Specialized Trading States and Commercializing Empires

The logic of tributary empires always had an economic aspect in the sense that empires use institutionalized coercion to extract resources. But very early in the Bronze Age, world-systems in which tributary states predominated show, in the interstices between tributary states, the emergence of marginal polities that specialized in profiting from trade.

These were semiperipheral capitalist city-states: the elites in control of state power in these small states used what political and military power they had to facilitate profit-making rather than the gathering of tribute. Here we are using a rather inclusive definition of capitalism in order to highlight a niche that emerged within the networks of exchange and military interaction: some polities were able to specialize in trading commodities.^[300] The first of these was Dilmun, probably located on the island of Bahrain in the Persian/Arabian Gulf. The Dilmunites were intermediaries in the trade between Mesopotamia and Harappan cities that emerged in the valley of the Indus River in what is now Pakistan. Most of the polities that specialized in trade were maritime polities, because transportation over water is much less expensive than over land, and can be combined with seapower—the use of watercraft for exercising coercion. A partial exception was the Old Assyrian city-state located on the Tigris River in northern Mesopotamia. This was the city-state of Assur, controlled by merchants who used donkey caravans to transport tin and copper along the trade routes connecting Cappadocia (now Turkey) with Mesopotamia.^[301]

More famous, perhaps, are the Phoenician city-states (Byblos, Sidon, Tyre) that emerged in the eastern Mediterranean. These combined merchant capitalism (buying cheap and selling dear) with the production of commodities for the carrying trade (imperial purple cloth, glass, Greek-style statuary, etc.). The Phoenicians are also famous for spreading the use of the alphabet, in which written symbols represent sounds instead of ideas.

These semiperipheral capitalist city-states not only took advantage of existing trade networks. They expanded and intensified trade networks and provided incentives for producers to increase production for sale. The Phoenicians and the Greeks both established settler colonies in the western Mediterranean, and the Phoenicians also had an entrepot at Moghador down the West African coast in what is now Mauritania. These colonies generally became independent competitors of the city-states that had founded them, rather than parts of a larger empire. Carthage was somewhat of an exception in producing a rather large empire in the western Mediterranean and Iberia during its period of contention with the expanding Romans (see further Scheidel, Chap. 5 in Vol. 2).

The West produced semiperipheral capitalist city-states specializing in trade, including some of the Italian city-states and the Germanic Hanseatic League in early modern times. Southeast Asia produced some of its own.^[302]

The actions of the semiperipheral capitalist city-states had a commercializing effect on the tributary empires, as kings became savvier about ways to benefit from the profit-making activities of merchants without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. The main challenge was letting the merchants and capitalists make money—and taxing them—while barring them from taking over. Tributary empires increasingly succeeded at this challenge as world-systems became larger and more complex.

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Source: Bang Peter F., Bayly C.A., Scheidel Walter (eds.). The Oxford World History of Empire. Volume One: The Imperial Experience. Oxford University Press,2020. — 584 p.. 2020

Specialized Trading States and Commercializing Empires

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