Posts Tagged ‘civilizations’
“If you would define the future, study the past”*…
The global economy and living standards have, Rafael Guthmann suggests, have had three “supercycles” of rise and fall over the past 4,000 years…
Economists often state that economic growth simply did not exist before recent times. The orthodox view that I was taught as an undergrad is that sustained economic growth began in the late 18th century. This view is articulated by economic historians like Clarke (2007). DeLong (2022) goes even further. He claims that modern economic growth only began in earnest in 1870, with the growth from 1770 to 1870 being very small in comparison, and that there was absolutely no growth in real incomes for ordinary people before 1770 (but he admits that living standards could have varied over pre-modern history for a tiny elite).
The data, however, shows that this model of economic history is plain wrong. Instead, over the last four thousand years, we can identify that there have been three major very-long-run economic cycles in the Western world that featured increasing incomes and then very long periods of decreasing incomes. These cycles of expansion and contraction lasted for several centuries.
As described by Bresson (2016), the first cycle corresponded to the rise and fall of Bronze Age civilizations, such as the Minoan and Mycenean cultures in Greece, the first literate civilization in Europe which developed writing around 2000 BC and collapsed towards the end of the 2nd millennium BC. The second cycle corresponded to the rise of Classical Greco-Roman civilization over the 1st millennium BC and its collapse during the 1st millennium AD. The third and present cycle began in the late 1st millennium AD and continues today. In this wider context, the industrial revolution beginning in the late 18th century was just an acceleration of the rate of economic development of the third cycle and did not really represent a discontinuity with past economic history…
He makes his case: “The Great Waves in Economic History,” @GuthmannR. (Note that, if one includes, for example, the long histories of the Chinese and African economies, the pattern of cycles of development and decline is further reinforced.)
* Confucius
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As we contemplate cyclicality, we might recall that it was on this date in 12 CE– in the middle of the second wave identified above– that the Roman emperor Augustus (AKA, Caesar Augustus, Caesar, and Octavian) was named Pontifex Maximus (chief high priest of the College of Pontiffs (Collegium Pontificum) in ancient Rome, this was the most important position in the ancient Roman religion), incorporating the position into that of the emperor.
“The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past”*…
Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, approached by a Berber on camelback; detail from The Catalan Atlas, attributed to the Majorcan mapmaker Abraham Cresques, 1375
There is a broad strain in Western thought that has long treated Africa as existing outside of history and progress; it ranges from some of our most famous thinkers to the entertainment that generations of children have grown up with. There are Disney cartoons that depict barely clothed African cannibals merrily stewing their victims in giant pots suspended above pit fires. Among intellectuals there is a wealth of appalling examples. Voltaire said of Africans, “A time will come, without a doubt, when these animals will know how to cultivate the earth well, to embellish it with houses and gardens, and to know the routes of the stars. Time is a must, for everything.” Hegel’s views of Africa were even more sweeping: “What we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented here only as on the threshold of the World’s History.” One can hear echoes of such views even today from Western politicians. Donald Trump referred to a number of African nations as “shithole countries” in 2018, and French president Emmanuel Macron said in 2017, “The challenge Africa faces is completely different and much deeper” than those faced by Europe. “It is civilizational.”
It may remain a little-known fact, but Africa has never lacked civilizations, nor has it ever been as cut off from world events as it has been routinely portrayed. Some remarkable new books make this case in scholarly but accessible terms, and they admirably complicate our understanding of Africa’s past and present…
The estimable Howard French provides an introduction to recent scholarship on “Africa’s Lost Kingdoms.”
* Dreams from My Father
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As we realize that the continent’s “darkness” is our own, we might send respectful birthday greetings to Mangena Mokone; he was born on this date in 1851. A Wesleyan minister who chafed under the implications of the Church’s (and their colonial partners’) color bar, he left to found the Ethiopian Church in 1892, starting the Ethiopian Movement, which was motivated by the desire for a more African and relevant Christianity, for the restoration of tribal life, and for political and cultural autonomy expressed in the slogan “Africa for the Africans” (and also in the word “Ethiopianism”).
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