A People’s History of the World

by Chris Harman

  12 According to texts paraphrased in H Maspero, China in Antiquity (first published in French in the 1920s) (Folkestone, 1978), p26.

  13 See, for instance, D Bodde, ‘The State and Empire of Ch’in’, in D Twitchett and M Loewe (eds), Cambridge History of China , vol 1 (Cambridge, 1986), p21.

  14 H Maspero, China , p45. For some discussions of modern Chinese scholars on the question of the character of ancient Chinese society, see the contributions by Wu Daken, Ke Changyi and Zhao Lusheng, in T Brook (ed), The Asiatic Mode of Production in China (New York, 1989).

  15 H Maspero, China , p70.

  16 Cho-yun Hsu, Han Agriculture (Washington, 1980), p4. See also J Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilisation (Cambridge, 1982), pp67–69, and D Bodde, ‘The State’, pp22–23.

  17 Cho-yun Hsu, Han , p6.

  18 J Gernet, History , p72.

  19 Cho-yun Hsu, Han , p12.

  20 Cho-yun Hsu, Han , p13.

  21 Shih-chi, quoted in D Bodde, ‘The State’, p40.

  22 Details given in D Bodde, ‘The State’, p45.

  23 J Gernet, History , p109, and D Bodde, ‘The State’, p52.

  24 According to J Gernet, History , p109.

  25 Cho-yun Hsu, Han , p3.

  26 K Wittfogel, ‘The Fundamental Stages of Chinese Economic History’, in Zeitschrift für Sozial Forschung , no 4 (1935).

  27 Cho-yun Hsu, Han , p39.

  28 ‘Discourses on Iron and Salt’ (81 BC), extracts translated in Cho-yun Hsu, Han , p191.

  29 Cho-yun Hsu, Han , p53.

  30 Translated in Cho-yun Hsu, Han , p165.

  31 Edict contained in D Bodde, ‘The State’, p69.

  32 Cho-yun Hsu, Han , pp6–7.

  33 D Bodde, ‘The State’, pp71–72.

  34 D Bodde, ‘The State’, pp71–72.

  35 Quoted in D Bodde, ‘The State’, p83.

  36 Cho-yun Hsu, Han , p153.

  37 For a general survey of conditions, see R Osborne, Greece in the Making (London, 1996), pp17–37.

  38 G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London, 1983), p293.

  39 R Osborne, Greece , p67, explains the growth of slavery very much in these terms, although he does not use the term ‘surplus’. De Ste Croix argues that under Greek conditions slavery was much more ‘profitable’ to the ruling class than serf, let alone free, labour could ever be. See G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , pp226–231. By contrast, Ellen Meiksins Wood does not even discuss the material circumstances of cultivation, and therefore the circumstances in which slavery took root, in E M Wood, Peasant, Citizen and Slave (London, 1988). This is typical of the lack of materialism which is the defining feature of the ‘political Marxism’ of herself, Robert Brenner and others.

  40 G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , p227.

  41 According to De Ste Croix, in Thessaly the Penastai were also serfs rather than slaves. Serfdom probably also existed in Crete. See G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , p150.

  42 The chapter on Lycurgus in Plutarch’s Lives (for instance in E C Lindeman (ed), Life Studies of Men Who Shaped History, Plutarch’s Lives (New York, 1950)), provides an account of what the Spartans claimed was their way of life. In fact the austerity may have been to a large extent an ideological myth rather than a reality, certainly in later Sparta. See A H M Jones, Sparta (Oxford, 1967).

  43 This is the argument put in A H M Jones, The Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1957).

  44 Quoted in G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , pp140–141.

  45 De Ste Croix points to evidence that only 13 per cent of slaves were ‘home bred’ according to inscriptions for the years 201–153 BC.

  46 R Osborne, Greece , p233.

  47 See the comments in G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , and in The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972). For a full attempted indictment of Socrates’ approach see I F Stone, The Trial of Socrates (London, 1997).

  48 This argument is spelt out at length in G E M De Ste Croix, Origins .

  49 E Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1920), p1.

  50 G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , p328.

  51 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (London, 1971), p28.

  52 Sallust, The Histories , vol 1 (Oxford, 1992), p24.

  53 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p51.

  54 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p51.

  55 G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , p334.

  56 G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , p335.

  57 According to P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p87.

  58 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p58.

  59 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p58.

  60 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p58.

  61 A H M Jones, The Roman Republic (London, 1974), p116.

  62 Quoted by P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p15.

  63 A H M Jones, The Roman Republic , p122.

  64 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p33.

  65 P A Brunt, Italian Manpower, 225 BC–AD 14 (Oxford, 1971).

  66 P A Brunt, Italian Manpower , p9.

  67 P A Brunt, Italian Manpower , p9.

  68 A H M Jones, The Roman Economy , p123.

  69 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p78.

  70 Details in P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , and A Lintott, ‘Political History’, in J A Cook, A Lintott and G Rawson (eds), Cambridge Ancient History , vol IX (Cambridge, 1986), p69.

  71 Again accounts of what happened are to be found in P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , pp83–92, and A Lintott, ‘Political History’, pp77–84.

  72 According to P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p92.

  73 Sallust, The Histories , vol 1, p25.

  74 Quoted in P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p96.

  75 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p98.

  76 P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p104.

  77 Appian, according to P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p197.

  78 See the account of their conditions in P A Brunt, Social Conflicts , p128.

  79 A Lintott, ‘The Roman Empire’, in J A Cook, A Lintott and G Rawson (eds), Cambridge Ancient History , vol IX, pp25–26.

  80 The marvellous film Spartacus with Kirk Douglas seems to take poetic licence by portraying him on a cross.

  81 Details from A Lintott, ‘Political History’, pp221–223.

  82 Livy, figure quoted in G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , p230.

  83 Quoted in G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , p368.

  84 Quoted in G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , p368.

  85 Quotes given in G E M De Ste Croix, Class Struggle , p355.

  86 It took them no more than a couple of hours to abandon their own attempt to re-establish the republic before the accession of Claudius.

  87 According to A H M Jones, The Roman Economy , p124.

  88 A H M Jones, The Roman Economy , p127.

  89 A H M Jones, The Roman Economy , p127.

  90 A H M Jones, The Roman Economy , p24.

  91 E Gibbon, Decline and Fall , vol 1, p89.

  92 Apuleius, The Golden Ass , translated by Jack Lindsay (London, 1960), p192.

  93 Apuleius, The Golden Ass , pp206–208.

  94 A H M Jones, The Roman Economy , p36.

  95 A H M Jones, The Roman Economy , p39.

  96 See L A Moritz, Grain Mills and Flour in Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1958), for a full discussion on these matters, especially pp131, 136, 138 and 143.

  97 Estimates given in A H M Jones, The Roman Economy , p83.

  98 A H M Jones, The Roman Economy , p129.

  99 See G Bois, The Transformation of the Year 1000 (Manchester, 1992).

  100 There is no reference in the earliest extant versions of his text. For a translation, see Josephus, The Jewish War (London, 1981). A Slavonic translation of a lost medieval text does contain a reference, but there is little reason to doubt this was an ‘interpolation’ by monks embarrassed by the lack of any reference to Jesus in a manuscript they were copying. It certainly does
not justify the way Christian writers use Josephus’s writings to back their own versions of history.

  101 Luke 18.19–26.

  102 Matthew 16.24.

  103 Luke 6.20–25.

  104 Matthew 5.1 and 5.6.

  105 Matthew 25.14–30.

  106 Matthew 21.20.

  107 His use of the word ‘proletariat’ to describe the masses of first-century Judaea is itself confusing. They were very different to a modern working class, despite being poor. Many would have been self-employed craftspeople (‘artisans’) and shopkeepers, others beggars and very few wage workers. What is more, the gospels have Jesus preaching to and associating with ‘publicans’ (tax collectors) – a despised, but not necessarily poor, group. Kautsky quotes in his favour a passage in St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians in which Paul says ‘not many mighty, not many noble, are called’. Kautsky says this means ‘property’ was not ‘represented’ in the early church. In fact, the passage actually says there were a few ‘mighty’ and a few ‘noble’, but that the great majority did not belong to these groups. This suggests the religion had some cross-class appeal and certainly was not purely ‘proletarian’ even at that early stage.

  108 M Goodman, ‘Judea’, in J A Cook and others (eds), Cambridge Ancient History , vol IX, p768.

  109 For the detail of these, see the earlier chapters of Josephus, The Jewish War .

  110 Josephus, Antiquities , quoted in K Kautsky, Foundations of Christianity (New York, no date), p300.

  111 Josephus, The Jewish War . The translation here is that to be found in K Kautsky, Foundations , but it differs only slightly from the Penguin edition of The Jewish War (London, 1981), pp126, 147.

  112 Josephus, The Jewish War , p148.

  113 According to M Goodman, ‘Judea’, p771.

  114 According to Josephus, The Jewish War .

  115 W A Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven, 1983), p34.

  116 Quoted in K Kautsky, Foundations , p261; on the degree of proselytisation, see also M Goodman, ‘Judea’, p779.

  117 Strictly speaking Buddhism is not ‘monotheistic’ because it does not in its earliest forms involve belief in a personal god of any sort. But it does stress a single principle underlying all reality, and so fits in the same category as the other religions.

  118 W A Meeks suggests a figure of ‘some five to six million Jews … in the diaspora’ in the first century (see W A Meeks, The First Urban Christians , p34). This figure seems to be excessive, given that the total population of the empire at the time was only about 50 million, and only a small proportion of those lived in the towns.

  119 Luke 14.26.

  120 Indeed, there must be more than a suspicion that the gospels are hearsay accounts written years afterwards, lumping together quite different events, including some of those mentioned by Josephus. If that is so, a figure called Jesus (the Greek form of Joshua, a very common Jewish name at the time) might have been involved in such incidents as one participant among many – and later reports might easily have vastly exaggerated his role. Anyone who has ever listened to participants recall events even a decade ago, such as the poll tax riot of March 1990 or the miners’ strike six years earlier, will know how divergent are the accounts of who did what.

  121 This version of the prayer is to be found in Apuleius, The Golden Ass .

  122 The estimate is by A J Malherbe, Social Aspects of Early Christianity (Baton Rouge, 1977), p86.

  123 The study is Judge’s, but is here quoted from A J Malherbe, Social Aspects , p46.

  124 See A J Malherbe, Social Aspects , p61.

  125 A J Malherbe, Social Aspects , p77.

  126 This is the argument of W A Meeks, The First Urban Christians , pp70–71, 191, although he uses the sociological jargon of ‘status inconsistency’.

  127 This was certainly the interpretation given to me at Sunday School!

  128 I Corinthians 11.2.

  129 H Chadwick, The Early Church (London, 1993), p46.

  130 Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians and the Colossians both take up issues raised by the Gnostics.

  131 P Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (London, 1971), p66.

  132 P Brown, The World , p67.

  133 For details, see H Chadwick, Early , pp135–136. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire gives lurid details of imperial interventions and the scale of repression throughout this period.

  134 See H Chadwick, Early , p179.

  Part three: The ‘Middle Ages’

  1 According to J C Russell, ‘Population in Europe 500–1500’, in C M Cipolla (ed), Fontana Economic History of Europe: The Middle Ages , p25.

  2 According to P Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, 1978), p126.

  3 See the excellent account of the literate culture of the period in H Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (Harmondsworth, 1954).

  4 See the summaries of the changes in J Gernet, A History , p180, and D Twitchett, ‘Introduction’, in D Twitchett (ed), Cambridge History of China , vol 3 (Cambridge, 1979), p5.

  5 J Gernet, A History , p197.

  6 J Gernet, A History , p236.

  7 There is some dispute among historians as to how widespread and effective this system of taxation was. N E McKnight argues that widespread exemptions from the system left only 17 per cent of the population paying the tax, while the nobility and officials received much more land than the ordinary peasant. The system would then have shifted land from the old aristocracy to the rising layer of officials, not to the mass of people. See N E McKnight, ‘Fiscal Privileges and Social Order’, in J W Haeger (ed), Crisis and Prosperity in Sung China (Tucson, 1975).

  8 R M Somers, ‘The End of the T’ang’, in D Twitchett (ed), Cambridge History of China , vol 3, p723.

  9 R M Somers, ‘The End’, p723.

  10 For accounts of the rebellion, see R M Somers, ‘The End’, pp733–747, and J Gernet, A History , p267. The account in the next two paragraphs is taken from Somers.

  11 There is some debate among scholars over the character of the landed estates. Some see them as similar to the manors of western feudalism, others as essentially capitalist. For a brief account of the discussion, see D Twitchett, ‘Introduction’, p27.

  12 E A Kracke, ‘Sung K’ai-feng’, in J W Haeger (ed), Crisis , pp65–66.

  13 Y Shiba, ‘Urbanisation and Development of Markets’, in J W Haeger (ed), Crisis , p22.

  14 E A Kracke, ‘Sung’, pp51–52.

  15 J Gernet, A History , p320.

  16 J Gernet, A History , pp310–311.

  17 J Gernet, A History , pp334–335.

  18 According to J Gernet, A History , p333.

  19 Fang Ta-tsung, quoted in Y Shiba, ‘Urbanisation’.

  20 D Twitchett (ed), Cambridge History of China , vol 3, p30.

  21 L C J Mo, Commercial Development and Urban Change in Sung China (Ann Arbor, 1971), pp124–125.

  22 Hsia Sung, quoted in Y Shiba, ‘Urbanisation’, p42.

  23 N E McKnight, ‘Fiscal Privileges’, p98. For a full account of the development and content of the examination system, see J F Chaffee, The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China (Cambridge, 1985).

  24 J F Chaffee, The Thorny Gates , p3.

  25 N E McKnight, ‘Fiscal Privileges’, p98 footnote.

  26 This is the tone of the best known of Karl Wittfogel’s later works, Oriental Despotism , written after he had abandoned Marxism. The theme is also present at some points in the writings of Etienne Balazs – for instance when he says that ‘it was the state which killed technological progress in China’ ( Chinese Civilisation and Bureaucracy (Yale, 1964), p11) – although at other points he recognises both the diversity of intellectual standpoints and the reality of technological change. Finally, the argument occurs in David Landes’s recent book, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (London, 1998). But upholding it means downplaying the very real economic dynamism shown in the Sung period.

  27 P B Ebrey, ‘Introduction’,
in P B Ebrey, Family and Property in Sung China: Yüan Ts’ai’s Precepts for Social Life (Princeton, 1984), p129.

  28 This is a point made very well by Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilisation , pp8–9.

  29 As Etienne Balazs, who admitted his approach was influenced by Marx as well as Max Weber, put it, ‘the scholar-officials and the merchants formed two hostile but interdependent classes’, E Balazs, Chinese Civilisation , p32.

  30 L C J Mo, Commercial Development , pp140–141.

  31 Quoted in L C J Mo, Commercial Development , p20.

  32 Passage translated in P B Ebrey, Family , p293

  33 J W Haeger, Introduction to Crisis , p8.

  34 For an attempted Marxist analysis of the Mongols, see R Fox, Genghis Khan (Castle Hedingham, 1962).

  35 S Runciman, ‘The Place of Byzantium in the Medieval World’, in J M Hussey, Cambridge Medieval History , vol IV, part II (Cambridge, 1966), p358.

  36 The Greek name literally means ‘holy wisdom’, but St Sophia is usually used in English.

  37 A Grabor, ‘Byzantine Architecture and Art’, Cambridge Medieval History , vol IV, part II, p330.

  38 G Dölger, ‘Byzantine Literature’, in Cambridge Medieval History , vol IV, part II, p208.

  39 G Dölger, ‘Byzantine Literature’, p209.

  40 A Grabor, ‘Byzantine Architecture and Art’, p306.

  41 K Vogel, ‘Byzantine Science’, in Cambridge Medieval History , vol IV, part II, p287.

  42 K Vogel, ‘Byzantine Science’, p305.

  43 See chapter 8, ‘The Physical Universe’, in C Mango, Byzantium (London, 1994), pp166–176. For a slightly more charitable account, see K Vogel, ‘Byzantine Science’, p269.

  44 R J H Jenkins, ‘Social Life in the Byzantine Empire’, in Cambridge Medieval History , vol IV, part II, p93.

  45 H St L B Moss, ‘Formation of the Eastern Roman Empire’, in Cambridge Medieval History , vol IV, part I, p38.

  46 P Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (London, 1971), p157.

  47 P Brown, The World , p104.

  48 R J H Jenkins, ‘Social Life’, p97.

  49 R J H Jenkins, ‘Social Life’, p98.

  50 R J H Jenkins, ‘Social Life’, p84.

  51 R J H Jenkins, ‘Social Life’, p89.

  52 Some historians have suggested that the different factions represented different political, class or religious interests. But Alan Cameron has provided a mass of evidence to back up his case that they cut across class and religious divisions, and deflected attention from issues which might have threatened the empire. The partial exception was the Nike riot, when the Blue and Green factions, upset by Justinian’s decision to execute a rioter from either side, issued a united declaration against him. But even in this case, as we have seen, the riot was not of the poor against the rich. See A Cameron, Blues and Greens: Circus Factions at Rome and Byzantium (London, 1976).