13 October 2006

Volume 3, Issue 3

In a world so often divided by boundaries and politics, we wanted to take a look at an aspect of society that brings countries together: trade. This issue of World History to Go looks at how global trading has evolved through the centuries.

Money Makes the World Go ‘Round

In China, a monetary system employing metals, animals, produce, and shells had been in use from the twelfth century BCE. In the late sixth century BCE the Zhou emperors began placing their names on small scale cast-bronze farming hoes that were to serve as money. The use of disc-shaped coins did not commence till the third century BCE. The use of paper currency, however, began in China during the twelfth century BCE, but was not adopted in the West till the seventeenth century, where it arose as a solution to the shortage of coinage.

The introduction of bronze coinage in Greece at the very end of the fifth century BCE also marked an important development in the Western world. This enabled coins to be used for everyday transactions of a much lower value than silver or gold permitted. Under the Romans huge issues of small bronze coins enabled the economy of many cities and regions to be extensively monetized for the first time in world history. The invention of coinage was not lost with the fall of the Roman empire. [From the article “Money,” by Kenneth Sheedy in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.]

Crucial Importance of the Silk Roads

The cultural and technological integration of Eurasia through the Silk Roads helps explain the technological and commercial precocity that gave Eurasians such a devastating advantage when they encountered peoples of the Americas and the Pacific. The technologies of pastoralism, including horse riding, as well as Chinese inventions such as the compass and gunpowder, which had traveled to Europe along the Silk Roads, gave colonists from Eurasia such a decided advantage. . . . Today, Central Asia is still a region of vigorous inter-Eurasian trade, but the Silk Roads count as just one of many different systems of exchange that link Eurasia and the globe into a single system. This makes it all too easy to forget that for perhaps four thousand years they were the main link between the forest dwellers of Siberia, the pastoralists of the steppes, and the agrarian civilizations of China, India, Persia, and the Mediterranean. Because of the Silk Roads, Indo-European languages are spoken from Ireland to India, Buddhism is practiced from Sri Lanka to Japan, and inventions such as gunpowder, printing, and the compass became part of a shared Eurasian heritage. The Silk Roads gave Eurasia a unified history that helps explain the dominant role of Eurasian societies in world history in recent millennia. [From the article “Silk Roads,” by David Christian in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.]

Multinational Corporations

Many multinational corporations (MNC) are both market oriented and supply oriented. The best examples are those companies that are involved in oil discovery, refining, and distribution through an international network in a world market. According to another taxonomy (system of classification), a multinational corporation can be vertically integrated, horizontally integrated, or diversified, according to the nature of its foreign assets. Moreover, the production facility located in the host country must be not only owned but also controlled: Calpers, today the most important pension fund in the world, is not a multinational corporation. It is, in fact, a major shareholder in many countries’ largest corporations but does not exert control over their management. The conjunction of foreign ownership and a certain degree of control over the overseas subsidiary creates the concept of foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI can take the form of the acquisition of an existing facility or of the realization of a completely new production unit (greenfield investment). When FDI is less than 100 percent of the subsidiary’s capital, different taxonomies of MNC can be used. The most common such MNC is the joint venture, which often involves two or more partners, not necessarily all foreign firms. For instance, in many cases the only way for a nondomestic firm to establish a production facility in a country is to associate itself with a local firm, creating a new venture. [From the article “Multinational Corporations,” by Andrea Colli in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.]

"Though attempting to cover as broad a subject as world history in five volumes seems impossible, the editors and their contributors have pulled the feat off with aplomb. No article runs more than approximately 10 pages, but each captures the essence of the topic being addressed as well as the distinct style of the contributor. . . . As McNeill states in his preface, the title is 'designed to help both beginners and experts to sample the best contemporary efforts to make sense of the human past by connecting particular and local histories with larger patterns of world history.' The encyclopedia succeeds admirably and belongs on the shelves of all high-school, public, and academic libraries. In short: buy it. Now." --Booklist **Starred Review** and Editors’ Choice

• Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History
• Edited by W. H. McNeill, Jerry H. Bentley, David Christian, David Levinson, Heidi Roupp, and Judith P. Zinsser
• Five volumes, 2,500 pages, US$575
• ISBN: 0-9743091-0-9 (hardcover: alk. paper)
Online: BerkshireWorldHistory.com

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Check out our new archive of all the issues of World History to Go. And we want to know what topics you’d like to see covered in future issues.

With warm regards,
Karen Christensen
karen@berkshirepublishing.com
Berkshire Blog