The curious fact was that the Bubonic Plague pandemic known as the Plague
of Justinian, which broke out in Constantinople in 542, reaching England by
549 (where it may have decided that this is in English), decimated population
levels throughout the Eurasian landmass *except* for East Asia. We know that
the effect on Europe was so complex and confusing that, in general, we don't
know what happened. The result has been the European Backwardness thesis,
attributed to everything *but* the Bubonic Plague, where the canonical
orthodoxy, once upon a time, was to blame European Backwardness on the Rise
of Islam by way of closing off the Mediterranean (the Pirenne argument, in
Mohammed and Charlemagne). Countering the European Backwardness thesis is
the European Development thesis, promoted by the self-styled heretic,
Christopher I Beckwith, in The Tibetan Empire In Central Asia, 1987[reprinted
with a new postscript, 1992]. The differential impact of disease would of
course logically affect different core and periphery regions variously. The
Byzantine Empire, for instance, became a "demographic sink," a huge area
reduced in productive labour supply and military-recruitment resources
relative to the territory the state was called upon to defend. Moreover,
the Byzantine state was aggressively conquering still more indefensible
territory at the very time the Plague struck, but increasingly overtly
waged war for the purpose of predatory taxation of former subjects of
Arian Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths it had originally made Holy War
to, as we would say, Liberate. As a "demographic sink," it lost all of its
Near Eastern provinces, except for two-thirds of Asia Minor, to Aarabs;
the Balkans to Slavs and Avars; Italy, most of it, to Lombards; North Africa,
to Arabs and Berbers; and the slice of Spain to Visigoths. Sassanid Persia,
also a "demographic sink," gambled everything on predatory war against the
Byzantines, at first limited (Yemen, Lazica), then total; and lost, being
in short order completely overrun by Arabs. The Frankish Kingdom(s) showed
drastic labour shourtages which were remedied by some combination of labour-
saving devices introduced by Romans but not much used hitherto, and by
predatory roundups of Slavs, whose name relaced the Latin *servus* as the
word for "slave" in various European languages. Colder climates being more
salubrious, when even feebly exploited by improved agricultural techniques,
the soils of Northwest Europe were so superior to the old Mediterranean
ones that they provided the basis for a new core area. Sheer guesswork
goes a long way, the seventh century reaching a new low in surviving
documentation. Historians' monotonous usage of the words "devastated,"
"pillaged," "laid waste," or "annihilated" suggests that new, newish,
or emergent core areas had rough going for a while. Even later, the
exulting of a Beckwith over the glories of the Carolingians at their
height ignores the superficiality of the edifice. At the Carolingian
peak, nobody would have imagined any such entities as France or Germany.
Austrasians and Neustrians occasionally had their differences, surely;
but a Frank was not constitued as a Frank by speaking Franconian; and
a Romance-speaking Frank was every bit as Frankish as the Germanic-
speaker. Both were Germans and Frankish. One of the enduring superstitions
of European nationalism, until recently, was the notion that Charlemagne
could be a National Hero of France *or* Germany, not both; which one he
was having been contingent on the French or German nationality of the
deluded.
In 589, Wen Di of the Sui dynasty, who had, as General Yang Jian, a half-
Mongol nobleman, seized power from the Northern Zhou in 581, the latter having
only in 577 destroyed the Northern Qi and unified North China with Sichuan,
defeated and captured the hapless Chen Shubao, last ruler of the Southern
dynasties ruling in Jiankang since 317. This meant that, for the first time
since the third century crisis (Chinese version, recall that Cao Cao was the
exact contemporary of Septimius Severus), a single political regime controlled
both the export route by land (the old Silk Route, out of Northwest China),
and that by sea (the route to India via Guangzhou and Hanoi). There is every
reason to beliieve that Chinese exports were inelastic. Imagine millions of
peasant women feeding silkworms on mulberry leaves, one of the most idiotic
forms of women's work ever concocted by the mind of Man. For everyday apparel,
of course, the still-more-cretinizing hemp splicing was available.
If East Asia was spared the Bubonic Plague, it should follow that China
was a "demographic mound." It undoubtedly had abundant population available
for labour and military recruitment. At the same time, it was, assuming
price-inelastic exports, it was dumping at least as much silk onto the
export markets, by sea to India, thence to Sassanid Persia prior to 637,
and from Sassanid Persia prior to 629, to Yemen, South Arabia, at that time
under Persian rule, quite possibly for smuggling into Byzantine Antioch. From
Antioch, so long as that city held onto its silk manufacturing industry, the
finished goods might be smuggled back to Arabia by the very Arabians who'd
smuggled the raw silk in, since the Saracens were losing subsidies formerly
paid by both Byzantines and Sassanids. This trade, being illegal, would be
ill-documented; and anyway, it would get ruined by the conseqences of the
all-out war in the Near East between the superpowers, won by the newly-
Muslim Arabs pouring out of relatively germ-free Arabia into the demographic
sinks which both empires had become. In China, the effect of this would
merely heighten the tendency already visible under the Sui (581-618), that
is, military predation. The interest of the Chinese state in peaceful
commerce was reduced by declining profits from exports. These profits
might be recouped by outright conquest of the former Chinese export markets,
Korea and Central Asia, even Persia: In 662, the Tang (618-907), the half-
Turkish dynasty founded by Li Yuan in a coup which overthrew the Sui after
the second ruler of that dynasty, Yang Di, was assassinated the previous
year, made a symbolic intervention in the former Sassanid lands on behalf
of Peroz, son of Yazdigird III, last Sassanid king. The Sui, it is widely
believed, had made themselves unpopular by reason of three idiotic wars
against Korea. The Tang continued the policy of invading Korea with equal
lack of success until the reign of Gaozong, third Tang ruler. Wars of
expansion in Central Asia were expensive for the state if glorious for
the military aristocracy of Northwest China until after 680. At that point,
power was seized by Wu Zhao, concubine of Gaozong (and also his father,
Taizong), who ruled from 690-705 as Emperor (the Son of Heaven by definition
was male) Cetian of the Zhou dynasty, that is, in her own name, the only
woman in Chinese history to turn this trick. She conducted massive blood
purges of the turbulent aristocrats, who were typically lance-knights who
fought in plate-armour. To this period belongs the first recruitments to
office by civil-service examinations, the policy-objective having been to
weed out militarism. If failed.
The first half of the eighth century witnessed the zenity of predatory
imperialist expansion, halted only by disastrous defeat at the hands of the
newly founded Abassid Caliphate.
Daniel A. Foss