Civilizations as Dynamic Networks: From Medieval to Modern Douglas R. White Filesource: FTP/Spufford/222net/citiesWWWnet.doc See: http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/Civ/ for additional slides Outline Introduction 1. Banks, Money and Trade Imbalances 2. Commodity Chains: Raw Materials, Finished Goods, and Consumption. 3. Roads and Flows. 4. A Network Perspective on Shifts in Economic Hegemony (Flow Centrality) 5. Volume of Trade and Commercial Transformation (Institutional Change) 6. Landed and Commercial or Capitalist Hegemony (Demographic and Network effects) 7. Transformations in Agent Space. – (Paris, Champagne Fairs) 8. Polities 9. Capital Cities and Wealth and Investment of Rulers and Merchant 10. Event and Agent Data 11. Modeling 12. Conclusion Introduction Peter Spufford’s (2002) history of late medieval Europe in Power and Profit: the Merchant in Medieval Europe provides a new synthesis of the transition from feudalism – based on rights and services tied to land – to a monetized economy. The history is told in terms of networks – among cities, merchants, peasants, elites, states and empires, ecclesiastical and other organizations – and a rising velocity of trade that at successive thresholds transforms sites and organizations within the network. The focus of this study on network representation allows a formulation of explanatory concepts that can be measured and tested as to network effects on social transformation. The goal is to expand and formalize the explanations offered by Spufford for the many organizational and tech- nological transformations that he recounts. Monetization, velocity of trade and thresholds beyond which organizations cannot perform without reorganization are crucial to Spufford’s explanations of the transformation that took place in this historical period, and are equally important in other contexts as well (Chandler 1977, 1990, Iberall and Soodak 1978, Soodak and Iberall 1978).