Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium

The chapter states the subject of the book plainly: the development of the structure and pattern of world trade over the last millennium. The authors write that the concept of «world trade» has a clear meaning for today but difficulties arise for a long period: borders change, countries appear and disappear. As a solution they choose Mauro's «intercontinental model» — following trade as a matrix of flows of goods and precious metals between continents, not countries. At the same time the authors note that the concept of the continent is itself a «myth» (Lewis and Wigen) and that the separation of Europe from Eurasia is arbitrary.

So they define seven «world regions»: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa and South-west Asia (the Islamic world), Central Asia, South Asia, South-east Asia and East Asia. The regions are distinguished not only by geography but by social, political and cultural lines; the focus is the «Afro-Eurasian oikoumene», because until the 1490s the Americas and Australasia take no part in trade with the other regions. By McEvedy and Jones's figures, in the year 1000 these seven regions make up about 90% of the world's population (232 million of 265 million); China alone is 60 million.

In the Western Europe part geographical advantages are listed: a long coastline, low average altitude, a great plain, rivers and protecting mountains; natural obstacles that make political unity difficult (the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Channel). In the historical part the Roman legacy, the invasion of Germanic tribes, Charlemagne's empire and the Treaty of Verdun of 843 (the beginning of modern France and Germany), Otto the Great and the Holy Roman Empire, the acceptance of Catholic Christianity by Bohemia, Poland and Hungary in the 10th century, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the British Isles and the Viking raids are given briefly but densely. The example of Alcuin illustrates the Carolingian renaissance.

The Eastern Europe part is defined as the sphere of influence of Byzantium and the Orthodox Church. It explains that Kievan Rus was founded by Scandinavian Vikings, that Prince Vladimir was baptised in 988 and married Anna, sister of the Byzantine emperor, and that the Bulgarian tsardom strengthened under Krum and Simeon and adopted the Cyrillic script. The chapter's style is dry academic history, but source lists are given at the end of every section and the general frame is clear. Its weakness is that it expects prior knowledge of European history from the reader; reading with the maps is recommended.

• Each chapter begins with regional descriptions and gives a source list at the end of each section
• The authors explain trade together with politics and war
• Maps and tables show long-term changes
• The language is academic, dry and information-dense