Premodern Trade in World History

Richard L. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415424776
• eBook ISBN: 9781134095797
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Trade and commerce are among the oldest, most pervasive, and most important of human activities, serving as engines for change in many other human endeavors.

This far-reaching study examines the key theme of trading in world history, from the earliest signs of trade until the long-distance trade systems such as the famous Silk Road were firmly established. Beginning with a general background on the mechanism of trade, Richard L. Smith addresses such basic issues as how and why people trade, and what purpose trade serves. The book then traces the development of long-distance trade, from its beginnings in the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods through early river valley civilizations and the rise of great empires, to the evolution of vast trade systems that tied different zones together.

Topics covered include:

• products that were traded and why;

• the relationship between political authorities and trade;

• the rise and fall of Bronze Age commerce;

• the development of a maritime system centered on the Indian Ocean stretching from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea;

• the integration of China into the world system and the creation of the Silk Road;

• the transition to a modern commercial system.

Complete with maps for clear visual illustration, this vital contribution to the study of World History brings the story of trade in the premodern period vividly to life.

Chapter 1
Some introductory musings

On the business of business

Exchange is a form of interchange between individuals or groups. It is the act of giving and taking one thing for another: goods, services, or some intangible item must change hands. Exchange is the engine that drives the circulation of commodities, items that flow through the economic system until they are consumed. And exchange involves reciprocity. Although goods circulate as the result of predatory activities such as brigandage, plundering, robbery, and piracy, these cannot be considered as exchange. Throughout history humans have engaged in a variety of consensual exchanges, two of the most important forms being gift-giving and trade. Whatever is being exchanged must have some utility, functional or social, in order to have a value assigned to it. That said, exchange can involve useful products such as metals and grains or products having only ceremonial, symbolic, or prestige value.

One of the oldest and most universal forms of consensual exchange is gift-giving, which originated as an aspect of intra-family and clan relations. In this, exchange was motivated more by social than economic factors: the goal was to maximize social contacts rather than reap material benefits. The giver of a gift gained esteem according to the perceived value of the gift. Thus it was not the possession of wealth that conferred prestige and power but the giving of wealth; it was truly better to give than receive. In tribal societies a common venue for ceremonial gift-giving was the feast where guests ate their fill and went home with presents as well. However, gift-giving was not simply a matter of gaining prestige through generosity, and usually the item was not a present in the sense that the giver expected nothing in return. Gift-giving established an obligation that led to counter gift-giving or the fulfillment of some duty, which in turn required a new round of transactions that theoretically was never-ending. Gift exchange often was used to forge links between groups or states. Among states in the ancient world, rulers often exchanged gifts and referred to each other as “brother,” symbolizing their friendly relations. For centuries this served as the most important mechanism for transferring goods among certain states.

A gift could be repaid in many ways. If it was given from a superior to a subordinate, the return was usually in the form of service since a subordinate could not be expected to return an equivalent or more valuable item to a superior. Gift-giving usually involved delayed reciprocity: counter-gifts were not required immediately. Nevertheless, some reciprocity was expected sooner or later, and failure to repay within a reasonable time was taken as a sign of hostility. Among equals, a counter-gift that was worth less was a sign of weakness deserving of contempt. Far from being motivated by disinterested magnanimity, gift-giving could be as calculated and self-serving as profit-based trade.

The development of commercial trade based on market principles out of earlier forms of exchange was a cumulative process, not an accidental discovery or calculated invention that can be traced to a specific series of events. Like gift-giving, commercial trade was a consensual act. The object of commercial trade was to create wealth by generating profit. Trade operated through the “market,” a process, which should be distinguished from the “marketplace,” a location. The market was driven by profits or value maximization and controlled by a supply and demand mechanism in which commodities moved according to price. Trade required entrepreneurial behavior and was characterized by investment and risk-taking. Since the purpose of trade was to maximize returns in order to enrich oneself, economic considerations dominated social and political considerations. In gift-giving the social relationship was the crucial factor whereas in commercial trade the desire for the commodity itself motivated the transaction. No social bond was created as a result of the exchange. Trade was negotiated and funneled through intermediaries, who could be strangers, and the return was immediate rather than delayed. Furthermore, trade was a discrete transaction separate from any previous or subsequent acts between the parties and terminable at the end of the transaction. It was not part of a continuing process unless the parties agreed for it to be, and then it continued only as a “business relationship.”

Gift-giving and trade were never exclusive to each other. Societies bound together through ceremonial exchange could simultaneously engage in commercial trade. And if gift-giving evolved earlier than trading for profit, the competition between the two did not remain steady over the centuries. In the modern world a residue of gift-giving can still be seen in such practices as birthday and holiday presents, but long ago exchange became dominated by commercial trade as gifts gave way to commodities.

In long-distance trade a society, at least in classical economic theory, concentrated on goods it could produce more efficiently than other societies either because it had better access to raw materials, superior technology, cheaper labor, or some other advantage. Trade was based on the cost of production in one place versus the cost of production in another with transportation expense added. In many instances the presence or absence of specific natural resources, such as metal, was the most important factor in determining imports and exports. As a society with a desirable commodity became part of an integrated network in which other societies with other commodities were doing the same, all parties should have reaped advantages. And as commercial networks expanded, competition increased, requiring more efficiency, which often meant increased specialization.

New goods that came in through exchange were often transformed from desirables into necessities. Demand could expand to cover an almost infinite range of commodities, but supply was usually limited and not very flexible. As an item came to dominate the production of a society’s economy, that society came to depend more and more on trade. Thus, a larger and more varied economy had less need to trade with outsiders than a smaller economy. A place that had a lot of copper, olive oil, or horses but little else, or whose people were especially adept at producing beautiful jewelry or potent medicines and were capable of making more than they needed, was more likely to engage in trade than a place that had all of the above.

Natural resources were not always the most important factor. A place that had plenty of skilled labor but little in the way of natural resources was more likely to produce a labor-intensive product more efficiently and thus more cheaply than an area that had lots of minerals, forests, or fertile land but a smaller, more scattered, or less skilled work force. However, an export market was not likely to be based on an unskilled labor force: in the premodern world, unskilled labor was everywhere. Some qualitative difference had to be evident to induce customers to pay for an import. From earliest times the ancient Greeks exported olive oil and wine, products that were carried in pottery. By the classical period, the ceramics being produced by craftsmen in cities such as Athens were so beautiful that they became items for export themselves.

Demand endowed a commodity with value, which was assigned through the process of exchange. The value differed for each side: it was this judgment that made the exchange desirable. The value may have been based on the usefulness of the commodity, some social meaning that was attached to it, or some aesthetic property associated with it. In basic barter, to gain a desired commodity, a trader had to sacrifice something that he believed was of less value than the item he was getting. The key to this process was that each side had to be convinced that it was getting more for less. Looking at the transaction from the outside, however, an observer ought to conclude that these commodities had an equivalent value.

The long-distance trader made his profit by taking advantage of the different values accorded to commodities from area to area. He bought an item in one place and sold it in another where he knew the price was higher. He subtracted his costs, and the result was his profit. In theory, no one was the loser: bargains were made only when both sides could realize a profit. The exploitation, and there was plenty of it, took place on the production rather than the exchange level. Losses to the trader were mostly the result of misfortune – the death of pack animals, the sinking of a ship, spoiled or plundered cargo – or misinformation, such as bringing a shipment of goods to a place where the price turned out to be less than expected. A trader who ended up with a caravan of dates, hides, textiles, or tin in a place where the price was insufficient to cover his costs was not long for the business.

All trade situations eventually changed: either improved, deteriorated, or just went in new directions. A huge number of variables impacted on trade, including changing tastes, fashions, and consumption patterns; traditions and taboos; political and social upheavals; and war, to name a few. Nevertheless, even when most of the variables appear to have been similar, people often responded to them very differently.

On theories of trade

In recent years the study of the exchange and circulation of goods has been dominated by two controversies. The first centers on a theory referred to as “Substantivism” advocated by a group of scholars led by Karl Polanyi. This in effect elevates the old gift-giving versus profit-seeking discussion to the level of a theoretical controversy. Substantivism attacks what is referred to as “Formalism,” which maintains that the way in which modern capitalist economies work – that is, through a market system – is the normal, standard way all economies have worked; it is a universal paradigm.

The Substantivists claim that the use of supply and demand to establish price did not appear until the fourth century BCE (in Greece) and that the mature market-driven profit-seeking system of price-fixing markets was not firmly established until the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE. They believe that people in earlier societies had nonmarket economies in which the exchange of goods was essentially a social act. The goal of exchange was to engender social relations, to form contacts, and to gain prestige as well as to acquire desired goods but not to make a profit from the sale of one’s own goods. Supply and demand played no role in setting price. Thus the study of trade is useful primarily to determine social and political patterns. In place of entrepreneurs haggling in a free market, Polanyi saw what he called administered or treaty trade organized between governments. The traders were not private businessmen but government officials, and the prices and quantities of goods to be traded were fixed through treaties negotiated beforehand that remained in effect for long periods of time.

In recent years much new textual and archaeological material has been amassed that was not available to Polanyi, who wrote in the 1950s, or his followers, whose heyday extended across the two decades that followed. This new material shows that the Substantivists greatly overstated the role of the state and understated the importance of private entrepreneurship in premodern trade. Markets in which prices were set by supply and demand and evidence of private capital accumulation, investment, and risk-taking appear between the late-fourth and mid-third millennium BCE. So do indications that merchants were motivated by the desire to make a profit. And to confuse matters, private and state capital were often found within the same economy.

The second controversy involving long-distance trade centers on the ideas of Immanuel Wallerstein and is known as World Systems Theory. World systems were trading networks that spanned separate communities meshing them economically into a single whole. The driving force of such a system was the accumulation of capital, which was market-oriented, profit-induced, and structured to transfer surpluses unequally through the core–periphery concept. World markets create interregional and international divisions of labor in which the peripheral areas supply the core area with resources, in particular raw materials, which are undervalued, in return for manufactured goods, which are overvalued, ensuring the accumulation of capital at the core at the expense of the periphery. Thus cores exploit peripheries, rich states exploit poor states, and technologically advanced societies exploit technologically underdeveloped societies. The net beneficiaries are the ruling or elite classes of the cores, although they make sure the elite classes of the peripheries also benefit, guaranteeing their support in perpetuating the system.

Wallerstein believed that such a world system emerged in the sixteenth century CE and is a unique characteristic of modern capitalism. Others, however, have decided to use his model for understanding trade in much earlier periods. For them, modern capitalism is nothing more than the most recent incarnation of a system that extends in various manifestations far back in time. They see core–periphery structures as inherently unstable: cores could grow, shrink, and disintegrate. If a core grew enough, its periphery could become part of the core. New peripheries could be added to a core, and established peripheries could drop out. Peripheries in time could develop their own peripheries. If a system shifted enough, a periphery could become a core, often as the result of technology transfer, and a core could likewise become a periphery. Skeptics of a strict interpretation of world systems theory see the various permutations going farther. In some places, they maintain, cores and peripheries didn’t exist, and in other places there was a multitude of cores. Nor did the component parts always function according to the model. For example, cores didn’t always dominate their peripheries, peripheries were not always dependent on their cores, and finished products sometimes flowed from peripheries to core rather than vice versa.

Cores, peripheries, and the systems they were embedded in did not have to be synonymous with political entities. Cores and peripheries could exist together in the same state as, for example, in the Roman or Chinese empires, or a core could constitute a region of independent states as in ancient Sumer or Greece that exploited an area not under its direct political control. World economies were generally larger than the political entities that were contained within them.

Not everyone has joined the world systems bandwagon. Wallerstein himself continued to deny that his model could be projected back in time, maintaining that there is a fundamental difference between the modern capitalist world system and all preceding systems. Thus the controversy over world systems became an extension of the older Substantivism–Formalism debate, with Wallerstein joining the followers of Polanyi in insisting that modern capitalism is distinct from all earlier systems and their adversaries seeing continuity from ancient (or even prehistoric) to modern times. Those critical of extending the theory backwards point to the level of technology and the transportation and communication systems as being too underdeveloped to allow for any real economic unity across large geographical areas for any significant length of time. What, they ask, qualifies a commercial network in the Bronze Age, for example, as being a “world system” in any meaningful way rather than seeing it as nothing more than a series of interconnected local trading systems? They wonder aloud why the word “world” is used. The terminology ends up being grander than the historical phenomenon it describes. World systems theorists respond by claiming that a world system when applied to premodern history doesn’t have to span the globe, nor does it require direct contact among all its participants. Instead it refers to a trading network extending beyond a physically delimited zone that is so integrated through exchange and trade that it forms a single commercial whole. Thus there can be simultaneous regional world systems, each in a sense comprising its own “world.” Some casual observers see the whole matter as degenerating into a question of semantics.

For historians who see the development of world systems as extending back into the ancient world, the land of Mesopotamia and the larger region of Southwest Asia play a crucial role. Mesopotamia served as the oldest core, to be followed in time by Egypt, India, and China. Eventually world systems grew together while simultaneously expanding outward, encompassing new peripheries. Westward this process extended to the Mediterranean basin and later Europe; southward it traveled up the Nile into the African interior and down the Red Sea and Persian Gulf into the Indian ocean and across to Southeast Asia; northward and eastward it moved into Central Asia and beyond to Siberia and Mongolia. Dating this process becomes a matter of determining when separate systems were integrated enough to become a single system. The final product was an interacting Afro–Eurasian exchange zone from Atlantic to Pacific held together by interconnecting sinews of land and sea routes through which increasing quantities of raw materials, finished products, luxury items, and in some places basic consumer goods flowed.

So what can we learn from such controversies? First, as is typical of theoretical disputes in history and anthropology, both sides are right, and both sides are wrong. Carefully devised abstractions can obscure reality as easily as elucidate it. Strict theoretical positions may be interesting intellectual constructs to those smitten by the logic or beauty of an idea, but too often they don’t fit the empirical evidence and thus don’t help if our goal in studying history is to try to determine what really happened in the past. Second, models don’t have to be universally applicable or completely right (no matter what their advocates say) to be useful when trying to determine general trends or in examining history in a conceptual way. Anyone studying the history of trade can learn much from the ideas of Polanyi and Wallerstein or for that matter from earlier theorists such as Marx and Adam Smith, keeping in mind that history is always sloppier than theorists would like it to be that’s why it’s not a science.

No doubt, there were different kinds of exchange networks working in different ways, each with its own particular set of quirks. However, in the larger picture, over the course of millennia, commodities increasingly flowed ever farther afield. Slowly but irreversibly, as different ecological niches were absorbed and smaller trading systems became intermeshed, an interdependent Afro–Eurasian trade zone emerged, spatially connected even if its internal dynamics were not always structurally uniform. This system would continue, with many starts and stops, until the onset of the modern era.

A closer look: how we know

Reconstructing a picture of long-distance trade in the premodern world is done through a combination of ways. The two most important sources of information are archaeology and written material. Archaeology must begin with common sense. If we know that a certain people used a substantial amount of bronze but did not have local access to copper and tin deposits, we must question how this society got its bronze. Where did the raw materials come from? If we are able to discount warfare and plunder, what was exchanged in return?

Archaeology can indicate the movement of goods and sometimes provide enough information to make estimates of the quantity and frequency involved. Archaeological evidence is a good place to start looking for patterns since long-distance trade that is historically important should show consistency. In their excavations, archaeologists look for indicators of trade. Pottery from the Ubaid culture of Mesopotamia (5300–4000 BCE) has been found scattered across northern Syria up into Anatolia (Turkey) to areas where metal deposits were abundant. This likely signifies a trade route. Seals made from stone or metal to indicate ownership and the presence of lead weights and scale pans used for measurements are indicators of trade even when the products they were used for are long gone.

Important sites for archaeological excavations begin with tombs and hoards. Tombs often contain grave goods intended to accompany their inhabitants into the next world whereas hoards usually consist of valuable gold and silver objects, including coins. Another type of deposit consists of votive offerings left in a sacred place associated with gods or ancestral spirits. Often this was a particular spot in a river, marsh, or other body of water. Goods found in tombs, hoards, and votive deposits are indirect indicators of trade if it can be determined that they were not made locally.

A new field of archaeology that has proved fruitful although challenging and expensive is maritime or nautical archaeology. Shipwrecks are little time capsules, like grave sites except that the goods found in graves were deliberately placed there. Occasionally underwater work allows for spectacular discoveries as, for example, the Uluburun shipwreck (discussed in Chapter 5).

Sunken wooden ships deteriorate as do much of their cargoes but not claybased ceramics. Pottery remains can help archaeologists deal with two central issues, dating and sourcing, the first a general matter in archaeological studies, the second more specifically related to questions involving trade.

Pottery is useful for the archaeologist because it was easily broken. When that happened, there was usually no reason to clean up the mess, so the shards were left where they fell. The material itself was virtually indestructible and could not be reused. Different places made pottery in their own ways, and styles and decorative fashions changed over time. Also various types of clay contained elements from different places, all of which give archaeologists a good idea as to when and where a piece originated.

Unfortunately, archaeology can be of little help with organic commodities referred to as “archaeologically invisible.” These include foods – grains, spices, condiments, beverages, preserved fish, and vegetable oils – and such products as papyrus, skins, unguents, medicines, cosmetics, salt, timber, exotic woods, and many more as well as slaves. Textiles tend to disintegrate, but spindle whorls do not. Raw materials such as metals and glass leave few traces once they are converted into finished products. And if metals don’t rot and can’t be digested, most corrode, and all can be melted down, which is frequently the fate of anything made of gold or silver. Once metal is alloyed or remelted, chemical analysis cannot be used for sourcing. We must operate under the realization that archaeological evidence is usually patchy, circumstantial, and ambiguous, and conclusions drawn from it are speculative and can be overturned from new data uncovered on the next big dig. Archaeologists deal in probabilities; they are usually caut...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Some introductory musings
• 2 In the beginning
• 3 The first link
• 4 Land of gold
• 5 Into the Aegean and out of the Bronze Age
• 6 Of purple men and oil merchants
• 7 Shifting cores and peripheries in the Imperial West
• 8 When India was the center of the world
• 9 Following the Periplus
• 10 The all-water route
• 11 From the Jade Road to the Silk Road
• 12 The last link
• Epilogue
• Select bibliography