We've introduced you to some elemental concepts that we'll be using for the semester.

But notice that one of the things that I have not done was tackle the question, myself, of what world history is. And, of course, there's been much debate from the eighteenth century onwards once historians and social theorists began to recognize that there was something going on that integrated the parts of the world together. Nowadays many of us would think of world history as synonymous with globalization, the story of the integration of the worlds parts together through trade the organization of international institutions like the United Nations, the proliferation of non-governmental organizations and the like that, that stitch the bits and pieces of, of, of the world together. One of the things I'd like to explore is the, the ways in which this was hardly straightforward or linear. In some senses, you could read Adam Smith as telling a story about commercialization as the engine of globalization. One of the things I want to summon over the course of the lectures an aspect I want to, to bring to bear the ways in which there were many breaks in the process of growing interconnections of the world, parts of the world and resistances to the process. And that gives rise to many pathways towards a more integrated world. So, the process of globalization or the history of globalization which me might consider the story that we are going to explore here as a complex, it's not as simple one and it has multiple origins. One complexity is, of course, men like Adam Smith often presume that the world as it became the world, oriented itself around Europe. And it's true, Adam smith and others witnessed the rise of Europe in some respects. But this did not mean that the rest of the world outside Europe did not play a vital part both in the rise of Europe, itself, and the rise of alternative models of thinking about the world as a whole. Let's go back to villages though. The story or the image we had from Brueghel of the sleeping farmers living close to subsistence and producing a little bit of the wealth that might be appropriated by the small elites at the

top of the social pyramid. Alright. So, that's were we, I left you off. But there's an important point to observe about village people and that is that while they lived at a subsistence level, one of the effects of developing wealth over the very long run, was that as they were able to produce more wealth and as their leads were able to appropriate more and more of that for their luxury consumption, this allowed non-agrarian populations to grow aggregating themselves increasingly into settlements that we would now call urban settlements. And so, what you begin to see emerging a very long time ago, was a long, almost sedimental process in the wake of the Neolithic Revolution, was the early trade that begins as trade between the countryside and towns, where non-agrarian populations lived. Indeed, it was Adam Smith who observed that this early commerce between the rural sector and the towns in a sense, was the incubus, was the beginning of the process of something that would expand outwards and radiate to the rest of the world. I want to dig a little deeper into this process of exchange between countries and towns and observe the exchange of one particular kind of good. Because some villages became effective at producing non-agrarian goods particularly luxury goods that could be consumed by non-agrarian populations in towns and increasingly in large cities. Cloth in Northern Europe, weapons in South Asia, silks in China, and perhaps most important of all were plant products. Products that had to be produced in the countryside but consumed in cities. Like spices, saffron in Spain, cinnamon in what is now, Sri Lanka, pepper in India. Food the plant products that were important for religious rituals, aphrodisiacs, as were going to see over the course of the next twelve weeks, were extremely important in making the world go around. Cleopatra was famous for bathing in saffron before receiving her suitors. These were trade goods. These were goods produced in the countryside for urban consumption. Not for subsistence needs, but to sell to other people. These particular goods, these kinds of luxury goods that I'm talking about are very important for understanding the logic

of this early process of integration because they're very light, easy to move around, and have a high value to their bulk. These are preciosities, and it's important because these are the kinds of goods precisely that could be shipped far away from the place where they were originally produced. So here, we have the production of goods not just for survival or subsistence and increasing numbers of villages around the world dedicated to producing these kinds of goods for the consumption by other people. That's the second conclusion. First, is the production of goods not just for survival. And secondly, production of goods that could themselves be shippable. Transportable to markets somewhere else increasingly far, far away. Lots of these transformations were going on all over the places. Let's zero in on one area of, of the world, in particular, where we left off, which was the rice paddies, of China. Here we see a region of the world that's going to emerge as an important hub for regional commerce, the kind of dynamics we are going to see around the world China. One important ingredient for explaining the kinds of transformations that are going to happen in China that they anticipate things that are going to happen in the rest of the world is, is, is a process of harnessing the power and potential of water. For those of you who are interested in engineering and, and I hope there are some of you out there I'll spend a time over the course of the next twelve weeks talking about technological innovations for explaining how globalization occurred and, and how it unfolded in different ways, in different parts of the world. Techno, technology is very important for understanding. So, let's start with one, which is hydraulic technology. But the command of hydraulics, the use of water for irrigation, damming, land reclamation and, of course, sewage was extremely important for, for changing the nature of the relations between the country and the city. One of the most monumental of the technological breakthroughs in China, was the construction of the famous Grand Canal which connected the southern part of

China, of the rice frontier that of this area to urban districts particularly the capital in northern China of Beijing. And you see then, as a result of many years centuries of building up a canal system in China. A fusion of the farming frontiers of Southern China with the bureaucratic and military power of Northern China. And, of course, the opportunities that were presented by opening up the new rice frontiers in the South of China, spurred farmers to press that rice frontier ever further. So, you see the growing connection between the agrarian sector and the urban sector, just in one region alone the kinds of possibilities that are unleashed. One reflection of that possibility was the ways in which populations grew between the eighth and the twelfth centuries in China the population expanded doubled, in fact, and reached 100 million. Flip side of this, of course, is as the agrarian frontier moves ever southwards as the result of the connections we begin to see the first large scale deforestation. Punch lines of this course is that this process of deforestation is something that began a long time ago and continues today is a story of continuity. The result of the deforestation of Southern China is, of course, the destruction of the habitats that sustained macrofauna, particularly the elephant. In a sense, it's a story of a long standing implicit war between farmers and elephants. Let's sum up the argument so far. Why is the story of agrarian expansion so important for understanding global history? Well, one, it sets of a cycle between the creating of wealth and the possibility of constructing and centralizing power, the growth of wealth particularly as its consumed and appropriated by urban communities and elites created resources that states could harness. We're going to see shortly how that changes the whole mathematics of politics and the rise of great empires. One of the sub-themes here is the negotiations that are going to begin between those who are able to skim the surpluses of agrarian societies, merchants, and tax collectors. This negotiation becomes really important for understanding global history. Second, that the trade between

countrysides and cities drew the parts of the world, in this case, China, as a world together, growing contact and growing interconnection. And we are going to see how this pattern of interconnection, eventually yields to increasing inter dependents between the parts of the world. This is what we will consider globalization. So, interconnection to interdependence between these different parts of, in this case regions like China, are going to anticipate dynamics that we're going to see spread around the rest of the world.