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Date:         Tue, 16 Feb 93 18:35:45 EST
From:         "Daniel A. Foss" <DFOSS@ccvm.sunysb.edu>
Subject:      class war it both ends of eurasia [the sequel]
To:           Chris Chase-Dunn <CHRISCD@JHUVM>
 
[A check of dates in books cited yesterday suggests it not impossible, has
it seem quite likely, renders it plausible, or <<your favorite
historicogibberish usage here>> that the Bubonic Plague did its usual work
in what are now Iraq and Iran a couple of years (1340?) before doing even worse
to Egypt. In the Iranian plateau the relatively sparse peasant population was
heavily dependent upon underground cisterns and subterranean irrigation tubes
called *qanats*. Should these have gone out of use, they would not readily
have been put back into operation. The political prominance of migratory
Turkic tribes, Aqaqonly, Qaraqonlu, and many more, following the breakdown
of organized Ilkhanid government points to a demographic preponderance of
(relatively) healthy-living pastoral nomads relative to cultivators; that is,
an abonormally high nomad-peasant ratio in the total population. The utter
chaosof nomadic unsettling the hardly-settled remaining settled life following
the Ilkhanid fall in 1340 was interrupted by the career of Tamerlane, c. 1370-
1405; which was a more calculatedly organized effort by a nomadic
confederation whose core was Tamerlane's Ulus Chaghaday: The strategic goal
was building enduring (in principle) states reliant on nomad armies to govern
the cultivated regions. Which adds up, even to a blind idiot like me, to the
cultivated regions constituting a "demographic sink"; the nomads moving into
it. (See the application of "demographic sink" to the seventh-century Middle
East in the retitled HE IS OUT THERE distributed Mon, 15 Feb 93. Yet according
to William H. McNeill, whom this writer has hithrto trusted as *vox dei*, the
Plague devastated the nomad population of Central Asia to demographic depths
whence they never recovered: It was the steppe which became the "demographic
sink," the cultivating population that which refilled it. This prima facie
contradiction is manifestly so important that I am certain Gunder will deal
with it as soon as someone else asks him. Not included in references yesterday:
The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, 1968.]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Core and periphery, state, industry, capital, credit, and power 1250-1350*.
 
   In the essay retitled DONT READ THIS, resent Fri, 12 Feb 93, I deliberately
scrambled an already confusing matrix, in the sense of mess, wherein I have
difficulty discerning where profit seeking by rulers and businessmen leaves
off and coercive power-wielding in interstate warfare begins. As did those
participating in the events in question. The objective was, for my part,
ascertaining whether there was anyone with the slightest interest in world-
systems theory OUT THERE, in which case we'd have been told, see here, Gimpel's
version of the story must be in error, as in a world-system the power relations
in question are by definition preposterous. And since 1989 it has become a
commonplace that there indeed was, there existed, there was objectively present
a world-system during the period 1250-1350: If Wallerstein is Zeus on Olympus,
Abu-Lughod is Pallas Athene. (Sociologists have become faster and more prolific
in the generation of deities than in former times were Hindus; so this should
be taken as descriptive, not insulting; one of the first things I was told
about sociology was how faddish it was.)
 
   England was, as of 1277, an exporter of raw wool, a "developing country" as
Gimpel put it. There were at this time two industrial cores, Flanders and
Northern Italy (Lombardy and Tuscany); whereof the latter, increasingly
centered in the Republic of Florence, was a financial and credit core. As
oversimplified as possible a description of the basis of this core to be had
is lifted from a book you have all read in college, Gene A. Brucker,
Renaaissance Florence, California, 1969[1983].
 
*The Italian city state for undergraduates*.
 
      Florence's economic connection with the papacy and the kingdom of Naples
   was formed in the last deceades of the thirteenth century. It was forged
   only after years of bitter strife between Guelf (papal) and Ghibelline
   (imperial) factions within the city, and after the Guelf powers had finally
   triumphed over their Ghibelline rivals in the peninsula. The conclusion of
   this lengthy and complex struggle represented a victory for a group of
   aggressive merchant families in Florance which used their Guelf ties to
   crush their local enemies, and also to obtain valuable economic concessions
   from their allies throughout and beyond the peninsula. They took over the
   papal banking monopoly from their Sienese rivals and established themselves
   as tax collectors for the Holy See throughout Latin Christendom. The
   Florentine share of this lucrative enterprise was substantial, but these
   merchants also used their protected position to monopolize intternational
   banking and trade in ultramontane areas. The late thirteenth and early
   fourteenth centuries witnessed the rise of the great Florentine mercantile
   companies - Sczli, Amieri, Bardi, Peruzzi, Acciaiuoli - each with capital
   resources far greater than any other business firm, and with networks of
   subsidiary branches which blanketed Latin Christendom. In Bruges, London,
   and Paris, in the Mediterranean ports of Barcelona, Marseille, and Tunis,
   in the Levantine marts, Flornetine merchants bought and sold, invested,
   exchanged coins, and sent home the profits from their varied activities.
   The Kingdom of Naples was most intensively exploited by these entrepreneurs.
   Florentine merchants possessed a monopoloy of the region's grain trade;
   their personnel collected taxes and rose high in the bureaucracy. The
   Angevin kingdom was to Florence by the early fourteenth century what India
   was to be for England 500 years later. (pp. 53-54)
 
*But this is not capitalism*.
 
   In a capitalist world-system, the core states are powerful and well-
organized; they have the most advanced means of violence, in terms of the
technique of weaponry, the training of the soldiery envisaged as using the
latter, and the "infrastructural power" to mobilize with utmost efficiency
permitted under prevailing conditions the whole of civil society's resources
for the conduct of warfare (including the maximum application of despotic power
at the decisive point [which is defined as the place you put most of your
Michael Mann]).
 
   As you slide downhill toward the periphery, the state deteriorates quanti-
tatively, qualitatively, and notwithstanding its outward militarism, in the
will and determination for self-defense. Bolivia may have a fighting chance
against Paraguay, yet cannot make the fight of it. What good are 35,000 brave
soldiers with their shouts of "Malvinas Argentinas" against one insane
Englishwoman with a united nation behind her, "Sink The Belgrano" on their
lips.
 
   The division of labor within the bourgeoisie as a class, twice mentioned
in these pages, between "entrepreneurial specialists" and "politico-military
specialists" has not, as of 1291-1343, yet occurred. The Forentines may have
soaked the Kingdom of Naples for money, but could not recruit Gurkhas, Sikhs,
Punjabis, and "the Wily Pathan" from it. Merchants were directly governing the
state, as the line between business and political failure was indistinct to
nonexistent. As such they thought with two minds, which if contradiction beset
the politico-military and entrepreneurial interests of the bourgeoisie, the
same half wit was deployable in the pursuit of either or both objectives at
once.
 
   The tin mines and the sheep were situated in close propinquity to armed
English with the latter's Welsh colonials, in ensemble the deadliest killers
in Europe. Excepting the odd Channel swimmer, a Bardi or Frescobaldi could
hardly escape the country without His Majesty's naval forces graciously
escorting him to the collection of tunnage and poundage. To parly
counterbalance this disability, the cumulative political errors of Henry II
(1154-1189; Thomas a' Becket) and John (1199-1216; Stephen Langton) had
placed England in the humailiating condition of a fief of the Papacy, whose
practical effect was the facilitation of Papal provision to English benefices.
Whcih in turn fomented anti-Papalist, even anticlericalist ire to the point of
heresy: Wyclif and Lollardy. In lesser degree it yielded the Prliamentary
Stature of Provisors and Praemunire, 1351.
 
   Florentine banks became agencies of the English state for the creation of
export markets for English wool in facilitating the gouging of England's
existing market. They were compelled to acceede to this as their credit
extended to the English Crown was hostage to their satisfactory performance
in response to the offer they could not refuse. The only situaltionally
rational response to additional credit demands for the hundred years war
was to go along. It was Florence, not England, which strategically had sunk
into the deadbeat Thrid World country facing IMF/World Bank demands to tighten
belt and liquidate assets to pay off bad loans on its books in the name of
good borrowers made to pay for the Hundred Years War of no concern of theirs.
 
   At home, the Republic of Florence had at its disposal immigrants from rural
areas with potential as part time soldier material. The wealthy bourgeois had
in many instances been trained in the manly art of combat but, in the struggle
against the pribileges of the (Ghibelline) aristocracy the best commanders in
conditions of Medieval (but, one must be quite clear, were no longer feudal)
warfare had gone into exile. And in a state system, any state or combination
of states, sooner or later fights all other states or combinations of states.
With the wealth the bourgeoisie had amassed coupled with their ability to soak
the poor for taxes, the burden of the purely military function of the
politiclal-miitary specialist had been sloghed off onto the *condoterre*, the
mercenary captain. Theis waF a bottomlessupit #{yf<<;chery and despotism. With
the militia system failed, the mercenary system failed, and the specialized
Ministry of Foreign Affairs untried (as to which further research is
necessary), one final strategy remained to the bourgeoisie, competing for money
and power at once: This was to make so much money as to get out of business
altogether.
 
   Not all that much money was required, conswideing: The Bradi Bank had twice
the employees, value of deposits, and number of branches as the Medici a
century later. The record shows that, after the death of Cosimo (1464),
Piero I (1464-1469) was a lousy banker, Lorenzo Il Magnifico (1469-1492) was
worse but was Magnifico for state-politicl reasons, Piero II (1492-1494) went
altogether bust but this was of trivial consequence considering the overthrow
of his regime by social revolution, and the future Medici Popes and Grand
Dukes never made an honest florin in their lives.
 
   Beginning with the rule of Cosimo, the Medici threw a very big party to
which a lot of artists were invited. In very recent, the veriest recent, times
it has been determined that Donatello did gay art.
 
*What's wrong with this picture*.
 
      The props which supported the Florentine economy - her mercantile emprie
   and her cloth industry - were frequently shaken in the early decades of the
   fourteenth century, but they did not collapse. But a series of disasters in
   the 1340s did reverse the trend of economic expansion which had continued
   for nearly three centuries. The banruptcies of the Bardi and Peruzzi
   companies, the two largest mercantile organizations, were serious blows
   to the two largest mercantile organizations, were serious blows to the
   city's economy and shook the confidence of the entrepreneurial class. Yet
   the effects of these business crises were miniscule by comparison with the
   impact of the Black Death in 1348. This pestilence still reigns unchallenged
   as the single greatest catastrophe in European history, more deadly than any
   war or natural disaster. According to the most recent estimate, some 40,000
   Florentines died during the plague year. As an isolated phenomenon, the
   pestilence was a major catastrophe. But it was also a portent for a host of
   other scourges: recurrent epidemics and famines, wars, political disorders,
   and social unrest.
 
      The economic scene confronting these Florentines who survived the plague
   did not change significantly during the next century. The city had lost one-
   half its population, and perhaps one-third of its market. Thereafter, when-
   ever the population curve began to inch upward, the increment would be
   snuffed out by another epidemic. Seven times between 1350 and 1430, the city
   was struck by plague. Fed sproadically by immigration after each visitation
   of the scourge, the urban population fluctuated between 50,000 and 70,000.
   But not until the eighteenth century did the city again reach the size it
   had attained during Giovanni Villani's lifetime. Florence's plight was also
   Europe's: a population reduced by one-third, a sluggish and stagnating
   economy. To these adverse economic conditions was added another negative
   factor, the intensification of politcal disorders. Throughout Europe, the
   merchant seeking to ply his trade was harassed by armed bands of soldiers
   and adventurers, spawned by the wars which broke out with increasing
   frequency and ferocity. if that perennial nuisance, feudal lawlessness,
   had disappeared from the European scene by the thirteenth century, its
   successor, the depredations of the armed companies, was an equally serious
   menace to the merchant and to his customers. (pp. 55-56)
 
*What's wrong with this picture is*:
 
   It presupposes the highly dubious attainment of capitalism to compel the
organization of scoial scientific knowledge into subject headings such that
the "self-" or "social-construction" of the Thingie called The West got taken
for granted. That The West was by virtue of global-cultural supremacy, able
to pick and choose among historical cultures with the effect that the part-time
egregiously underpaid Janie Johnson, PhD, Emlightenment/Fr Rev specialist
(Janie Johnson, meet Kimberly Cook, you agree about important things. Kimberly
Cook, meet Janie Johnson.), Univeristy of Arkansas at Little Rock, is
constrained by a textbook, possibly computer generated, of stuff and fluff
which has simply gotta be covered by week t o4 week 11, as part of the pastness
of Our Past.
 
   Us mutants aint got no past, they saved five dollars and didn't chlorinate
the gene pool, you know what you can do with your Purpose of Human Civilization
on this Earth.
 
   Nowhere, to mop this up, but by *us* is Knowledge arranged by The Rise of
Capitalism. Or even by The Economic Effects of the Bubonic Plague, since you
know *what you aint got* is CAPITALISM RISING.
 
   The investigator will make no advance toward ye much vaunted Objectivity
unless and until you "give it up baby," take off that white skin, doesn't
that feel nice, and realize you, white people and your Western Civilization
in toto aggregatedly, got where you are today for one reason only, which is
SHEER DUMB LUCK
SHEER DUMB LUCK
IT ALL RAN AFTER THE FARMER'S WIFE
SHE CUT OFF ITS TAIL WITH A CARVING KNIFE
YOU EVER SEE SUCH A SIGHT IN YOUR LIFE
AS SHEER DUMB LUCK.
 
[Coming tomorrow: Beseeching Chris Chase-Dunn for distribution of the essay
whereof this is the sequel.]
 
Daniel A. Foss