oh man the ancient world had SO MUCH more long-distance trade than the West is prepared to to think about we forget that the Dark Ages were exactly that. Europe's end of the global trade networks shut down, & to this day we still think of that shut-down state as "normal."https://twitter.com/IOnceAteALeaf/status/1031209548147843072 …
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Yup, I 100% appreciate that there was much more trade than folks typically think btwn the collapse of the western Roman Empire & the Renaissance. That is in fact a big part of my beef w how folks perceive history of food, e.g. believing food was "always" local until v recently.
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(2/) That said. From an agricultural trade POV, drawing a line btwn pre- & post-Roman trade patterns is still very useful. Prior, there was routine, massive long-distance bulk trade of food. Afterwards, trade was much more restricted to elite prestige goods.
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This, exactly. Consider that maybe half a billion (with a b) pounds of grain were imported to Rome every year from North Africa, Sicily, Egypt, etc. 3000 pounds of pepper in Gaul is just so minuscule next to that! The smallest Roman merchant vessels carried 70+ tons!
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But we were talking, I thought, about cross-continent trading and whether that collapsed; what you're talking about was all within the Roman Empire, which is a separate discussion... On the 2nd point, 3000 lbs of one spice, to one region of Europe, may not seem much, perhaps, >
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> but I still think it very significant (note, the largest classical era find is 75kg) in showing continued operation of significant trading networks linking Europe to Indo-Pacific region, and that these didn't collapse, which was the claim I was voicing scepticism towards :) >
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> In my view, evidence we have is, despite its admitted patchiness etc, enough to show that long-distance trade networks did indeed continue and that new ones formed; in fact, more arch & documentary records for 6th-8thC links to China, for example, than earlier, I'd suggest…!
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> Moreover, the evidence for Central Asian trade links to northern and eastern Europe really can't be ignored: one estimate is that perhaps as many as 100 million or more silver dirhams were imported into these regions in return for slaves, furs etc, which is astonishing >pic.twitter.com/PLL0Rymo63
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Some back of an envelope calculations in https://www.academia.edu/1764468/Dirhams_for_slaves._Investigating_the_Slavic_slave_trade_in_the_tenth_century … for the scale of 10thC slave trade to, primarily, Samanid Empire in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan etc; if even remotely right then they imply trade from N/E Europe involving potentially hundreds of thousands of slaves...pic.twitter.com/ghXr1fdi0y
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> And if we look to later medieval period, with its better surviving documentation, then we find plenty of evidence for significant scales of cross-continent/Indo-Pacific trade e.g. 15thC wedding feast of Hedwig Jagiellon to son of the Duke of Bavaria involved over 1,000 lbs >
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(3/) Whether it was cause or effect, that dropoff in long-distance food trade was involved in a huge shift in the balance of power between cities & rural areas. It's also had huge implications in how folks think food is "supposed" to work.
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(4/) The hyperlocal manorial food system is seen as normal/ideal (& relates to "blood & soil" nativism, hostility towards cities as legitimate centers of power, etc). Basically, food economics is tied into a lot of the toxic politics medieval studies is dealing with right now.
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(5/) Also, scrolling through my feed will reveal that I had done a clarification on long-distance medieval trade a few minutes after the OP, using your work.
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Apologies, I fear I'm finding the thread rather unnavigable in its extent and missed that :)
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(6/) I'm an ag scientist working on the people side of "why do we keep having bad ag even though we know better." It's an incredibly interdisciplinary field. The nature of ID work is it's not always going to prioritize exactly the same things that specialists do.
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(7/) Is the term "Dark Ages" super passé amongst historical specialists? Yes. Is it relevant for addressing growth & attenuation of intercontinental food trade networks over thousand-year+ timespans and laypeople's perceptions thereof? Also yes.
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Well, that's a somewhat different to the suggestion in the original tweet that the European end of the cross-continental trade networks shut down :) Though even on this basis I'd urge caution in using the 'Dark Ages' and am not wholly sold on the idea… https://twitter.com/caitlinrgreen/status/1031838636348780544 … :)
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The term has taken on too many popular connotations, to be sure, but I have a hard time seeing the centuries following the collapse of roman rule in the west as anything other than a dark age.
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Historians referred to the Early Middle Ages as a Dark Age because they lacked documentary evidence from the place and period. Also, it wasn't culturally or technologically dark, e.g. Islamic Spain introduced new irrigation and crops (rice, sugarcane, cotton.)
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Early Middle Ages also saw an agricultural transition from Roman latifundia to medieval manors; slaves became serfs. Slaves owed unlimited labor to their owners. Serfs owed limited labor to their owners, could have families, and could work rented land.
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