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World-system cycles since 1000 BC. Temporal boundaries and factors affecting the pulse of the system

Abtract

Systems are characterized by the existence of cycles. This paper suggests that temporal boundaries have existed for world-systems since 1000 BC, and offers explanations for the systemic logic behind the phases of expansion and contraction.

Systems are characterized by the existence of cycles, each with a phase of expansion and a phase of contraction. For world-systems, we can discern economic cycles, synchronized with political, social and ideological evolutions. They are accompanied by shifts of power between competing centres, and changing inequalities with both processes of domination and processes of co-evolution set in motion by the system and by local expansions

In an article published in 2011, I have tried to delimit the temporal frames of possible Bronze Age world-systems in western and eastern Asia, between the fourth and the second millennia.[1] Here I will deal with possible world-systems since 1000 BC.

How can we delimit temporal frames of world-systems? Archaeology and texts provide clues for trade and its significance. They also shed light on the political constructions and the development of cities. The number and size of cities, as well as the rise and fall of these cities – whose interconnections form the system’s “basic foundation” – serve as useful indicators of economic activity, level of interconnectedness between regions, and transformations in the system(s). T. Chandler’s 1987 calculations of the population of the twenty-five largest cities have been updated by Modelski (2003) and Morris (2013). They are useful in this sense, but they need to be approached with at least two caveats. First, the estimations for the oldest periods are questionable, especially for India and China. Second, Chandler’s method tends to underestimate the important role of city-states, whose economic and cultural influences are usually greater than their demographic standing. The prominent cities belonged mainly to the great powers that controlled the cores of the system, as shown on the maps for the four cycles identified for the Afro-Eurasian world-system for the 1st and 2nd millennia A.D. During the 15th and at the beginning of the 16th century, we find also important towns that were city-states belonging to semiperipheries: Malacca, and Venice (at this time, however, Venice was more a “macro-state».

For the whole period prior to 1500 BC, insights into possible world-systems are confronted by major problems of temporal delimitations (e.g. Gasche et al. 1998; Warburton 2007; Reade 2008),[2] and by difficulties in interpreting the data or due to the lack of it. The cycles observed from the 4th millennium BC onward reacted to climate variations – around 3200, 2200, 1750, and 1200 B.C.[3]A 1000-year cycle is clearly apparent, as well as a 500-year cycle.[4]A global decrease in temperature is usually acccompanied by a weakening of the monsoon in the Indian Ocean, and processes of aridification in various countries.

During the first millennium B.C., in both the Western and the Chinese hypothesized world-systems, we can observe three cycles (see Table 1), partly initiated by climatic variations – of varying magnitude – with an overall decrease in temperatures around 800, 400 and 200 B.C.[5] (Beaujard 2010). These can be seen as part of a systemic logic (as is shown in Fig. 1). Moreover, an Indian word-system was formed, which would progressively unite to the eastern and western world-systems.

For the Iron Age, I have shown that all regions did not follow the same path on the one hand, and that some areas were directly influenced (positively or negatively) by the expansion of dominant cores on the other.

Table 1

Western world-system
Phases of growth / Phases of decline and restructuring
1000–850 BC / 850–750 BC
750–450 BC / 450–350 BC
350–200 BC / 200–1 BC
Chinese world-system
Phases of growth / Phases of decline and restructuring
1000–850 BC / 850–750/700 BC
750/700–450 BC / 450–350/300 BC
350/300–50 BC / 50–1 BC

Table 2

Indian world-system
Northern region
Phase of growth / Phase of decline and restructuring
700–200? / 200–1?
Southern region
Phase of growth / Phase of decline and restructuring
200–1

Increasing interconnections in the Ancient World resulted in the different regions being progressively integrated and shaped into a single Afro-Eurasian world-system from the turn of the Christian Era onward (see Beaujard 2012).

The Afro-Eurasian world-system developed at a progressive rate, with an increasing integration of its different parts, and through four cycles, that can be represented as four ascending waves, on an upward curve, from the 1st to the 6th century, 6th to the 10th, 10th to the 14th, and from the 14th to the 17th century.

For each period, internal and external driving forces for change were fundamentally intertwined. Their combination is fully part of the movement and logic of the system.[6]

Advances in agriculture marked each ascendant phase. Agricultural progress was sometimes induced by demographic pressure;[7]increases in agricultural output were also often linked to favorable climatic changes. This in turn led to a rise in population and the growth of cities as well as craft activity. Long-distance commercial and cultural exchanges played a crucial systemic role, by favoring a growing division of labor – both within the interconnected societies, and between these societies –, processes of state building, and technological and institutional innovations. Innovations, in turn, led to a rise in production, exchanges and social complexity. Thus, we observe a combination of Smithian and Schumpeterian growths. These periods of what Jack Goldstone has termed «efflorescence» saw growth per capita in the main cores. Each ascendant phase was accompanied by the rise of empires[8] whose investments in public works often contributed to economic growth, at least in the early stages.

However, a set of interconnected factors regularly caused a reversal in the cycle, due to the surextension of empires, state-sponsored wars that interrupted investments in the productive sector, excessive taxation, political struggles for the control of wealth and state power, and so on. More generally, increasing economic and sociopolitical complexity goes along with higher costs, and every society finally reaches a point of declining marginal returns (unless new organizational or technique solutions are found, but they only push back the deadline) (Tainter, 1988: 194). Complexity then becomes less attractive, and a process of disintegration is initiated. Phenomena of capital decentralization in the ancient and modern world-systems may have played a significant role in the shifts of centers of accumulation (Friedman, 2000: 142).

The decrease in resources (wood, metals) was also responsible for higher production costs, higher transport costs and lower investment. Moreover, Malthus has shown that population tended to grow quicker than agricultural production. The demographic growth that accompanied the periods of economic progress, in the end, created social tensions[9]and environmental problems, which in turn led to a decrease in production, an increase in the cost of production, and a “fall of average elite incomes” (Turchin and Nefedov, 2009: 10).

World-systems are socio-ecological systems (Hornberg et al. 2007), and first of all, environmental disruptions and the cycles themselves might be linked to climatic changes, connected to cycles in solar activity,[10] low solar activity being associated with phases of global cooling. Falls of temperature which occurred at different periods induced various changes in the regions concerned (aridification, or wetter conditions); moreover, each society reacted in a different way to the environmental transformations[11]. Moreover, it is noteworthy that the global cooling between around 1450 and 1475 did not lead to a large recession, even though it did affect Ming China, India, and Egypt, and played a role in the collapse of the Great Zimbabwe state in southeastern Africa: the growth of the system and the forces of integration were probably strong enough during this period to enable the system to resist.

Recessions were first drawn out (3rd-6th, 8th-10th centuries), and later became briefer (around 70 years during the 14th century, less than 60 years during the 17th century). This shortening of the phases of recession probably reflects greater integration and ever-increasing acceleration forces in the world-system. The recessions did not affect all parts of the system to the same degree, either because of the partial integration of certain subsystems or, more often, because of particular local or regional conditions. India and Southeast Asia, most notably, appear to occur sometimes out-of-sync with the rest of the world-system. For Southeast Asia, the asynchrony also appears to be tied up to the pace of China, which often moved ahead of the rest of the system.

In times of recession, the world-system did not disappear but underwent a phase in which its networks were restructured, as were its implicated states and their societies. The phases of decline of the system were marked by the disintegration of empires, and an increase of internal conflicts and wars. The weakening of the centers often favored changes in the hierarchy of the system, with the emergence of strong states in the peripheries or semi-peripheries.

Then came the next upswing brought on by various factors: more favorable climatic situation, reconstitution of energy sources (soil, wood), technical innovations in agriculture, etc.

In sum, a set of forces working together produced a pulsation in the system, leading to an upward movement in the curve.

We see today, however, that this rising curve cannot be infinite. Demographic and ecological pressures, as well as the exhaustion of resources (notably fossil fuels, despite the temporary relief brought by the fracking technique), may in the near future mark the upper limits of growth in this system, for this particular phase of it, or even for the system as a whole.

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Appendix

Solar minima and average temperature minima

Solar minima[12] / Estimated periods
ca. / Reconstructed temperature
minima
Homeric minimum / 800 BC[13] / 800 BC[14]
390-360 BC[15] / 400-350 BC
170-190 AD
250 A.D.[16] / 300, 320, 340 A.D.[17]
430[18]
540[19]
685[20] / 636, 660[21]
800-810[22]
850[23]
900 AD[24] / 900-910[25]
Oort minimum / 1040-1060[26] / 1060, (1052-1090)[27]
1130[28] / 1110[29]
1280-1290[30]
Wolf minimum / 1320-1350 AD[31] / 1320, 1340, 1350[32]
Spörer minimum / 1450-1470 AD / 1448-1470[33]
1530, 1590[34]
Maunder minimum / 1650-1700 AD[35] / 1680[36]

Solar maxima and average temperature maxima

Solar maxima / Estimated periods
ca.[37] / Reconstructed temperature
maxima
700-440 BC[38]
300 BC
100 BC
50 A.D.[39]
120[40]
210
280[41]
375 / 400[42]
590-600[43]
750[44]
840[45]
850 / 880[46]
920
1060-1230 / 960-1260[47]
1370 / 1370-1430[48]
1510 / 1480-1510[49]
1550[50]
1610 / (1620)[51]

[1] Even though the debates on different chronologies for the 3rd and 2nd millennia (Gasche etal. 1998, Warburton 2007, Reade 2008) clearly indicate that the phases of growth and recession put forward for some areas are often only mere hypotheses.

[2]This ‘Ultra-Low Chronology’ partly breaks the correlations established between the climatic variations and some political collapses (Egyptian Old Kingdom, ca 2180, and the Akkadian empire), but other correlations are put forward: the end of Ur III would coincide with the collapse of the Indus culture.

[3]About the relationship between system and environment, E. Morin, 2005: 31.

[4]Dergachev and van Geel (2004), however, also point out to the existence of 2400 and 1500-year climatic cycles, and G. Bond et al. (1997) suggest a 1470-year cycle.

[5]J. L. Brook (2014) does not note any climatic deterioration around 200 B.C. however. I. G. Usoskin et al.’s (2012) reconstruction of the decadal solar sunspot activity over the Holocene only suggests a limited global cooling around 200 BC; a large volcanic event has been registered in Greenland in 210 ± 30 BC (M. G. L. Baillie 1992).

[6]P. Turchin and S. A. Nefodov (2009: 4) also advocate «a synthetic theory of secular cycles».

[7]On the relationships between demographic pressure and technological changes in the agricultural domain (changes in land use, and in tooling), cf. E. Boserup (1998).

[8]Imperialistic expansion can represent an alternative to domestic redistribution of wealth, and a safety valve for social tensions. For various reasons, empires also emerged during phases of contraction of the system.

[9] See also J. Goldstone, 1991: xxvi.

[10]O. M. Raspopov et al. (2008) point to the existence of a 210-year solar cycle («De Vries/Suess cycle»), which superimposed with a 87 year cycle («Gleissberg cycle»), engendering cycles of longer duration (supra). Moreover, Usoskin (2013: 68) show the significance of the 11-year «Schwabe cycle».