The Economic Development of the World: Part 2

The East vs. West Fight Over the Eurasian Economy


The Tang Dynasty Year 700 BC

Europe wanted to control trade but so did the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire is Europe's opposite number. These people could fight and knew how to use technology. This is the beginning of East v. West. This power struggle still goes on today. 

Asian History is not as warlike as the Europeans. But it at times was just as bloody and the use of slaves were wide spread. China dominated Asia even before the time of the great Egyptian building boom 25,000 years ago.  The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China shared many similarities and likely exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other notions such as that of writing likely developed individually in each area. Cities, states and then empires developed in these lowlands.

The steppe region had long been inhabited by mounted nomads, and from the central steppes they could reach all areas of the Asian continent. The northern part of the continent, covering much of Siberia was also inaccessible to the steppe nomads due to the dense forests and the tundra. These areas in Siberia were very sparsely populated.

The center and periphery were kept separate by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus, Himalaya, Karakum Desert, and Gobi Desert formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could only cross with difficulty. While technologically and culturally the city dwellers were more advanced, they could do little militarily to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horse bound force. Thus the nomads who conquered states in the Middle East were soon forced to adapt to the local societies.

Asia's history would feature major developments seen in other parts of the world, as well as events that would affect those other regions. These include the trade of the Silk Road, which spread cultures, languages, religion, and disease throughout Afro-Eurasian trade. Another major advancement was the innovation of gunpowder in medieval China, which led to advanced warfare through the use of guns. It was the gun and the ocean going ships adopted by the Europeans that gave Europe the advantage in warfare.

Asia has a history of uniting then separating just to unit again at a later date. The Maurya and Gupta empires are called the Golden Age of India and were marked by extensive inventions and discoveries in science, technology, art, religion, and philosophy that crystallized the elements of what is generally known as Indian culture. The religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, which began in Indian sub-continent, were an important influence on South, East and Southeast Asia.

By 600 BCE, India had been divided into sixteen regional states that would occasionally feud amongst themselves. In 327 BCE, Alexander the Great came to India with a vision of conquering the whole world. He crossed northwestern India and created the province Bactria but could not move further because his army was afraid of the foot soldiers of India. Shortly prior, the soldier Chandragupta Maurya began to take control of the Ganges river and soon established the Maurya Empire. The Maurya Empire (Maurya Rājavanśha) was the geographically extensive and powerful empire in ancient India, ruled by the Mauryan dynasty from 321 to 185 BCE. It was one of the world's largest empires in its time, stretching to the Himalayasin the north, what is now Assam in the east, probably beyond modern Pakistan in the west, and annexingBalochistan and much of what is now Afghanistan, at its greatest extent. India was united for the first time in the Maurya empire. The government established by Chandragupta was led by an autocratic king, who primarily relied on the military to assert his power It also applied the use of a bureaucracy and even sponsored a postal service. Chandragupta's grandson, Ashoka, greatly extended the empire by conquering most of modern-day India (save for the southern tip). He eventually converted to Buddhism, though, and began a peaceful life where he promoted the religion as well as humane methods throughout India. The Maurya Empire would disintegrate soon after Ashoka's death and was conquered by the Kushan invaders from the northwest, establishing the Kushan Empire. Their conversion to Buddhism caused the religion to be associated with foreigners and therefore a decline in its popularity occurred.

The Kushan Empire would fall apart by 220 CE, creating more political turmoil in India. Then in 320 CE, theGupta Empire (Sanskrit, Gupta Rājavanśha) was established and covered much of the Indian Subcontinent. Founded by Maharaja Sri-Gupta, the dynasty was the model of a classical civilization. Gupta kings united the area primarily through negotiation of local leaders and families as well as strategical intermarriage. Their rule covered less land than the Maurya Empire, but established the greatest stability. In 535 CE, the empire ended when India was overrun by the Huns.

The Han Dynasty (simplified Chinese: 汉朝; traditional Chinese: 漢朝; pinyin: Hàn Cháo ;206 BCE – 220 CE) was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms (220–265 CE). Spanning over four centuries, the period of the Han Dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history. One of the Han Dynasty's greatest emperors, Emperor Wu of Han, established a peace throughout China comparable to the Pax Romana seen in the Mediterranean a hundreds years later. To this day, China's majority ethnic group refers to itself as the "Han people". The Han Dynasty was established when two peasants succeeded in rising up against Shi Huang's significantly weaker successor-son. The new Han government retained the centralization and bureaucracy of the Qin, but greatly reduced the repression seen before. They expanded their territory into Korea, Indochina, and Central Asia, creating an even larger empire than the Qin.

The Han developed contacts with the Persian Empire in the Middle East and the Romans, through the Silk Road, with which they were able to trade many commodities—primarily silk. Many ancient civilizations were influenced by the Silk Road, which connected China, India, the Middle East and Europe. Han emperors like Wu also promoted Confucianism as the national "religion" (although it is debated by theologians as to whether it is defined as such or as a philosophy). Shrines devoted to Confucius were built and Confucian philosophy was taught to all scholars who entered the Chinese bureaucracy. The bureaucracy was further improved with the introduction of an examination system that selected scholars of high merit. These bureaucrats were often upper-class people educated in special schools, but whose power was often checked by the lower-class brought into the bureaucracy through their skill. The Chinese imperial bureaucracy was very effective and highly respected by all in the realm and would last over 2,000 years. The Han government was highly organized and it commanded the military, judicial law (which used a system of courts and strict laws), agricultural production, the economy, and the general lives of its people. The government also promoted intellectual philosophy, scientific research, and detailed historical records.

However, despite all of this impressive stability, central power began to lose control by the turn of the Common Era. As the Han Dynasty declined, many factors continued to pummel it into submission until China was left in a state of chaos. By 100 CE, philosophical activity slowed, and corruption ran rampant in the bureaucracy. Local landlords began to take control as the scholars neglected their duties, and this resulted in heavy taxation of the peasantry. Taoists began to gain significant ground and protested the decline. They started to proclaim magical powers and promised to save China with them; the Taoist Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184 CE (led by rebels in yellow scarves) failed but was able to weaken the government. The aforementioned Huns combined with diseases killed up to half of the population and officially ended the Han Dynasty by 220 CE. The ensuing period of chaos was so terrible it lasted for three centuries, where many weak regional rulers and dynasties failed to establish order in China. This period of chaos and attempts at order is commonly known as that of theSix Dynasties. The first part of this included the Three Kingdoms which started in 220 CE and describes the brief and weak successor "dynasties" that followed the Han. In 265 CE, the Jin Dynasty of China was started and this soon split into two different empires in control of northwestern and southeastern China. In 420 CE, the conquest and abdication of those two dynasties resulted in the first of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. The Northern and Southern Dynasties passed through until finally, by 557 CE, the Northern Zhou Dynasty ruled the north and the Chen Dynasty ruled the south.

During this period, the Eastern world empires continued to expand through trade, migration and conquests of neighboring areas. Gunpowder was widely used as early as the 11th century and they were using moveable type printing five hundred years before Gutenberg created his press. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism were the dominant philosophies of the Far East during the Middle Ages. Marco Polo was not the first Westerner to travel to the Orient and return with amazing stories of this different culture, but his accounts published in the late 13th and early 14th centuries were the first to be widely read throughout Europe.

The Islamic Caliphate and other Islamic states took over the Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia during the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, and later expanded into the Indian subcontinent and Malay archipelago.

At the beginning of the Medieval Age in 500 CE, the Middle East was separated into small, weak states; the two most prominent were the Sassanid Empire in Persia (modern-day Iran), and the Byzantine Empire in Turkey. In the Arabian peninsula (now Saudi Arabia), the nomadic Bedouin tribes dominated the desert, where they worshipped idols and remained in small clans tied together by kinship. Urbanization and agriculture was very limited, save for a few regions near the coast. Mecca and Medina were two of these cites that were important hubs for trade between Africa and Eurasia. This commerce was central to city-life, where most inhabitants were merchants.

From 613 CE to 630 CE the prophet Muhammad spread the Islam faith in the Arabian desert, culminating in his victory at Mecca. He then unified the idolatrous tribes into an Islamic Empire, ruled by a religious and political leader, the caliph. They would proceed to conquer the Sassanids, and modern-day Syria, Palestine,Egypt, and Libya.  An Arabic navy was created that soon dominated the Mediterranean, crippled the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire), and put it under siege for centuries to come. Issues in deciding the caliphs to succeed Muhammad led to the Ridda wars and eventually the Sunni-Shia split, two different sects of Islam; the Sunni eventually became dominant and established the Umayyad Caliphate. Here lies the reason why you have the wars between the two Islamic sects today.

The Umayyad Empire began to decline in the early 700's CE when its leaders became more and more detached from their people, especially the warriors who had fought for their conquest. A new political group, the Abbasids, joined the upset warriors, Shia, and mawali, and overthrew the Umayyad in 750 CE during the Battle of the Zab. The remaining Umayyads fled to Iberia, and established the independent, Muslim Caliphate of Córdoba. The establishment of the Abbasid Caliphate started with moving the capital to Baghdad in Persia (now Iraq) in 762 CE and with this came the application of certain Persian political institutions. This included the creation of an absolute monarchy, which ruled without question, as well as an improved bureaucracy, led by the wazir who took most of the political and administrative responsibilities the caliph previously had. The Abbasid also experienced a boom in trade, specifically that at sea, sending dhows that continued expansion, first by sending merchants and missionaries to India and Southeast Asia. Eventually conflict would arise due to a piracy issue in India, and the Abbasid would begin to conquer the western area of India which they traded with. The first expedition was led by Turkish general Qutb-ud-din Aybak and established the Mamluk Sultanatein 1206 CE, ruled by the sultan (Arabic: سلطان) which means "authority."

The Abbasid Empire that helped make the people of Europe fearful of outsiders

However, the Abbasid government soon fell to the same vices as the Umayyad. Different factions in the royal court would fight for power, especially various groups of the Turkic peoples. The caliph began to rely on advisors from wealthy families, which would sometimes render him a mere puppet. This happened when the Persian Buyid dynasty was established in 934 CE. The Shia government lasted only a little over a century. They were quickly overpowered by the Turkish people who would create the Seljuq dynasty by 1051 CE, reestablishing the Sunni government. Nevertheless, succession issues and the squabbling factions would continue through the First Crusade, launched by Christian western Europeans in 1095 CE, which was largely ignored by the more powerful Muslim princes despite its success at capturing Jerusalem. The next eight Crusades would succeed to varying degrees, and the Christians would lose considerable ground when the Muslims were united under Saladin in the late 1100s CE. By 1291, after the final crusade and the fall of Acre, the Christians had lost all of the territory they originally gained.

The increasingly divided regions of the Abbasid caliphate would face new challenges in the early 1200s CE, during the invasion of the central Asian nomadic peoples, the Mongols; led by the infamous Genghis Khan, the Mongols raided much of the eastern empire. In 1258, Genghis Khan's grandson Hulegu Khan would finish his grandfather's work with the sacking of Baghdad and the death of the caliph. The Mongols eventually retreated, but the chaos that ensued throughout the empire deposed the Seljuq Turks. In 1401, the weak and limping caliphate was further plagued by the Turko-Mongol, Timur, and his ferocious raids. By then, another group of Turks had arisen as well, the Ottomans. Based in Anatolia, by 1566 they would conquer the Mesopotamia region, the Balkans, Greece, Byzantium, most of Egypt, most of north Africa, and parts of Arabia, unifying them under the Ottoman Empire. The rule of the Ottoman sultans marked the end of the Postclassical Era in the Middle East, and of the caliphate.

Post classical China saw the rise and fall of the Sui, Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties and therefore improvements in its bureaucracy, the spread of Buddhism, and the advent of Neo-Confucianism. The Middle Ages were an unsurpassed era for Chinese ceramics and painting. Medieval architectural masterpieces the Great South Gate in Todaiji, Japan, and the Tien-ning Temple in Peking, China are some of the surviving constructs from this era.

By 960 CE, most of China had been reunited under the Song Dynasty, although it lost territories in the north and could not defeat one of the nomadic tribes there—the Liao Dynasty of the highly sinicized Khitan people. From then on, the Song would have to pay tribute to avoid invasion and thus set the precedent for other nomadic kingdoms to oppress them. The Song also saw the revival of Confucianism in the form of Neo-Confucianism. This had the affect of putting the Confucian scholars at a higher status than aristocrats or Buddhists and also intensified the reduction of power in women. The infamous practice of foot bindingdeveloped in this period as a result. Eventually the Liao Dynasty in the north was overthrown by the Jin Dynasty of the Manchu-related Jurchen nomads. The new Jin kingdom invaded northern China, leaving the Song to flee farther south and creating the Southern Song Dynasty in 1126 CE. There, cultural life flourished.

The Mongol Empire, the largest land empire ever created by one group of people.

By 1227, the Mongols had conquered the Western Xia kingdom northwest of China. Soon the Mongols incurred upon the Jin empire of the Jurchens. Chinese cities were soon besieged by the Mongol hordes that showed little mercy for those who resisted and the Southern Song Chinese were quickly losing territory. In 1271 the current great khan, Kublai Khan, claimed himself Emperor of China and officially established the Yuan Dynasty. By 1290, all of China was under control of the Mongols, marking the first time they were ever completely conquered by a foreign invader; the new capital was established at Khanbaliq (modern-day Beijing). Kublai Khan segregated Mongol culture from Chinese culture by discouraging interactions between the two peoples, separating living spaces and places of worship, and reserving top administrative positions to Mongols, thus preventing Confucian scholars to continue the bureaucratic system. Nevertheless, Kublai remained fascinated with Chinese thinking, surrounding himself with Chinese Buddhist, Taoist, or Confucian advisors.

Mongol women displayed a contrasting independent nature compared to the Chinese women who continued to be suppressed. Mongol women often rode out on hunts or even to war. Kublai's wife, Chabi, was a perfect example of this; Chabi advised her husband on several political and diplomatic matters; she convinced him that the Chinese were to be respected and well-treated in order to make them easier to rule. However this was not enough to affect Chinese women's position, and the increasingly Neo-Confucian successors of Kublai further repressed Chinese and even Mongol women.

The Black Death, which would later ravage Western Europe, had its beginnings in Asia, where it wiped out large populations in China in 1331.

The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe. Medieval Asia was the kingdom of the Khans. Never before had any person controlled as much land as Genghis Khan. He built his power unifying separate Mongol tribes before expanding his kingdom south and west. He and his grandson, Kublai Khan, controlled lands in China, Burma, Central Asia, Russia, Iran, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Estimates are that the Mongol armies reduced the population of China by nearly a third. 

Genghis Khan was a pagan who tolerated nearly every religion, and their culture often suffered the harshest treatment from Mongol armies. The Khan armies pushed as far west as Jerusalem before being defeated in 1260. If the Mongol’s could have stayed together as a fighting force with a successive government, they could have over run all of Europe easily. Here is another reason why the Europeans fear non-White people from outside Europe.

The Russian Empire began to expand into Asia from the 17th century, and would eventually take control of all of Siberia and most of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. The Ottoman Empire controlled Anatolia, the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans from the 16th century onwards. In the 17th century, the Manchuconquered China and established the Qing Dynasty. In the 16th century, the Mughal Empire controlled much of India and initiated the second golden age for India. China was the largest economy in the world for much of the time, followed by India until the 18th century.

In the interest of national glory, the Chinese began sending impressive junk ships across the South China Seaand the Indian Ocean. From 1403 to 1433, the Yongle Emperor commissioned expeditions led by the admiralZheng He, a Muslim eunuch from China. Chinese junks carrying hundreds of soldiers, goods, and animals for zoos, traveled to Southeast Asia, Persia, southern Arabia, and east Africa to show off Chinese power. Their prowess exceeded that of current Europeans at the time, and had these expeditions not ended, the world economy may be different from today. In 1433, the Chinese government decided that the cost of a navy was an unnecessary expense. The Chinese navy was slowly dismantled and focus on interior reform and military defense began. It was China's longstanding priority that they protect themselves from nomads and they have accordingly returned to it. The growing limits on the Chinese navy would leave them vulnerable to foreign invasion by sea later on. The Chinese coast was helpless when the British and Japanese came calling with their ships and guns in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

Chinese Influence on the Japanese  

Japan went under the process of sinicization, or the impression of Chinese cultural and political ideas. Japan sinicized mostly because the emperor and other leaders at the time were largely impressed by China's bureaucracy. The major influences China had on this region were the spread of Confucianism, the spread of Buddhism, and the establishment of a bureaucracy (although it was vulnerable to favoritism towards the wealthy). In Japan, these later medieval centuries saw a return to the traditional Shinto faith and the continuing popularity of Zen Buddhism.

Medieval Japan is marked by the beginning of the Asuka period. During this time, Yamato dynasty is established, along with the beginning of recorded Japanese history and a capital in the southern Nara region. In 600 CE, the Japanese send their first diplomatic mission to China, catalyzing the process of adoption of Chinese culture. The Yamato establish their power with a Chinese-based bureaucracy and encourage the spread of Buddhism, discovered through China. The latter was achieved particularly through the construction of Buddhist temples in cities and the countryside.