Patrick Garner-Before European Hegemony-Part 1

In Before European Hegemony, Abu-Lughod discusses Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems approach. She states that the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries witnessed the first modern world system. She also declares that the Mongol empire made the earlier economic system possible. The Mongol empire and successor states did this by providing trade links to exist across the Indian Ocean and the Eurasian Landmass. This is when the author claims that the economy became structured. The author also speaks of the issues that affected trade and helped trade. Essentially, she takes us through European trade when it was relatively new to international trade and speaks of how the trade developed into an essential part of the economy.

One of the things that I found interesting was that when she looks backward in time, she discusses how China would have been most likely to achieve hegemony. However, china experienced a huge economic collapse in the middle of the fifteenth century. China had to shutdown naval exploration and trade. If this had not happened China would most likely have been the primary center of the world economy for centuries. This seems extremely interesting to me because I would never had guessed that China would have ever been able to have this status. It is amazing how certain things can change history in such a big way. Especially something of this magnitude. Many things could have been extremely different for many centuries if China would have been the powerhouse of the economy.

I was also intrigued by the credit instruments that were developed in the Middle East and China. It is amazing that there were forms of credit that long ago. Do you think that this ever became a long term problem? Not neccessarily on a small scale with single merchants and traders but on a large scale with the countries themselves. Is this something that lead to disputes when huge debts became a problem? Also, The United States has significant debt to other countries still today. I wonder if any other areas of the world have this problem from that long ago? This is just something that caught my eye and I thought was interesting to possibly look into.