Analysis Of 'The Material And Trading Worlds, Circa 1400'

The purpose of this chapter 1, "The Material and Trading Worlds, circa 1400," is to describe what the world was like around 1400 in general terms. The author, Robert Marks, argues that most changes in history are the result of "huge processes that are hardly detectable," coming from the changes in social, economic, political, and cultural structures. He analyzes two major structural aspects of the world in the 1400's: first, material and natural conditions under which most people lived; and second, the trading networks, connected most of the "Old World" together. Thus, this chapter introduces two worlds, a material (agricultural world) in which most people lived restrictive lives, and a trading world that brought parts of the world into greater
In addition, the author is eager to show how these two dimensions interacted through a discussion of the mid-fourteenth century Black Death, one of the greatest catastrophes to befall human society. It is true that the plague spread hugely and quickly due to the expanded trading network led by Mongols; however, it is hardly ignorable that the spread of the Mongol Empire had a great impact on the increase in overall production and production in Market specialization, leading to a new concrete global world. Marks also introduces a key concept, a civilization which refers to the large empires, based on the agricultural revolution, and there is an explicit relationship between cities and countryside; and ruling elites and peasants. These relationships form the foundation of what marks refers to as the "biological old regime." In the "biological old regime," about 90
The plague could spread rapidly and hugely due to the trading route across the large, treeless steppe as Mongol Empire spanned almost the entire Eurasian continent. The "steppe ecosystem was susceptible to the plague bacillus (Marks, 37)" as Mongol riders heading west spread the plague to the rodents on the steppe, resulting transmitting it across the whole Eurasia at the end. It is true that the consequence of Black Death was lifeless and awful enough to largely reduce the population of people in 1400; however, there became "more and better land, more fuel, and more resources of all kinds," (Marks, 37) consequently even leading to larger population in later