The Other Pax's the West won't Talk About
In The Great Tech Game , Anirudh Suri made an interesting list that got me thinking about how distorted Western versions of history are. He writes: “In recent history, the world has lived through Pax Romana, Pax Islamica, Pax Mongolica, Pax Britannica and Pax Americana.” Pax Islamica? Pax Mongolica? I’d only heard of the other three Pax’es… Pax Islamica is Suri’s term for the era when the Muslims controlled the global trade routes, both on land and via the sea. Until the Muslims took over, each region on these routes had its own trading practices and different legal traditions. The Muslims standardized a lot of that – from Arabia to Malaysia, the same tax and import-export rules were followed. This made things stable, predictable and trade increased. The West won’t mean even mention this phase since they were locked out of these routes by the Muslims who weren’t interested in the “backwaters of Europe”… While the era of Muslim dominance is ignored in Western n...