Tributary World-Ecologies, Part II
The Mediterranean World and the Crisis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2022.1122Keywords:
World-Ecology, Capitalism, Historical Sociology, Mediterranean, Middle AgesAbstract
This essay—the second in a two part series—reconceptualizes the High Medieval Mediterranean World as a tributary world-ecology. Area Studies view the High Medieval Mediterranean as a culturally fragmented world, while the Commercialization Theorists only unite these fragments externally through trade relations. In contrast, Marxist Theorists almost exclusively focus on Medieval Europe through production relations. I argue that the High Medieval Mediterranean can be theorized as a tributary world-ecology. I advance two interrelated arguments. First, I underline the socio-ecological similarities and differences between the North Sea (addressed in Part I) and the Mediterranean Worlds. The Mediterranean world-ecology was premised upon the breakdown of world-imperial redistribution mechanisms and localization of peasant exploitation. This was exemplified by the development of iqta’, pronoia and similar land-tenure regimes across the Mediterranean World. The localization peasant exploitation, however, did not result in autarchy, but rather in the formation of a world-market. In fact, novel agrarian relations, coupled with the climatological upturn and technological innovations, led to the growth of surpluses in the hands of the aristocracies. This in turn stimulated artisanal production and revival of trade. Consequently, the Mediterranean World, like the North Sea World, witnessed further geographical integration and economic growth. Second, I emphasize the similarities and differences between the crises of the North Sea and the Mediterranean Worlds. Their socio-ecological relations reached their limits when the climate began to cool and destabilize, and organizational innovations could no longer produce sufficient surpluses. Consequently, both world-ecologies collapsed, finding its clearest expression in the Black Death. In turn, the Mediterranean, just like the end of the Roman period, disintegrated. The Western Mediterranean and the North Seas were integrated on the basis of capitalist productive and commercial networks, resulting in the birth of European capitalist world-ecology. In contrast, the Eastern Mediterranean would be reintegrated on the basis of the tributary networks of the Ottoman World-Empire.
References
Abulafia, David. 2011. The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean. London: Allen Lane.
Abu-Lughod, Janet. 1989. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D: 1250–1350. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Anderson, Perry. 1974. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: New Left Books.
Ashtor, Eliyahu. 1976. Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages. University of California Press.
Bloch, Marc. 1966. French Rural History: An Essay on Its Basic Characteristics. Translated by Janet Sondheimer. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bois, Guy. 2009. The Crisis of Feudalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Braudel, Fernand. 1992. Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century. Volume III: The Perspective of the World. Translated by Siân Reynolds. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Brenner, Robert. 1977. “The Origins of Capitalism: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism.” New Left Review 104: 25–92.
______. 1985a. “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe.” Pp. 10–62 in The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, edited by T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
______. 1985b. “The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism.” Pp. 213–327 in The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, edited by T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
______. 2001. “The Low Countries in the Transition to Capitalism.” Journal of Agrarian Change 1(2): 169–241.
Byres, Terrence. 2006. “Differentiation of Peasantry under Feudalism and the Transition to Capitalism: In Defence of Rodney Hilton.” Journal of Agrarian Change 6(1): 17–68.
______. 2009. “The Landlords Class, Peasant Differentiation, Class Struggle and the Transition to Capitalism.” Pp: 57–82 in Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation, and the Agrarian Question, edited by H. Akram-Lodhi and C. Kay. London and New York: Routledge.
Cahen, Claude. 1953. “L’évolution de L’iqtac du IXe au XIIIe Siècle: Contribution à une Histoire Comparée des Societies Médiévales.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 8e Année 1(Jan-Mar): 25–52.
Cahen, Claude. 1968. Pre-Ottoman Turkey: A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Culture and History c. 1071–1330. New York: Taplinger Publishing.
______. 1980. “Commercial Relations between the Near East and Western Europe from VIIth to XIIth Centuries.” Pp. 1–25 in Islam and Medieval West, edited by K. I. Semaan. Albany: SUNY Press.
Chamberlain, Michael. 1999. “The Crusader Era and the Ayyubid Dynasty.” Pp. 211–241 in The Cambridge History of Egypt. Vol: 1. Islamic Egypt, 640–1517, edited by C. F. Petry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ciriacono, Salvatore. 2006. Building on Water: Venice, Holland, and the Construction of the European Landscape in Early Modern Times. Translated by Jeremy Scott. New York, NY: Berghahn Books.
Cox, Oliver C. 1987. “A World-System Perspective on Capitalism” Pp. 223–324 in Race, Class and World System. The Sociology of Oliver C. Cox, edited by H. M. Hunter and S. Y. Abrahams. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Crouzet-Pavan, Elisabeth. 2002. Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth. Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Baltimore, MA: John Hopkins University Press.
Demirci, Mustafa. 2003. ?slam?n ?lk Üç Asr?nda Toprak Sistemi. Istanbul: Kitabevi.
Demo, Eduardo. 2013. “Industry and Production in the Venetian Terraferma (15th–8th Centuries).” Pp. 291–318 in A Companion to Venetian History, 1400–1797, edited by E. R. Dursteler. Leiden: Brill.
De Vries, Jan. 2008. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dobb, Maurice. 1963. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. New York: International Publishers.
______. 1978. “A Reply.” Pp. 57–67 in The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, edited by R. H. Hilton. London: Verso.
Engels, Friedrich. [1877] 1987. Anti-Duhring. Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works Volume 25. New York: International Publishers.
Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. 1987. Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.
Frantz-Murphy, Gladys. 1999. “Land-Tenure in Egypt in the First Five Centuries of Islamic Rule (Seventh-Twelfth Centuries AD.)” Proceedings of the British Academy 96: 237–266.
Goetein, Shelomo Dov. 1967. A Mediterranean Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Habakkuk, Hrothgar John. 1958. “The Economic History of Modern Britain.” Journal of Economic History 18(4): 486–501.
Haldon, John. F. 1993. The State and the Tributary Mode of Production. London: Verso.
Harvey, David. 2001. “The Spatial Fix: Hegel, Von Thünen and Marx.” Pp. 284–311 in Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography, edited by David Harvey. New York: Routledge.
Hill, George. [1948] 2010. A History of Cyprus. Volume 2: The Frankish Period 1192–1432. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Hilton, Rodney H. 1951. “Y eut-il une Crise Générale de la Féodalité?” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 1(Jan. - Mar.): 23–30.
______. 1985. “A Crisis of Feudalism.” Pp. 119–37 in The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre- Industrial Europe, edited by T.H. Aston and C.H.E Philpin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hilton, Rodney H. and Hyman Fagan. 1950. The English Rising of 1381. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Hindess, Barry and Paul Q. Hirst. 1975. Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. London: Routledge & Keagan Paul.
Humphreys, Stephen R. 1999. “Egypt in the World-system of the later Middle Ages.” Pp. 445–461 in The Cambridge History of Egypt. Vol: 1. Islamic Egypt, 640–1517, edited by C. F. Petry. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.
Köprülü, Fuat. 2004. Bizans Müesseselerinin Osmanl? Müesseselerine Etkileri. ?stanbul: Akça?.
Lane, Frederic Chaplin. 1973. Venice: A Maritime Republic. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. 1976. The Peasants of Languedoc. University of Illinois Press.
Lewis, Bernard. 1995. The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years. New York: Scribner.
Linder, Rudi Paul. 2009. “Anatolia 1300–1451.” Pp. 102–137 in The Cambridge History of Turkey. Vol: 1. Byzantium to Turkey, 1071–1453, edited by K. Fleet. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
McCormick, Michael. 2001. Origins of the European economy: Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300–900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Melville, Charles. 2009. “Anatolia under the Mongols.” Pp. 51–101 in The Cambridge History of Turkey. Vol: 1. Byzantium to Turkey, 1071–1453, edited by K. Fleet. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Milonakis, Dimitris. 1993–1994. “Prelude to the Genesis of Capitalism: The Dynamics of the Feudal Mode of Production.” Science & Society LVII(4): 390–419.
Moore, Jason W. 2000. “Environmental Crises and the Metabolic Rift in World-Historical Perspective” Organization & Environment 13 (2): 123–157.
______. 2003a. “The Modern World-System as Environmental History?” Theory & Society 32(3): 307–377.
______. 2003b. “Nature and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism.” Review 26(2): 97–172.
______. 2003c. “Capitalism as World-Ecology.” Organization & Environment 16(4): 431–458.
______. 2007. “Silver, Ecology, and the Origins of the Modern World, 1450–1640.” Pp. 123–142 in Rethinking Environmental History, edited by Alf Hornborg, J.R. McNeill, Joan Martinez-Alier. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
______. 2009. “Madeira, Sugar and the Conquest of Nature in the “First Sixteenth Century. Part I: From “Island of Timber” to Sugar Revolution, 1420–1506.” Review 32 (4): 345–90.
______. 2010a. “‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’ Part I: The Alchemy of Capital, Empire and Nature in the Diaspora of Silver, 1545–1648.” Journal of Agrarian Change 10 (1): 33–68.
______. 2010b. “‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’ Part II: The Global North Atlanctic in the Ecological Revolution of the Long Seventeenth Century.” Journal of Agrarian Change 10(2): 188–227.
______. 2010c. “Madeira, Sugar and the Conquest of Nature in the “First Sixteenth Century. Part II: From Regional Crisis to Commodity Frontier, 1506–1530.” Review 33 (1): 1–24.
______. 2015. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso.
______. 2016. “The Rise of Cheap Nature.” Pp. 78–115 in Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, edited by Jason W. Moore. Oakland: PM Press.
______. 2018. “The Capitalocene, Part II: Accumulation by Appropriation and the Centrality of Unpaid Work/Energy.” Journal of Peasant Studies 45(2): 237–279.
Nizamülmülk. 2015. Siyasetname. Translated to Turkish by Mehmet Kanar. ?stanbul: Say Publishing.
Ostrogorsky, George. 1997. History of the Byzantine State. New Brunswick and New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Ouerfelli, Mohamed. 2008. Le Sucre: Production, Commercialisation et Usages dans La Méditerranée Médiévale. Leiden & Boston: Brill.
Patel, Raj and Jason W. Moore. 2018. History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. London: Verso.
Pezzolo, Luciano. 2013. “The Venetian Economy.” Pp: 255-290 in A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797, edited by E. R. Dursteler. Leiden: Brill.
Pirenne, Henry. 1956. Mohammad and Charlemagne. London, UK: Allen and Unwim.
Postan, Michael M. [1944] 1966. “Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime: England.” Pp. 548–632 in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol: 1: The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages, Second Edition, edited by M. M. Postan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 548–632.
Postan, Michael M. and John Hatcher. 1985. “Population and Class Relations in Feudal Society.” Pp: 64-78 in The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre- Industrial Europe, edited by T.H. Aston and C.H.E Philpin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rodinson, M., & Pearce, B. 1978. Islam and capitalism. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Shatzmiller, Maya. 1994. Labour in the Medieval Islamic World. E.J. Brill.
Tilly, Charles. 1990. Coercion, Capital, and European states, AD 990–1992. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Timur, Taner. 2012. Marx-Engels ve Osmanl? Toplumu. ?stanbul: Yordam.
Treadgold, Warren. 1997. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Verlinden, Charles. 1970a. “Some Aspects of Slavery in Medieval Italian Colonies.” Pp. 79–97 in The Beginnings of Modern Colonization, edited by C. Verlinden. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
______. 1970b. “The Italian Colony of Lisbon and the Development of Portuguese Metropolitan and Colonial Economy.” Pp. 98–112 in The Beginnings of Modern Colonization, edited by C. Verlinden. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
______. 1970c. “Italian Influence on Spanish Economy and Colonization during the Reign of Ferdinand the Catholic.” Pp. 113–131 in The Beginnings of Modern Colonization, edited by C. Verlinden. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
______. 1970d. “The Italians in the Economy of the Canary Islands at the Beginning of Spanish Colonization.” Pp. 132–160 in The Beginnings of Modern Colonization, edited by C. Verlinden. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press.
Watts, John. 2009. The Making of Polities, Europe, 1300-1500. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wickham, Chris. 2010. The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400-1000. London, UK: Penguin Books.
______. 2016. Medieval Europe. New Haven, Conn., and, London, UK: Yale University Press.
Wittfogel, Karl. 1957. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study in Total Power. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Wood, Ellen M. 1994. “From Opportunity to Imperative: The History of the Market.” Monthly Review 46(3): 14–40.
______. [1999] 2002a. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. London: Verso.
______. 2002b. “The Question of Market Dependence.” Journal of Agrarian Change 2(1):50-87.
______. 2005. Empire of Capital. London, UK: Verso.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Ça?r? ?diman
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
- Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- the Work is the Author’s original work;
- the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- the Work has not previously been published;
- the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.
