Globalism in the Pre-Modern World? Questions, Challenges, and the Emergence of a New Approach to the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age

Abstract

This introductory and at the same time comprehensive study attempts to outline the current state of research regarding the claim that globalism was already well underway during the pre-modern period. Much depends, of course, on the definition, the evidence, and the theoretical concepts, as the many controversies indicate which are examined here and contrasted and compared with a wide variety of concrete historical, literary, and art-historical examples or concrete cases. Undoubtedly, the discourse on globalism also in earlier periods before the twenty-first century carries strong political undercurrents, but this essay endeavors to approach the topic sine ira et studio, and simply to reflect on what is possible at the moment to claim regarding global perspectives and where we ought to be careful in our historical investigations. The various literary texts and historical documents from the fields of arts, commerce, medicine, science, etc. introduced and discussed here will hopefully illustrate convincingly that we are justified in accepting the notion of pre-modern globalism, and this even well prior to ca. 1500, if we cast our investigative net as far as possible and pursue innovative comparative and interdisciplinary research.

Introduction

For quite some time now, scholars have debated the validity or usefulness of the concept of globalism in the pre-modern world, prodded along in that endeavor by their colleagues in the modern fields of economics, history, social-and cultural studies, religion, and anthropology, not to forget literature.1 Unquestionably, the twenty-first century is deeply characterized by many aspects characteristic of globalism, as illustrated by trade connections, diplomatic relationships, international political alliances, and communication now facilitated by the internet, email, social media, etc. There are good reasons to trace those developments not much further back than maybe to the late twentieth century, while everything before then appears to have been national, parochial, local, introspective, and limited, as many historians have claimed with the purpose of drawing clear demarcation lines separating epochs, in whatever form defined, leaving the pre-modern era, so to speak, in the dust of history. Poets, philosophers, architects, and scientists from the late antiquity exerted a deep influence on the Middle Ages; and those from the medieval era, met with much interest well into the early modern age. It is not uncommon, however, to reach a workable compromise when the turning point of ca. 1500 is accepted as the beginning of globalism, although I would question even that separation line.2 The other challenge is also what we mean by ‘global,’ when the case often concerns ‘only’ contacts or exchanges between, say, Christian European writers and Muslim Arab authors, all learning from each other. I suggest to be more inclusive and to acknowledge the globality also of certain contact zones, such as the eastern Mediterranean, which was a truly fertile world where many cultures met and interacted with each other. More about that later.

Medievalists and early modernists have now argued against such a too simplistic and binary, perhaps even disrespectful and ignorant perspective and have strongly argued in favor of accepting that globalism already existed well before the modern era, that is, long even before the fifteenth century. The current book will pick up that baton and pursue the same goal of confirming the presence of globalism already well before the modern era, and this on the basis of numerous individual case studies. We are, after all, still far away from a truly global understanding of globalism today, to play here with a pun, and can only aspire to collect the necessary data to recognize actually existing networks across the world already well before 1800, or so.

But many doubts continue to linger as to the real potentials or promises of this concept in grasping fundamental aspects of the period prior to 1600, to say the least, although Europeans found their way to the New World and to East India already shortly before 1500 (Vasco da Gama [1497–1498] and Christopher Columbus [1492]; here disregarding the Vikings traveling to Newfoundland already around 1000), continuing centuries of explorations by traders, pilgrims, soldiers, diplomats, and missionaries. Similarly, when we consider the situation in the Arabic, African, or Asian world, we would find many indicators of fascinating and far-reaching contacts, exchanges, trade, and diplomatic relations, channels of mutual influence, and a network of global communication certainly much more close-knit than many modern scholars have recognized or are even willing to consider possible. Hence, what would the notion of globalism mean in those cultures and in those cultural-historical periods?

If we move away from the traditional Eurocentric view, our entire orientation toward the global easily experiences a dramatic shift, forcing us to take into consideration many different factors, power players, trading networks, and philosophical, literary, and artistic exchanges.3 In fact, the high Middle Ages already witnessed noteworthy intellectual contacts between Christians and Muslims in a constructive manner debating their religious viewpoints, as Najlaa Aldeeb outlines in her contribution to this volume. To this we can easily add merchants, diplomats, architects, artists, philosophers, rulers, and others who operated on a relatively global platform. Of course, the crusades put the entire Christendom on a collision course with Islam, primarily driven by the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, long before 1099 (conquest of Jerusalem) and long after 1291 (fall of Acre), countless members of the Christian and Muslim communities, both merchants and clerics, lived in very close proximity to each other, shared many cultural elements, and learned from the respective other side, as many scholars have already observed in recent times.4 We are, in short, facing a significant paradigm shift in our understanding of the medieval and early modern past, and Global Studies allows us to promote these new perspectives, pushing us to break many different barriers in our traditional scholarship.

Some scholars have also seriously questioned the traditional notion of an early modern Europe having been the first continent to develop a world reach, or a colonial empire at that time. Already in antiquity, but then also throughout the Middle Ages, the Mediterranean was certainly a major contact zone bringing together representatives of many different cultures in Africa, Europe, and Asia, and hence also languages and religions. The global South, for instance, and other parts of the world, always have to be granted an equal role within our historiographical reflections, although we can thereby also face the danger of losing our focus and comparing apples with oranges. It is one thing to bring together shared cultural or philosophical issues from different regions, or even continents, or to reveal connections of economic, artistic, or medical kinds across the world, but it is another thing to use the notion of ‘global’ for universal discussions without an inherent and reasonable cohesion and shared meaning.5 While the Spanish and Portuguese crown indeed managed to conquer much of the American continent since Columbus’s first journey in 1492, they were much less successful in other parts of the world, which actually opened a valuable vacuum for the Jesuit Order founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, one of the major spearheads for the march toward globalism well before modernity.6

Medieval Maps

The history of mapmaking, for instance, can help us much in that regard, identifying the prevalent notions about the larger world, or if that was even recognized in the first place as the true factors in producing such maps. Although many medieval and early modern maps seem to be rather limited, reflecting, at first sight at least, an astoundingly myopic worldview, they actually prove to be valuable to convey a mental-historical concept behind them, reflecting a strong awareness of the larger world well beyond Europe, or far into Asia, depending on the viewpoints.7 This does not mean that we would be able to trace the specific outline of the larger world in those maps, and we should be very careful in equating medieval with modern maps because the purposes differed considerably.

In other words, we have to be careful in our analysis of maps because they often did not necessarily serve practical purposes for travelers, as they do for modern people.8 They were often at any rate much too large to be carried around (see the Hereford or the Ebstorf mappamundi), or pursued rather aesthetic,...