The Pre-modern world

Large conquering empires, feudal territories, city-state republics, and emerging national monarchy were among the administrations of the pre-modern world. Popes competed for political and economic power with monarchs. However, significant developments were gradually emerging that would undermine medieval life’s governing institutions. Rising population, city growth, and the development of a middle class between the peasants and the nobility resulted from the progress in business and trade. The rise of European trading networks had started to disrupt the feudal structure by the 1300s. The merchant middle-class grew wealthy in the developing cities and gradually broke off its dependence on the ruling elite.

BODY 

Globalisation is a term used to describe an economic system that has only been around for about half-century. However, the history of commerce, immigration, capital migration, and other factors have contributed to creating the contemporary globe.

Travellers, merchants, missionaries, and pilgrims have travelled enormous distances for information, opportunity, and spirituality and have sought refuge since ancient times. The Indus valley civilisation and modern-day West Asia were linked by an active maritime trade as early as 3000 BCE

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1. 1. 1. Silk Routes
         • Silk routes are an excellent depiction of pre-modern international commercial and cultural connections across far-flung corners of the globe
         • Scholars have discovered several silk routes, both across land and by water, linking vast parts of Asia and connecting Asia to Europe and central Africa. Expensive metals like gold and silver moved across Europe to Asia in return for textiles and jewels from India
         • Chinese ceramics, as well as textiles and spices from mainland Southeast Asia, followed the same path
         •   Commercial and trade interchange were always intertwined
         • Ancient religious missionaries, as well as early Islamic preachers a few decades later, very probably followed this path to Asia
         • Buddhism arose from northeast India long before all of this and spread worldwide via crossroads on the silk routes
      2. Food Travels
         • Many cases of long-distance shared culture may be found in food travels
         • Traders and visitors brought new crops to the area
         • Noodles and other ready-to-eat items made their way west through China to produce ‘spaghetti’
         • Around five hundred years ago, our forefathers were unfamiliar with essential foods such as potatoes, soya, oilseeds, corn, tomatoes, chillies, potatoes, and so on
         • Many of the things we consume now originated with America’s first occupants, the ‘American Indians‘
      3. Reasons for People’s Migration
         • The pre-modern world was a society that existed before the introduction of urbanisation. As a result, there were indeed not many migrations. The rate of migration was increasing at a natural rate of 0%
         • There was no migration because it was a pre-urbanisation period. Traditional communities, for example, did not experience migration as a result of urbanisation
         • The second phase of modernisation was an early transitional society that was centered on migration
         • International migration was the primary priority of this movement, which was mostly centred on overseas travel. It also explained why many people were migrating from rural areas to the urban core
         • This phase was primarily concerned with rural-to-urban migration. They switch from a rural to an industrialised lifestyle
         • For example, as urbanisation progressed, people began to travel to cities or metropolitan areas to pursue work. As a result, the urbanisation process is more prevalent in the second phase
      4. The Saga of Conquest
         • After European explorers discovered a sea route to Asia and eventually crossed the Western Ocean to America in the sixteenth century, the pre-modern world dwindled significantly
         • For ages, the Indian Ocean had been a hive of activity, with products, workers, information, traditions, and other items crisscrossing its seas
         • The Indian subcontinent served as a crossroads for these migrations and a vital node in their circuits. The arrival of Europeans aided in the expansion or redirection of some of these flows into Europe
         • America’s huge lands and bountiful harvests and resources began to influence trade and lives worldwide starting in the 1600s
         • Several missions set out in pursuit of ‘El Dorado‘, the legendary gold city
         • By the mid-sixteenth century, the Portuguese and Spanish invasion and colonisation of America had begun to grow
         • The conquest of Europe was not solely due to better weapons but several other factors.
      5. Role of Diseases in Conquest
         • The Spanish conquerors’ most effective weapon was not a traditional military gun. It was pathogens like smallpox that they harboured on their bodies
         • The ancient people of America had no immunity to infections that emerged from Europe due to their extended isolation
         • Smallpox, for example, proved to be a lethal disease
         • It gradually swept across the continent, well ahead of any Europeans who arrived. It wiped out entire communities and paved the way for conquest
         • Guns could be acquired and used to fight back against the attackers. But not illnesses like pox, which the invaders were usually immune to but not the colonies
         • In May 1634, John Winthrop, the first administrator of the Massachusetts Bay colony in New England, even said pox was a sign of God’s blessing for the imperialists, referring to this pre-modern biological warfare
         •   It had acquired an identifiable relation by the 1300s.
      6. New Trade Routes
         • China and India were arguably the world’s wealthiest countries until the 18th century. They were also the most influential traders in Asia
         • China is considered to have curtailed outside ties and withdrawn into isolation beginning in the late 15th century
         • The decline of China and the rise of America steadily shifted the global commerce centre westward. Europe then established itself as the global trade hub

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CONCLUSION

Trade routes, immigration, and other factors all played a role in creating the international society. The pre-modern world, not the intermediate eras that followed, is the root cause of many of these developments. We ought to comprehend the phases whereby the world we live in has formed as we consider the significant and visible evidence of global interconnection in our lives now. Human communities have become increasingly intertwined over history.