The European Subsystem

Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 examines the formulation, expansion, and fortification of the development of international connections during the thirteenth century. Through the application of empirical case studies, Abu-Lughod expounds upon commercial exchanges that were rife with symbiotic, cooperative, and divergent roles performed by various participants that enabled the continuation of this world system. While Abu-Lughod examines the mechanics of the thirteenth century system, she also seeks to uncover the reasons why this system disentangled. In the first portion of the book, "The European Subsystem," Abu-Lughod analyzes the three vital participants of the world system in the thirteenth century European subsystem: the towns of the Fairs of Champagne; the industrial and commercial towns of Flanders; and the seaports of Italy. These key participants formed a single circuit of exchange, enabling a gathering location for merchants from various directions and the circulation of non local trade. To Abu-Lughod, these key participants illustrated an opaque and complex relationship that induced a wider reach. During the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the towns of the Fairs of Champagne conducted the interactions Europe had with one another and the East. Eventually, technological advances and new levels of need fazed out the Fairs of Champagne and thus the industrial/commercial Ghent and Burges took over these crucial world system interactions during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Unfortunately, natural events such as the Black Death dramatically reduced the population and the silting of the channel, which eliminated oceanic access. In addition, political and economic components, as well as the Italian multinationals' superior entrepreneurial abilities, induced the decline of Bruges and Ghent and the dependence of the seaports of Genoa and Venice that connected northwestern Europe to the entrepots of the Middle East. Yet disease, political factionalism and ultimately the inability of the Italian mariner states to shape events in regions beyond their control , eventually thwarted Italy's "bid" for hegemony over the world system. The second portion, "The Mideast Heartland", connects and examines the European subsystem with the Middle Eastern trade. Though Italian mariner states played a pivotal role in liking Egypt to European markets, the Egyptian rulers limited Italian access with the East; such changes are central to the mercurial rise and fall of the thirteenth century world system. The Mongols, without strategic locations, productive capacity and transport world economic fucntions, provided low risk and low protective rent land transist. Unfortunately a host of factors, especially the Black Death inhibited and then eliminated low risk and transit.

Abu-Lughod raising an interesting point about success. Core zones of world economies constantly and consistently displaced consecutively from one location to another without; the inevitability of this illustrates that the successions are often through no fault of the particular core. As Abu-Lughod states, "And if blame cannot be attributed, so success need not be "deserved." " (74) The development of the world system had arbitrary components that forces one to think beyond concepts like internal virtue or defect. Champagne and Flanders did not "deserve" to fail. And this extends towards other regions in the world that did not "deserve" to fail and those that did not "deserve" to succeed. To push beyond typical western historian attitudes about western development, (especially after reading McNeill) makes Abu-Lughod's work feel refreshing and quite thought provoking.

This reading raises the question about possible Chinese hegemony. Will Western hegemony continue or will the current economic events cause a new succession? (Of course the 21st century is "global village" and is set up differently than the world system in the thirteenth century. )

-Lolia