Innovation slowed partly because reunited Chinese governments had
less need to support commerce, and partly because the world was, as yet,
too disconnected for innovations to spread rapidly (though some, such as
gunpowder and the compass, did diffuse slowly across Eurasia).
In the mid-14th century, the medieval Malthusian cycle ended in a crash
that affected most of Eurasia. Overpopulation and malnutrition were
widespread before the plague spread from China, through Central Asia, to the
Mediterranean world. In many regions, it killed off a third of the population.
The crash suggests that rates of innovation, though impressive in some regions,
were not yet rapid enough to match population growth, so the Malthusian
pattern would continue. In 1350, the main structures of Agrarian civilizations,
including tribute-taking elites and peasant farmers, remained ¿ rmly in place,
and Eurasia was still dominated by the traditional hub regions.
Though commerce, capitalism, and international exchanges À ourished during
the medieval Malthusian cycle, they could not yet overcome the technological
inertia of Agrarian civilizations. The next lecture surveys changes during
the “early Modern Malthusian cycle,” which lasted from about 1350
to 1700 C.E. Ŷ
Bentley and Ziegler, Traditions and Encounters, chaps. 15, 17, 18, 20.
Christian, Maps of Time, chap. 12.
Fernandez-Armesto, The World, chaps. 10, 12, 13, 14.
Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony.
Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past.
McNeill, Plagues and Peoples.
Essential Reading
Supplementary Reading