The Elementary Effect on Subsequent World Systems

The information that I found most striking throughout this reading was the overall lack of real knowledge of the general population during the Pax Mongolica era. It is even more interesting to think that a world trade system had the ability to sustain itself (for however short a time) with almost complete misunderstanding of the cultures being traded with. Specifically, we see both sides of the spectrum (West & East) not knowing. This mutual failure to understand the most prefatory things about their fellow trading partners, in my eyes, ultimately was one of the heaviest blows to future systems.

Many of the Europeans believed that in India "people" were fused with dogs, had no heads and walked with single feet. They knew not how the Chinese made silk, and classified all Mongols as Tartars (which was an unfortunate bout of luck for, most honestly, both Europeans & the Mongols). Europeans, who had not had much exposure to the world beyond, were malleable in their beliefs. But without at least a basic understanding of the cultures they were trading with they brought about their own end to the world system. While their irrevocable crusades may have opened the doorway to the East, they ultimately closed it. I believe that the Crusades, though they did sporadically abate, created, or at least perpetuated, a non-necessary and extremely hindering belief of the world outside of Europe.

The path to destruction was walked by not only the Europeans, though. The East, conjointly, joined in. By not furthering their knowledge of where their products were going, to whom they were going, and general such knowledge of culture; the fate of the system was furthermore sealed. From reading, and the general vibe that Abu-Lughood writes about, the East (much like the West) seemed to a bunch of small children playing around- though not quite ready to understand the world at large. It seems as if one child told another that in the West they get wool from combing water sheep. Thinking this was true the latter-child turns and tells another. And another. And the chain perpetuates and it is then common belief that wool does indeed come from combing water sheep. And so the elementary effect has occurred. Or, rather, was occurring across the world at the time.

Now, to clarify, I do not believe that because the West and the East failed to acquaint or, at the very least, amass basic facts about one another than the death of the world system occurred. I fully accept that there were a plethora of reasons for this world system's collapse. My fundamental belief though, after this particular set of reading, is that the subsequent world system may have been entirely different if the two [East & West] had gained some common ground. I believe that a new trade route could have been formed via land and port if basic knowledge for the opposite culture existed. This would have amplified not only people’s desire to trade, but also to converse with and further peruse a culture. I think, if that desire in addition to that of trade, was intrinsically installed within both the Europeans and those in the East, the resulting world system would have been a renewed version of its former self; albeit slightly altered.