Dr. Janet Abu-Lughod is one of the most important and influential female historians. Abu-Lughod was an urban sociologist who taught at both the New School for Social Research, and the American University in Cairo, Egypt. In 1989 Dr. Abu-Lughod drew on her culturally diverse and scientific background and published a book titled Before European Hegemony, in this book she contends that Europe’s world economic system that developed after Columbus’ stumbled upon the Americas was not a new and original structure. The artifacts and sources from origins through the year 1500 that have been uncovered reveal that a roughly balanced, interdependent world economic system was fully developed before 1492, affirming Dr. Janet Abu-Lughod’s thesis. The
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It is here that true interdependence and economic systems began developing. This can be seen in the Silver Coin from Thrace. On one side of the coin is a rendering of Alexander the Great with horns on his head alluding to his association with the Greek god Zeus and the Egyptian god Anmon. The incorporation of both a Greek and an Egyptian god shows that Lysimachus was able to draw influence from multiple cultures, which ties into interdependence. Thrace, from where the coin hails, is chock full of silver and gold mines. The people of Thrace weren’t going to just hoard these precious metals, they extracted them, created things with them, and of course traded them; showing yet more ties to their economy an interdependence. The most obvious connection to the economic system is that the artifact is a coin. If there is actual currency in the Classical World, then there was indubiously some sort of structured economic …show more content…
Mansa Musa was a vastly wealthy king who, as a Muslim, strived to fulfil the pillars of Islam. Two of these pillars include giving alms to the poor and visiting the holy site of Mecca. On Mansa Musa’s journey to Mecca he took along immense amounts of gold, much of which he gave to the poor. The fact that Mansa Musa had so much wealth contributes to the fact that everything wasn’t completely balanced at this point. Mansa Musa actually gave away so much gold that he collapsed the economy in
It is here that true interdependence and economic systems began developing. This can be seen in the Silver Coin from Thrace. On one side of the coin is a rendering of Alexander the Great with horns on his head alluding to his association with the Greek god Zeus and the Egyptian god Anmon. The incorporation of both a Greek and an Egyptian god shows that Lysimachus was able to draw influence from multiple cultures, which ties into interdependence. Thrace, from where the coin hails, is chock full of silver and gold mines. The people of Thrace weren’t going to just hoard these precious metals, they extracted them, created things with them, and of course traded them; showing yet more ties to their economy an interdependence. The most obvious connection to the economic system is that the artifact is a coin. If there is actual currency in the Classical World, then there was indubiously some sort of structured economic …show more content…
Mansa Musa was a vastly wealthy king who, as a Muslim, strived to fulfil the pillars of Islam. Two of these pillars include giving alms to the poor and visiting the holy site of Mecca. On Mansa Musa’s journey to Mecca he took along immense amounts of gold, much of which he gave to the poor. The fact that Mansa Musa had so much wealth contributes to the fact that everything wasn’t completely balanced at this point. Mansa Musa actually gave away so much gold that he collapsed the economy in