Economic Centre of Gravity

We all know economic power is shifting away from the US toward China.  This interesting chart by McKinsey, based on data from Angus Maddison of University of Groningen, shows how economic power has shifted from AD1 to present day, along with forecasts into the future.  Not surprisingly, the centre of gravity has shifted most rapidly between 2000 and 2010, since we all know that all rates of change have accelerated in recent days.

This map definitely recalled for me some of the themes in History of the World Since 1300, the wonderful Coursera course by Jeremy Adelman of Princeton that I took last year.  I sent Adelman a copy of the map and he cautioned that the data was hugely controversial.  He was surprised that the 1950 data was not further west, given the dominance of California and trans-Pacific exchanges. Adelman also pointed out how Euro-centric the image was: you could picture that shift shooting out over the Pacific rather than creeping back across Europe.

Top 10 Things about 'A History of the World Since 1300'

I've written a few times about MOOCs, massive open online courses (here,  here, here, and here).  I loved the first course I took at Coursera - A History of the World Since 1300.

And here's the Top 10 things I liked:

The professor: 

Jeremy Adelman was fabulous.  He's a superb story-teller with an extraordinary command of language and history is after all a fascinating story.  I would take any course from him, just to luxuriate in his teaching style again.

The global point of view:

The course was a fantastic survey of a wide swath of history.  And it delivered on its promise of taking a world view.  Despite coming from an American university, it did not overemphasize the US story, nor betray an American point of view on subjects.  Like so many westerners, my (modest) knowledge of history centred on Europe.  This course greatly broadened my horizons.  "Europe was just a side show in WW II".  That statement startled me, but it's clearly true when you look at what happened in Asia and Russia.  That's typical of the mental readjustment I experienced.

The focus on major currents of history:

There was more emphasis on the major ebbs and flows of history, and less on particular political figures and dates.  The big theme of the course was the long term - though sometimes discontinuous - march of our world from isolated, self-sufficient villages to a interrelated, interdependent global society.  History seen through this lens has a certain inevitability.  Specific decisions in particular countries of situations caused blips in the details, but history moves inexorably forward.

The relative datelessness:
Liberation from the tyranny of dates!  The course infrequently mentioned specific dates.  This sometimes had the disadvantage of leaving me a bit at sea: was this happening in China at the same time as that development in India, or after it?  However, overall, I loved the approach of looking at broad sweeping patterns rather than specific dates.

Emphasis on Ideas:
Adelman talked a lot about ideas and their influence on history.  Sometimes we can be discouraged about how little attention is paid to big ideas.  But this course illustrated the incredible impact of ideas, sometimes suddenly but usually gradually over a long period.  We heard more about philosophers, scientists and economists than about politicians. Queen Victoria got a passing mention, but the likes of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Charles Darwin and Adam Smith were central figures.

The students:

I loved the variety among the 90,000 students in the course.  From highly educated, to those who had not had access to higher education.  Current students to retirees.  Scientists to humanists.  Soldiers to housewives.  We heard from these students in the discussion forums and the live-streamed Precepts.  I had my papers marked by students from Germany, Australia, Chile, Austria, China, US and India.  What a 'global feeling'.

The 'extras':

However, the course was greatly enriched with the Global Dialogues, mostly conversations with some of the leading lights of the Princeton History department, the discussion forums, and the precepts with students.  The textbook was excellent, although it was a lot of reading per week.

The homework:
While relatively straightforward, the homework questions, and for that matter the quizzes, were well thought out and unambiguously stated.  The essays forced me to crystallize my learning, and it was illuminating to both grade others' papers and to receive the grades myself.  The essays were generally of very high quality and good learning tools.  About 3-5% of the students wrote the essays, so I assume the ones who would produce the best essays self-selected to write them.

The technology:

I loved that the video was such high quality, that the navigation was intuitive, and that it just plain always worked.

Lectures 5: History of the World Since 1300

The 15th and 16th Centuries saw a stampede of Europeans rushing to create colonies in Asia.  And they arrived as bullies.  With superior firepower to all the countries in Asia, including powerful China, they overcame wherever they went.  China was able to defend their territory and relegate the Europeans  to the margins in China.  This was fine because they were primarily after trading bases anyway.

Portugal went out to an early lead in Asia.  Vasco de Gama led the charge by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Muslim blockade.  And a rapacious, brutal explorer he was, bombarding ports and butchering sailors.   Pires followed, arriving in China with a similar absence of respect.  There was retribution by the Chinese, who executed Pires and resolved to keep Europeans at the periphery of their country.  Nevertheless, through European military technology, Portugal took Goa (1510), Melaka (1511), Hormuz (1515) and Macao (1535).  This was a totally different pattern from the style of conquest in Mexico. The Portuguese did not create an institutional system in their outposts, and their success was ephemeral.

Meanwhile, Spain took Manila in 1571 and transformed it into an important port for trans-shipment of silver from the Americas to China, displacing Japanese silver.  Manila Galleons carried 15 tons of silver a year along this 'China Road'.

The Dutch also acquired territories in Asia, taking Java in 1519 and establishing their permanent headquarters base for the Dutch East India Company.  But they went beyond just trading, and established plantations to grow nutmeg, mace, cinnamon and cloves.

After their initial success, Europeans faced some setbacks.  They had a growing need for profits to fund the religious wars in Europe.  Yet their fierce rivalry with each other was driving up the costs of maintaining and fortifying these Asian outposts.  Meanwhile, profits were dropping as the Arabs fought back by reopening the Red Sea Ports, and flooding the market with pepper and reducing its price.

History of the World Since 1300

The first lecture of History of the World Since 1300 was wonderful.  The course promised a world view of history, and it's already showing in the readings and the lecture.

I was impressed with the perfect technology.  I started to view the first lecture shortly after 6 pm when it first became available, and it was great - no problem with buffering on the beautiful high definition video.  The first lecture was divided into five segments, with a quiz question after each segment.  You can download the video in MP4 format, and there is a text version of the lectures as well (called subtitles, but really just a separate written text).

The first lecture focused on the growth in trade as the driver of linkages around the world.  In the back story about earlier times, Professor Adelman talked about early trade between the countryside and villages, which allowed the villages to grow because of the agricultural produce from the rural areas. As people become able to produce more than required just for survival, 'luxury' items  start to move great distances along overland trade routes like the Silk Route.  Such trade is driven by products with a high value to bulk ratio.  Camels can't carry all that much and so you want to ship light, valuable goods like spices, cinnamon and pepper.  The emergence of maritime trade routes, enabled through improved maritime technology like bigger ships, the compass and charts, meant that heavier goods like teak, ivory, sugar, earthenware, lead and glass could flow along the trade routes.  

We see the beginning of the great entrepot centres like Aleppo (in the news about Syria lately) and Samarkand (in today's Uzbekistan) that served the overland routes and the maritime entrepots of Calicut (Kozhikode in Kerala in Southern India), Melaka (in present-day Malaysia), Aden (in present-day Yemen) and Venice.  In all cases, it's Arab merchants who dominate trade, using close, trusted family connections to carry out trade, and they become the first money lenders to facilitate trade.

The lecture and the readings brings together the spread of religion and the interlinking of the world.  Buddhism spread along trade routes, and in turn facilitated trade by developing bonds between people.  From the above mention of maritime technology, Adelman foreshadows future world trends caused by technology changes.  He had already spoken of China's strength and power largely driven by their harnessing of water through irrigation, dams, land reclamation and sewage handling.  But a key theme has been the development of wealth and the trading of wealth driving world development.  Indeed, Adelman's first introduction pointed to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations:  Smith argued that wealth was an engine of social interaction, and clearly Adelman subscribes to this notion.

Adelman ended with a segment on Genghis Khan.  Did you know that in 25 years the Mongols conquered an area larger than the Romans conquered in 400 years?  The Mongols came from the Northern Asian plains, with little opportunity to develop beyond subsistence level.  With so few resources of their own, their approach to developing wealth was to plunder it through conquest.  They travelled light and conquered quickly, depending on surprise, terror and their superior horse-based warfare for victory.  They wiped out the rulers in conquered areas and replaced them with Mongol rulers (often sons of Genghis Khan), they left the common people in place and living much as usual.  They needed these people in place to provide the goods for their support.  You can't plunder much from a society that isn't producing any more.  Trade flourished under the Mongols, bringing lemons and carrots from Persia to China and noodles and playing cards to Europe.  But there were exchanges beyond goods.  German miners found their way to China to improve mining practices there and Chinese doctors found their way to Persia.

Past  related blog posts:

• discussion of Coursera as a disruption innovation in eduction here
• post on the way the course will run - a fascinating view of the advantages of an online course here
• talking of The Wealth of Nations, I reported on a fascinating chart article from The Economist, on the first effort to actually measure the wealth of nations, as opposed to their income which is captured in GDP