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Globalization in World History

In this fully revised fourth edition, this book treats globalization from several
vantage points, showing how these help grasp the nature of globalization both
in the past and today.
The revisions include greater attention to the complications of racism
(after 1500) and nationalism (after 1850); further analysis of reactions against
globalization after World War I and in the 21st century; more discussion of stu-
dent exchanges; and fuller treatment of developments since 2008, including the
role of the Covid-19 pandemic in contemporary globalization.
Four major chronological phases are explored: in the centuries after 1000 CE,
after 1500, after 1850, and since the mid-20th century. Discussion of each phase
includes relevant debates over the nature and extent of the innovations involved,
particularly in terms of transportation/communications technologies and trade
patterns. The phase approach also facilitates analysis of the range of interac-
tions enmeshed in globalization, beyond trade and migration, including disease
exchange, impacts on culture and consumer tastes, and for the modern periods
policy coordination and international organizations. Finally, the book deals with
different regional positions and reactions in each of the major phases. This in-
cludes not only imbalances of power and economic benefit but also regional styles
in dealing with the range of global relationships.
This volume is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students
of world history, economic history, and political economy.

Peter Stearns is Distinguished University Professor of History at George

Mason University. For several decades he has regularly taught world history and
globalization courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. He has published
titles in the Themes in World History series, on subjects including time, human
rights, and happiness, with his latest release Punishment in World History.
Themes in World History
Series editor: Peter N. Stearns

The Themes in World History series offers focused treatment of a range of human
experiences and institutions in the world history context. The purpose is to provide
serious, if brief, discussions of important topics as additions to textbook coverage
and document collections. The treatments will allow students to probe particular
facets of the human story in greater depth than textbook coverage allows, and to
gain a fuller sense of historians’ analytical methods and debates in the process.
Each topic is handled over time – allowing discussions of changes and continui-
ties. Each topic is assessed in terms of a range of different societies and religions –
allowing comparisons of relevant similarities and differences. Each book in the
series helps readers deal with world history in action, evaluating global contexts as
they work through some of the key components of human society and human life.

Education in World History

Mark S. Johnson and Peter N. Stearns

Human Rights in World History (Second Edition)

Peter N. Stearns

Food in World History (Third Edition)

Jeffrey M. Pilcher

The Turkic Peoples in World History

Joo-Yup Lee

Punishment in World History

Peter N. Stearns

The Environment in World History (Second Edition)

Stephen Mosley

Globalization in World History (Fourth Edition)

Peter N. Stearns
Globalization in World History
Fourth Edition

Peter N. Stearns
Designed cover image: MIAMI, USA - AUGUST, 2019: An Olympic
flag flutters above a red athletics track. Lazyllama/Alamy Stock Photo
Fourth edition published 2024
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
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an informa business
© 2024 Peter N. Stearns
The right of Peter N. Stearns to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
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recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2009
Third edition published by Routledge 2019

ISBN: 978-1-032-57492-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-57298-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-43961-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003439615

Typeset in Times New Roman

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents

Acknowledgments vii

PART I
Context1
1 Globalization and the Challenge to Historical Analysis 3
2 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE:
A Preparatory Phase 14

PART II
Early Globalization, 1000–1450 CE33
3 The Birth of Globalization? 35
4 Transition: The Mongol Period 64

PART III
Protoglobalization69
5 The Main Features of Protoglobalization, 1500–1750 73
6 A Late-18th-Century Transition 103

PART IV
Modern Globalization, 1850–1945 113
7 The 1850s as Turning Point: The Birth of Modern Globalization 117
8 The Great Retreat, 1914–45, and a New Transition 153
vi Contents

PART V
Contemporary Globalization: The Most Recent Phase
and Its Backlash 161
9 Contemporary Globalization since the 1940s:
A New Global History? 165
10 A New Retreat?: The Signs of Disruption in the 21st Century  208
11 Conclusion: The Historical Perspective 221

Index 225
Acknowledgments

Though it seeks to complicate their approach, this book owes much to the New
Global Historians and the Toynbee Society in which they long participated, in-
cluding the late Bruce Mazlish, the late Raymond Grew, Wolf Schaefer, and
Akira Iriye. Various people have assisted in the previous editions, including
Craig Hamilton, Laura Bell, John Garnett, and Alexis Frambes. Three schol-
ars offered useful comments on the third edition, for which I am grateful. Spe-
cial thanks to Sinead Monaghan for assistance with this new edition, and to the
Routledge staff, Isabel Voice, and Allison Sambucini, for their combination of
encouragement and practical help. Finally, I am grateful to the many undergrad-
uate and graduate students at George Mason University who have participated
in discussions about the history of globalization and who have added both data
and perspectives.
Part I

Context

Globalization is one of those phenomena that begin well before they are clearly
named. The word globalization was first used in English in the 1930s, but its
meaning was not clear. It was mainly an English equivalent of a French term,
mondialisation, that had been introduced to describe the increased speed of
global communication and transportation after the mid-19th century. (A Japanese
word for the process was introduced in the 1960s.) In English, use of globaliza-
tion ticked up a bit in the 1980s, with some application to international busi-
ness, but its real birth was only in the 1990s. At that point, the term soared in
popularity, mainly to define the increased linkages of the post-Cold War world
that scholars and journalists thought, or hoped, were beginning to open up. By
the early 21st century, many Americans were familiar with the term and could
offer a reasonable definition, though they disagreed on whether they approved
or disapproved of the process it described.
This book focuses on the development of the framework for globalization,
arguably over a considerable span of time and in some fairly clear phases – but
including the 20th–21st century surge that the word itself was invented to de-
scribe. The argument is simple. Grasping the longer history of globalization,
and even spending a bit of time deciding when it “really” began, improves an
understanding of what the process is all about, why and how it is complicated by
different regional reactions, and why it continues to provoke considerable con-
troversy. Arguably, as some historians have contended, globalization has been
the most important single process in world history over the past decades or even
centuries, changing human life in many ways. Figuring out its dimensions goes
some way to grasping one of the basic characteristics of the modern world.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003439615-1
1 Globalization and the Challenge
to Historical Analysis

Globalization, which as recently as the 1990s seemed destined to link the

world’s regions in ever-tighter connections, has unquestionably hit a number
of speed bumps during the past two decades. The recession of 2008, the most
serious international downturn since the 1930s, caused second thoughts in
many quarters. Growing concerns about racism raised questions about glo-
balization’s role in furthering the exploitation of some groups of people by
others. Increasing realization of the environmental crisis and the inadequacy
of measures to address it – though this might argue for more global con-
trols – set off another set of warning bells about the overall process that had
brought humanity to this point. Great power tensions, including the desire of
countries like China, India, and Brazil to shake free from Western dominance,
introduced another set of questions about global arrangements. Responses to
the Covid-19 pandemic that surged in 2020 not only disrupted international
contacts temporarily but highlighted clear limitations to more general global
arrangements, as many frightened societies largely ignored wider coordina-
tion. Globalization was not dead; indeed, the technologies for interconnec-
tion advanced steadily. But it was clearly entering a new and less predictable
phase.
In fact, globalization has always been a historical process, evolving, chang-
ing, and sometimes retreating over a long stretch of time. To be sure, it is
possible to jump into the connective framework at any given point – as in
the 1990s, when the term itself began to become commonplace for the first
time – and talk about the structures involved and debate the advantages and
disadvantages of the whole phenomenon. But a fuller grasp of globalization
and its impact, and patterns of regional response, requires a deeper examina-
tion of changes and continuities over the past several centuries. At the same
time, globalization has never been a predetermined process, destined for in-
evitable advance: it has always involved human choices and resistances, as
is so clearly the case today. Historical analysis does not predict the precise

DOI: 10.4324/9781003439615-2
4 Context

contours of globalization in the future, but it plays a vital role in evaluating

what the phenomenon is all about, and why it provokes such intense – and
contradictory – reactions.

****

Globalization has long been a subject for dispute. Some observers have seen it
as an engine for economic growth and prosperity, or a framework for the protec-
tion of human rights and even a peaceful global community. Others have blasted
it as a source of corporate control and impoverishment, a threat to cultural integ-
rity, a terrible and destructive force.
Specific debates also involve globalization’s regional impact in a “post-colo-
nial” but still very unequal world. From a British journalist, Martin Jacques: “At
the heart of globalization is a new kind of intolerance in the West towards other
cultures, traditions and values, less brutal than in the era of colonialism but more
comprehensive and intolerant.” From Tadashi Yanai, a Japanese businessman:
“Globalization is criticized from q Western perspective, but if you put yourself
in the shoes of people in the developing world, it provides unprecedented op-
portunity.” Here too, contradictory arguments flourish.
In recent years, hostile takes on globalization have been gaining ground
in many different countries and from many different angles. From the left:
globalization promotes economic and political systems that “threaten progres-
sive goals, and should be recognized as such and fought at every level.” “It
does not serve the interests of the vast majority of the people on the planet
and is both economically and environmentally unsustainable.” Its menace is
“self-evident.”
From the right: globalization has “left millions of our workers with nothing
but poverty and heartache” “We reject globalism” (Donald Trump). Globaliza-
tion tears down the precious values of the nation, making Europe, for example, a
“standardized cluster” open to influences from all over the world (Viktor Orban,
the authoritarian Hungarian leader): “Globalization, by aggravating the crisis of
meaning, has led to the enhancement of fundamentalist entities like the ISIS (ter-
rorist) group.”
From a variety of angles: globalization is “harming us more than helping us.
Why are so many horrors happening at once in the world?”
And finally, along with the attacking chorus, another important note.
While some people, whether for or against globalization in principle, argue
that the process is irresistible – as the Vietnamese president recently stated,
“rejecting globalization was like rejecting the sunrise” – critics now argue
that the process can be successfully opposed. The aura of inevitability may
have faded in favor of beliefs that new nationalism, or new radicalism, can
turn the tide.
 Globalization and the Challenge to Historical Analysis 5

Is globalization entering a dramatic new phase? And would this be a good

thing? How can the history of globalization help sort out the surprising array of
contradictory judgments on what the phenomenon is all about?

***

Globalization is quite simply the intensification of contacts among different

parts of the world and the creation of networks that, combining with more lo-
cal factors, increasingly shape human life. The process is a blend of economic,
technological, sociocultural, and political forces, though globalization terminol-
ogy is often used to focus primarily on economics – the integration of national
economies into an international economy through trade, foreign direct invest-
ment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology.
Globalization is no mere abstraction: it has real human meaning. It refers (in
the financial crisis of 2008) to Americans who woke up at 3 in the morning to
check Asian stock markets because they knew these would influence and fore-
shadow Wall Street later in the day. Globalization refers to global McDonalds,
with 31,000 locations worldwide, all with common emphasis on fairly greasy
food served quickly and (in principle at least) cheerfully. Or to Starbucks, with
22,500 sites including 10,000 outside North America – often challenging lo-
cal coffee house traditions that go back over 400 years. It refers to a quarter
of the world’s population (regardless of time zone) glued to televised accounts
of World Cup soccer. It refers to the millions of American kids playing with
Japanese toys like Hello Kitty or (not too long ago) Pokémon, or the charitable
contributions from around the world pouring into disaster areas like tsunami-hit
Southeast Asia or Katrina-devastated New Orleans. It refers … – the list is long
indeed, with an impressive range of arenas and activities.
The concept of globalization was not coined by historians but rather by other
social scientists, economists in the lead. These theorists in turn, implicitly or
explicitly, argued that globalization identified a phenomenon whose nature and
consequences were quite novel, leading to very different interregional interac-
tions and human experiences from anything that had occurred before. Most of
them also initially contended that this global innovation was largely a good
thing, producing not only a different but also a better world; yet it was also
clearly possible to make the same claims about novelty and conclude that the
results were unfortunate – the world is indeed changing dramatically but getting
worse. Either way, globalization has always had historical meaning in suggest-
ing a significant movement away from earlier frameworks.
And this, of course, is where historians and historical perspectives come in.
How new is globalization compared with previous patterns of contact among
societies in different regions of the world? What’s the difference between a
multinational corporation – one of the bearers of globalization today – and the
6 Context

international corporation of the late 19th century, or indeed the international trad-
ing company of the 16th century? No one can contest that contemporary globali-
zation harbors unprecedented features – the Internet is purely and simply new;
the capacity for a quarter of the world’s population simultaneously to watch the
same sports event is purely and simply new. But claims about globalization as a
huge departure in the human experience go beyond these narrower examples, and
they should depend on a very careful analysis about how the recent globalization
process stacks up against earlier changes in contacts and their results.
The historical assessment becomes all the more crucial if we are in fact en-
tering a significant new globalization phase, in which resistance and retreat will
take center stage. How new is this kind of tension over globalization, and are
there any revealing precedents?
Evaluating the origins of globalization – when the process really began – also
opens the question of what caused it. Some discussions of globalization seem to
assume that it dropped out of the sky, with at most a few generalized references
to changes in technology. In fact, of course, a variety of human decisions are
involved, for example in determining not only what technologies to use (some
societies in the past have in fact resisted global devices) but how local policies
coordinate, or fail to coordinate, with larger global forces like epidemic disease
or the popularity of global sports. One way to ask about globalization’s origins,
in fact, is to determine the point at which the motivations to accelerate global
exchanges became so compelling that further expansion of actual contacts was
virtually assured. It’s at least possible that more careful attention to causes and
motivations must push chronology considerably back in time, without ignoring
the importance of more recent developments, like the Internet, in shaping an
additional stage in the globalization process. Root causes, in other words, may
pre-date important but more surface manifestations.
Clearly, globalization and its current uncertainties cannot be fully understood
without historical context that will trace when the various strands of the process
first took shape and why, and that will also evaluate results and resistances in the
past as well as the present. The goal is to use a discussion of how globalization
relates to prior patterns of interregional contacts to determine more precisely
what is really new about the recent developments, particularly beyond specific
technologies, and whether the current changes constitute in fact a huge jolt of
the unexpected or, rather, an acceleration of experiences to which many socie-
ties had already adjusted.
To be sure, historians (like most scholars) like to argue, and globalization
has already provoked some sharp debates. Thus, one group, calling themselves
the “new global” historians, urges that recent globalization is indeed a huge
change, perhaps one of the greatest in human history. The group tends to opt for
a slightly more generous time span than some non-historians prefer, pointing
back to the 1950s or so for the onset of the contemporary current. But they’re ad-
amant about seeing the phenomenon as a great gulf between present and future
 Globalization and the Challenge to Historical Analysis 7

conditions, on the one hand, and the bulk of the human past on the other. Indeed,
they like to distinguish themselves from world historians, arguing that their
“global” history alone captures the uniqueness of recent change instead of bury-
ing it in the catalogue of centuries. Against this, though somewhat less fiercely,
another cluster of historians has begun to urge that it’s the later 19th century,
not the later 20th, that should be seen as the true globalization seedbed. Against
both, one eminent world historian, David Northrupp, contends that it’s around
the year 1000 CE that human history divides between largely separate or re-
gional experiences (before) and increasing contact, imitation, and convergence
(after); and if this is true, more recent changes associated with globalization
form merely the latest iteration of this basic and long-standing momentum. This
last approach calls attention to the contributions of major societies like China
or the Arab world in creating the initial conditions for globalization, rather than
placing disproportionate emphasis on Western initiatives.
Finally, and fairly recently, a number of historians have begun to argue that
globalization should be seen as emerging in phases (one of the major studies is
in fact entitled The Three Waves of Globalization), rather than trying to pinpoint
one burst of innovation. These books have the great merit of moving our vision
away from an exclusive focus on essentially contemporary developments, as in
the new global history approach. Whereas the globalization of sports clearly be-
gins in the late 19th century, the globalization of trade arguably goes back much
farther. We may be better able to evaluate the impacts of globalization on the
human condition more accurately if we look for a more gradual accumulation
of new patterns rather than just debating about the origins of the whole process.

***
This book rests on the claim that globalization has become one of the defining
features of world history – indeed, probably the most important single feature –
but that it emerges from a more complex and longer-standing process of change.
It picks up on the idea of stages or waves of particularly important change, but
adds careful attention to chronologically earlier precedents and to the idea of a
sequence of key steps. It also notes earlier patterns of resistance, which can place
current attacks in clearer perspective. In dealing with globalization historically,
the book also places the process, appropriately enough, in a clearly global con-
text. Modern globalization has been disproportionately connected to Western
norms, at least until very recently, but the basics clearly pre-date Western lead-
ership just as the process, today, is at least partially escaping Western control.
Finally, as against any single schema, the book urges the need to recognize the
complexities involved in figuring out how globalization has emerged over time.
Can a historical approach also help us sort out the advantages and disadvan-
tages of globalization, cutting through some of the passions about gains and
losses? Certainly, when globalization is seen unfolding over time, it is possible
to note changes in the winners and losers and in the aspects of the process that
8 Context

are most contestable. History does not say, conclusively, whether contemporary
globalization is on balance bad or good, but it can suggest why evaluation has
become so complicated and also why different regions, as well as various politi-
cal factions, take different positions on the subject.

Potential Turning Points

In dealing with major changes in global contacts and processes from 1000 CE
onward, the chapters that follow pay particular attention to four major turning
points: around 1000, around 1500, around 1850, and of course in recent decades
(with attention to a few other partial transitions as well, particularly in the 13th
and then the 18th centuries). This approach also highlights attention to periods in
which globalization had to retreat – for example, after World War I and arguably
today – another reminder that globalization has never been an automatic process.
Very few historians have really argued for globalization before 1000 (though
as we will see there are some diffuse gestures in this direction), but even here
there are a few issues to consider and certainly a need to establish a backdrop
for the greater complexity in trading and contact patterns thereafter. The goal is
to show how globalization in part flows from prior change – to see it as part of a
sequence of developments, with some ongoing motives and impacts attached –
but also, through the same approach, to highlight features that are demonstrably
and significantly novel. Each stage of globalization, including the most recent
one, involves a combination of continuity and change from past patterns, rather
than some inevitable march toward greater world integration.
This approach will also open some other kinds of discussion that an all-or-
nothing approach to globalization – either dramatically new or old hat – tends to
obscure. In the first place, it can help sort out regional experiences. Every seri-
ous analyst of globalization, even the most enthusiastic, urges recognition of the
interaction between regional and global factors. And it’s quite clear that different
societies have different reactions to globalization, as a whole process and in terms
of some of its constituent parts (like immigration or consumer culture). A more
explicitly historical approach shows how these differences develop, and even sug-
gests that some societies formed basic commitments for or against globalization at
different points in time. Japan, for example, made key decisions on relationships
with the rest of the world after 1868 that have clearly conditioned its responses
to the more recent rounds of globalization later in the 20th century. Parts of the
Middle East or Africa, in contrast, have probably faced core issues more recently,
whereas China arguably postponed full consideration of globalization until 1978.
Regional issues around globalization are not modern alone: each of the following
chapters on stages of globalization or “preglobalization” will include specific dis-
cussion of the major regional variants involved in that time period.
The historical approach also assists in dis-aggregating globalization in terms
of constituent parts, each with a somewhat different historical background. This
is where the importance of seeing globalization in terms of the accumulation
 Globalization and the Challenge to Historical Analysis 9

of different patterns of contact, rather than as a single framework, emerges

strongly. Migration and disease exchanges, for example, are important parts of
contemporary globalization, and as such they should be analyzed in terms of
how they contribute to change; but as basic processes they go way back in hu-
man history. Global environmental impact (as opposed to more purely regional
results of human activity), on the other hand, and global movements to protect
the environment, are much newer. Definable global political arrangements (in
contrast to more traditional relationships among nations) fall a bit in between,
older than global environmentalism but far younger than disease exchange.
For globalization is both an intensification of the range and speed of contacts
among different parts of the world and an expansion of the kinds of activities
intimately involved in global interactions. Both aspects help explain why global
developments play an increasingly active role in shaping human lives, which
is the key reason to study the phenomenon in the first place. They explain also
why globalization, even if ultimately judged to be a novel force, is not entirely
new – and why resistance has historical precedents as well.
Contacts among different societies have increasingly become the key focus
in world history scholarship and teaching, for they commonly involve such in-
teresting tensions and attractions and so often produce changes in all the socie-
ties involved. Globalization connects this core interest to the present by forcing
analysis not just of specific contact episodes but of how contact patterns built
up into durable systems and motivations. Globalization today is partly the result
of conscious planning, but it also reflects the ambitions and daring and greed of
many people in the past who knew they wanted to reach out for new goods or
new ideas or new conquests without having any idea that what they were do-
ing would someday amount to a new world system. By the same token, explicit
hostility to globalization also builds on the past, on earlier efforts to argue that
too much contact risked loss of identity and loss of control.

Isolation and Contact

The pull to separate but also the pull to connect both go far back in human history.
Separation resulted from the wide dispersion of human bands, in turn a func-
tion of the demands of a hunting and gathering economy. Hunting and gathering
groups, generally about 60–80 strong, usually required upward of 200 square
miles to operate – depending of course on climate and other conditions. This in
itself tended to create substantial open space between one group and the next,
which in turn could encourage the development of distinct habits and identities.
Furthermore, the same conditions impelled frequent migration, a pattern that
took shape among early human species, well before the advent of Homo sapiens
sapiens, and then applied to this latest species as well. For every relatively small
expansion in population would force some members of a hunting and gathering
group to move beyond current territory, to look for additional sources of food.
By the time Homo sapiens sapiens began to move out of its original home in
10 Context

East Africa, dispersion through migration developed quite quickly, as the species
moved not only to other parts of Africa but to the Middle East and thence to other
parts of Asia and Europe, to Australia (using a land shelf extending from South-
east Asia, that has long since been submerged but that for a time allowed a rela-
tively small journey over water), and (by 25,000 BCE) across the then-existing
land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and surprisingly rapidly onward to other
parts of the Americas. By 10,000 BCE, right before the advent of agriculture, the
roughly 10 million people in the world had populated virtually all inhabitable
areas. Several Pacific islands still lay vacant, including Hawaii; New Zealand was
untouched; Bermuda would not be discovered until European voyages in the early
modern centuries. But there were small bands of people almost everywhere else.
This meant, obviously, that huge distances began to separate different groups. A
few, like the Aborigines of Australia, would be cut off entirely from other popula-
tion centers until modern times. Others were less isolated, but could easily find
contacts with people outside a specific region unusual and possibly threatening.
The isolation emphasis should not, of course, be overdrawn. Few small hunt-
ing and gathering bands were entirely separated from larger regional networks.
While local languages might develop (there used to be far more different lan-
guages in the world than there are today), most of them related to larger language
groups, like Bantu, or Indo-European, which in turn meant that communica-
tion among many groups was not forbiddingly difficult. Within a single region,
certain hunting bands might regularly come into contact for purposes of self-
defense (or aggression), mate selection, or other social and trading purposes.
It remains true, however, that it is not entirely inaccurate to emphasize the
decisive quality of dispersion and differentiation of the world’s human popula-
tion on the eve of agriculture. Sheer distance was challenge enough, in the long
centuries when people could move about only on foot (even granting the superior
walking ability of earlier humans compared with their contemporary counter-
parts) or on crude boats. But distance also combined with dramatically different
habits, localized religions, and linguistic patterns to make contact and communi-
cation extremely difficult, often promoting proudly separate small-group identi-
ties and considerable fear of strangers as well. Larger contact networks – even far
short of globalization – would have to contend against these localizing factors.
In certain ways, agriculture could make aspects of these localizing tendencies
even worse, for it tied groups not just to a general locality but to very specific
property, often an individual village. Hunters and gatherers, after all, had to move
around at least within a circumscribed region, which could facilitate impulses
toward wider migration. Agricultural villagers, in contrast, were often linked to
specific properties passed from one generation to the next through inheritance and
a family cottage. Deep cultural attachments to particular villages could readily de-
velop, making even the next village down the road slightly suspect, and strangers
from greater distances truly ominous. To be sure, some villagers traveled at least a
bit in order to market some goods or seek temporary employment elsewhere; and
 Globalization and the Challenge to Historical Analysis 11

when crowding impinged, some would move away altogether. It’s important not
to overdo the localized parameters. It remains true, even in the present day with
busses and other modern amenities facilitating travel, that some villagers (often,
particularly women) rarely if ever get more than a few miles from their home turf,
seeing no purpose and possibly some real threat in exploring further.
Scattered populations and highly regional habits and cultures could thus be
confirmed by the advent of agriculture. It would take much time and effort to
build regular contact networks simply within larger regions (like China’s ulti-
mately fabled Middle Kingdom or India’s subcontinent), not to mention inter-
regional connections. World history, in a real sense, began on a local level, and
even today has not entirely escaped these confines.
On the other hand, reasons for wider contacts existed early as well, and at
least some individuals pursued them even before we have any clear record of
how they moved around. At the most basic level: regional isolation never intro-
duced so many genetic modifications within the species Homo sapiens sapiens
that interbreeding could not occur, as happened with so many other species that
were more locally defined. We do not always know the nature or specific timing
of some early contacts – for example, when basic foods were exchanged from
one region to another – given lack of precise records, but it is clear that some
daring initiatives were involved.
The most obvious lure to pull people away from purely regional interactions
involved goods that could only be obtained through more distant ventures. Rare
decorative materials might be a lure, like gold or precious stones. The advent of
the use of bronze, after 4000 BCE, forced considerable travel in search of tin, one
of the key alloys of this composite metal. People in the Middle East ventured into
Afghanistan and possibly as far as Britain to seek regular supplies. Soon also,
knowledge of valuable spices that could only be obtained from certain localities
drove considerable long-distance trade. Once it was established that goods of this
sort were worth the risk and cost of travel, other specializations could develop,
including ultimately manufactured goods based on the traditions and ecologies of
particular regions, which would expand this motivation still further.
Contact could also generate knowledge of food products that might be im-
ported to the benefit of local populations. We know that somehow foods native
to parts of Southeast Asia (bananas, yams, and coconuts) were brought to Africa
very early in the agricultural phase of human history, and once planted in Africa,
possibly via Madagascar, they became vital food staples. This means that there
was some major interregional contact, at least occasionally, several thousand
years ago: precise dates and certainly precise mechanisms are unclear. Similar
kinds of benefits could result from learning about, and exporting, domesticated
animals. China’s knowledge of horses, and for a considerable time an ongoing
source of supply, came from contacts with Central Asia; a Southeast Asian pig
was brought to Madagascar. The opportunity to learn about basic goods, beyond
trade items, could easily spur a quest for wider ventures.
12 Context

Ultimately, it became obvious also that other kinds of learning could result
from long-distance ventures, when particular regions became known for par-
ticular kinds of cultural strength. It’s hard to pinpoint when student and schol-
arly travel began – and patterns would long involve only a few individuals, not
larger cohorts – but Greeks were visiting Egypt to learn about mathematics early
in Greek history, and it was not too long after that when individuals from places
like China began to go to India to seek Buddhist wisdom. Knowledge, in other
words, added to trade and products in motivating outreach.
Harder to calculate, but attached to these more specific spurs, could be sim-
ply a quest for adventure and new experience, without a precise calculus of
what social or personal gains would result. The confines of life in villages or
even early agricultural cities could seem limited, sometimes even stifling, and
a few individuals undoubtedly looked to wider horizons for personal reasons.
Details here are hard to come by, for almost none of the most ambitious early
travelers left any record of their motivations. We know, for example, that in the
5th century BCE a Phoenician named Hanno, with a crew, sailed through the
Mediterranean and down the first part of Africa’s Atlantic coast to Sierra Leone
and possibly as far as Nigeria – but we don’t know why he did it, and what kind
of personality would push him into what, for him, must have been the real un-
known. The fact that fanciful beliefs developed about many less familiar parts
of the world, populating them with mythical beasts and bizarre human habits,
might convince many people that it was best to stick close to home, but it might
also have challenged a few to go out and see for themselves.
Finally, of course, purely local conditions could generate pressures to reach
beyond conventional confines. Population crowding, exhaustion of local re-
sources, and military ambitions could push groups into patterns of migration or
invasion that, in some instances, could move them considerable distances and
produce a host of new (and often unwelcome) contacts for local populations.
Nomadic herdsmen from places like central Asia were often the sources of these
new connections, spilling over into incursions into the Middle East, India, China,
or Europe, as with the movement of Indo-European peoples into India and the
Mediterranean before about 1200 BCE or, a bit later, the surge of Slavic migra-
tions into Russia and east central Europe. These migrants might ultimately settle
down, but for at least a considerable time they would challenge existing cultural
and political conditions and provide new linkages with more distant regions.
Early contacts, whether for trade or scholarly discovery or adventure, could
easily begin to trigger other changes, which in turn would encourage additional
ventures to reach beyond the locality and region. This further process developed
slowly, however, as so many people were enmeshed in local concerns that the
motives and benefits of more extensive ventures remained simply out of reach.
It remains true that a real pull to develop some connections among relatively
far-flung parts of the world emerged early on, and it recurrently tugged against
the dispersion and localism of the initial world history framework. Neither the
motivations nor the institutions or technologies existed to create a truly global
 Globalization and the Challenge to Historical Analysis 13

outreach through the initial millennia of human development, but they could
certainly produce experimentation and change. Localism long predominated,
but not without recurring and sometimes productive tensions with people who
saw benefits in exploring wider horizons. This was the context from which glo-
balization would ultimately emerge.

Further Readings
K. O’Rourke and J. Williamson, “When Did Globalization Begin?” European
Review of Economic History 6 (2002); Paul James and Manfred Steger, “A
Genealogy of ‘Globalization’: The Career of a Concept,” Globalizations 11
(2014); Adam McKeown, “Periodizing Globalization,” History Workshop
Journal 63 (2007); Jan Pieterse, “Periodizing Globalization: Histories of
Globalization,” New Global Studies 6 (2012); Frederick Cooper, “What Is
the Concept of Globalization Good For? An African Historian’s Perspective,”
African Affairs 100 (2001).
Excellent histories of globalization include A.G. Hopkins, ed., Globalization in
World History (New York, 2002); Bruce Mazlish, The Idea of Humanity in a
Global Era (New York, 2008) and A New Global History (New York, 2006);
Diego Olstein, Thinking History Globally (New York, 2008) and A Brief His-
tory of Now: the past and present of global power (New York, 2021); Robbie
Robertson, The Three Waves of Globalization (L: A History of Developing
Global Consciousness (London, 2003); Jurgen Osterhammel, Niels Peterson,
and Dona Geyer, eds., A Short History of Globalization (Princeton, 2005);
Jeffrey Sachs, The Ages of Globalization (New York, 2020).
See also Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: commodities in cul-
tural perspective (Cambridge, 1986); Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade
in World History (Cambridge, 1985).
On world systems:
Robert, Denemark, J. Friedman, B.K. Gillis and G. Modelski, eds., World System
History: The Social Science of Long Term Change (London, 2000); Christo-
pher Chas-Dunn and Eugene N. Anderson, eds., The Historical Evolution
of World Systems (New York, 2004); and Andre Gunder Frank and Barry
K. Gillis, eds., The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand?
(London, 1993). See also Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory
and Global Structures (Newbury Park, CA, 1992).
For an important alternative to a globalization approach to current history, Samuel
Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate (New York, 1996)
On fairly recent patterns, Alfred Eckes and Thomas Zeiler, Globalization and
the American Century (Cambridge, 2003); and Akira Iriye, Global Commu-
nity: the role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contempo-
rary World (Berkeley, 2004); Barry Gills, ed., Globalization in Crisis (New
York, 2011); Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth
of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA, 2020).
2 Emerging Patterns of Contact,
1200 BCE–1000 CE
A Preparatory Phase

Historians take great delight in finding evidence that crucial aspects of the hu-
man experience started earlier than experts once thought. This is part of their
effort to bring the past alive by making it unexpectedly relevant to more re-
cent interests, and also to counter a modern tendency to exaggerate the extent
that most of what we see around us is brand new. Thus historians of medieval
Europe, intrigued by the popularity of the Renaissance, long ago began to find
“renaissances” in the 12th century. Modern mass consumerism, once thought
to be a product of industrialization later in the 19th century, turns out to have
started in Europe in the 17th–18th centuries, well before industrialization, and
now historians are discovering consumer revolutions as early as the 14th cen-
tury. The sexual revolution hailed or lamented in the 1960s turns out to have
started in the 1940s and 1950s – and so it goes. Even the industrial revolution
is now preceded by an “industrious revolution” that began more than a century
earlier (not only in Europe but possibly in Japan as well). The list of topics
where historians have revised initial beliefs about the origins of a phenomenon
is a long one. Sometimes the resulting findings are superficial or debatable;
sometimes (as with consumerism) they seriously reorient the ways we think
about the past and about the causation of major change.
It is not surprising, then, that a few historians have argued not only that glo-
balization is not brand new – many would agree here – but that it goes back as
far as 5,000 years ago, the point at which one scholar, Andre Gunder Frank,
has claimed to find the origin of the modern world economy. And indeed, soon
after the advent of agriculture, merchants from the Middle East or the Indian
subcontinent did begin to engage in some bartering, for example seeking pre-
cious stones; this was the case when tradesmen from Mesopotamia, in present-
day Iraq, reached out to their counterparts in what is now Pakistan. But to go
from firm evidence of an interest in trade to a claim of globalization is too far
a stretch – one that ignores those aspects of globalization that depend not just
on the existence of occasional exchange but on significant and regular levels of
trade and accompanying contacts even beyond trade.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003439615-3
 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE 15

This chapter tackles the first set of issues in the effort to put globalization
into historical perspective: the distinction between undeniable and interesting
interregional contacts emerging early in the agricultural phase of human history,
and the fact that these contacts cannot be construed, by any plausible stretch of
the imagination, as constituting a preliminary form of globalization. If we push
globalization back to the first emergence of regular trading patterns, we risk los-
ing any distinctive meaning for the phenomenon – and that’s the case with the
undeniably interesting developments up to about 1000 CE. While hardly con-
stituting even a primitive form of globalization, early commerce did generate
important precedents and motivations that can provide a backdrop to the more
decisive changes that globalization involves, and these precedents form the fo-
cus of this chapter. Indeed, in discussing the important preliminaries that had
indeed been established early in the Common Era, we can also begin to clarify
what additional innovations globalization would involve.
World historians, with their deep and growing interest in contacts, have de-
voted impressive energies to uncovering and highlighting trade and other connec-
tions relatively early in human history. The effort can be complicated by problems
of evidence: we know about early contacts mainly on the basis of products from
one region that have been found in another. For example, cowrie shells collected
in the Indian Ocean as early as 1400 BCE have been found in China, where they
were greatly valued and ultimately used as a form of money. Less surprisingly,
a number of precious stones from India and Afghanistan, again dating well be-
fore the Common Era, have been unearthed along the Mediterranean coast of
the Middle East. So it is clear that trade was occurring, in some cases over fairly
long distances – but there is no real record beyond the remaining artifacts, which
inevitably raises questions about whether some other early trade patterns existed
but have yet to be discovered. Similar uncertainties are attached to the clear evi-
dence of food exchanges, where products native to one area – like present-day
Indonesia – were brought to places like Africa early on, and adopted into local
agriculture. We know this happened, but specifics are lacking.
By the 2nd century BCE, however, the situation clearly began to change, and
there is evidence to match. Long-distance trade started to occur with greater
regularity, leaving records not only through surviving products but also through
contemporary commentary on the delight that some exotic goods caused for
their upper-class consumers, along with some criticism of the waste and frivolity
involved. One trading artery has won particular attention: the Silk Road (more
properly, Roads), generating understandable fascination with the exchanges and
trade centers that linked producers in Western China with buyers ultimately as
far away as Mediterranean Rome. Indeed, the Silk Road has arguably won dis-
proportionate attention to the detriment of awareness of other, equally important,
contact routes that also sprang up well before modern times. Not surprisingly,
a few historians have gone on to argue that these early exchanges became so
16 Context

entrenched that they virtually guaranteed further and intensifying contacts later
on – in some cases suggesting that the result already added up to the first form of
globalization. Though more plausible than the claims of 5000 years of globali-
zation, this still goes too far, and can in fact be needlessly confusing. However,
the establishment of Silk Road trade but also regular exchanges in the Indian
Ocean did provide an active backdrop to what would later emerge as globali-
zation’s first definable phase, providing precedents and motives that would be
picked up and elaborated several centuries later. Without overdoing the range or
intensity of the contacts involved, the precedents do deserve a closer look.
The big challenge for most regions before 1000 CE, amid the predominant
localism of early agricultural societies, was to build networks within larger re-
gions – like the Mediterranean basin or the Middle East or China – that would
facilitate trade and cultural and political exchange. Efforts to reach beyond the
major regions, though they did exist, had virtually no significance for the vast
majority of the human population. The principal focus of the great classical
civilizations, like Persia, India, or Rome, centered on expanding internal re-
gional contacts, not in building connections further afield. These connections
did emerge, rather tentatively, but they must be sketched carefully, without ex-
aggerating their importance and without so eroding an understanding of later,
more decisive changes that globalization becomes a process virtually cotermi-
nous most of recorded world history. A case can be made that globalization was
becoming inevitable by 1000 CE (though even here there are serious objec-
tions), but not before. Indeed, a key reason to sketch previous patterns is to
provide a backdrop against which to measure later change, not to encourage a
premature identification of globalization.

Migrations and Trade

Migrations were surely the earliest human encounter with long distances. Un-
doubtedly, most migrating groups initially moved just a few dozen miles away
from their place of origin, and the long distances were achieved over time as a
result of movement by many successive generations. There were, however, ex-
amples of apparently rapid moves over many hundreds of miles. It seems likely
that some groups of Native Americans migrated swiftly down the Pacific coast,
from the Siberia–Alaska land bridge and Northwest, by using coastal vessels,
reaching various parts of South America surprisingly quickly, possibly within a
few centuries. Even long-distance migrations, however, did not set up structures
of exchange. They brought people to new places and sometimes mixed different
groups of people, but the migrants did not usually return – so no durable pat-
terns of regional interaction developed beyond encounters between residents
and migrants on the spot. Many migrant regions soon returned to considerable
isolation. The contrast with the later patterns of migration that would form part
of globalization, to be discussed in subsequent chapters, is obvious.
 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE 17

Unlike early migration, trade, over any appreciable distance, whether for gift
exchange or for profit, did bring back and forth interactions. It is not entirely
clear when trade emerged beyond purely local contacts. Sea shells from the
Indian Ocean reached Syria by about 5000 BCE, probably constituting a gift
exchange for ornamentation and obviously suggesting some movement across
the Middle East from one coast to another – but we don’t know whether this was
a regular interaction or even whether any group or individual made the entire
trip or whether the shells passed gradually from one locality to the next. Trade
over a hundred to two hundred miles also developed, for example in east-central
Europe (in present-day terms, from Hungary to Poland), not only for precious
stones but for materials, like flint, important in making early tools and weap-
ons. The most venturesome early trade may have developed among peoples in
Southeast Asia, for example in some of the islands of present-day Indonesia,
where boats developed that were capable of navigating in sections of the Indian
Ocean. Primitive shipping also developed in the Persian Gulf region, by at least
4000 BCE, with efforts to take advantage of favorable winds during certain
months of the year to reach India and then return. Some of these Asian initiatives
clearly reached the east coast of Africa, explaining the crop exchange between
the two regions.
Crucial developments in the emergence of overland trade (including trans-
shipments of goods initially brought by sea, for example from Indian Ocean
ports in the Persian Gulf inland to the rest of the Middle East), involved the
domestication of pack animals. Donkeys were domesticated by the third millen-
nium BCE, presumably near their African place of origin. They spread widely
to other societies. Their capacity to carry relatively heavy loads over long dis-
tances, though slowly and sometimes reluctantly, was a crucial advance for land-
based travel. For certain regions, both in Asia and in Africa, the domestication of
the camel had similar significance. These were humble advances compared with
the later technologies of globalization, but they greatly furthered connections
among adjacent regions.
Several of the early river valley civilizations developed interregional trade. As
noted, Mesopotamia, at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, exchanged
with Harappan society in northeastern India (today Pakistan). Not only goods but
also artistic symbols were part of this exchange, and there may have been cross-
fertilization in religious ideas as well. Egypt began to launch shipping in the Red
Sea by 2500 BCE, reaching the Arabian Peninsula (present-day Yemen) and also
farther down the Indian Ocean coast of Africa. Egyptians received gold, ivory, and
slaves from Ethiopia in exchange for manufactured goods. Trade with the Middle
East emphasized spices, some of which had been shipped over from India. Here
was an example of somewhat longer-distance trade that did not however involve
direct connections; that is, it operated in shorter interregional hops rather than
direct contact. Several centers in the Persian Gulf, notably an island complex
called Dilmun (present-day Bahrain), also served as transmission hubs for goods,
18 Context

such as precious stones, produced elsewhere. By the second millennium BCE,

a trading ship in the Mediterranean might carry goods from sub-­Saharan Africa
and Northern Europe, as well as the Middle East or India, showing the range of
contacts that sustained a lively commerce.
Trade also began to show up as a literary subject. The first known epic poem,
the Babylonian Gilgamesh from before 1200 BCE, involves a travel theme. A
ruler travels from Sumer, which is largely treeless, hundreds of miles to the inte-
rior seeking timber for his palace (the timber would then be floated downriver),
and of course encounters many adventures in the process. The early Hindu holy
book, the Rig Veda of the second millennium BCE, features a story about pirates
attacking an Indian merchant ship in the Persian Gulf, with Indian rulers sending
armed vessels to retaliate against the pirates. Clearly, the excitement of contact
caught attention early, and stories of this sort might stimulate other would-be
adventurers.
These early ventures had some obvious limitations. For the most part, they
operated between two neighboring regions rather than over longer distances.
(References however do exist to three-year expeditions, presumably all the way
across the Indian Ocean and back.) Even the contacts between regional neigh-
bors were also often interrupted. Migrations and invasions into the Middle East
and India, for example, dried up seagoing initiatives around 2000 BCE for a
considerable period of time – the newcomers, though triumphant over locals
militarily, simply did not know how to run the more ambitious commercial op-
erations. One particularly interesting initiative had a different fate: Southeast
Asians, with their superior shipping technology, were able to sail into the Pa-
cific, reaching and populating some of the island groups of Pacific Oceania. But
the connections were not maintained, and a separate Polynesian culture began
to develop without any further linkage with its Asian progenitor or with the
many technological and agricultural advances that began to occur in Asia itself.
A more routine barrier resulted from prescriptive competition: not surprisingly,
some of the people involved in trade worked actively to discourage others from
joining in. Arab merchants who brought spices like cinnamon to Egypt, in ships
or overland caravans, tried to convince the Egyptians that they did not know
where the spices came from, or that they were dropped in the mountains by giant
fearsome birds and that they could be obtained only by doing battle with drag-
ons. Ruses of this sort formed another limit on regular trading activities. Finally,
since goods were often trans-shipped rather than carried directly from produc-
tion to use, a great deal of confusion existed about the actual sources of goods.
Many Mesopotamians believed that items came from Dilmun that were actu-
ally produced in India, and there were many other similar misidentifications –
reflecting real limits on effective contact and knowledge even amid significant
interregional commerce.
Evaluations of merchants also suggest interesting hesitations about commer-
cially based contacts. On the one hand, merchants were vital to the exchange
 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE 19

process; on the other hand, many societies distrusted them because of their profit
motives and because they seemed to differ from the high-prestige aristocrats and
state officials. One result, for example in early Greece, was a heavy reliance on
foreigners to carry on the dirty business of commerce. But foreign-ness might
simply increase the stigma involved, and sometimes suggested real danger in
too much reliance on contacts outside one’s own society. An Indian political
handbook in the 4th century urged that trade should be promoted in order for rul-
ers to earn tax revenues and acquire materials for war, but also starkly insisted:
“Merchants … are all thieves, in effect, if not in name; they should be prevented
from oppressing the people.” Ambivalences of this sort did not stop interre-
gional exchange, but they suggested reactions that might constrain the whole
process. Correspondingly, most cities in early civilizations were in fact centers
for political and religious activities, with largely local trade and dependent on
taxing peasants; only a few urban areas really focused on the longer-distance
commercial opportunities.
It is true that some of the unevenness and hesitation over interregional con-
tacts still apply to globalization today: tension between local identity and self-
sufficiency, on the one hand, and wider outreach on the other builds on issues
that emerged quite early on. Concern about great and excess profit taken by
long-distance business leaders has a contemporary echo as well. But limitations
were far more marked in the early periods than today, and the impact of the con-
tacts that did develop was measurably less great, in all but a few trading centers
(Bahrain, for example), than would prove characteristic later.
One result of the narrow base and oscillation in interregional outreach was
the fact that some really promising projects had surprisingly little outcome. For
example, the famous 5th-century (BCE) Greek traveler, Herodotus, reported
that a Phoenician explorer deliberately went around the whole continent of
Africa, with the sponsorship of an Egyptian pharaoh, to see if it was surrounded
by water – the venture took 2 years. We cannot be sure if this actually occurred,
but it would certainly have been feasible, and marks exactly the kind of initiative
that one would expect of seafaring leaders like the Phoenicians – and exactly the
kind of initiative that could have led to a permanent advance in Asian-African
communications. But if it did occur there was no real result. No one else would
venture around Africa until 1498 CE, which meant that African links with other
parts of the world, though very important in the Indian Ocean and across the
Sahara, long were somewhat limited. Similarly, Phoenician expeditions into the
South Atlantic, reaching the Canaries and Azores island groups, had no after-
math, as these islands were subsequently isolated from any contact for another
2,500 years. In terms of relevant perspectives on globalization, it is vital to re-
member that contacts do not always pay off as against local preferences for
greater isolation.
On the other hand, the early patterns of interregional trading did begin to
establish the kinds of motivations for at least medium-distance exchange that
20 Context

would sustain more ambitious and consistent efforts later on. Various groups
developed a real stake in access to goods that could not be produced locally.
Spices are obviously a core example; they not only enlivened foods (in socie-
ties where variety and freshness of food constituted real challenges), but they
also contributed to other vital activities – cinnamon, for example, was used in
Egyptian preparations for embalming the dead. Various kinds of consumers and
producers, in other words, sustained this kind of trade even if they might not
always have been aware of the interregional contacts involved. Not only goods
but also other novelties attracted attention. Urban crowds in Mesopotamia, for
example, could enjoy elephants and apes brought in from Africa – one poem
wrote of “beasts from distant lands jostling in the great square”; and the role of
exotic animals in motivating interest in exchanges would be a sustaining factor
from this point onward. Governments and merchants had stakes as well, and they
were quite conscious of the external involvement. Merchants could obviously
win profits from distance trade. By the third millennium, clusters of foreign mer-
chants located in key cities, for example in the northern Middle East, obviously
both reflecting and encouraging awareness of the importance of commerce be-
yond the single society. Some merchant associations developed to help regulate
interregional trade, for example to handle issues like the exchange of payments
but also to help assure ethical standards. Governments played a vital role as well,
working to stimulate trade but also developing a clear interest in assuring and,
where possible, expanding its reach. They acted not only because of their own
interest in diversifying available goods, in some cases including materials vital in
the production of weapons, but also because of the taxes they could levy on ship-
ping and trade caravans. Egyptian rulers, for example, were quite aware of the
advantages Egypt gained from its access to the Indian Ocean and were eager to
make sure that no other society unduly interfered or competed. It has even been
argued that the Greek conflict with Persia, a bit later on (492–479 BCE), was less
a clash of civilizations or a quarrel over landed territory, but more a function of
Greek reluctance to accept a Persian capacity to cut off Greek contact with the
Indian Ocean and its commercial riches. Motives of this sort, and their variety,
suggest how trade-based contacts in early agricultural societies both reflected and
furthered the kinds of thinking that would feed later, more elaborate interregional
connections, ultimately including globalization itself.

The Classical Period

The advent of the great classical civilizations, from 800 BCE or so onward,
raises an obvious complication even in briefly summarizing the initial historical
backdrop to globalization. The major civilizations now began to stretch over a
large territory. In China during the Han dynasty, for example, it took 40 days
to travel from the capital to the most far-flung provinces, even on the relatively
good roads the state now provided. Not surprisingly, the bulk of the energies of
 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE 21

various leaders – not just emperors but also venturesome merchants and cultural
emissaries – went into developing internal networks that would take advantage
of this new territory and work to integrate it into a (somewhat) coherent whole.
Chinese leaders, for example, worked very hard to link north and south China,
building canals to facilitate trade, sending colonists from the north to the south,
and promoting use of a single language, Mandarin, at least in the governing
class – despite or in fact because of the multiplicity of ethnic groups, languages,
and cultures of the mixture of peoples that now made up the Chinese empire. All
the classical empires fostered cultural systems – like Hinduism and Buddhism
in India, or Greek-derived architecture around the Mediterranean – that would
provide new links, not necessarily attacking more local systems but seeking to
supplement them with more over-arching styles and values. Trading activities
sought to take advantage of local specializations – like grain growing in North
Africa, in exchange for wines and olive oil from Italy and Greece within Medi-
terranean civilization – to promote greater efficiency and prosperity (and tax
revenues) and in the process create a more coherent overall economy. Common
social systems spread out, like patterns of slavery in the Mediterranean or the
caste system in India, another linking device. Finally, periodically at least, care-
fully constructed empires sought to provide political unity to all or at least major
parts of the major civilization areas.
These efforts were quite successful for many centuries, and in some cases,
particularly India and China, they created durable values and institutions that
would provide internal coherence and distinction from other major societies for
many centuries, well past the classical period itself and into our own day. Not
surprisingly, the efforts took a great deal of energy and focus, and could detract
from comparable interest in reaching outside the new regional civilizations. In-
deed, to the extent that integration efforts promoted core identities for many
people they could actually discourage wider contact and breed disdain for socie-
ties and regions outside the home base. Greeks and Chinese both began to refer
to peoples outside their own expanding orbits as “barbarians,” clearly inferior
and worth little or no attention when there were so many exciting opportunities
at home; the philosopher Aristotle in fact argued that it was “natural” for Greeks
to enslave any non-Greeks.
In sum, the great focus of the classical period in world history involved major
regional integrations that unquestionably cut into previous levels of local isola-
tion, even forging larger civilizational identities at least for the upper classes.
Equally obviously, the result was not globalization – even the great Roman and
Han Chinese empires were regional entities, not global ones. In some respects,
in fact, the new structures might distract from a deep interest in wider contacts.
At the same time, however, the classical civilizations did advance a some-
what larger interregional agenda in several ways, even though the agenda never
gained top priority. In the first place, the new empires brought in territories that
had not previously been regular parts of the patterns of exchange. The Roman
22 Context

Empire, for example, building around the entire Mediterranean basin, now in-
volved the whole of North Africa in regular contacts with southern Europe and
the Middle East. Phoenician outreach had launched this inclusion, but the new
Empire made it an established fact. North African regions periodically broke
off from larger political units – for example, from the later Arab Caliphate –
but they would from this point onward always be economically and culturally
linked at least to the Middle East. Rome’s Empire similarly involved new parts
of Europe, such as France, in extensive trade and cultural exchange. Each of the
classical civilizations was regional, but the region was now writ large, so that
internal contacts already constituted a significant reduction of local isolation.
This is why the creation of the great classical empires sometimes gets mentioned
as historical precedent for globalization.
There was even some tourism within the empires, beyond adventurers out on
their own. Some Romans began to travel to Greece and Egypt, and occasionally
into the Middle East, to see famous sights. The idea of “Seven Wonders of the
World,” like the Egyptian sphinx, originated in the classical period and helped
spur travel for pleasure within the Mediterranean-Middle Eastern regions –
another sign of the importance and widening reach of contacts within the huge
territories that were now seen as part of a coherent whole.
Furthermore, the empires created infrastructure that could facilitate even
wider outreach, by making trade and travel easier than ever before. Particularly
important here were developments in the Persian Empire and its later succes-
sors, given the geographic centrality of this region for potential contacts be-
tween Indian Ocean and Mediterranean networks. With conquests beginning in
556 BCE, the empire itself achieved great size at least for a century, stretching
from the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent (the Indus river region)
to Egypt and Libya and the Mediterranean, though efforts to move significantly
into Europe, or further south in northeastern Africa, failed. Exchanges stretched
even more broadly, as Persian rulers at their height received gifts from sub-­
Saharan Africa (including elephant tusks), India, and southern Arabia. The
imperial government built an impressive system of highways, stretching over
8,000 miles. The great emperor Cyrus also established a series of carefully-
spaced inns, to house merchants and travelers on their journeys, with water
reservoirs, and he set up the world’s first postal and message service. A Greek
later described the result: “With you [Persians], every way is easy, every river
is crossable, and there is no dearth of provisions.” The main purpose of all of
this, of course, was to facilitate communication and trade within the empire –
including the movement of military forces; as with the other classical civili-
zations, knitting the new, vast territory together and keeping it together was
a challenging task. But the same systems could help merchants and visitors
from other regions, moving through the territory; more than ever before, the
Middle East, including Persia, became an entrepot for exchanges between east
and west, a central point in interactions between much of Asia and key parts of
 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE 23

Europe and North Africa. While the Persian Empire itself had a relatively brief
life span, its systems were preserved or revived by later rulers and regimes –
including Alexander the Great, the revived Persian regime under the Parthians,
and subsequent Arab caliphs.
Similar developments took place within the Roman and Chinese empires.
Chinese emperors began to build highways, at some points 50 feet wide, with
trees planted alongside for aesthetic reasons. An official described the result as
early as 178 BCE, noting that roads went “all over the empire … around lakes
and rivers, and along the coasts of seas, so that all was made accessible.” By
the time of the Han dynasty, 22,000 miles of highway were available in China,
providing internal linkages but also facilitating travel to the west, toward central
Asia. A postal system was also operative, with fresh horses for messengers every
ten miles. Rome constructed even more roads – 48,000 miles worth – and also
invested heavily in seaports along the Mediterranean, particularly for the ship-
ment of grain.
Finally, building on internal infrastructures for overland travel but also the
seaports in both the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, classical civilizations
extended contacts with each other, which is the achievement world historians
have picked up on particularly in their legitimate eagerness to show the early
origins of inter-societal contacts.
The most famous linkage was the so-called Silk Road, which at its height
brought products from western China to the upper classes of the Roman Empire –
but also to elites in Persia and the Middle East and in India. Exchange of silk
from China westward began as a result of growing contacts and tensions with
nomadic peoples in western China/central Asia. Chinese officials and merchants
brought silk cloth beyond the country’s borders as gifts to conciliate potential
invaders but above all in exchange for horses, called “heavenly horses” because
of their superior qualities, which had a huge impact on the Chinese military and
on Chinese imagination more generally. Ultimately, the Chinese also imported
alfalfa seeds, which allowed them a better agricultural base for sustaining the
horses they were coming to depend on.
But for world history, the main point was the movement of Chinese manufac-
turing output toward other regions, stimulating not only new forms of trade but
new tastes which could sustain international commerce for centuries to come.
Nomadic leaders used the Chinese-exported silks for their own adornment, and
that of their families, but they simply could not consume all that the Chinese
provided, so they began to pass the products west. Small amounts of silk reached
the Middle East and even southeastern Europe by the 6th century BCE, but sig-
nificant exchange developed only late in the 2nd century BCE, around the year
130. Nomadic traders began to take Chinese products, headed by silk, and move
them through several overland routes through central Asia and then into Per-
sia, where other merchants would pick up the loads and use the excellent road
network to distribute the goods more widely – with some of them reaching the
24 Context

Mediterranean where other merchants might buy them for sale to North Africa
and southern Europe. Tastes for silk goods clearly expanded among upper-class
men and women alike, with silk sashes adorning Roman togas or silk banners
highlighting Persian military units. This was, in other words, a significant trade,
from the 1st century BCE until the political and economic deterioration of Han
China and the Roman Empire a few centuries later. Not only did silk move west-
ward, but obviously exchange depended on some two-way traffic that would
repay the merchants for their trouble and ultimately provide value for Chinese
producers as well; from the Middle East and the Mediterranean came various
precious stones, “the eggs of great birds” (probably ostriches), manufactured
carpets, furs, and even entertainers, as well as the horses the Chinese cherished
so greatly.
Silk Road trade linked East Asia with other parts of the continent and with
Europe for the first time, a major step beyond the more limited exchanges that
had described interregional contacts previously. At the same time, however, the
trade proceeded mainly through regional stages of a few hundred miles each
with re-exchange at several points, in regional hubs like the city of Samarkand,
rather than through direct long-distance exchange from producing to consum-
ing regions. Merchants, correspondingly, focused on a fairly narrow geography,
rather than directly connecting major civilization centers. In a larger sense, the
Silk Road routes built on regional systems that had long connected the northwest
part of the Indian subcontinent (today’s Afghanistan and Pakistan) to Persia and
the Middle East, or China to central Asia. It was also true that (central Asian
horses aside) the exchange goods that came into China were not as sought after,
not as capable of developing new consumer tastes, as silk was in Persia and the
Roman Empire; they tended to be seen as novelty items rather than staple luxu-
ries. Indeed, the Romans, who wrote widely about the importance of silk, were
not very clear at all about what they exported in return. This imbalance between
China and other parts of the world would long complicate long-distance trade,
and it certainly constrained activity during the classical period itself.
Another set of routes served, like the Silk Road, to link different parts of
Asia, Africa, and Europe over long distances, with new merchant activity and
new consumer tastes integral to the process. In this case, however, the sea –
the Indian Ocean – rather than land served as vehicle, and India, rather than
China, was the key player. Southeast Asia – what is now Malaysia, Vietnam, and
Indonesia – was heavily involved in this network as well, providing products
and merchants alike.
The quality of ships gradually improved by the first millennium BCE, though
boats made from leather, papyrus, and other materials continued to operate in
parts of the Indian Ocean. Navigators from Sri Lanka apparently learned how
to use birds, taking them on voyages and releasing the creatures so that they
could follow them to land. The Chinese invention of the rudder would ultimately
facilitate sea trade in a more systematic fashion. Sailors learned how to use
 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE 25

monsoon winds to help move through various parts of the Indian Ocean in ap-
propriate seasons. A host of people were involved in trade: Arabs, Egyptians,
Greeks, Malays, as well as Indians and Chinese.
Spices constituted the core of the Indian Ocean trade. Chinese merchants
sought cloves and similar items from Southeast Asia and India, moving both
overland and from the Pacific coast into Indian waters. Pepper, produced in India
proper, became a crucial product. Greeks used it, partly for medicinal purposes,
and it became a vital cooking item during the Roman Empire. Spices, incense,
pearls, and other materials from East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula blended
into this trade as well, including African items like rhinoceros’ horn. Manufac-
tured products gained attention. Indian cotton cloth won popularity, though the
Roman Empire ultimately banned it because of its competition with woolen and
linen fabrics. India also became another transit point for silks imported overland
from China. The Chinese also had contacts with India by sea, at one point send-
ing an expedition to buy a rhinoceros for the emperor’s private zoo.
From the Mediterranean world, both merchants and government officials
worked actively to promote these valuable exchanges, particularly by the time
of the Roman Empire. Regular fleets set sail from the Red Sea coast of Egypt –
upward of 120 boats, complete with Roman archers to help repel pirates; and
small clusters of Roman merchants formed in several Indian cities. Roman ships
(staffed mainly by Greeks and Middle Easterners) also traded regularly with
Sri Lanka and the Middle East, again from the Egyptian coast. From the Red
Sea, goods were offloaded onto camels, which would carry them to the Nile and
thence to the port of Alexandria, where they could enter standard Mediterranean
trade. Romans, for their part, were able to put more items into this network
than was true for the Silk Road, because ships could carry heavier goods. Thus,
Roman tin was sent to India, along with linen cloth made in Egypt and other
products. Wine was particularly important, probably the most valued Mediter-
ranean item in play. But even with this, Romans faced a constant balance of
payments challenge, because the commodities they wanted from Asia exceeded
Asian interest in what they had to offer. Gold shipments were essential to correct
the imbalance, and Roman observers worried that too much of their wealth was
being siphoned off as a result.
Exchanges within Southeast Asia also linked into the Indian Ocean network,
often brokered by merchants from Malaysia or Indonesia. Interregional trade
was not new in this area, but the growing links with Indian and Chinese systems
gave it greater resonance. Raw materials were involved, including a number
of fine woods native to the region and esteemed for their decorative qualities.
But manufactured items were important as well, and some were now deliber-
ately adapted to fit into long-distance commerce. Producers in Indonesia and
Cambodia, for example, developed lower-cost incense candles or skin treat-
ments to compete with goods from the Middle East and the Mediterranean, par-
ticularly in Chinese markets. India exported to Vietnam cotton cloth, pepper, but
26 Context

also glass products and gold coins made in the Roman Empire; the Chinese sent
maritime expeditions down the Vietnamese coast looking for a route to India.
The Chinese also had active interest in unusual animals, such as elephants, from
the region. And again, regional products, including spices such as nutmeg, ex-
changed with Indian or Persian merchants, could make it all the way back to
Mediterranean consumers.

Consequences and Limitations

All of this has strong overtones of characteristics seen in economic globali-
zation, though of course only parts of three continents, not all six inhabited
continents, were involved. Consumers, though primarily wealthy ones, unques-
tionably developed tastes for goods that could only be brought in from a long
distance. Clear trade routes were established, overland between East Asia and
southern Europe, and by sea from China’s Pacific Coast to the Middle East and
East Africa (and by overland extension, the Mediterranean), that would often be
used later on – the Silk Road, for example, crops up again in the Mongol period,
and Indian Ocean connections remain vital to the present day. Merchants and
key rulers alike knew that interregional commerce could pay off in profits, trib-
ute, and taxes, and their experience and motivations could easily carry forward
into later periods. Small wonder that some historians, writing of the unexpected
richness and variety of interregional trade by the early centuries CE, claim a vir-
tually uninterrupted progress from these patterns to the kinds of trade that would
branch out in the 15th century, to even more recent connections – in essence,
arguing for the origins of globalization in developments that date back to more
than 2,000 years ago. There is no question that, centered of course in trade, some
key habits and specific connections and processes were established by the time
of the classical empires that would build into the global world we know today.
It is also important to note that expanding trade brought new potential for the
spread of epidemic disease. Diseases like bubonic plague, probably spreading
from India, seriously cut into Chinese and Mediterranean populations by the 2nd
and 3rd centuries CE, contributing to civilizational crisis. Here is another sug-
gestion of features that would ultimately become part of globalization.
Setting a preliminary foundation, however, is not the same thing as launching
the process itself. A number of limitations described even the most ambitious
interregional enterprises, and these limitations strongly suggest that a globaliza-
tion claim is premature. In the first place, though this point is hard to establish
with any precision, the range and excitement of the far-flung merchants should
not distract from the fact that the bulk of social energies and imagination, even
in the merchant class, continued to go into local and regional activities. Far more
people were involved in building networks within the great empires than ven-
tured into connections among major societies. And the key achievement of the
classical period was the construction of new regional civilizations, above more
 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE 27

purely local attachments – not the narrower bridges among these civilizations
themselves.
The links that did develop, furthermore, centered for the most part on inter-
esting, certainly valued, but fairly superficial luxury products. Heavy materi-
als, goods used by large numbers of people for basic activities, moved within
regions or occasionally from one region to a neighbor – like the timber brought
several hundred miles from the interior to the Mesopotamian coast – but not
commonly in interregional trade. Expensive cloth – not the stuff of most peo-
ple’s clothing or daily wear – spices, and a few other decorative items clearly
helped develop new tastes but hardly worked into the essentials of life. A few
substances did become part of wider rituals or consumer interests – like the
spices used in Egyptian embalming, or the Roman tin imported in India – but
they were the exception, not the rule.
Trade was, of course, the centerpiece of the interconnections, and while ar-
guably this remains true with globalization, the narrowness of the trade impact
in the earlier period was noteworthy. Technological exchange, for example, did
not follow as clearly from commercial contact as might be expected. Chinese
advances during the classical period, like the invention of paper, simply did
not yet spill over to other societies, despite the expansion of access to Chinese
products and commerce. Apparently, connections were not yet regular enough
for people outside China to gain a sense of the obvious advantages of paper as
a writing material. The same kind of limitation applies to cultures and cultural
apparatus. Extensive trade with India did not lead any other society, at this point,
to realize the superiority of the Indian numbering system; separate numbering
procedures, like the cumbersome numerals of the Roman Empire, continued to
prevail. Religions and philosophical systems remained localized for the most
part, spreading within the new civilizations but not much beyond them. Artistic
influences were similarly limited, aside from some specific imitation of a few
designs. Artists in northwestern India copied Greek styles for a brief period after
Alexander the Great’s conquests brought Greek rule to the region – the results
were pictures of the Buddha dressed in Greek hair arrangements and costumes,
for a little over a century – but there was no durable result, no real combining
of styles. A few exceptions can of course be noted – Middle Easterners picked
up some Indian stories that later became part of popular literature, and the game
that ultimately turned into chess spread from India to the Middle East – but for
the most part the range of interactions that we associate with globalization sim-
ply had yet to develop.
Interregional knowledge was also limited, even where products moved over
great distances. The absence of direct travel, as opposed to shorter caravans
followed by trans-shipment to another merchant group, played a key role here,
along with the massive amount of time even a trip of a few hundred miles re-
quired. Chinese adventurers and emissaries went into central Asia and later
Chinese merchants and Buddhist students traveled to India; a limited number
28 Context

of Greeks and Romans moved through the Middle East and into parts of central
Asia, and also into a few sections of sub-Saharan Africa; and of course Roman
trade with India brought direct exchange. Persians and Arabs, who might ven-
ture both east and west, may have known a bit about Europe and India alike,
though the evidence is limited. But Mediterranean knowledge of China, and
vice versa, was exceedingly vague, because, as far as we can definitely know, no
Chinese ever ventured that far west, and at most one Roman group ever made
it to China (and we cannot be sure even of this). Roman aristocrats might love
silk, but they had little notion where it came from; their known world stopped
at India, and only a single Greek writer, who had traveled to India, makes even
a passing reference to “Thina” as a source of silk, adding “It is not easy to get
to this Thina: for rarely do people come from it …. ” Romans indeed believed
that silk came from plants or trees save for one writer who claimed it was pro-
duced by giant spiders. Chinese authors knew a bit more about Rome than vice
versa, describing it as a well-governed land with rich but honest merchants, but
claiming also that Rome was the source of products like an ointment that made
gold. Wild beliefs about regions that were vaguely known about but not directly
visited – including claims about cannibalism or bizarre sexual habits – showed
the extent of ignorance about even some neighboring regions, like central Asia
or parts of Africa; and the same beliefs could discourage actual contact. Globali-
zation, in contrast, while it still involves mutual prejudices, has greatly reduced
the amount of fanciful exaggeration.
Finally, even the amount of interregional trade that did develop spurred crit-
ics and skeptics – though arguably this has some echoes in diverse reactions to
globalization today. If products were demonstrably moving farther than people
did, this very fact created anxiety about the products as well. Roman moral-
ists wrote scathingly against the vanity and wastefulness embodied in imported
silks. Thus, Seneca, in the 1st century CE:

I see there raiments of silk – if that can be called raiment, which provides
nothing that could possibly afford protection for the body, or indeed mod-
esty, so that, when a woman wears it, she can scarcely … swear that she
is not naked.

Other writers referred to silk as degenerate or indecent, in violation of all

traditional standards for dress. And while Chinese authorities did not get quite
so exercised about foreign products – partly because there was nothing as over-
whelmingly sought after as silk – they might note how little they valued distant
opportunities. Thus, the one Roman merchant mission that may have reached
China, in 166 CE (it is at least mentioned in Chinese chronicles, though there is
no direct Roman evidence), brought gifts that did not impress the emperor, who
refused to do any business with the emissaries. As a number of historians have
noted, greater official interest at this point might have created not only a more
 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE 29

direct but a more durable bond between East Asia and the Mediterranean, but
it was a testimony to mutual ignorance and the relatively slight importance of
most actual long-distance trade that nobody cared to follow up. The two regions
would remain without direct contact for another 1,200 years.
Not surprisingly, in this situation, the collapse of the great classical empires,
beginning with the fall of the Han dynasty in China in 220 CE, severely threat-
ened the interregional linkages that did exist. Overland travel became far more
dangerous because there were no strong states to protect against marauders, and
this came close to shutting the Silk Road down in favor of shorter-distance ex-
changes. Merchants from Rome and China withdrew from the Indian Ocean,
and while Indian traders took advantage of the opportunity to extend their efforts
to Southeast Asia, the range and volume of trade in this region also declined
for a time. Commerce would revive, of course, and the Indian Ocean continued
to attract attention, but there was no question that something of a crisis had
emerged by the 3rd or 4th century CE that significantly affected interregional
contacts for several centuries.

The Missionary Religions

In this crisis, finally, one other development began to take shape, with ambiva-
lent implications for interregional contacts. As the classical empires deteriorated
and then disappeared, with the disorderly collapse not only of the Han dynasty
in China but later the Roman Empire in the west, several major religions began
to spread more widely, their organization and otherworldly goals serving so-
cieties now in earthly disarray. Buddhism had already begun to move beyond
India, and now reached actively into Southeast Asia and into China (and ul-
timately other parts of East Asia); Chinese interest was clearly in part a reac-
tion to the deteriorating conditions after the fall of the Han. Christianity spread
widely within the Roman Empire, particularly from the 4th century onward, and
then burst beyond, moving particularly toward northern Europe but also toward
additional pockets in Africa and the Middle East. Soon, after 600 CE, a new
religion, Islam, would spread most rapidly of all. All of these religions traveled
on the strength of missionary zeal, a growing commitment to spread what was
regarded as religious truth beyond the boundaries of any one society or people.
The resultant processes of conversion and religious remapping served as one of
the key developments in the next, postclassical period of world history.
The spread of world religions, in turn, had several links to the larger process
of interregional contacts, some of which persist to this day. In the first place,
as the religions began to compete with more localized, polytheistic faiths, they
reflected the wider contacts already developing among parts of Africa, Asia, and
Europe. Ethiopia, for example, was open to Christianity because of earlier trade
links to the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. Merchant activity often went
hand in glove with religious proselytism and missionary work, as merchants
30 Context

helped bring religious practices as they set up trading communities, and as their
commercial success might suggest the superiority of their religion over more
traditional local faiths and provide an additional motive for conversion.
Indeed, it can be argued that the unprecedented commitment to the idea of a
universal religion, valid for all people, was a revolutionary development whose
novelty reflected the experience of significant contact – creating a notion of a
common humanity arguably for the first time in human history. Early defenders
of the major world religions all debated this point – whether Buddhism as a re-
form movement directed at Hinduism should just be discussed in India, whether
Christianity was only for Jews, whether Islam should be for Arabs alone. Lead-
ers of the three faiths all ultimately decided, often after a period of hesitation,
that the response should be ecumenical, that unlike all earlier belief systems
the faiths should not apply to a single people or region alone but potentially to
humanity as a whole. And this in turn suggested an awareness spurred by a sense
of contacts among different regions and societies. The missionary religions were
not yet truly global – each had its own main regions – but they were the closest
thing yet to a global cultural force – obviously worth comparison to the newer
global cultural forces that receive so much emphasis today.
The same universal claims also generated further activity. The second point
about the new religions is the fact that they could encourage additional contacts
in turn. Belief in a single God or divine order, rather than divinities more specifi-
cally attached to a particular place, and the availability of doctrines and rituals
that were also not place-specific, could provide new assurance to individuals
moving out of their locality of origin, for whatever reason. The same faith that
worked at home would be equally valid thousands of miles away. Expanding
religions also provided new motives for travel, beyond the previous predomi-
nance of trade. Missionaries could be as eager as merchants to reach a distant
spot. Religious faithful might seek study opportunities near spiritual centers like
monasteries in India (for Buddhists) or hubs of religious scholarship like Cairo
or Baghdad in Islam. Larger numbers of religious individuals might simply want
to travel to holy sites, however distant – like Jerusalem for Christians, or even
more urgently like Mecca for Muslims.
The emerging religious map also, however, set up some new divisions,
among regions with different religious preferences – this was the final implica-
tion for patterns of contact. The world religions overcame narrower cultural
and political boundaries, but their variety, and in some cases mutual hostility,
very definitely challenged any idea of a single world. Wider contacts might be
impeded by religious fears or dislikes, to a greater extent than had been true
before, as new kinds of intolerance emerged. Individual travelers might hesitate
before going beyond their religious community, or feel uneasy if they tried.
The Mediterranean now divided between Christian and Muslim, and while the
result was not always belligerent intolerance, the religious rift set up cultural
barriers that have not been entirely overcome even in the present day. Certainly,
 Emerging Patterns of Contact, 1200 BCE–1000 CE 31

when religious allegiances were at their height, the separate systems of beliefs
and practices seriously complicated larger patterns of exchange. Here is a final
reason to see the premodern centuries of the human experience, at least until
1000 CE or so, as contributing to, but measurably separate from, processes that
might be considered actual versions of globalization.

***
Overall, it remains true that most developments in the world history by the end
of the classical period and even slightly beyond were regional rather than tran-
sregional, emphasizing separate patterns more than contacts. Energies went into
discrete regional identities and internal connections more than into crosscutting
initiatives. The spread of religions modified this pattern in some important ways,
allowing some sense of a common humanity. But while the religions leaped over
some regional boundaries – this was particularly true for Islam’s spread into
several parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Spain – they also created
some new barriers. Even within Christianity, the differences that developed be-
tween Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy could constrain interaction,
and the same would hold true to some extent for separate strands in Islam. Con-
tacts and shared processes – the features we properly associate with globaliza-
tion – had yet to gain the ascendant. We can look back and see innovations like
the Silk Roads (invoked today by China in its new effort at global leadership) as
a building block for later connections, but further change was essential before
the first identifiable form of globalization could emerge.

Further Readings
On debates over the effective origins of world trade and globalization, see Andre
Gunder Frank and Barry Gillis, eds., The World System: Five Hundred Years
or Five Thousand (London, 1993) and Oystein LaBianca and Sandra Shum,
eds., Connectivity in Antiquity: Globalization as Long-Term Historical Pro-
cess (New York, 2004); Karl Moore and David Lewis, Birth of the Multina-
tional: 2000 Years of Ancient Business History – From Ashur to Augustus
(Copenhagen, 1999).
For overviews, see Richard L. Smith, Premodern Trade in World History (New
York, 2008); Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cultural Contacts and
Exchanges in Premodern Times (New York, 1993); Stephen Gosch and Peter
N. Stearns, Premodern Travel in World History (New York, 2008); Milo
Kearney, The Indian Ocean in World History (New York, 2004).
On early trade patterns, see Maria Eugenia Aubet, The Phoenicians and the
West: Politics, Colonies and Trade, trans. Mary Turton (2nd ed., Cam-
bridge, 2001); Lionel Casson, Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times (Austin,
TX, 1994); Karl Hutterer, Economic Exchange and Social Interaction in
Southeast Asia: Perspectives from Prehistory, History and Ethnography
32 Context

(Ann Arbor, MI, 1977); Samuel Mark, From Egypt to Mesopotamia: A Study
of Predynastic Trade Routes (College Station, TX, 1997); Shereen Ratnagar,
Encounters: The Westerly Trade of the Harappa Civilization (New Delhi,
1981). On trade during the classical period, see Raoul McLoughlin, Rome
and the Distant East: Trade Routes with the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India
and China (London, 2010); Vimala Begley and Richard D. De Puma, eds.,
Rome and India: The Ancient Sea Trade (Madison, WI, 1991); Linda Ellis
and Frank L. Kidner, eds., Travel, Communication and Geography in Late
Antiquity (Burlington, VT, 1994); Xinru Liu, Ancient China and Ancient
India: Trade and Cultural Exchanges (New Delhi, 1988); J.I. Miller, The
Spice Trade of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1998); Yu Yingshi, Trade and
Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-barbarian Rela-
tions (Berkeley, CA, 1967). See also Frank L. Holt, Alexander the Great and
Bactria: The Formation of a Greek Frontier in Central Asia (Leiden, 1989).
On migration patterns, see Peter Blackwood, ed., The Global Prehistory of
Human Migration (New York, 2015) and Patrick Manning, Migration in
World History (3rd ed., New York, 2020); on epidemic disease, see Samuel
Cohn Jr., Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to
AIDS (Oxford, 2018).
On the missionary religions, see Roy Amore, Amir Hussain and Willard Oxroby,
eds., A Concise Introduction to the World Religions (4th ed., New York,
2016).
On the Silk Road, see Peter Frankopan, The Silk Road: A New History of the
World (New York, 2016); Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History
(Oxford, 2015); Susan Whitfield, Life Along the Silk Road (Berkeley, CA,
1999); and Frances Wood, The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart
of Asia (Berkeley, CA, 2004). See also Christopher Beckworth, Empires of
the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Pre-
sent (Princeton, NJ, 2009).
Part II

Early Globalization,
1000–1450 CE

By 1000 CE, the nature of interregional contacts linking many parts of Asia,
Africa, and Europe was being substantially transformed. Exchanges among re-
gions accelerated – not to modern levels, to be sure, but well beyond what had
occurred previously. Trade was the key connection, as the variety and impor-
tance of goods transported over considerable distances increased. But a new
range of technological and cultural exchanges occurred as well. For an interest-
ing handful of individuals, from several different societies, even international
travel proved to be a growing attraction, and the several travelers who wrote
about their experiences might inspire others.
The new patterns built in part on prior developments, though the number of
regions involved went well beyond any precedent. The Silk Roads were still in
play, though other routes often overshadowed their importance, particularly given
the growing vitality of Indian Ocean shipping. Some of the key export goods, like
silk and spices, were familiar as well. The role of the missionary religions, in mo-
tivating travel and inspiring a wider vision of humanity, was a crucial component.
But the ramifications of the new framework went well beyond previous levels,
bolstered as well by some important new technologies and commercial methods.
Historians and other social scientists have identified the innovations of this
interregional framework in several ways. David Northrup offers a striking claim:
before about 1000 CE, major regions operated largely separately, with mutual
contacts barely affecting their substantial divergence. After 1000, however, in-
creasing convergence became the norm, with regional societies functioning in re-
sponse to contacts, communications, and even deliberate imitations. Further, the
importance of linkages would simply expand over time, despite periodic setbacks,
meaning that the interconnected societies of today are direct heirs of the various
forces that created a more convergent world a bit more than a millennium ago.
Building on essentially the same point, other historians, like A.G. Hopkins,
have simply labeled the patterns that were emerging about 1000 CE “archaic
globalization” – globalization because of the new and durable linkages in-
volved, archaic because the specifics were very different from the globalization
that would unfold later on.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003439615-4
34 Early Globalization, 1000–1450 CE

Chapters in this section focus on the nature of this first globalization frame-
work, taking shape around 1000 (Chapter 3) but then adjusting and expand-
ing further with subsequent developments like the impact of the great Mongol
Empire that arose in the 13th century and a fleeting Chinese effort to create yet
another set of options (Chapter 4). At the same time, however, the chapters also
clarify the “archaic” point – the many ways that this framework differed from
what would come later, beginning with the vital fact that it was not yet fully
global, given the key regions that were still untouched.
Not surprisingly, data about patterns of exchange improve considerably for this
new period, compared to what went before. Among other things, travelers’ account
become not only more numerous but more accurate, less filled with bizarre exag-
gerations. Challenges remain, however. In some cases – like the presence of Arab
merchants in Scandinavia, or the activities of the Chinese on the East African
coast, we have only discoveries of old coins for evidence. There are no qualitative
data to give a fuller sense of the experience, or of local reactions. Were there other
contacts that left no records at all? It is tantalizing to wonder if Chinese voyagers
reached the southern tip of Africa as part of their 15th-century voyages, and at
least peeked at the Atlantic – but we do not know if they went that far. Evidence
gaps have generated some vigorous (and sometimes fanciful) debates – such as the
idea that one Chinese expedition actually crossed the Pacific, or that other routes
across the Pacific reached the Americas before the 15th century. Certainly, more
information may come to light in the future, for this crucial transitional period.
Exploration of early globalization establishes one other vital preliminary, this
one quite clear though possibly unexpected. The initial authors of a more vig-
orous interregional framework were not Europeans; Arabs played a key role,
joined by people from South and Southeast Asia. Western Europeans would
enter in as well, but as slight latecomers and with some initial disadvantages
compared to other regions involved. This disparity would play its own role in
the changes in globalization that would occur later on.

Further Readings
David Northrup, “Globalization and the Great Convergence: Rethinking World His-
tory in the Long Term,” Journal of World History 16 (2005); Ino Rossi, Frontiers
of Globalization Research (Berlin, 2008); Lula Martell, Sociology of Globalization
(London, 2010); C.A. Bagly, Birth of the Modern World (London, 2004); Janet
Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250 to A.D.
1350 (Oxford, 1989); A.G. Hopkins, Globalization in History (London, 2002).
For debates over whether Polynesians reached the Americas as part of their im-
pressive voyages in the Pacific, see David Lewis, We the Navigators. Land-
finding in the Pacific (Honolulu, 1994). For an absolutely false claim about
a Chinese voyage to the Americas, masquerading as revisionist history while
simply manufacturing evidence, see Gavin Menzies, 1421. The Year China
Discovered America (New York, 2003).
3 The Birth of Globalization?

The watershed in interregional contacts that has been identified around

1,000 years ago was not based on a single striking event or discovery. The date,
1000 CE, is simply a convenient marker – nothing really dramatic relevant to
globalization occurred in that year, and few people at the time would have been
aware of any particularly significant alteration or upsurge in global relations.
But by 1000 CE, a number of key changes had been accumulating over the
course of about 300 years; and after that date the changes would solidify and
amplify, justifying the understanding, in retrospect, that a fundamental transi-
tion was underway. In contrast to prior patterns, including even the earlier Silk
Roads, a network had emerged that was unprecedentedly wide ranging, with
regular contacts and a variety of impacts – a network that can, for the first time,
be called an early version of globalization.
No one, to be sure, puts an unqualified globalization label on the changes
that took shape during the centuries after the end of the great classical empires,
which is why adjectives like “archaic” are carefully attached. Among other
things, the networks that developed were Afro-Eurasian, not truly global – for
the Americas and Pacific Oceania remained isolated from the larger interre-
gional currents. But the identification of a process that involved such intense
and fruitful contacts that its further development became highly probable – so
that the extension to the whole world, while itself a significant further change,
built on established patterns – may certainly justify the conclusion that the ef-
fective origins of globalization really date this far back in historical chronology.
After all, the voyages that would bring the Americas into the global picture for
the first time were intended not to discover new lands but to shorten the connec-
tions between Europe and Asia – intended, in other words, to take advantage of
existing interregional ties.
The idea of the 1000s as the beginnings of global linkage, in strong contrast to
previous and more sporadic connections, is not an abstract claim. The challenge
is to demonstrate not only change, but significant change, and to show what this
all meant in human terms. For not only is there no dramatic event to mark the
divide between separateness and convergence; there is also no overwhelming

DOI: 10.4324/9781003439615-5
36 Early Globalization, 1000–1450 CE

new technology, no communications revolution of the sort we associate with

more modern phases of globalization. The shift, instead, resulted from an accu-
mulation of developments in shipping, in trade routes, and in cultural outreach
(plus a bit of technology) – and accumulation, though the basis for most major
departures in history, is never as vivid as a single transformative invention or
some upheaval in foreign policy or war.
Happily, nevertheless, the chronological divide is not just a theoretical con-
struct or even an organizing device for textbooks (though that’s true too, as his-
torians increasingly realize the ramifications of the change), for it has a concrete
human face.
It was only in the centuries after 1000 CE, for example, that wide-ranging
interregional travel took shape. Whereas during the classical period there is re-
cord, and an uncertain one at that, of only one trip between Europe and China, by
the 13th and 14th centuries a substantial number of travelers went from Europe
or North Africa to East Asia. Some were missionaries, some merchants, some
adventurers or job-seekers, and there were even some entertainers involved. The
world’s greatest known traveler, the lawyer Ibn Battuta, operated in this context,
with many trips from his native Morocco to the Middle East, central Asia, India,
China and Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, logging almost 80,000 miles
on his journeys overall. Travel of this sort reflected a new capacity to take ad-
vantage of established routes and contacts and a new interest in reaching out as
widely as possible in the known world. It also supported further travel in turn,
for some of the new adventurers, including Ibn Battuta, wrote accounts of their
trips which helped a wider audience learn about other parts of the world and
could spur some to outreach of their own. It was no accident that Christopher
Columbus, on his own travels late in the 15th century, had with him a copy of
the most famous European travel book to that point, Marco Polo’s description of
his journey to China. Long-distance travel was still the province of a relatively
small number of individuals, and of course it was noteworthy that the more ex-
tensive ventures went west to east rather than vice versa; but the phenomenon
was no longer simply a rarity, and that fact in turn signaled the beginning of a
new era in terms of interregional contacts.
Mapping came of age by around 1000 CE, with increasingly accurate repre-
sentations of Asia, Europe, and much of Africa. Arab mapmakers led the way,
which reflected larger Arab leadership in the processes of trade and travel. But
mapmakers from other societies joined in, based on knowledge of Arab maps
and guides and on travel from their own home bases. Fanciful representations
even of neighboring regions, common still in the classical period, gave way to
more precise detail. Better maps, in turn, facilitated additional contacts, showing
the attainability of far-flung destinations.
Dependence on long-distance trade also increased, another sign of change.
Markets for Chinese silk continued to play an important role, which represented
obvious continuity with the past. But the range of Chinese exports expanded,
 Another Random Document on
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 CHAPITRE VII
LA RETRAITE SUR LA TERRE
FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH

A notre grand étonnement, dès le premier jour de notre retraite,

nous trouvons la glace bien meilleure que dans la direction du nord.
Devant nous s'étendent de larges plaines, unies, coupées seulement
de loin en loin de chaînes de monticules et de canaux recouverts de
«jeune glace». Ces accidents de terrain sont orientés dans le S. 22°
O. magnétique, soit environ à l'ouest-sud-ouest du monde, c'est-à-
dire parallèlement à la direction que nous suivons.
Le 10, une bonne étape: 15 milles.
Le 12, j'oublie de remonter les montres. Pour obtenir maintenant
le temps moyen de Greenwich, je prends une observation
circumméridienne et détermine la latitude, puis fais l'estime depuis le
point où nous avons rebroussé chemin et où j'ai pris ma dernière
observation de longitude. Grâce à ces précautions, l'erreur dans la
détermination des positions ne sera pas grande.
14 avril.—Jour de Pâques. Je passe la journée à calculer la
latitude, la longitude et le temps moyen. Une occupation très
agréable que ces opérations mathématiques et la manipulation de la
table des logarithmes avec des doigts rigides, presque gelés, et avec
des vêtements couverts de glace sur le dos. Pourtant la température
n'est que de −30°, presque un temps chaud. D'après mes calculs,
hier, nous devions nous trouver au-dessous de 86°5′,3, tandis que,
d'après l'estime, nous devions être par 85°50′ et quelques minutes,
ayant parcouru 50 milles en trois jours. Maintenant, selon toute
vraisemblance, la dérive nous porte dans le nord. Nous ne devons
pas avoir dépassé le 86°, et j'ai vérifié sur cette position l'heure de
nos montres.
Les jours suivants, nos progrès sont rapides, quoique la banquise
soit maintenant plus accidentée qu'au début de la retraite. Le 17
avril, nous parcourons 20 milles. Toujours un ciel clair; jour et nuit,
le soleil brille dans une atmosphère absolument calme. Depuis notre
départ, pas une seule fois le mauvais temps ne nous a arrêtés. La
température s'élève; le thermomètre ne marque plus que −27°.
L'été approche. Si à coup sûr un temps aussi doux est agréable,
dans quelques semaines il peut nous exposer à bien des difficultés et
à bien des dangers. Il hâtera la débâcle et rendra très pénible
l'approche des côtes.
20 avril.—Durant plusieurs heures, impossible de traverser un
large fossé, rempli de blocs amoncelés dans un désordre effrayant.
De tous côtés, des chaînes de toross et des hummocks, et, de toutes
parts, de larges crevasses. Pendant longtemps cette glace a dû être
en mouvement et soumise à de terribles pressions. Sur plusieurs
points, les monticules atteignent une hauteur de huit mètres et
contiennent des strates de matière minérale. Un floe notamment est
entièrement noirci par une substance inorganique ou organique. Le
temps me manque pour examiner la chose.
Au cours de notre route, je note, à différentes reprises, des
hummocks très massifs et très étendus, de forme carrée, semblables
à des îles élevées couvertes de neige; des blocs paléo-*crystiques,
très certainement.
Après de longues recherches, je parviens à découvrir un passage
à travers ce labyrinthe de glace. Au delà quel n'est pas mon
étonnement d'apercevoir un énorme tronc de mélèze de Sibérie,
dressé au milieu de la banquise. Nous le marquons des initiales: F.
N. H. J. 85°30′.
 Pendant plusieurs jours ensuite, la glace relativement unie nous
permet de glisser rapidement sur nos ski. En deux jours la distance
parcourue est d'au moins 40 milles.

UN LAC AU MILIEU DE LA BANQUISE

Le 26, à mon grand étonnement, je rencontre une piste fraîche

de renard venant de l'O.-S.-O. et allant vers l'est. Que diable est-il
venu faire jusqu'au 85°? Involontairement je regarde autour de moi,
pensant apercevoir une terre. Le temps est malheureusement
bouché. Probablement ce renard s'est avancé jusqu'ici à la suite d'un
ours. Plus loin encore, d'autres pistes de renards toujours dans la
même direction. Quelle nourriture peuvent-ils trouver au milieu de ce
désert de glace? Probablement des crustacés qu'ils attrapent dans
les bassins d'eau libre.
Température minima −35°,7.
Hier, rencontre d'un amoncellement de blocs, qui paraît de
formation toute récente. J'y remarque d'énormes fragments de glace
d'eau douce, contenant des particules d'argile et de graviers, de la
glace de rivière provenant probablement des fleuves sibériens.
Même à l'extrême nord de notre course, j'ai souvent vu des glaçons
de cette nature, et, jusqu'au 86° de latitude, j'ai observé de l'argile à
la surface de la banquise.
27 avril.—Bonne étape. Nous avons parcouru, suivant toute
probabilité, une distance de 20 milles. Quittant le campement hier à
trois heures de l'après-midi, nous avons marché jusqu'à ce matin.
Bientôt viendra le temps où nous aurons l'espérance de voir
apparaître la terre. La terre! quand la verrons-nous? Quand
foulerons-nous autre chose que cette glace et cette neige?
Aujourd'hui encore de nouvelles pistes de renards, toujours dans
la même direction.
Un de nos chiens est complètement à bout. Il ne se tient plus sur
ses pattes; une fois que nous l'avons chargé sur un traîneau, il
demeure complètement immobile. Aujourd'hui nous le délivrerons
des souffrances de l'existence. Pauvre bête, jusqu'à la fin, elle a
énergiquement travaillé, et maintenant qu'elle ne peut plus tirer, elle
nous rendra un dernier service en nourrissant de son cadavre les
survivants. Elle était née à bord du Fram, le 13 décembre 1893, et,
en véritable enfant des régions polaires, elle n'avait jamais vu autre
chose que de la glace et de la neige.
Le lendemain, quel n'est pas notre étonnement de rencontrer un
large bassin d'eau libre! Pendant que nous le suivons, à la recherche
d'un passage, tout à coup les deux bords se rapprochent et se
joignent avec un fracas terrible. Sous la violence du choc, la glace se
dresse; d'énormes blocs roulent; tout craque et mugit. Rapidement
nous poussons les chiens pour traverser le chenal à la faveur de ce
bouleversement.
De jour en jour nos attelages deviennent plus faibles. Plusieurs
bêtes sont absolument exténuées. Barnet ne peut plus se soutenir;
ce soir nous l'abattrons.
Encore des traces de renards. Je commence à croire que nous
approchons d'une terre. De minute à minute je m'attends à
l'apercevoir.
Le 29, encore une journée diabolique! A peu de distance du
campement, la route se trouve barrée par un nouveau chenal d'eau
libre, puis par un second, et par un troisième. Chaque fois, nous
sommes obligés à d'interminables détours. Pour le passage de ces
canaux, impossible de nous servir de nos kayaks; ils sont criblés de
trous et il ne peut être question en ce moment de les radouber. Une
pareille entreprise prendrait un temps considérable et serait
particulièrement difficile par des températures de 30° sous zéro.
Avant tout, il nous faut gagner la terre ferme avant la débâcle.
2 mai.—Après quatre heures de marche rapide, voici de
nouveaux ravins et des chaînes de toross. Sous nos pas, la glace,
pressée avec force, craque bruyamment. Avec cela, un chasse-neige
masque toute vue. Force nous est de nous arrêter. A peine la tente
est-elle dressée, que le monticule qui nous abrite commence à être
agité par les pressions et à geindre terriblement. Nous courons le
risque d'être écrasés par une avalanche; mais telle est notre fatigue,
que je m'endors en dépit de l'imminence du danger.
Le soir, nous sacrifions un de nos chiens. Depuis quelque temps
déjà, les provisions qui leur sont destinées sont épuisées. Nous
devons nous résoudre à les abattre l'un après l'autre pour nourrir les
survivants. Notre meute ne se compose plus maintenant que de
seize bêtes, et nous sommes encore loin de la terre.
3 mai.—Seulement 11°,3 sous zéro. Une température de
printemps, qui nous donne une sensation exquise de bien-être.
Maintenant, nos mains cruellement «mordues par la gelée» peuvent
toucher les objets, sans craindre à chaque contact une cuisance
atroce.
Toujours des chaînes de monticules et des ravins remplis d'eau
dont la traversée nous épuise. Une fois couchés dans nos sacs, bien
au chaud, nous oublions vite les souffrances et les fatigues. Je suis si
éreinté que je chancelle sur mes ski; lorsque je tombe, je voudrais
rester couché où je suis.
8 mai.—Les canaux ouverts à travers la banquise paraissent tous
orientés, parallèlement entre eux, du nord-est à l'ouest-sud-ouest
(du compas), c'est-à-dire, perpendiculairement à la direction que
nous suivons.
 A notre grande joie, la glace semble devenir plus unie aux
approches de la terre, alors que nous redoutions précisément le
contraire. Le nombre des chiens diminuant de jour en jour, le halage
est de plus en plus pénible. Je n'ai plus que quatre bêtes à mon
traîneau.
10 mai.—Température −8°,8. Hier, la glace était plane; au départ
nous espérions donc faire bonne route, lorsqu'une tourmente de
neige s'est levée et nous a brutalement obligés à camper.
Aujourd'hui, après quelques heures de clair soleil et de ciel bleu,
chute de neige abondante, et temps «bouché».
A chaque pas, des chaînes de blocs soulevés par les pressions.
Par la brume, impossible de trouver la route au milieu de ce dédale
12 mai.—Notre second sac de pain sera bientôt vide, et jamais la
terre n'apparaît! Plus que douze chiens dont les forces diminuent de
jour en jour!
A mesure que nous avançons, la banquise devient de plus en
plus difficile. La glace est maintenant recouverte de neige qui ne
porte pas. A chaque instant, lorsque l'on quitte les ski pour pousser
les traîneaux, on tombe dans quelque trou, masqué par cette couche
trompeuse.
Aujourd'hui la température est relativement élevée; la nuit
dernière, la chaleur dans le sac de couchage m'a empêché de
dormir. Minimum −14°,2′.
16 mai.—L'anniversaire de la naissance de Johansen. Nous fêtons
ce jour avec toute la solennité que comportent nos moyens. Au
dîner, ragoût, le mets favori de mon camarade; comme dessert un
excellent grog au jus de citron.
Hier, nous nous trouvions par 83°36′ Lat. N. et 59°55′ E. de Gr.
Évidemment, nous sommes poussés dans l'ouest par un courant
violent et risquons de dépasser la terre la plus nord de l'archipel
François-Joseph.
Sur les plaines les chiens marchent encore très bien, mais,
devant le moindre obstacle, refusent d'avancer. Afin d'accélérer le
traînage, je m'attelle à leur tête. Plus loin, la banquise devenant très
accidentée, je dois abandonner la bricole pour aller reconnaître le
terrain en avant. Celui de nous qui marche en tête du convoi, ne
parcourt pas moins de trois fois le même trajet. Une première fois, il
va à la découverte et prépare le passage, puis revient en arrière
pour conduire les attelages. En dépit de toutes les difficultés, nous
poursuivons notre route. Peut-être, à la fin, tant d'efforts seront-ils
récompensés. Actuellement, nous serions satisfaits si nous
atteignions la terre et trouvions une glace unie.
Aujourd'hui encore, quatre abominables fissures. La dernière
forme un véritable lac, une polynie, suivant l'expression russe passée
dans le vocabulaire arctique. La nappe d'eau est couverte de jeune
glace, trop faible pour porter, et en même temps trop résistante pour
y lancer les kayaks. A perte de vue s'étend dans l'ouest ce large
chenal absolument infranchissable. Pour traverser cet obstacle, nous
n'avons pas le choix des moyens; il faut, ou suivre la polynie vers
l'ouest, jusqu'à ce que nous ayons trouvé un passage,—ce qui nous
jette hors de notre route,—ou bien revenir en arrière et chercher
dans l'est à contourner cette ouverture. Je me décide pour la
première alternative. Bientôt, heureusement, nous découvrons en
travers du canal une plaque de glace assez solide; immédiatement
nous y poussons les chiens. Finalement ce large fossé, devant lequel
nous craignions de perdre plusieurs jours, est rapidement franchi.
Notre satisfaction devait être de courte durée. A quelque distance de
là une seconde polynie! Pour aujourd'hui c'est décidément trop et je
prends le parti de camper.
17 mai.—La fête nationale, en Norvège. Couché dans mon sac, je
songe à la joie du pays, tout là-bas, en ce jour d'allégresse générale.
Je vois, en rêve, les processions joyeuses d'enfants, les drapeaux
claquant au vent dans le gai soleil d'une journée de printemps.
Aussi, combien triste me paraît notre position. Nous errons sur une
banquise interminable, incertains du lendemain, poursuivant
énergiquement notre marche vers le sud, tandis qu'une lente dérive
des eaux nous entraîne vers l'ouest. Mais, quand même, nous
voulons nous aussi fêter cette date chère à tous les cœurs
norvégiens. Le pavillon national flotte sur les traîneaux, et, au dîner,
un véritable festin est servi: un succulent ragoût, de la confiture
d'airelle, puis un grog au citron.
Dans la polynie ouverte devant nous s'ébat une bande de
narvals. Leur donner la chasse entraînerait une perte de temps trop
considérable.
Après avoir passé le chenal, le terrain devient relativement
favorable. Longueur probable de l'étape: 10 milles. De plus en plus
la dérive nous pousse dans l'ouest.
20 mai.—Terrible tourmente de neige. Pas de vue. Nous restons
couchés dans la tente, réfléchissant tristement à notre situation.
Nous devons être par 83°10′ environ, et devrions, par suite, nous
trouver à la Terre Petermann, si elle est située réellement dans la
position indiquée sur la carte de Payer. De deux choses l'une: ou
nous sommes jetés, à notre insu, en dehors de la route que nous
croyons tenir, ou bien cette terre est si petite que nous n'avons pu la
distinguer.
21 mai.—Ciel toujours brumeux et neigeux; malgré tout, nous
nous mettons en route.
Passé un grand nombre de larges ouvertures couvertes de
«jeune glace». Tout récemment, dans cette région, devaient
s'étendre de vastes espaces d'eau libre.
23 mai.—La plus terrible journée du voyage. Dès le départ, nous
sommes arrêtés par une très large fissure. La traversée d'aucune des
ouvertures rencontrées jusqu'ici n'a présenté autant de difficultés.
Après avoir cherché en vain un passage pendant plus de trois
heures, je prends le parti de suivre le chenal vers l'est. Peut-être, de
ce côté, trouverons-nous un «pont»? Arrivés à ce qui nous paraît
être la fin de cette polynie, nous ne voyons qu'un amoncellement
inextricable de blocs et de floes, disloqués par de larges crevasses et
heurtés violemment les uns contre les autres. A grand'peine nous
avançons au milieu de glaçons empilés les uns au-dessus des autres.
Quand, enfin, nous croyons avoir dépassé le chenal, d'autres
ravins et d'autres crevasses, encore plus difficiles, s'ouvrent devant
nous. La banquise est comme convulsée. Pendant quelque temps
c'est à désespérer de la situation. Dans toutes les directions
apparaissent des fissures, et, de tous côtés, la couleur foncée du ciel
indique l'ouverture de nappes d'eau libre.
Dans l'après-midi, d'une heure à trois, repos. Une fois étendus
dans notre sac, et bien repus, nous oublions toutes ces tribulations.
Lorsque nous nous remettons en route, le temps est devenu
complètement brumeux. On ne peut distinguer un mur de glace
d'une nappe de neige détrempée. Nous traversons je ne sais
combien de crevasses, d'hummocks et de toross. Heureusement
chaque chose a une fin. Après ce terrible entassement de blocs,
nous arrivons à une plaine relativement unie. Depuis quinze heures
je suis en marche, et depuis douze nous travaillons au milieu de ce
dédale de glace. Nous sommes à bout de forces et absolument
trempés. Une couche trompeuse de neige couvre la surface de l'eau
dans les crevasses et je ne sais combien de fois nous avons pris des
bains de pieds. Dans la matinée, je me trouvais sur un glaçon que je
croyais solide, lorsque tout à coup il enfonça. Je n'eus que le temps
de me jeter sur un bloc qui, heureusement, était résistant. Sans
cela, je prenais un bain complet dans une bouillie de glace. Me
trouvant alors seul, la situation n'aurait pas été précisément drôle.
26 mai.—La neige ne porte plus. Dès que l'on quitte les ski, on
enfonce jusqu'aux genoux. Avec cela, lorsque le temps est sombre
comme hier, impossible de reconnaître les accidents de la banquise;
sous la couche de neige fraîche tout est uniformément blanc.
Les chiens n'en peuvent plus. Heureusement, le résultat des
observations est réconfortant. Nous devons nous trouver par 82°40′
de Lat. N. et par 61°27′ de Long. Est.; la dérive vers l'ouest a donc
cessé. Après cette constatation, l'avenir devient moins noir.
La couleur foncée du ciel indique l'existence de nappes d'eau
libre. En effet, toute l'après-midi, les fissures succèdent aux fissures;
dans la soirée, nous sommes arrêtés par un très large chenal. De
l'hummock le plus élevé que je puis atteindre, à perte de vue dans
toutes les directions, s'étend cette fente, plus impraticable encore,
semble-t-il, que toutes celles précédemment rencontrées. Au bivouac
Kvik, mon chien favori, est sacrifié. La malheureuse bête ne peut
plus tirer; non sans un gros chagrin je me décide à cette nécessité!
Tôt ou tard il faudra l'abattre; mieux vaut aujourd'hui, alors que le
pauvre animal peut encore nous rendre service en fournissant des
vivres pour trois jours aux huit autres survivants.

JE GRIMPE AU SOMMET D'UN hummock; DE LA-HAUT LE PANORAMA

EST VRAIMENT DÉCOURAGEANT…

27 mai.—Lat. 82°30′. Aucune terre en vue; c'est à n'y rien

comprendre. Probablement nous sommes de plusieurs degrés plus à
l'est que nous ne le croyions [32] .
[ En réalité nous nous trouvions à 6° à l'est de
32] notre point estimé.

La glace sur laquelle nous cheminons est plate. Seulement çà et

là se rencontrent de petits glaçons entassés par les pressions, plus
rarement de larges mamelons ou d'étroites crêtes. Très certainement
cette croûte cristalline ne date pas de plus d'un an. A mon grand
étonnement, les plaques de «vieille glace» sont rares et isolées. Au
campement, impossible de découvrir un glaçon qui ait été exposé à
la chaleur de l'été, et qui, par suite, ait perdu toute trace de sel.
Pour nous procurer de l'eau, nous avons dû faire fondre de la neige.
Lorsque la neige n'est pas granuleuse, sa fusion produit beaucoup
moins de liquide que la glace et exige plus de chaleur. Pendant l'été
ou l'automne dernier, une vaste zone d'eau libre a dû s'étendre dans
cette région.
29 mai.—Hier, pour la première fois, un oiseau en vue, un pétrel
arctique (Procellaria glacialis).
Nous partons avec l'espoir d'en avoir terminé avec les crevasses
et les canaux qui découpent la banquise. Ah bien oui! à peine en
route, les apparences du ciel indiquent l'existence de nouvelles
rigoles d'eau libre. Je grimpe en toute hâte au sommet d'un
hummock; de là-haut le panorama est absolument décourageant. Au
sud, à l'est, à l'ouest, un dédale de canaux se coupant et se
recoupant dans tous les sens. Partout la glace est disloquée; suivant
toutes probabilités, jusqu'à la terre François-Joseph elle doit être
ainsi convulsée.
Maintenant, la banquise n'est plus formée de glace polaire
massive et compacte, mais de petits glaçons. Si seulement, nous
étions en mars, les froids auraient bientôt consolidé tous ces
«champs» en une masse rigide. Toujours j'avais considéré comme
de la dernière importance d'atteindre la terre avant la fin de mai,
sachant combien la banquise serait morcelée à cette époque, alors
que le thermomètre s'élève au-dessus de zéro. Hélas! mes craintes
n'étaient que trop fondées. Nous sommes arrivés trop tard ou trop
tôt. Dans un mois, cette masse de glace sera complètement
disloquée, et à travers ses fissures on pourra naviguer en kayak.
Aujourd'hui, impossible d'employer ce mode de locomotion; la
«jeune glace» déchirerait les coques de nos frêles embarcations.
Dans toutes les directions la couleur du ciel annonce la présence
de nappes d'eau libre. Que ne donnerais-je pas pour être là-bas! Si
la banquise devient encore plus morcelée, nous devrons attendre la
débâcle complète; pour cela nos provisions sont-elles suffisantes?
C'est douteux.
Je suis tout à coup tiré de ces réflexions par un clapotement
bruyant dans le chenal voisin. Une troupe de narvals s'ébat à côté de
moi dans une heureuse insouciance. Si j'avais un harpon, je pourrais
capturer un de ces cétacés.
Dans la matinée, pendant que nous peinons au milieu des
canaux, passe un guillemot grylle (Uria grylle). Un peu plus loin,
nous entendons des mugissements de phoques, bientôt même nous
découvrons un de ces animaux; malheureusement il se tient hors de
portée.
Le gibier commence à se montrer, la situation n'est donc pas
désespérée! En avant coûte que coûte!
31 mai.—La glace devient de plus en plus mince.
Hier, aperçu deux phoques (Phoca fœtida), un oiseau, et
rencontré les traces d'un ours et de deux oursons. Nous allons donc
pouvoir nous ravitailler en viande fraîche.
Pan, le plus vaillant de nos tireurs, doit être sacrifié. La pauvre
bête est maintenant épuisée; à son tour de servir de pâture aux
survivants qui peuvent encore nous rendre quelques services.
Un terrain presque impraticable, un chaos de blocs nageant au
milieu de l'eau. Nous cheminons en sautant de glaçons en glaçons.
Si nous étions seuls, cela irait encore; mais, avec nos traîneaux, ces
escalades et ces descentes continuelles nous mettent à bout de
forces.
Du 82°52′ au 82°19′ la banquise est presque uniquement
composée de «jeune glace» épaisse d'environ 0m,80. Sur toute cette
distance nous n'avons rencontré que quelques vieux floes et de rares
champs de «vieille glace», comme celui sur lequel nous sommes
actuellement campés. La mer a donc été libre sur une distance de 33
milles vers le nord, et, dans la direction du sud, cette nappe devait
également atteindre une grande étendue.
 Pris aujourd'hui une hauteur méridienne; nous serions par
82°21′, et toujours pas trace de terre. De plus en plus cela devient
une énigme. Mais patience!
 CHAPITRE VIII
LA LUTTE POUR LA VIE

1 er juin.—Atteindrons-nous enfin, au cours de ce mois qui

commence aujourd'hui, la terre si ardemment désirée. Il faut
l'espérer et le croire, tandis que le temps marche.
Horizon bouché et neigeux; avec cela, vent contraire. Aussitôt
après le départ, nous sommes arrêtés par un canal paraissant, au
premier abord, infranchissable. Finalement, les choses tournent
mieux que nous n'avons osé l'espérer. Après un détour vers le nord-
est, nous parvenons à passer l'obstacle. Au delà nous avons la
chance de rencontrer une plaine bien unie; sur cet excellent terrain
nous marchons jusqu'à midi. Plus tard, encore une heure et demie
de bonne glace, après cela nos tribulations recommencent. Dans
toutes les directions la route est coupée par de larges ouvertures.
Pendant une heure et demie je cherche en vain un passage.
Combien différentes sont les idées que les expéditions se font sur
leurs situations respectives! Si nous réussissons à atteindre la terre
avant l'épuisement de nos provisions, nous nous considérerons
comme sauvés. Payer, au contraire, se serait cru perdu si, au cours
de son excursion à l'archipel François-Joseph, sa ligne de retraite sur
le Tegetthoff avait été coupée. Et pourtant il n'était pas, comme
nous, épuisé par une marche de deux mois et demi sur la banquise.
 Hier, au moment de lever le camp, nous avons entendu le cri
d'une pagophile blanche (Larus eburneus). Deux de ces beaux
oiseaux blancs volaient au-dessus de nous. Tout d'abord je pris mon
fusil pour les tirer, puis me ravisai. Ces mouettes ne valent pas une
cartouche.
2 juin.—Dimanche de la Pentecôte. Le chenal qui nous a arrêtés
hier s'est agrandi pendant la nuit, et est devenu un très large bassin.
Nous nous trouvons sur une île de glace au milieu de cette nappe.
Maintenant il n'y a plus à hésiter, il est absolument nécessaire
d'entreprendre le radoubage des kayaks. Une fois les embarcations
en état de tenir la mer, nous nous lancerons à travers les fissures de
cette banquise toute crevassée.
Installés dans une partie abritée de notre île de glace, nous
travaillons commodément sans sentir le moindre vent, tandis que
souffle une fraîche brise du sud-ouest. Nous dînons d'un excellent
ragoût chaud, un véritable régal, puis, en sybarites, nous nous
prélassons dans une douce paresse. De temps à autre un repos est
très agréable. Après cela au travail.
Je découds la peau de mon kayak pour exécuter les reprises;
après quoi, je resserre tous les liens unissant les pièces de la
carcasse. Une longue besogne; il n'y a pas moins de quarante
nœuds! Ce travail achevé, le châssis de l'embarcation est aussi solide
qu'au moment du départ. Une fois les deux canots remis en état,
nous serons parés pour le départ, et désormais pourrons poursuivre
notre route, sans crainte d'être, à chaque instant, arrêtés par une
nappe d'eau ou par un large chenal. Avant peu même, nous
pourrons naviguer au milieu de cette banquise disloquée. Le
transport des quelques chiens survivants sera alors une source de
difficultés. Aussi devrons-nous nous en séparer. Notre meute est, du
reste, réduite à six animaux, et seulement pendant quatre jours
encore nous pourrons les nourrir.
 CANAL OUVERT A TRAVERS LA BANQUISE (JUIN 1895)

Aujourd'hui la Pentecôte! C'est, dans notre beau pays, l'été gai et

riant; ici, c'est la glace, la glace éternelle. La petite Liv ira dîner chez
sa grand'mère; peut-être, pour la circonstance, met-elle une
nouvelle robe? Un jour viendra où je pourrai, moi aussi,
l'accompagner, mais quand?
Nous travaillons toujours à la réparation des embarcations. Dans
notre ardeur à la besogne, nous en oublions même de manger.
Souvent, pendant vingt-quatre heures de suite, nous peinons sans
une minute de repos; parfois même la journée s'écoule avant que
nous ayons songé à préparer un repas.
Cette réfection des kayaks exige non seulement un grand effort,
mais encore une attention soutenue. A tous les instants les plus
minutieuses précautions sont nécessaires, pour ne pas couper une
courroie trop vite ou pour ne pas briser une latte de bois en voulant
lui donner une courbure trop forte. Nos provisions de matériel sont si
restreintes! Nous fûmes récompensés de nos peines; plus tard, nous
eûmes la satisfaction de constater que nos embarcations tenaient
parfaitement la mer et pouvaient même affronter une tempête.
 4 juin.—Avant peu, la mer sera libre ou tout au moins la banquise
disloquée. La glace est très mince et très morcelée, en même temps
la température s'élève. Hier, le thermomètre est monté au-dessus de
zéro, et, à mesure qu'elle tombait, la neige fondait. Aujourd'hui, ciel
bleu et soleil resplendissant. Un air de gaieté et de joie rayonne dans
tout l'espace, et nous apporte un doux réconfort. L'illusion est si
complète que je me crois à la maison, par une belle matinée d'été,
devant les riantes perspectives du fjord. Que seulement la mer soit
bientôt dégagée et que nous puissions nous servir des kayaks,
bientôt nous serons de retour.
Jusqu'ici nous avons pu manger à notre faim. Sans peser nos
rations, nous n'avons cependant jamais dépassé la quantité de
vivres fixée à l'avance, soit un kilogramme par jour. Désormais, cette
ration devra être singulièrement réduite pour être assuré d'avoir des
vivres jusqu'au bout. A déjeuner, le menu se compose, pour chacun
de nous, de 36 grammes de beurre et 185 grammes de pain de
gluten.
Position: par une observation au théodolite, Lat.: 82°17′,8.
Long.: 61°16′,5. Comment la terre n'est-elle pas en vue! Peut-être
sommes-nous plus à l'est que nous ne le croyons et la terre s'étend-
elle dans l'est vers le sud, c'est la seule explication plausible. En tous
cas, nous n'avons plus loin jusqu'aux premières îles de l'archipel
François-Joseph.
6 juin.—Toujours au travail de la remise en état des kayaks.
Demain soir, probablement, nous serons parés pour le départ. Nous
n'avons plus que 2kg,293 de beurre, à 36 grammes par jour et par
homme il durera encore vingt-trois jours. Ce matin, température
+2°. Jamais, jusqu'ici, le thermomètre ne s'était élevé aussi haut. La
neige est complètement ramollie et des gouttelettes d'eau suintent
des hummocks. La nuit dernière, il est tombé une véritable pluie.
8 juin.—Après un dernier labeur consécutif de vingt-quatre
heures, les kayaks sont enfin prêts. Il est véritablement curieux que
nous puissions travailler aussi longtemps sans un instant de repos. A
la maison, nous serions éreintés et affamés, si nous n'avions ni
mangé ni soufflé pendant un aussi long laps de temps. Ici pourtant
notre appétit est excellent, et nous ne connaissons pas l'insomnie.
Après trois mois et demi de marche à travers la banquise, nous
sommes aussi solides que le jour du départ.
La provision de pain peut durer encore trente-cinq ou quarante
jours; d'ici là, espérons-le du moins, nous serons hors d'embarras.
Déjà, du reste, le gibier commence à paraître. Aujourd'hui, nous
nous régalons d'une pagophile blanche, la première viande fraîche
que nous ayons mangée depuis longtemps. A coup sûr, elle nous
semble excellente, cependant pas autant que l'on pourrait le croire
après un régime aussi prolongé de conserves. C'est la meilleure
preuve de la qualité de notre ordinaire.
Sous l'influence d'une fraîche brise du sud-est qui s'est levée hier,
presque tous les canaux se sont fermés. Ce matin, une tourmente
fait rage. Quand même, nous nous mettons en route. A notre grande
joie le terrain est relativement facile. La banquise s'étend presque
plate, et, sur cette surface unie, la marche devient rapide, en dépit
des mauvaises conditions de la neige. Cette neige fraîche adhère aux
patins et les empêche de glisser.
A 100 mètres devant soi, impossible de rien distinguer à travers
ce poudroiement blanc. Nous sommes transpercés, mais qu'importe
ce désagrément, nous marchons vers le but désiré. Plus loin, la
route est de nouveau barrée par des canaux entourés d'un
labyrinthe de crevasses et de chaînes d'hummocks. Quelques
fissures, très larges, sont couvertes d'une marmelade de petits
glaçons. Impossible de nous servir des kayaks au milieu de cette
bouillie glaciaire; au premier coup de pagaie leur frêle coque serait
percée par les aiguilles tranchantes de la glace. Heureusement, sur
plusieurs points, les plaques cristallines, entassées les unes sur les
autres, forment des ponts suffisamment solides pour permettre le
passage de la caravane. Mais, avant de découvrir un passage, que
d'allées et venues, et, pendant ce temps, l'attente n'est pas
précisément agréable pour celui qui reste en arrière avec les chiens.
L'infortuné doit demeurer immobile, exposé au vent et à la neige.
Quand mon absence se prolonge, Johansen craint que je ne sois
tombé dans quelque crevasse. Seul dans ce désert de glace, les
idées les plus étranges vous passent par la tête.
Pour découvrir le terrain devant nous, je grimpe sur des
hummocks; la vue de ma silhouette rassure alors pour un moment
mon compagnon. Pendant une de ces attentes, Johansen remarque
tout à coup un léger balancement du floe; le glaçon semble agité par
une faible houle. Serions-nous dans le voisinage de la mer libre? Je
n'ose le croire; déjà auparavant nous avons observé de semblables
oscillations produites par la pression des blocs les uns contre les
autres.
Dans la journée, croisé une piste d'ours dont la date ne peut être
déterminée sur cette neige qui oblitère tout en quelques minutes.
Probablement elle est d'hier, car à peine les chiens l'ont-ils flairée
qu'ils veulent partir en avant. Vieille ou fraîche, n'importe. Un ours
est venu jusqu'ici; peut-être allons-nous pouvoir remplir bientôt
notre garde-manger qui commence à se vider.
Toute la journée, nous avançons sous des tourbillons de neige
fondante. A dix heures du soir, seulement, nous nous arrêtons. Après
cette pénible étape, combien nous paraît agréable notre petite tente
chaude et confortable. Ce soir-là, le gratin nous paraît encore
meilleur que d'habitude.
9 juin.—Nous nous épuisons en efforts surhumains. La surface de
la banquise est maintenant recouverte d'une couche de neige
fondante, et, dans cette bouillie glaciaire les traîneaux restent
embourbés! Et toujours des canaux que nous traversons sur des
glaçons en guise de bacs, et toujours de la «jeune glace» très mince
(épaisseur maxima: 0m,80). Dans la journée, je n'observe que
quelques vieux floes. Pendant une partie de l'étape nous cheminons
sur une croûte cristalline dont la puissance ne dépasse pas 0m,30 à
0m,35. Un large bassin d'eau libre a dû exister dans ces parages et,
avant peu, s'y reformera. Cette glace, recouverte d'eau, forme une
véritable brouelle. Elle est constituée de floes, souvent de très
faibles dimensions, serrés les uns contre les autres. Lorsqu'ils se
disloqueront, nous pourrons naviguer dans toutes les directions à
notre choix.
 A chaque éclaircie, nous scrutons avec anxiété l'horizon. Toujours
rien ne paraît. A chaque pas, cependant, nous observons des indices
du voisinage de la terre et de l'eau libre. Les mouettes deviennent
de plus en plus nombreuses; aujourd'hui, j'ai aperçu un guillemot
nain (Mergulus alle). Le dénouement approche certainement; dans
combien de temps se produira-t-il? Patience et toujours patience!
10 juin.—Les difficultés deviennent de plus en plus terribles. La
glace est encore plus inégale et plus découpée que les jours
précédents. L'étape n'a guère dépassé trois ou quatre milles. Si le
vent du S.-E. ne nous a pas repoussés vers le nord, nous devons
être vers 82°8′ ou 82°9′. Sur la couche superficielle de neige
grenue, les patins glissent aisément; si par malheur ils atteignent la
bouillie glaciaire sous-jacente, les traîneaux restent embourbés.
11 juin.—Quelle vie monotone que la nôtre! Les jours succèdent
aux jours, les semaines aux semaines, les mois aux mois; toujours
les mêmes difficultés et le même labeur incessant, un jour plus facile
et le lendemain plus pénible.
Nous n'avons plus que cinq tireurs, trois à mon véhicule, deux à
celui de Johansen. Si avant trois jours nous n'avons pu nous
ravitailler, nous ne pourrons plus les nourrir.
Toujours nous espérons atteindre la fin de cette terrible banquise
et toujours nous ne voyons qu'un monotone panorama de glace
infinie. Aucune terre, aucun bassin d'eau libre! Pourtant nous devons
être à la même latitude que le cap Fligely, ou, en mettant les choses
au pire, à quelques minutes plus au nord. Nous ne savons où nous
sommes et nous ignorons quand cette situation prendra fin et… nos
provisions diminuent de jour en jour. L'un après l'autre, nos derniers
chiens doivent être sacrifiés. Bientôt la marche deviendra
complètement impossible sur cette neige détrempée. Les chiens
enfoncent à chaque pas et nous pataugeons jusqu'aux genoux.
Parfois, nous éprouvons un moment de défaillance devant
d'inextricables dédales de canaux et d'amoncellements de blocs à
travers lesquels toute route semble, au premier abord, impossible.
Quand même, il faut avancer, le salut est à ce prix.
 Dans notre détresse, la moindre chose suffit à nous rendre un
peu d'espoir. Hier, la rencontre d'une petite morue (Gadus polaris)
dans une nappe d'eau nous a réconfortés. Cette mer est
poissonneuse; nous ne courons donc pas le risque de mourir de
faim.
13 juin.—Toujours la même banquise convulsée et le même
temps abominable. A chaque pas, la couche de neige superficielle
cède sous le poids des traîneaux, et les véhicules restent embourbés
pendant que les chiens barbotent impuissants. Encore de larges
fissures de très mauvaise apparence. Nous poussons en travers des
glaçons pour former une sorte de pont. Au moment d'effectuer le
passage, un ouragan se déchaîne et détruit notre ouvrage.
Impossible de voir à deux pas devant soi à travers les tourbillons de
neige chassés par la tourmente. Il faut nous résoudre à camper.
Quatre heures de marche terrible. Distance parcourue: un mille.
C'est à désespérer.
13 juin.—Je pars en avant. Johansen amène ensuite mon
traîneau, puis le sien. Une fois le terrain reconnu sur une certaine
distance, je retourne en arrière chercher mon véhicule, pour repartir
ensuite à la découverte. Toute la journée nous recommençons cette
longue et pénible manœuvre. Si nous ne marchons pas rapidement,
au moins nous avançons; c'est déjà quelque chose. La banquise est
maintenant toute hérissée d'hummocks et toute déchirée de canaux
remplis de petits fragments de glace. Nulle part la moindre surface
plane; rien qu'une masse de débris entassés dans un désordre
effrayant. C'est, ma parole, à désespérer. Partout la route est
fermée; il semble véritablement que nous soyons définitivement
bloqués. Impossible de lancer les kayaks; sur ces nappes
encombrées d'aiguilles de glaçons, leurs coques seraient
immédiatement percées. Lorsque du haut d'un monticule j'examine
l'horizon, toujours je me pose les mêmes questions: Nos provisions
sont-elles suffisantes pour attendre la fusion de la neige et la
dislocation de la banquise, et aurons-nous des chances de trouver
suffisamment de gibier pour subsister jusque-là?
L'étape n'est que de deux milles.
 14 juin.—Il y a trois mois que nous avons quitté le Fram, juste le
quart d'une année. Depuis cette date, nous errons sur la banquise
polaire. Quand arriverons-nous au terme de nos tribulations? Nul ne
le sait.
Dans la matinée, une saute de vent au nord-est détermine une
baisse de la température. Sur la nappe verglassée, le traînage
devient facile. Malheureusement, dans la soirée, la neige
recommence; toute la nuit, elle tombe et couvre la glace d'une
épaisse couche absolument impraticable. Dans ces conditions, ce
serait folie de se remettre en route. Nous restons donc sous la tente.
Quand on ne travaille pas, on n'a pas le droit de manger. Le
déjeuner est réduit au strict nécessaire; pourtant nous sommes
affamés comme des loups.
Je passe la journée à reviser mes calculs d'observations. Depuis
le départ, aucune erreur n'a été commise. Nous nous trouvons par
82°26′ Lat. et 57°40′ Long. Est. de Gr. Depuis le 4 juin, la dérive
nous a donc poussés dans le nord-ouest. Ainsi, tous les efforts des
jours précédents ont été dépensés en pure perte. A mesure que
nous avancions vers le sud, au prix des plus terribles fatigues, le lent
mouvement des eaux nous rejetait en arrière. Dans notre détresse,
une seule espérance nous reste: cette dérive va peut-être nous
porter vers des eaux libres. D'après les résultats de l'observation
prise aujourd'hui, de plus en plus je doute que nous nous trouvions
à l'est du cap Fligely. Probablement la première terre que nous
verrons sera le Spitzberg. Nous avons probablement dépassé
l'archipel François-Joseph. Si nous sommes aussi loin vers l'ouest
que je le suppose, bientôt nous trouverons de larges étendues d'eau
libre; il sera alors facile d'atteindre le Spitzberg, la délivrance! Mais
rencontrerons-nous assez de gibier sur la route pour notre
nourriture?
15 juin.—La situation devient désespérée. Impossible d'avancer
sur cette neige détrempée et sur cette glace toute hérissée
d'obstacles. Peut-être devrions-nous abattre nos derniers chiens
pour nous en nourrir, et poursuivre notre route en halant nous-
mêmes les traîneaux. Nous aurions ainsi un supplément de quinze
ou vingt jours de vivres. Peut-être aussi, sommes-nous près de terre
ou dans le voisinage de larges nappes d'eau libre. Le plus sage est
donc de continuer.
Nous abattons deux chiens. Au départ, l'un d'eux avait les jambes
comme paralysées; à chaque pas, il tombait sans pouvoir se relever.
Notre meute est réduite à trois tireurs. Néanmoins nous
avançons toujours, mais au prix de quelles fatigues! Lorsque la glace
est accidentée, il devient nécessaire de haler successivement chaque
traîneau; par suite, le même chemin doit être parcouru trois fois.
Quoiqu'il en soit, nous gagnons une petite distance vers le sud.
Toujours la couleur du ciel indique l'existence de nombreuses nappes
d'eau dans cette direction.
Hier soir, nous nous sommes mis en marche à dix heures et nous
n'avons campé qu'à six heures ce matin. Le repas se compose d'une
soupe au sang de chien, un véritable régal! Depuis plusieurs jours,
j'ai supprimé le dîner, ne trouvant pas nos progrès vers le sud
suffisants pour nous permettre une belle débauche.
Nous avons 148 cartouches à plomb, 195 à balle. Avec de
pareilles ressources en munitions, nous pourrons nous procurer une
bonne quantité de vivres. Au pis aller, si nous n'abattons que des
oiseaux, 148 mouettes nous fourniront toujours une nourriture
suffisante pendant quelque temps. Cette inspection de notre arsenal
me réconforte, après tant de surprises désagréables. Nous pouvons
certainement prolonger la lutte encore pendant trois mois; d'ici là,
notre position deviendra meilleure, du moins je dois l'espérer. De
plus, il est possible de prendre des mouettes avec un hameçon;
enfin, en dernière ressource, nous nous nourrirons de petits
crustacés marins capturés à l'aide d'un filet. Si nous ne réussissons
pas à atteindre le Spitzberg avant le départ des derniers pêcheurs
norvégiens, un hivernage sur cette terre sera une vie de délices
comparée à celle que nous menons sur cette terrible banquise,
travaillant, sans trêve ni merci, au plus rude labeur, sans jamais
apercevoir le terme de tant de fatigues et de tant de dangers. A
aucun prix, je ne voudrais revivre de tels jours! Nous payons
chèrement la négligence commise en ne remontant pas à temps les
montres. Quand même, espérons! La nuit la plus noire ne précède-t-
elle pas l'aurore?
Les jours succèdent aux jours; toujours le même labeur épuisant
du halage des traîneaux sur une neige détrempée. Tant d'efforts
aboutissent à un faible résultat; avec cela, les vivres sont presque
épuisés. Les rations des chiens, réduites au strict nécessaire, se
composent seulement de quelques débris, tout juste suffisants pour
les empêcher de mourir de faim. Nous sommes littéralement épuisés
et affamés. Dans ces conditions, je suis résolu à tuer tout ce que
nous trouverons sur notre route, même les mouettes, lorsque nous
en apercevrons.
La traversée des canaux, tout remplis de fragments de glace,
devient de plus en plus difficile. De vastes espaces sont couverts de
petits glaçons sans résistance; à chaque instant, l'un de nous prend
un bain de pied fort désagréable.
18 juin.—Une brise très fraîche s'élève de l'ouest; probablement
elle rejette la banquise en arrière, vers le nord, et nous fait perdre
tout le terrain gagné au prix de tant d'efforts. Allons-nous ainsi, tout
l'été, dériver au gré des vents et des courants, sans jamais pouvoir
sortir de cette impasse!
A midi, position: 82°19′. J'ai tué deux pétrels arctiques et un
guillemot de Brünnich (Uria Brunnichii). Nos rations vont pouvoir
être légèrement augmentées; à mon grand désespoir, j'ai manqué
deux phoques.
19 juin.—Avant le déjeuner, je pars reconnaître le terrain vers le
sud. La glace est d'abord unie, puis bientôt apparaît un labyrinthe
inextricable de canaux. Quoique les kayaks prennent eau de toutes
parts, nous nous décidons à faire route sur ces esquifs à travers les
fissures ouvertes dans la banquise.
La neige est toujours détrempée; à chaque pas, entre les,
hummocks, on enfonce profondément dans cette couche molle et
glacée.
Après le déjeuner, composé de 45 grammes de pain et de la
même quantité de pemmican, les kayaks sont radoubés pour que les
approvisionnements ne soient pas complètement détrempés lorsque
les embarcations seront mises à l'eau.
Après un souper aussi frugal que le déjeuner, 54 grammes de
pain de gluten et 27 grammes de beurre, nous nous couchons. Qui
dort dîne. Pour nous, il s'agit de vivre le plus longtemps possible
sans manger. La situation devient très critique: aucun gibier; plus de
vivres, pour ainsi dire, et, dans toutes les directions, une banquise
absolument impraticable.
J'ai essayé de capturer des crustacés à l'aide d'un filet. Insuccès
complet. Je n'en ai recueilli qu'un très petit nombre, avec un
ptéropode (Clio borealis). Toute la nuit je me creuse la cervelle pour
trouver un moyen de nous sortir d'embarras. A coup sûr, le salut
viendra!
A tout prix, nous devons gagner la terre avant que nos maigres
provisions soient complètement épuisées; pour cela, il faut nous
débarrasser d'une partie de nos bagages. Quand le moment sera
venu, nous prendrons seulement nos fusils, nos kayaks, les quelques
conserves qui nous restent et nous abandonnerons le surplus de
notre équipement, la tente, le sac de couchage, la pharmacie, et
tous les vêtements qui ne sont pas strictement indispensables.
 CANAUX DANS LA BANQUISE (20 JUIN 1895)

20 juin.—Des vols de guillemots passent et repassent; parfois ils

s'arrêtent juste devant l'entrée de la tente, et font entendre, autour
de notre abri, un joyeux babillage. De trop petits oiseaux qui ne
valent pas la poudre. Depuis que le vent d'ouest souffle, la faune
ailée est devenue bien plus nombreuse.
 LA TRAVERSÉE D'UN LAC

La mince couche verglassée qui recouvre la neige détrempée, se

brise sous le poids des traîneaux et les véhicules restent embourbés.
Pour les remettre en marche, l'un de nous doit s'atteler en avant,
tandis que l'autre pousse vigoureusement par derrière. Même les ski
enfoncent dans cette bouillie spongieuse. De plus, de nombreux
canaux d'eau libre nous coupent le passage et nous obligent à de
longs détours.
Après plusieurs heures de marche, la route est barrée par une
large nappe d'eau. Pour la traverser, l'emploi des embarcations
devient absolument nécessaire.
Une fois mis à l'eau, nous attachons les kayaks bord contre bord,
au moyen de ski passés dans les courroies de la couverture
supérieure des canots, de manière à former une même masse bien
rigide. Sur l'espèce de pont ainsi formé, nous plaçons ensuite les
traîneaux avec leurs chargements. Nous ne savions trop ce que nous
allions faire des chiens, lorsque, eux-mêmes, se chargèrent de nous
tirer d'embarras. A peine les véhicules sont-ils chargés que nos
fidèles compagnons se couchent sur le pont et y demeurent
absolument immobiles, comme si toute leur vie ils avaient été
habitués à ce genre de locomotion.
Pendant ces préparatifs, un phoque vient tout à coup rôder
autour de nous. Pour pouvoir le harponner et l'empêcher de couler,
j'attends que les kayaks soient parés. C'était agir comme le héron de
la fable. Une fois que nous fûmes prêts, le gibier se garda de
reparaître. Déjà, auparavant, plusieurs de ces amphibies s'étaient
montrés un instant pour disparaître ensuite définitivement. C'est à
croire que ces animaux sont envoyés pour retarder notre marche par
leurs apparitions décevantes. Enfin, nous «poussons» pour
commencer notre navigation.
Un véritable convoi de bohémiens que ces deux singuliers esquifs
chargés de traîneaux, de sacs et de chiens. Quoique la manœuvre
de la pagaie au milieu de ces impedimenta ne soit pas précisément
facile, nous réussissons à faire de la route. Nous devrons nous
estimer très heureux si, toute la journée, nous pouvons avancer
ainsi, sans grande fatigue, au lieu de nous épuiser au halage des
traîneaux sur une neige détrempée. Les kayaks ne sont pas
complètement étanches; à plusieurs reprises, l'emploi des pompes
devient nécessaire. Mais, qu'est-ce que cela! Tout notre désir serait
maintenant de voir s'étendre à perte de vue, devant nous, l'eau
libre.
Une fois arrivé à l'extrémité du lac, je saute sur la glace; au
même instant, j'entends derrière moi un grand clapotement. Un
phoque, qui était couché là, venait de plonger. Quelques minutes
après, un second clapotement; un autre phoque (Phoca barbata)
montre sa tête curieuse au-dessus de l'eau, s'ébroue pendant
quelques instants, puis plonge sous la lisière de la glace, avant que
j'ai eu le temps de saisir mon fusil. Tandis que je suis occupé à haler
sur le bord l'un des traîneaux, l'animal apparaît de nouveau tout près
de nous, soufflant et s'ébattant à notre nez, comme pour nous
narguer. Mon fusil se trouve au fond du canot. Encore une fois, cette
magnifique occasion m'échappe. «Prends ton fusil et tire, criai-je
aussitôt à Johansen; surtout vise bien, ne le manque pas.» En un
clin d'œil, mon compagnon épaule et, juste au moment où le phoque