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�SOUTHERNIZATION

DURING THE MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD circa 900-1200:

�INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY AND TERRITORIAL POWER

IN CONNECTED EMPIRES –

ABBASID, TANG-SONG, PAGAN, SRIVIJAYA, CHOLA ��

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MOBILITY AND PRODUCTIVITY �(LEARNING IN A PANDEMIC)

The social experience of our pandemic highlights the causal role of mobility in the production of goods and services, i.e. economic growth, “development,” and aggregate social wealth.

Travel restrictions reduce trade connections, labor mobility, and congregating for production, consumption, and education.
Reduced travel reduces social wealth and welfare, representing a globalization of local restrictions in the face of a globally mobile pandemic.

Resulting reductions in wealth and welfare are unevenly distributed,
this reveals inequities in the social organization of economies and disparities in “entitlements,” that is, social capacities to obtain goods and services,

as indicated by unemployment, loss of income, and excess mortality among specific groups.

Inequities in entitlement express social ranks of privilege and power.

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TERRITORY IS A PRODUCTION (PROCESS) INSIDE SPACES OF MOBILITY

Steppe nomads create territory by moving herds, camping here and there, seeking greener pastures, fighting for control of space
The social organization of mobility around kinship becomes the basis for naming and controlling territory
Systems of territorial control evolve where some families become dominant and others subordinate, forming ranks of wealth and entitlement, loyalty and alliance, that become attached to specific places, where wealth accumulates,

as we saw in North India in the days of the Buddha,
among Kushans in the days of Kanishka, 500 years later,
and we will see among Arabs and Mongols in weeks to come.

Agricultural production becomes the material basis for the accumulation for territorial wealth and population in urbanizing settlements that are hubs for merchant mobility and for the construction of homes, forts, temples, mosques, where some mobile nomad warriors become rulers of agrarian societies and connect them to one another along routes of nomad travel, trade, and conquest.

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PATRONAGE AS PRODUCTIVITY

The mobility of investors in territories along routes of mobility (migration, trade, and war) produces the populations and structures that embody the “spread” of religions.
Religious patronage is an investment in territorial order,

also in the social status of religious patrons in social relations of production,
and also in the productivity of society,

because, at the very least, temples, stupas, monasteries, and mosques are themselves social wealth,
and they also help to organize the social relations of production, as we will see.

Religious patronage produces religious institutions inside social relations of production that travel from place to place --- typically including physical conflict to control human and natural resources and thereby institute social ranks of status and entitlement.

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THE MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD

The period 900-1200 was a watershed period in the long history of Global Asia, because

It witnessed the consolidation of expansive territories of patronage and productivity that generated a dramatically increasing scale of long-distance mobility, from the Mediterranean around the Indian Ocean to the Pacific.
This watershed period was enriched by increasing agricultural production under more favorable climatic conditions of warming temperatures and increasing rainfall during three centuries known as the Medieval Warm Period.

It produced the world of territories that motivated and sustained Mongol expansion and which Mongols wove together to expand Asia’s circulatory system in the thirteenth century.

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RELIGIOUS TRENDS

It was also during the medieval warm period that

Mahayana Buddhism declined in India, where Brahmanical Hinduism became dominant,
while Theravada Buddhism became dominant in most of Southeast Asia (where it remained connected to Sri Lanka)
as much of the substance of Mahayana was absorbed into Hinduism and Neo-Conficianism,
and Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism emerged in Tibet (for later travels to Mongolia).

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McCormick, Michael et al. “Climate Change during and after the Roman Empire: Reconstructing the Past from Scientific and Historical Evidence.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 43, no. 2, 2012, pp. 169–220. (online PDF).

�

the climate connection

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ENVIRONMENTS FOR ASIA’S ��MEDIEVAL “SOUTHERNIZATION”��

The mobility of wind and water creates a distinctive monsoon Asia space
Unified by monsoon seasonality (temporality – both annually and over long periods of time)
AND differentiated by location, climate (latitudinally), and topography
Creating (somewhat) stable territorial patterns and ecological niches
AND stimulating and channeling both human mobility and the formation of human livelihood territories

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THE RISE OF RICE

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van Glahn, p. 231

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van Glahn p.232

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Among pagodas and fair ladies : an account of a tour through Burma

Author: Trench Gascoigne, Gwendolen Galton

Print Source: London: A.D. Innes and Co, 1896

Publication Info: Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Library. Publication Date: 1896

Chapter 3, Pagodas. On the origins and conditions of Pagoda Slaves.

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THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY

Bondage, subordination, control, and humanity: is slavery social death or social status?
A recent contribution: Slavery in the Islamic World : Its Characteristics and Commonality, edited by Mary Ann Fay, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2018

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MAMLUKS

Mamluk (Arabic: مملوك mamlūk (singular), مماليك mamālīk (plural), also transliterated as Mameluke, mamluq, mamluke, mameluk, mameluke, mamaluke or marmeluke) is a term most commonly referring either to slave soldiers, freed slaves, Muslim converts assigned to military and administrative duties, and Muslim rulers of slave origin.
Turkish slaves in the Delhi Sultanate (Wikipedia) Turkish slaves throughout the Islamic world, and in the Delhi Sultanate were valued members of society. Their value, for their patrons, was their military capabilities, their loyalty and discipline. Their ability to capitalize on opportunity for social mobility, while maintaining their own unique cultural identity created an interesting tension in their social narrative. Their slave origins created a discrepancy in their nobility. This discrepancy was often eluded in commentary by the Persian Chroniclers of the time.
Mamluk Egypt. The Mamluk Sultanate was a medieval realm spanning Egypt, the Levant and Hejaz that established itself as a caliphate. It lasted from the overthrow of the Ayyubid dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517.
In India, the Mamluk Dynasty was founded by Qutb ud-Din Aibak, a Turkic Mamluk general from Central Asia. The Mamluk Dynasty ruled from 1206 to 1290; it was the first of five unrelated dynasties to rule as the Delhi Sultanate till 1526.

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