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Macro-Historical Paralellism and the China “Puzzle”
slower pace could still guarantee parallel access of the
civilizations to the latest inventions. The civilizations might
have grown independently of each other for a long time, yet
from the Axial Age onward, long-distance trade was
conducted between China, India, West Asia and Rome, and
between China, East Asia and India. This would mean that
the different parts of the world now were already
interconnected and interdependent, though not in such an
overwhelming manner like today. Not only did the ‘Silk Road’
serve this purpose, but lots of other trading routes by land or
sea. Here humans should pay homage to the horse, who in
the past played a key role in inter-civilization transport and
communications. Without this gift for us to overcome
distance and thus hugely facilitate transport and
communications, civilization of today would be unthinkable,
probably not very far removed from the Stone Age.
From the above discussion it is clear that globalization
had been going on long before 1500. Yet Emmanuel
Wallerstein the world-system theorist would not allow it to
happen until 1500. Whether globalization was already under
way in antiquity depends on a definition of ‘globalization’. Yet
we may probably use a new concept--- ‘pre-1800
globalization’. Yet we should remember that the industrial
capitalism is by no means a historical feat of Northwest
Europe, something it churned out single-handedly in a
closed system, totally independent of the other regions in the
world system. It is a fairly well-known fact that some kind of
proto-capitalism and proto-industrialization had been going
on in the Italian cities hundreds of years before the
industrial revolution of England which began in the latter
half of the 18 th century. Yet the reason why it was Venice,
Genoa, Pisa, Florence, etc rather than the other regions that
led Europe out of the Dark Age deserves greater attention. To
a large extent, this could be explained by their locations.
Due to proximity to the East, the Italian cities could easily
take advantage of the capital, knowledge and technology
from the pool of the world-system, which had never ceased to
grow even when Europe was having its Dark Age, but from
which Europe had been cut off since the 4 th and 5 th
centuries, when Rome declined and fell.
The importance of the Italian cities’ trade with the East is
not to be underestimated, as industrial capitalism is very
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