A People’s History of the World

by Chris Harman

  53 See A Cameron, Blues and Greens , and R J H Jenkins, ‘Social Life’, p86.

  54 J B Bury, ‘Introduction’, Cambridge Medieval History , vol IV, pxix.

  55 R J H Jenkins, ‘Social Life’, p88.

  56 Known to the Romans as Arabia Felix (Happy Arabia) and today called Yemen.

  57 For a full account of the expansion and neglect of the Mesopotamian irrigation systems, which points out that the blame lay not just with war but also with ‘oppressive taxation’ and ‘the devolution of authority into the hands of the landed nobility’, see R M Adams, Land Behind Baghdad (Chicago, 1965), pp69, 80–82.

  58 The analogy is Bernard Lewis’s, in B Lewis, The Arabs in History (London, 1966), p55.

  59 The analogy is Peter Brown’s, in P Brown, The World , pp192–193.

  60 Both quoted in B Lewis, The Arabs , p58.

  61 See, for instance, P Brown, The World , p200.

  62 B Lewis, The Arabs , p72. For a detailed account of the disputes among the Arab armies, see the chapter, ‘The Islamic Opposition’, in M G S Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol 1, Classical Age of Islam (Chicago, 1974).

  63 B Lewis, The Arabs , p80.

  64 B Lewis, The Arabs , p80 and B Lewis, ‘Government, Society and Economic Life Under the Abbasids and Fatamids’, in Cambridge Medieval History , vol IV, part 1, p643. See also S D Gotein, Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (London, 1966), pp221–240.

  65 B Lewis, The Arabs , p81.

  66 B Lewis, The Arabs , p86.

  67 B Lewis, The Arabs , p91.

  68 See his argument in M Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism (London, 1974).

  69 B Lewis, The Arabs , p91.

  70 G E von Grunebaum, ‘Muslim Civilisation in the Abbasid Period’, in Cambridge Medieval History , vol IV, part I, p679.

  71 M G S Hodgson, The Venture of Islam , vol II (Chicago, 1972), p65.

  72 R M Adams, Land Behind Baghdad , p116.

  73 R M Adams, Land Behind Baghdad , p87.

  74 Yaqut, quoted in R M Adams, Land Behind Baghdad , p87. See also Adams’s account of what happened throughout the irrigated area, pp99–106.

  75 Quoted by G E von Grunebaum, ‘Muslim Civilisation’, p693.

  76 He did so precisely by analysing the dynamic of rise, revolution and decline in the previous 700 years of Islamic civilisation. See Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah (London, 1987).

  77 See, for example, G E von Grunebaum, ‘Muslim Civilisation’, p682.

  78 Quoted in B Davidson, Africa in History (London, 1992), p61.

  79 Quoted in G Connah, African Civilisations (Cambridge, 1987), p183.

  80 H Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre), quoted in A Callinicos, Theories and Narratives (Cambridge, 1995), p167.

  81 See, for example, K W Butzer, Early Hydraulic Civilisation in Egypt (Chicago, 1976), pp9–12; M Stone, Egypt’s Making (London, 1991), pp27–29; and for a report on ‘megalith’ monuments in southern Egypt around 4500 BC, see ‘Tribe in Sahara Were the First to Aim for the Stars’, in the Guardian , 2 April 1998.

  82 Quoted in G Connah, African , p150.

  83 Leo Africanus, History and Development of Africa , vol 1 (London, 1896). For an excellent fictional re-creation of his journeys, see A Maalouf, Leo the African (London, 1994).

  84 See D W Phillipson, African Archaeology (Cambridge, 1985), p170; Jared Diamond goes so far as to argue, ‘African smiths discovered how to produce high temperatures in their village furnaces and manufacture steel 2,000 years before the Bessemer furnaces of 19th century Europe and America’ (J Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel , p394). M J van der Merwe and T A Wertime believe knowledge of iron making originally diffused across the Sahara from the Mediterranean coastal regions, but recognise that African smiths developed techniques which led to the direct making of steel rather than wrought iron. See their essays in T A Wertime and J D Munly (eds), The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven, 1980).

  85 G Connah, African Civilisations , p213.

  86 J Diamond, Guns , pp177–191.

  87 See the details given from research among documents from Cairo’s synagogue in S D Coitein, Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden, 1966), p297.

  88 G Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West (London, 1968), p5.

  89 This, for instance, is part of the explanation of David Landes in his often acclaimed book, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations .

  90 The so-called ‘political Marxists’, Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood. See, for instance, Robert Brenner’s own essay in T Ashton (ed), The Brenner Debate (Cambridge, 1993).

  91 L White, ‘The Expansion of Technology 500–1500’, in C Cipolla (ed), Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol 1, The Middle Ages (London, 1972), p147. See also G Duby, Rural Economy , pp18–19.

  92 L White, ‘The Expansion’, p149.

  93 L White, ‘The Expansion’, p146.

  94 G Duby, ‘Medieval Agriculture’, in C Cipolla (ed), Fontana , pp196–197. In fact the advances in productivity in Ch’en and T’ang China may have been as great as these in Europe, but this does not detract from the importance of what happened.

  95 S Thrupp, ‘Medieval Industry’, in C Cipolla (ed), Fontana , p225.

  96 P Kriedte (ed), Industrialisation Before Industrialisation (Cambridge, 1981), p19.

  97 J Le Goff, Medieval Civilisation (Oxford, 1988), p59.

  98 M Bloch, Feudal Society (London, 1965), p346.

  99 J Le Goff, Medieval Civilisation , p198.

  100 See G Bois, The Transformation of the Year 1000 (Manchester, 1992). For a critical discussion of his views, see my review of the work, ‘Change at the First Millennium’, International Socialism 62 (Spring 1994).

  101 J Le Goff, ‘The Town as an Agent of Civilisation’, in C Cipolla (ed), Fontana , p79. For the role of such small towns newly established on lords’ estates in England, see R Hilton, ‘Lords, Burgesses and Hucksters’, in Past and Present (November 1982).

  102 See, for instance, the list of translations of scientific texts into Latin from the Arabic, in J Gimpel, The Medieval Machine (London, 1992), pp176–177.

  103 Quoted in J Gimpel, Medieval , p174.

  104 Quoted in J Gimpel, Medieval , p174.

  105 See J Gimpel, Medieval , pp192–193.

  106 L White, ‘The Expansion’, p156.

  107 Southern Belgium and the northernmost strip of France.

  108 For a full account, see S Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers .

  109 R Roehl, ‘Pattern and Structure of Demand 1000–1500’, in C Cipolla (ed), Fontana , p133.

  110 The standard history of the Crusades is Stephen Runciman’s three-volume work, A History of the Crusades (Harmondsworth, 1990). The BBC paperback by Terry Jones and Alan Ereira, The Crusades (London, 1996), provides an easy overview. The fact that the Crusaders were able to conquer the lands of a civilisation that was far more advanced than Europe was a result of the new techniques employed in European agriculture – a sign of material advance. But this did not alter the destructive and wasteful character of the Crusades for all involved.

  111 G Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism (Cambridge, 1984), p1. There were, in fact, probably historic precedents just as serious – in, for instance, the crises which hit the early ancient civilisations or medieval Mesopotamia.

  112 G Duby, ‘Medieval Agriculture’, p192.

  113 R Hilton, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism (London, 1990), p171. See also G Bois, The Crisis , pp1–5.

  114 The phrase used by both Bois and Hilton.

  115 Quoted in J-P Poly and E Bournazel, The Feudal Transformation (New York, 1991), p119.

  116 R Hilton, Class Conflict , p65.

  117 For a summary account of events, see S A Epstein, Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe (Chapel Hill, 1991), pp252–253.

  118 N Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London, 1970), p102.

  119 N Cohn, Pursuit , p103.

  120 N Cohn, Pursuit , p104.

  121 N Cohn, Pursuit
, pp139–141.

  122 Now the north western part of the Czech Republic.

  123 The quotes are given in N Cohn, Pursuit , p215. For a much more sympathetic account of the Taborite movement, which does not see it as simply a question of irrational longings, see K Kautsky, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation , translated by J L and E G Mulliken (London, 1897, reprinted New York, 1966).

  124 See, for example, C Hibbert, The Rise and Fall of the Medicis (London, 1979).

  125 See G Duby, ‘Medieval Agriculture’, p182.

  126 Fernand Braudel gives a full account of the various international networks in chapter 2, ‘Markets and the Economy’, of F Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, Civilisation and Capitalism in the 15th–18th Century , vol 2 (London, 1979).

  127 G Duby, ‘Medieval Agriculture’, p193. For instances of urban traders going further and beginning to become considerable holders of agricultural land, see G Bois, The Crisis , p153.

  Part four: The great transformation

  1 Bernal Diaz’s description of the view as Cortes’s troops arrived at Itztapalapa on the shores of the Lake of Mexico, quoted in F Katz, Ancient American Civilisations (London, 1989), p179.

  2 Cortes’s description of Tenochtitlan and its market at Tlatelolco, quoted in F Katz, Ancient , p180.

  3 An account of the Inca capital Cuzco by one of the Spanish conquerors, quoted in J Hemming, The Conquest of Peru (London, 1970), pp120–121.

  4 Columbus’s arguments are presented in The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus by his Son Ferdinand , translated by Benjamin Keen (New Brunswick, 1992), pp15–28.

  5 On Columbus’s religious mysticism, see K Sale, The Conquest of Paradise (New York, 1991), p189.

  6 A description of the first indigenous peoples encountered in the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus’s sailors, from The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus , pp60, 69.

  7 Quoted in K Sale, Paradise , p181.

  8 Letter’s text in The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus , p82.

  9 The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus , p71.

  10 Quoted in K Sale, Paradise , p110.

  11 On Columbus and the ‘Caribs’, see K Sale, Paradise , p130. There have been widespread doubts among anthropologists about the exact prevalence of cannibalism. The firm evidence seems to be that cannibalism as a general way of getting food has never existed, except at times of mass starvation (when it has even occurred in ‘advanced’ twentieth-century societies). ‘Ritual’ eating of certain parts of dead people has been a feature very occasionally found among a few early societies based upon horticulture.

  12 The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus , p109.

  13 According to Las Casas, who lived on the island for several years as a colonist before becoming a priest, quoted in K Sale, Paradise , p155.

  14 One estimate, by Sherburne Cook and Woodrow Borah, suggests it could have been eight million. See K Sale, Paradise , p161.

  15 Quoted in K Sale, Paradise , p159.

  16 K Sale, Paradise , p182.

  17 See K Sale, Paradise , p180.

  18 Quoted in F Katz, Ancient , p324.

  19 R C Padden, The Hummingbird and the Hawk: Conquest and Sovereignty in the Valley of Mexico 1503–1541 (New York, 1970), p74. See also the account of class divisions, imperial expansion and religion in F Katz, Ancient , pp134–243.

  20 Now the Almeda palace in central Mexico City.

  21 V Gordon Childe, ‘The Bronze Age’, in Past and Present (1956).

  22 J Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel .

  23 Quoted in F Katz, Ancient , p334.

  24 Quoted in W H Prescott, The Conquest of Peru (New York, 1961), p251.

  25 According to W H Prescott, Conquest , p251. See also F Katz, Ancient , p334.

  26 Description and figures given by W H Prescott, Conquest , p253.

  27 According to the account of Pedro Pizarro, quoted in F Katz, Ancient , p335.

  28 Quoted in J Hemming, Peru , p178.

  29 Decree quoted in J Hemming, Peru , p129.

  30 J Hemming, Peru , p365.

  31 J Hemming, Peru , p113.

  32 J Hemming, Peru , p376.

  33 Quoted in J Hemming, Peru , p347.

  34 Fernando de Almellones, quoted in J Hemming, Peru , p348.

  35 Details in J Hemming, Peru , p407.

  36 Marx and Engels described it variously as a ‘balance between the nobility and the burghers’ (F Engels, The Origins of the Family (London, 1998), p211); as ‘an equilibrium between the landowning aristocracy and the bourgeoisie’ (F Engels, The Housing Question in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 23 (London, 1988), p363); as ‘serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism’ (K Marx, The Civil War in France (London, 1996), p75); as ‘a product of bourgeois development’ (K Marx, Capital , vol 1 (Moscow, 1986), p672). By contrast, Perry Anderson describes it as ‘a redeployed and recharged apparatus of feudal domination … the political carapace of a threatened nobility’ (P Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974), p18). But if it was ‘redeployed’ or ‘recharged’ feudalism, it was through the monarchy relying on the market and leaning on the urban upper class – that is, by basing itself on elements of capitalism as well as elements of feudalism.

  37 The term is Marx’s, in K Marx, Capital , vol 1, p686.

  38 Statutes named and quoted in K Marx, Capital , vol 1, pp686–687.

  39 For details, see H Heller, The Conquest of Poverty: the Calvinist Revolt in 16th Century France (London, 1986), p27.

  40 A G Dickens, ‘The Shape of Anti-Clericalism and the English Reformation’, in E I Kouri and T Scott, Politics and Society in Reformation Europe (London, 1987), p381.

  41 See, for instance, R S Duplessis, Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997), p93.

  42 At points in his numerous writings, Weber attempts to produce such an explanation in terms of the interaction of multiple factors, but he never provided a coherent account. His writings are more like footnotes to history than an account of the real historical process.

  43 This is an argument even accepted by Perry Anderson in his Lineages .

  44 Witold Kula gives a brilliant exposition of the dynamic and contradictions of the economy which emerged in Poland and, by implication, in many other parts of Europe in this period, in W Kula, Economics of the Feudal System (London, 1987). Despite its title, this book is about what I call ‘market feudalism’, not the classic feudalism of the earlier Middle Ages. It shows how the drive of the lords to buy the new goods created in the advanced industries of Britain, Holland and elsewhere could lead to stagnation, and even undermine agriculture. I suspect these conclusions apply also, at least in part, to other societies with both ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ sectors – such as Sung China, Abbasid Mesopotamia and Mogul India.

  45 Quoted in G Mülder, ‘Martin Luther and the Political World of his Time’, in E I Kouri and T Scott, Politics and Society in Reformation Europe , p37.

  46 H Heller, Poverty , p131.

  47 That is, ‘prince’.

  48 See especially T A Brady, The Politics of the Reformation in Germany (New Jersey, 1997); P Blickle, Communal Reformation (London, 1992); J Abray, The People’s Reformation (Oxford, 1985).

  49 P Blickle, Communal , p63.

  50 P Blickle, Communal , p73.

  51 P Blickle, Communal , p84.

  52 G R Elton, Reformation Europe (Glasgow, 1963), pp53–54.

  53 T A Brady, The Politics , p80.

  54 G R Elton, Reformation Europe , p64.

  55 Quoted in A G Dickens, The Age of Humanism and Reformation (London, 1977), p152.

  56 P Blickle, Communal , p88.

  57 P Blickle, Communal , p12.

  58 P Blickle, Communal , p13. For a full account, together with translations of documents, see T Scott and B Scribner (eds), The German Peasants’ War (London, 1991).

  59 For a full account of the typical re
sponse of a town oligarch, Jacob Sturm of Strasbourg, see T A Brady, The Politics , pp82–86.

  60 P Blickle, Communal , p13.

  61 T A Brady, The Politics , p83. Frederick Engels’s 1850 account, The Peasant War in Germany contains a detailed description of the movement in different regions, in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 10 (London, 1978), pp399–477. For a Marxist history which pays less attention to the details of battles, see E Belfort Bax, The Peasants’ War in Germany (London, 1899).

  62 The 12 points are printed in T Scott and B Scribner (eds), The German Peasants’ War , pp252–257.

  63 P Blickle, Communal , p50.

  64 G R Elton, Reformation Europe , p59.

  65 F Engels, The Peasant War , p449.

  66 Villagers in Shaffhausen, quoted in P Blickle, Communal , p48.

  67 G R Elton, Reformation Europe , p59.

  68 Quoted in F Engels, The Peasant War , p419.

  69 Quoted in L Febvre, Martin Luther (London, 1930), p258.

  70 Quoted in L Febvre, Martin Luther , p258.

  71 P Blickle, Communal , p199.

  72 Quoted in K Kautsky, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation (New York, 1966), p136.

  73 G R Elton, Reformation Europe , pp58, 94.

  74 Most famously in the case of Goetz von Berlichingen.

  75 Quoted in P Blickle, Communal , p200.

  76 H Heller, Poverty , p137.

  77 H Heller, Poverty , p70.

  78 Honoré de Balzac, About Catherine de Medici (London, 1910), p59.

  79 H Heller, Poverty , p175.

  80 H Heller, Poverty , p139.

  81 H Heller, Poverty , p172.

  82 The centrepiece of the recent much acclaimed film, La Reine Margot .