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Welcome to the first lecture in this survey of world history
since 1300. The theme today is going to be to
introduce you to some of the characters, in a sense the cast,
of global history, at the very beginning of our narrative.
This course, is to a very large extent, about the interaction
of the different parts of the world. How they shaped each other,
how they created new practices, models of society, new
technologies and cultures, that never existed before.
But what parts?
what about the world before there were any nations?
When we think about our globalization, we think about
globalization between and among and above nation states.
But back in 1300, was a very different, cast of characters.
So we have to also introduce ourselves to the very categories of social
life that made sense to most people living in the world in 1300.
So, how did they live?
Well one category of social life
that almost everybody shared was that was the
category that our world, or, or, the, the vision of our world
created by gods, or a god. Humans didn't
create the world. That very idea came much later on,
in the trajectory of world history. So we could start
out by talking about divine models of the world and its parts.
Another way to start out the story would
be to say, well a common denominator of the
world in 1300 was the fact that most people
lived in the countryside, they lived in small villages.
So, let's begin with an image.
this one is a great famous painting.
I'll come back to it several times in the course of the lecture, by a a painter
called Bruegel called this The Corn Harvest.
And here is really meant to convey the image, the impression.
That what was constant about world history
at the very beginning, over much of the period that we're going to be talking
about, was the fact that living standards remained very constant,
around, and for many centuries after 1300. There were
their living standards were remarkably equal around the world.
The great disparities in global
distributions is something that we're going to
get to later in this course, that opens up in a much more recent time period.
Most people lived in the countryside, most people lived close to the land.
And most people around the world lived roughly
the same way, in the same material conditions.
How do we know this?
Well, one way that we know the world was remarkably equal in
its basic living standards is through the study of life-expectancy rates.
Roughly speaking, in 1300, the vast majority of the world's
population lived between 30 and 35 years.
Height, too, is another measurement, was remarkably even around the planet in
1300. The average height for men in 1300,
was between five feet, five feet, six inches tall.
So, we lived shorter lives, back in 1300,
and we also were shorter people back in 1300.
And this was remarkably evenly distributed around the planet.
So we lived very similarly around the world, and one
of the themes we're going to explore is how these great
divergences opened up, after 1300.
But I'm not going to get to that for a, a little while.
Let's continue by introducing ourselves to the planet in 1300.
Let me just add, that if there were one
exception to this general rule about the relative evenness
of the world, or equality of the world in
1300, there was an important exception to the rule.
Which is that at the that the societies were comprised of social
pyramids, and at the top were very small elites.
So at the very top of the social pyramid were these small elites.
This is an image of one of the most famous books
in world history, called The Wealth of Nations, written by Adam Smith.
And I'm going to come
back to this book, over and over again, because we're going to
be arguing with Adam Smith for the next 12 or 13 weeks.
And what Smith noticed was that one of the
important integraters of the world was the pursuit of riches.
The pursuit, of wealth, and I want to talk about wealth right now.
Let me make a distinction though, I'm not going to talk about money, yet.
Later in the course
we're going to talk about money we're going to get to that later, for
those of you who are interested in the global history of money.
Let's hang on to Adam Smith's title, the wealth.
What is wealth?
And why does wealth matter for global history?
So let's start with a definition so we
know we're all talking about the same thing here.
Wealth is the product
of human effort that yields a surplus
above and beyond what is necessary to survive.
I'm going to repeat it.
I know you can pause this and replay it but I'll repeat it.
Wealth is the product of human effort above and beyond,
that surplus above and beyond, what is necessary to survive.
Now why does that matter?
Wealth,
and the pursuit of it, matters, because one
of the motives for bringing the parts of the
world, together into a more interconnected system or set
of systems, or subsystems, is the pursuit of wealth.
And Adam Smith was a brilliant chronicler of that process.
And his famous book published in 1776, an important year in the calendar
of global history, noted that wealth was a critical
aspect of Europe's ties with the rest of the world.
Well it's interesting for us, in a sense, is how he presumed that it was nations.
Look at the title of the work itself.
That it was nations that were repositories of wealth.
And so, in ending this segment, I want
you to already begin to question and yourselves and
ask how it is or what kinds of political
organizations might serve as alternatives for the
organization and pursuit of wealth in a world before there were nations.
And what relationship that might have to a world of villages.