....second.
Andrey,
I was regrettably near-sleepwalking when I wrote that first letter, re
inter-imperial warfare over (ie back and forth along) the Silk Route, with
possible concominant or correlative effects upon the manner of waging war.
I had, on that particular day, actually forgotten the Persian occupation of
Yemen in question. A few days later, at such time as you say you were away,
I did finally recall the Persian occuaption of the Yemen. Nevertheless and
notwithstanding, I continued silk-obsessed, as before. It is true that the
Persians found deposits of silver in Yemen, which they repatriated. The
precipitating instigation was, however, silk: Justinian ["The Great" by
immense self-promotion], prior (525) even formally taking power (527),
sought to prevail upon the Negus of Abyssinia to procure silk from the
Indian sea route for the factories of Antioch. [Note: objections, say,
to the effect that Arabs traded in both imported and exported silk are
irrelevant, in light of the vast manufacturing industry of Antioch. The
"Broad Masses," as we used to characterize them, of this great industrial
city were long-proletarianized, and constituted the *most riot-prone urban
mob* in the Empire. The impact of food shortage facilitated even greater
violence and destruction than did pagan-Christian conflicts, which is the
late empire was quite noteworthy. The nailbiting of Libanius (late fourth
century) over provisioning of the city was not misplaced. In 383 the food
supply did, indeed, fail. This was the proximate cause of The Day Of The
Statues, so-called because every statue of an Emperor was pulled down and
destroyed. Theodosius' exalted vision of his Mission, uniformity in Faith
and servility (enforced by massive repression) in public Order, Goths
excepted, of course[!], impelled him to Do God's Will on Antioch as he had
in Thessalonika, his previous killing-ground; yet somehow, the successive
Patriarchs of Antioch, Felix and St John Chrisostom, averted the worst of
imperial wrath. More routinely, the "Broad Masses" were bifurcated along
lines of Green versus Blue, not merely in the Circus and Arena; the colour-
moieties extended to the "theater clacques," where playwrights and thespians,
however execrable, were sustained by partisan cheers against detractors; this
intensified the riot-proneness, as if more contributions to the fund of rage
were strictly necessary. As a fan of the revolutionary proletariat myself, I
find it difficult to posture as a detractor of urban explosions; yet the
absence of *convincing and compelling evidence* that political awareness
extended beyond hatred of those who were Greenish/Bluish in a species of
near-racist execration on one side of Blue costumes (or Green on the other)
was a politico-cultural and institutional dead end. There wasn't, after all,
the developed-capitalist social relations requsite for transcendence of this
blockage.
In addition, Antioch contained the HQ of the Praetorian Prefecture of
Oriens, headquarters of Roman armies on the Mesopotamian front; as well
as an Imperial Residence. These had subsidizing effects, and Command and
Control in the event of war was based here. (It is the present writer's
conviction that Valens, not very bright, entertained delusional fantasies
based on prior (and foreshadowing future) policies, toward using Goths to
win decisive victory against Persia, this time cheaply, with ferocious
fighting men newly fallen into his lap. Who, after all, were better soldiers
than Germans, his own Albanians now seemingly "over the hill."
Those who have read Benjamin Isaac, The Limits of Empire, 1990, recall
that, before and after Valens' time, the bedouin of the desert had supplanted
commitment of main force units on both sides. This policy, on the part of both
major powers, saved money in direct military expenditures. It also rendered
the transit system, and its taxibility, problematic. The bedouin would not
or could not be concentrated, rendering pointless the specification of, eg,
Nisibis, Callinicum, and Dara for sole and exclusive border-crossings; and at
which points, exclusively, there was customs duty paid.
Isaac states, categorically, that it was in the fourth century that bedouin
raids, herewith and hereafter, in the sources, called *Saraceni*, became major
security problems. The withdrawal of regular troops, at war-readiness, from
the frontier was both cause and effect. Units were dispersed throughout areas
threatened by raids, sent to occupy road junctions hitherto unfortified, made
to police caravan routes, and posted along roads to guard travelers or even
tourists.
It should be obvious from these dispositions that the collection of land
revenue from caravans liable to customs duties was not easy. Much impost almost
certainly was uncollectible, and the thinly-policed and -guarded routes the
army was made responsible for garrisoning and policing placed the imperial
forces at a disadvantage had a large mass of Saraceni refused payment. Their
dissatisfactions, Late-Antique Romano-Byzantine with the Ghassanids, Sassanid
with the Lakhmids, took a long time to incite decisive action. Customs payments
foregone were to be counterbalanced against insecurities in enemy territories
induced by the very tribes whose back-tax liabilities were set against loot
and pillage for one's own benefit, direct or indirect. Ghassanids and Lakhmids,
in 545, did not hesitate to war on each other with no help whatever from their
Great Power sponsors.
The foregoing leads up to what I actually wished to discuss; that is, the
Persian policy in Yemen. The silk purchased by Persians in Sri Lanka in the
520s, so as to frustrate the scheme whereinto Justinian inveigled the Negus'
cooperation for silk-supplies was not to be confused with silk arriving in
Persia by the land route. The sea route was dependent upon the possession of
Jiaochi (Hanoi) by the Southern Empire (of the Six Dynasties), whose
capital was in Jiankang (modern Nanjing). All analogies between the
Southern Empire and the Byzantine, qua vestige of Civilization, ie, not in
fact overrun by, first (in North China), Huns who, one statelet at a time,
were in turn dispossessed. [Note: From 370, the Turks and Mongols were
united by a figure they could trust - he was Proto-Tibetan - named Fu Jian,
a larger-than-life hero.] The chaos and political fragmentation of the Hunnish
states let to commercial disruption in the overaland silk trade. The Turco-
Mongol forces (led by a proto-Tibetan), in 382 recaptured the central asian
oasis of Kucha, site of the Stone Pillar, where caravans from North China had
long rendezvoused with those from Persia via Afghanistan. This land route,
thus, was early and authoritatively reduced to order. (Trade not guaranteed by
some state structure or other, howevermuch pitiful, takes on the sporadicism
and insecurity of the 5,000-year World System.)
The Southern Empire (The Six Dynasties: Eastern Jin, 317-420; Liu Song,
420-479; Qi, 479-502; Liang, 502-549 whose distinction was overthrow and
extermination of its ruling class by the latter having been locked in their
palaces, fine raiment and all, but minus slaves and food; and Chen, 557-589,
after the General Chen preoccupied with squashing a Vietnamese revolt, 552-
557) was, by contrast to the state to its north, which it stigmatized without
letup as "the sixteen kingdoms of the five barbarians," was a slovenly, poor,
wretched excuse for a polity. It notably fetured a ruling class which refused
on principle to do the work of the high offices which, along with titles and
emoluments, they inherited by right; the eunuchs had been exterminated in 189.
Either hallucinating or fantasizing they were exemplars of the Traditions
handed down from Real China, the South showed, if showing be required, the
fatuity of Jefferson's adage, "That government governs best which governs
least." Taxation (a rumour) and customs duties were laxly, if ever, collected.
Which, curiously, proferred to merchants the benefits of secure harbours minus
liabilities to harbour dues (criminality is a kettle of another colour of
fish). The ships in the sea trade were Persian and Indian, with the Chinese
catching up with breathtaking rapidity.
A ship docked in India, as Crone reports, had preexisting ties between
the sailors/traders and the merchant-purchasers. The latter, Persians, had
a closed market being run to their advantage, and these Persians bought whole
cargoes, which Byzantine agents were too ignorant in the trade to match. Thus
did Justinian's appeal to the Negus flop entirely. What the Abyssinians'
control of Yemen, to 540-ish, accomplished was the drawing of Persian interest
in supplanting the Abyssinians.
In the event of war, the land border between Byzantium and Persia was
closed. Could the Persians afford to tell their suppliers, "We don't need
the silk this year, as it happens there's no way to get it to Antioch?" No
chance. These relations were established over years, decades, lifetimes.
Response to the state of the market was sluggish, and embedded in what
Chinese today call *guanxi*.
Another obvious possibility was: Land the silk in Yemen. This birds two
kills, and gets you stoned:
---a. The Persians faced the Abyssinians across the Bab-el-Mandeb; which
rendered the passage of shipping up the Red Sea rather, uh, problematical;
not necessarily impossible. Andrey Korotayev is almost certainly correct:
Dollars to Betsy, it's the way to bet that the shipping landed in Aden, not
Roman Aela (Aqaba). The two kills thus were: (1) depriving the Romano-Byzan-
tines of raw silk for Antioch's industry; and (2) depriving the Romano-Byzan-
tine state of suchlike revenues as the prevailing syutem of corruption would
permit passing on to the appointing superiors of customs collectors. [Note:
We lack the analogue of Alfred Taylor Mahan, who would, might, perhaps just
write for us a set of massive tomes entitled, *The Influence Of Corruption,
Crookedness, Embezzlement, Defrauding The State, Acceptance of Bribes (in
lieu of revenue payment), Tax Subsidies, and Cooking The Books upon History*.]
[Note: Be it further noted that Justinian's regime was crooked, top to bottom.]
Say, speculating still, the silk has been landed in Aden. Who is to move
the goods? Tribes tout entieres aren't likely, as there must be infiltration
of the porous frontier by small groups of horse-and-camel merchants and traders
who are required to make a considerable effort to evade detection, faking pay-
ments of taxes if challenged. I have no notion of how many Quraysh there were
in the tribe, an easier question by far than How many Mongols in a Horde (ten
thousand); but the safest, most lucrative, policy was, necessarily, split up,
sneak in and out, be inconspicuous, lie a very great deal, and at all times
claim to be acting on one's own account. (That is, don't get the other guys
mixed up in it.)
By all means, then, had the Persians tapped the smuggling potential of
South Arabia, they might have perpetrated considerable economic dislocation
in Justinian's state finance, and they would have minimized dependence, as
was their overall policy at the time, on any tribal entity. (602: Khushrau
destroys Hira. Slightly earlier, Justin II discontinues subsidy to Ghassnids.)
How much shipping did, actually, get through to Aela? What was the "bezzle"?
What was the net collection?
And nothing's yet been said on the historico-political eventoids I noted
in my letter to Andrey with potential to affect the price of silk, commoditas
commoditarum.
Further studies are necessary, not least by me in the library.
Daniel A. Foss