Jiirgen Osterhamme! and Niels P. Petersson Translated by Dona Geyer globalization a short history ETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRNCETON AND OXFORDThe Development and Establishment of Worldwide Connections Until 1750 Long-distance Trade, Empires, Ecumenes Soon after Immanuel Wallerstein first outlined his histori- cal theory that a “modern world-system” had emerged in the sixteenth century, the almost inevitable objection was raised that similar world systems had existed much earlier. According to some authors, such systems appeared as far back in history as five thousand years ago.’ One of the mo- tors driving this criticism was the political aim to discredit Wallerstein for his supposed “Eurocentrism.” Indeed, Wallerstein does describe the “rise of the West,” a history that leaves no doubt about the uniqueness of modern Eu- rope. Even Wallerstein would not deny this. However, if others could convincingly argue that the world has re- peatedly seen the rise and fall of world-systems through- out history, then it would be difficult to attribute such a special role to the modern history of the European- Atlantic realm. : ‘We do not have to take a position in this rather quib- bling debate in order to acknowledge that it has renewed academic interest in large-area integration in both the pre- modern and modem periods of history. Such integrationtook on various forms, of which three are particularly im- portant. The first of these was the consolidation—usually coerced in the beginning—of smaller political units into an empire. With the creation of such empires, smaller po- litical units such as kingdoms, tribal federations, or city states were swallowed up by a larger entity that was char- acterized by (a) a hierarchy of rule established for the en- tire empire, often with a monarch (emperor) at the top, (b) a military apparatus that could be deployed over vast, areas, and (c) the symbolically underscored claim that the empire's center was the center of all known civilization. Even though this entity might also have been held to- gether by some cultural “glue,” an empire was basically an. organization of centralized coercion and therefore never a “network.” If ever the military arm of the empire became paralyzed, there was always the danger that individual re- gions would declare their independence from the empire and that border areas would be conquered by aggres neighboring peoples. A second form of integration was the religious ecu- mene.? Empire and ecumene could roughly overlap, al- though this is not what usually occurred, As a rule, the area in which a religion prevailed was far larger than that of the political and military entity that emerged in connection with the religion in question. Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism could not be contained within Political borders. Only in China were the borders of its po- litical geography nearly identical to those of religious geography. At least in times when the Chinese empire was strong, it was identical for the most part with that area in which the upper class followed the moral teachings of re [WORLDWIDE CONNECTIONS UNTILI750. 33, Confucianism, which should not really be called a “reli- gion.” From here, Confucianism spread to neighboring countries such as Japan (without ever dominating the religious landscape), a land never ruled by the Chinese emperor. Consequently, an ecumene generally consisted of nu- merous political units. Their common religion did not always guarantee that they would peacefully coexist with one another, as both moder European history and the century-long tension between the Islamic lands of Iran and the Ottoman empire illustrate. In turn, an empire did not necessarily have to embrace a religion claiming uni- versal validity; it might have what amounted to simply anumber of local cults. The Mongolian empire of the thirteenth century, for example, existed without a “high’ religion. However, this was one reason why the empire existed only for a relatively short period: its “ideological yn was weak. Religious ecumenes would have re- mained very loosely organized had they only been based on a common set of spiritual beliefs. As it were, they be- came more than “imagined communities.” Two compo- nents had to evolve in order to guarantee a stable unity: the gravitation toward holy centers, namely, pilgrimages (often over long distances), and the widespread commit- ‘ment to certain rules governing ritualistic and daily life. In other words, people adhered as a matter of course to a catalog of duties that transcended geographical and even. linguistic borders. One such example would be the set times of day that every believer in the Islamic world de- votes to prayer. Often, but not always, religious ecumenes were also cemented by the study of holy scriptures such as