On Wed, 19 Jun 96 19:22:24 CDT Daniel A. Foss
<U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU> wrote:
> Exactly! There is no good reason to suppose that the trade amounted to
> much, or the profits either immense or dependable, relative to the total
> economic activity of Arabia. The same is true of the silk trade in relation
> to the total economic activity of Roman-Byzantine and Chinese empires. Yet
> even a very small amount of ancient or medieval trade could have enormous
> political and ideological consequences. The extent to which this was true
> was itself variable, tending to have been rather less in China than in
> the Mediterranean world. That is, the extent of Chinese commercialization
> was, to a European observer, disquised in Antiquity and Medieval times
> by the apparent stability of ideological and political forms. Though
> this was itself variable over time.
>
> Let's look at the events at both ends of the Silk Route which could
> have destabilized the trade in Late Antiquity.
>
> China:
> 577. Northern Zhou conquers nothern Qi, unifying North China.
> 581. Yang Jian seizes power, founds the half-Mongol Sui dynasty.
> 589. Sui conquers Chen regime in South China, unifying the empire.
> 617. Assassination of second Sui ruler.
> 618. Li Yuan seizes power, founds the half-Turkish Tang dynasty.
>
> Byzantium-Persia:
> 540. Khusro I sacks Antioch. Outbreak of war over Lazica due to Persian
> ambition to close off the branch of the caravan route to China which
> ran through the Caucasus to Byzantine territory.
> 541. Belisarius invades Persia.
> 542. Outbreak of Bubonic Plague in Constantinople and Antioch. This epidemic,
> the first of many recurrences until the eighth or early ninth centuries,
> was to reduce populations everywhere except in East Asia (and Arabia).
> Epidemic reached Britain by 549. Byzantine empire subsequently vulnerable
> to invasion by Arabs, Slavs, and Avars.
> 545. Ghassanids and Lakhmids at war with each other without support from
> Byzantine or Persian governments.
> 554. Byzantine conquest of Ostrogothic Italy completed (536-554).
> 555. Two Byzantine monks illicitly obtain silkworm eggs in Ceylon and return
> to Constantinople. Byzantine silk industry founded shortly thereafter.
> (Silk production later spreads to Italy and Spain.)
> 562. Byzantine-Persian peace treaty covers Arab allies.
> 565. Death of Justinian (527-565). Successor Justin II (565-578) ends
> subsidies to Ghassanids.
> 572. Byzantines lose Dara to Persians. First westward shift of the border
> on the Silk Route through Mesopotamia since 363.
> 591. Byzantine army in the Persian capital, Ctesiphon, supports bid for the
> throne by Khusro II.
> 602. Khusro II destroys the Lakhmid base at Hira.
> 602. Phocas murders Maurice and seizes power.
> 602. Persians begin raids into Byzantine Syria.
> 610. Heraclius overthrows and kills Phocas.
> 614. Persians conquer and occupy entire Byzantine Near East.
>
> Now, with lengthening periods of Byzantine-Persian warfare, the border
> would have been closed for those periods, with trade shifting to Aden and
> the Hijaz route, in principle. But the same periods of major power warfare
> would have seen simultaneously an intensification of tribal warfare between
> Arab allies, who would have found pillage much more profitable than the
> traders found their trade. Assuming, of course, that these activities were
> distinct, which they were not.
>
> We do not have explicit Byzantine and Persian statements which rationalized
> military activities in terms of trade. Trade in fact was merely one factor
> imposing its logic on the activities of ruling classes, states, bureacracies,
> armies, and monarchs. The motives of the latter were not necessarily well
> understood by the historians who reported them, whether trade was a
> consideration or not.
>
> Staring at this confusion, we may easily say, if we so desire, that
> our theories have dissolved altogether.
Dear Daniel,
I am finally back in Moscow and can now reply to your extremely
intersting message in more detail. Your list of events in Arabia and
its vicinities in the 6th - early 7th centuries AD is very relevant
and illuminating. Yet, to my surprise you have managed to miss one of
the most relevant (for our discussion) events - the Persian
occupation of Yemen by the end of the 6th century AD; whereas this is
just what can explain the "Crone - Simon Paradox" which seems to
puzzle us a bit.
(Just to remind, the Paradox is that:
as P.Crone has shown very clearly, there does not seem to have been
any reasonable place for the massive overland Yemen - Syria caravan
trade traditionally ascribed to 6th century Meccans, as after the
development in the 1st century BC - 1st century AD of a
well-established Mediterrania - Yemen - India sea route there was no
sense in the transportaion of any reasonable commodity amounts from
Yemen to Mediterrania by the ardious Transarabian way. On the other
hand, as was shown by R.Simon almost simultaneously [at least for the
English-reading public] with P.Crone, there is still some evidence
for the Meccan overland trade between Yemen and Syria).
The Persian occupation of Yemen seems to be a real clue here. The sea
trade with Yemen seems to have been extremely risky for the Greek
merchants already in the last quarter of the 6th century taking into
consideration the very unstable situation in Yemen at that time (the
first Persian occupation, internal strife &c). And, of course, one can hardly
imagine any reasonable sea trade by the Greek merchants with Yemen
after the final Persian occupation taking into consideration the
immense Greek-Persian hostilities just at that time. These
circumstancies appear to have been precisely those which created a
niche for the reasonably (though in no way extremely) profitable
Meccan overland Transarabian trade. Hence, in fact there does not
seem to be any real contradiction between R.Simon and P.Crone -
actually, Simon has shown that the reasonably profitable Meccan
Transarabian trading network existed, but it was a rather late
phenomenon, having arisen in a more or less full-fledged form in the
90s of 6th and the very beginning of 7th cent.AD (which correlates
very well with Daniel's & my "chronicle" of the WS events of the
time).
Yours,
Andrey Korotayev, Senior Research Fellow
Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
12 Rozhdestvenka, Moscow 103753, Russia,
ANDREI@RSUH.RU