Globalization was the most striking theme for me within this week’s readings and discussions. Two parts in particular stuck out, the first being the letters from John Paige to William Clarke, British merchants (1). Paige’s letters underscore many of the market stresses created as a result of disrupted trade. Both government regulations and personal fears changed economic patterns within the wine industry, and several of his letters include detailed monetary happenings and predictions to be sent to one of his Clarke. The highly developed network of trade combined with the precision with which such conjecture was made demonstrates early globalization, even in a context where neither party was directly involved in the outbreak of plague in Malaga itself (2). This plays into the calm, matter-of-fact tone of Paige’s letters, though part of it may also simply stem from the status of the letters as business correspondence. Either way, the deaths of other known merchants mentioned in some of the later letters lack emotion in their reporting.
During the Week 4 seminar, somebody suggested that a contributing factor to the tone of the communication could have simply been how commonplace death was during the 17th century. Plague, other diseases, starvation, unsafe working conditions, war, and high infant mortality rates all contributed to shorter human lifespans, and given that there were apparently only three years of European peace during the 17th century, perhaps it is human nature to become used to a continuous stream of misfortunes (3). During the Q+A portion of the seminar, Fred Carnegy suggested that while those living through such an outbreak may not have fully understood the big picture of climate change, they certainly would have seen the general disruption of the era and understood it as such. It is interesting to consider the psychological perspectives of how people adapted to continuous crises.
The second instance of globalization that stood out to me was the account of the eruption of Mount Villarica in Chile, where it was apparently heard in the Philippines and Cambodia (4). I’m not sure how significant it is from a historical perspective, but I just thought it was really interesting how instead of ships and goods and wars being the points of connection between humans living so far apart, it was a natural disaster that was cumulatively experienced. Excluding anyone harmed by the event, of course, it’s kind of beautiful that both the rich and the poor experienced it, rather than only the lucky few traveling before modern globalization, and even if it didn’t really affect their lives in any way, shape, or form past, it was still a moment of mass human connection.
References
- Paige J. Letters: 1649 | British History Online [Internet]. British-history.ac.uk. 2021 [cited 9 February 2021]. Available from: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol21/pp1-8
- A Quick Guide to the World History of Globalization [Internet]. Sas.upenn.edu. 2021 [cited 9 February 2021]. Available from: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/global1.htm
- Parker G. Global crisis – war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth cent. 1st ed. Yale University Press; 2013.
- Parker G. Global crisis – war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth cent. 1st ed. Yale University Press; 2013.