A Theoretical Introduction to 5,000 Years of World System History Andre Gunder Frank No history can be written but universal history. —Ranke During this period, history becomes, so to speak, an or- ganic whole . . . all cvents culminating in a single result... . Separate histories must be regarded as of very little use in arriving at a realistic conception of the total picture. For it is only by exposing side by side the threads that con- nect each event with the whole complex, and also by point- ing out the resemblances and differences, that it becomes possible to achieve this. —Polybius New Peoples. . . transferred the centre of civilization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. The distinction between ancient and modern history, therefore, is no mere accident, nor yet a mere matter of chronological conven- ience. What is called modern history is, in reality, the for- mation of a new cycle of culture, connecting several epochs of its development with the perishing or perished civiliza- tion of the Mediterranean states. —Mommsen Whoever is the lord of Malacca has his hands on the throat of Venice. —Tomé Pires REVIEW, XIII, 2, SPRING 1990, 155-248 135156 Andre Gunder Frank What has happened is a sensc of remarkable complexity in the interplay between the Occident and East Asia. . . . The Old World at least has long lived in a more unified realm of discourse than we have been prepared to admit. —Lynn White, Jr. Few scholarly tasks are more urgent than that of learning to see the various historical backgrounds of our common world in relation to each other. The point is that from a world-historical point of view, what is important is not European history in itself, however im- portant that be for us all, but its role in interregional his- tory. . . . The problem of reorienting ourselves to a more interregional viewpoint, then, is psychologically far- reaching, and must be solved along with that of organiz- ing the historical material. During the last three thousand years there has been one zone, possessing to some degree a common history, which has been so inclusive that its study must take a prepon- derant place in any possible world historical investiga- tion. . . . The various lands of urbanized, literate civilization in the eastern Hemisphere, in a continuous zone from the Atlantic to the Pacific, have been in commercial and com- monly in intellectual contact with each other, mediately or immediately. Not only have the bulk of mankind lived in this zone, but its influence has emanated into much of the rest of the world. [In] the following approach . . . events may be dealt with in their relation to the total constellation of historical for- ces of which they are a part—a method not limited to world history, but perhaps likely to be especially appropriate in this case. This means that we are to consider how events reflect interdependent interregional developments. . . . What is important is the recognition . . . that there has been some sort of developing pattern in which all these45,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 157 interregional developments can be studied, as they are affected by and in turn affect its elements as constituted at any one time. —Marshall G. S. Hodgson (1954, 1958) I. CONCEPTUAL INTRODUCTION 1. Thesis y thesis is that our present world system extends back Jong before ap 1500 to 2500 sc and probably earlier. I believe that we usefully can and should (re)read history this way and I intend to support this thesis in two steps. The present “Theoretical Introduc- tion” critically examines some other contemporary world-historical and macrosociological approaches to build up a prima facie case for my thesis. I hope, in a subsequent “Historical Review? to (reread and (re)write selected empirical and analytical studies of history to support my thesis with historical materials. I believe it can and should be shown that there was—and still is—a millennial systemic connection and unity of development in what has been variously called the “world island,’ “ecumene,’ and “central civ- ilization? which stretches from eastern Asia to western Europe and southern Africa. The Americas and Australasia were previously affected and later incorporated into this same one world system. I also wish to stress the importance of the oft-neglected centrality of central and inner Asia in the unfolding of this one world system history over some five millennia. 2. Relevance and Purpose This reading of history has contemporary cultural, political and theoretical or analytical relevance. Culturally, it is more humanocentric, that is, non- (anti-) Euro/Western-centric. Politically and analytically, this reading intervenes in several contemporary political and theore- tical debates: 1. Euro- and Western-centrism and its Islamo-, Sino-, Indo- centric and other alternatives; 2. Political and ideological debates about alternative political158 Andre Gunder Frank “systems? like capitalism, socialism, and none of the above; 3. Disputes about what kind of history to read and write, and how to do it; 4, Ideological and theoretical debates about the primacy of cul- tural and ideological, political and military (power), eco- nomic and technological, social structural (including gender), and physical and environmental factors and their relations in the past and present; 5. Theoretical debates about the meaning of “society; “nation,” world economy and system, mode of production; and na- tional, civilizational, comparative, and world (systems) his- tory, as well as social evolution and transformation, etc.; 6. Philosophical debates about materialism and idealism, and determinism and free will. I shall comment on some of these issues, and explicitly or implic- itly intervene below. . Euro- and Western-centrism (Eurocentrism for short) has been a problem for a long time, both in the West and, through its cultural colonialism, elsewhere. Increasingly, more objections to Eurocentrism have recently been voiced, and so have calls for its replacement. UNESCO has been active in this task, and recently alternatives to Eurocentrism have had some impact within the educational establish- ment in the United States (though mostly because the Pacific theater and Asian immigrants are increasingly more important than Euro- pean ones). Islamic revivalism on the right is directed against the influ- ence of the West, while on the left the Egyptian Samir Amin (1989) has recently published a book directed against Eurocentrism, to which I shall return. For a Westerner, it is extremely difficult to escape Western-centrism. One problem is the constant Western temptation to address— even if to give different answers to—questions previously posed by Western- ers, which in a global context are of relatively minor importance. An- other problem is the dependence on Western and Western-language sources, which gives a Western bias to the selection and interpretation of historical sources and problems. Both Western biases will be more than evident in my attempt to write a non- or at least less Euro/Western- centric history.5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 159 Il. HISTORICAL PROCEDURES 1. Procedures My procedure will be first theoretical or conceptual, and then his- torical. This paper undertakes the first theoretical step to argue that it makes sense to pursue the world system much farther back than the year aD 1500, the date at which some (I now believe mistakenly) see the birth of our modern world system. In Part III, I mostly dispute as unfounded scholarship which neglects the possibility of existence of this world system before ap 1500. To this end also, Section 3.2.2. especially, and Section 3.3.1. to a lesser extent, examine the concept of the “world system” and its historical continuity over time, its geo- graphical extension over space, and some of its constituent economic connections, political relations, and cultural diffusions. Sections 3.3.2. and 3.3.3. critically accompany writings that, de- spite their authors’ possible reservations about world system history, I find most useful as a guide. Part IV offers my provisional theoretical conclusions and conceptual proposals toward writing a historical- materialist political economy of world system history. This conclusion is complemented by a derivative paper with Barry K. Gills (Frank & Gills, 1989), tentatively entitled “The Cumulation of Accumulation” which extends and deepens our conception of the process of accum- ulation in the world system and how to study it. Subsequently, I in- tend to write one or more studies of the history of the world system, tracing it as far back as the evidence and my analysis of it permit. 2. Timing Reading and writing world system history poses some procedural problems of timing, sequencing, and periodization. It is well to pose them in this theoretical introduction, although I may postpone their practical resolution to the subsequent historical review. One problem is that of historical time and timing. “World” histo- rians, comparative civilizationists, and social scientists who confine themselves to comparing one place and time with another, or to study- ing one problem or institution like power or the state, or culture or religion, can define their historical timing to fit their chosen topics and problems. A world system history, of the world system as a whole, how-160 Andre Gunder Frank ever, requires single and scquential timing for the whole and all of its parts. This problem is illustrated by a dispute I had with Perry An- derson in an earlier book (Frank, 1978b). He rejects explicitly —and many other historians reject de facto—what he calls “chronological mo- nism,’ in which “events or institutions appear to bathe in a more or less continuous and homogencous temporality” (Anderson, 1974: 10). Therefore, in his Lineages of the Absolutist State, there is no such thing as a uniform temporal medium: for the times of the major Absolutism . . . were precisely, enormously diverse . . . no single temporality covers it. . . . [On the other hand, some] fundamental phenomena fall well within the formal compass of the “periods” treated here, as contemporaneous . . . [but although] their dates are the same, their times are sepa- rate (Anderson, 1974b: 10). In methodological opposition to this, I already wrote in the mid-1970's that: Anderson’s apparent attempt to make historiographic virtue out of empirical necessity when he argues that the historical times of events are different though their dates may be the same must be received with the greatest of care—and alarm. For however useful it may be [comparatively] to relate the same thing through different times, the essential (because it is the most necessary and the least accomplished) contribution of thc historian to his- torical understanding is successively to relate different things and places at the same time in the historical process. The very attempt to examine and relate the simultaneity of different events in the whole historical process or in the transformation of the whole system—even if for want of empirical information or theoretical adequacy it may be full of holes in its factual cov- erage of space and time—is a significant step in the right di- rection (particularly at a time in which this generation must “rewrite history” to meet its need for historical perspective and understanding of the single world historical process in the world today). ‘Throughout this book the attempt is made to examine succes- sively historical events and to analyze the processual or systemic5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 161 connection between them in different parts of the world af the same time, that is, in the same decade or year, and particularly in the same period of crisis. Implicit, if not explicit, in this ap- proach is the supposition of the existence of systemic connec- tions in a single historical process by the sixteenth century, if not earlier (Frank, 1978b: 20-22), I may briefly illustrate this reading of history with an example from this earlier book. I argued that events in India, and elsewhere in the world, directly and materially contributed to initiating the American Revolution. In general, I sought to show how the development of the world economic crisis since 1762, through successive recessions cul- minating in that of 1773, rallied support to the cause of independence. More specifically, the 1774 Quebec and Intolerable Acts and “taxation without representation” are well known. Less known or forgotten is that they were a response to the recession and the Boston Tea Party. The general economic crisis of the 1760's strengthened the hand of the East India versus the West India interests in London and promoted the East India Company's “Rape of Bengal? This in turn occasioned the Bengal Famine of 1770-72, which nearly bankrupted the East In- dia Company. Therefore, it sought redress in Parliament in London and was newly granted the American market in the Tea Act of 1773. After shipping tea to Boston with monopoly privileges that went against the interests of local merchants, these merchants had a “Tea Party” and dumped the tea into Boston Harbor. The Quebec and Intolerable Acts were the British punitive response. The April 19, 1775, Lexington and Concord “shot that was heard around the world” and the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence were the American responses in turn. Thus, India contributed materially and directly to the American Revolution through the worldwide historical process and its connec- tions in a single world system. Pursuing history in a single world system back many centuries and millennia, I will have to be similarly “monistic” in timing and inter- relating events and developments around the world. However, I may have to lengthen my “simultaneous” timing a bit to inquire into other historical connections. For instance, Beckwith challenges the common interpretation of the establishment of the Carolingian dynasty in 751 as an isolated event. Beckwith observes that in the thirteen year period162 Andre Gunder Frank between 742 and 755 there were “fundamental changes, usually sig- naled by successful political revolts, in every Eurasian empire. Most famous among them are the Carolingian, Abbasid, Uyggur Turkic, and anti‘T’ang rebellions. . . . Significantly, all seem to have been in- timately connected with central Eurasia” (1987: 192-93). Beckwith sug- gest that the simultaneous political event in “Western Europe was not coincidental,” and observes at the same time that “it occurred during an economic depression in Europe? and that “the importance of the international trade routes through central Eurasia cannot be overem- phasized” (1987: 192-93), Earlier also, was the decline of Han China and Rome related to their mutual trade (and if so how), and was their decline related as well to the subsequent development of first Persia and then India, which had benefited the most from this trade as mid- dlemen? And later, (how) were developments in Ming China and Saf- avid Persia common responses to the preceding Mongol invasions and retreats? 3. Sequencing A second procedural problem is that of finding and sequencing the historical period(s) to be studied. Selecting any particular starting date is likely to be either arbitrary or conventional (which may also be arbitrary). Or, the date selected may follow some preconceived no- tion of when what we are studying is supposed to have started (which is likely to be both conventional and arbitrary). As we will observe below, for instance, world system history is now “conventionally” started around 1500, or more “precisely” in 1492 by Frank (1978b), 1494 by Modelski (1987), and more generously about 1450 by Wallerstein (1974). But how can we “really” know when it all began? The American his- torian of China, John King Fairbank, poses this problem and offers his answer in the preface of his book ade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: [1] I think authors ought to look back and give us some record of how their works developed. [I will try to do so in due course] [2] Thad two years by the tail, and both were pulling me back to earlier times, In my observation this regression in time is typical. . . . Asa result, would-be modernists have wound up as medievalists. The rule seems to be, if you want to5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 163 study the mid-period of a century, begin at the end of it and let the problems lead you back. Never try to begin at the beginning. Historical research progresses backward, not forward. [3] The moral seems to be: as you find your unifying concepts [like mine above], follow them out; but don't let them carry you off. They probably don’t belong to you in any case. [4] [This can at best result in] a book that to its author is a mere antechamber to a whole unwritten library, bursting with problems awaiting exploration . . . (Fairbank, 1969: vii-xii). Fairbank’s second rule, to proceed backward, avoids arbitrary and conventionally mistaken beginnings. Thus, this “backward” procedure can help us find answers to the problem of timing the beginning and changing perspective of our problem. However, this procedure also poses some narrative and analytic problems of its own. Of course, Fair- bank does not say we must also narrate backward. We can work back- ward in history, first as far as the evidence and our analysis thereof permits, and then narrate it forward. Fairbank does so himself. However, this procedure may still pose some conceptual and an- alytic problems. One is that I may be accused of stretching my present conceptions back into history—not as far as they will go—but farther than the evidence fits. I may be trying to squeeze it into a procrustean historical bed. True, but not necessarily any more so than using any other historical procedure or conceptualization, including those that choose starting dates arbitrarily defined by their preconceptions. Is Ranke’s history “wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” ever possible? The other analytic problem is twofold. First, the real historical proc- ess did “eigentlich” move forward and not backward. So there are good grounds not only to tell, but also to analyze, history with the stream rather than against it—once we have pursued it far enough back to find its origin! However, if we want to analyze the process of historical cumula- tion, or even evolution or development, in a single system, then we must also follow and analyze this system-wide process progressively and cumulatively from its inception. Fairbank’s first, third, and fourth164 Andre Gunder Frank rules are reproduced here for what they are worth. I believe they are useful as guides and cautions in doing and communicating this his- torical analysis. 4. Periodization In my proposed historical review, I intend to try a compromise resolution of these procedural problems, which is based on periodi- zation. In embarking on this historical venture, I take it as provision- ally established that there has been a single modern world-system since 1500, despite the critiques of the work by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989), and the lack of them in my own above-quoted World Ac- cumulation 1492-1789. Therefore, the differences between these books and the present theoretical introduction and proposed subsequent his- torical review are the following: I now also stress and examine “sys- temic connections in a single historical process” extending back much earlier than 1500. I now examine these systemic connections in a sin- gle historical process over a much wider geographical and social range, including at least the entire Afro-Eurasian ecumene, of which Europe and its world is only a part. Thus, the historical and socio-geographical scope of this process is no longer seen as beginning and centered in Europe, which, on the contrary, joined it rather late. I will also ques- tion the supposed historical uniqueness and perhaps the social- theoretical relevance of the modern capitalist mode of production. Therefore, I now also propose to work as far afield geographically and as far backward in time, and to consider as diverse modes of produc- tion, as the evidence, its systemic interpretation, and my ability per- mit. Of course, I still regard it as essential “to analyze the processual or systemic connection between [historical events] in different parts of the world at the same time” (Frank, 1978b: 22). To do so, I may, however, wish to introduce some periodization or “stages” into my reading and writing of history. In my subsequent “Historical Review? 1 intend to (re)read the history of major periods before ap 1500. For the reasons explained above, I will start in ap 1500 and work backward from period to period. For convenience, I will di- vide history before ap 1500 into periods of 1,000 years each, and further subdivide some into periods of 500 years. I will examine each of these periods in reverse chronology, starting from ap 1500 and by implica- tion or reference from today. However, within each of these periods,5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 165 I will also read and write historical development forward. These per- iods are: the modern period since a 1500; the medieval period from AD 1500 to ap 500; the classical period from Ap 500 to 500 Bo; the period of late antiquity or ancient history from 500 ac to 1500 nc; and the periods of earlier antiquity before 1500 nc. Of course, my in- tent is not to create arbitrarily convenient divisions of historical time. Instead, I will argue that these convenient divisions roughly corres- pond to historically significant major turning points, which also merit special analysis in themselves. Where and when these dates do not co- incide, I will make the necessary amends, which correspond to the his- torical evidence. 5. Classification In the present “Theoretical Introduction? I will (re)examine other approaches and (re)read others’ renditions of history. On the concep- tual level, I will examine world-historical, macrosociological, and political-economic approaches, beginning with those most distant and moving successively closest to my own. On the temporal level, how- ever, this theoretical discussion will examine approaches, beginning mostly with those that deal with historical periods closer to our time and proceeding more or less successively to the times most distant from our own. The purpose of this introductory exercise is not simply to review some of the state of the art. The purpose is more to review omissions of, or objections to, world system history by others, and to argue why these omissions and objections are not warranted. In other words, I review the work of others to build a case for my own. By ex- amining, and where warranted, rejecting the “anti-world-system-before- 1500” arguments of others, I intend to build up a prima facie case for my thesis that our world system began thousands of years earlier. World historians in the United States and elsewhere have sought alternatives to Eurocentric history. However, most of their proposed alternatives have centered largely on the additional or comparative study of other world regions and earlier civilizations, particularly in Asia. Only a few historians, notably William McNeill and L. S. Stavrianos, have written and pleaded for a more unified world history. Even they, however, have laid less stress than I would like on analyzing interde- pendence at the same time in a single world system. I have examined numerous world-historical works with suggestive166 Andre Gunder Frank titles like A World History (McNeill, 1967), New Perspectives in World History (Engle, 1964), Perspectives on the European Past: Conversations with Historians (Cantor, 1971), History for a United World (Dance, 1971), The World to 1500: A Global History (Stavrianos, 1970), and Cross-Cultural Trade in World His- tory (Curtin, 1984). I have also examined works on historiography and historical method and the Encyclopedia of World History (Langer, 1972), the Penguin Alas of World History (1974), and the Penguin Atlas of Ancient History (McEvedy, 1967). Additionally, we may draw on many works of historical and comparative macrosociology like Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (Tilly, 1984), The Sources of Social Power: A His- tory of Power from the Beginning to 4.D. 1760 (Mann, 1986), The Political Systems of Empires (Eisenstadt, 1963), and Comparative History of Civiliza- tions in Asia (Farmer et al., 1977). 6. Trinities of History Almost none of these approach “world history” as recommended here by me, or in the classical opening epigraphs I cited in my sup- port. Curiously, several of the surveys on how history is, or can be, written, review a trinity of “three” ways to do it. More curiously, their trinities are very different from each other. For instance, Canter (1971) distinguishes “humanist historiography” (including narrative and bi- ographical history), “romantic historiography” of national histories, and “comparative history? which is again subdivided into three kinds, im- pressionistic, positivist, and model-building. Edith West recognizes in Engle “three main organizational schemes for organizing history con- tent; history can be studied by geographical regions, chronologically, or topically (1964: 595), Most curiously, none of these sets of three possible and recommended ways to do history (or not to do history) includes one world history, and least of all one like the one I recom- mend above and try to practice below, Very few historians or macro- sociologists even consider the possibility, let alone the desirability, of world systemic history, even though some of them also pursue non- or anti-Eurocentric ends. Therefore, I hope I may be forgiven if I also invoke my own trin- ities of historians and historical macrosociologists with regard to how they do, and would have others, write world systemic history. 1. The largest majority swear by the historical gods of the above- named or other trinities, and forsake world history altogether for re-5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 167 gional, sectoral, personal, or whatever other “history? 2. Many historians and macrosociologists claim to write the his- tory of the world, but without ever attempting to do world history. ‘They distinguish various civilizations or other systems, and sometimes study one problem or another, like ideology, power, economy, tech- nology, etc., through many if not all of them. Toynbee (1946), Quigley (1961), and more recently Mann (1986) are among them. 3. Some students of world history or historical macrosociology do consider something like my kind of world history and for some of the same reasons. Following precedent, I shall subdivide this third cate- gory into three subcategories as well. 3.1. Some consider world system history, but reject it outright. Two examples are Anderson (1974), who was quoted above, and Tilly (1984), to be examined below. 3.2. Others indicate some real or potential agreement in principle, and sometimes in part of their analytical practice, with world system history. Then however, they devote most of their own historical and macrosociological practice to comparative, model-building, or region- al history instead. Examples are Farmer et al. (1977), Chase-Dunn (1986), and Ekholm and Friedman (1982). Some of the authors in this second category, and also others who might fit there, also help to raise and partly to answer two important theoretical/conceptual and empirical/historical questions about world system history: (a) what do we mean by world system and how do we define, recognize, and bound it? and (b) does this system have a rec- ognizable, albeit perhaps changing, structure, in particular a hege- monical (?) core-periphery structure? Among those who think so, a minority prays at the altar of the third divine form in my trinity. 3.3. Thus, a small minority finally does some—and in a few cases very much—world system history. Some, including Marxists, Waller- stein (1974), and formerly myself (Frank, 1978b), limit their history and their conceptual definition of the world system to the period after 1500. This date already represents an advance, chronologically 300 years backward, and conceptually wider. Most Marxists, and lately also Eric Wolf (1982), focus on industrial capital(ism) and therefore define and date the capitalist world system only from 1800. Others extend the world system back further, to the thirteenth century, like Abu-Lughod (1989), and to the Islamic, Indian, and Chinese world168 Andre Gunder Frank and system of Hodgson (1974), Lombard (1975), Chaudhuri (1985), and Gernet (1985). Finally, the smallest minority, especially McNeill (1964), Stavrianos (1970), and to some extent Curtin (1984) and Wil- kinson (1987), extend their systemic purview still farther backward in history and outward in the world. However, even they shy away from pursuing it to its “logical” conclusion. 7, Historical (Preview and Central Asian (W)hole Below, I will mine and refine some of these above-mentioned and other approaches and studies as inputs into my own. I will also draw on students of interregional trade, migration, conquest, and techno- logical and cultural or religious diffusion. All can help us extend these systemic connections farther back in time and space. I will reexamine Wallerstein’s transition to capitalism around 1500. I will examine Abu- Lughod’s Thirteenth-Century System (1989), and will look at the me- dieval Islamic, Indian, and Chinese world through the perspectives of Hodgson (1974), Lombard (1975), Chaudhuri (1985), and Genet (1985). Scholars like Hirth (1885), Hudson (1931), Needham (1954-84), and Yu (1967), document the relations between imperial Rome and Han China via the Parthian empire and India, and to their outlyers in Africa, southeast Asia, and Japan. We should ask how systematic and systemic these relations were. Similarly, we should inquire into Hellenic-Indian and still earlier religious and cultural diffusion and other connections. Most of all, I will rely on McNeill (1964), Stavri- anos (1970), and Wilkinson (1987), as my most systematic and systemic predecessors and guides in the journey back through world-historical time. Even these world system historians, however, give central Asia less emphasis than I would like. I argue that we must devote much more attention and systematic analysis of systemic connections in and through central Asia. This area, its peoples and their often decisive importance for world history, is an enormous hole in most historical work, espe- cially that on ‘civilization(s)? and also on our historical world system. (1 am tempted to call this omission a central Asian black hole, except that it seems to repulse and expel rather than attract historians and others.) During several millennia, repeated waves of migrating, con- quering, but also newly socializing, “hordes” of “barbarians” emerged in all directions out of central Asia. They fundamentally changed the5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 169 lives, civilization, and relations, of the peoples of cast, central, and west Asia. They also affected the history of Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Yet these peoples and their movements are largely ignored; considered uncivilized. At most, some consideration is given to their impact elsewhere, but without considering the dynamic and cause of this “Pulse of Asia” (Huntington) itself. Least of all has this central Asian dimension been incorporated into a reading of the history of the world system itself. Lattimore (1962), Krader (1963), Stein (1974), Rossabi (1982), Beckwith (1987), Barhold (1962), and other Russian and Soviet, as well as, Chinese authors can help us. Let a hundred flowers bloom for each approach of the trinity. I certainly welcome and draw on all kinds of historical, sociological, an- thropological, ideational, religious, psychological, political-economic, technological, biographical, national, sectoral, comparative, and other studies. I also welcome contemporary worldwide, and not so wide- ranging, histories of cycles of civilizations, war, hegemony, colonialism, economic organization, ideologies, social movements, etc. All of these can advance our production and consumption of knowledge directly, and also indirectly, as raw material inputs for other flowery approaches. This study welcomes the other studies and draws on them and their various historical realities to connect them into a single historical whole as far as possible. However, I also request similar acceptance and place, if not pride of place, for the systematic study of world system history which I am trying to advance here. Therefore, I ask any possible true believers in their own methodological gods or trinities, at least to accept the equal right and merit of the one proposed here to exist as well. Ill. TRINITY OF WORLD HISTORICAL APPROACHES: ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY 1. Specialized Histories I will draw on non-world-historical and social-scientific studies when and where they are useful as raw material inputs in this study, but without further discussing them per se.170 Andre Gunder Frank 2. Histories of the World, but not World Histories It may be useful to cite and comment on some selected histories of the world, which are not world histories, in order to compare and contrast them with my own. In so doing, indeed, I also wish to argue that these authors have few or no good reasons to reject my road to our often common goal. We may start with the best known of these historians, Arnold Toynbee. Arnold. Toynbee (1946: 34-40) finds (nineteen) or twenty-one civili- zations, five still living and sixteen dead (though “most of them [were/are] related as parent or offspring to one or more of the others” (1946: 34). He rejects the following alternative “misconceptions” or “il- lusions,’ which he seems to think exhaust all alternatives, which they do not: “The egocentric illusion [of] the misconception of the unity of history—involving the assumption that there is only one river of civilization, our own” (Toynbee, 1946: 37). We should indeed reject this Euro/Western egocentric illusion, but it is Toynbee’s misconcep- tion to assume that there cannot have been, or be, a single unifying river unless it was or is that of “our” (Western, or for that matter, any other single civilizational) river. I suggest there was much of a com- mon river and unity of history. ‘Toynbee also rightly rejects “the illusion of ‘the unchanging East?” “The East” has no historical existence. Indeed, it was a Euro/Western- centric invention. Moreover, of course, the many peoples and regions of “the East” have been very different and everchanging. This fact, and reading of history, need not and should not, however, exclude these peoples and regions from participation in a common stream of history or historical systemic unity. Thirdly, Toynbee rightly rejects “the illusion of progress as some- thing which proceeds in a straight line” (1946: 38). Leaving the criteri- on of progress or not aside for the moment, it can certainly have had its historical ups and downs in any and all parts of the system and maybe in the whole system itself, while still maintaining and perhaps (as in natural selection) even furthering systemic unity and continuity. Finally, Toynbee rejects the “very different concept of the unity of history” (1946: 37), which regards it as the diffusion of Egyptaic civ- ilization over thousands of years. The rejection of this fourth concept of unity, like that of the Eurocentric first one, also does not require5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 171 the rejection of the unity of history or of a single historical world sys- tem itself. Therefore, Toynbee’s rejection of both historical unity and histor- ical continuity is unnecessary on all five counts, his own four rejections and his own alternative reading. Carroll Quigley (1961) devotes more attention than Toynbee to the interrelations and mutual influences among civilizations and the rise and declines of each through their seven stages of mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion. Nonetheless, he still recognizes sixteen separate civilizations, which resemble, but also differ from, those of Toynbee. Thus, Quigley also writes a history of the world without attempting to write world history. Michael Mann (1986: 1-2) sums up his approach in two statements. Both could offer justification and basis for my world system historical approach. However, in Mann's hands they do the opposite: Societies are not unitary. They are not social systems (closed or open); they are not totalities. We can never find a single bounded society in geographical or social space. Because there is no system, no totality, there cannot be “sub-systems,” “dimen- sions” or “levels” of such a totality. Because there is no whole, social relations cannot be reduced “ultimately” “in the last in- stance” to some systemic property of it—like the “mode of ma- terial production? or the “cultural” or “normative system? or the “form of military organization.” Because there is no bounded totality, it is not helpful to divide social change or conflict into “endogenous” and “exogenous” varieties. Because there is no so- cial system, there is no “evolutionary” process within it... . There is no one master concept or basic unit of “society”. . . . would abolish the concept of “society” altogether. The second statement flows from the first. Conceiving of so- cieties as multiple overlapping and intersecting power networks gives us the best available entry into the issue of what is ulti- mately “primary” or “determining” in societies. . . . [There are] four sources of social power: ideological, economic, military, and political (IEMP) relationships (1986: 1-2).172 Andre Gunder Frank I can only agree with Mann’s proposal to abolish the concept of society and with his rejection of the search for a single, ultimately de- terminant, property thereof. For most of Mann's rejection of the prem- ises of orthodox history and social science, right and left, also eliminates many underbrush obstacles on the way to the world system history I propose. However, I have some reservations about his prima facie rejection of all totality and systemic property, as well as to his preoc- cupation with power alone. In particular, I cannot be satisfied with his inquiry only into “the sources of social power” at different times and places, without a systematic attempt to investigate possible con- nections between here and there, and to trace possible continuities be- tween then and now. Moreover, as per Section 3.2.2. below as well as Gills and Frank (1989), I suggest that Mann’s focus on power itself devotes insufficient attention to the use, if not the motive, of power for ulterior economic ends. 3. World System History Considered and (@) Rejected, (2) Neglected and Conceptualized, (3) Pursued 3.1. Wort System History ReecTe> An example of the consideration and outright rejection of world system history is Perry Anderson (1974), as cited above. Charles Tilly (1984: 19, 62, and passim) inveighs against some of the same premises as Mann, which Tilly calls the “pernicious postulates of twentieth-century social thought” The first four, and most impor- tant, of these are (1) that “society” is a thing apart and that the world is divided into “societies”; (2) that social behavior results from indi- vidual mental events; (3) that social change is a coherent general phe- nomenon, explicable en bloc; and (4) that social change is a succession of standard stages, each more advanced than the one before. I, and I presume Mann, agree. Elimination of these postulates can also pave the way toward a world system history. Moreover, Tilly asks “how can we improve our understanding of the large-scale structures and processes that were transforming the world . 2” Tilly answers by arguing that “the most pressing theoretical prob- lems are to connect local events to international structures of power and to improve existing models of these international structures” He considers doing so at the world-historical, the world-systemic, the macro-5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 173, historical, and the microhistorical levels. “If the world forms but a sin- gle coherent network, the first two levels collapse into one. . How many levels exist and what units define them are partly empirical ques- tions” But “if any connection counts, we will most likely discover that with trivial exceptions the world has always formed a single system? Tilly rightly rejects counting any connection; but he jumps to the un- founded conclusion that therefore “only in the last few hundred years, by the criterion of rapid, visible, and significant influences, could some- one plausibly argue for all the world as a single system. . . . [This] im- plies that human history has seen many world systems, often simultaneously dominating different parts of the globe” Therefore, Tilly argues that we must study many “big structures, large processes, huge comparisons” (1984: 19, 62, and passim). Yet Tilly’s own objectives and alternative criteria to the pernicious postulates also permit alternative plausible arguments, which have been made by some others and that are closer to my own below. To begin with, there could have been a multi-centered and yet single system. (Tilly does not accept this ar- gument. On the contrary, in private correspondence of July 30, 1989, he suggests that we would have to adopt precise numerical criteria of degrees of influence to measure significance, which in turn I reject as deleterious.) 3.2.1. Connections Recognized but Neglected Edward Parmer (1985) recognizes world-historical connections and interactions, which may be systemic; but he rejects their study in favor of historical comparisons instead. Farmer represents the longstanding teaching program on world history at the University of Minnesota. In an article in The History Teacher, entitled “Civilization as a Unit of World History: Eurasia and Europe's Place in It? he writes: My starting point is the proposition that European history needs to be placed in some kind of global context if we are to be able to think clearly about the history of the non-Western or non- European world . . . [and meet] the need to counter Europo- centrism. . . . The way to put European history in its place is to consider it from the perspective of Eurasian history as a whole. .... [For] a balanced view of the whole human com- munity, the answer I propose, at least for the period before 1500,174 Andre Gunder Frank is to employ a comparative perspective. . . . World history [before 1500], according to this definition, includes the history of the Eurasian land mass and [comparing] its four major civilizations developing in parallel. . . . In addition to comparing civilizations we can also talk about their inéeraction . . . [through] religions . .. trade and warfare (345-54; emphases in original). Elsewhere, Farmer et al. (1977) recognize interaction and reject it even more explicitly. Early modern empires were founded in all cases by military conquest, . . . South Asia, the Indian subcontinent, has through- out its history interacted with West Asia and Central Asia along overland communication routes. India has also played a role as an intermediary in maritime trade between Southeast Asia and areas to the west, and South Asian values have made a profound impact [elsewhere]. [Nonetheless] first of all, we are not primarily concerned with seeking the origins of civilized society. . . . Second, interaction among civilizations is not the focus. Contact between one part of Eurasia and another, the influence of one culture on another, is a constant and substantial portion of our picture, but it is not the interaction itself that is of primary interest, but the effects of interaction on the civilizations involved. .. . [Instead, ] the comparative perspective is useful in studying Asian civilizations for two principal reasons. First of all, by treating the history of civilizations comparatively, one underscores the differences among them and hence their separateness in a way that dispels the notion of Asian unity. Second, comparison stim- ulates awareness of contrasts. Because there is no single Asian civilization, it follows there can be no uniform history of Asia . . . [but] five culture zones, three of which [West Asia, South Asia, and East Asia] are clearly identified with civilizations . . . which historically interacted . . . with Southeast Asia and Central Asia. . . . [The latter mer- its less study because it] was generally inhospitable to the de- velopment of civilization, although in some parts of this region5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 175 oasis cities flourished as local variants or blends of major civ- ilizations (1977: Preface and Introduction, passim). Ofcourse, I agree about countering Eurocentrism and putting Eu- ropean history in its proper place. But why do so only through making comparisons, rather than also by studying interactions (which if they are systematic enough may be systemic)? For a balanced view of the whole human community, and of Europe within it, we also need a history of the whole historical system and the interactions and com- parisons within it. Moreover, the comparison of contrasts within a sys- tem of interaction is more revealing than studying differences without connections, let alone unity. Yet, although Farmer notes some inter- actions, he insists on teaching only comparisons. For instance, he writes: ‘The early modern empires appeared in the wake of the Mongol world empire. In some respects the early modern empires had the character of rallies by civilizations seeking reintegration af- ter the Central Asian intrusion. In some cases they were con- quest empires built by Central Asians following the Mongol model. In all cases the influence of the Mongol experience can be clearly discerned. Among the features of these regimes are the following elements: conquest of the contiguous land area; a strong ruler with highly centralized authority; a tax system designed to exploit an agricultural resource base; reliance by central authority on a military machine built around horse- mounted cavalry; ideological ties to the indigenous religious system; and efforts to stabilize the social order by legislating class statuses. Examples of early modern empires are: in West Asia the Ot- tomans (1453-1918) based in Anatolia, and the Safavids (1501-1722) in Iran; in South Asia the Moghuls (1526-1739); in East Asia the Ming (1369-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) Dy- nasties in China, and the Tokugawa state (1600-1868) in Japan; and in Eastern Europe and Central Asia the Russian Empire (1480-1917) (Farmer, 1985: 357-58). Of course, the comparative method is important for displaying com- mon features, such as those Farmer discerns above, However, to under- stand why these common features appear at particular times, we need176 Andre Gunder Frank also to study the common problems, experience, interactions, and back- ground. In Asian history in particular, moreover, we need to study the possible centrality of central Asia, which much comparative study lets fall into an empty hole between the several “civilizational” stools. The comparison between the above-mentioned Safavid empire in Iran and the Ming empire in China was primary in a Farmer seminar I attended at the University of Minnesota (when I was teaching world history there last spring). All my attempts to make connections, as well as comparisons, between the analogous reactions in different parts of the erstwhile Mongol empire of Genghis Khan to their immediately prior common experience were rejected by Farmer, his colleagues, and their students. They all agreed that mine was not the right way to study world history. It is hard for me to understand the resistance to my mod- est proposal of arguing for connections in addition to, but not instead of, their comparisons. My amazement has only increased since finding that Polybius had insisted on the same thing a bit earlier, as cited in my opening epigraph: study “the threads that connect each event with the whole complex, and also by pointing out the resemblances and differences”! Christopher Chase-Dunn (1986, 1989) devotes considerable explicit at- tention to extending world system theory historically backward before 1500 and also to prehistory. I shall return below to his theoretical prop- osition of criteria for the definition and bounding of a world system. Chase-Dunn also devotes much analytical and empirical attention to interconnections, especially commercial ones. On many occasions, he points to wide-ranging interregional interconnections in his work on world systems, core-periphery hierarchies, semiperipheries, and modes of production. Yet, rather than systematically pursuing such systemic interconnections in a single evolving world system, Chase-Dunn still prefers to emphasize comparisons among different world systems, hier- archical organizations, and modes of production. Chase-Dunn, however, advances my cause not only by his admis- sion of pre-1500 and prehistorical interconnections and world system/s, but also by explicitly rejecting modes of production as the primary, predominant, and determinant standard or criterion of system defini- tion and bounding. I welcome this challenge to the mode of produc- tion, which is dominant de jure in Marxist and de facto in many non-Marxist studies. I have long claimed that this preoccupation with5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 177 modes of production in general, and in particular with the capitalist (plus historically the feudal and ideologically the socialist!) modes of production, is an obstacle to systematic thinking about systemic inter- connections. Exclusive or predominant attention to the mode of pro- duction necessarily blinds us to the wider systemic connections and historical antecedents and development of the modern world system. ‘The same preoccupation with modes of production probably also gen- erates unrealistic hopes about the socialist future of our world system. Indeed, this may be the functional, if not causative, political ideolog- ical raison detre of insisting on mode of production as the key (to so- cialism?). I also vote for abandoning primary reliance on the mode of pro- duction as the determinant criterion of historical development. I vote for replacing the focus on mode of production with a focus on the modes of accumulation in the world system. Of course, this also means that we must abandon the definition of one in terms of the other. On the other hand, my wife Marta Fuentes argues that we should not entirely abandon the study of modes of production, insofar as they may help shape the gender structure of society. This proposition sounds intui- tively persuasive and merits further study. However, this means using the idea of modes of production for something very different, and prob- ably more useful, from the debate between Marxist collectivists and bourgeois free marketers. Moreover, perhaps feminists can consider “mode of accumulation” to include patriarchal reproduction. Chase-Dunn shares my reservations about the thesis that there already is a socialist mode of production in a separate world system. We both see the existing socialist countries as part and parcel of the same world capitalist system (Chase-Dunn, 1982; Frank, 1980). He also shares some of my skepticism about the future, although he looks forward to a single world state as an arbiter to avoid future world wars. Despite Chase-Dunn's help, I nonetheless find him to be still excessively reticent to pursue the analysis of the single world system backward through history as far as it will take us. Exkholm and Friedman (1982) do take our world system farther afield and farther back in history. Moreover, they also reject the blinders that the production restriction imposes on seeing, reading, and writing about the systemic continuity of the world system. Yet their long historical and world systemic perspectives in theory are contradicted by their178 Andre Gunder Frank continued insistence on referring to world systems, which they com- pare over time and space between the here and now and the then and there of Rome, China, Egypt, Sumer, etc. Their continued insistence on only comparative analyses of, for instance, the role of the semi- periphery in the system, and their virtual exclusion of tracing the con- tinuity of the whole system is all the more strange, since Kajsa Ekholm has herself written that an international production system with all its concomitant di- vision of labor has been a constant in the world economy, more general than modern capitalism. . . . The decisive importance of trade in economic growth is related to the fact that expan- sion of production has always been primarily based on export production, that growing accumulation has depended on increas- ing export, with or without local production as its base. . . . The importance of external trade and markets for economic development is easy to document by simply enumerating the great number of wars that have been fought in order to main- tain and expand control over such “resources.” In fact, loss of such control has invariably resulted in economic regression. Europe's expansion around Africa into the Indian Ocean led toa clear decline in the Middle East which had previously been strategically located in terms of world markets. . . . It is this reductionist error [of Marxist insistence on local “inter- nal” production and class struggle] that is the basis for the mis- conception that capitalism developed in Europe via an internal process. . . . Thus the development of capitalism in Europe is not the result of an evolution from feudalism as a system, but the result of a shift in a single system within which the shift is itself an aspect of the local transformation in Europe. In effect, the capitalist evolution of Western Europe represents a contin- uation and further development of processes already in existence in the Middle East. At the same time, the Middle East expe- riences economic decline, political fragmentation and a tendency to a kind of feudalism reminiscent of Europe in the earlier pe- riod. . . . In fact, every peripheral sector is a potential center in the next period, and centers are usually transformed peripheries from a previous pe- riod (1980: 157-61; emphases in the original).5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 179 This is the direction in which I propose to go, following not only Ekholm but also Polybius before her! However, if we begin our his- torical journey backward through time from 1500, we will soon find more than the Mediterranean and Middle East (which is a Eurocen- tric term for west Asia), In the immediately preceding centuries, Gen- ghis Kahn and his successors up to Tamerlane were active in the whole Asian expanse from China to Europe. Moreover, in the preceding cen- turies also, China flourished more than any other part of the world and was its center, if any, according to McNeill (1983). I shall return to this subject in the historical review below. Here already however, it raises questions about the geographical and social extent of the world system, about its hegemonic centers if any, about their rise and de- cline, and about possible shifts of hegemonic centers from one place to another. 3.2.2. World System Connections Conceptualized The didactic advantages of retaining some of the development (pro- gression?) of my conceptualization of world system history through three drafts of the present paper I hope will outweigh the stylistic costs of taking the reader through some of this conceptualization more than once. Later drafts were influenced by critiques of, and conversations about, previous drafts with people named in my acknowledgments and particularly with Barry Gills, as represented in Frank and Gills (1989). World System Criteria and Boundaries. Before discussing the conceptual definitions cited below for this purpose, in my first draft I hazarded the following preliminary proposition: ‘Tentative brief definitional criteria of what (1) system, (2) con- tinuity, and (3) systemic continuity might be: (1) the criterion of the range and participation in a/the world system is that it made/makes (local) historical (including present) events differ- ent from what they would have been in isolation from/outside that system; looking at it the other way around, historical events and experience could not have been the same in isolation from. the system, or if the system had not existed; (2) the criterion of continuity is that the past has significantly affected the histor- ical present and future, and the historical present would have been different if the past had been different; (3) systemic continuity means that these criteria operate[d] (are [were] met) over the180 Andre Gunder Frank world system as a whole, so that the (apparent) discontinuity (birth/death life cycles) in/of a (regional or social) part does not negate the historical continuity at the (whole) systemic level; indeed, social transformations of the parts appear to have been an essential constituent element of the systemic existence and historical continuity of the whole. I wish to state right here, however, that I am conscious that this “whole” is also relative. In particular, even the pieces of its history have been written almost exclusively by men about men, who constitute(d) at most half of the whole (population). ‘The “hidden history” of women’s participation —and therefore of the entire relations between men and women—in this whole history (and not just over 300 years as in Sheila Rowbotham’s book of that title) largely remains to be written. And I have no hope of even beginning to work on shis task here, other than to express my awareness that it is at least half of the task. Few women, let alone men, have yet devoted themselves to this half of the task; and those who have, like Gimbutas (1980, 1982) and Eisler (1987), only pursue part of the history of the world system. So let us return to the other half. (Two readers—both women—have ob- jected to this paragraph. One said it is a selfserving attempt to absolve myself from responsibility for undertaking—do it, or shut up about— this whole task. The other, my wife Marta Fuentes, said that women probably really did not have much role in “my” kind of history. I ap- preciate and respect both comments, but I also disagree with both. Asking the right question may not be as much as half the right answer, but it can Aelp—even me—find it; and I do think that both women per se and the patriarchal structure of society, and process of reproduc- tion, did play a major role in all of our history as well as in my view of it.) Tilly (1984) poses the question of how to define and bound the sys- tem after rightly rejecting “society” as an answer. On the one hand, he says if any connection counts, the answer and the “system” is trivial. On the other hand, if we use criteria taken from nineteenth-century, let alone contemporary, reality, we could find no system before that. Somewhere between those extremes lie all useful accounts of human connectedness. A sensible rule of thumb for connected- ness might be that the actions of powerholders in one region5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 181 of a network rapidly (say within a year) and visibly (say in changes actually reported by nearby observers) affect the wel- fare of at least a significant minority (say a tenth) of the pop- ulation in another region of the network. Such a criterion indubitably makes our own world a single system (Tilly, 1984: 62). But Tilly begs several questions with his “rule of thumb? and maybe we need more dexterity. First of all, he transfers part of the problem to defining and bounding his different regions. Why then should sig- nificant effects between here and there be limited to one year? How can we demand local observer reports? Many people, even now, do not know what hit them here from there. Even if past people did re- port what hit them here, their reports may long since have been de- stroyed or lost. Yet indirect and inferential evidence may still be available. Why should we discount that? The effects themselves may also be in- direct. For instance, direct effects may affect very few, but these in turn can affect the welfare of many. Also, why include only the actions of powerholders and not of others in the system? In short, we need more— or is it less?—than Tilly’s “rule of thumb” to seek and find the world system. Chase-Dunn also tries his hand: I shall contend that any regularized and repetitive exchange of material goods which substantially affects the welfare of a population or the maintenance of a power structure constitutes part of a single world-system network (1986: 102). This sounds better to me, because it is more flexible. However, it still begs questions of what substantial, welfare, power structure, and population are. Moreover, what is the time-frame of regularized and repetitive? Also, why only exchange of material goods? Furthermore, Chase-Dunn continually refers to “societies” as though he and we knew or could know what they are. Jane Schneider (1977) addresses another problem of bounding under the title “Was There a Pre-Capitalist World System?” One reason she answers affirmatively is that she challenges and rejects the bounding criterion of trade in essentials and luxuries. Wallerstein and others ex- clude trade in luxuries, and therefore the regions from which luxuries182 Andre Guader Frank are imported, from the division of labor and the world system. Source regions of luxury trade are thereby relegated neither to the core nor to the periphery of the system, but to the outside of the system. Schneider “suggest[s] that this dichotomy is a false one which obscures the systemic properties of luxury trade” (1977: 21) and the systemic connection of regions, peoples, and their producers who are falsely excluded from the world system. Moreover, Schneider also relates trade in luxuries to trade in precious metals and both to the predatory use of force. Since antiquity, expanding empires have acquired precious met- als and other highly valued luxuries, not only by plunder and piracy, but by exporting finished goods, above all cloth. . . . It is possible to hypothesize a pre-capitalist world system, in which core-areas accumulated precious metals while exporting man- ufactures, whereas peripheral areas gave up these metal (and often slaves) against an inflow of finished goods. .. . Because the tribute system was maintained through the distribution of luxuries, these goods were also “essential”. . . . It is necessary to view luxury trade not merely as a stimulus to production, or an adjunct to stratification, but also as a series of long dis- tance exchanges of relevance to the capture of energy (1977: 24-25). Chase-Dunn (1986) agrees in principle, as do I, but I would go even further. The “highly valued luxuries” were part and parcel of the exercise of power and the store of value. The “adjunct to stratification” also was an “adjunct” to exploitation, and the “capture of energy” in- cluded economic surplus. Empirical confirmation is to be found, for instance, in Lombard’s analysis of medieval Afro-Eurasian-wide trade in precious metals and luxuries in exchange and division of labor (or production) for (other) “necessities” However, it may be argued that luxury trade was also vital in classical and ancient times. The forth- coming historical review will analyze the important role of the silk (and other luxury) trade between Ming China and Imperial Rome via inter- mediaries in Parthian Persia and India. Moreover, this trade may have contributed to the decline of the former and the development of the latter. Luxury trade was also important for the entire Fertile Crescent region and its outlyers in the earlier Axial Age.5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 183 Indeed, it may be argued that for this earlier history, even Schneider does not value luxury trade enough! Luxury (not to mention precious metals) trade may have been even more significant than she suggests (and more important than staples trade?) for the following reasons: Not only was luxury consumption part of the ideological and social cement holding up the hierarchical structure of society and its pro- duction of social surplus, but long-distance luxury trade also tied the luxury consuming elites to each other—and therefore to the hierarch- ical structure of surplus production and of exploitation here and there. Thus, luxury trade may be said to have been an integral, instead of only a marginal or inessential, part of economic, social, political, and ideological organization everywhere. Therefore, “luxury” trade is also a very significant element of the world system as a whole. Another approach to defining, if not bounding, the world system is to appeal to general systems theory in general, and/or to analyses by Prigogine and others (Prigogine & Sanglien, 1988), in particular of the emergence of order out of chaos. Wilkinson (1987: 33), to whom I shall return below, is also intent on defining connections and unity, albeit of what he calls “Central Civ- ilization” rather than of a world system. For present purposes, how- ever, he stresses that “fighting is bonding” and “conflict, hostility, and even warfare, when durable (habitual, protracted, or inescapable), are forms of association” (Wilkinson, 1987: 33). I agree. However, Wilkinson implies that not only material exchange, or even an international (sic!) division of labor, but also various political relations are systemic. This places Wilkinson in good company. Thirty years ago, I wrote an essay on “Dyad, Triad, Cohesion, and Social Science Theory: Or Toward Conflict Resolution among Theories of Social Conflict” (Frank, 1959). I examined eight theories or approaches, to wit: (1) Simmel’s sociology of the dyad and triad; (2) Gluckman’s thesis about cross-linkage; (3) the balance of power approach; (4) Galbraith’s propositions about countervailing power; (5) the theory of games; (6) the economist’s market analysis; (7) oligopoly theory; and (8) some aspects of Marxian theory. All of these, whether dealing with conflict or cohesion, and no doubt others, refer to what I called “struc- tured interaction . . . [which] is cohesive for the system which the units constitute. It’s just that the system is transformed” by some of this inter- action (1959: emphasis in original).tee Andre Gunder Frank Moreover, we may recall Mann's four sources of social power— ideological, economic, military, and political (IEMP)—all of which are relational. But so are the repeated, if not continual, migrations, in- vasions, conquests, and assimilations of populations around the world over the millennia. All of these have a place in the interactions that make up our world system, in the present and in the past. My initial proposition about system extension and continuity still seems relevant for my inquiry. How far afield and how far back shall I go? That is the question. Other than the ubiquitous but invisible society, the most popular large social systems are and were (cultural?) civilizations, political em- pires or other state systems, and world economies or world economic systems. Often, the three overlap in fact or are so viewed by their stu- dents. Before 1500, civilizations were not thought to be (or even be- come) worldwide in scope, although the cultural influences of the major religions spread extensively. Systemic contacts among the various em- pires may, however, have covered much of the world, as did population migrations and some military conquests. What about economic rela- tions? And how interactive, regularized, repetitive, and welfare-affecting need they have been to be termed systemic? Or, how related were they to ideological, political, military, migratory, and other relations? Thus on second thought, I would use the criteria reviewed above only to extend, but not to replace, my first-draft criteria for world sys- tem bounding. My emphasis would still be on “significant” difference or change, where one structure and/or process there affects another here, and some continuity between then and now. Of course, these changes and continuity can be transmitted system-wide through all sorts of economic, political, social, cultural, and physical or migratory relations. 3.3. Wortp System Tuzortes anp Hisrortes We finally arrive at several points of transition. One transition is from the above primarily theoretical/conceptual considerations to (their application to) the study of history before 1500. Another is the sup- posed “transition to capitalism” around 1500. A third transition (back- ward chronologically but I hope forward conceptually) is from a world system centered in Europe, to a world system which is centered else- where or not at all. The connection between the two last-named tran-5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 185 sitions, of course, is that capitalism and its capitalist world system supposedly arose through an indigenous transition from feudalism in Europe between 1500 and 1800, according to all Weberian, Marxist, world system, and other orthodoxies. The connection between these two transitions is also related to the supposed primacy and uniqueness of capitalist production, considered distinct from previous feudal or other tributary, and future socialist, modes of production. I, of course, now challenge the verity and utility of all these connected theses. As to transitions, I may usefully recall that while we were waiting for, and debating about, the transition to socialism in Chile between 1970 and 1973, it became increasingly clear that a transition is a transition between a transition and a transition. 3.3.1. Neo-Marxists and World-Systems Schools Marx and Marxists read history as a succession, and sometimes com- bination, of “modes of production.” The now discredited Stalinist read- ing of history makes it a necessary and progressive succession of modes of production from the “Asiatic” and slave modes to feudal, capitalist, socialist, and communist modes of production. Some(times) Marxists read this succession into world history, some(times) into regional or national history, but with little historical accuracy. Less dogmatic and more catholic Marxists find varieties and combinations of these and other modes of production and the transitions among them. However, the central focus remains the production in world or smaller societies and not the world systemic unity or historical continuity. On the con- trary, this fixation with supposed modes of production prevents these Marxists from looking for, or even seeing, systemic unity and continuity. Thus, if capitalism is industrial, and industry was not prevalent (which is itself a doubtful proposition) before 1800, neither capitalism (that is the capitalist production), nor systemic continuity could have existed before 1800. Thus, in his self-designated Marxist book, Europe and the People without History, Exic Wolf (1982) takes a giant theoretical step backward by dating the beginning of this world capitalist system in 1800 for the above reason. This represents a step backward for Wolf, because he had previously written. several important books and arti- cles (which were very influential in my own thinking) showing that New World peoples had been incorporated into the self-same system since 1500, and how.186 Andre Gunder Frank Some Marxists, like Samir Amin, have of course pushed this date back to 1500. However, until recently, Amin has insisted that there cannot have been any systemic continuity into times before 1500, because only then did the production begin to change from tributary to cap- italist. Amin’s LEurocentrisme (1988), however, represents a welcome re- consideration of this Marxist position. The reason for my welcome is that it removes some obstacles to looking for, and seeing, systemic continuity before 1500, and it consciously offers alternatives to Euro- centrist perspectives. Samir Amin (1988) inveighs against Eurocentric Western misreading of history and Western misappropriation of what it finds useful to sup- port its Eurocentric ideology. Amin challenges both the Western di- vision between East and West, and the division of history into epochs by the latter. He recalls that Christianity, Hellenism, and Islam were all born in what Westerners now call the East. However, the West has (mis)appropriated the first two traditions; so much so, that in the pop- ular image the Holy Family is blond! (Amin, 1988: 68). Amin agrees with Martin Bernal who makes a convincing case for Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987). Greece followed the East more than it led the West, notwithstanding Western claims to Athens (and the Christian part of Jerusalem!) as the fountainheads of its own civilization. Similarly, Amin challenges the Eurocentric periodization of history, which divides antiquity from the medieval age at the end of the Ro- man empire (in the West!). However, this temporal division is not sig- nificant for the East (the later Byzantine part of the Roman empire continued!), Amin would rather place a dividing line at the time of Alexander the Great, when he unified the Hellenist East (1988: 44). Islam again unified and expanded this region and provided “the objective basis for the progress of the productive forces and thus of the success of the state based on the tributary production” (Amin, 1988: 40). This and other tributary societies are not immobile, and they made remarkable progress in their development of productive forces (Amin, 1988: 108). Furthermore, Islam and other religions and peoples already had universalist aspirations (Amin, 1988: 71). Moreover, doubtless, embryonic forms of capitalism (private enterprise, market exchange, free wage labor) existed in the Mediterranean5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 187 region for a very long time, particularly in its Arab-Islamic and Italian parts. In a certain way, this Mediterranean system . . . constituted the prehistory of the system of the capitalist world- economy (Amin, 1988: 52). Finally, and also in support of my argument here, Amin challenges an axiom which is almost universally accepted without question from right to left: that factors internal, rather than also or often predom- inantly “external” to societies, are decisive in their transformation. In this regard, Curtin specifies even more in the opening words of his Cross-Cultural Trade in World History: ‘Trade and exchange across cultural lines have played a crucial role in human history, being perhaps the most important ex- ternal stimuli to change, leaving aside the unmeasurable and less-benign influence of military conquest. External stimulation, in men, has heen the most important single source of change and development in art, science, and technology. Perhaps this goes without saying .. . (Curtin, 1984: 1). This consideration brings us to the “school"(s) of writers who inten- tionally and explicitly posit a large world system. World-systems writes, like Braudel (1982-84), Wallerstein (1974; 1978; 1987), Frank (1967; 1978b), and more recently Modelski (1988), Gold- stein (1987) and others, have written from different but related per- spectives of the existence of a (capitalist) world-system since about 1500, or perhaps 1450 for Wallerstein (1974), 1492 for Frank (1978b), or 1494 for Modelski (1987). For all, however, their reading has restricted the systemic unity of world history to only about 500 years and to only those parts of the world that have since then been incorporated in the “Modern World-System” centered first on western Europe and then on America. For Modelski, and more recently for Paul Kennedy in his bestselling The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), the criterion of systemic pertinence is the existence of and challege to hegemonic world power, which omits most of mankind that neither has been or sought to be hegemonic. For Wallerstein and Frank, the criterion has been capitalist pro- duction, pushed back to 1500 but no further. Before learning of Fairbank’s second rule (though when I did so, I belatedly added it to188 Andre Gunder Frank my preface), I thought I could identify and start at the “beginning” and entitled my book on the history of the capitalist world-system, World Accumulation 1492-1789. Wallerstein admits of other world- systems/economies before and elsewhere, but with different modes of production. Therefore, his reading of this “modern world-system” does not and cannot include any regions, historical times, or world “systems? which fall outside his, I now believe, excessively restrictive definition. Common to all of these readings are the twin ideas that the mod- ern world-system developed through the transition from a feudal to the capitalist mode of production, and that this ocurred in southern and western Europe. Anderson and Brenner, among others, deny that this transition took place so early and so generally in Europe. There- fore, they deny even this, from my present point of view, excessively limited temporal and geographical scope of the world system and cap- italist economy. In The Modern World-System, Volume III, Wallerstein (1989: 129-38) devotes considerable analytic energy to trying to elab- orate a criterion of inclusion and exclusion in the systemic division of labor. He continues to insist on the distinction between “essentials” and “luxuries” as a criterion of inclusion/exclusion. He concedes that there is little point debating the essentiality or not of luxury imports; if someone is willing to pay for them, who are we to say that they are not essential? However, luxury exports, among which Wallerstein spe- cifically includes precious metal bullion, are still a criterion of exclu- sion for him. Therefore, and for other reasons as well, Wallerstein’s revised criteria of a “production process and division of labor that are integral and responsive to ever-changing market conditions of a world- economy” still do not meet the standards of the criterion set out in the discussion of system definition and bounding above. A number of critics have pointed to the contradictions in Wallerstein’s position, which obliges him to accept a division of labor and trade earlier and elsewhere in other “world-systems,” but to exclude them from his read- ing of the “modern world-system” The reason is that his world system criteria are not only an extensive division of labor, but also a partic- ular production. This is another reason to abandon the fixation with production. Brenner on Wallerstein. Brenner identifies the contradiction in Waller- stein’s argument:5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 189 Thus, since Wallerstein admits, even if only implicitly, that the medieval world-system seems to fit into the model of the world- economy, he maneuvers himself into a dilemma, which reflects the fundamental weaknesses of his conceptual framework. On the other hand, the medieval economy was apparently a world- economy. However, it did not function in a capitalist way: It was not an economic system, which systematically produced according to the profit motive and that correspondingly accu- mulated innovatively. That is why this system has to be clearly distinguished from the capitalist economy, which followed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at least in some regions. However, since the medieval world-economy nonetheless coin- cides in its basic features with the “modern” world-economy, Wallerstein is obliged to explain why the medieval economic system functioned differently from the subsequent world- economy. Since, however, the world-system theorists have not worked out the prerequisites of a capitalist economy, they also cannot explain why one “world-economy” operates with capi- talist methods, but the other one does not (Brenner, 1983: 90; retranslated from the German). Brenner argues that preexisting class and property relations gen- erated the obligation to compete, the profit motive, and thereby tech- nological innovation and capital accumulation, which are the marks of modern capitalism. Brenner then points his finger at Wallerstein’s inability to account for the same in his capitalist world-economy and modern world-system. Wallerstein could not have been clearer in saying (admitting) that the older as well as the newer world-economy had no in- herent power to develop their productive forces. Therefore, the modern world-economy is only the last of a whole series of pre- decessors, none of which ever had the ability to alter the forces of production in any major way. [The modern world-economy] therefore, might equally well have developed like the previous ones; since its organization of production was not significantly different —except for the inexplicable appearance of the “meth- ods of capitalism and of scientific technology.” In Wallerstein’s190 Andre Gunder Prank system, progress and innovation —so far as they appear at all— operate as a Deus ex Machina (Brenner, 1983: 95). So maybe, as Amin now also begins to suspect, the “modern” world- system had a medieval precedent — or even continuity—after all! The way out of Wallerstein’s dilemma, and the way to bring the machine that produces the technological god down to earth, is threefold, One is to cut (out) Brenner’s and others’ Gordian production knot. That will also release us to tread the other ways. The second is to abandon undue distinctions between trade in necessities and luxuries. The third is to pursue the entire division of labor—and political and other relations — much farther back. Then we may also find ample trade and production for profit, its reinvestment, capital accumulation, and tech- nological progress before 1500. Indeed, we may ask if none of these existed before 1500, how could the modern world-system have taken off after 1500? Moreover, we may ask, if nothing of interest had been going on and nodhing accumulating in eastern and svuthern Europe before 1500, why would Europeans have sought to expand there? 3.3.2. The Thirteenth-Century World System Janet Abu-Lughod (1989) begins taking this tack. She makes a major contribution to the writing of world history by pushing the starting date for the world system back to 1250. In doing so, she has finally cut the Gordian knot of the supposed break in world history in 1500, as per Wallerstein (1974) and others. This is a major step forward in my opinion. She denies that the present world system emerged in Eu- rope through the transition from any previous production. She argues instead that whatever production existed in the sixteenth century also existed in the thirteenth century in Europe—and in the “Middle East? India, and China. Abu-Lughod argues that eight interlinking city-centered regions were united in a single thirteenth-century world system and division of labor. According to her reading, however, this world system econ- omy experienced its apogee between 1250 and 1350 and declined to (virtual) extinction thereafter, before being reborn in southern and western Europe in the sixteenth century, In her words, “of crucial im- portance is the fact that the ‘Fall of the East’ preceded the ‘Rise of the West” (Abu-Lughod, 1989: 338).5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 191 Abu-Lughod’s thirteenth-century Afro-Eurasian world system has eight interlinked regions in three related and interlocked subsystems. ‘These were: (1) the European subsystem, with the Champaign Fairs, industrial Flanders, and commercial Genoa and Venice regions; (2) the mideastern Heartland and its east-west routes across Mongol Asia, Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, and Cairo and the Red Sea; and (3) the Indian Ocean —east Asian subsystem of India, southeast Asia, and China. The fortunes, and mid-fourteenth-century crisis and Black Death epidemic misfortunes, were more or less common to all of them. In Abu-Lughod’s world system, the European regions were tied to each other, and through the Crusades and later the Mediterranean port cities, were tied into the Middle East. There the Venetians vied with the Byzantines and Ottomans and allied with Egypt under Mam- eluk rule—but not before the decline of Baghdad. This city prospered, perhaps like no other, in the ninth-tenth centuries and benefited from the most geographically and commercially favored route to the Orient via the Persian Gulf. But Baghdad’s fortunes declined in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, long before its (and Iraq’s and Persia’s) conquest by the Mongols. Partly for that reason—and partly due to problems with overland trade to the Orient created by the Mongols—at the end of the thirteenth century Cairo rose to regional dominance and per- haps became the crossroads center of the world under Mameluk rule, which it shared with Syria. The topologically and economically less favorable rival Red Sea route to the Orient then displaced the Persian Gulf route and promoted Cairo’s fortunes. All these regions suffered terribly after 1348 from the Black Death, which had been imported from the East. Nonetheless, it may be ar- gued that some of the ravages of the Black Death should be attributed to the already economically, socially, and politically weakened (there- fore unable to organize and resist the plague) Mideastern (including Egyptian) and European societies as a result of the economic crisis, which had started at least a half-century earlier. Abu-Lughod cites am- ple evidence that transport and other infrastructural investment and expansion in Venice and Genoa had declined and then halted two dec- ades before the arrival of the plague. The Indian coasts, and especially southeast Asia and China, had been experiencing a centuries-long economic boom since the eleventh century, which was manifested in fast growing intra- and interregional192 Andre Gunder Frank trade. Arabs, Persians, and of course Indians, on the west sidc of the Indian subcontinent, and Indians, Malays, “Indonesians, and Chinese, on the other side, were especially active in the interregional trade. This was the time of Chinese fleets calling on southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and Africa with much larger and more numerous ships than would sail the world’s oceans for many centuries. Chinese arts and sciences—and public works, technology, and industrial products— were preeminent in the world. In his The Pursuit of Power, and now even more so, McNeill (1983, 1990) insists that China was by far the most developed and important (and therefore by Western historians most significantly neglected) region in the world at that time. The reasons for the sudden Chinese retreat from overseas com- merce in the early Ming Dynasty at the beginning of the fifteenth cen- tury has been the source of much speculation. Abu-Lughod suggests that a (not usually considered) factor may have been the effects on China of the fourteenth-century economic crisis in the worldwide com- mercial system, as well as the consequences of the Mongol invasions. Dealing with the latter was not only costly to the Chinese, it may have swung the domestic political balance of power from supporting or tol- erating overseas expansion to defense against overland invasions. The Mongol conquests to the east (into China), to the south (into the Indian subcontinent), to the southwest (of Persia and Iraq), and to the west (through Russia into Europe) changed the face of much of the earth. Of course, they changed the social, commercial, political, racial, and cultural face of inner Asia and downgraded the role of Sam- arkand and other commercial, political, and cultural centers. But the domino-like repercussions went far beyond the reach of the Mongol armies. At the end of this period, and in direct or indirect response to the changes wrought by the Mongol invasions, the Ming Dynasty rose in China, Akbar’s empire rose in India, the Safavid Empire rose in Persia, and Europeans began a worldwide imperial and now also trans-Atlantic venture in the West. Was that a time of first waxing and then waning Chinese and Mon- gol hegemony during and after the lifetime of Genghis Khan? Did the hegemonic center shift from East to West? Posing and answering these questions permit us to see that the post-1500 world system did not rise in Europe out of the transition from feudalism a la Wallerstein (1974), but that it represents a shift of the hegemonic core to Europe in the5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 193 gencral direction from East to West, although we may also identify more complicated prior West-East shifts within Asia. (This core shift westward, of course, has also continued since then across the Atlantic and continues still today across the Pacific. Modelski [1987] observes this westward shift around the globe in the direction of its earlier locus toward Japan and perhaps onward toward China.) However, there are also problems with Abu-Lughod’s procedure. I accept the statement in her first chapter that in “this book [she] is less interested in identifying origins [of the system] and more [inter- ested] in examining a crucial moment in [its] history” (Abu-Lughod, 1989: 9). Nonetheless, we cannot properly understand this, or any other crucial moment, outside of the entire historical context which gener- ates, shapes, and gives it meaning. My own experience is relevant in this regard. An editor asked me to write a comment on an early version of Abu-Lughod’s work (Frank, 1987-88). Thus, he provided me with the incentive and opportunity to think farther back than the year 1492 at which I had begun my own book. But once I began this route, with or without Fairbank’s rule, I had to continue. I wrote about the period of crisis between 1300 and 1450. But if there had been a systemic crisis, there must already have been a system, whose previous expansion during the time of the Cru- sades led to this crisis. So I then thought about going back toward ap 1000. Only later did I attempt to follow Fairbank’s rule two farther back. From this perspective, Abu-Lughod’s reading also suffers from contradictions. On the one hand, she notes, correctly I believe, that “some two thousand years ago, an earlier incipient world system ex- isted which involved almost all the regions (except northern Europe) participating in the thirteenth-century system” (Abu-Lughod, 1989: 343). Yet “that system also ‘failed’ after the fall of Rome and the loss of (Chinese] Han unity, only to be restructured eventually through the ‘rise’ of the Islamic world” (Abu-Lughod, 1989: 343). Elsewhere, she refers in passing to the subsequent and intervening flowering of a (part) Islamic-centered world from ap 800 to ap 1100. Yet, in her reading, in each case the system “failed” Nonetheless, she argues that systemic changes should rather be viewed as shifts in the direc- tion and configuration of central trends (or vectors) . . . [and] if we assume that restructuring, rather than substitution, is what194 Andre Gunder Frank happens when world systems succced one another, albcit after periods of disorganization, then failure cannot refer to the parts themselves but only to the declining efficacy of the ways in which they were formerly connected. In saying the thirteenth-century world system failed, we mean that the system itself devolved. . . . From earliest times, the geographically central “core regions” . - . were Central Asia and the Indian Ocean, to which the Med- iterranean was eventually appended. These cores persisted through the classical and thirteeth-century world systems. A decisive reorganization of this pattern did not occur until the sixteenth century (Abu-Lughod, 1989: 343-45). Why then does Abu-Lughod shy away from consistently extending her own argument to reading—if not writing—a historical continuity with a shifting core (or during periods of temporary disorganization no single core) in a single world system over at least the two thousand years she mentions? It seems plausible, if not obvious, to argue that between the fourteenth-century decline of the East, and the fifteenth- sixteenth-century rise of the West, there occurred a “declining efficacy” and “disorganization” of “the ways in which they were formerly con- nected” (Abu-Lughod, 1989: 343). In that case, consequently, there would have been a shift of the center of gravity in the system from East to West—but not a complete failure of the system as a whole. On the contrary, this temporary disorganization, and renewed reor- ganization, could, and I belicve should, be read as the continuation and evolution of the system as a whole. But if we make this argument for the thirteenth-sixteenth-century period, then why not make it for the earlier periods, including the rise and decline of Islamic, before that of Roman and Chinese, connections and “restructuring rather than substitution” within a single and continuous world system which de- volved rather than failed? I believe we should. Therefore, we should write a world system history which goes back farther than 2,000 years and also includes more peoples and regions of the world than those mentioned above. Similarly, Jacques Gernet also remarks that what we have acquired the habit of regarding— according to the history of the world that is in fact no more than the history of the West—as the beginning of modern times was only the5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 195 repercussion of the upsurge of the urban, mercantile civiliza- tions whose realm extended, before the Mongol invasion, from the Mediterranean to the Sea of China. The West gathered up part of this legacy and received from it the leaven which was to make possible its own development. The transmission was favored by the Crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the expansion of the Mongol empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. . . . There is nothing surprising about this ‘Western backwardness: the Italian cities . . . were at the ter- minus of the great commercial routes of Asia. . . . The upsurge of the West, which was only to emerge from its relative isola- tion thanks to its maritime expansion, occurred at a time when the two great civilizations of Asia [China and Islam] were threat- ened (1982: 347-48). 3.3.3. Islam, India, and China in the Medieval World System Marshall Hodgson (1974) wrote his three-volume Venture of Islam tour de force some years after we had shared and apartment together in Chicago in 1953. But I remember him telling me then that he already regarded the Islamic regions as the center of a world-historical drama. Reuben Smith, the editor of this posthumously published work on Is- lam, mentions in the preface that Hodgson was simultaneously work- ing on a world history as well. The manuscript, unfortunately, remained in an unpublishable state at the author's death. But although the pub- lished work is deliberately confined to Islam, Hodgson's world-historical perspective shows through, and I believe, enriches the interpretation of his historical material. In his chapter on “The World Before Islam? and under the subtitle “Cosmopolitan and Mercantile Tendencies in Early Agrarianate Society” Hodgson writes, for instance, that change was steady and far-reaching; and from very early such changes were interdependent across a large part of the Afro- Eurasian land mass. Local societies were less and less indepen- dent in their cultural development. ... Through the Afro- Eurasian land mass, all peoples involved came to be historically interrelated to some degree, tied into the trade network and subject to at least the indirect impact of the historical devel- opments that arose in the cited regions in the older agriculturalAndre Gunder Frank areas. . . . At the expense of some schematizing, Afro-Eurasian citied history thenceforth can be presented as the interdepen- dent and more or less parallel development of four major com- plexes of civilized traditions [Chinese, Indic, European, and Nile-to-Oxus]. . . . As these regions were in contact, there was much mutual influence and even sharing of common heritages, for instance in commerce and art, in religion and science. Still more important, perhaps, than simple borrowing among the regions was their common historical context. . . . In sum, the whole Afro-Eurasian Oikoumene was the stage on which was played all civilized history, including that of Islamic civilization . .. (Hodgson, 1974: I, 109-14). Hodgson proceeds to trace the birth, rise, expansion, and subse- quent leveling off of Islam within this Afro-Eurasian Oikoumene, Of course, I cannot do the same here. I can mention only a few high points selected for their relevance to the construction of a world-historical system. Hodgson repeatedly emphasizes the unity of the Nile-to-Oxus (flowing into the Aral Sea) region, and its Fertile Crescent and Iranian highlands core, where Cuneiform and Aramaic languages predomi- nated. From very early, this region was climatically and geographically favored, relative to more arid regions to the southwest and northeast. The region was also a focal point or crossroads for the commerce of goods and ideas, not to mention the migration and invasion of peoples from some of these other regions. The region took advantage of these, and, at least in part, became the site of earlier great civilizations and major religions. Islam would rise to become another. Maurice Lombard (1975) sees the Islamic area and period similarly, but even more so as a single (world) economic system. He writes in the “Introduction” and “Conclusion” to his The Golden Age of Islam: The centre of the Muslim World was situated in the Isthmus region, bounded by the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Med- iterranean, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea. It was, there- fore, set at the intersection of two major economic units: the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean area. These two territor- ies, united in Hellenistic times, but later split into two rival worlds, the Roman-Byzantine and the Parthico-Sassanian, were now reunited by the Muslim conquest, so as to form a new,5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 197 vast territory which was economically onc. This unity rested on large-scale trading relations along caravan and maritime routes, on one currency, the Muslim dinar, and one interna- tional commercial language, Arabic . . . (Lombard, 1975: 9-10). The network of capital cities constituted the economic, social, and cultural framework of the Muslim World. From the eighth to the eleventh centuries the main points along this central axis, namely Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Kairouan, Fez, and Pa- lermo, all of them important staging-posts on the route from Samarkand to Cordoba, bore witness to the amazing unity of a syncretic civilization with its vast movements of men, mer- chandise, and ideas, a civilization superimposed on the older regional, rural, or nomadic background. . . . [This] created a vast common market stretching from central Asia to the Indian Ocean, from the Sudan to the barbarian West and the region of the Russian rivers. This large unit which overlapped the three former areas, the Sassanid empire, Byzantine Syria, and Egypt, and the western, barbarized Mediterranean, enjoyed an influx of gold, a plentiful supply of slaves (Turks, Africans, Slavs), and a network of major trade routes which stretched from China to Spain and from black Africa to central Asia and encouraged tremendous urban expansion (Lombard, 1975: 120). Moreover, this “common market” was fueled by growing urban de- mand and rested on a truly international division of labor with a unified monetary system. Lombard details the generally eastward flow of gold and silver, in which the West lost the gold and silver to Byzantium, which was also dependent on Africa for them, and which lost it in turn to the Sassanid east, from where it flowed further east. Lombard an- alyzes the trade in cereals — including wheat, barley, sorghum, and rice (1,000 camel loads of cereals daily from Beja to Kairouan and Tunis)— especially into Baghdad, whose population may have reached two mil- lion; other foodstuffs like sugar, dates, olives, grapes/wine (despite Is- lam); stock rearing, especially of sheep, horses, and camels; timber and other forest products, like wood/charcoal for smelting metal ores, and the different metals themselves, all of which were in especially short supply in the Fertile Crescent; wool, flax, cotton (from India), silk tex- tiles and dyes for tents and carpeting, as well as clothing; stone, clay,198 Andre Gunder Frank and glass products; salt and other sca products; writing materials; and medicines. Armenian, Italian, and other Christians, and especially Rad- hanite Jews played essential roles as middlemen. Last but not least, there was a major trade in slaves. “Following the example of the Ancient World and the Byzantine Empire, the Mus- lim World was a civilization based on slavery. . . . But no slaves were to be had inside the Muslim world. . . . The slave-traffic was, then, of the utmost commercial importance” (Lombard, 1975: 194-96). These slaves were imported from African Ethiopia, Nubia, and Sudan; cen- tral Asian Turkestan; Slavic eastern Europe; but also from Frankish western Europe, wherein Jewish merchants managed the western trans- Mediterranean route and whose hub of the trans-Alpine and east Med- iterranean slave trade was Venice. The second half of the eleventh century did bring crises, dis- turbances, invasions, and with them urban decline and the dis- ruption of trade. Whole districts of Baghdad and Cairo stood in ruins; people left. . . . After the eleventh century the center of gravity of the Ancient World swung from one place to another. From now on, the nerve centres and centres of influence of an expanding economy were no longer in the East, in the cities of the Muslim World. They moved westward and became established in the mercantile ci- ties of Italy and Flanders and, half-way along the great trade route linking them with each other, in the trade fairs of Cham- pagne .. . (Lombard, 1975: 236-37). At this point, I would express only three reservations to this intro- ductory account. One is that, as Lombard himself shows later in his book, and as, following him, we will examine in the proposed histor- ical review, the Muslim world and its economic system extended even farther. Moreover, the changing Muslim world did not exist in isola- tion. In his own examination of The Venture of Islam, Hodgson empha- sized its relations with China. The period was one of great prosperity. It is not clear how far this was the case throughout the Afro-Eurasian Oikomene, but at least in China at that time what may be called a “commercial revolution” was taking place. Under the strong government of5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 199 the Tang dynasty ... commerce became much more exten- sive and more highly organized. . . . Chinese economic activ- ity was directly reflected in the trade in the Southern Seas (the Indian Ocean and eastward), where Chinese ports became an important terminus for Muslim vessels. More generally, at this time began a long period of limited but unmistakable Chinese cultural ascendancy in the Oikomene as a whole—replacing the recent ascendancy of Indic impulses and the still earlier as- cendancy of Hellenism. . . . It can be surmised that the com- mercial life of the lands of Muslim rule was given a positive impetus by the great activity in China, especially considering its important connections with China both via the Southern Seas and overland through central Eurasia. In any case, com- merce also enjoyed the great benefits of extended peace (Hodg- son, 1974: I, 234-35). The second reservation to Lombard’s account is the early dating of the shift in the center of gravity and the omission in the meantime in Lombard’s account of China and the Mongols. The third reserva- tion is that the two earlier areas and periods, which Lombard distin- guishes, can also be seen as belonging to a single system and historical process if we look at them from the wider world systemic and longer historical perspective I propose here. K. N. Chaudhuris (1985) subject is Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Nonetheless, he also emphasizes the importance of T’ang China and the relation of the overland trade to his subject. ‘The expansion and the new activities which became faintly ev- ident in the rhythm of both caravan and trans-oceanic trade from the seventh century onwards in northern and southern China received a great deal of impetus from the domestic as- pirations and developments of the T’ang and Sung empires. However, in the West it was joined by the second and most pow- erful of the historical forces of the time, the rise of Islam and its expansion across the fertile lands of the Near East and South Asia... (Chaudhuri, 1985: 34). ‘The Arab and Chinese geographical texts dating from the early centuries clearly speak of the hazards of the sea. .. . Bounded200 the paii Andre Gunder Frank by the Pacific at one end and extending all the way to the Med- iterranean at the other, it was this latter circuit of trade [China Sea, Bay of Bengal, and Indian Ocean] that constituted the foundation of pre-Columbian world economy in both the east and the west. In Asia commercial traffic was in the hands of highly skilled professional merchants, who operated as private individuals with little substantive state support. . . . The Asian ruling classes sometimes took part in shorter commercial voy- ages when opportunities for profit were clearly visible (Chaud- huri, 1985: 15-16). The medieval trade of Asia was really founded on the economic and social acceptance of the four great products of eastern civilisation—silk, porcelain, sandalwood, and black pepper— which were exchanged for incense (Arabian gum resins), thor- oughbred horses, ivory, cotton textiles, and metal goods. . . . The scalanes of dhe Indian Ovean were supplemented all through history by the northern caravan routes with sturdy two- humped camels, horses, and mules as transport (Chaudhuri, 1985: 39). Although the social position of the trading communities was never very high in any Asian country, the ruling elites were totally dependent on them for the fulfillment of two essential functions . . . to create a market system or to centralize the tax- ation system. . . . Furthermore, rare and luxury commodities . . could be obtained only through trade. Historians on the whole have avoided analysing the fundamental factors which propel long-distance trade (Chaudhuri, 1985: 16). Jacques Genet (1982) and Wolfram Eberhard (1977) surely rank among most authoritative Western historians of China. Yet both are at ins to emphasize the relations between China, her neighbors, and other parts of the world, and their importance for the development and our understanding of China itself—and of the rest of the world. Th us, Eberhard explains in his “Preface” that he has “also been con- cerned not to leave out of account China's relations with her neigh- bors” near and far (1977: xviii). For his part, Gernet already stresses in his “Introduction” that5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY an important place must be given to the influence of distant civilizations. The Far East in general and the Chinese world in particular were in contact throughout their history with the western and southern parts of the Eurasian continent .. . [through] the great commercial currents— maritime and car- avan traffic; ... the great military expansions and of diplo- matic relations; and . . . the spread of the great religions and of pilgrimages... The big Chinese cities—especially the capitals—have always been in every age cosmopolitan cities (1982: 19-20). 201 Both authors, as well as others, also demonstrate the economic and commercial basis of many military, diplomatic, and other political, well as cultural, relations across Eurasia overland and around it sea. A systematic political, economic, and commercial network is as by at- tested to by migrations, invasions, alliances, diplomacy, pilgrimages, technological diffusione (and come attempte to restrain or monopolize it), tribute payments, caravan and maritime trade, and colonies of many thousands of both resident and itinerary merchants (and sometimes the slaughter of some thousands of them recorded in historical doc- uments) in each of many cities of west, inner, and east Asia (and cluding China). in- This is not the place to retrace the “ins and outs” or “ups and downs” of these relations between China and other parts of Eurasia (and Af rica) over the years. However, even Gernet’s summary of these rela~ tions, especially for the medieval period, lends further support to the thesis that trans-Eurasian relations, as far as China, were systematic in a single world system. During the whole period from the seventh to thirteenth centur- ies the two great civilizations of Eurasia were those of Islam and China. . . . Contacts between the Islamic world and the Chinese world began in the Tang age and went up to the Mon- gol age. . . . The first contacts took place at the time of the Arab expansion in the area between Mesopotamia and Lake Balk- has, from about 650 and 750. The whole policy of the T’ang in this part of the world aimed at opposing the victorious ad- vance of the Arabs, but China's various alliances . . . were un- able to hold up their progress. . ..202 Andre Gunder Frank ‘The Chinese T’ang and Sung empires, the former continental and warlike, the latter maritime and commercial, were contem- poraneous with the Ommayad and Abbassid empires, and be- long to the same period of Eurasian history. East Asia and the Islamic world even seem to have evolved in the same way. . . . Relations across central Asia were contemporaneous with the maritime expansion of the Islamic world into the Indian Ocean and as far as East Asia after the foundation of Baghdad in 762... . The Chinese expansion in Asia in the seventh and eighth centuries resulted in increasing influence of T'ang civ- ilization in all neighboring lands: central Asia, Tibet, Trans- oxiania, Korea and Japan, and the countries of South-East Asia. Certain elements of Chinese culture spread to the Turks. . . Sino-Islamic contacts were to permit the transmission of cer- tain techniques from East Asia to the Islamic world and thence to Europe (1982: 287-89). This expansion of the Chinese world’s relations with South- East Asia and the Indian Ocean took place in a much wider context. The Nanking dynasty’s interest in overseas countries was contemporaneous with the expansion of Indo-Iranian sea- faring activities and the development of commercial routes be- tween the Middle East, the Indian Ocean, and South-East Asia. This is the explanation of [their] progressive conversion to Hin- duism (1982: 197). In the opposite direction on the other hand, the two big currents of civilization flowing from Persia and In- dia mingled with and mutually enriched each other in the whole area extending from Afghanistan to the valley of the Amu- Darya and the oases of the Tarim basin. The most active mer- chants in central Asia and North China came from Samarkand (K’ang to the Chinese), Maimargh (Mi), Kish (Shih) and Buk- hara (An). Their language, Sogdian, an eastern Iranian dialect spoken on all the roads from the Amu-Darya basin to the Wei valley [the center of Chinese power], was the great medium of communication in central Asia. . . . Since the trade routes con- tinued from Bukhara on to Merv and from Balkh to Herat,5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY it is not surprising that Iranian influences penetrated fairly widely into China. . . . The presence of an embassy from Sas- sanid Persia in Chiang-an [the T’ang Chinese capital] is men- tioned as early as 638. . . [and] the last Sassanid sovereign . . demanded China's help against Arab attacks. . . . Even distant Byzantium had considered the idea of an alliance with China (1982: 282-83). Buddhism conquered the greater part of the Asiatic continent, by travelling along the commercial routes, carried with the great flow of trade. ... The first translators of Buddhist texts into Chinese were not Indians but Parthians, Sogdians and Indo- Scythinans, or people born in China or the Chinese borderlands of Sogdian or Indo-Scythina parents. . . . The distant memory of Greek sculpture preserved in the folds of the drapery, the poses and faces of certain Chinese and Japanese Buddhist stat- ues is one of the finest proofe of the unity of our world (1982: 211, 213, 226). 3.3.4. World (System?) History 203 We finally meet the most shining angels in the holiest of my trinity. I will only “introduce” them here in order to place them on my highest pedestal. Some certainly need no introduction to historians, and I will later draw on their work amply myself to make my own proposed view of world system history. re- William McNeill (1964) takes us still further back and farther afield. His monumental The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, offers a reading of much more of a whole world history than I could summarize here. I will draw heavily on him for my own historical re- view. At this point, I cite McNeill only to illustrate some oft-neglected events in world system history prior to the Islamic apogee. By 200 ap, Hellenism had lost almost all of its expansive en- ergy. ... The Confucian tradition of China also underwent a similar, though less drastic decay. . . . India, on the contrary, entered upon an age of remarkable cultural expansion both at home and abroad. . . . The spread of Mahayana Buddhism over- land into central Asia, China, Korea, and ultimately to Japan was the most spectacular demonstration. ... But an almost204 Andre Gunder Frank equally vast movement followed the scaways .. . and planted a series of states in southeast Asia and Indonesia . . . (McNeill, 1964: 361). India therefore appears to have played the leading role in the entire Eurasian world between 200 and 600 ap. . . . In one re- spect, the expansion of Indian culture was very different from the earlier expansion of Hellenism. Military conquest played almost no part: merchants and missionaries took the place of the armies of Macedon and Rome. Consequently, Indian ex- pansion followed trade routes, particularly the sea route to south- east Asia and the islands of Indonesia, and the overland trail through the oases of central Asia to northwest China. Com- munication between India and the lands of southeast Asia was very ancient (McNeill, 1964: 362, 337). Farther west, the Sassanian Persian empire replaced the previous dominance of the Kushan one, which had its center to the northeast. The other world-historically most significant development, however, was yet another outward mobilization of central Asian peoples, who Teft outer Mongolia in several directions. They occupied northern China, pushed the Ephthalites into India, engaged Sassanian Persia (which rivaled Rome, but adapted with greater success), and moved west, push- ing other peoples through Europe into the heart of the Roman Em- pire, to whose decline they contributed. The name of Attila the Hun has become a byword in the West. McNeill observes in a footnote and concludes in the text that the remarkable chronological coincidence suggests that displace- ments of peoples within the central steppe, probably emanat- ing from the region where the Juan-juan confederacy was coming into being, pushed both Huns and Ephthalites from their ac- customed pasture lands. . . . Indeed, the nomad challenge was sufficiently important that the political history of ecumene may in large part be understood as the consequences of the shifting pressures brought from the steppes against the various segments of the civilized world (1964: 388, 316-17). The fall of Rome (in the West, since Byzantian Rome continued) was due to many causes which are subject to many interpretations. Two,5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 205 however, are of particular interest from the present perspective of world systemic history. One is that of the above-mentioned barbaric invasions from the north and east. However, these must be traced not only to their central Asian origins as above, but also to the resistance of Han Dynasty China, which perhaps deflected more migratory invasions west- ward, and eventually into the Roman empire. Indeed, it may be ar- gued that Han strength against nomad incursion was itself partly supported by foreign trade, including that with Rome. Eventually, of course, both Han China and Rome fell to tribal invaders, but not before both had in turn been weakened by trade losses to their Indian and Parthian intermediaries. Thus, another cause of decline was the connections between China and Rome themselves, particularly those via India and Persia. Joseph Needham (1954-84) and others have documented and emphasized the export of Chinese knowledge and goods to Rome, often via India. Hirth (1885), Hudson (1931), and more recently Yu (1967), among others, have documented the far-reaching trade connections. Particularly the Chinese export of silk and import of woolen and linen textiles, glass, Baltic amber, and Red Sea corals and pearls, as well as slaves and jug- glers, from markets in the Roman empire, albeit probably from its eastern rather than its western part. The Roman historian Marcelli- nus claimed, perhaps with some exaggeration, that the use of silk “spread to all classes without distinction, even to the lowest” (Stavrianos, 1970: 100). How else did Rome pay? Taylor summarizes these scholars findings about the silk trade with China. The economic consequences for the ‘West were considerable. Because Roman exports of wool, linen, glass, and metalware to the East in the first two centuries A.D. did not match in value the empire's imports of silk, spices, per- fumes, gems, and other luxuries, the West suffered seriously from an adverse balance of trade. Gold and silver had to be continually exported to Asia. Late in the first century a.p. Pliny estimated that India, China, and Arabia drained away annu- ally at least 100,000,000 sesterces, declaring: “That is the sum which our luxuries and our women cost us.” The discovery of large hoards of Roman coins in India supports Pliny’s state- ment of the drain of specie. Few Roman coins have been found206 Andre Gunder Frank in China, probably because the Romans purchased the silk pro- duced in China from Parthians, Kushans, and other middle- men in western Asia. A British scholar has estimated that between 31 5.c. and 192 a.p. alone, Rome's trade with the Or- ient cost her a net money loss of some £100,000,000. (This se- rious drain took place at a time when the known sources of gold and silver supply within the empire were being exhausted, and must be reckoned as a major factor in the economic de- cline of the Roman world.) (1987: 43). This account leaves unmentioned the consequences for Rome (not to mention for her colonial subjects), of the Roman exertions and expen- ditures to maintain and expand her empire necessary to guarantee, produce, and drain away the surplus for these remissions to cover its commercial deficit with the Orient. (Women today might, of course, not agree with Pliny’s cost/benefit calculation about their female an- vestors.) ‘The previous period is known in Westernized world history as that of Hellenic culture in Greece and Rome. According to this latter-day Westernized Eurocentric reading, this culture and empire developed in situ, as though it had emerged out of the head of Zeus, like Pallas Athene. Martin Bernal (1987), having recently unmasked this west Eu- ropean (re)writing of history, argues for an alternative reading of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. The historical record seems to support him, For, as McNeill writes, Greek and Roman art styles can be traced over the Silk Roads to China, and there were also longstanding Indian connections, which in turn were tied to Persia. Of course, Greek culture also spread eastward. Besides, Greek was an Indo-European language. McNeill discusses the Hellenic period: ‘The keystone of the ecumene was Bactria, where tendrils from the Hellenistic, Indian, Chinese, and Iranian styles of civiliza- tion met and intertwined. . . . A propitious political climate for the caravan trade . . . came to link India, China, and the Mid- dle East more closely than ever before (1964: 330, 320). By the first century a.p. direct voyages across the full width of the Arabian Sea, from the Straits of Aden to the southern-5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 207 most India, had become matters of routine. As a result, trans- port between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean became vastly cheaper as well as faster; and a greatly enlarged flow of goods between these regions funneled through Alexandria by Egypt. This long-distance trade kept Alexandria prosperous even when its immediate hinterland in the Nile Valley suffered eco- nomic retrogression under Roman rule. Similar voyages beckoned farther east; and on the eastern shores of the Bay of Bengal, enterprising merchants established con- tacts with other seamen operating from the south China coast. The result was to link China with India by sea, just as the Med- iterranean has (perhaps only slightly earlier) been linked to In- dia. By the second century a.b. (and possibly before) . . . [they were] merged into one more or less continuous commercial net- work, spanning the entire breadth of the southern seas between Africa and south China. Thug, in the latter decades of the sec- ond century 8.c. China consciously entered into regular con- tact with other civilizations of Eurasia. Organized trade routes, both by land and by sea, soon linked the four great cultures of the continent. In addition, Eurasia’s central sea of grass pro- vided a third linkage, more sensitive to military than to mer- cantile enterprise, By the fourth century 8.c. horse nomadry had spread to all the tribes of the steppe. . . . Thus, the Eura- sian ccumenc was closed as never before (1964: 296-97). However, McNeill still stopped short of reading the world history of the last three thousand years as that of a world system or “central civ- ilization? as David Wilkinson (see below) calls it. From this perspec- tive, I still have some important reservations about McNeill’ earlier reading of world history. One reservation is that McNeill saw things too exclusively in po- litical terms. Here and there the economic infrastructure peers through his account, but it only gets very marginal attention. We need to de- vote more attention to the world economy of central civilization and to integrate that with political and cultural history. McNeill writes me in correspondence that [AD post-1500] world system writers lend too much weight to economic matters and not enough to political (includ- ing military) and cultural ones. That may be. But if so, most historians208 Andre Gunder Frank of the earlier periods make the opposite mistake and pay too little at- tention to economic forces and relations. More economic records are available than have been used. Writing was supposedly developed to keep economic records, and archaeologists have deciphered many. Even secondary sources on economic relations have been neglected by his- torians intent on writing political and “civilizational” history. Popula- tion changes, invasions, migrations, trade, the diffusion of military and other technology, religious and other cultural exchanges, etc., all con- tribute to developing the forces and changing the relations of produc- tion. So do changing ecological “conditions” of production (to which O'Connor [1988] refers in his work on economy and environment). I don't see why these matters should be considered separately, rather than as an essential part of the cement and indeed motor force of the workings of the system as a whole. For instance, in his examination of the same Hellenic world and period, which was reviewed by McNeill above, Hodgson attributes more importance to trade and other economic relations. In the sixth century Bc even more lands from the Nile to Oxus were absorbed into the Archmenid Persian empire, which united in peaceful interchange the many peoples from the Aegean to the Indus. Under it Aramaic merchants received full mercan- tile freedom, and Aramaic became the chief administrative tongue. . . . The various lands in the region were closely inter- related; to some degree they underwent a common destiny. I think this resulted at least partly from the role of the mercantile classes in the regional life. . . . Increasingly over the centuries there was opportunity for the high culture focused on the mar- ket to become more autonomous and even more influential in the society asa whole. . . . It was doubtless a mercantile poten- tiality that, at one stage of Oikoumenic development, made it possible for Greek culture to gain such a hold in the region (Hodgson, 1974: 118-24). And in his review of the end of the period, Hodgson writes: The mercantile development represented in part a response to the ever quickening pattern of trade throughout the Afro- Eurasian Oikomene. Direct trade by sea and land between China5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY and the Indo-Mediterranean regions opened . . . [and] quickly became important commercially and financially. Trade elsewhere in the Southern Seas (the seas of the Indian Ocean and east- ward) had likewise expanded, as had trade both north of the Mediterranean in Europe and south towards the Sahara. The peoples from Nile to Oxus not only took full advantage of their crossroads, but also helped develop new fields of trade. It was in this period that Greek, [the] premier commercial language . . . was displaced in favor of elements from the Fertile Cres- cent. Along the central Eurasian trade routes, it was Iranian and Semitic culture and religion that came to dominate locally even more than Chinese or Indic. . . . In the west Mediterra- nean and its hinterland, the same elements—‘Syrians” and Jews—became carriers of mercantile culture ... (1974: I, 142-43). L. S. Stavrianos (1970) argues that at the basis of the new Eurasian ecumenism was technological advance. ... When hoes and axes and plows, as well as weap- ons, could be made of iron [which was more widely available and cheaper than bronze], the economic, social, and political repercussions were immediate and farreaching. This stage was reached slowly—about 800 8.c. in India, 750 x.c. in Central Europe, and 600 s.c. in China. In these and other regions the advent of cheap iron led first and foremost to the cutting down of heavy forests hitherto invulnerable to stone-edged axes and wooden plows. But farmers were now able to use their strong and sharp iron axes and iron-shod plows to extend agriculture - + + (1970: 88). This expansion of the frontiers of agriculture made possible a corresponding expansion of the ecumene of civilization, which grew more in the half millennium from 1000 to 500 x.c. than in the preceding three millennia from 4000 to 100 b.c. The basic reason for this was the tremendous increase in produc tivity that now took place. ... The jump in agricultural pro- ductivity meant that surplus was now available for economic development and state-building purposes . . . (1970: 88). 209210 Andre Gunder Frank The net effect was a great stimulus for all kinds of commerce, a corresponding stimulus for manufacturing and agriculture, and an overall increase in economic specialization with an at- tendant rise in efficiency and productivity. The manufacturer of cheap goods now had available for the first time a mass mar- ket, while the small landholder could turn from subsistence ag- riculture to specialized farming, whether the mulberry and silkworm in China or olive oil in Greece. The new iron tools also made possible the building of better and larger ships, which, in turn led to longer voyages and to more trade and coloniza- tion . . . (1970: 89). Side by side with these economic developments were equally significant social and political changes. The military aristocracy . . . was being undermined by the new class of merchants, crafts- men, and mariners. The old tribal society was being transformed by monetizatiun, persunal services and allegiances were being superseded by the exigencies of the market place. Equally dis- ruptive was the political consolidation made possible by the eco- nomic growth. Tribal chiefs and their advisory councils and assemblies were being replaced by kingdoms and then by em- pires, whether in Italy or India or China . . . (1970: 89). Such basic and all-inclusive disruption was unsettling and un- comfortable. It led to soul searching —to the posing of new ques- tions and the seeking of new answers... The answers constituted the great philosophical, religious, and social systems of the Classical Age. It was not happenstance, then, that the spokesmen for these systems were all contemporaries— Confucius in China, Buddha in India, Zoroaster in Persia, and rationalist philosophers in Greece. In all these regions the disruption and the challenge was the same, but the answers varied greatly . . . (1970: 90). Yet, it may also be argued that the religious answers and social solu- tions to common problems were remarkably similar. Therefore, another reservation to McNeill is that he wanted to see four separate civilizations (Chinese, Indian, Mideastern, and Med- iterranean/European) between 500 Bc and ap 1500. Yet he repeatedly5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 2u shows, as in the preceding quotations, that they were connected all along. However, McNeill emphasizes and perhaps overvalues the dis- tinctiveness of these civilizations and insufficiently values the significance of their connections and indeed their unity. If we rewrote MeNeill’s argument into a description of a single Eurasian system/civilization, without thereby denying the civilizational distinc- tions and cultural varieties, I think we would be a step ahead. As Wilkinson says, the fact that one or more places declined does not mean that the whole system disappeared. On the contrary, the com- ing and going of the parts seems to be an essential mechanism of the development of the whole. A third problem with McNeill’s account of world history during this period is that he virtually left sub-Saharan Africa out of the story. With our contemporary sources, like Curtin, Davidson, and Fage, which have become available since McNeill wrote, and with more reliance on contemporary sources like Ibn Battuta, it is now possible to recon- struct much more of the cultural, political, and economic participa tion, and integration of Africa in this common history of a single Eurasian-African (really Asian- African-European) world system, Mad- agascar had been populated by Malays. The Axum empire in east Af- rica had far-reaching international relations across the seas and into Africa, and became Christianized. Zimbabwe gold was exported from southern Africa; and west African gold and slaves entered the trans- Saharan and then Mediterranean trade at least since the Phoenician- founded Carthage became a turning point in the same. We need sys- tematic accounts of African participation in the world system, and I will make an effort in this direction in the proposed historical review. (The “New World” is not treated here, although contacts during our periods have been documented. Going farther back in history would of course include the migration of Asian peoples eastward across the Pacific.) The other problem with McNeill’s world was that it had a hole in it. Every now and then barbarian hordes emerged from the Eura- sian steppes and McNeill recorded their arrival. But in his account, they emerged as a deus ex machina from an “uncivilized” no-man’s land. Yet these “barbarians” transformed McNeill’s four civilizations, which by Wilkinson’s and my reading formed a single civilization/system. McNeill repeatedly analyzes the consequences of212 Andre Gunder Frank central Asian invasions and migration on and in the civilized regions where they moved. But McNeill did not inquire into the causes which led to these peoples/forces coming out; he treats them as if they came from nowhere. In part, this omission may be because they left little or no written records. However, in part, it probably was also because McNeill, like most others, is fascinated by “civilization(s)? which ex- clude the barbarians by definition. The comings and goings, or non- comings, of the barbarians need to be systematically fitted into a larger system (bigger than that including only the civilized peoples), within which all of these interact. Needham’s work on China, and especially the works of Owen Lattimore and others on inner Asian frontiers, help make these connections, Therefore, I will make a special effort to in- clude the central Asian peoples and their movements in my own read- ing and writing of world system history. The reason I have written of McNeill in the past tense above is not that he has stopped writing, but on the contrary, because in re- cently published articles, as well as in private correspondence with me, he has been reconsidering his earlier thinking. He is now much more inclined to look for and see a world system which goes much farther back in history and includes more peoples, but given his incompar- ably vaster erudition perhaps more cautiously. In his article on “The Rise of the West after Twenty Five Years” McNeill now writes that: The central methodological weakness of my book is that while it emphasizes interactions across civilizational boundaries, it pays inadequate attention to the emergence of the ecumenical world system within which we live today. . . . Being too much preoccupied by the notion of “civilization? I bungled by not giving the initial emergence of a trans-civilizational process the sustained emphasis it deserved. . . . Somehow an appreciation of the autonomy of separate civilizations (and of all the other less massive and less skilled cultures of the earth) across the past two thousand years needs to be combined with a portrait of an emerging world system, connecting greater and greater numbers of persons across civilizational boundaries. ‘To make this a feasible enterprise, one needs a clear and dit tinct idea of the emergent world system as manifested first in5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 213 the ancient Middle East and a second time in the modern world, and one must reflect on how these intersected with the more local civilizational and cultural landscapes they impinged upon. . . . In the ancient Middle East, the resulting interactions among peoples living in different landscapes, with diverse lan- guages and other outward signs of civilized diversity, led to the emergence of a cosmopolitan world system between 1700 and 500 ac. . . . There is a sense, indeed, in which the rise of civ- ilizations in the Aegean (later Mediterranean) coastlands and in India after 1500 ac were and remained part of the emergent world system centered on the Middle East... . All three re- gions and their peoples remained in close and uninterrupted contact throughout the classical era. . . . [Moreover,] one may, perhaps, assume that a similar [to the modern] primacy for ec- onomic exchanges existed also in earlier times all the way back [to] the earliest beginnings of civilization in ancient Mesopo- tamia .. . (1990). This recent reflection by McNeill, coming after his vast historical work and reconstruction, can encourage us also to advance further in this systemic reading of world history. So does the next author mentioned below. Alistair Taylor (1987-88) also commented on the early Abu-Lughod, like McNeill and myself. Taylor also proposes a different historical perspective — one that takes account of the existence of a Eurasian commercial system antedating even Clas- sical times—[with a] . . . continuum in Eurasia (and parts of Africa) in which societal discontinuities occur periodically with- out destroying the interregional system of commercial, cultural, and other linkages. In adopting this counter-perspective, we envisage any number of dynamic interconnected processes at work: technological, political, economic, religious . . . (1987-88: 48). Here, we can take a mere glimpse at the thousand-year history of parts of this Eurasian system before classical times from 1500 to 500 ac. Beyond the developments already reviewed by McNeill and Stavrianos, the two most notable “events” were the two waves of nomadic migra-ait Andre Gunder Frank tion and invasion between 1700 and 1500 sc and between 1200 and 1000 sc, and their respective impacts on the more settled peoples to the east, south, and west. The first wave used bronze weapons and two-spoked horse-drawn carriages to invade China and India. Indo- European Hittites and Kassites settled in Asia Minor and the Levant, the Hurrians assimilated in Mesopotamia, and the Semitic Hyksos conquered Egypt. The second wave of arrivals rode (by then larger domesticated) hor- ses and used iron weapons. Again, they moved eastward into China, southward to India, and southwestward. Semitic Phoenicians settled on the east Mediterranean coast, while the Aramaenas and Hebrews settled to the South of them. Other invaders arrived farther east; the Dorians in Greece, from where they also expanded eastward. Out of these developments emerged new Assyrian and then Chaldean empires centered on Niniveh and Babylon, and later a new Persian empire and Classical Greece. The Phoenicians became traders par excellence and dominated com- merce and new settlements over a wide area around the Mediterra- nean and beyond between 1200 and 700 sc. They founded Carthage, Marseille, and Cadiz; they settled on Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balaeric Islands; they traded in the Atlantic as far as Britain. They, or their local descendants, also engaged in trans-Saharan trade from Carthage and Utica, and traded in the Egyptian population and com- mercial centers. The Phoenicians dominated the regional trade in Iber- ian metals, west African gold and slaves, and much of the trade in foodstuffs, textiles, dyes, timber, and pottery. Eventually, the Phoeni- cians were overtaken by Greek advance, settlement, and commerce, in the Black Sea region. David Wilkinson (1987) writes in a more unitary-history sense about what he calls the “Central Civilization.” It began in the west Asian part of the Eurasian land mass and eventually encompassed the entire globe. Central Civilization is the chief entity to which theories of class society, the social system, world-economy and world systems must apply if they are to apply at all. A suitable theoretical account of its economic process does not yet exist; one for its political process may . . . (1987: 56-57). Wilkinson’s subtitles indicate his intent and recommended procedure:5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 215 Recognizing Central Civilization as a Reality. . .. Recogniz~ ing a single entity in adjacent “civilizations”. . . . Recognizing a single entity after civilizations collide. . . . Recognizing a sin- gle entity when “civilizations” succeed each other. . . . Did Cen- tral Civilization Ever Fall? (1987: 35-39). Wilkinson’s answer is “no? since its birth was when Sumer and Egypt joined hands around 1300 sc. However, as Stedman Noble (1989), among others, suggests, even before that Egypt probably could not have developed as it did without its ties to Mesopotamian Sumer via the Levantine shores of the Mediterranean. Wilkinson argues that the rise and decline of particular regional urban centers and their rural hinterlands does not spell the rise and decline of what he calls Central Civilization. It continues and is even enriched by the ups and downs of its various parts. Thus civilization —historical world system in my terminology—has continued and developed through relations includ- ing collisions between civilizations, successions and combinations of “different civilizations” and the decline and fall of some city-centered region(s), empire(s) or civilization(s) and its/their replacement by others. Central Civilization is the chief entity to which theories of class society, the social system, world-economy and world systems must apply if they are to apply at all (1987: 56-57). Inan unpublished manuscript concluding part of the same article, Wil- Kinson poses “a centralist challenge to centralists” to overhaul thoroughly pluralist textbooks and curricula. He proposes eighteen successive but continuous historical processes from “when [Egyptian and Mesopota- mian] civilizations collide” around 1500 sc to “the present moment and the prospects for Central Civilization” as the possible skeleton of a course in world history, comparative civilizations, or world civilization, which he would call “Central Civilization: The Origins of World Civilization” Ina more recent paper, Wilkinson offers numerous additional refiec~ tions which can further guide our inquiry into the history of the world system. For whatever reason, the Central economy is at all times a mixed political economy, embodying trade and war, coercion and bar- gaining, the one-few-and-many. The balance shifts with time, scale, region and commodity. And possibly other variables. The216 Andre Gunder Frank determinant of the mix need study. . . . Whenever it is possible to map the distribution of wealth in Central ilization, in- equality prominently appears: by city, by region, by political power, by inheritance, in law, by age and family status, by gender. ‘The several inequalities do not appear to be reducible to any one fundamental root inequality. The entry into the Central world-economy of fish, wheat, oil and wine, suggests mass consumption driven either by political redistribution (to hire the loyalty of armed men, clients, voters, etc.) or by markets, probably varyingly by both. Luxury goods may also have spread more widely through the social struc- ture. . . . World-economic commodities in Central Civilization have tended strongly to be elite goods—luxury food, clothing, shelter, and display items—along with the trade tools of elite- supporting soldiers and bureaucrats (weapon-metal; paper for recordkeeping). Elites, dasses, aud the assuciated inequalities must not be treated as recent phenomena. Early Central trade in precious metals may, and coinage does, imply the develop- ment of mobile free persons, merchant classes and economic vs. politico-military elites, characterized by private property in portable wealth. These elements of capitalism similarly must not be treated as of recent vintage. ‘The general trend over time is clearly toward a continuing in- crease in the number and variety of commodities trades in the world economy of Central Civilization. Within this trend there are temporary and permanent commodity dropouts, shifts in regional contributions, epochs of faster and slower commodity increase; but the trend remains. Commodities and commod- ification too precede modernity, and must be attributed to some early cause, perhaps simply to civilization’s division of labor, increased scale, and increased population. . . . The increase in the number and variety of commodities over time is one piece of evidence for a secular trend to expansion in Central Civilization over the past 5000 years. . . . There ex- isted an Old World ecumenical macroeconomy, a multicivili- zational structure which apparently provided the highest-level5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 217 largest-scale economic order until the global reach of Central Civilization. . . . This economy was larger than any polity. It may require theoretical treatment as a whole . . . (1988: 51-55). Thus, Wilkinson takes another big step toward a reading of historical continuity of a single world system encompassing much of the Eura- sian land mass. Wilkinson goes to pains to establish what should be intuitively obvious; that long-lasting recurrent (armed political or eco- nomic) conflict between and among peoples and “societies” suggests that they also have long-lasting systemic contact and relations. By the above-mentioned criteria of system and continuity, not only is “co- operative” trade and migration evidence of systemic continuity, but equally or even more so are invasions, defenses against them, and other recurrent military and political conflict, not to mention cultural diffu- sion and imposition. For the history of none of the participating peo- ples and regions would have been the same without this interaction among them, and the historical course of the whole was, and remains more than, the sum of its parts. This also suggests that Wilkinson’s following thesis twelve must also be applied beyond Central Civilization: “the Central economy is at all times a mixed political economy, embodying trade and war, coercion and bargaining, the one-few-many. The balance shifts with time, scale, region, commodity” Indeed, the whole economic dimension must be applied to central Asia and its relations with the east-south-western civ- ilized areas, At the same time, we must agree with Wilkinson's theses ten and eleven that in this sense “the world economy of Central civilization has never been fully statist . . . [nor] fully capitalist? This implies not only his thesis eight “that Central Civilization has never been completely penetrated by any particular ‘instrument of expansion’ . . . or ‘produc- tion’ (in the Marxist sense), but also, as I already argued, that we should abandon most of the Marxist fixation (but de facto also that of the ideo- logical “free marketers”) with modes of production. I think this fixation is an ideological snare and delusion which obscures more than it clarifies social relations. This fixation especially hides the essential continuity and operation of the historical world system. To make his case for continuity, Wilkinson uses McEvedy’s (1967) Penguin Atlases of Ancient and Medieval History to construct turnover tables of the rise and decline of ancient and medieval cities and their218 Andre Gunder Frank hinterlands, which demonstrate their system-wide continuity. Of course, the same procedure can and should be applied to regions, empires, and “civilizations.” That way we can perhaps demonstrate that the rise and decline of individual regional centers and empires, and the conflicts and successions among them, are part and parcel of the evolutionary course of world systemic history itself, and analyze how this worked. Wilkinson's emphasis on urban-centered ‘civilization? however, excludes the nomadic peoples. Thus, his procedure largely omits the important role of the central Asian peoples, who invaded and migrated into the “civilized” areas and who at home and abroad served as partners and way stations along the overland Silk Roads. UNESCO, at the initiative of Eiji Hattori, has organized a world- wide research and seminar project to reconstruct the Silk Roads. These various overland and maritime routes, which for millennia connected the peoples of the Eurasian and African land mass, along with the mi- grations and invasions along and across them, may be regarded as the backbone and rib case of this world system. The ever-changing inter- action between central Asian and neighboring peoples to the east, south, and west was the pulsating heartbeat of this (single) system. And the cultures and great religions of their civilizations may then be regarded as the ever-renewed mind and spirit of the peoples in this long-evolving historical world system. I finally end this (perhaps excessively lengthy) review of the rela- tions between the views of others concerning world system history and my own. To do so, I select a long citation whose content, if not alto- gether the procedure recommended, is closest to mine. Yet even to this statement, I shall express some reservations and amendments below. L. S. Stavrianos (1970) begins The Werld to 1500: A Global History with his “Introduction: Nature of World History”: The distinctive feature of this book is that it is a world history. It deals with the entire globe rather than some one country or region. It is concerned not with Western man or non-Western man, but with all mankind. The viewpoint is that of an observer perched on the moon, surveying our planet as a whole, rather than that of one who is ensconced in London or Paris, or for that matter, in Peking or Delhi. [Stavrianos himself is now in San Diego, California].5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY The global approach to history represents a new departure in modern historiography. . . . In recent years, interest in world history has been growing largely as a reaction to the manifestly global sweep of contemporaneous events. . .. World history is manifestly essential for the understanding of a world that has become “one” in reality as well as in rhetoric. This utilitarian function, however, is not the only reason for turning to world history. Equally important is the fact that the story of man from its very beginnings has a basic unity that must be recognized and respected. Neither Western nor non- Western history may be properly comprehended without a glo- bal overview encompassing both. Only then is it possible to per- ceive the interaction amongst all peoples at all times, and the primary role of that interaction in determining the course of human history. . . . World history is not the sum of histories of the civilizations of the world, in the same manner that Western history is not the sum of the histories of the countries of the West. . . . [Similarly] the geography of world history is . . . [not] the sum of the con- tinents comprising the earth’s surface . . . [which would be] as mechanical and as misleading as the former. . . . For the same reason that the structure of world history requires focusing on historical movements that have had major influence on man’s development, so the geography of world history requires focus- ing on those regions that initiated those historical movements. When this is done, one land unit stands out uniquely and un- challengeable: Eurasia, the veritable heartland of world history since Neolithic times. . . . To an overwhelming degree, the his- tory of man is the history of these Eurasian civilizations. ‘The Central Eurasian steppes comprise the endless grasslands stretching from Manchuria in the east to Hungary in the west and provide an overland channel of communication among the centers of civilization strung out in Eurasia’s periphery. . . . Thus the history of Eurasia was to a great extent molded by this inter- action between nomadic tribes and sedentary civilizations. . . . The ancient, the classical, the medieval periods of pre-1500 Eu- 219220 Andre Gunder Frank rasian history . . . were heralded by major turning points pri- marily attributable to these nomadic invasions (1970: 3-6). Thus, Stavrianos still gives less emphasis than I would like to world systemic structure and to simultaneous interconnections in the world- historical process. Therefore, this reading of world history also sees less cycles and crisis-generated critical turning points in the historical process than I suspect further inquiry might reveal. However, it does stress the essential unity of the world-historical process, the centrality of central Asia, and above all that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. 3.3.5. Extending World System History in Space and Time ‘To extend world system history still further in space and time, as suggested above, we will have to draw on diverse historical and arche- ological evidence. However, three well-known authors, Owen Latti- more, Gordon Childe, and Philip Curtin, can serve as guides. Their readings of history imply that following Fairbank’s second rule will bear additional earlier fruits. Owen Lattimore (1962) built much of his reputation studying the Jn- ner Asian Frontiers of China and the relations of nomad tribal and more sedentary civilized peoples across them. For my present purposes of including central Asia and its peoples in the world system, it will be useful to cite Lattimore on three points: great walls, interaction across them, and the cycle of the same. The walls were manifestations of the constant, or at least recurrent, relations among Asian peoples. Lattimore (1962: xliv-xlvii), citing the Russian writer Barthold and others, argues that there were many “great wall” fortification systems other than the well-known Chinese one. They were built at one time or another in many places along the whole stretch of central Asian borders from the Yellow Sea to the Black Sea. The great empires had extended their agricultural base northward, and were dependent on it, and tribute from it, for their survival. Therefore, Lat- timore argues, “it was profitable for many individual subjects of the empire to cross the line of demarcation and to throw their lot in with the barbarians” (1962: xlvi). In particular, the rulers of the civilized empires to the south sought to avoid the export of grain staples to their independent barbarian nomad neighbors to the north. The “‘great walls?5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 2ai therefore, had a function of keeping in the subjects of the empires as well as in keeping out the barbarians” (Lattimore, 1962: xlvi). Indeed, Lattimore lays great stress on the interaction, and its cy- clical recurrence, between inner Asian nomadic peoples, especially those bordering the great civilizations, and these latter. Ending his intro- duction to the second edition of this book, Lattimore says: It was the interaction of conditions that favored the barbarians . . with the conditions that favored the great civilized empires; it was this interaction, and not the fluctuations of climate, that for a whole age of history set the rhythm of the pulse of Asia and Europe (1962: xlvii-xlviii). At the conclusion of the book, he suggests: There remains a further point to be considered: whether the two interacting cycles [among barbarians and among civiliza- tions] have independent phases, were independent in origin. Probably not. Inasmuch as the evolution of the Chinese agri- culture and society, by the pressure it put on the people of the steppe margin, helped create the true steppe society, the no- mad cycle was at least in part a product of the Chinese cycle. Once established, of course, the nomad cycle acquired a vigor that enabled it to interact on the cyclical history of China with independent force (1962: 550-51). Huntington’s books, Pulse of Asia and Civilization and Climate, had pre- viously attributed these recurrent waves of tribal migrations to 640-year climatic cycles in Asia, which sent the barbarian hordes outward, and of course, each people forced the next farther out. As against Huntington's climatic explanation, Lattimore, as cited above, and Jo- seph Needham (1954-84) advance more social-interactive explanations. Either way, or in any combination of these explanations, however, the fact remains that this interaction in and across Asia was important for all its peoples. So important was this interaction that none of the Asian peoples’ history could or would have been the same without it. That is, they were in the same system. Similarly, the above-cited Gernet and Eberhard repeatedly empha- size the importance of inner Asian interactive relations in the devel-222 Andre Gunder Frank opment— indeed in the very formation—of both China and its neigh- bors. Gernet argues that it would be simplistic to see in the Great Wall a sharp divide between the world of the nomadic cattle-raisers and that of the Chinese farmers and townspeople. The northern frontiers of the Chinese world formed a zone where the opposing modes of life of the farmer and the herdsman mingled and com- bined. . . . Just as certain tribes of herdsmen changed over to agriculture, so some Han adopted the nomad’s mode of life. . . . ‘The Great Wall formed only one element in a much vaster com- plex: allied tribes who collaborated in the defense against in- cursions; outposts, forts, and advanced garrisons; military colonies; lands developed by deported populations; horse breed- ing, and so on... . assimilation, diplomatic combinations, and commercial exchanges (1982: 122-23). The contributions of the steppe, of Sino‘Tibetan borders, and of South China were crucial in the formation of the Chinese civilization. The influence of neighboring cultures made itself felt in every domain— methods of harnessing horses, use of the saddle and stirrup, [and much military technology]. . . . [Be- yond borrowings, in particular the steppe peoples contributed significantly to] the centralizing, statist tendencies which seem to be bound up with the problem of defence against incursion from the steppes, but also with the needs of colonization, dis- tribution of land and irrigation of dry zones . . . (1982: 195, 174). Gernet (1985) and Eberhard (1977) also demonstrate how, repeatedly, (cyclical?) developments in the steppe regions brought on reactive Chi- nese offensive and defensive alliances in the north and west, or retreats and expansions southward, and greater thrusts into or retreats from maritime expansion. However, “the inverse phenomenon was almost certainly just as important” (Gernet, 1982: 199). Indeed, the Manchu, Mongol, Chin, and many earlier rulers and dynasties in China came from the steppes—and were Sinicized. The very names of China and Cathay were derived from other Asian peoples. ‘The systemic interrelation of the tribal-nomadic and sedentary- civilized peoples is further elucidated by McNeill and others, albeit5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 223 from a civilizational perspective. McNeill associated cach wave of no- madic invasion with a new military, technological, and organizational innovation (chariots the first wave, iron the second, etc.), which made the invaders irresistible. Of course, we may well wonder what made all these nomad peoples “barbarians” if they were superior in (at least some) technology, military prowess, and the therefore necessary social and political organization, as to win against the “civilized” empires time and again. Moreover, each barbarian influx was rapidly integrated and “civilized” some time after their arrival. McNeill also observes that, after each invasion, there occurred a new civilizational flowering, often at the edge of the “system,” in part as local reaction (Toynbee’s challenge and response?), and presumably in part as a result of the new economic, political, cultural, and blood infusions from the invaders. These (challenge and?) response civiliza- tional developments include the original Mesopotamia-Egypt fusion in 1500 nc (central to Wilkinson’s argument); Assyria after 1000 Bc; Confucian Han China, Buddhist India, Sassanian Persia, classical Greece, etc., around 500 sc; China, Kushan, Rome at (Christian time) 0; China, Persia, Islam, Byzantium, and even Dark Age western Eu- rope after av 500; Ming China, Akbar Mogul India, the Ottomans, Safavid Persia, southwest Europe after the Mongols, etc. The “barbar- ian’-“civilizational’ relations in all of these cases require incorporation into a continuous and systematic reading of civilizational history and systemic continuity. The resulting, or related, “local” regional ups and downs should perhaps be read as shifts in the core/center within a sin- gle world historical system. Other recent studies by Tom Hall, Philip Kohl, and Christopher Beckwith, which I found since writing the above, reinforce my con- cern with inner and central Asia, or central Eurasia, as Beckwith calls it. It is this latter point that is crucial: the development of core areas cannot be understood apart from the interconnections with its peripheral ar- eas... . It follows from this redefinition of civilizations as the entire field of interaction, that “barbarians? typically nomads, played a role in the evolution of civilization. When one adds that the Mongol Empire was one of the largest . . . empires in human history, the importance of nomads in civilizational change becomes inescapable. . . . Nomadic groups have had a224 Andre Gunder Prank major influence on the course of civilizational change. The habit of pushing barbarians beyond the pale . . . of intellectual con- sideration is at best misleading, and profoundly disastrous to understanding the processes and variations of civilizational ev- olution . . . (Hall, 1989: 2, 15; emphasis in original). Hall emphasizes the essential role of Osman nomads in the formation of the Ottoman empire and civilization. More generally, Hall also cites Philip Kohl on “The Balance of Trade in Southwestern Asia in the Mid-Third Millennium s.c.” (1978: 489): One purpose of this study of long-distance trade in southwest- ern Asia was to show that even the earliest “pristine” example of state formation cannot be explained entirely as an internal process of social differentiation but must be viewed partly as the product of a “world-economy” at different levels of devel- opment which stretched at least from the Nile Valley and south- eastern Europe in the west to Soviet Gentral Asia and the Indus Valley in the east (Haal, 1989: 5). Beckwith adds a reflective Eurasian world-embracing “Epilogue” to his study of medieval Tibet and writes: The evidence shows that, during the Early Middle Ages, the Tibetan Empire and Frankish Western Europe were integral parts of a civilized world which included the Islamic caliphate and T’ang China and was “focused” (to adapt Pirenne's usage) on Central Eurasia . . . (1987: 196). Central Eurasia was the overwhelming focus of Arab and Chi- nese foreign policy and the source of strong cultural influences on them, There should be little doubt that Central Eurasia was a most influential factor in the history of the medieval empires. Scholars of earlier generations had good reason to look to that region for their “missing link” in world history . . . (1987: 193- 94). The history of Central Asia is of fundamental importance for an understanding of Eurasian history (1987: 229). Not surprisingly, Beckwith (1987: 194n, passim) also takes the strong- est exception to “the widespread and frequently deliberate use of the5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 225 pejorative term ‘barbarians’ for the peoples of Central Eurasia” I hope that Beckwith would agree also to extending these reflections back- ward in time to periods before the medieval one. V. Gordon Childe (1942) stands out among the authors who long ago pointed us to an earlier beginning of the world system in his Man Makes Himself and What Happened in History. In his chapters on “Early Bronze Age Civilization in Egypt and India” and “The Expansion of Civili- zation? Childe repeatedly emphasizes that long before 1500 uc these civilizations were essentially dependent on long distance trade—in “lux- uries” as well as in necessities. For one place and time after another, Childe speaks of the organized, regular, and also long-distance market trade of raw materials in exchange for manufactures. Similarly, he in- sists on the spread of the money economy, and the sale and purchase of land like any other commodity. Of course, he is particularly con- cerned with the development and spread of productive technology. Moreover, he sees these processes as quite widespread early. Thus, he suggests such connections between China and western Asia before 2000 ac. More recent archeological research and publication tends to re- confirm many of Child’s claims. Some of these are reviewed by Robert M. Adams in his “Anthropological Perspectives on Ancient Trade” (1974). Moreover, the (cyclical?) rise and fall of civilizations, and of their intra- and intercivilizational trade and political relations, was also already related to “barbarian” and other migrations and invasions before 1500 ec. This date is only 3,500 years ago. Yet, the quote from Wil- kinson above refers to 5,000 years, Childe to earlier than that, and Lenski and Lenski (1982) write of 10,000 years back. For all these rea- sons, and perhaps others, any provisional 1500 2c, or alternative cut- off date, may be convenient, but wrong. Perhaps we will need to con- tinue following Fairbank’s second rule and study history, including that of the world system, much further backward still! Philip Curtin (1984) recently assembled and reviewed some other- wise scattered references to “Ancient Trade” in his Cross-Cultural Trade in World History. He suggests that trade and exchange are as old as hu- man society. In the Mediterranean, people began moving about by boat by 7000 ac. Sea trade in the eastern Mediterranean expanded in about 3000 2c, and fourth-millennium Egypt depended on trade with the coast of present-day Lebanon. Curtin joins other historians in supposing that the commonalities among the Indic, Mesopotamian,226 Andre Gunder Frank and Egyptian civilizations between 2500 and 1500 sc can only be ex- plained by their contacts with each other. He notes that, according to some archaeologists, sea and land commercial links may have been, not only the result, but the very cause of Indus Valley urban civili- zation. Others suppose greater influence coming across the Indian Ocean from east to west. Curtin discusses evidence of long-distance trade over at least 1,500 kilometers and its significance in these areas between the fifth and third millennia. This trade involved particularly metals, their ores, and other minerals, These in turn were associated with specialization in skilled metal-working, which often took place far from the site of the mines in Anatolia and elsewhere. During the rule of Saragon of Akkad, and the extension of his empire circa 2300 sc, trade extended at least from Oman, Bahrain, and Anatolia to India. On the one hand, “Saragon sent out military expeditions to and maintained fortifications in An- atolia to protect his commercial interest” On the other hand, “once again the long-distance traders appear to have been from the less multi- functional society, carrying their goods to the economic centers of that time” (Curtin, 1984: 66). In these Mesopotamian centers, recent re- search has downgraded the supposed dominance of the temple econ- omy and has shown that most land actually belonged to private individuals, includ- ing women. Private people had controlled land from the be- ginning of Mesopotamian history down through the Third Dynasty of Ur. State control over the economy becomes im- portant only in later times. Finally, new investigations showed that markets and fluctuating prices could be found in Meso- potamia at least as early as the end of the fourth millennium a.c. even though redistributive and reciprocal arrangements may also have existed. . . . [About 2600-2500 s.c.] other evi- dence suggest{s] an elaborate network of trade, probably car- ried by professional traders and operating through market exchange, though some of the merchants may have acted as agents from temples or for political authorities, who also wanted to profit from trade (Curtin, 1984: 64-65). The Kultepe tablets [from Kanesh in Anatolia] portray an eco- nomic order where merchants were extremely sensitive to small5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 227 changes in price, where prices fluctuated rapidly, and where political authorities interfered in trade as much as they could to suit their own particular interests—but never to the extent of successfully suppressing the underlying play of supply and demand, though here as elsewhere in the history of commerce, protection costs were an inescapable cost of doing business (Cur- tin, 1984: 70). Some Implications. These discoveries suggest several propositions which are relevant to my general thesis about world system history. —A\ll the political-economic modes of Marx, of Polanyi, and of others, and particularly markets and tributary redistribution, have a much longer history and wider prevalence than previ- ously thought. —Long-distance trade began much earlier and was much more important for social development than was previously, that is recently, thought possible. —Both local and long-distance trade and their associated other manufacturing and agricultural economic activities and political structures and processes combined to signify much more capital accumulation, and much more significance of the same, than we have as yet considered. These political-economic structures and processes were much more central to the rise and decline of states, empires, and civilizations, and to changes in relations among them, than isolated political-cultural factors, which have received prefer- ential emphasis by many other analysts. These and other processes and their analysis suggest much longer and broader systemic connections in world history than most suspected, and they justify any attempt to do a world sys- tem history over several millennia. —Further research is likely not to confine, but further to expand, the time depth and geographical and social range of this historical continuity, and its political-economic connections in the world system, perhaps to include east and southeast Asia in one direction and Africa and Europe in the other.228 Andre Gunder Frank IV. CONCLUSION: HISTORICAL THESES, CONCEPTUAL PROPOSALS, AND RESEARCH AGENDA The foregoing introductory and theoretical review, along with my recent related work with Barry K. Gills, lead me to the following ten- tative historical theses, conceptual proposals, and research agenda. I begin with the most concrete historical ones and progress to the more abstract theoretical ones. However, this conclusion is intended as a (not the) conceptual guide to my (and I hope others’) writing of a his- tory of the world system in which European/American hegemony is only a late arrival and perhaps a temporary phase. The following par- agraphs incorporate the introduction to, and a summary of, the com- plementary paper by Gills and Frank (1989). 1. World System Origins 1.1. The origins of our present world system can and should be traced back at least 5,000 years to the beginning of the relations between Mes- opotamia and Egypt. The world system developed out of several con- fluences like a major river system (e.g., the Mississippi-Missouri). One such major confluence was that of Mesopotamia and Egypt, which Wilkinson dates around 1500 sc. However, there also were other im- portant contributory developments reaching back to around 2500 Bc or earlier. Relations of Mesopotamian Sumer with Anatolia on the one hand, and with the Indus civilization on the other, also contri- buted to the formation of this world system. However, the expansion was not really like a river that flows through a preexisting bed; rather, the world system expanded into and incorporated other areas like a glacier, in part adapting to preexisting topology and in part itself re- structuring this topology. We may also use the analogy of an inkblot that spreads, or to two or more inkblots, which merge. Thus, even- tually China and southeast Asia converged into this developing world system. Then, the “discovery” of the New World, and later Oceania, were major instances of incorporation. 1.2. The ecological basis of the world system accounts for its origins and much of its subsequent historical development. The rise of spe- cialization, and the consequent exchange among urban civilizations with their agricultural peripheries, and with tribal and nomadic hin- terland suppliers, of essential raw materials was ecologically determined5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 229 and led to the genesis of the world system. Ecological-economic-social interactions and, especially, constraints have accompanied the histor- ical development of the world system ever since and lately are (re)impressing themselves on popular consciousness. 1.3. Economic connections among various parts of the world system be- gan much earlier, and have been much more prevalent and significant than is often realized. Economic connections through trade and mi- gration, as well as through pillage and conquest, have been much more prevalent and much wider in scope. They have also gone much farther back through history than is noted in most studies. So have manufac- turing, transport, commercial, and other service activities, and their relations with agriculture and livestock. These economic connections have not received nearly as much attention as they merit per se. Even more, the far-reaching importance of these trade connections in the social, political, and cultural life of “societies” and their relations with each other in the development of the world system as a whole have been totally neglected. Even those who do study the trade connections, such as Philip Curtin in his study of trade diasporas (1984), neglect the systematic study of the world system complex which these trade connections promote. The more one looks, the more widespread, integrative, and influ- ential does this world system political-economy appear. An instance (reviewed by Lombard) is the “medieval” Islamic-centered single world economy, which affected countless millions of people spread through- out northern, western, southern, and eastern Europe; west, north, and east Africa; and west, south, central, east, and southeast Asia. None- theless, this does not mean that a particular political-economic pro- duction is determinant for, or coterminous with, the world economic system. It also does not imply that solely economic or even political- economic relations are the “ultimate” determinate, let alone the be all and end all, of social life or even of the world system. The example of Islam itself disproves this. We return to this matter below. Other earlier examples of economic connections are the China- India-Persia-Rome-Africa trade at the beginning of the Christian era, and the Asian and African connections, if nor origins, of the previous Hellenistic world. Already long before classical times, Egypt, the Le- vant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley engaged in long- distance trade with each other. This trade was so systematic—or so230 Andre Gunder Frank systemic—as to have played probably essential roles in their respective economic, social, political, and cultural formation, and thus interre- lated their civilizations. Yet, these in turn were dependent on their political-economic relations with tribal and other “external” peoples. 1.4. World system extension grew to include most of the Asian-African- European ecumenical (“Eastern” hemisphere) land mass and its out lying islands by 600 sc. It incorporated much of the “New World” (the Western hemisphere) by ap 1500. However, there is increasing evidence of earlier trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific contacts, even if between two or more systems rather than within one. Systemic economic and po- litical connections did develop much earlier among Africa-Egypt-the Levant-Anatolia-Mesopotamia-south Asia, and it in turn with east and southeast Asia, and by all of them with inner and central Asia. In east Asia also, first economic and cultural connections, and then political connections, developed among Shang, Chou, Korean, and Japanese peoples in the north and east. Similar connections developed among Thai and other southeast Asian peoples, and those in the south of what would become part of China. “China’ itself may be dated perhaps from Shang times already before 1500 nc, and certainly from 1000 sc in the Chou dynasties in the north. Systematic north-south connections developed between then and 500 Bc to form the China we know with its dynastic ups and downs. Economic, cultural, and political connections developed and sys- tematized both through incorporation of “outer” areas and through their fusion, as between two expanding inkblots. How far “out” did the world system extend at any particular time? For Wallerstein, large parts of the world remained “external” to the world-system for long periods even after 1500. This is because these areas and their peoples did not satisfy his (I now believe excessively) stringent criteria for system inclusion—until they came to do so through “incorporation” into the system. However, long before ap 1500, and even before 1500 Bc, we can identify “hinterland” regions and (often migrant) peoples, who for long periods maintain trade, migratory/invasory, political, and socio-cultural contacts with the world system peripheries—and thereby also with the system core(s). All sedentary “civilized” and most nomad “barbarian” peoples on the Afro-Eurasian ecumente land mass have jointly participated in a single—even if multicentric— world system for several millennia.$4000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 231 2. World System Routes and Nexuses 2.1. Maritime routes furthered economic and other connections among many parts of the world system and contributed to its expansion in important ways. The advertising “blurb” of The Sea-Craft of Prekistory, by Paul Johnstone (1989), reads: “The nautical dimension of prehis- tory has not received the attention it deserves. .. . Recent research has shown that man travelled and tracked over greater distances and at a much earlier date than has previously been thought possible. Some of these facts can be explained by man’s mastery of water transport from earliest times.” The sea routes were cheaper and often favored over the overland ones between east, south, and west Asia, as well as to and from east Africa and the southern and northern shores of the Mediterranean. These and other sea routes mentioned below also formed part of the network of “Silk Roads” 2.2. The Silk Roads, over both land and maritime routes, formed a sort of spinal column and rib cage of the body of this world system for over 2,000 years. These “roads” extended overland between China, through inner and central Asia, to the above-mentioned “Middle East- em” (west Asian) nexuses. From there, they extended through the Med- iterranean into Africa and Europe. However, this overland complex was also connected by Mediterranean, Black Sea, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and numerous river maritime “roads.” Moreover, this overland Silk Road complex was complemented by a vast maritime network cen- tered on the Indian Ocean through the Arabian Sea and Bay of Ben- gal, and on the South China Sea. These in turn were connected overland across the Kra narrows of the Malay Peninsula, as well as by ship through the straits between it and Sumatra, etc. The Silk Roads, of course, derive their name from China's prin- cipal export product to the West. However, the trade extended far be- yond silk alone. Indeed, the silk had to be paid for, and complemented by, a large variety of other staple and luxury goods, as well as money and services, including the services of slaves and other people who per- formed them. Thus, the Silk Road also served as the trade routes, the loci of urban and administrative centers, and the military, political, and cultural sinews of a vast and complex division of labor and cul- tural diffusion. 2.3. Central Asia has been a much-neglected focal point of world232 Andre Gunder Prank system history, both as a logistic nexus among its regions to the east, south, and west, and through the recurrent pulse of its own waves of migration and invasion into these regions. Pursuing the interactions and the cycles among them along the central Asian trails of Owen Lat- timore, Aurel Stein, and others like Marco Polo before them would help fill the hole left by McNeill and the omission of these peoples by Wilkinson. Was central Asia—and not primarily the “civilized” areas— something of a motor force of change in the whole system? Whatever the causes and explanations of the central Asian cycles, it seems es- tablished that movements of invasion and migration, each lasting some 200 years, occurred in roughly half-millennium intervals. There were waves of invasions in 1700-1500 sc, 1200-1000 sc, around 500 8c, around the year 0, ap 400-600, and ap 1000-1200/1300. Each inner wave created outer waves, except the last one of Genghis Khan and his successors up to Tamerlane, who overran everything themselves. 2.4, Logistical nexuses in what is now called the Middle East, in inner Asia, and through some sea straits acquired critical roles as bottleneck control-points along these routes. Therefore, these regions and corri- dors or nexuses also played an especially significant role in the devel- opment of the world system. They were magnets which attracted the flow of migrants and invaders and the attention of hegemonic powers. However, they were also magnets because of their market demand and their supply of precious metals and other raw materials. Therefore, they have also been especially significant fulcra of religious and other cultural diffusion. ‘The Afro-Eurasian (more properly Asian-Afroeuropean) ecumene has traditionally had a few outstanding nexuses, which have repeatedly attracted such expansion and control, and have served to cement the world system. We can identify three obvious trade routes/corridors con- necting the Mediterranean and its European and African outlyers to the west, central, south, and east Asia: (1) The Nile and Red Sea route (with canal or overland connections between them) to and from the Indian Ocean and beyond; (2) The Tigris and Euphrates-Persian Gulf route to and from the Indian Ocean and beyond (whose topology and climate gave it competitive advantages over the rival first route); and (3) the Dardanelles-Bosphorus-Black Sea and then overland “Silk Road” route to Asia. Of course, each of these three main routes had competing alter-5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 233 native variants and feeder routes of its own. For instance, there were several Silk Roads between east and west. There were also different feeder routes in east and central Asia, and to/from south Asia, as well as routes connecting northern and western Europe and through the Baltic Sea via Dnieper, Don, Volga, and other Ukrainian and Russian routes. Of course, within and between Europe, Africa, south Asia, cen- tral Asia, and east Asia, there were additional alternative competing routes and bottlenecks of trade, migration, invasion, and cultural diffu- sion. Topological factors favored some inland places, like Samarkand, over others in relations within and among east, central, and south Asia. Ceylon was an important locus of east-west transshipment, as was Kra on the Malay Peninsula, the Straits of Malacca, and others. Significantly, these nexuses repeatedly were the objects, and some- times the subjects, of especially important economic, political, military, migratory, and cultural processes—and of competition for the access to and benefit from the process of accumulation, which their privileged position afforded. It is no (historical) accident that the most privileged of these nexuses to and from the Persian Gulf has been a major mag- net of military attention (still for U.S. and other fleets in 1988). Nor can it be a historical accident that most of the past and present major world religions were born in and around this region and either died out (like Zoroasterism) or spread around the world, like Judaism, Chris- tianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Eurocentrism has posed an impediment to the identification and study of these other important nexuses in the world system—and for that reason, among others, to the appreciation of the world system as a whole. 3. Infrastructural Investment, Technology, and Ecology 3.1. Infrastructural investment and capital accumulation accompanied and supported most parts of the world system from its beginning and throughout its historical development. Capital accumulation can be shown to have been a constant process (albeit an uneven or cyclical one) for millennia. Capital accumulation went into the construction of, and (re)investment in, massive and extensive productive facilities and public works in the following areas: agriculture and manufactur- ing; the development of facilities for transport and trade; defensive and offensive military measures; the provision and use of financial in- stitutions; and yes, the construction of ideologically legitimizing mon-234 Andre Gunder Frank uments. All of these represented accumulation, then and now. Moreover, many historical-economic, political, and cultural/ ideological events, processes, and institutions can be clarified and “fall into place” if they are seen as instrumental to promoting the process of capital accumulation and sharing in, or disputing, its benefits. Not only trade and migration, but also much political power and rivalry, as well as ideological legitimization and cultural diffusion, are assoc- iated with “economic interest” in the generation and extraction of eco- nomic surplus and its investment in capital accumulation. On the other hand, to what extent did the associated cost of accumulation through military (over)extension, la Paul Kennedy (1987), contribute to, or even generate, the decline of hegemonic powers and the exhaustion of nomad invaders? Moreover, this process of economic surplus man- agement and capital accumulation is so interregional and inter-‘societal” as probably to have constituted a process of world accumulation in a world system over the millennia. 3.2. Technological innovation also played a similar and related role throughout the historical development of the world system and me- diated in the competitive economic and military conflicts among its parts. Technological change was much more pervasive and important than is often acknowledged. Technological process in military and civ- ilian techniques of production, organization, and trade has long played an important, and oft-neglected, role in the history of the world sys- tem and in the changing relations among its parts. Technological ad- vance and advantage has been crucial throughout history in offensive and defensive armaments, shipping, and other transportation equip- ment and facilities, as well as in construction, agricultural, metalwork- ing, and other manufacturing methods and facilities. Progress, and leads and lags in all of the above, have significantly contributed to the creation of, if they might not be said to have caused the relations of inequality within, the world system, including core-peripheral relations and the existence of hegemonic powers. 3.3. Ecology, however, has always exercised an essential influence and constraint on this world system development. Indeed, much tech- nological development itself has been in response to ecological conditions — and has in turn had ill effects on the ecology. So technol- ogy again responds to ecological constraints.5,000 YEARS OF WORLD SYSTEM HISTORY 235 4. Surplus Transfer and Accumulation Relations 4.1. Surplus transfer and interpenetrating accumulation among parts of the world system are its essential defining characteristics. Capital accu- mulation, and the associated process of the generation, exploitation, transfer, and investment (or, in short, the management) of economic surplus, has been woefully neglected in historical and social-scientific studies. To talk of transfer of surplus from one “society” to another is to say that neither would be as it was and is without its relations with the other. The capture by elite A (with or without its redistribution) of part of the economic surplus extracted by elite B connects not only the two elites, but also the economic, social, political, and ideological organization of their “societies.” Thus, this transfer, or sharing, of sur- plus between “societies” structurally and systematically interrelates their institutions, processes of surplus management, and their class and gender structures of exploitation and oppression. Of course, if part of the sur- plus of elite A is also traded, through equal, or more usually unequal, exchange, for part of the surplus from elite B, the systemic connections are even more systematic. Similarly, if elite B has a relation of surplus trade or extortion with elite C, as it has with elite A, then A and C are also systematically connected in the same system. The interconnection and interpenetration of economic surplus and accumulation beyond and between polities can thus become an (the?) extended and/or concretized criterion of inclusion in, and bounding of, the world system. If different “societies,” empires, and civilizations, as well as other peoples, exchanged surplus, then they participated in the same world system, since the organization of “society” A could and would not be the same as it was in the absence of its contact with B, and vice versa. An example of this was the connections between the imperial elites and the productive/exploitative structures of the Roman- Parthian-Indian-Han Chinese empires. Therefore, in a socio-political economic sense, trade in high-value luxury items, not to mention pre- cious metals, for elite consumption and accumulation, may be even more important than low-value staple trade for the expansion and re- production of the world system as a whole. 4.2. Conter-Peribhery- Hinterland (CPH) complexes and hierarchies among different peoples, regions, and classes have always been an important