The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

50 Chapter Two

Chinese felt that any unusual accumulation of private wealth from

trade or manufacture was profoundly immoral, since it could only

arise when an entrepreneur systematically cheated others by buying

cheap and selling dear. Official ideology and popular psychology thus

coincided to reinforce the advantage officials had in any and every

encounter with merely private men of wealth.

Market Mobilization beyond China's Borders

Though the capitalist spirit was thus kept firmly under control, the rise
of a massive market economy in China during the eleventh century
may have sufficed to change the world balance between command and
market behavior in a critically significant way. China swiftly became by
far the richest, most skilled, and most populous country on earth.
Moreover, the growth of the Chinese economy and society was felt
beyond China’s borders; and as Chinese technical secrets spread
abroad, new possibilities opened in other parts of the Old World, most
conspicuously in western Europe.
Even before gunpowder, the compass, and printing began to revo­
lutionize civilized societies beyond China’s borders, there was a pre­
liminary phase when intensified long-distance commerce raised the
significance of market relationships to new heights, preparing the way
for a longer, more sustained economic take-off than any that occurred
within Chinese borders.
Unfortunately, little is known about the growth of trade in the
southern seas. Arab seafarers and before them Greco-Roman and
Indonesian seamen had traversed the Indian Ocean and adjacent wa­
ters for many centuries before the Chinese appeared there. Sumerians
in all probability had communicated with peoples of the Indus valley
by sea at the very beginning of civilized history, and various Indian
peoples also sailed to and fro across the tropical waters where summer
and winter monsoons, blowing alternately in opposite directions for
about half the year, made navigation relatively safe and easy, even for
small and lightly built vessels.
What seems certain is that the scale of trade through the southern
seas grew persistently and systematically from 1000 onwards, despite
innumerable temporary setbacks and local disasters. Behavior attuned
to the maintenance of such trade became more and more firmly em­
bedded in everyday routines of human life. The production of spices,
such as pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and the rest, which played so con­
spicuous a role in Europe’s medieval trade, began to dominate the