The Eurasian world c. 1200

This lecture was about the degree of Eurasian integration prior to the creation of the Mongol World Empire.

Some factors that facilitated Eurasian integration included those political foundations: the large, stable societies organised by the centralised imperial states of Outer Eurasia, eg. the Tang and Song empires in China (6th to 13th centuries), the Umayyad and Abbasid empires of the Islamic world (7th to 13th centuries) and the Byzantine Empire (4th to 13th centuries). These empires projected their power outward and incorporated many different peoples within their reach. They also provided the foundation for the cultural and commercial activities that reached beyond their borders. Also there were economic foundations, linking Asia to Europe, ie. The Silk Roads. These were the overland trade networks linking East Asia and the eastern Mediterranean region via the silk roads, and the maritime trade networks of the Indian Ocean basin. There were also religious and cultural foundations. The three great world religions that spread through much of Eurasia during this period: Christianity helped generate cross-cultural linkages in Western Eurasia, Buddhism in Eastern Eurasia and Islam in central Eurasia.

There were three regions of integration (The Three Circuits):

• The Sino-Indian Circuit - The poles of this circuit were India and China. Technology spread easily throughout this whole region eg. silks and ceramics as well as religious movement and technological developments. By 1200, the buddhist element of this circuit began to fragment as Confucianism in China and Islam to the east rose, but the interaction facilitated by buddhism continues after its fragmentation
• The Byzantine-Western European Circuit - Religion integrated the European region, meaning there was greater interation between the Mediterranean and Northern Europe.
• The Islamic Circuit - had overlaps with both neighbouring spheres. Both tried to contest this "eating" into their territory, but without success. It wasn't until 1492 that the Islamic influence in spain was removed. Islam was the most successful at crossing boundaries between steppe and sown.

The Networks of Exchange:

Major cities:

China: Chang'an (Xian), Quanzhou, Guangzhou,

Srivajaya (Southeast Asia): Palembang, Malacca

India: Calicut

Middle East: Aden, Baghdad, Alexandria

Europe: Constantinople, Venice, Genoa

Activity came to be directed at production for the market, and thus lives became affected by developments far beyond the locality. Champa rice was drought-resistant and early-ripening and thus was actively distributed throughout the chinese empire to increase productivity. There was food and commercial crops spread by Arabs, such as rice, sugarcane, hard wheat, bananas, lemons, limes, mango, watermelon, spinach, egg plant and cotton. The gradual linking together of regions across Eurasia produced an integration of the disease pool. Smallpox, measles, cholera and plague were among diseases that travelled these trade routes. The initial impact of the spread of these diseases was population decline, but gradually populations developed immunities, so that by around 1200 we can talk of shared immunities across much of Eurasia. The Atlantic and Pacific regions hadn't encountered these diseases however, thus they had a devastating and dramatic impact.

There were however, limits to Integration. Despite these aspects of commercial, cultural and biological integration, many things were not exchanged, and much was still to be learned by people in one part of Eurasia about peoples and cultures in other parts.