concepts which are part of the traditions in the field, before moving on to discuss the World History approach and its distinctive features. Introduction: What is History? The study of history is the study of the human past. This sounds quite straightforward but becomes tricky when probed in more detail. What is the past? Are there logical starting and end points? Can we actually study the past when we have no records of that past? Is what I had for breakfast this morning not also part of the past and therefore history? Or does there need to be sufficient time between the present and the past for historians to be able to more distantly and objectively reflect on past events? The answer to these questions is mostly affirmative; there is a logical starting point, which is the emergence of the early hominids, around 7 million years ago. We can study the past also in these very early years by using the tools of archaeology, geology and carbon dating, for example. Also, what happened this morning in your kitchen, is interesting for historians writing about human diets or dietary history. In short, historians are interested in studying humans in their broadest sense, in their natural environment, across time and across place. Still, we can and should be more specific. When we study the past, we use certain parameters. We study the past usually by dividing it up into time frames (prehistoric) or narrowing it down in geographical scope (Africa) or by focusing on one feature (emergence of hominids). History is generally a story about change over time (the migration out of Africa), about major ruptures (the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago) and causality (the spread of homo sapiens after the end of the last ice age) and often also about big exploits and momentous events (the development of tools to survive the icy conditions). So, history is in essence the study of change over time in the human past. chapter 1. introduction: what is world history? 15 Image 1.1 Early Hominids, Australopithecus afarensis, cast ‘Lucy’ 16    1.1 The Study of History History The study of change over time in the human past. When studying this human past, historians have developed an important tool set. One of the most important tools, already mentioned, is compartmentalizing time. We use the idea of chronology, the measurement of time, and identify logical cut-off points when these major changes or ruptures occurred and heralded a new time frame. At the end of the last ice age, a new geological epoch started, the Holocene. This is a geological term. Geologists study the planet’s surface, oceans and atmosphere and 11,700 years ago the surface of the planet changed substantially and this signaled a transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. Geological time is different from historical time. In 2000, Dutch Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen coined the term the ‘Anthropocene’, referencing the Greek word Anthropos, which means human. It suggests the emergence of a new phase in our planetary history, based on the human imprint on the surface of the Earth, which is a requirement for geological distinction. This imprint has been argued to be visible in the shape of radioactive fallout, microplastics and heavy metals. Presently, there is no agreement among scientists whether the Anthropocene has actually started.* Distinguishing historical time does not require geological proof and there are many examples of time frames and epochs in circulation; prehistory is such a time frame to describe the period between the invention of basic tools and the emergence of script. Scripts or basic writing systems were first developed around 5,000 years ago and signaled the transition to history and history writing based on written sources. Prehistory itself can be subdivided into three phases of Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age related to the acquiring of control over metallurgy. This will be further discussed in chapter two. The core feature of the past is that it is a period of time that is behind us. However, this history or the story of the past is subject of perennial change. This seems paradoxical. How can we explain this? This is where history as an academic subject starts to take shape. Not only do we use chronology as a sense making tool, but there are also other important concepts that historians use. For the purposes of this handbook, we introduce three: historicism, meta-history and historiography. Historicism** The study of the past is an exercise in interpretation. Even if we lived through the period of the past we investigate, there is subjectivity, partial view, partiality, * We will return to this issue in more detail in chapter 11. ** In the English language historicism is used interchangeably with historism denoting the same phenomenon. We have opted to use historicism as it was the original term ‘Historismus’ as developed by the German school of historical science. chapter 1. introduction: what is world history? 17 perception and perspective involved. How can we attain a fuller picture? Historicism is an approach or practice which invites the historian to engage in history writing by trying to step into the shoes of contemporaries. Each period in history has its own unique beliefs, norms and values and is best understood only in its own historical terms and contexts. These internal meanings of history need to be discovered by historians. This idea of historicism is the result of the nineteenth century Rankean Revolution, named after German researcher Leopold von Ranke, who was highly influential in the process of professionalizing history writing. Image 1.2 Leopold von Ranke His invitation was to focus on how it really was at the time and get as close as possible to that lived experience. Historians need to attempt to look through the eyes of the contemporaries, award importance to context, place and culture to write history. When engaging in this exercise a careful approach to interpretation (this is called hermeneutics) needs to take place, which requires the historian to be aware of biases and limitations. These need to be spelled out as much as possible. 18    1.2 The Study of History Historicism The study of history in its unique context, time and place. It is the task of the historian to try to get as close as possible to the lived historical experience. An example of the application of a historicist approach would be the following: The Sumerians in Mesopotamia were the first known and recorded civilization in history. Around 6000 BCE, the first cities emerged in Ancient Sumer. The Sumerians are also noted for their development of written script, the cuneiform. These written sources could only be appreciated when combined with an understanding of the Sumerian civilization. Image 1.3 Sumerian Cuneiform (ca. 2500 BCE), six-column Sumerian economic tablet mentioning various quantities of barley, flour, bread and beer. Excavated at Shuruppak, Tell Fara, Iraq An important Sumerian record and often (re)interpreted is the Gilgamesh epos (c. third millennium BCE), a mythical story of a Sumerian king, which was found on clay tablets and which displayed significant similarities to the Christian Bible written in the first century CE. Only the combination of sources allows us to claim some form of understanding of Ancient Sumer. chapter 1. Introduction: What is World History? 19  Based on a historicist approach, investigators refrain from universalist claims about history. Trying to study history by applying a present-day moral yardstick is anathema in this approach, as it fails in the exercise of understanding history as it was. The use of sources is of paramount importance to the historicist approach. We can distinguish two categories of sources, which can be used by the academic: primary and secondary. Primary sources consist of material that is directly related to the historical events which are the subject of study. These sources are contemporary to the events and produced by those directly involved or with direct knowledge or experience of the events. These sources can be of varying nature: written texts (diaries, notes), drawings and paintings, autobiographies, video or audio recording, interviews etc. This material is a direct link to the events and is as little moderated as possible. Secondary sources are sources that are moderated and not directly produced at the time or linked to the events. They usually involve interpretation. For historians, the main secondary sources are the books and articles written over the course of time about the historical events that are subject of study. These books and articles engage in a direct and indirect debate with each other and build our knowledge base through combination, refinement and (re)-interpretation. This debate is also called historiography, which will be discussed shortly. 1.3 The Study of History Primary sources Sources produced at the time of historical events, by contemporaries, unmediated by others in ex post facto interpretation. Secondary sources Sources produced after the historical events containing interpretation and assessments which are part of the debate of history. Thinking about primary and secondary sources in a concrete sense, we can look at the investigation of the emergence of hieroglyphs in Ancient Egypt around 2800 BCE. The historian is not only tasked with trying to understand the meaning of the script, but also needs to be aware and incorporate understandings of Egyptian society and culture. This has formed a large challenge because for most of the past two millennia the knowledge of the script had been lost. Only with the deciphering of the Rosetta stone in the 1820s have we been able to match meaning to context. 20   Image 1.4 Rosetta Stone Clay tablets containing hieroglyphs form the primary source, which could only be cracked by using the triple translation on the Rosetta stone, used here as a secondary source, containing identical texts in Greek, Demotic and Ancient Egyptian. Meta-History Apart from historicism, a second important instrument of interpretation is the idea that there is meaning in history. In this perspective there is the possibility of an overarching logic to the course of history. This is in contrast to the idea of randomness. In some important respects, meta-history writing is the flipside of historicism because the former seeks to make universal claims about history. The task, according to the meta-history approach, is for the historian to discover patterns and regularities over the course of time. An example of a meta-historical approach is the Christian idea of history fulfilling the will of God. With the emergence of Christendom after the birth of Christ in the year zero and the adoption of Christianity by Roman Emperor chapter 1. Introduction: What is World History? 21 Constantine in the fourth century CE, the interpretation of events as forming part of God’s will on Earth, towards redemption in the life after death, formed a powerful frame of understanding historical events throughout the European Middle Ages. Another example of meta-historical thinking is Marx’s nineteenth century theory of historical materialism, which he published in Das Kapital and which was the foundation of the political philosophy of Marxism.* The perspective he presented was that history of all hitherto existing societies is in fact the history of class struggles. The structure of capitalist society displays features that ineluctably lead to exploitation, which would be a cause for revolution. Echoes of this kind of thinking of history displaying development and an endpoint are also visible in interpretations of history as constituting progress towards ever larger degrees of liberty, freedom and democracy, as argued by Francis Fukuyama in his End of History thesis, to which we will return below.** 1.4 The Study of History Meta-History The interpretation of history according to an overarching meaning or internal logic, leading towards an ultimate end point. Similar to historicism, this approach is not without problems; it runs the risk of teleological reasoning. This means that because we think that we know the endpoint of the course of history, everything is interpreted as functioning towards that goal. Thereby other alternative and valid interpretations are overlooked. A last concept is based on historians engaging in a discussion with each other. Debate is an inherent feature of academic life and in essence a quality check. To paraphrase Dutch historian Peter Geyl, history is a debate without an end. This debate is also called historiography. Historiography History is a perennial discussion and does not possess a logical end point. We will never fully ‘know’ history. The discussion which is history focuses on all the possible interpretations of the past. Historiography is pre-occupied with the tenability of evidence, arguments, theories and interpretations of the past. These all change over the course of time: new sources become available, new questions are asked, new methods and theories are developed, new interpretations take place. In this way, history becomes this never-ending discussion. When scholars intend to make a contribution to a debate with their own historical investigation, they have to * This concept will be further elaborated in chapter 7. ** Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1991). 22 give proof of awareness of the pre-existing historiography in order to claim a place and also originality for their contribution. 1.5 The Study of History Historiography The pre-existing knowledge base including, importantly, debate about a particular historical subject. It is the existing recorded state of the understanding of history. Historiographic positioning within the field is an important exercise for historians. We see over the course of a debate, the emergence of schools of thought which bring scholars with a particular approach or interpretation together under the same label. An example of a historiographical debate is the scholarly discussion about modernity. Modernity is defined as the product of the age of Enlightenment. It is marked by scientific discovery, personal liberty, religious tolerance and the idea that reason rather than beliefs guide human behavior. 1.a Concept Definition Modernity A set of ideas focused on rationality, science, secularism, democracy and cosmopolitanism. It reflects both a time frame in which these ideas came about and gained traction, at the end of the eighteenth century, as well as an outlook on the world as either pre-modern and modern.* 1.b Concept Definition Enlightenment The Enlightenment is an intellectual and scientific movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in which scientists and philosophers aimed to establish dominance over natural phenomena. By using reason and rational deduction, increased insights could be gained into the workings of the natural world and humans living within it. The malleability of nature also resulted in policies aimed at ‘enhancing’ and ‘purifying’ the human race. One scholar who put forward an argument for an appreciation of modernity is Steven Pinker. In his 2019 book entitled Enlightenment Now he asked for the power of the * In the introduction to Part II we will elaborate further on this definition. chapter 1. introduction: what is world history? 23 Enlightenment to be recognized as the reason for the spread of ideas of rationality, science, secularism, democracy and cosmopolitanism.* 1.c Concept Definition Democracy System of government by the people for the people. Critics have pointed out that the Enlightenment has not been a uniform experience. Instead, modernity as a product of the Enlightenment can mean different things to different people, notably it facilitated the further conquest of territories, colonization and repression. The fruits of modernity have been distributed unevenly and the question needs to be posed whether these fruits have been fruits at all when they caused racism, war and genocide.** We will return to this debate at multiple occasions in the rest of this handbook, not least in the introduction to the second part of the volume. Together with historicism and meta-history narratives, historiographic discussions are importantly a product of the professionalization of history writing in the nineteenth century. After the emergence of states, as the dominant organizational form overtaking cities, civilizations and empires in the eighteenth century, the idea of the state as a nation changed the focus on history writers. The ‘Age of Revolutions’*** at the end of the eighteenth century caused the nation-state to become dominant. Commensurately, this nation-state sought a common understanding of its history. Historians started to write about their great nations that once were amazing and that had always been distinct and unique. History became a tool in the service of the nation and a form of nationalism. An important shortcoming of this approach is that it is difficult to include storylines that end up not contributing to the creation or the greatness of the nation. When nationalism contributed to the outbreak of war, the First World War being a case in point, there was a sense that nationalist histories were in need of revision. In an attempt to overcome the notion that the * Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress (New York: Penguin 2019). ** Jeremy Lent, ‘Steven Pinker’s Ideas About Progress are Fatally Flawed: These Eight Graphs Show Why’, 18 May 2018. Available at: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-05-18/steven-pinkers-ideas-about-progress-are- fatally-flawed-these-eight-graphs-show-why/ Last accessed 15 April 2022. Ian Golding, ‘The Limitations of Steven Pinker’s Optimism’, Nature, 16 February 2018. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586- 018-02148-1 Last accessed 15 April 2022. See also: Steven Pinker, ‘Enlightenment Wars, Some Reflections on ‘Enlightenment Now’ One Year Later’, Quillette, January 2019. Available at: https://quillette.com/2019/01/14/ enlightenment-wars-some-reflections-on-enlightenment-now-one-year-later/ Last accessed 15 April 2022. *** Term coined by Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962). 24 nation is the dominant factor in history, historians in the twentieth century offered broadly three new ways of ordering history. First, they study topics smaller than nation states. An example of this is microhistory which started to focus on small units such as individual events, communities, or sometimes even one individual. What makes it different from a case study is that micro history attempts to answer large questions and tries to draw conclusions that are larger than the case itself. A second approach has been to study areas that encompass more than one nation and engage in thematic history writing. Examples of this approach include social history, economic history, women’s history, gender history, cultural history, as well as local history, subaltern history, to move in more recent years to history of pets and disability history. A third option has been to study the Earth in its totality. This entailed a shift to ever larger units of investigation, rather than the focus on specificity or themes. The history of oceans, fire or the history of space started to become mature topics of investigation. Since Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter space in 1961, space exploration has captivated human imagination and has in the twenty-first century led to the idea of space tourism with the launch of the Virgin Galactic space tourism company. Another example of history writing taking the whole of the Earth as a starting point, is World History. Together with the speeding up of globalization, the question was raised whether globalization should be the entry point to study history. What is World History? World History has a long pedigree, not so much informed or triggered by globalization but rather the realization that large parts of the human experience had remained outside of the scope of professional history writing, as outlined above. World History sees as its main contribution the history writing of interconnectedness, or entanglement, of the history of the world. There are three important forms of connections that have been identified: The exchange of people, goods, and ideas. Not all of those interactions immediately happened on a global scale, but there would not be globalization today without some of those initial connections in these domains. That does not mean that it is a linear development, where the level of globalization is ever-increasing. People moving from one place to another, migration, has happened as long as people have existed and is still occurring today. When humans migrated, they came into contact with other humans. These contacts brought both advantages and disadvantages. Migration could lead to conflicts and it facilitated the spread of pathogens between different groups. However, it also broadened the gene pool creating a more resilient population and people could learn from one another. Moreover, it allowed people to exchange goods, which they could trade for other chapter 1. introduction: what is world history? 25 goods. In order to have trade, a population needed to have a consistent food surplus. Food surplus could be brought to markets, and it allowed for specialization once the entire population was no longer needed for food production. Although there are no written primary sources to corroborate this, one of the first forms of specialization was probably violence, closely followed by spiritual guidance. Religious beliefs were one of the first ideas that easily spread when people started interacting. Eventually the spread of ideas led to world religions, but ideas about racism also spread on a global scale. Ideas had consequences when they changed practices. The driving force of the spread of people, goods, and ideas were networks. Some networks were more formalized than others and organizations relied on intricate networks to function. A distinction between a network and an organization is not always clear-cut, but what they have in common is that they offer an opportunity to tell World History beyond the importance of the nation state, based on local, regional, national, transnational and international sources. 1.d Concept Definition World History The study of history from a world perspective focusing on the spread of people, goods and ideas and increased interconnectedness. To further unpack World History, we will use the three concepts introduced in the first part of this chapter – historiography, historicism and meta-history – to gain a deeper understanding of the field. The Historiography of World History There has been a long tradition of civilizational history writing with notable contributions from different parts of the world and different authors, such as Herodotus, Ssu-ma Chen, Polybius, Rashid al-Din, and Ibn Khaldoun. These studies form the core of the historiography in World History and recount the experiences of peoples in different civilizations in different parts of the world across time. Twentieth century examples of civilizational history writing are Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. Spengler, in his Untergang des Abendlandes (Decline of the West) published in 1918, predicted the decline of the West, based on a cyclical and organic interpretation of the development of human history.* Instead of looking at the development of human societies in the past from a linear or teleological perspective, a cyclical view is inspired by the life spans and seasonal changes which can be observed in nature. For example, the movements of the moon and the sun and the life cycles of flora and fauna, which all follow a cyclical pattern from birth * Oswald Spengler, Der untergang des abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der weltgeschichte (Muenchen: Taschenbuch, 1991). 26 to death and reproduction.* Civilizations rise and decline in a similar pattern. A civilization could be best characterized by a shared culture. Spengler identified nine civilizations over the course of human history, each with a life span of around 1000 years. Western civilization, Spengler predicted, would also be inevitably heading for decline, hence the title. His ideas were very popular in the 1930s. It is a general argument against the Enlightenment and liberalism, and some of his arguments were picked up by Nazism. The book was heavily criticized also because of the absence of a proper academic standard. Arnold Toynbee also subscribed to the idea of civilizational history writing. His A Study of History, published between 1934 and 1961, focused on twenty-one civilizations in human history, which all rose and fell.** The explanation he offered was that those civilizations which lasted the longest were best capable of warding off challenges by outsiders. Toynbee thus discarded Spengler’s assumption of inevitability, yet still took a cyclical as well as dialectical approach. His challenge-response theory was very popular, but similar to Spengler criticized more recently for lacking academic standards. 1.e Concept Definition Civilization A complex society bound together by common rule, sharing a common territory, identity, means of communication and religion. A second strand in the historiography of World History is big or universal history. This approach focuses on the writing of the history of the Earth, starting with the Big Bang and bringing the story all the way up till today. A proponent of this approach is, for example, David Christian. In his work he argues for an understanding of big history as an increase in complexity over the course of the Earth’s 13.7-billion- year history.*** Apart from increasing complexity on Earth, he emphasizes collective learning and control over bio-spheric resources as the main driving forces explaining the visible pattern of development. In order to tell this story, universal history writing borrows heavily from other fields of expertise, such as geology, chemistry and physics and is therefore decidedly multi-disciplinary in its approach. World History borrows and builds on these approaches. It focuses on the emergence and development of contacts and interactions between civilizations over the course of time. These civilizations interact and their encounters form the main drivers of change. The core concerns of World History are again the pre-occupation with the idea of increasing connectivity, mobility of people, goods and ideas, and exchange between people transcending borders and boundaries. * Jack Goody, The Theft of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007). ** Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). *** David Christian, Origin Story. A Big History of Everything (New York: Hachette, 2018). chapter 1. introduction: what is world history? 27  An example to illustrate the approach to connectivity is the age of colonialism. In a recent study, two scholars have identified a distinct ecological effect of colonialism.* They have taken a close look at the geological effect of the colonizers travelling across the Atlantic, who brought with them germs for smallpox, measles, flu, and typhoid. These diseases killed more than fifty million indigenous Americans, almost 90% of the total indigenous population, within a few decades after their introduction. This is also known as the ‘Great Dying’. This caused societal collapse and an end to the prevailing subsistence farming. The ecological effect was that forests re-emerged. This perspective subscribes to the idea of the Anthropocene, introduced above. The traces of human presence on the Earth’s surface became visible through the (temporary) cessation of agriculture. World History shares the same precursors, the ambition to provide grand narratives. Historians working in this tradition operate with long time frames, and both emphasize macro and micro processes, and they engage in a de-centering exercise by not putting Western experiences center stage. The main differences are that big history specifically includes other academic disciplines (chemistry, physics) as partners instead of simply borrowing from them. World History aims to investigate the connections between the process, interactions and interconnectedness at the center of enquiry. Historicism and World History The historian practicing World History cannot possibly be an expert in all the different times and places that are of relevance to tell the story of increased connections and connectivity. Therefore, the World Historian relies heavily on the work conducted by other expert historians of different specializations. The starting point is the application of scientific methods, as outlined above. What makes World History distinct is its interdisciplinarity approach, using the insights from national, and regional history writing, as well as micro, thematic, transnational and Earth- centered approaches. * Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene (New Haven: Yale University Press 2018). Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Santa Barbara Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1971). Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). William McNeill ‘How the Potato Changed World History’, Social Research Vol. 66, No. 1 (1999), pp. 67-83. 28  1.6 The Study of History Interdisciplinarity Several distinct academic disciplines are used to create a synergetic effect towards a common understanding. World Historians use these pre-existing research findings and the existing materials and do several things with them: they devise comparative research designs whereby they can compare and contrast between different places and time frames. Moreover, they use the material to discover similarities and differences, patterns and trends that are not visible when limited to one particular time frame, location or even theme. 1.7 The Study of History Comparative Research Design An approach to conducting research through comparison. This comparison can focus on different groups of people, time frames, locations, themes but also definitions, concepts and theories. When practicing World History, the historian uses primary and secondary sources. These sources are judged by the same standard applicable to every historian’s work. An example of how sources are used and combined, and to illustrate the kind of inquiry that brings together these elements, is the discovery of an image of a cockatoo. This exotic bird has been found in a thirteenth century manuscript unearthed in the Vatican library among the books belonging to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. A cockatoo is a bird found originally exclusively in Australasia. Image 1.5 Cockatoo in Manuscript Emperor Frederick II, Vatican Library chapter 1. introduction: what is world history? 29 The image dates from around 1241-1248 and is believed to be the oldest image of the bird in Europe. This in itself is an interesting find and adds to the discussion about flora and fauna present in Europe. Moreover, the image has triggered new questions about trading routes through which the Emperor managed to get hold of the bird. The specific species of yellow-crested cockatoo comes from New Guinea and the most northern part of Australia. These parts of the world, as this image proves, were part of the existing trading routes much earlier than was hitherto assumed.* World History as Meta-History What is the aim of World History writing? The focus is on telling the story of the multiplicity, but also commonality, of the human experience across time. Apart from this ambition, it is important to note that World History also subscribes to a core meta narrative. The idea that human history is a story of ever-increasing connections and connectivity to create an interconnected world is in essence a meta-history exercise. While the occasional set-back occurred, a retreat from globalization in the interbellum as well as possibly today with the rise of geo- political rivalry, the story of World History is one of the emergence of ever tighter networks spanning the globe. As part of this larger objective of highlighting connections, World History also exhibits a normative strand. It subscribes to the ideal of helping to create a ‘global citizenship’. It is founded on a normative agenda that scholarship should be geared towards creating, especially among the younger generations, an ideal of cosmopolitanism, of global citizenship. 1.f Concept Definition Global Citizenship The field of World History operates in the belief that the study of the process of ever-increasing connections can help in the formation and education of future generations of responsible and informed global citizens. This is the cosmopolitan ideal of the field. It is not the ambition of this book to tell the history of everything that happened in the world in the past two millennia. Instead, this book seeks to approach World History from an ‘area focus’. Such an approach can seem outdated, from a by-gone era of Toynbee and Spengler. They understood World History as made up of separate and distinct cultural spheres and civilizations, while neglecting the patterns of globalization which had shaped these separate cultures and states. Since the end * Heather Dalton, Jukka Salo, Pekka Niemela, and Simo Orma, ‘Frederick II of Hohenstaufen’s Australasian cockatoo: Symbol of detente between East and West and evidence of the Ayyubids’ global reach’, Parergon, Vol. 35 No. 1 (2018), pp. 35-60. 30 of the Cold War, area-specific knowledge has been deemed to be less urgent in contrast to the scholarly pursuit of universal disciplinary knowledge and a deeper understanding of the historical patterns of globalization. The approach to World History chosen for this volume is based on the understanding that the different regions of the world should not be seen as separate and essentially different from one another. This handbook seeks a more complex and comprehensive approach by trying to avoid generalizations which universal theories can produce, to understand historical patterns in different regions of the world in their locality but also in their connectivity. In this endeavor, this handbook does not argue against the existence of universal themes and global exchanges, and rejects any essentialist approach to history which suggests that there are natural and unchanging or even insurmountable differences between peoples and their cultures. Yet, universal themes and concepts, such as communication, religion, trade and identity, did not all evolve following a similar universal pattern, but rather followed local trajectories in different parts of the world and were shaped by those local conditions and developments. There are ten thematic chapters in this volume and each take a different theme as a starting point to discuss the development of these historical phenomena. The discussions respect the locality of each region, while at the same time also showing awareness of the interaction between that region and the rest of the world. The chapters will be presented more or less chronologically. That does not mean that the relationship between that area and the world is unique for that area or for that time. Similar mechanisms and processes occurred in other times and at multiple places. The argument is that developments occurred as a result of the local context as well as the interactions with the rest of the world. Hence, the history of the world has subsequently been shaped by diverging developments in these areas. Each chapter is specifically aimed at offering a window to interpret the ordering of the world. Ultimately, it aims to tell a story of experiences of change over time in the human past. Guiding Questions 1. What is history? 2. What is historicism? 3. What is meta-history? 4. What is historiography? 5. What is World History? 6. What is modernity? 7. What is a civilization? chapter 1. introduction: what is world history? 31 Guide to Further Reading The Study of History Carr, E.H., What is History? (New York: Vintage: 1961). A classic text based on a series of public lectures at Cambridge University in which the basic skills are very eloquently discussed. Gaddis, John Lewis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002). Written by one of the most notable historians of the twentieth century, this book discusses important questions about the study of history, such as its practices and status within academia. Lowenthal, David, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). What is the role of history in our contemporary lives, how does this role change and how does history shape the present? These are just some of the questions this notable book reflects on. Tosh, John, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of History (London: Routledge 2015). One of the most used handbooks to introduce students to the study of history: practical and useful. World History Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton: 1997). A classic, hotly debated and controversial text about the trajectories of the development of human society based on a structural lens. Eaton, David, World History Through Case Studies: Historical Skills in Practice (London: Bloomsbury 2020). A refreshing approach to world history via case studies and based on diverse research practices. McNeill, J.R. and William H. McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s Eye View of Human History (London: Norton 2003). An overview of the development of human webs covering the world over the course of the past millennia. McNeill, William H., ‘The Changing Shape of World History’, History and Theory, Vol. 34/2 (1995), pp. 8-26. This article introduces the reader to the historiography of the field. Tignor, Robert, et al., Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World From the Beginnings of Humankind to the Present (New York: Norton 2013). A very accessible and detailed handbook with an overview of world history till today. 32  PA R T I The Pre-Modern World (< 1800 CE)  introduction part i The Pre-Modern World (< 1800 CE) “Traveling – it gives you home in thousand strange places, then leaves you a stranger in your own land” –– Ibn Battuta (1304-1369) World History, as the introduction indicates, is often associated with the history of globalization. Whereas this description of the field is too simple, World History does concern itself with the history of increasing global interactions and international relations. As such, the traditional and Eurocentric view of the first or true phase of globalization is one where the Columbian voyages starting in 1492 CE are seen as the starting point. Yet, as the title of this introduction to Part 1 indicates, this book Image I.1 Ibn Batuta in Egypt 34 part i the pre-modern world (< 1800 ce) will take a different approach and sees the period before the Columbian Exchange as a significant period in the history of increasing global connections. In order to understand the current world, this early history of the developments of global populations needs to be addressed and analyzed, as during this long period the different world regions, which we identify being Africa; Central Asia; East Asia; Europe; the Middle East; North America; Pacific; Russia; South America; and South East Asia, shaped and molded their distinct local characteristics. This long period of almost five thousand years, stretching from antiquity, when significant long distance trade between developing civilizations was taking off and in part shaping local markets and identities, up to the rise of the Atlantic World and the dawn of what we call the ‘Modern era’, when the Americas became more closely connected to what has been called ‘the Old World’ consisting of Eurasia and Africa, is thus a key period to understand the present-day practices of individuals and states formulating and negotiating their regional distinctness in the process of international relations. Nevertheless, a five thousand year long period is certainly vast, complex and not easily summarized, certainly not on a global scale. As such this book approaches World History from a contextual and thematic angle. Using thematic as well as contextual approaches allows us to understand long-durée developments from a local perspective and as such resists generalizations which broad universal theories can produce. This book aims to narrate and analyze long-term processes, which can be identified at different times in different places on Earth, but always respecting the local unique context in which such global phenomena occurred. We have identified a certain number of key historical processes and thematic developments which have quintessentially shaped this long stretch of time. One such theme or historical development which defined the development of human societies during this period is Communication, or rather, the developments of techniques of communication such as the development of writing (ca. 3000 BCE) as well as the invention of paper (ca. 200 CE) and the cultural changes which occurred due to these innovations. Writing allowed societies to more easily store vaster amounts of information for longer periods of time, and share this information across greater distances. This boom in information-sharing sparked a global cross-pollination, which triggered a rapid cultural, economic and political development. For example, one major development during this era which is closely linked to the emergence of writing as well as the formation of distinct regional identities, was the expansion of certain world views, traditions and teachings which purported a universal message and universal truth rather than claiming authority and legitimacy based on a local source of power or tradition. This period between ca. 1000 BCE to 300 CE saw the rise of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Greek Philosophy and the monotheistic beliefs represented by Judaism. The significance of this process cannot be underestimated. Where spiritually unified communities first bonded over local rites and/or a local deity, for example a god protecting a city or a specific lake, the introduction part i the pre-modern world (< 1800 ce) 35 concept of a universal God or a universal set of life-guiding principles and rituals that could and should apply to all of humankind, allowed not only these ideas to spread more easily, but also encouraged people to help the expansion of such ideas, as it was considered both a collective quest and individual duty to enlighten all societies with the ‘truth’. The “evangelization” of the world, be it in the name of for instance Confucius or Christ, created vast spheres of cultural influence, in which distant communities could experience a sense of belonging to one another based on a shared belief system or common practice of traditions. We are of course all aware of the damage overtly zealous ‘missionaries’ caused on less willing recipients of these newly established belief systems. Several episodes of violent religious persecution or forced conversion come to mind, such as the ‘Anti-Buddhist Proclamation’ in 845 CE Tang China, the persecution of Christians in 64 CE Rome or the forced conversion of native-Americans in South America by the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors (see chapter 5). Nevertheless, it is also important to remember how the spread of only a handful of dominant belief systems created spheres of cultural homogenization that were previously unthinkable and did indeed make the world seem smaller or at least more comprehensible. The travel experiences of the globetrotter par excellence Ibn Battuta (1304-1369 CE) are a great example of this, as the North African traveler (see chapter 3 on the Silk Roads and Central Asia) found a home in almost every new and distant place he set foot, thanks to the shared customs of the Islamic faith in the ‘Dar-al-Islam’ which created a level of trust and understanding between himself and people as far apart as South- East Africa, Persia and the Indonesian archipelago. Similarly, Buddhist monasteries found along the Silk Roads served as landmarks and cultural ‘refuges’ where those who practiced the traditions accompanying the teachings of the Buddha could find rest and support (see chapter 3 on the Silk Roads). This cultural homogenization based on a religious or philosophical under- standing of the world, should also not be exaggerated. Local differences in the daily practice of religious and/or philosophical wisdoms account for some of the current regional cultural and political distinctness, such as for example the Burmese form of Buddhism (see chapter 6 on Religion) or the differences between Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholic Christianity, which were politically and theologically sealed with the ‘Great Schism’ of 1054 CE. One can also think of the Reformation of 1517 CE which set the Protestant Christians on a different trajectory of a theological as well as ritualistic expression of Christianity from the Roman Catholics, or the split between the Sunni and Shiite Muslims which originated with the dispute over succession of the Prophet Muhammad as leader of the Islamic faith, that led to regional differences in the expression and understanding of their religious beliefs. The dominance of these handful of religious/philosophical world views also created the need for more powerful and clearly drafted doctrines, as well as more 36 part i the pre-modern world (< 1800 ce) powerful spiritual brokers who acted as the teachers and/or intermediaries between the ‘common’ people and their deities or inner spiritual development. This brings us to another of the central themes in this first part of the book, namely Political Order. Chapter 4 shows how the religious authorities in Europe have always sought to find a balance between worldly leaders (Kings/Knights, etc.) and spiritual leaders (Priests/ Pope, etc.). Europe did not follow a divergent path at this stage in World History. The struggle between religious and worldly powers is a universal phenomenon. What made it intriguing is that it occurred in a relatively small geographical area. All other major political states at the time encompassed vast areas, think for instance of the Song Empire, the Umayyad Caliphate or the Malian Empire. These empires certainly did not portray an absolute cultural uniformity and were in many instances also ruled by local lords or kingdoms loyal to a larger empire, not unlike European feudal knights and their kings. Yet, the scale of these vassal states and their overlord’s empire was still significantly larger than the scale on which such processes occurred within Europe. This fierce competition for power in such a small area, and the debate, containing so many different views and voices – about who should wield power and based on what authority – profoundly shaped the thinking on political power and state formation in this area. Additionally, these ideas would have long-term global consequences as certain principles, such as the Westphalian treaty, which evolved within the local European context, would eventually become dominant throughout the world and serve as the basis for the principles of state sovereignty in the United Nations Charter. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one central theme this part of the book will address is Trade. This thematic lens is arguably the most obviously connected to the process of globalization. Indeed, Chapter 3 which deals with Trade through discussing the Silk Roads also shows how the power of commerce and with that the power of desire, the appreciation of fine craftsmanship and the quest for artistic and productive innovations often proved more powerful than political orders and the enforcement of state regulations. For example, the so-called commercial revolution in Song China (960-1279 CE) led to the creation of the famous Grand Canal, the invention of gunpowder, and even the concept of paper money in the eleventh century CE. This commercial boom in East Asia helped the trade all along the Silk Roads to blossom. This period thus also sees the rise of a wealthy and relatively independent merchant class, who used their money to celebrate their success and lavishly decorate themselves and their homesteads, as such supporting the local artistic industries, as well as used their money to buy political influence, thus upsetting the political order. This great boom of global trade, however, was severely shaken in the fourteenth century by the sudden appearance of a new bacterial infectious disease, which was to kill almost half of the entire population of the ‘Old World’. The bubonic plague or ‘Black Death’ most likely originated somewhere in Central Asia and found through introduction part i the pre-modern world (< 1800 ce) 37 the merchant caravans and ships a way to spread rapidly to the major centres of trade and power in the entire Eurasian landmass as well as North Africa. In particular the first wave of this sudden and devastating pandemic, the likes of which the modern human population has never seen before nor since, profoundly changed societal development. It triggered religious debates on the nature of suffering and salvation amongst Christian as well as Muslim scholars. In terms of political order, people looked to their rulers for guidance and protection which most could not offer, leading for example to the end of the Yuan Dynasty, which was toppled in 1368 CE in the ensuing chaos which emerged after the plague erupted in 1331 CE. In Europe lower population numbers led to higher wages which in return led people to invest in labor-saving ways to produce food and products, starting the so-called proto- industrialization. The Black Death was certainly not the only time biological exchanges proved crucial in the shaping of societies’ futures. Chapter five for instance addresses the biological nature of the Columbian Exchange, which caused the native population of the Americas to die in great numbers due to imported diseases from the ‘Old World’ to which the population in the Americas had no immunity. This rapid and massive depopulation in turn brought the Spanish and Portuguese colonists to consider importing enslaved individuals from Africa to work on the newly established plantations. As early as 1493, African enslaved were forcibly shipped from the south west African coast, near present-day Angola, to be put to work in Brazil. This mass movement of peoples from across different continents coming together in the Americas caused people to reflect on who they were and how they related to one another. The Casta paintings (see chapter 5) which were produced in much of Spanish America are a clear example of the growing tendency to identify and classify people based on superficial physical traits as essential characteristics of one’s being. This injurious Race thinking would have profound effects on the history of not only the Americas and Africa but on the whole of world history since. At the dawn of what we call the ‘modern era’, racist thinking had become an integral ideology in the thinking about ‘the other’ and would come to influence direct global encounters in the ensuing age of Industrialization, Nationalism and ‘New Imperialism’ (see part 2). 38 part i the pre-modern world (< 1800 ce)  chapter 2. Communication: The Writing Revolution anne marieke van der wal Image 2.1 San Rock Art, Cederberg Mountains, South Africa Introduction In 2018 in a cave at the southern tip of the African continent, scientists identified an object which changed our understanding of the development of human communication. Scientists discovered a 73,000-year-old stone, which had been ‘decorated’ with clear and straight lines, drawn with an ochre crayon. This object presents the first known form of intelligible communication by homo sapiens to date.* It shows us how our desire to leave a mark goes back to the earliest stages of human evolution. Moreover, it provides evidence that we can trace not only human evolution to Africa, but also the origins of human communication technologies. Indeed, in the * Christopher S. Henshilwood, Francesco D’Errico, Karen L. Van Niekerk, Laure Dayet, Alain Queffelec and Luca Pollarolo, ‘An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa’, Nature, Vol. 562 (2018) pp. 115-118. chapter 2. communication: the writing revolution 39 yellow and orange rocks of the semi-arid rocky terrain of Southern Africa, countless red pigmented symbols appear on hidden and sheltered rock walls. They preserve these ancient expressive statements, transmitting information across thousands of years about the flora and fauna, which once marked the landscape. Moreover, they bear testament to the human communities who eked out an existence at the southern tip of the African continent. Such rock art has an incredible appeal to archeologists and historians, as they are beautiful and delicate primary sources of a ‘prehistoric’ era, as well as testimony to humanity’s primordial and profound urge for meaningful communication. The study of history is intimately connected to the study of communication, as historians are first and foremost interested in the recorded past, in the history of who we are and where we came from, and how we have narrated and recorded that process. Yet in studying the history of communication there is a tendency to focus on communication as a tool, and as such give more weight to understanding its changing speed, latency and scope rather than looking at how innovation has changed the nature and culture of communication itself. Chronological overviews, provided in history textbooks, of the major breakthroughs in the history of communication usually list technological advancements in modes of writing that have increased the magnitude of this mode of transmittance, such as the invention of writing (c. 3400 BCE); the invention of the printing press (woodblock printing c. 200 CE; Gutenberg 1440 CE); the invention of the telegraph (1844) and the invention of the internet (c. 1970 CE), and these are presented as pivotal turning points in the history of human civilization. However, there is an anachronistic element in this modern obsession of historians with written forms of communication, as it hinders our understanding of previous societies and civilizations who, for the most part of human history, despite the ability to write, were predominantly oral cultures. Recent paleoanthropological and archeological research into the origins of meaningful communication in human societies has recognized how developments of visual symbolic communication (rock art) often developed in close collaboration with the development of acoustic expressions. 2.a Concept Definition Meaningful Communication The deliberate act of transferring information through a verbal (speech or writing) or non-verbal (such as drawing, movement, objects) medium. It appears that many ancient rock art sites were either located in naturally sonorous landscapes or in caves with high levels of resonance and reverberations*, suggesting * Margarita Diaz-Andreu and Tommaso Mattioli, ‘Rock Art, Music and Acoustics: A Global Overview’, in: Bruno David and Ian J. McNiven (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art (Oxford: 40 part i the pre-modern world (< 1800 ce) that the performance of acoustic sounds was equally important for early human societies to transmit information as the more tangible signs left on the rock walls. Moreover, evidence of the abundance and importance of these non-textual or non- tangible forms of communication can also be clearly seen in these ancient rock art drawings themselves. The rock painting shown in image 2.1 depicts human figures who seem to dance, and where there is dancing there is music and/or singing, an integrated and complex form of human communication. Several historians, notably Global Historians William McNeill & John R. McNeill, have argued that more collaborative acts of communication, such as singing and dancing, were fundamental for the evolution of human civilizations.* This idea was already expressed in the mid-nineteenth century by the ‘father of evolution’ himself, Charles Darwin, who speculated in his book The Descent of Man, that “We must suppose that the rhythms and cadences of oratory are derived from previously developed musical powers. We can thus understand how it is that music, dancing, song, and poetry are such very ancient arts. We may go even further than this, and […] believe that musical sounds afforded one of the bases for the development of language” (1871).** One can easily imagine how call and response singing techniques, found in many folk music across the globe, or the focus and collaboration required for keeping rhythm and time during exertive synchronized movements such as group dances, are what strengthened the bonds between kinsmen, villagers and even larger social groups. The wish to communicate and the evolution of tangible and intangible communication modes is what has shaped the progress of our species as social animals. To be able to converse and make ourselves intelligible to one another is what has helped us collaborate and cement social cohesion. Thus, in understanding the rise of human civilizations, we need to simultaneously look at the development of communication and the reasons why certain more ‘primary’, such as non-written, modes of communication continued to be used. It is after all not only the story of the past that should interest us but also how the story is told and how we came to use certain communicative ways to shape and narrate those stories that bind us. The history of Africa provides a logical starting point in this search for the meaning of modes of communication and its connection to the development of human civilizations, as the region is seen as ‘the cradle of human kind’ as well as part of what is known as the ‘fertile crescent’ where most of the earliest civilizations and written scripts developed. This chapter will look at different cultures of communication and how they have shaped the development of several key civilizations in the history of Africa, notably Ancient Egypt and the Sahelian Empire of Mali, as well as our modern understanding of these historical states. Both Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 503-528. * William McNeill and J.R. McNeill, The Human Web. A Birds Eye View of World History (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 13. ** Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and in Relation to Sex (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1872), p. 572. chapter 2. communication: the writing revolution 41 these ancient societies provide an interesting case study in which written language had evolved to a very high level, yet, oral communication remained central in the day-to-day activities of these societies, not unlike our modern societies today. The main argument of this chapter is that the oral recounting of history forms a long standing pattern in human societies and forms an important entry point in the understanding of human connections and the human relationship to history. Historiography Storytellers, Oral Literature & the Revolution of Writing Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of transmitting complex information. Stories to make sense of the natural world, to transmit experiences and skills, and stories about social groups and their ancestry. These oral traditions about our ancestral heritage are the earliest forms of history, the practice of narrating past events and providing meaning and significance for those people and events that came before. 2.1 The Study of History Oral History The study of history through orally transmitted sources. Historians distinguish between sources which are part of an oral tradition and the field of Oral Literature, such as epic poetry or folklore, and oral sources which recount only a one generational/individual memory of certain historical events. Such life stories and interviews are recorded after the historical events have occurred, and as such provide a testimony of both the past and the present. At the same time, they offer historians evidence of otherwise undocumented events or perspectives. Early ‘historians’ were thus master storytellers. They were charged with preserving the living and distant memories of a people. At the same time, such stories about the past were used to justify certain societal structures and values. What binds us as a group? What are the cultural norms which we adhere to? What justifies the authority of those in power? As these genesis traditions, normative narratives or stories about royal lineages were both lengthy and important and memory strategies were used to make sure the storytellers could remember crucial information and faithfully transmit this. Such strategies were mostly stylistic adaptations, such as formulaic composition, alliteration and ring composition.* As such, these ancient stories about the past became forms of literature, oral literature, in which fact and * Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (New Haven: Harvard University Press, 1960/2000). John Miles Foley, The Theory of Oral Composition. History and Methodology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). 42 part i the pre-modern world (< 1800 ce) myth became entangled. Examples of this can be found in some of the earliest known oral traditions, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh (written down c. 2100 BCE) and already mentioned in the introductory chapter; the Indian Rig Veda (c. 1500- 1200 BCE) or the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers (c. 1200 to 1194 BCE ) and the Iliad and Odyssey (fall of Troy c. 1260–1180 BCE; publication of the Epic c.800–700 BCE). The emergence of writing provided new ways to record and share information. Many linguistic historians expect that the early written languages, which emerged independently in different locations across the world, developed predominantly out of a need for counting and calculating. For example, the earliest known form of writing, the Sumerian cuneiform (see also chapter 1), seemed to have developed predominantly from accounting systems more than 5000 years ago.* Writing thus initially served the purpose of recording numbers in a very meticulous and indisputable way, which made long distance trade or tax collections, especially through third parties, easier and more reliable. These archaic scripts like cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphs (see image 2.2) were thus not immediately used for recording authoritative texts on religion or philosophy, as is often imagined, but were rather used for more mundane but nonetheless important purposes like recording ownership or values of goods.** Nevertheless, the revolution that written languages caused was the change in thinking about recording and disseminating information. This orality-literacy shift was one of the most profound cognitive revolutions in human history, as it changed the way we think and remember. In practice, it meant, among other things, that expressions of thought went from, for example being predominantly participatory, as communication was mostly uttered in the presence of other people, to becoming more internalized and ‘distanced’ with regards to time, space and community. This change caused expressions of information to become more eternalized but at the same time also disconnected from immediate feedback.*** The Greek philosopher Plato warned that writing “weakens and destroys memory”.**** And several Griots, professional storytellers and keepers of African history, have pointed out that whereas “other peoples use writing to record the past, […] this invention has killed the faculty of memory among them. They do not feel the past anymore, for writing lacks the warmth of the human voice”.***** This ‘revolution’ was, however, one of slow pace, as writing did not take over all aspects of significant communication, nor immediately erode the status and authority of the spoken word. Indeed, Plato also noted, referring to * Denise Schmandt-Besserat, How Writing Came About (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996). ** Toby Wilkinson emphasises the importance of writing for the economic management for early pharaohs, in his work The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. The History of a Civilization from 3000 BC to Cleopatra (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), p. 55. *** Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word (New York: Routledge, 1982/2005) **** Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus 274c-277a. ***** Djeli Mamoudou Kouyaté cited in: D. T. Niane and Djeli Mamoudou Kouyaté, Sundiata. An Epic of Old Mali (London: Pearson, 2006). chapter 2. communication: the writing revolution 43 Socrates words, that “he who […] believes that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person”.* Image 2.2 Proto-Hieroglyphs Herodotus, by many still considered as the ‘father of history’ in the Western tradition, used oral sources throughout his work, and prided himself on having first account oral testimonies to give his work more credibility. He was as such practicing a field of history that we today would call ‘Oral History’. Moreover, several scholars have suggested that Herodotus’s famous work The Histories (c. 430 BCE) was in fact composed as an oral performance for the purpose of public lectures, and only later written down in book form.** This shows that in the late Iron Age, written transmissions of historical information were certainly not deemed more reliable than oral communication. Similarly, Sima Qian (202 BCE – 25 CE), the Chinese ‘father of history’ equally attached tremendous value to oral sources such as proverbs, folk tales and poems which he collected during his travels throughout China and used for writing his all-encompassing history of China and masterpiece Shi Ji (Historical Records).*** In the same fashion, the North-African historian Ibn Khaldun (1332 CE –1406 CE) based much of his writing on information received through oral traditions and interviews. In his celebrated collection of books called the Kitāb al-‘ibar (Book of Lessons), Khaldun demonstrates one of the first recorded instances of historicist thinking when he argues for understanding the past as strange and different from * Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus 274c-277a. ** William A. Johnson, ‘Oral Performance and the Composition of Herodotus’ “Histories”, Journal of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3 (1994) pp. 229-254. *** Yang Li-Wen, ‘Oral History in China’, Oral History, Vol. 15, No.1 (1987), pp. 22-25. 44 part i the pre-modern world (< 1800 ce) the present. He warns historians of too eagerly believing historical narratives that are rooted in the present, stating that (oral) narratives of, for example, royal genealogies are: “For a pedigree […] something imaginary and devoid of reality. Its usefulness consists only in the resulting connection and close contact”.* At the same time, for Khaldun this source critique applied to both oral as well as written sources. He saw no difficulty in accepting oral accounts as primary sources, under the condition that the author would be committed to apply source critique in analyzing these sources. As such, written and oral accounts were considered to be equally valuable. Historism, Written Communication & the Concept of Civilization Despite the continuing importance of oral traditions, the emergence of writing has become intertwined with our modern understanding of the rise of civilizations (for definition, see chapter 1). Most textbook definitions of civilization integrate a reference to written language, and as such become normative devices through which our perception of previous oral cultures is negatively influenced. In fact, definitions of civilization are in more ways normative and problematic, as they are often presented as clear and static binary opposites such as civilized and uncivilized; cultured vs. uncultured; urban vs. rural; sedentary vs. nomadic; state vs. stateless, etc. Scholars have pointed out that many of these dichotomies, for instance the division between democratically or autocratically organized societies or the urban- rural dichotomy, are problematic as they assume, for example, that only democratic city dwellers are civilized and in effect more autocratic rural societies are not. This divisionism is not a modern phenomenon; ancient societies were similarly keen on mirroring themselves to others who they usually regarded as lesser developed. In the process, they elevated their own society to the highest level of civilization. Think of the dichotomy of Greek vs. Barbarian, or Chinese vs. the Sìyí 四夷. For early historians the focus on writing became dominant in thinking and writing about what constitutes a civilization. Writing became associated with a higher level of thinking. Early western scholars distinguished between ‘prelogical’ or magical vs. ‘logical’ cultures or civilizations, instead of distinguishing simply between predominantly oral vs. literate societies.** This negative assessment of ‘non-literate’ societies became more dominant with the professionalization of the historical discipline in the nineteenth century, and the development of methodological doctrines such as the Rankean school of Historicism (see chapter 1). Since then, the historical discipline has come to focus predominantly on the recorded (written) human past. All human history that could only be reconstructed based on non-written evidence became classified as ‘prehistoric’ and became the * Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah an Introduction to History, trans Franz Rosenthal, 3 volumes (New York: Pantheon, 1958), l 265. Cited in: Ralph A. Austen and Jan Jansen, ‘History, Oral Transmission and Structure in Ibn Khaldun’s Chronology of Mali Rulers’, History of Africa, Vol. 23 (1996), pp. 17-28, p. 17. ** Ong, Orality and Literacy, p. 29, 59. chapter 2. communication: the writing revolution 45 field of archeologists and (paleo)anthropologists. Oral sources were left out of the professional study of history for a considerable amount of time, and this meant in practice that those societies that had preserved the story of their past through oral communication were neglected and ultimately seen to be ‘people without history’*. It was this legacy, among others, that led to the devaluation of oral cultures and in particular of African History. Some western historians of the nineteenth century went so far as to dismiss the African origins of early civilizations such as Ancient Egypt. The German philosopher Hegel for example infamously wrote: “[Africa] is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit. Historical movements in it-that is in its northern part-belong to the Asiatic or European World. Carthage displayed there an important transitionary phase of civilization; but, as a Phoenician colony, it belongs to Asia. Egypt will be considered in reference to the passage of the human mind from its Eastern to its Western phase, but it does not belong to the African Spirit”.** Such obvious biased and dismissive interpretations of non-Western and non- ‘literate’ histories cast a long shadow on the field of African history, as well as on the interpretation of what it meant to be ‘civilized’. The Cultural Turn and the Rediscovery of Oral Sources In the later decades of the twentieth century, a shift occurred within the historical discipline and other fields in the Humanities that placed culture and the ordinary lives of people at the center of investigation as well as moving from a more positivist epistemology that aimed to understand and study the past in a completely neutral and objective manner, to a post-modern understanding of knowledge production and scientific enquiry. 2.2 The Study of History Epistemology The approach to knowledge and how to arrive at it, taking into account its foundations, methods, and validity. 2.b Concept Definition Culture The ideas and practices that award meaning to activities in human societies. * Eric Wolff, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). ** G.F.W. Hegel, Philosophy of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1892) p. 99. 46 part i the pre-modern world (< 1800 ce) Exemplary for this focus on culture as well as attention for discourse and meaning, is the work by communication specialists Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan. These scholars highlighted how not only was the content of the message important, but also that the chosen medium through which a message is communicated is equally part of that message and worthy of study.* Additionally, both scholars argued that the technologies used for communication changed the nature of communication and changed our cultures. Several (modern) cultures retain, what Ong calls, a ‘secondary orality residue’ as opposed to a primary orality found in non-literature societies. This persistence of oral communication is seen as more deliberate and self-conscious**, and continues to thrive as sound. In particular, the human voice presents such a powerful and experiential acuteness and connectedness that almost all literate societies still favor oral communications. Even today in our highly literate societies, we prefer hearing human voices over mere textual communication as becomes evident from the continuing success of radio, podcasts and vlogs. Emancipatory movements in the twentieth century had their effect on the historical profession, as newly independent countries in, among others, Africa sought to retell their own histories from a postcolonial perspective. The study of oral sources, which were seen as untainted and authentic African voices as opposed to the colonial narratives in the written conventional accounts of colonial archives, became more popular. Several historians as well as anthropologists paved the way for contemporary historians by developing methodologies for the use of oral traditions as well as creating collections of transcribed traditions for future researchers. The Malian historian Hampâté Bâ gave voice to the tremendous fervor that was felt by these historians during the last decades of the twentieth