The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History

The authors organize Part 4 around three key changes that they identify at the start of the section: relative shifts in the prosperity and power of India and Southwest Asia, the expansion of the web to new parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and the transformed role of universal religions in civilized societies. The discussion illuminates that organized warfare and organized religion, which become increasingly intertwined, are defining features of human history and integral to expansion and tightening of the human web.

The interplay between destruction and construction across various elements of human history is evident. Part 3 shows that steppe raiders incited massive violence and contributed to growth of the web. Much the same story continues in Part 4, which opens by acknowledging that “[s]hifting military balances between steppe raiders and civilized defenders go far to explain why” (84) the balance of power shifted from the extremities of the Old World Web to its center. Although steppe raiders were partly responsible for the decline of certain empires, they also spread Chinese goods and influence into Central Asia, formed protection agreements with civilized rulers that made long-distance trade more efficient, and provoked migrations to Northeast Asia and Eastern Europe. The authors’ presentation of the role of steppe raiders thematically illustrates The Dynamics of Cultural Exchange and Conflict: Destruction of certain elements within the web made way for new creations to emerge and strengthen links within the web.

Islam played a role similar to that of steppe raiders but had the added dimension of intertwining religion with war and politics. Muslim military victories over the Byzantine and Persian armies, Spain, northwest India, and Central Asia demonstrate that military conquest was the primary means of expansion before more peaceable forms of conversion became the norm. At the same time, Islam’s penetration into North Africa, West Africa, and East Africa brought African coastlands more fully into the web and prompted state and language creation, while Islam’s “far-ranging economic exchanges” (92) enabled prosperity in Spain and brought Muslims, Christians, and Jews into economic cooperation with one another. Merging religion with secular matters was not confined to Islam and emerged as a defining characteristic of the age. The text delineates this new kind of “alliance between throne and altar” (104) by identifying which rulers adopted which religions. The authors note that one key characteristic that all four major world religions shared was that “religions of salvation connected rulers and ruled through shared subjection” (107) to divine will. This equality under God(s) was an important precursor to intellectual, political, and social currents that the authors discuss in later sections.

While organized warfare and organized religion were major connecting factors in the Old World Web, transportation and agricultural innovations were significant too. Improved seafaring capabilities enabled settlement of new areas and extension of trade networks in the Pacific, while overland camel caravans created more capacious trade networks among Southwest Asia, Central Asia, and the African Sahara. In addition, barges and sleighs brought steppe nomads into long-distance trade networks. Agriculturally, the spread of rice paddy cultivation was a major factor in India’s prosperity under the Gupta dynasty and inspired new state formation in Southeast Asia, Java, and Sumatra. The most important development in Western and Northern Europe was moldboard plow agriculture. The text posits that these agricultural developments in Europe and Asia eventually “altered the balance of wealth and power within” (102) the Old World Web, thus setting the stage for the text’s later discussion of emerging power dynamics.