CH A P T ER 2

The Rise and Fall of Civilizations

Though modernity is relatively new, international relations are

as old as civilization. Humans have existed for several hundred
thousand years, but until the last 7,000 years they wandered
the earth in small groups hunting, gathering edible plants,
and attempting to survive threats from other humans, beasts,
and vile weather.1
After mastering tools, weapons, and fire, the first major
step toward civilization was the domestication of animals for
food, clothing, transport, and companionship.2 Next came the
domestication of plants as groups settled in river valleys and
began sowing and reaping crops. Over centuries some of these
settlements developed into complex civilizations that included
most or all of the following components: herding and farming;
complex, hierarchical political, social, economic, military, and
religious institutions, each with a division of labor; the use of
metals, the wheel, and writing; clearly defined territories; and
trade with other peoples. The first “civilization” emerged in
Mesopotamia around 5,000 BC, and for the next 6,500 years
or so, great civilizations there and elsewhere rose, extended
their rule, then collapsed for a variety of interrelated political,
technological, economic, military, and ecological reasons.3
During the fifteenth century, beyond Christian Europe,
advanced and powerful civilizations sprawled across vast
stretches of the globe: Ming China, Aztec Mexico, Inca Peru,
Benin Africa, Mogul India, Ashikaga Japan, and Ottoman
Asia Minor. In Southeast Asia alone, there was a patchwork

W. R. Nester, Globalization
© William R. Nester 2010
16 GLOBALIZATION: HISTORY OF MODERN WORLD

of smaller civilizations like the Khmer, Thai, Vietnamese,

Burmese, and Javanese. All of these non-European civiliza-
tions were ruled by centralized bureaucracies and had achieved
enormous advances in technology, the arts, philosophy, and
wealth. However, despite their dazzling accomplishments,
none of the non-European civilizations developed the related
psychological, philosophical, and technological prerequisites
for modernity and global conquest. Elsewhere humans were
mostly organized in small hunter gather groups or primitive
agrarian communities.4
China had the most potential to modernize.5 The vast
Chinese empire had a centralized government presided over
by the emperor of the Ming dynasty, was run by a highly cul-
tivated elite known as the scholar-gentry, and was guided by
the political philosophy of Confucianism; created magnificent
works of literature, music, architecture, painting, and sculp-
ture; traded extensively throughout East, Southeast, and
Central Asia; and was the first to invent paper money, gun-
powder, porcelain, and printing. Militarily, the Chinese had
over 1 million men under arms and a 1,350 ship navy. Between
1405 and 1433, Admiral Cheng Ho led seven naval, trade,
and exploration expeditions that reached as far as the Persian
Gulf and East Africa. The Chinese could have “encountered”
Europe rather than the Europeans Chinese.
Yet the Ming dynasty retreated from the brink of becoming
a global power. Not only the naval expeditions were discontin-
ued but also the emperor forbade any further construction of
ocean-going ships. Geopolitics partly explains this withdrawal.
Ming China shifted from an offensive to defensive stance in
response to a failed attempt to defeat Annan Vietnam, and
the aggression of Mongols and Manchurians along China’s
vulnerable northern frontier and Japanese pirates along the
coast. Philosophical and political reasons reinforced the geo-
political imperative to withdraw. Confucianism celebrated
the scholar-bureaucrats who ran China and denigrated mer-
chants and soldiers alike. The Court feared that its military