The Era of Chinese Predominance, 1000–1500 53
Indeed, the transformation of Chinese economy and society in Sung
times may best be conceived of as an extension to China of mercantile
principles that had been long familiar in the Middle East. Buddhist
monks and central Asian caravan traders were the first intermediaries.^60
Their linkages with nomads of the open steppe created another
strategically important, trade-prone community, whose impact upon
China and other civilized populations of the Old World was assured by
the military effectiveness the nomad way of life conferred upon steppe
dwellers.
What was new in the eleventh century, therefore, was not the prin
ciple of market articulation of human effort across long distances, but
the scale on which this kind of behavior began to affect human lives.
China’s belated arrival at a market articulation of its economy acted
like a great bellows, fanning smoldering coals into flame. New wealth
arising among a hundred million Chinese began to flow out across the
seas (and significantly along caravan routes as well) and added new
vigor and scope to market-related activity.^61 Scores, hundreds, and
perhaps thousands of vessels began to sail from port to port within the
Sea of Japan and the South China Sea, the Indonesian Archipelago and
the Indian Ocean. Most voyages were probably relatively short, and
goods were reassorted at many different entrepots along the way from
original producer to ultimate consumer. Business organizations re
mained simple, often familial, partnerships. Hence an increasing flow
of commodities meant a great number of persons moving to and fro on
shipboard or sitting in bazaars, chaffering over prices.
As is well known, a similar upsurge of commercial activity took
place in the eleventh century in the Mediterranean, where the princi
pal carriers were Italian merchants sailing from Venice, Genoa, and
other ports. They in turn brought most of peninsular Europe into a
more and more closely articulated trade net in the course of the next
three hundred years. It was a notable achievement, but only a small
part of the larger phenomenon, which, I believe, raised market-
regulated behavior to a scale and significance for civilized peoples that
had never been attained before. Rulers of old-fashioned command
societies simply were unable to dominate behavior as thoroughly as in
earlier times. Peddlers and merchants made themselves useful to rul
ers and subjects alike and could now safeguard themselves against
- This is the central thesis of Stefan Balazs, “Beitràge zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der
T’ang Zeit” (n. 2 above), and of Jacques Gernet, Les aspects économiques du Bouddhisme
dans la société chinoise du Ve au Xe siècle (Saigon, 1956).
- My late colleague, Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago, 1974),
2:403–4, made the same suggestion several years ago, with the same lack of evidence to
back up the hypothesis.
