Top Quotes: “Silk Roads: A New History of the World” — Peter Frankopan
Introduction
“The rise of Europe sparked a fierce battle for power — and for control of the past. As rivals squared up to each other, history was reshaped to emphasise the events, themes and ideas that could be used in the ideological clashes that raged alongside the struggle for resources and for command of the sea lanes. Busts were made of leading politicians and generals wearing togas to make them look like Roman heroes of the past; magnificent new buildings were constructed in grand classical style that appropriated the glories of the ancient world as their own direct antecedents. History was twisted and manipulated to create an insistent narrative where the rise of the west was not only natural and inevitable, but a continuation of what had gone before.”
Ancient Times
“A road network that linked the coast of Asia Minor with Babylon, Susa and Persepolis enabled a distance of more than 1,600 miles to be covered in the course of a week, an achievement viewed with wonder by Herodotus, who noted that “neither snow, rain, heat nor darkness. could slow the speedy transmission of messages.””
“Greek was in daily use by officials more than a century after Alexander’s death, as tax receipts and documents relating to soldiers’ pay from Bactria from around 200 BC show. Indeed, the language penetrated deep into the Indian subcontinent. Some of the edicts issued by Maurayan ruler Ashoka, the greatest of the early Indian rulers, were made with parallel Greek translations, evidently for the benefit of the local population.
The vibrancy of the cultural exchange as Europe and Asia collided was astonishing. Statues of the Buddha started to appear only after the cult of Apollo became established in the Gundhara valley and western India. Buddhists felt threatened by the success of new religious practices and began to create their own visual images. Indeed, there is a correlation not only in the date of the earliest statues of the Buddha, but also in their appearance and design.”
“A formal system of tribute developed whereby the nomads were given luxury gifts including rice, wine and textiles in return for peace. The most important item that was given was silk, a fabric that was treasured by the nomads for its texture and its lightness as a lining for bedding and clothing. It was also a symbol of political and social power: being swathed in voluminous quantities of precious silk was an important way that the chanyu (the tribes’ supreme leader) emphasised his own status and rewarded those around him.
The sums paid in return for peace were substantial. In 1 BC, for example, the Xiongnu were given 30,000 rolls of silk and a similar amount of raw material, as well as 370 items of clothing. Some officials liked to believe that the tribe’s love of luxury would prove its undoing.”
“Extremes of temperature had to be negotiated — one reason why the Bactrian camel was so valued. Hardy enough to brave the harsh conditions of the desert, these animals have advance knowledge of deadly sandstorms, one writer observed, and “immediately stand snarling together” — a sign for the traders and caravan leaders to “cover their noses and mouths by wrapping them in felt.””
“The capture of Egypt transformed Rome’s fortunes. Now that it controlled the vast harvests of the Nile valley, the price of grain tumbled, providing a major boost to household spending power. Interest rates plummeted, falling from around 12 to 4 per cent; this in turn quickly fuelled the familiar boom that accompanies a flood of cheap capital: a surge in property prices.”
“Two millennia ago, silks made by hand in China were being worn by the rich and powerful in Carthage and other cities in the Mediterranean, while pottery manufactured in southern France could be found in England and in the Persian Gulf. Spices and condiments grown in India were being used in the kitchens of Xinjiang, as they were in those of Rome. Buildings in northern Afghanistan carried inscriptions in Greek, while horses from Central Asia were being ridden proudly thousands of miles away to the east.”
“What had been an intense internal journey, devoid of outside trappings and influences, was now supplemented by advice, help and locations designed to make the path to enlightenment and Buddhism itself more compelling. Stupas or shrines ostensibly linked to the Buddha were built, becoming points of pilgrimage, while texts setting out how to behave at such sites made the ideals behind Buddhism more real and more tangible. Bringing flowers or perfumes as an offering to a shrine would help achieve salvation, advised the Saddharmapundarika, often known as the Lotus Sutra, that dates to this period. So too would hiring musicians to “beat drums, blow horns and conches, pan-pipes and flutes, play lutes and harps, gongs, guitars and cymbals”, this would enable the devotee to attain “buddhahood.” These were deliberate efforts to make Buddhism more visible-and audible — and to enable it to compete better in an increasingly noisy religious environment.”
“Setting up the fire temples of which Kirdir was so proud not only risked antagonising local populations but also enforced doctrine and faith by force. Zoroastrianism became synonymous with Persia. It did not take much for this religion to be seen as a tool of occupation rather than a form of spiritual liberation. It was no coincidence, then, that some began to look to Christianity precisely as an antidote to the heavy-handed promotion of beliefs from the Persian centre.”
“In due course, tensions between Rome and Persia abated, and as they did so, attitudes to religion softened. This came about because Rome was forced into retreat so firmly in the fourth century that it found itself fighting for its very life. In a series of campaigns that lasted until Shapur I’s death in 379, Persia succeeded in taking key nodes along the trade and communication routes running towards the Mediterranean. Nisibis and Sinagra were recovered, and half of Armenia was annexed. Although this territorial rebalancing helped calm animosities, relations really improved when both Rome and Persia were faced with new challenges: disaster was looming from the steppes.
The world was entering a period of environmental change. In Europe, this was evidenced by rising sea levels and the emergence of malaria in the North Sea region, while in Asia from the start of the fourth century sharply reduced salinity in the Aral Sea, markedly different vegetation on the steppes (evident from high-resolution pollen analyses) and new patterns of glacier advances in the Tian Shan range all show fundamental shifts in global climatic change.
The results were devastating, attested by a remarkable letter written by a Sogdian trader in the early fourth century and found not far from Dunhuang in western China. The merchant recounted to his fellow traders that food shortages and famine had taken a heavy toll, that such catastrophe had befallen China as to be barely describable. The Emperor had fled from the capital, setting fire to his palace as he left, while the Sogdian merchant communities were gone, wiped out by starvation and death. Do not bother trying to trade there, the author advised: “there is no profit for you to gain from it.” He told of city after city being sacked. The situation was apocalyptic.
The chaos created the perfect conditions for the mosaic of steppes tribes to consolidate. These peoples inhabited the belts of land linking Mongolia with the plains of central Europe, where control of the best grazing land and of reliable water supply guaranteed considerable political power. One tribe now established themselves as masters on the steppes, crushing all before them. The Sogdian trader referred to the architects of apocalypse in his letter as the xwn. They were the Xiongnu — better known in the west as the Huns.
Between about 350 and 360 there was a huge wave of migration as tribes were shunted off their lands and driven westwards. This was most likely caused by climate change, which made life on the steppe exceptionally harsh and triggered intense competition for resources.”
““The Huns scarred the cheeks of infant boys when they were born in order to prevent facial hair growing later in life, while they spent so long on horseback that their bodies were grotesquely deformed; they looked like animals standing on their hind legs.”
Although it is tempting to dismiss such comments as signs of bigotry, examinations of skeletal remains show that the Huns practised artificial cranial deformation on their young, bandaging the skull to flatten the frontal and occipital bones by applying pressure to them. This caused the head to grow in a distinctly pointed manner. It was not just the behaviour of the Huns that was terrifyingly out of the ordinary; so was the way they looked.”
“These days, it is voguish to talk of an age of transformation and continuities that followed the sack of Rome — rather than to describe the period as the Dark Ages. And yet, as one modern scholar argues powerfully, the impact of the rape, pillage and anarchy that marked the fifth century as the Goths, Alans, Vandals and Huns rampaged across Europe and North Africa is hard to exaggerate. Literacy levels plummeted; building in stone all but disappeared, a clear sign of collapse of wealth and ambition; long-distance trade that once took pottery from factories in Tunisia as far as Iona in Scotland collapsed, replaced by local markets dealing only with exchange of petty goods; and as measured from pollution in polar ice caps in Greenland there was a major contraction in smelting work, with levels falling back to those of prehistoric times.”
“A bitter feud had been brewing for some time between two rival clerics in the west, Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, and Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, over the question of the divine and human nature of Jesus. Debates like this were not necessarily settled by fair means. Cyril was a born politician, ruthless in his methods of winning support for his position, as an extensive schedule of bribes he paid out shows: influential figures, and their wives, were treated to luxury goods like fine carpets, chairs made of ivory, expensive tablecloths and cash.
Some clerics in the east found the dispute — and the nature of its resolution — bewildering. The problem, as they saw it, lay in the sloppy translation into Greek of the Syriac term describing the incarnation — although the argument was as much about jostling for power between two leading lights in the church hierarchy, and the kudos that came from having one’s doctrinal positions accepted and adopted. The clash came to a head over the status of the Virgin, who in Nestorius’ opinion should be termed not Theotokos (the one who bears God) but Christotokos (the one who bears Christ) — in other words, the human nature of Jesus alone.
Outflanked and outmanoeuvred by Cyril, Nestorius was deposed, a move that destabilised the church as bishops hastily changed their theological positions one way and then another. Decisions made at one council could be challenged at another, as rival factions lobbied fiercely in the background. Much discussion revolved around the question of whether Jesus Christ had two natures — divine and human — inviolably united in one person and how the two were linked. The precise relationship between Jesus and God was also a matter of intense debate, revolving around the issue of whether the former was the creation of the latter, and therefore subordinate, or a manifestation of the Almighty, and hence co-equal and co-eternal. Responses to the questions were set out forcefully at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, with the articulation of a new definition of faith which was supposed to be accepted throughout the Christian world and was accompanied with the explicit threat that anyone who did not agree with it was to be expelled from the church. The church in the east reacted furiously.
This new teaching of the western church was not just wrong, the eastern bishops argued, but verged on heresy. A reworded creed was therefore issued that set out the distinct and separate natures of Jesus.”
“By the middle of the sixth century there were archbishoprics deep within Asia. Cities including Basra, Mosul and Tikrit had burgeoning Christian populations. The scale of evangelism was such that Kokhe, situated close to Ctesiphon, was served by no fewer than five dependent bishoprics. A Cities like Merv, Gundeshäpür and even Kashgar, the oasis town that was the entry point to China, had archbishops long before Canterbury did. These were major Christian centres many centuries before the first missionaries reached Poland or Scandinavia. Samarkand and Bukhara (in modern Uzbekistan) were also home to thriving Christian communities a thousand years before Christianity was brought to the Americas. Indeed, even in the Middle Ages, there were many more Christians in Asia than there were in Europe. After all, Baghdad is closer to Jerusalem than to Athens, while Teheran is nearer the Holy Land than Rome, and Samarkand is closer to it than Paris and London. Christianity’s success in the east has long been forgotten.
Its expansion owed much to the tolerance and deftness of the Sasanian rulers of Persia, who were able to pursue inclusive policies at times when the aristocracy and Zoroastrian priesthood were pacified.”
“As religions came into contact with each other, they inevitably borrowed from each other. Although it is difficult to trace this accurately, it is striking that the halo became a common visual symbol across Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Christian art, as a link between the earthly and the divine, and as a marker of radiance and illumination that was important in all these faiths. A magnificent monument at Täq-i Bustän in modern Iran depicts one ruler on horseback, surrounded by winged angels and with a ring of light around his head in a scene that would have been recognisable to followers of any of the great faiths of this region. Likewise, even poses — like the Buddhist vitarka mudra, formed from the right thumb and index finger of one hand touching, often with the other fingers outstretched — were adopted to illustrate connections with the divine, favoured particularly by Christian artists.”
“Lying at the crossroads of routes linking India to the south, Bactria to the north and Persia to the west, Bamiyan contained a complex of 751 caves supplemented by immense figures of the Buddha. Two statues, one to a height of 180 feet and another, slightly older, approximately two-thirds of the size, stood carved into vast niches in the rocks for nearly 1,500 years-until they were blown up and destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 in an act of philistinism and cultural savagery.”
The Rise of Islam
“The rise of Islam took place in a world that had seen a hundred years of turmoil, dissent and catastrophe. In 541, a century before the Prophet Muhammad began to receive a series of divine revelations, it was news of a different threat that spread panic through the Mediterranean. It moved like lightning, so fast that by the time panic set in, it was already too late. No one was spared. The scale of death was barely imaginable. According to one contemporary who lost most of his family, one city on the Egyptian border was wiped out: seven men and one ten-year-old boy were all who remained of a once bustling population; ‘the doors of houses hung open, with no one to guard the gold, silver and precious objects inside.’ Cities bore the brunt of the savage attacks, with 10,000 people being killed each day in Constantinople at one point in the mid-540s. It was not just the Roman Empire that suffered. Before long cities in the east were being ravaged too, as disaster spread along the communication and trade networks, devastating cities in Persian Mesopotamia and eventually reaching China.”
“There is also growing consensus that Muhammad was preaching to a society that was experiencing acute economic contraction as a result of the Perso-Roman Wars. The confrontation and the effective militarisation of Rome and Persia had an important impact on trade originating in or passing through the Hijaz. With government expenditure funnelled into the army and chronic pressure on the domestic economies to support the war effort, demand for luxury items must have fallen considerably. The fact that the traditional markets, above all the cities in the Levant and in Persia, were caught up in the fighting can only have further depressed the economy of southern Arabia.
Few would have felt the pinch more than the Quraysh of Mecca, whose caravans carrying gold and other valuables to Syria had been the stuff of legend. They also lost their lucrative contract to supply the Roman army with the leather needed for saddles, strapping for boots and shields, belts and more besides. Their livelihood too may have been further threatened by a decline in pilgrims visiting the haram, an important shrine dedicated to pagan gods located in Mecca. The site was centered on a series of idols — reportedly including one “of Abraham as an old man” — but the most important of which was a red agate statue of a man with a golden right hand and with seven divinatory arrows around it. As guardians of Mecca, the Quraysh did well from selling food and water to visitors and performing rituals for pilgrims. With upheaval in Syria and Mesopotamia having repercussions further beyond, and disruption in so many different aspects of daily life, it was not surprising that Muhammad’s warnings of imminent doomsday struck a powerful chord.
Muhammad’s preaching certainly fell on fertile ground. He was offering a bold and coherent explanation for traumatic levels of upheaval with immense passion and conviction. Not only were the epiphanies he had received powerful, so too were the warnings he issued. Those who followed his teaching would find that their land would be fruitful and burst with grain; those who did not would see their crops fail, Spiritual salvation would bring economic rewards.”
“Muhammad’s prospects did not look promising when he was holed up in Yathrib, with his small group of early. followers. Efforts to evangelise and add to the umma — the community of believers — were slow, and the situation was precarious as forces closed in from Mecca to attack the renegade preacher. Muhammad and his followers turned to armed resistance, targeting caravans in a series of increasingly ambitious raids. Momentum built up quickly. Success against superior numbers and against the odds such as at the battle of Badr in 624 provided compelling evidence that Muhammad and his men enjoyed divine protection; lucrative spoils likewise made onlookers take notice. An intense round of negotiations with leading members of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca finally resulted in an understanding being reached, since known as the treaty of al-Hudaybiya, which provided for a ten-year truce between Mecca and Yathrib, and lifted restrictions previously placed on Muhammad’s supporters. The number of converts now began to swell.”
“The faithful had previously been told to face Jerusalem when they prayed. In 628, however, following further revelation, it was apparently announced that this instruction had been a test and should now be amended: the direction or gibla to face when praying was nowhere else but Mecca.
Not only that, but the Ka’ba, the old focal point of the polytheistic, pagan religion in Arabia, was identified as the cornerstone for prayer and pilgrimage within the city. This was revealed as having been set up by Ishmael, the son of Abraham and the putative ancestor of twelve Arab tribes. Visitors to the city were told to process around the sacred site, chanting God’s name. By doing so, they would be fulfilling the order given to Ishmael that men should be told to come from Arabia and from faraway lands, on camel and on foot, to make a pilgrimage to the place where a black stone at the heart of the monument had been brought by an angel from heaven. By confirming the Ka’ba as sacred, continuity was affirmed with the past, generating a powerful sense of cultural familiarity. In addition to the spiritual benefits offered by the new faith, there were obvious advantages in establishing Mecca as a religious centre par excellence politically, economically and culturally. It defused antagonism with the Quraysh to the point that senior members of the tribe pledged their allegiance to Muhammad and to Islam.”
“Willing to sanction material gain in return for loyalty and obedience, Muhammad declared that goods seized from non-believers were to be kept by the faithful. This closely aligned economic and religious interests.
Those who converted to Islam early were rewarded with a proportionately greater share of the prizes, in what was effectively a pyramid system. This was formalised in the early 630s with the creation of a diwan, a formal office to oversee the distribution of booty. A share of 20 per cent was to be presented to the leader of the faithful, the Caliph, but the bulk was to be shared by his supporters and those who participated in successful attacks, Early adopters benefited most from new conquests while new believers were keen to enjoy the fruits of success. The result was a highly efficient motor to drive expansion.”
“Two other important reasons also help explain the triumph of Islam in the early part of the seventh century: the support provided by Christians, and above all that given by Jews.
In a world where religion seems to be the cause of conflict and bloodshed, it is easy to overlook the ways in which the great faiths learnt and borrowed from each other. To the modern eye, Christianity and Islam seem to be diametrically opposed, but in the early years of their coexistence relations were not so much pacific as warmly encouraging. And if anything, the relationship between Islam and Judaism was even more striking for its mutual compatibility. The support of the Jews in the Middle East was vital for the propagation and spread of the word of Muhammad.
Although the material for the early Islamic history is complicated, an unmistakable and striking theme can be consistently teased from the literature of this period — whether Arabic, Armenian, Syriac, Greek or Hebrew — as well as from the archaeological evidence: Muhammad and his followers went to great lengths to assuage the fears of Jews and Christians as Muslim control expanded.”
“Word soon began to spread among Jewish communities that Muhammad and his followers were allies. An extraordinary text written in North Africa in the late 630s records how news of the Arab advances was being welcomed by Jews in Palestine because it meant a loosening of the Roman — and Christian — grip on power in the region. There was heated speculation that what was going on might be a fulfilment of ancient prophecies: “they were saying that the prophet had appeared, coming with the Saracens, and that he was proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ that was to come.” This, some Jews concluded, was the coming of the Messiah — perfectly timed to show that Jesus Christ was a fraud and that the last days of man had arrived. Not all were persuaded.”
““Do not be afraid,” the angel reassured him, for God is “bringing about the kingdom of [the Arabs] only for the purpose of delivering you from that wicked [Rome]. In accordance with His will, He shall raise up over them a prophet. And he will conquer the land for them, and they shall come and restore it with grandeur.” Muhammad was seen as the means of fulfilling Jewish messianic hopes. These were lands that belonged to the descendants of Abraham — which meant solidarity between Arab and Jews.”
“In spite, or perhaps because of, the relentless jostling for position and authority at the centre of the Muslim world, the peripheries continued to see astonishing expansion. Commanders who were happier in the field than fighting political and theological battles led armies ever deeper into Central Asia, the Caucasus and North Africa. In the case of the latter, the advance seemed relentless. After crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, the armies flooded through Spain and into France, where they met resistance in 732 somewhere between Poitiers and Tours, barely 200 miles from Paris. In a battle that subsequently acquired a near-mythical status as the moment the Islamic surge was halted, Charles Martel led a force that inflicted a crucial defeat. The fate of Christian Europe hung by a thread, later historians argued, and had it not been for the heroism and skill of the defenders, the continent would surely have become Muslim. The truth is that, while the defeat was certainly a setback, it did not mean that new attacks would not be unleashed in the future — if, that is, there were prizes worth winning. And as far as western Europe was concerned in this period, these prizes were few and far between: wealth and rewards lay elsewhere.”
“While the Muslim world took delight in innovation, progress and new ideas, much of Christian Europe withered in the gloom, crippled by a lack of resources and a dearth of curiosity.”
“In the case of Bukhara in the eighth century for example, the governor announced that all those who showed up to Friday prayer would receive the princely sum of two dirhams — an incentive that attracted the poor and persuaded them to accept the new faith.”
“The practices and beliefs of others on the steppe were no less surprising. There were tribes who worshipped snakes, others who worshipped fish and others still who prayed to birds after becoming convinced that they had triumphed in battle thanks to the intervention of a flock of cranes. Then there were those who wore a wooden phallus round their necks that they would kiss for good luck before setting out on a journey. These were members of the Bashgird tribe — a people of legendary savagery, who would carry the heads of their enemies around with them as trophies. They had appalling habits, including eating lice and fleas: Ibn Fadlan saw one man find a flea in his clothes, “and having crushed it with his fingernail, he devoured it and on noticing me, said: Delicious!””
“A delegation was therefore dispatched with the aim of converting the Khazars. It was led by Constantine, best known by his Slavonic name Cyril and for the creation of the eponymous alphabet he devised for the Slavs-Cyrillic.”
“Despite Constantine’s brilliance — he was told by the khagan that his comments about scripture were as “sweet as honey”. — the embassy did not have the desired effect, for the Khazar leader decided that Judaism was the right religion for his people.
Remarkably, a copy of the khagan’s reply to this letter survives, with the Khazar ruler explaining his tribe’s conversion to Judaism. The decision to convert, wrote the khagan, was the result of the great wisdom of one of his predecessors, who had brought delegations representing different faiths to present the case for each. Having pondered how best to establish the facts, the ruler had asked the Christians whether Islam or Judaism was the better faith; when they replied that the former was certainly worse than the latter, he asked the Muslims whether Christianity or Judaism was preferable. When they lambasted Christianity and also replied that Judaism was the less bad of the two, the Khazar ruler announced that he had reached a conclusion: both had admitted that “the religion of the Israelites is better,” he declared, so “trusting in the mercies of God and the power of the Almighty, I choose the religion of Israel, that is, the religion of Abraham.” With that, he sent the delegations home, circumcised himself and then ordered his servants, his attendants and all his people to do the same.”
Slavery
“In the Viking age the bravest and toughest men did not head west; they headed east and south. Many made fortunes and won fame not just at home but in the new lands that they conquered. The mark that they left, furthermore, was not minimal and transient, as it was in North America. In the east, they were to found a new state, named after the traders, travellers and raiders who took to the great water systems linking the Baltic with the Caspian and Black Seas. These men were known as Rus’, or rhos, perhaps due to their distinctive red hair, or more likely thanks. to their prowess with the oar. They were the fathers of Russia.
It was the lure of trade and riches in the Islamic world that initially spurred Vikings to set off on the journey south.”
“Slavery was a vital part of Viking society and an important part of its economy and not just in the east. Considerable literary and material evidence from the British Isles shows that one of the most common purposes of longship attacks was not the indiscriminate rape and pillage of popular imagination, but taking captives alive. “Save us, O Lord,” one ninth-century prayer from France implores, “from the savage Norsemen who destroy our country; they take away…our young, virgin boys. We beg you to save us from this evil.” Shackles, manacles and locks have been found along slaving routes especially in northern and eastern Europe, while new research suggests that holding pens previously thought to have been for livestock were in fact designed to corral people who were due to be sold in places like Novgorod, where the market lay at the intersection of the High Street and Slave Street.”
“Many slaves were destined for Scandinavia. As one famous Old Norse poem, “The Lay of Rigr” (“Rigsbula”), puts it, society was divided into three simple categories: aristocracy (jarlar), freemen (karlar) and slaves (roelar). But many others were sent to where good money was paid for fine specimens, and nowhere was there greater demand, nowhere was there greater spending power than the buoyant and wealthy markets in Atil that ultimately fed Baghdad and other cities in Asia, as well as elsewhere in the Muslim world, including North Africa and Spain.
The ability and willingness to pay a high price provided rich rewards and laid the basis for stimulating the economy of northern Europe. To judge from the coin finds, there was a surge in trade in the latter part of the ninth century, a time of major growth in the Baltic, southern Sweden and Denmark, with towns like Hedeby, Birka, Wolin and Lund expanding rapidly.”
“It was the sale of slaves that paid for the imports that began to flood into Europe in the ninth century.”
“All over Italy, when they meet, people say to each other, “schiavo,” from a Venetian dialect. “Ciao,” as it is more commonly spelt, does not mean “hello”; it means’ “I am your slave.’”
“Among those with no compunction about human trafficking were the inhabitants of an unpromising lagoon located at the northern point of the Adriatic. The wealth it accumulated from slave trading and human suffering was to lay the basis for its transformation into one of the crown jewels of the medieval Mediterranean: Venice.
The Venetians proved to be singularly successful when it came to business. A dazzling city rose up from the marshes, adorned with glorious churches and beautiful palazzi, built on the lucrative proceeds of prolific trading with the east. While it stands today as a glorious vision of the past, the spark for Venice’s growth came from its willingness to sell future generations into captivity. Merchants became involved in the slave trade as early as the second half of the eighth century, at the very dawn of the new settlement of Venice, though it took time for the benefits and the profits to flow through in volume. That they eventually did so is indicated by a series of treaties drawn up a century later, in which the Venetians agreed to be bound by restrictions on the sale of slaves, including returning slaves to other towns in Italy who had been brought to Venice illegally for sale. These negotiations were in part a reaction to the growing success of the city.”
The Crusades
“Terms were struck which gave fabulous potential benefits in return for help. As reward for taking part in the siege of Acre in 1100, for instance, the newly arrived Venetians were promised a church and market square in every city captured by the Crusaders, as well as one-third of all plunder taken from the enemy and immunity from all taxes. It was the perfect example of what one scholar has termed the classic Venetian blend of “piety and greed.””
“This was ostensibly a time of faith and intense religious conviction, a period marked by self-sacrifice in the name of Christianity. But religion had to jostle alongside realpolitik and financial concerns and the church hierarchy knew it. When the Byzantine Emperor John II tried to assert his claim over Antioch, the Pope issued a declaration to all the faithful, telling them that anyone who helped the Byzantines would face eternal damnation. This had everything to do with keeping Rome’s allies happy, and little to do with theology or doctrine.
But the best example of the blending of the spiritual and material came after the loss of Edessa to the Muslims in 1144 another major reversal for the Crusaders. Calls went out across Europe for reinforcements to take part in an expedition that would become the Second Crusade. The cheerleading was led by Bernard of Clairvaux, a charismatic and energetic figure, who was realistic enough to understand that the remission of sins and the possibility of salvation through martyrdom might not persuade everyone to head east. “To those of you who are merchants, men quick to seek a bargain,” he wrote in a letter that was circulated widely, “let me point out the advantages of this great opportunity. Do not miss them!””
“Ironically, the basis for this growth in the age of the Crusades lay in the stability and good relations between the Muslim world and the Christians, both in the Holy Land itself and elsewhere. Although there were regular clashes in the decades after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, it was only in the late 1170s that there was a dramatic escalation of tension. On the whole, Crusaders learnt how to deal with the majority Muslim populations that came under their sway, and with those further afield. Indeed, the King of Jerusalem regularly brought his own lords to heel, preventing them from launching reckless forays on passing caravans or on neighbouring cities that might antagonise local leaders or demand a major reaction from Baghdad or Cairo.
Some new arrivals to the Holy Land found this hard to understand and were a constant source of problems as a result, as local observers recognised. Newcomers could be incredulous that trade with the “infidel” was taking place on a daily basis, and took time to realise that in practice things were not as black and white as they had been painted back in Europe. In time, prejudices wore off: westerners who had been in the east for a while “are much better than those recently arrived,” wrote one Arabic author who was appalled by the crude and uncouth habits of new arrivals — as well as by their attitudes to anyone who was not Christian.
There were Muslim parallels to this way of thinking too. One fatwa, or declaration, issued in the 1140s urged Muslims neither to travel to the west nor trade with the Christians. “If we travel to their country the price of commodities will rise, and they will gather from us huge sums of money which they will use to fight Muslims and raid their lands.” By and large, however, for all the fiery rhetoric on both sides, relations were remarkably calm and considered. Indeed, in western Europe, there was considerable curiosity about Islam. Even at the time of the First Crusade, it had not taken long for some to form positive opinions about the Muslim Turks. “If only the Turks had stood firm in the faith of Christ and Christendom,” wrote the author of one of the most popular histories of the expedition to Jerusalem wistfully perhaps even hinting at the previous religious background of the Seljuks before they became Muslims; “you could not find stronger or braver or more skilful soldiers.”
It was not long either before the scientific and intellectual achievements of the Muslim world were being actively sought out and devoured by scholars in the west.”
“In 1202, the fleet arrived at Zara on the Dalmatian coast, a city that had been at the centre of a long-running struggle between Venice and Hungary. As it became clear that an attack was imminent, the confused citizens hoisted banners marked with crosses over the walls, assuming that there had been a chronic misunderstanding and refusing to believe that a Christian force would attack a Christian city without provocation — and against the express orders of Pope Innocent III.”
“As the Crusaders considered how to justify such actions and argued about what to do next, a golden opportunity presented itself when one of the claimants to the throne in Byzantium offered to reward the army generously if they helped him take power in Constantinople. The forces that had originally set out for Egypt under the impression that they were heading for Jerusalem found themselves by the walls of the Byzantine capital, weighing up their options. As negotiations with factions inside the city dragged on, discussion among the Crusaders turned to how to take the city, and above all how to divide it and the rest of the empire between them.”
“On the eve of the battle, bishops reassured the westerners that the war “was a righteous one and that they should certainly attack the [Byzantines].” Referring to the disputes about doctrine that surfaced with convenient regularity when there were other, more material issues at stake, the priests said that the inhabitants of Constantinople could be assaulted on the basis that they had declared that “the law of Rome counted for nothing and called all who believed in it dogs.” The Byzantines, the Crusaders were told, were worse than the Jews; “they are the enemies of God.”
When the walls were breached, chaotic scenes followed as the westerners rampaged through the city. Whipped into a religious frenzy by the poisonous words that had been dripped into their ears, they plundered and desecrated the city’s churches with particular thoroughness. They stormed the treasuries of Hagia Sophia.”
“Constantinople’s physical riches were spirited away to churches, cathedrals, monasteries and private collections all over Western Europe. Sculptures of horses that had stood proudly at the Hippodrome were loaded on to ships and transported to Venice where they were mounted above the entrance to St. Mark’s Cathedral; innumerable relics and precious objects were likewise transported to the city, where they remain today, admired by tourists as examples of fine Christian craftsmanship rather than war booty.”
The Mongols
“News came through that a large army was marching from deep inside Asia to help the western knights against Egypt. Crushing all opposition as they advanced, they were heading to the Crusaders’ relief. The identity of the inbound relief force was immediately obvious: these were the men of Prester John, the ruler of a vast and phenomenally wealthy kingdom whose inhabitants included the Amazons, Brahmans, Lost Tribes of Israel and an array of mythical and semi-mythical creatures. Prester John ostensibly ruled over a kingdom that was not only Christian but as close to heaven on earth as possible.”
“What was heading towards the Crusaders and towards Europe was not the road to heaven, but a path that seemed to lead straight to hell. Galloping along it were the Mongols.”
“The sack of one city was calculated to encourage others to submit peacefully and quickly; theatrically gruesome deaths were used to persuade other rulers that it was better to negotiate than to offer resistance.”
“Curiously, given their reputation, one explanation for the astounding successes of the Mongols in early thirteenth-century China, Central Asia and beyond was that they were not always seen as oppressors. And with good reason: in the case of Khwarazm, for example, the local population had been ordered to pay a year’s taxes up front to fund the construction of new fortifications around Samarkand and to pay for squadrons of archers against an imminent Mongol attack. Putting such strain on households hardly retained goodwill. In contrast, the Mongols invested lavishly in the infrastructure of some of the cities they captured. One Chinese monk who visited Samarkand soon after its capture was amazed to see how many craftsmen there were from China and how many people were being drawn in from the surrounding region and further afield to help manage the fields and orchards that had previously been neglected.
It was a pattern repeated time and again: money poured into towns that were rebuilt and re-energised, with particular attention paid to championing the arts, crafts and production. Blanket images of the Mongols as barbaric destroyers are wide of the mark, and represent the misleading legacies of the histories written later which emphasised ruin and devastation above all else.
This slanted view of the past provides a notable lesson in how useful it is for leaders who have a view to posterity to patronise historians who write sympathetically of their age of empire — something the Mongols conspicuously failed to do.”
“In 1221, armies under the command of two of Genghis Khan’s sons advanced like lightning through Afghanistan and Persia, ravaging all before them. Nishäpur, Herat and Balk were taken, while Merv was razed to the ground and its entire population murdered, according to one Persian historian, save for a group of 400 artisans who were brought back to the east to work at the Mongol court. The ground was stained red with the blood of the dead: a small group of survivors apparently counted the corpses and put the number of the dead at more than 1.3 million. Breathless reports of similar death tolls elsewhere have convinced modern commentators to talk in terms of genocide, mass murder and the slaughter of 90 per cent of the population.”
“The Pope, Gregory IX, took the step of announcing that any who helped defend Hungary would receive the same indulgence as that granted to Crusaders. His offer met with little enthusiasm: the German Emperor and the Doge of Venice were more than aware of what the consequences would be if they tried to help and ended up on the losing side. If the Mongols had now chosen to continue westward, as one modern scholar puts it, “it is unlikely that they would have encountered any coordinated opposition.”Europe’s moment of reckoning had arrived.
With a gall that is almost admirable, some contemporary historians now began to claim that the Mongols had been halted by brave resistance, or even defeated in imaginary battles that seemed to become more real as time went on. In fact, the Mongols were simply uninterested in what western Europe had to offer — at least for the time being.”
“Béla — and Europe — were saved by a stroke of great fortune: Ögödei, the Great Khan, suddenly died. To the devout, it was obvious that their prayers had been answered. To high-ranking Mongols, it was vital to be present at and participate in the selection of the man who should take the mantle of leadership. There was no such thing as primogeniture. Rather the choice of who should succeed to the position of highest authority rested on who made their case best and loudest in person to a conclave of senior figures. The decision of whom to back could make or break commanders’ lives and careers: if a patron rose to the top, the share of the rewards could be disproportionately high. This was not the moment to be chasing troublesome monarchs through the Balkans. It was time to be at home, watching the situation unfurl. And with that, the Mongols took their foot off the throat of Christian Europe.
Although it is the name of Genghis Khan that is synonymous with the great conquests of Asia and the attacks on lands far beyond, the Mongol leader died in 1227 after the initial phase of empire building in China and Central Asia had been carried out, but before the dramatic attacks on Russia and the Middle East and the invasion that brought Europe to its knees. It was his son Ögödei who oversaw the expansion that massively increased the extent of Mongol lordship, masterminding campaigns that extended into the Korean peninsula, Tibet, Pakistan and northern India — as well as in the west. It was Ögödei who deserved much of the credit for the Mongol achievement, and equally some of the responsibility for its temporary halt: for his death in 1241 provided crucial breathing space.”
“The Mongols decided not to attack for different reasons: neither Anatolia nor Europe was the focus of their attention simply because there were fatter and better targets elsewhere. Expeditions were sent to what remained of China until it capitulated completely in the late thirteenth century, at which point the ruling Mongol dynasty adopted the imperial title of Yüan and founded a new city on the site of the old city of Zhongdu. This now became the Mongol capital, designed to crown the achievements of taking control of the entire region between the Pacific and the Mediterranean. The new metropolis has retained its importance ever since: Beijing.”
“By the later thirteenth century, the Mongol world had become so vast, stretching from the Pacific to the Black Sea, from the steppes into northern India to the Persian Gulf, that strains and cracks began to appear. The empire divided into four main branches, which became increasingly hostile to each other.”
“In the space of a few decades, in the European mind the Mongols had gone from being saviours to demons and back again. Thoughts that the end of the world was nigh had given way to the belief that a new beginning was at hand.
The grandiose plans came to nothing. Just as Crusade after Crusade had delivered less than promised, all the fine talk of an alliance that spanned thousands of miles and involved the fate of global religions did not produce any meaningful results. For Edward I, it turned out that there were problems closer to home that were more important. Rather than forming a grand alliance with the Mongols against Muslim Egypt, the English king was forced to head to Scotland to put down the rebellion of William Wallace. With other European monarchs similarly preoccupied, the Christian presence in the Holy Land finally came to an end: two centuries after the knights of the First Crusade had captured Jerusalem, the last footholds gave way. Sidon, Tyre, Beirut and Acre surrendered to the Mamlüks in 1291. It turned out that goodwill and enthusiasm alone were not enough to support, save or hold on to the locations that lay at the heart of the Christian faith.”
“The Crusades ultimately failed: attempts to colonise the most important locations in Christendom had not worked. The same could not be said, however, for the Italian city-states that succeeded where Christian knights had faltered. While devout knights had been forced out, the maritime states simply readjusted and burrowed ever deeper into Asia. There was no way they would relinquish their position. On the contrary, after the loss of the Holy Land, the issue for them was not about reducing their reach. It was about extending it.”
“Sensitive pricing and a deliberate policy of keeping taxes low were symptomatic of the bureaucratic nous of the Mongol Empire, which gets too easily lost beneath the images of violence and wanton destruction. In fact, the Mongols’ success lay not in indiscriminate brutality but in their willingness to compromise and cooperate, thanks to the relentless effort to sustain a system that renewed central control. Although later Persian historians were highly vocal in asserting that the Mongols were disengaged from the process of administering their empire, preferring to leave such mundane tasks to others, recent research has revealed just how involved they were in the detail of everyday life. The great achievement of Genghis Khan and his successors was not the ransacking of popular imagination but the meticulous checks put in place that enabled one of the greatest empires in history to flourish for centuries to come. It was no coincidence, then, that Russian came to include a broad range of loan words, drawn directly from the vocabulary relating to Mongol administration — and particularly those to do with trade and communication: words for profit (barysh), money (dengi) and the treasury (kazna) all originated from contact with the new masters from the east. So too did the postal system in Russia, based on the Mongol method of delivering messages quickly and efficiently from one side of the empire to another through a network of relay stations.
Such was the genius of the Mongols, in fact, that the platform for long-term success was established right from the very beginning. As Genghis Khan and his successors expanded their reach, they had to incorporate new peoples within a coherent system. Tribes were deliberately broken down, with loyalties refocused on attachments to military units and above all allegiance to the Mongol leadership itself. Distinguishing tribal features, such as how different peoples wore their hair, were stamped out, with standardised fashions enforced instead. As a matter of course, those who submitted or were conquered were dispersed across Mongol-controlled territory to weaken bonds of language, kinship and identity and to aid the assimilation process. New names were introduced in place of ethnic labels to underline the new way of doing things. All this in turn was reinforced by a centralised system of rewards where booty and tribute were shared out: proximity to the ruling dynasty counted.”
“He was in charge of gathering levies and taxes to fill the Mongol treasuries, evidently doing well for himself in the process. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of trusted figures like Ivan resulted in the emergence of a pre-eminent dynasty which could be relied on and which prospered at the expense of rival families. The effects were deep and long lasting: some scholars have argued that it was the Mongols’ system of government that laid the ground for Russia’s transformation into a fully fledged autocracy by empowering a small handful of individuals to lord it over the population, as well as over their peers.”
“In China, meanwhile, culinary habits changed to adopt flavours, ingredients and cooking styles favoured by the new overlords from the steppes. Texts like the Yinshan zhengyao, a dietary guidebook listing “Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Food and Drink,” include many dishes influenced by nomad cuisine and tastes, heavily emphasising the boiling of food as the preferred means of cooking. Using every piece of an animal carcass — second nature to those dealing with livestock for their living — became part of the mainstream.”
The Plague
“That Pegolotti himself was not from Venice or Genoa, the two powerhouses of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, but from Florence was itself revealing. There were new upstarts eager to get a piece of the action in the east — such as Lucca and Siena, whose traders could be found in Tabriz, Ayas and other trading points in the east — buying spices, silks and fabrics from China, India and Persia as well as elsewhere. The sense of new horizons opening up was nowhere better expressed than on the map that hung in the Great Council Hall of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena: designed to be rotated by hand, the chart showed the world centred on the Tuscan town, setting out distances, transport networks and Siena’s very own network of agents, contacts and intermediaries stretching deep into Asia. Even obscure towns in the centre of Italy were starting to look to the east for inspiration and profits and thinking in terms of establishing their own connections to the Silk Roads.”
“As well as being home to livestock and nomads for thousands of years, the Eurasian steppe also forms one of the world’s great plague basins, with a string of linked foci stretching from the Black Sea as far as Manchuria. The ecological conditions of arid and semi-arid landscape lend themselves perfectly to the spread of the bacterium Yersinia pestis that is transmitted from one host to another principally by fleas through blood feeding. Plague was spread most effectively and quickly by rodent hosts such as rats, although camels could also become infected and play an important role in its transmission — as research closely linked to the Soviet Union’s biological-warfare programme during the Cold War period showed. Although plague can be spread by consuming or handling host tissues or by inhaling infected materials, transmission to humans is most commonly effected by fleas vomiting bacilli into the bloodstream before feeding, or by bacilli in their faces contaminating abrasions in the skin. Bacilli are then carried to the lymph nodes, such as in the armpit or the groin, multiplying rapidly to cause swellings or buboes that Boccaccio, who lived through the plague, described as growing as large as an apple, or the size of an egg “more or less.” Other organs are then infected in turn; haemorrhaging causes internal bleeding and the distinctive black bags of pus and blood that make the disease as visually terrifying as it is lethal.”
“So many began to die across towns and villages in England that the Pope in “his clemency granted a plenary indulgence for confessed sins.” According to one contemporary estimate, scarcely a tenth of the population survived; several sources report that so many perished that there were not enough people to bury the dead.”
“Europe lost at least one-third of its population to the plague, and perhaps much more, with conservative estimates of the number of dead placed somewhere around the 25 million mark in an assumed total population of 75 million.”
“Despite the horror it caused, the plague turned out to be the catalyst for social and economic change that was so profound that far from marking the death of Europe, it served as its making. The transformation provided an important pillar in the rise — and the triumph — of the west. It did so in several phases. First was the top-to-bottom reconfiguration of how social structures functioned. Chronic depopulation in the wake of the Black Death had the effect of sharply increasing wages because of the accentuated value of labour. So many died before the plague finally began to peter out in the early 1350s that one source noted a “shortage of servants, craftsmen, and workmen, and agricultural workers and labourers.” This gave considerable negotiating powers to those who had previously been at the lower end of the social and economic spectrum. Some simply “turned their noses up at employment, and could scarcely be persuaded to serve the eminent unless for triple wages.” This was hardly an exaggeration: empirical data shows that urban wages rose dramatically in the decades after the Black Death.
The empowerment of the peasantry, of labourers and of women was matched by a weakening of the propertied classes, as landlords were forced into accepting lower rents for their holdings deciding it was better to receive some revenue than nothing at all. Lower rents, fewer obligations and longer leases all had the effect of tilting power and benefits towards the peasantry and urban tenants. This was further enhanced by a fall in interest rates, which declined noticeably across Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The results were remarkable. With wealth now more evenly distributed through society, demand for luxury goods — imported or otherwise — soared as a result of more consumers being able to purchase items that had previously been unaffordable. Spending patterns were affected by other demographic changes that the plague had produced, notably the shift in favour of the working young, who were best placed to take advantage of new opportunities opening up before them. Already less disposed to saving because of their close shave with death, the new up-and-coming generation, better paid than their parents and with better prospects for the future, set about spending their wealth on things they were interested in — not least of which was fashion. This in turn stimulated investment in and the rapid development of a European textile industry.”
“As recent research based on skeletal remains in graveyards in London demonstrates, the rise in wealth led to better diets and to better general health. Indeed, statistical modelling based on these results even suggests that one of the effects of the plague was a substantial improvement in life expectancy. London’s post-plague population was considerably healthier than it had been before the Black Death struck – raising life expectancy sharply.
Economic and social development did not occur evenly across Europe. Change took place most rapidly in the north and the northwest of the continent, partly because this region was starting from a lower economic point than the more developed south. This meant that the interests of landlord and tenant were more closely aligned and therefore more likely to end in collaboration and in solutions that suited both parties. It was also significant, however, that the cities in the north did not carry the same ideological and political baggage as many of those in the Mediterranean. Centuries of regional and long-term commerce had created institutions such as guilds that controlled competition and were designed to hand monopolistic positions to defined groups of individuals. Northern Europe, by contrast, began to boom precisely because competition was not restricted — causing urbanisation and economic growth to happen at a markedly faster rate than in the south.
Different behavioural profiles also emerged across different parts of Europe. In Italy, for example, women were either less tempted or were less able to enter the labour markets, and continued to marry at the same age and to have as many children as before the outbreak of plague. This contrasted sharply with the situation in the northern countries, where the demographic contraction gave women the chance to become wage-earners. One effect of this was to raise the age at which women tended to get married — which in turn had longer-term implications for family sizes.”
“ The transformations triggered by the Black Death laid foundations that were to prove crucial for the long-term rise of northwestern Europe. Although the effects of the divergence between parts of Europe would take time to evolve, the systemic flexibility, the openness to competition and, perhaps most importantly of all, the sense of awareness in the north that geography counted against them and that a strong work ethic was required in order to turn a profit, all laid the basis for the later transformation of the European economies in the early modern period.”
“It was not just Venice that flourished. So too did the towns dotted along the Dalmatian coast which served as stopping points on the outbound and inbound journeys. Ragusa, modern Dubrovnik, saw extraordinary levels of prosperity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Disposable wealth quadrupled between 1300 and 1450, spiralling up so quickly that a cap on dowries was enforced to stop payments that were rising rapidly; the city was so awash with cash that steps were taken partially to abolish slavery: in times of such plenty, it seemed wrong to hold fellow humans in bondage and not to pay them for their work. Like Venice, Ragusa was busy building its own trading network, developing extensive contacts with Spain, Italy, Bulgaria and even India, where a colony was established in Goa, centred on the church of St. Blaise, Ragusa’s patron saint.”
The “New” World
“One example of a man who fretted over the future of the faith was Christopher Colón. Although by his own calculations there were still 155 years to go before the Second Coming, Colon was outraged that little more than lip-service was being paid to matters of religion by the “faithful.” and was particularly appalled by Europe’s lack of concern for Jerusalem. With a fervour bordering on obsession, he drew up plans to launch a new campaign to liberate the Holy City, while at the same time developing a second fixation about the precious metals, spices and gems that were so abundant and cheap in Asia. If only it were possible to get better access to them, he concluded, they could in turn easily fund a major expedition to liberate Jerusalem.”
“The African slave trade exploded in the fifteenth century: it proved highly lucrative from the outset. There was considerable demand for manpower to work on farms and plantations in Portugal — with slaves brought back in such numbers that the crown prince who sponsored the first expeditions was compared to no less a figure than Alexander the Great for having forged a new age of empire. It was not long before the houses of the wealthy were described as “being full to overflowing of male and female slaves,” allowing their owners to use their capital elsewhere and become even richer.”
“European settlement was expensive, was not always economically rewarding and was easier said than done: persuading families to leave their loved ones behind was hard enough, but high death rates and testing local conditions made this even more difficult. One solution had been to send orphans and convicts forcibly to places like São Tomé, in conjunction with a system of benefits and incentives, such as the provision of a “male or female slave for personal service” to create a population base on which a sustainable administrative system could be built.”
“The task now was to reinvent the past. The demise of the old imperial capital presented an unmistakable opportunity for the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome to be claimed by new adoptive heirs something that was done with gusto. In truth, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal and England had nothing to do with Athens and the world of the ancient Greeks, and were largely peripheral in the history of Rome from its earliest days to its demise. This was glossed over as artists, writers and architects went to work, borrowing themes, ideas and texts from antiquity to provide a narrative that chose selectively from the past to create a story which over time became not only increasingly plausible but standard. So although scholars have long called this period the Renaissance, this was no rebirth. Rather, it was a Naissance — a birth. For the first time in history, Europe lay at the heart of the world.”
“Europe became a clearing house for bullion that came in from spectacularly rich sources, such as the mine at Potosi, high in the Andes in what is now Bolivia, which turned out to be the single largest silver strike in history, accounting for more than half of global production for over a century. New techniques for extracting the metal using a mercury-amalgam process were developed, making mining cheaper, quicker and even more profitable. The discovery enabled an extraordinary acceleration in the redistribution of resources from South America, through the Iberian peninsula and on to Asia.”
“The opening up of new trade routes and the enthusiastic purchasing ability of Europe meant that there was a sudden influx of hard currency into India. A considerable proportion of this was spent buying horses. Even in the fourteenth century, we have reports of thousands of horses being sold each year by dealers in Central Asia. Horses bred on the steppes were popular, not least because they were bigger and better fed than those reared on the subcontinent itself, which were “by nature so small that, when a man is upon them, his feet nearly touch the ground.”With European silver pouring in to buy goods from the east, much was spent buying the best steeds, for reasons of prestige, for social differentiation and for ceremonial events — rather as money that has flowed more recently into oil-rich states has been spent on the best rides: Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other fine cars.”
“Most horses came from Central Asia. With money flowing into India, one contemporary commentator told of eye-wateringly high margins as the inflationary pressures of a surge in demand outstripping supply kicked in. Rising revenues prompted investment in building bridges, upgrading caravanserais and ensuring the security of major routes running north. The result was that the cities of Central Asia enjoyed another burst of life and splendour.”
“[The Taj Mahal] represents something else too: globalised international trade that brought such wealth to the Mughal ruler that he was able to contemplate this extraordinary gesture to his beloved spouse. His ability to complete it stemmed from the profound shifts in the world’s axis, for Europe and India’s glory came at the expense of the Americas.
Shah Jahan’s lavish expression of sorrow at his wife’s death finds a neat parallel with that articulated on the other side of the globe not long before. The Mayan Empire had also been flourishing before the arrival of the Europeans. “Then there was no sickness; they had then no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no consumption. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here. They brought shameful things when they came,” was how one author writing not long afterwards put it. Gold and silver taken from the Americas found its way to Asia; it was this redistribution of wealth that enabled the Taj Mahal to be built. Not without irony, one of the glories of India was the result of the suffering of “Indians” on the other side of the world.”
“In 1571, the foundation of Manila by the Spanish changed the rhythm of global trade; for a start it followed a programme of colonisation whose character was markedly less destructive for the local population than had been the case after the first Atlantic crossings. Originally established as a base from which to acquire spices, the settlement quickly became a major metropolis and an important connection point between Asia and the Americas. Goods now began to move across the Pacific without passing through Europe first.”
“Elizabeth’s approaches to the Sultan were underpinned by the prospect of opportunities that had opened up following the Turkish advance into Europe. The Pope had long been urging Christian rulers to rally to prevent further losses, warning gravely that “if Hungary is conquered, Germany will be next, and if Dalmatia and Illyria are overrun, Italy will be invaded.” With England resolutely ploughing its own furrow, developing good relations with Constantinople seemed sensible foreign policy — as well as offering the prospect of developing commercial links.”
“Positive views of the Ottomans and of the Muslim world spread into mainstream culture in England. “Mislike me not for my complexion,” says the Prince of Morocco to Portia in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, when attempting to win her hand in marriage. The king was a man, the audience was informed, who had fought bravely for the Sultan on many occasions and was a fine match for the heiress.”
The Rise of the Dutch
“Spain found it all but impossible to resist military confrontation with Protestants and Muslims alike. It was a new chapter for holy war.”
“As the earlier Crusades had shown, holy warfare’s appetite for men and money could be ruinously expensive for royal treasuries. The situation was not helped by the willingness of the Spanish crown to use debt to finance its projects, which encouraged short-term and ambitious decisions while hiding consequences that would only become clear later — especially when things went wrong. Fiscal mismanagement and incompetence were part of the picture; but ultimately Spain’s inability to control military spending proved catastrophic. Incredibly, it became a serial defaulter on its debts in the second half of the sixteenth century, failing to meet its obligations no fewer than four times. It was like a lottery winner that had gone from rags to riches-only to squander the prize money on luxuries that were unaffordable.”
“Things eventually snapped in the provinces and towns of the Low Countries, which formed part of the Spanish demesne, where anger was fanned by the way that Spain sought to solve its financial woes through heavy taxation. Northern Europe was a hive of productive urban centres, with Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent and Amsterdam emerging in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as important emporia for goods to and from the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, the Baltics and Russia, as well as the British Isles. Naturally, they blossomed further still following the opening up of trade from India and the Americas.
These cities became magnets for merchants from far and wide, which in turn made for vibrant social and economic life and for strong civic identities. The growing populations required surrounding land to be used effciently, prompting rapid advances not only in yield management of crops in the surrounding territory but also in irrigation techniques, such as the construction of dykes and sea walls to allow every piece of available land to be used profitably. The burgeoning size and productivity of the cities of the Low Countries and their hinterlands made them lucrative honeypots — centres which generated tax revenues, something not lost on the Spanish rulers who by luck of dynastic marriage and inheritance controlled most of this region.
It was not long before individual provinces and cities were howling in dismay at the introduction of punitively high levels of taxation, coupled with brutally heavy-handed attitudes on matters of faith. The ideas of Martin Luther, John Calvin and others who emphasised the institutional corruption of distant political rulers and the spiritual importance of the individual fell on fertile ground in these heavily urbanised areas and helped Protestantism embed deep roots in the region. Economic and religious persecution proved a powerful cocktail for fomenting revolt and eventually led to the Union of Utrecht of 1581 — a declaration of independence by what became the Union of Seven Provinces, effectively the Dutch Republic. The Spanish responded with a show of force, together with an embargo on trade across the Low Countries that began in 1585. The aim was to starve the rebel provinces and cities of oxygen and force them into submission. As is so often the case when sanctions are put in place, the result was the opposite: faced with little alternative, the separatists went on the offensive. The only way to survive was to use every ounce of knowledge, skill and expertise they had to their advantage; it was time to turn the tables.”
“The timing was fortuitous. The trade ban ensured that there were huge stockpiles of grain and herring, which meant that food supplies were both plentiful and cheap. Although rents rose quickly, the swelling of the population also produced a boom in house construction, and brought together an effective group of experienced merchants and other professionals who were trying to escape the pressure exerted by the Spanish.
When the blockade was finally lifted in 1590, the Dutch moved quickly to clear out Spanish troops who had been sent to maintain order, taking advantage of the fact that Philip II of Spain had become embroiled in military conflict elsewhere in Europe. Suddenly free from military pressure and with a window of opportunity presenting itself, the Dutch threw themselves into international trade, seeking to build connections with the Americas, Africa and Asia.
There was a clear commercial logic to the plan of establishing their own trade routes. Bringing goods direct to the Dutch Republic would avoid two rounds of taxation: first, goods would arrive without having had duties creamed off in ports in Portugal and Spain where cargoes were typically taxed before being sent north. Second, the fact that the Dutch authorities would now collect the revenues themselves, rather than pass them back to the Iberian masters.”
The Power Shift
“In the Inca lands, wrote Pedro de Cieza de Léon, law and order were carefully maintained, with great care taken “to see that justice was meted out and that nobody ventured to commit a felony or theft.” Data was collected annually across the Inca Empire to make sure taxes were calculated correctly and fairly paid, with births and deaths recorded centrally and kept up to date. The elite had to work the land themselves for a set number of days each year and did so “to set an example, for everybody was to know that there should be nobody so rich that…he might disdain or affront the poor.””
“The centuries that followed the emergence of Europe as a global power were accompanied by relentless consolidation and covetousness. In 1500, there were around 500 political units in Europe; in 1900, there were twenty-five. The strong devoured the weak. Competition and military conflict were endemic to Europe.”
“Although the names of scientists like Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton and Leonard Euler have become famous to generations of schoolchildren, it can be all too easy to forget that some of their most important work was on the trajectory of projectiles and understanding the causes of deviation to enable artillery to be more accurate. These distinguished scientists helped make weapons more powerful and ever more reliable; military and technological advances went hand in hand with the Age of Enlightenment.”
“Already on the back foot thanks to new routes to market which brought goods directly to the richest consumers, the city-states with their deeply entrenched rivalries stood no chance against clusters of towns able and willing to combine their resources. Such large sums were raised to fund expansion that it became standard to spend more than half of state revenues simply servicing national debts.” It was expensive to be locked in a constant fight against neighbours and constantly striving to gain a political, commercial and cultural edge over them.”
The English Empire
“The shift in power to the north of Europe left some unable to compete and keep up. In the Ottoman world, for instance, the number of cities with populations of more than 10,000 remained broadly the same between 1500 and 1800. There was no pressure to intensify agricultural production to service growing demand — which meant that the economy remained sluggish and static. Tax collection was also inefficient, partly a result of tax farming, which incentivised individuals to make quick gains at the expense of the state’s long-term income.”
“The fall in moral standards that came with economic and social upheaval was enough to encourage some to take drastic action. The time had come to establish new pastures, concluded the more conservative, to find a place where it would be possible to practise a simple lifestyle that prioritised religious devotion and spiritual purity a place for a fresh start, and a return to basics.
The Puritans who settled New England did so in protest against the changes that had accompanied Europe’s rise and against the affluence that followed. They were reacting to the strange stream of new ideas and goods that made the world seem a very different place — where Chinese porcelain was appearing on household dining tables, where marriage of people with different skin colour to Europeans was giving rise to questions about identity and race, and where attitudes about the body were prompting what one scholar has recently termed the “first sexual revolution.””
“Taking service with these highly commercialised organisations, which benefited from both government protection and very powerful investors, made for an attractive career path. Men were drawn from all over England and indeed from other parts of the world too — including the bastion of conservatism that was New England. There were rich rewards for the ambitious and the quick-witted who rose through the ranks of the Company.
Typical was a man born in Massachusetts in 1649, who moved with his family back to England as a small boy before entering the service of the East India Company. Initially holding the lowly position of writer, he eventually rose through the ranks to become governor of Madras itself. He did well for himself there too well, in fact, for he was removed from his position after five years, with rumours swirling about how much he had gained personally during his tenure. That he returned home with five tons of spices, large quantities of diamonds and innumerable precious objects suggests that the accusations were well founded — as does his own epitaph in Wrexham in North Wales where he was buried: “Born in America, in Europe bred, in Africa travell’d and in Asia wed…Much good, some ill, he did; so hope all’s even and that his soul throu’ mercy’s gone to Heaven.” He spent his money liberally back in England, though he did not forget the land of his birth: towards the end of his life, he gave a generous sum to the Collegiate School of Connecticut, which recognised his gift by renaming itself after a benefactor who might make further donations in the future: Elihu Yale.”
“The trump card that proved unbeatable was that of geography. England — or Britain after the union with Scotland in 1707 — had a natural barrier protecting it from its rivals: the sea. This was helpful in terms of dealing with military threat, but it was a godsend when it came to government expenditure. With no land frontiers to defend, Britain’s military expenditure was a fraction of its continental rivals. It has been estimated that, while England’s armed forces were approximately the same size as those of France in 1550, by 1700 the French had almost three times more men in service. These needed equipment and pay, meaning spending was proportionately far greater in France than in England; revenues were also proportionately lower in France as soldiers and sailors — each a potential generator of taxable income and indirect taxes through consumption — were removed from fields, factories and other employment to serve their country.
It was as though Britain was vaccinated from the contagious problems of Europe that saw seemingly never-ending warfare as states on the mainland squabbled and fought in almost every possible permutation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”
“Intense arguments about who would inherit the throne of Austria could have consequences that led to fighting and exchanges of territory in European colonies all over the world: the issue of the legitimacy of Maria-Theresa’s succession in the 1740s provoked outbreaks of fighting from the Americas to the Indian subcontinent that lasted nearly a decade. The result when matters were finally settled in 1748 was that Cape Breton in Canada and Madras in India changed hands between the French and the British.
This was just one example of how competition between European powers had effects on the other side of the world. Towns in India were handed to the French by the Dutch at the end of the 1690s as a result of the settlement of the Nine Years’ War in Europe; islands in the Caribbean changed hands between Britain and France as part of peace settlements two decades later after further intense fighting in Europe; while huge swathes of North America were swapped between the British and French when disputes over the Spanish throne were settled. Marriages could also deliver vast territories, strategic bridgeheads or great cities — such as Bombay, handed over to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza when she married King Charles I in the 1660s. It was an act of generosity that, as the city’s Portuguese governor accurately predicted, spelt the end of Portugal’s power in India.”
“Mughal emperors such as Akbar, Shah Jahän and Awrangzib (ruled 1658–1707) were partial to having themselves weighed on their birthdays, with gems, precious metals and other treasures being repeatedly loaded on to the scales until they were balanced — hardly the best incentive to maintain a trim waistline.”
“A House of Commons Select Committee that was set up in 1773 to look at the aftermath of the conquest of Bengal revealed the staggering sums taken from the Bengali purse. Over £2 million tens of billions in today’s terms — had been distributed as “presents,” almost all of it finding its way into the pockets of EIC employees locally. The outrage was compounded by disgraceful and shocking scenes in Bengal itself. By 1770, the price of grain had been driven higher and higher, with catastrophic results as famine kicked in. The death toll was estimated in the millions; even the governor-general declared that a third of the population had died. Europeans had thought only of enriching themselves as the local population starved to death.
The situation was entirely avoidable. The suffering of the many had been sacrificed for personal gain. To howls of derision, Clive simply answered — like the chief executive of a distressed bank — that his priorities had been to protect the interests of shareholders, not those of the local population; he deserved no criticism, surely, for doing his job. Things were to get worse. The loss of manpower in Bengal devastated local productivity. As revenues collapsed, costs suddenly rose sharply causing panic that the golden goose had laid its last egg, This prompted a run on the shares of the FIC and pushed the Company to the brink of bankruptcy. Far from its directors being superhuman administrators and wealth-creators, it turned out that the practices and culture of the Company had brought the intercontinental financial system to its knees.
After desperate consultation, the government in London concluded that the EIC was too big to fail and agreed a bail-out. To fund this, however, cash had to be raised. Eyes turned to the colonies in North America, where taxes were substantially lower than in Britain itself.”
“As those in the American colonies recognised, there was ultimately little difference between being a subject in one territory controlled from Britain rather than another. If Bengalis could starve to death, why not those living in the colonies, whose rights seemed no better or greater? It was time to go it alone.”
“Its genesis marked the end of a chapter. The passing of most of India into British hands ensured that the overland trade routes were starved of oxygen, as buying and spending power, assets and attention were decisively diverted to Europe. The decline in the importance of cavalry in the face of yet more improvements in military technology and tactics, particularly relating to firepower and heavy artillery, also played a role in depressing the volumes passing along the roads that had criss-crossed Asia for millennia. Central Asia, like southern Europe before it, began to fade.”
Russia
“The first sign of problems came in the early 1800s. For many decades, Russia had been rolling back its frontiers to incorporate new territories and new populations on the steppes in Central Asia, which were made up of a mosaic of tribal populations to its south and east, like the Kyrgyz, the Kazakhs and the Oirats. To start with, this was done with a reasonably soft touch. Although Marx was deeply critical of the imperialist process of creating “new Russians,” it was undertaken with considerable sensitivity.” In many cases local leaders were not just richly rewarded but were also allowed to remain in power; their positions within their territories were endorsed and formally recognised by St. Petersburg, Concessions such as sweeping tax breaks, land grants and exemptions from military service likewise made Russian overlordship easier to tolerate.
Territorial expansion fulled economic growth that began to accelerate across the nineteenth century. For one thing, the previous heavy expenditure on defences against raids and attacks from the steppes was reduced, freeing funds to be used elsewhere and in other ways. For another, rich rewards were garnered from gaining access to the wonderfully fertile land of the steppe belt that stretched across the top of the Black Sea and extended far into the east.
Russians had previously been forced to cultivate less attractive terrain for their crops, resulting in grain yields that were among the lowest in Europe and which exposed the population to the threat of famine.”
“Russia’s increasing importance at an international level was not limited to Europe or to the Near East, for its tentacles stretched further still. In contrast to how we now look at the world, in the first half of the nineteenth century Russia’s eastern frontier was not in Asia at all, but somewhere else altogether: in North America. Colonies had first been established across the Bering Sea in what is now Alaska, with communities then founded on the west coast of Canada and beyond, as far south as Fort Ross in Sonoma County, California, in the early 1800s. These were no transient merchants, but permanent settlers who invested in building harbours, storage facilities and even schools. Young local boys of “Creole origin” on the Pacific seaboard of North America were schooled in the Russian language and taught the Russian curriculum, and some were sent to study in St. Petersburg.”
“Some were appalled by the Anglo-French invasion. Writing furiously and voluminously about the war as it progressed, Karl Marx found fertile material with which to develop ideas about the ruinous impact of imperialism that he had first set out in The Communist Manifesto a few years earlier. Marx documented increases in military and naval expenditure in detail and provided running commentaries in the New York Tribune in which he fiercely attacked the hypocrisy of those who had dragged the west to war. He could hardly contain his glee when Lord Aberdeen was forced to stand down as Prime Minister in the face of widespread disillusionment at the heavy casualties sustained in Russia. As prices rose in London, sparking protests at home, it seemed obvious to Marx that Britain’s imperialist policies were being dictated by a small elite and came at the expense of the masses. Communism was not born of the Crimean War, but it was certainly sharpened by it.
So was the unification movement in Italy. After Russia’s nose had been bloodied — at the expense of many French and British troops, including those who took part in the infamous charge of the Light Brigade — settlement terms were finally discussed in Paris. One of those at the negotiating table was Count Cavour, Prime Minister of Sardinia, who owed his place to the decision of Vittorio Emanuele, the island’s king, to send a force of auxiliaries to the Black Sea in support of France. He used his moment in the spotlight shrewdly, calling for a united, independent Italy, a rallying cry that was viewed sympathetically by the allies and helped galvanise supporters back home. Five years later, the King of Sardinia had become King of Italy, a new country forged of disparate cities and regions. The imposing Altare della Patria monument that stands in the centre of Rome and which was built three decades later, in the words of Primo Levi, in order to make Rome feel Italian and to make Italy feel Roman, marked the culmination of developments that had been given momentum by the fight over land and influence thousands of miles to the east.”
“The aim was to humiliate Russia and to strangle its ambitions. It had the opposite effect — this was a Versailles moment, where the settlement was counter-productive and had dangerous consequences. Quite apart from the fact that the settlement was so punitive and restrictive that the Russians immediately tried to slip its shackles, it also prompted a period of change and reform. The Crimean War had revealed that the Tsar’s army was no match for allied troops, who were more experienced and better trained. After some hard-hitting reports had been prepared for the Tsar, Alexander I, which set out the shortcomings of the Russian army in merciless detail, a root-and-branch overhaul of the military was carried out.
Dramatic steps were taken: conscription was reduced from twenty-five years’ service to fifteen, lowering the average age of the army at a stroke, while bulk orders of up-to-date equipment were issued to replace antiquated and inefficient material. But the most striking change came from far-reaching social reform. Although a severe banking crisis in the late 1850s also played a role, it was defeat in the Crimea and shame at the terms that followed that prompted the Tsar to abolish serfdom, a system under which a significant part of the population was tied to the land and indentured to wealthy landlords.
Within five years, serfdom had been swept away, ending centuries of slavery in Russia.”
“It presaged a surge towards modernisation and economic liberalism that propelled growth at a phenomenal rate in the second half of the nineteenth century: iron production rose five-fold between 1870 and 1890, while the impressive expansion of the railway network served, as one modern scholar has put it, to “emancipate Russia from the limitations imposed by her geography”-in other words, by linking the vast country together.” Far from bottling Russia up, the British helped let the genie out of the bottle.”
“In the fifteen years that followed the end of the Crimean War, Russia brought hundreds of thousands of square miles under its control without having to resort to force. Well-led expeditions, coupled with shrewdly applied diplomatic pressure on China, allowed “immense strides” to be made in the Far East “in the short space of ten years,” as one seasoned observer noted in a report for the Foreign Office in London in 1861.
Not long afterwards, yet more of the southern steppe fell into Russia’s lap, along with the oasis cities straddling the heart of Asia. By the late 1860s, Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara, as well as much of the prosperous Fergana valley, had become “protectorates” or vassals of St. Petersburg, a prelude to full annexation and incorporation within the empire. Russia was building its own massive trade and communication network, which now connected Vladivostok in the east to the frontier with Prussia in the west, and the ports of the White Sea in the north to the Caucasus and Central Asia in the south.
The story was not unremittingly positive. Although a much needed programme of modernisation had been embarked on after the debacle of the Crimean War, Russia’s sinews strained as it grew. Generating cash to help fund the empire’s transformation was a constant problem, one that led to the embarrassing decision to divest it of Alaska for geopolitical and financial reasons.”
“The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the connection with the Chinese Eastern Railway, led to an immediate boom in trade, with volumes nearly trebling between 1895 and 1914.”
“In 1894, before the railways had opened up new possibilities, more than 80 per cent of all customs revenue collected in China was paid by Britain and by British companies — whose ships also carried more than four-fifths of China’s total trade. It was obvious that Russia’s rise, and that of the new land routes that would bring produce to Europe, would come at Britain’s expense.”
WWI
“It was “urgently desirable,” therefore, “that Russia’s position and influence” should be expanded in Europe — and diverted, in other words, from Asia.
The timing could not have been better. France was becoming increasingly agitated about the burgeoning economic growth of Germany, its neighbour and bitter rival. Memories of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, which had led to the siege of Paris and a Prussian victory parade through the centre of the city following the agreement of an armistice, were still fresh in the mind. The speed of that invasion had been a great shock, prompting fears that another lightning strike might catch France unawares again — especially since one of the effects of the attack had been the unification of Germany into an empire, proclaimed in the Palace of Versailles itself. This was bad enough. The French were deeply alarmed by the surging rise in German industry in the two decades after 1870 as coal production doubled and metal production trebled. The upswing in the economy led to greater and greater investment in an already impressive military machine on both land and sea. French diplomats worked furiously behind the scenes in the early 1890s to conclude a military convention and then a full-blown alliance with Russia, the primary purpose of which was self-defence: both countries agreed to attack Germany in the event that the latter or its allies mobilised their armies — and indeed both gave formal undertakings to act against Britain in the event that London moved against either.
The British desire to reorientate Russian attention to its western border was therefore music to French ears.”
“Keeping Russia happy at all costs became the driving thrust of British policy after the alliance had been signed. In 1907, Sir Edward Grey told the Russian ambassador to London that Britain might consider being more flexible on the issue of the Bosporus — if the Russians agreed to establish “permanent good relations.” This was enough to prompt a shuffling of the European house of cards, as St. Petersburg embarked on a round of diplomatic horse-trading that included gaining Austrian support on the issue of the Bosporus Straits in exchange for acquiescence over the annexation of Bosnia a deal that was to have spectacular consequences.”
“Ironically of course, the sense of German menace was itself underpinned by the vulnerability felt by this middle European nation as it faced the possibility of being caught in the middle of a Franco-Russia alliance which talked of military co-operation and joint attack in the event of provocation. It was not long before festering paranoia about being trapped on two flanks led the German High Command to consider its own options.”
“In this context, Italy’s attack on Libya in 1911 and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 that followed simply set off a chain reaction, as the Ottoman Empire’s outlying provinces were picked off by opportunistic local and international rivals at moments of weakness. With the Ottoman regime teetering on the brink of collapse, ambitions and rivalries in Europe sharpened dramatically. For their part, the Germans began to think seriously about expanding into the east and establishing a protectorate to create a “German Orient.” While this sounded like expansionism, there was an important defensive streak to such thought too which chimed with growing aggressive sentiments that ran deep through the German High Com mand. Germany, like Britain, was coming to expect the worst; and in the Germans’ case, that meant stopping the Russians from taking control of the best parts of an Ottoman Empire that was widely thought to be rotting, while for the Russians it meant realising long-held dreams and securing a long-term future whose significance could not be overstated.”
“That the terms of the agreement handed control of Persia’s crown jewels to foreign investors led to a deep and festering hatred of the outside world, which in turn led to nationalism and, ultimately, to a more profound suspicion and rejection of the west best epitomised in modern Islamic fundamentalism. The desire to win control of oil would be the cause of many problems in the future.”
“Palestine was important for another reason. Concerns had been growing about the rising levels of Jewish immigration to Britain, with the numbers arriving from Russia alone rising by a factor of five between 1880 and 1920. At the turn of the twentieth century, there had been discussions about offering land in East Africa to encourage Jewish émigres to settle there, but by the time of the war attention had shifted to Palestine.”
“In so far as it had troops in the field, Britain had a head start, enabling the landscape to be shaped in a way that suited its needs. In the case of Mesopotamia, this was done by forging a new country that was given the name of Irag. It was a hotch-potch made up of three former Ottoman provinces that were profoundly different in history, religion and geography.”
“Admiration for Germany across the region went much further. Some scholars have pointed out the similarities between the ideology that Hitler imposed on Germany in the 1930s and a similar programme adopted in Persia of “purification” of the Persian language and customs, and a conscious effort to hark back — as the Nazis did — to a semi-mythical golden age. Indeed, the decision to change the name of Persia formally to Iran was supposedly the result of Teheran’s diplomats in Berlin impressing on the Shah the importance of the idea of “Aryanism” — and the shared etymological and pseudo-historical heritage that Iran’s new identity could easily reference.”
WWII
“As he stressed to Hitler, Ukraine was the key: control of the rich agricultural plains that ran across the north of the Black Sea and on past the Caspian would “liberate us from every economic pressure.” Germany would be “invincible” if it could take the parts of the Soviet Union that held “immense riches.” Gone would be the dependence on the USSR’s goodwill and its whimsical leadership; the effects of the British blockade of the Mediterranean and the North Sea would be massively reduced. This was the chance to provide Germany with access to all the resources it needed.”
“Indeed, a meeting held by state secretaries in January 1941 with Hermann Göring in his capacity as co-ordinator of a Four Year Plan, he had gone so far as to warn that it would not be long before meat would have to be rationed, a step that had been repeatedly vetoed for fear of losing support not just for the war but for the Nazis.
Backe’s proposal was radical. While the Soviet Union was vast and varied in terms of geography and climate, it could be divided by a crude line. To the south, covering Ukraine, southern Russia and the Caucasus, were fields and resources that formed a “surplus” zone. To the north, that is central and northern Russia, Belarus and the Baltics, there was a “deficit” zone. As Backe saw it, those on one side of the line produced food; those on the other side just consumed it. The answer to Germany’s problems was to concentrate on taking the former — and to ignore the latter. The “surplus” zone should be captured, and its produce diverted to Germany. The “deficit” zone was to be cut off — if and how it survived was of little concern. Its loss was to be Germany’s gain.”
“The effect on those living in the “deficit” zone was also noted at the meeting. They were to be cut off at a stroke. In one of the most chilling documents in history, the minutes simply state: “as a result, × million people will doubtlessly starve, if that which is necessary for us is extracted from the land.” These deaths were the price to pay for Germany being able to feed itself. These millions were collateral damage, necessary victims for German success and survival.”
“There was another model that Hitler regularly referred to as well, with which he saw parallels and to which he looked for inspiration: the United States. Germany needed to do what the European settlers in the New World had done to the native Americans, Hitler told Alfred Rosenberg, the newly appointed Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories: the local population had to be driven back — or exterminated. The Volga, he proclaimed, would be Germany’s Mississippi, that is to say, a frontier between the civilised world and the chaos beyond. The peoples who had settled the Great Plains in America in the nineteenth century, he said, would surely flock to settle in the east. Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians and also, he predicted confidently, Americans themselves would find their futures and their rewards in a “new land of opportunity.” A new world order was going to emerge thanks to the fields of Ukraine and southern Russia that stretched far into the east. It was the end of the American dream, Hitler declared: “Europe — and no longer America — will be the land of unlimited possibilities.””
“It would not be long before forced labour became commonplace for captured Soviet soldiers and the local population. In due course, more than 13 million people were used to build roads, to farm fields or to work in factories both for the Nazi regime directly and for private German companies — many of which remain in business today. Slavery had returned to Europe.”
“Having predicted that millions would die from food shortages and famine, the Germans now began to identify those who should suffer. First in line were Russian prisoners. There is no need to feed them, wrote Göring dismissively; it is not as though we are bound by any international obligations. On 16 September 1941, he gave the order to withdraw food supplies from “non-working” prisoners of war — that is, those who were too weak or too injured to act as slave labour. A month later, after rations for “working” captives had already been reduced, they were lowered once again The effect was devastating: by February 1942, some 2 million (of a total of 3.3 million) Soviet prisoners were dead, mostly as a result of starvation.
To quicken the process further still, new techniques were devised to eliminate the number of mouths that needed feeding. Prisoners of war were gathered by the hundred so that the effects of pesticides that had been used to fumigate Polish army barracks could be tested on them. Experiments were also carried out on the impact of carbon monoxide poisoning, using vans that had pipes connected to their own exhausts. These tests — which took place in the autumn of 1941 — were conducted in locations that were soon to gain notoriety for using the same techniques on a massive scale: Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen.
The mass murders that began just weeks after the start of the invasion were a sickening response to the failure of the German attack and the abject inadequacies of the economic and strategic plans.”
“There had been discussions in Nazi Germany about deporting Jews elsewhere too. In fact, and perversely, Hitler had been championing the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine for the best part of two decades. In the spring of 1938, he spoke in support of a policy of emigration of German Jews to the Middle East and the formation of a new state to be their home. Indeed, in the late 1930s, a high-level mission, led by Adolf Eichmann, had even been sent to meet with Zionist agents in Palestine to discuss how an accommodation could be reached that would solve what was often called “the Jewish question” once and for all. With considerable irony, Eichmann — who was later executed in Israel for crimes against humanity — found himself discussing how to boost emigration of Jews from Germany to Palestine, something which seemed in the interests both of the anti-Semitic Nazi leadership and of the leadership of the Jewish community in and around Jerusalem.”
“Stern offered to “actively take part in the war on the German side.” If the Jews could be liberated through the creation of a state, Hitler would surely beneft: apart from “strengthening [the] future German position of power in the Middle East,” it would also “extraordinarily strengthen the moral basis” of the Third Reich “in the eyes of all humanity.”
This was bluster. In fact, Stern was being pragmatic — even though the hopes he placed in allying with Germany were not shared by all within his own organisation. “All we want of the Germans,” he said shortly afterwards to explain his stance, is to bring Jewish recruits to Palestine. In doing so, “the war against the British to liberate the homeland will begin here. The Jews will attain a state, and the Germans will, incidentally, be rid of an important British base in the Middle East, and also solve the Jewish question in Europe …” It seemed logical — and horrific: leading Jewish figures were actively proposing collaboration with the greatest anti-Semite of all time, negotiating with the perpetrators of the Holocaust hardly twelve months before genocide began.”
“Faced with a drain on resources that were already scarce, it was a short jump for a systematically anti-Semitic regime to start to look for murder on a mass scale. Jews were already in camps in Poland; they were a ready and easy target at a time when Nazi leadership was realizing that there were millions of mouths too many to feed.”
“Initial plans to make a “phased withdrawal” from India which also sought to provide protection for the Muslim minorities were rejected by London as too costly and too lengthy.”
“In a bid to preserve the balance of the delicate situation in Palestine, so as to retain control of the refinery and port of Haifa, keep Suez secure and maintain friendly relations with leading figures in the Arabic world, active steps were taken to try to curb Jewish emigration from Europe. After plans had been drawn up by British intelligence to sabotage ships bringing refugees to Palestine — and pin blame on an apparently powerful but non-existent Arab terrorist organisation — the British took more direct action.
The low point came in the summer of 1947, after ships on their way to load Jewish émigrés in French ports had been harassed. One vessel carrying more than 4,000 Jews, including pregnant women, children and many elderly, was rammed by British destroyers as it made its way east even though the decision had already been taken to refuse entry to the passengers when they reached Palestine. Treating those who had survived concentration camps or lost family in the Holocaust in this way was a public relations disaster: it was clear that Britain would stop at nothing to maintain its interests abroad — and think nothing of others in the process.”
“It was time to find alternatives and thereby decrease dependence on — and the importance of — Middle Eastern oil.
The volte face produced some unexpected side-effects. The general reduction of highway speed limits to 55mph, a step intended to slow consumption, led not only to a fall in consumption of over 150,000 oil barrels per day, but also to a major reduction in the number of traffic accidents nationwide. In December 1973 alone, statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggested a fall in fatality levels of more than 15 per cent as a direct result of lower speed limits.”
The Late 20th Century
“By the autumn, President Carter was being encouraged by senior members of his administration to allow a dying man who had been a staunch friend to the United States into the country to receive medical treatment. As this was being discussed, Khomeini’s new Foreign Minister told the President’s advisers point-blank that “you are opening Pandora’s box with this.” White House records show that Carter was aware of how high the stakes were if he allowed the Shah entry to the United States. “What are you guys going to advise me to do if [the Iranians] overrun our embassy and take our people hostage?” the President asked. He did not receive a reply.
On 4 November, two weeks after the Shah had checked into the Cornell Medical Center in New York, militant Iranian students overwhelmed the security guards at the U.S. embassy in Teheran and seized control of the embassy compound, taking around sixty diplomatic staff hostage. Although the initial aim seems to have been to make a short, sharp protest about the decision to admit the Shah to the United States, things escalated rapidly. On 5 November, Ayatollah Khomeini commented on the situation at the embassy. He did not mince his words, let alone appeal for calm. The embassies of Teheran, he declared, were breeding grounds for “underground plots [that] are being hatched” to bring down the Islamic Republic of Iran. The chief orchestrator of these plots, he went on, was “the great Satan America.” With that, he called on the United States to hand over “the traitor” so that he could face justice.”
“Those resisting the Soviet army were also actively courted by Beijing and provided with weapons in volumes that increased steadily in the 1980s. Indeed, when U.S. troops captured Taliban and al-Qaida bases at Tora Bora in 2001, they discovered large stockpiles of Chinese rocket-propelled grenade launchers and multi-barrelled missile launchers, along with mines and rifles that had been sent to Afghanistan two decades earlier. In steps that it too has come to regret, China also encouraged, recruited and trained Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, before helping them make contact with and join the Mujahidin. The radicalisation of western China has proved problematic ever since.”
“This performance did little to avert spectacular fallout in Washington as it became known that the United States had been selling arms to Iran in what looked like a direct trade for the return of American hostages. Things became even more toxic when it emerged that those closely involved with the Iran-Contra initiative had been shredding documents that bore witness to covert and illegal actions being authorised by the President himself. Reagan appeared before a commission appointed to look into the affair, where he pleaded that his memory was not good enough to recall whether or not he had authorised the arms sales to Iran. In March 1987, he made another televised address, this time to express his anger about “activities undertaken without my knowledge” a statement that played fast and loose with the truth, as Reagan himself now noted. “A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me otherwise.”
These embarrassing revelations had consequences that ran deep through the Reagan administration, where a slate of senior figures were subsequently indicted on charges ranging from conspiracy to perjury to withholding evidence.”
“The charges turned out to be nothing more than window-dressing; all the leading figures later received presidential pardons from President George H. W. Bush, or had their convictions overturned on Christmas Eve 1992. “The common denominator of their motivations — whether their actions were right or wrong — ” read the citation, “was patriotism.””
“The Iraqis, declared the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, were “quite convinced that the United States…was targeting Iraq. They complained about it all the time…And I think it was genuinely believed by Saddam Hussein.” At the end of 1989, rumours began to spread through the Iragi leadership that the United States was plotting a coup against Saddam Hussein. Tariq Aziz told the U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, point-blank that Iraq had evidence that the United States was scheming to overthrow Saddam. The siege mentality had developed into paranoia so acute that, no matter what step the Americans took, it was liable to be misinterpreted.
It was not hard to understand Irag’s misgivings — especially when loan guarantees that had been promised by Washington were abruptly cancelled in July 1990 after White House attempts to funnel financial support to Baghdad had been derailed by Congress. Worse, in addition to withdrawing $700 million of funding, sanctions were imposed as punishment for Irag’s past use of poison gas. From Saddam’s point of view, this was a case of history repeating itself: the United States promising one thing and then doing another — and doing so in an underhand way.
By this time, Iraqi forces were gathering in the south of the country. “Normally this would be none of our business,” said the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, when she met with Saddam Hussein on 25 July 1990.
In what is one of the most damning documents of the late twentieth century, a leaked transcript of the U.S. ambassador’s meeting with the Iragi leader reveals that she told Saddam she had “direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq,” noting with admiration Saddam’s “extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country.” Nevertheless, Glaspie told the Iraqi leader, “We know you need funds.”
Iraq was going through difficult times, admitted Saddam, who was “cordial, reasonable and even warm during the meeting,” according to a separate memorandum that has also subsequently been made public. Angular gas drilling, long-standing border disputes and the depressed price of oil all presented problems for the economy, he said as did debts run up in the war with Iran. There was one potential solution, he said. Taking control of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, a region over which Irag was involved in a long-running dispute with Kuwait, would help resolve some of the current problems. “What is the United States’ opinion on this?” he asked.
“We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait,” replied the ambassador. She went on to clarify what this meant: “Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.” Saddam had asked for a green light from the United States, and he had been given one. The following week, he invaded Kuwait.”
Conclusion
“Major investment in transcontinental railway lines has already opened up freight routes along the 7,000-mile Yuxinou International Railway that runs from China to a major distribution centre near Duisburg in Germany visited by President Xi Jinping in person in 2014. Trains half a mile long have started carrying millions of laptops, shoes, clothes and other non-perishable items in one direction and electronics, car parts and medical equipment in the other on a journey that takes sixteen days — considerably faster than the sea route from China’s Pacific ports.
With $43 billion of investment in improving rail links already announced, some predict that the number of containers being transported by train each year will rise from 7,500 in 2012 to 7.5 million by 2020. This is just the beginning; railway lines are being planned that will pass through Iran, Turkey, the Balkans and Siberia to Moscow, Berlin and Paris, and new routes will link Beijing with Pakistan, Kazakhstan with India. There is even talk of a tunnel 200 miles long being built under the Bering strait that will allow trains to pass from China through Alaska and Canada and into the continental United States.”
