Great Debates in Global History 1 – Civilisations

The Core Argument of The Human Web

- Form: Meta history, meta narrative
- Pattern: Human webs shaped history
- The exchange and spread of information and items through webs, and the human responses
to them, is what shapes history.
- Dialects/ motors of change: Webs combined competition and cooperation, within and
between webs, causing societal progress.
- Chapters 1-3: constant tension between nomadic and sedentary civilisations

A web:
- McNeills: ‘a set of connections that link people to one another’ (chapter 3)
- Connections include: kinship, friendship, chance encounters, common worship, economic
exchange, ecological exchange, political cooperation, rivalry, enmity or military competition.
- Communicating information

Periodisation of the webs

- Contrasting Mcneill periodization to standard periodization.

Characteristics of Webs
- Cooperation and competition, mobility
- Internal – external dynamics

The Human Apprenticeship

- Control over fire
- Song, dance and art
- Speech and common meaning (development of language)
- Complex tools and technology

The emergence of agriculture 12000 years ago: the emergence happened around the world
around the same time.
Animal domestication served a step up in development.
First World Web:
- Agriculture created opportunities to tribes such as:
-
Earliest Civilisations
- Mesopotamia, fertile crescent
- Egypt, Nile
- Northwest India, Indus
- China
- Two big metropolitan webs: nile-indus corridor, east asia china
Definition of a Civilisation
- McNeills: the ‘common subjection to rulers, whose continued dominion was much assisted
by the fact that they subscribed to a set of moral rules embodied in sacred or at least
semisacred texts’.
- Civilisation: complex society that focuses on a large number of people
Western Civilisation?
- Core elements: democracy, capitalism, liberty, science
Characteristics of Civilisations:
- Ruler
- Moral rules or codes
- Embodies in scared texts
- However; Internal coherence? Contradictions?
Early Characteristics of Civilisations of the Metropolitan Web:
- Bureaucratic government – Rule
- Alphabetic writing and literacy
- Portable congregational ( community worship) religions (Judaism, Buddhism,
Zoroastrianism, Confucianism) – moral codes and sacred texts
The Role of Religion:
- What came first, civilization or moralizing gods?
- Harvey Whitehouse: ‘complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world’
Civilisation v Empire:
- Rule – Population, territory, identity
- Empire is the organizational feature of civilisations
- Peter Turchin’s empire definition (mega empires): ‘territorial states that controlled, at their
peak, an area equal or greater than one million square kilometres’
Imperiogenesis, Peter Turchin’s Argument:
- Nomads versus settled population
- External threat – internal cohesion
- The necessity of ‘scaling up’ the level of political organization
- Evidence for ‘one of the strongest macro-historical regularities over the long term’
The Argument for Mega-Empires:
- Environmental gradient, limited distance (nomads and the settled population have to meet
somewhere)
- Military superiority of the nomads
- Space, deep hinterland for expansion
- A theory of ‘co-evolution of agrarian mega-empires and nomadic imperial confederations’
Pastoralists v Agriculturalists:
Military Innovation:
- The chariot (1800 bce)
- Iron weaponry (1200 bce)
- The mounted archer (700 bce)
The Axial Age (800 – 200 BCE) (Turchin):
- Increase in empire size
- Nomad military superiority
- Emergence of world religions
- Increase in urbanization
- Axial Age idea originates from Karl Jaspers
- The major world religions emerged during a timespan of 600 years between 8th century and
the 3rd century BCE
Turchin’s Argument:
- Mirror empire model
- Antagonistic interactions between pastoralist and agrarian empires
- The steppe frontier is a location for imperiogenesis
- During Axial Age scaling up of maximum empire size.
- Chinese Empires are perfect example of Turchin’s theory, Americas fit least into Turchin’s
model (due to the lack of domesticated animals).
Summarising Pastoralists v Agriculturalists:
- Mega empires are large territorial states that controlled at least one million square kilometers.
There have been over sixty between 3000 BCE and 1800 CE mainly in Eastern Asia.
- The antagonistic interactions on a steppe frontier between the nomadic pastoralists and the
settled agrarian communities that lead to the rise of the mega empires. The steppe frontier is
 a feedback loop leading increasing political organization on the either side of the steppe
frontier.
Emergence of Empires:
Civilisation (McNeills):
- Bureaucratic government – Rule
- Writing and literacy
- Portable congregational religions – moral codes and sacred texts
- Frontiers: encounters, exchanges
Empire (Turchin):
- Environmental gradient, limited distance
- Military superiority of the nomads
- Space, deep hinterland for expansion
- Frontiers: imperiogenesis

10/9/2019
- 30 mpq’s, 4 open questions
- Material from chapters 1-6, all lectures
East Asia and Trade
- Old world web
Christian’s Silk Road:
- The long and middle-distance land routes by which goods, ideas, and people were exchanged
between major regions of AfroEurasia’. (2000, 3)
15/11/2019

Ruskii: English
Rusisskii: British