Seminar: The globalisation trap: The Piasts, the Samanids, and the dangers of long-distance trade
02 05 2024
Category: Our seminar, seminar
We cordially invite you to upcoming talk on Center for Systemic Risk Analysis Seminar.
The seminar will be held on 7 May 2024 from 19:30 to 21:00 CET in our conference room, Dobra 56/66, Warsaw, room 2.90, as well as on the Zoom platform (link to the meeting below).
Our Guest: Marek Jankowiak, Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences: https://ihpan.edu.pl/en/employees/researcher/marek-jankowiak-2/
Title: The globalisation trap: The Piasts, the Samanids, and the dangers of long-distance trade (abstract below)
Center for Systemic Risk Analysis Seminar (University of Warsaw) | Marek Jankowiak, Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Join Zoom Meeting: https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/99658295394?pwd=alZVazFYZzFXUHZLVDY4Y25jSDhnZz09
Meeting ID: 996 5829 5394
Passcode: 681485
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The globalisation trap: The Piasts, the Samanids, and the dangers of long-distance trade
Abstract: Most interpretations of the rise and fall of the first Piast state – the state of Mieszko I,
his immediate ancestors, and his son and grandson – emphasise the role of internal factors and
relations with its closest neighbors. I would like to take a different perspective: that of its
contacts with Central Asia. By interpreting the tens of thousands of dirhams, Islamic silver
coins, imported from Central Asia to Greater Poland in the tenth century as the residue of a
long-distance trade system, I would like to show how the changing rhythms of this trade shaped
the policies of the Piasts and other north European rulers. I will focus in particular on the final
stage of these contacts and their cessation in the final decades of the tenth century. How did
the northern Europeans deal with the disconnection from Central Asian silver? What mitigating
strategies did they develop? I will conclude by asking whether the difficulties faced by
the Piasts and their colleagues can be interpreted as an early case of the globalisation trap.
Photo: Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons