Economic History of the World

I was reading something and found out about an interesting and (I think) relatively unknown incident that, had it played out differently, could have significantly altered the course of history. So I decided to write an article about it, and here it is.

Incense is a mixture burned in religios rituals. Two most important ingredients are frankincense and myrrh. They are both obtained by collecting the resin which leaks when their respective trees are cut. When burned, these resins produce strong odour.

Frankincense tree:

Frankincense resin:

Frankincense and myrrh grow in the mountains of south Arabia (nowadays Yemen and Oman) and mountains of Horn of Africa (Somalia). Because of their importance in religious rituals, they were very sought after by the ancient world’s temples and as the sources were geographically concentrated, trade developed.

Source areas:

The trade route is ancient. It could have existed as early as 1000 BC, when Bible describes Queen of Sheba (a kingdom in south Arabia) travelling it to visit Jerusalem, where she brought gifts of spices. By Roman times the route was well established, interspersed with water stations and supported s massive volume of trade. The sea route was also sometimes used, but Red Sea was dangerous because of pirates and its trecherous weather. At the source of the route powerful cities and kingdoms thrived on taxation and trade which went as far as India and Britain. Roman territories were big consumers. Most of this trade created a deficit for Romans. Having nothing else valuable to trade, they had to give gold and silver in order to purchase the coveted spices. The sums have grown to be significant. Romans called the land “Arabia Felix”, happy Arabia, and Plinius the Elder lamented that it was the richest land in the world. Romans were thus eager to either break the monopoly or capture it for themselves.

Contemporary Roman historian Strabo in his work Geography gives an account of how Romans decided to conquer Arabia Felix. In 26 BC, on orders from Emperor Augustus, Roman governor of Egypt, Aelius Gallus, took upon organizing a military campaign with the goal of finding the source of incense and subduing it to Roman power. 10 000 soldiers were assembled in Egypt, Romans and Egyptians with 1000 Nabatean auxillaries and 500 Jews. Nabatea was a north Arabian kingdom under Roman influence and Nabateans had agreed to help the Romans. Syllaios, a Nabatean governor, became their guide and thus they began their expedition.

Which immediately took off on the wrong foot. In the port of Cleopatris (south end of today’s Suez canal) the Romans constructed wrong type of ships. Having corrected that mistake, they made it to the Nabatean port of Leuke Come, but not without having lost many ships due to bad navigation. Once they arrived disease broke out and they had to spend the winter in the port. Finally, they marched to the interior the following spring.

Roman expedition:

Syllaios proved a terrible guide and progress was slow. The expedition made it to some friendly tribes and after wandering through waterless desert, they eventually arrived to the green landscapes of northern parts of south Arabian kingdoms. The climate was better and there was water which sustained denser population. Romans managed to capture a couple of cities easily and ressuply there. After garrisoning them they proceeded south. Natives consolidated and attacked the Romans at a river crossing. Romans were outnumbered but more expirienced at warfare so they came out victorious, losing only seven men in combat and killing “tens of thousands” by Strabo’s account.

They proceeded to the city of Marsiaba (today Ma’rib) to which they laid siege, but had to give it up after six days for lack of water. That marked the southernmost point of the Roman advance. Having marched some 2000 km from where they started and spent six months on the road, suffering from attrition, famine and exhaustion from difficult terrain, Gallus decided to turn back. The captured natives of the area claimed that they were only two days from the spice producing regions.

Roman march back to the sea took only two months, which reinforced their belief that they were purposefully misled by their guide. When they reached the Red Sea, they crossed back to Egypt with the remains of the expeditionary force. Thus ended their ambitious expedition and incense remained in Arab hands. Syllaios, the Nabatean guide, was tried for treason, found guilty and beheaded.

An interesting question is what would have happened had the Romans suceeded in reaching the incense sources? In that case, they would very likely have kept the territories they had captured. Arabia is a huge peninsula, but it is mostly uninhabited. As this map shows, Romans passed through the inhabited areas, so no additional expeditions would have been needed to control the land:

Where people in Arabia live:

Romans considered natives lousy warriors on both land and sea, so pacifying them wouldn’t likely have been a problem for them. Different scenarios are imaginable: from displacing the local population to mixing with it. In any case it is possible that Arabia Felix, including Mecca and Medina and other inhabited areas, would afterwards remain Roman for decades or centuries. Could classical heritage have shaped the culture of the area and its subsequent history differently, we can only guess.

Sources:
http://www.umich.edu/~classics/programs/class/cc/372/sibyl/db/Strabo-Geog-xvi4.html
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
http://www.fathom.com/course/21701787/sessions.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankincense
http://www.itmonline.org/arts/myrrh.htm

My review (in Croatian) of this book can be found here. The book gives a perspective on history of speculation. Basically, it has been coming in new flavours, but always with the same undertaste. The same rituals repeat themselves in each mania under the motto that “this time it is different”. And all booms tend to end up in more or less spectacular busts. The case for similarities in investor behaviour is very convincing, but the case for danger from speculators is not. In conclusion author gives some critique of efficient market hypothesis and sides with advocates of more governmental regulation of speculation.

I’ve been reading chapters from these two books, so I thought I’d share the links. I can’t comment in detail since I haven’t read them entirely.

- draft of a forthcoming (2007) book. A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (4.1 MB pdf) by Gregory Clark. This is the final draft.

- draft of Brad DeLong’s (still unpublished) book Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century. It’s a draft but accompanied with graphs and tables, so it’s useful.

Both autors are lecturers of economic history at their respective universities.

To illustrate the point from the last post better, here is a series of screenshots from the Gapminder animation:

I’ve stumbled upon an interesting statistics visualisation tool. It’s made by Swedish Gapminder foundation. They have thought up some clever ways to display information. Their tool is called Trendalyzer and you can find it in various incarnations on the web: at Gapminder’s official site, at the UN and at Google. For all three you need to have Flash plugin installed in your browser. If you don’t like that, you can also get an executable file from gapminder.org (~3.5 MB).

Here are some examples:

The available data allows us to take a look at world development of the last 30 years. The trends that emerge should make us optimistic: world is becoming a better place. It is also clear that most improvement occurred in Asia, and it seems to me beyond doubt that India and China liberalizing their economies was the cause of that. It would be great if same policies could somehow be made to work in Africa too.

It has long been recognized that economic performance of a country is linked in some way with characteristics of its population. Which characteristics and in what proportion has been matter of much investigation. Max Weber has influentially argued for religion, others have used more encompassing terms like culture or heritage. I’ve also read about inquires into relationship between IQ and the wealth of nations.

Obviously the idea is not easy to capture and quantify, but I think most people would agree that there is some underlying truth to it. Nations are obviously different in many aspects. But which of them influence their welfare?

One particular term that is used here in Croatia is mentality. Often in the context of something being a good idea or policy and “our mentality” preventing successful execution, but sometimes also in positive contexts.

I can’t begin to describe how annoying I find the concept. Why? Because if national mentality exists, it’s a product of centuries of collective expirience and a persistant feature. Government policy may shift incentives around and influence behaviour of individuals, but changing the mentality of the nation would be beyond the power of bureaucrats.

The idea that economic development is largely dependent on a variable that for practical purposes doesn’t vary at all is a pretty depressing one. I refuse to accept it . We have to be able to change our situation through conscious effort.

I am not saying that characteristics of a population can’t be measured at all. I’m saying that it’s doubtful whether we can derive anything meaningful from those measurements. Here is an interesting work by Geert Hofstede (you can compare any two countries on the site):

Those variables are as good indicators of values/mentality as any. But how do they relate to economic performance? I’ve looked through the country list and found no obvious relationships. It seems that if there are any, they are as elusive as the definition of mentality itself.

To crown my recent big update of the Croatian part of the site, I’ve also taken some time to refresh my memory about Rondo Cameron’s A Concise Economic History of the World and write a review. The book is one of the few attempts at global history that didn’t end up as five volume series so you will find it recommended reading at many university courses on the subject. While it boasts the subtitle From Paleolithic Times to the Present it is mostly concerned with the period around the industrial revolution. Cameron doesn’t like the term, but provides a good narrative of the phenomenon. He has mostly concentrated on the factors that explain the differences in economic development of European countries. For example, development of China and India isn’t much discussed, nor are the reasons for it being different than that of Europe.

I have added more content to the portion of my site that is in Croatian. It is now richer for a book review and also the complete book Bogatstvo svijeta - ekonomska geografija za svakoga by Jurij Semjonov. This is a very enjoyable book on economic history and economic geography from 1937. I have the Croatian edition and it says it’s a translation but doesn’t mention which is the original language, title or publisher. Strangely, I couldn’t find anything about Jurij Semjonov on the internet either. I’ve tried a plethora of other spellings (Yuri Semyonov, Urii Semenov…) without success. I’m so used to finding everything quickly that this genuinely surprised me.

I’ve added another book review in Croatian. This time it is Kratka povijest ekonomije, Croatian translation of German youth book Geschichte der Wirtschaft (History of Economy) by Nikolaus Piper. I ran into it in the library and took under an hour to read it. If you expect a youth book to be childish you would be wrong with this one, it’s completely serious. It is probably a decent introductory text about the subject, especially since Rondo Cameron’s A Concise Economic History of the World, which is itself very condensed, has about four times more text.

I’m very good at finding stuff online. I don’t have time or will to actually read or see it all but I still find and even hoard a lot of information . Here are some video lectures I found which are exactly about the topic of this blog: world economic history. I can’t vouch for their quality as I haven’t watched them yet. Hopefully someone will find something useful.

Why the Industrial Revolution took off in Europe but failed in East Asia

Kenneth Pomeranz (University of California at Irvine)

Click.

The Industrial Revolution and the Great Divergence: World Economic Growth since 10,000 BC
(3 lectures)

Gregory Clark (University of California, Davis)

Click.

An Introduction to Global Economy History
(3 lectures)

Patrick O’Brien (London School of Economics)

Click.

Collapses of Ancient Societies and their Lessons for Today

Jared Diamond (UCLA)

Click.

An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of America’s Economic Power

John Steele Gordon

Click.