There were four distinct periods of large-scale Eurasian exchanges which were both the product and the defining forces of major economic and technological breakthroughs:
1-3th centuries A.D.: exchanges between Roman Empire, Middle East, India and China under Han dynasty. These exchanges were greatly facilitated by the political unification of the Mediterranean under the Rome and China under Han dynasty.
1 Gunn (2003) is more concerned with the cultural/civilisational side of the picture, while we
11-13th centuries: This is the time of multiple Silk Ways, which we outline below. However, despite the romantic flair of the Silk Ways, maritime routes were more important in terms of volume of trade than the land routes. Arab traders served as the major force in this era of Eurasian exchange.
16-19th centuries: time of maritime trade and gradual European expansion in the Indian ocean and in the Pacific. Although Europeans led the drive, their role in absolute terms requires a qualification. According to contemporary research, the major bulk of trade exchange was still between the Asian trade partners. Also, the exchange of technologies was certainly mutual (Frank, 1998; Gunn, 2003).
Approximately since the 1970s: contemporary wave of Eurasian exchange as an instance of globalisation. Maritime transportation firmly becomes the principal means for goods exchange. Still, the major feature of the contemporary, fourth Eurasian exchange is that there are essentially new means of exchange, whose economic value may be difficult to measure directly against trade in goods, most importantly telecommunication and information exchange, but also air transportation (which greatly advanced the exchange of people and ideas). The technological advances in transportation and telecommunications helped intensify the global exchange by many–fold (the whole 17th century Asian trade could have been served by one transocean
container vessel!).
An important feature of the first, second and third exchanges is that the role of Europe was not central. In fact, the ‘Western’ civilisation firmly held the hegemony only since the very end of the eighteenth century. As it is changing now, the overall period of Western hegemony is likely to be restricted by 200 years – out of five millennia of charted history of the human race. Any attempts to retouch this (such as reclassifying Japan as part of the “West”) are doomed.
Eurasia itself is a Eurocentric denomination, albeit one invented on a distant marginal peninsula of that land mass. “Asiopa” is statistically more correct! Or, rather, “the relevant geographic and historical unit is really “Afro-Eurasia” (Frank, 1998: 2). From the point of view of the political, demographic, and economic history, as well as anthropology, it could also be called “Afrasia’. Still, we have no choice but to stick to Eurasia (just remember that under different circumstances our book might be entitled “Asiopian Integration”).
To provide a few figures for comparison, modern demographers place China’s population in 1500 at 100 million, compared with Europe’s 68 million (and Japan’s 16 million). By 1800, China’s population would rise to over 300 million (300 years of peace), vastly outstripping Europe with 173 million (Frank, 1998: 171).
The city of Hanchow in the 13th century had probably a million inhabitants
and was – until 19th century London (!) – the world’s largest city
(Abu-Lughod, 1989: 337). China was as good the central piece of the 2nd
Eurasian exchange and a central piece of the third one, as it absorbed two thirds of the world silver in exchange for its higher value-added production of silk, ceramics, tea, etc.
Below we reproduce the abridged version of the table on world population by Clark (see Table 9.1). His calculations largely coincide with other influential historians who charted the world’s demography.
Table 9.1. World Population 1200-100 (million, estimates by Clark) Source: Clark, 1 Year 1200 1500 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 World 348 427 498 516 641 731 890 Europe 51 68 83 90 106 130 173 Asia 248 231 303 311 420 484 590 China 123 100 150 100 150 207 315 Japan 12 16 18 22 26 26 26 India 75 79 100 150 200 200 190 Africa 61 85 100 100 100 100 100 Americas 23 41 15 13 13 15 25 Oceania 1 2 2 2 2 2 2
The population of China was steadily 1.5-1.7 times larger than the totality of Europe. Japan’s population is equal to those of the largest European nations, France and Great Britain. Asia makes roughly two thirds of the world population, compared to 20% or less of Europe.
The calculation of GDP would not be much different, as per capita GDP in China and Japan was equal or higher than that of the European nations well until the 19th century. E.g. in 1750 total world GNP was $155 billion (measured in
1960 US dollars), of which 77% was in Asia2.
In terms of per capita income, Europe and China (and probably India) attained comparable levels of development between 1000 and 1500. In fact, China enjoyed higher levels of per capita income, technological advance etc. in 11- 15th centuries (Pomeranz, 2000).
The standard figures by Maddison confirm this view (see Table 9.2).
Let us summarise some characteristics of the four Eurasian Exchanges in Table 9.3.
2 Braudel (1992) citing estimates by Paul Bairoch; his “Asia excludes Russia and Japan. If we
EDB Eurasian Integration Yearbook 2011 Years A.D. 1 1000 1500 1600 1700 1820 1870 1913 1950 1973 2003 Western Europe Population (thousand) 25050 25560 57332 73788 81460 133040 187504 260975 304941 358825 394604 GDP ($ million) 14433 10925 44183 65602 81213 159851 367466 902210 1396078 4096764 7857394 GDP (per capita, $) 576 427 771 889 997 1202 1960 3457 4578 11417 19912 USA Population (thousand) 680 1300 2000 1500 1000 9981 40241 97606 152271 211909 290343 GDP ($ million) 272 520 800 600 527 12548 98374 517383 1455916 3536622 8430762 GDP (per capita, $) 400 400 400 400 527 1257 2445 5301 9561 16689 29037 Latin America Population (thousand) 5600 11400 17500 8600 12050 21591 40399 80935 165938 307873 541359 GDP ($ million) 2240 4560 7288 3763 6346 14921 27311 120796 415328 1389460 3132145 GDP (per capita, $) 400 400 416 438 527 691 676 1493 2503 4513 5786 Japan Population (thousand) 3000 7500 15400 18500 27000 31000 34437 51672 83805 108707 127214 GDP ($ million) 1200 3188 7700 9620 15390 20739 25393 71653 160966 1242932 2699261 GDP (per capita, $) 400 425 500 520 570 669 737 1387 1921 11434 21218
Population (thousand) 59600 59000 103000 160000 138000 381000 358000 437140 546815 881940 1288400 GDP ($ million) 26820 26550 61800 96000 82800 228600 189740 241431 244985 739414 6187984 GDP (per capita, $) 450 450 600 600 600 600 530 552 448 838 4803 India Population (thousand) 75000 75000 110000 135000 165000 209000 253000 303700 359000 580000 1049700 GDP ($ million) 33750 33750 60500 74250 90750 111417 134882 204242 222222 494832 2267136 GDP (per capita, $) 450 450 550 550 550 533 533 673 619 853 2160
Other East Asia
Population (thousand) 11400 21100 37600 43600 50700 64228 89506 145893 333310 565057 1018844 GDP ($ million) 4845 8968 20822 24582 28440 36451 53155 122874 256938 839258 3926975 GDP (per capita, $) 425 425 554 564 561 568 594 842 771 1485 3854 West Asia Population (thousand) 19400 20000 17800 21400 20800 25147 30290 38956 59847 112918 249809 GDP ($ million) 10120 12415 10495 12637 12291 15270 22468 40588 106283 548120 1473739 GDP (per capita, $) 522 621 590 591 591 607 742 1042 1776 4854 5899
Eurasian Integration –
EDB Eurasian Integration Yearbook 2011
Years A.D. 1 1000 1500 1600 1700 1820 1870 1913 1950 1973 2003
Total Asia (excl. Japan)
Population (thousand) 165400 175100 268400 360000 374500 679375 730796 925689 1298972 2139915 3606753 GDP ($ million) 75535 81683 153617 207469 214281 391738 400245 609135 830428 2621624 13855834 GDP (per capita, $) 457 466 572 576 572 577 548 658 639 1225 3842 Africa Population (thousand) 17000 32300 46610 55320 61080 74236 90466 124697 228181 390202 853422 GDP ($ million) 8030 13835 19383 23473 25776 31266 45234 79486 203131 549993 1322087 GDP (per capita, $) 472 425 414 422 421 420 500 637 890 1410 1549 World Population (thousand) 225820 267330 438492 556148 603190 1041695 1271919 1791091 2525205 3916493 6278620 GDP ($ million) 105402 120379 248445 331562 371428 694598 1110951 2733365 5331689 16022888 40913389 GDP (per capita, $) 467 450 566 596 616 667 873 1526 2133 4091 6516 Table 9.2. Maddison) Maddison
Table 9.3.
Four Eurasian Exchanges
Eurasian exchanges Routes Which way
First, 1-3 century A.D. Sea and land Roman Empire – West Asia – India – China
Second, 11-13th A.D. Sea and land (Silk Ways) More between Arab world, South, and East Asia; Europe on the
margins of Eurasian trade
Third, 16-19th A.D. Predominantly sea Intensive interregional exchange; Europe, West Asia – India -
South-East - East Asia. Europe still uncompetitive in relative terms, compensates deficit by silver bullion.
Fourth, contemporary Sea; much less over land; air; telecommunications
Initially more from Europe to Asia; increasingly also in the opposite direction and within Eurasian land mass; significant boost as the Soviet Union broke up; huge boost with China rising as an eco- nomic superpower.
During the first exchange, the great facilitators and actors were the consolidated China under Han and the consolidated Roman Empire. The Roman Empire, for instance, was in contact with the most of Eurasia as far away as India and China. However, this nascent world system would not survive the end of the Roman Empire. According to Abu-Lughod, “… this was not a global or worldwide system…, it covered a significant proportion of the central land mass of Europe and Asia and contained most of the population that existed at that time, since the peripheral regions were only sparsely populated” (Abu-Lughod, 1989: 43).
It was a long time before the second Eurasian exchange materialized on the back China, India, and the Arab world. The maritime trade along the coast played the principal role.
Moreover, exchanges over the continental land mass became prominent at the time, visible in the history of the Silk Ways. There were three land routes of that time – Northern, Middle, and Southern ones. The Northern route across the landmass of Central Asia reached its peak as the Mongol empire settled for a relatively short timespan in the second half of the 13th
century, and the traders could enjoy – not always and, of course, at a price – a relative security on the way from Mediterranean/Europe to China. The Middle route – connecting Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean via Baghdad, Basra, and the Persian Gulf – was presumably much more significant in terms of volume of trade. It is also true for the Southern route that went through Egypt and Red Sea to the Arabian Sea and then the Indian Ocean and was controlled by the Arab traders. To sum up, Central Asian trade over land should not be overestimated! According to Chaudhuri, even at its height, “the Central Asian caravan trade was complementary to the transcontinental maritime commerce of Eurasia” (Chaudhuri, 1985: 172).
Spencer observed an interesting characteristics of both maritime and overland trade in the 12-13th centuries, which he aptly summarised in one phrase:
to the point of destination goods changed hands many times, with each trader serving just one stretch. On this way, a handful of global entrepôts based on Molucca Straits as well as in the Islamic world (notably Cairo and Baghdad, but also Samarkand) became the verified world cities with distinct specialisation as trade cities. Few individuals traveled across the entire maritime route of trade, so goods indeed traveled farther than men3!
The Second exchange came to an end in the second half of the 14th century
with the fall of the world system. Scientists clash over the causes of this phenomenon; however, the Black Death has certainly a lot to do with the disruption of trade connections and the terms of trade. For example, the population of Venice fell by three fifths. The land transportation was also ultimately disrupted by the break up of the pax mongolica.
In words of Abu-Lughod, “the unification of much of the central Eurasian land mass under the Mongols… facilitated the expansion of trade by opening up the northern route between China and the Black Sea outlet to the Mediterranean… [However,] its very success led ironically to its eventual demise… The unintended consequence of unification was the eruption of a pandemic that set back the development of a world system for some 150 years. When the system revived in the sixteenth century, it had taken on a quite different shape.” (Abu-Lughod, 1989: 171).
Indeed, the impact of the Mongol empire on the world economy and trade – once the initial extremely negative effect of destroyed economies of Central Asia, West Asia, and Russia took place – is multi-faceted. On the one hand, the absence of borders from China to Europe facilitated the evolvement of the functioning overland trade route, which made a viable alternative to the Middle and Southern routes. On the other hand, among many things, it facilitated the creation of what can be called a ‘common microbes market’. The rapid and unimpeded spread of endemics through the Mongol-dominated space clearly enabled the 14th century bubonic plague
to move so fast through the Eurasian landmass.
The history of Exchanges/globalisation is intertwined with the history of endemics. This is quite natural, essentially because exchange of diseases forms an inherent part of a “shadow” side of the overall exchange. William McNeil suggests that by the start of the Christian era ‘four divergent civilised disease pools had come into existence – China, India, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean (including Europe) – each of which contained a population of some 50-60 million people and had reached relative equilibrium with its environment, including endemic diseases. Their relative encapsulation from one another prevented the transfer from one system to the next of ‘strange’
diseases (those for which local populations had not yet built up natural immunities of cultural patterns of avoidance and treatment)” (McNeill, 1976: 93-97).
Contrary to the second exchange the third one has already drawn in both Americas and virtually all of the African continent and, thus, became a global exchange. Despite its global character, it was still very heavily centered on Eurasia. Mutual exchange of goods, people, ideas and technologies (means of production, military, medicinal, agricultural etc.) across Eurasia to a large extent shaped the modern civilisation.
The story of rhubarb is illustrative of the routes and ways of influence in the Third exchange. Chinese rhubarb entered Europe through (1) Russian caravans traveling overland in the north or (2) through to Arabia or (3) by coastal trade routes. First, European pharmacists used it as a medication. Then, planting of rhubarb was attempted in Europe and in Russia, later in America. Starting 1970 the East India Company entered trade in a big way (Gunn, 2003:74).
Despite rising volumes of world trade, it should not be overestimated either. J.C. van Leur (1955: 212) estimates Southeast Asian trade in 15-16th
centuries at 98,000 tons. The whole Asian maritime trade thus could be served by one contemporary supercargo container vessel employed over a year!