The Benefits of Hegemony

[Chris_]

An interesting article (and history lesson) from Arnold Kling @ TCS Daily

Marco Polo, his father, and his uncle, were merchants. They were able to trade throughout Asia because of the protection of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Kahn. These rulers created a Mongol hegemony in Asia.

Trade flourishes under hegemony. That is the lesson I took from Power and Plenty, a dense, arduous survey of economic history written by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke. In addition to the Mongol empire, they describe the increased trade under the hegemonies of the Romans, the Muslim Caliphate, and various dynasties in China and Latin America during the first millenium. Of course, the most recent example of trade under hegemony has been what Walter Russell Mead in God and Gold calls the maritime powers of Great Britain and the United States.

It makes sense once you think about it. Disparate peoples can coexist in three ways: in isolation, under hegemony, or at war. In the absence of hegemony, peaceful intercourse is an elusive ideal.

Squalid Isolation
Geographical isolation has been a factor for most of human history. For millenia, inhabitants of what we now call the "new world" were unaware of the existence of the "old world," and vice-versa. Geographical isolation was overcome by transportation technology, from ocean-going ships to railroads to automobiles and airplanes. Another important technological development was communications, from the telegraph to the telephone to the Internet.

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