Case Study 1: Native American Clan Systems and the Hopewell Interaction Sphere
This case study on Native American clan systems illustrates the way that ideas of expanded citizenship have been put into practice through centuries of ritual and diplomatic relations. We see that global citizenship has often been a real lived experience, not confined to the realm of intellectual discussion.
Before the arrival of European explorers and colonisers in the 15th century, Native Americans in North America (or Turtle Island, as it was known to many indigenous communities – retold by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass) had complex clan systems which stretched for thousands of kilometres. These groups were able to maintain a sense of common identity and joint responsibility without access to common language or print material. For example, it was common for a traveller from the Bear or Wolf clan to be able to travel huge distances and be hosted at every stop along the way by fellow clan members, despite never having met one another. There are many ways through which clans maintained a sense of responsibility towards each other’s well-being over the centuries, from common spiritual belief systems to strategic alliances.
One way in which this was put into practice was the “Hopewell Interaction Sphere”: a network of continuous trade and cultural ties between 100 BCE and 500 CE. Members of various tribes from as far north as the Great Lakes and as far west as modern Montana regularly travelled to the river valleys of modern Ohio. In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow describe mass seasonal gatherings which involved feasting, dancing, burial rituals, ceremonies, and competitive games. The coordination of these required sophisticated navigation and time-telling systems to ensure all participants arrived at the same time for this week-long intensive period of sharing culture, materials, and ideas, which was repeated multiple times per year.
All that remains physically today is a series of large earth mounds and artefacts indicating impressive sites of gathering. However, the Hopewell Interaction Sphere was part of a long tradition among Native American clans of creating and maintaining a sense of expanded citizenship for centuries. This is a reminder that notions of global citizenship were not only invented by Western philosophers: ideas of mutual belonging and duty of care for far-away strangers have been effectively practiced across a wide range of cultures and time periods.
Natalia Hussein
Sources
*Graeber, D. and Wengrow, D. (2022). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Penguin Books.
*Kimmerer, R.W. (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Penguin Books.
*National Geographic, Intriguing Interactions [Accessed 05 December 2023 at https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/intriguing-interactions/].
Case Study 2: The Silk Roads of the 13th and 14th Centuries
The Silk Roads are famed historical trading routes across central Asia, active on and off from 200 BCE right up to the present day, with the launch of the “New Silk Road” or “Belt and Road” initiative in 2013 by the Chinese leader Xi Jinping. This case study zooms in on the Silk Roads of the 13th and 14th centuries, providing two contrasting examples of global citizenship: one intellectual and mobile, the other practical and local.
Historians have often studied the Silk Roads through the lens of cosmopolitanism, where the experience of being in contact with people, ideas, and goods from around the world fostered practices of tolerance and intercultural exchange. During the period of Mongol domination of the Silk Road regions in the 13th and 14th centuries, from Nanjing (China) in the east to Baghdad (Iraq) in the west, the flow of goods included textiles (especially silk), food, and spices; the flow of people included merchants, explorers (such as Marco Polo, the Venetian writer), and diplomats; the flow of ideas included religion and science. The Silk Roads also carried disease (such as the gruesome Black Death plague from Central Asia to Europe) and violence (from Christian crusaders making use of travel routes on their conversion campaigns to Mongol armies’ expansion westwards), showing that risks were created as well as opportunities.
Looking first at intellectual cosmopolitanism, the example of Chinese scientific imports and diplomatic outreach is telling. Peter Nolan writes that during the Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, doctors from central Asia were brought to the Chinese royal courts to advise on medical practices and Islamic astronomers were consulted for their expertise (to the extent that the Ming emperor established a Muslim Astronomical Bureau in Nanjing 1368 to complement the existing Chinese astronomical bureau). This curiosity also extended outwards: between 1405 and 1433, Chinese diplomatic missions in the form of giant fleets (Nolan writes that “the first expedition contained 62 great sailing ships and carried a force of around 30,000 men”) travelled to destinations as diverse as Sumatra, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, and the Maldives. No attempts were made at colonising these areas, indicating that these were primarily exploratory missions based on expanding connections made through the land and maritime Silk Roads of the time, investing in creating a shared world of intellectual advancement and expanding trade (a vision that came to an abrupt end with China’s isolationist turn, where virtually all ships in the “Treasure Fleet” were destroyed by 1525).
Turning second to an example of local cosmopolitanism, Armenian practices of hosting and cooking for Silk Road travellers in the 13th and 14th centuries shed light on the ways that global citizenship could be created and maintained in less mobile settings. Kate Franklin analyses “everyday cosmopolitanism” through the practices of hospitality shown to caravans of merchants (groups of travellers, sometimes with an armed escort) passing through the Kasakh Valley. Armenians welcomed strangers at roadside restaurants called “caravanserai” set up specifically to cater for their needs, cooking local food and offering shelter – this contrasts with the (modern) expectation that groups of Silk Road travellers would cook their own meals as a self-contained unit. In fact, Islamic waqf (charitable donations of land or assets for communal religious use) documents of the time and inscriptions on Armenian caravanserais often committed to the welcoming of passers-by through food, shelter, and prayers. Franklin demonstrates how the practice of caring for foreign travellers, sometimes for pay and sometimes free of charge, was not just a cultural habit, but also an intentional and political decision which made exchange possible across huge distances. One can imagine how sharing bread and a warm stew on the Silk Roads, baked and stirred by a well-meaning stranger, was a highly personal and impactful experience of global citizenship in medieval Eurasia.
Natalia Hussein
Sources
*Edwards, J. (2017). 500 years ago, China destroyed its world-dominating navy because its political elite was afraid of free trade. The Independent. [Accessed 21 April 2024; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/500-years-ago-china destroyed-its- worlddominating-navy-because-its-political-elite-was-afraid-of-free-trade a7612276.html]
*Franklin, K. (2021). Everyday Cosmopolitanisms: Living the Silk Road in Medieval Armenia. University of California Press.
*Frankopan, P. (2023). Tales of silken times. UNESCO Courier. [Accessed 02 April 2024, https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/tales-silken-times]
*Nolan, P. (2015). The Silk Road by Land and Sea. Horizons: Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development, No. 4, pp. 142-153.
*Shi, Y. (2014). Islamic Astronomy in the Service of Yuan and Ming Monarchs. Suhayl: Journal for the history or the exact and natural sciences in Islamic Civilisation, Nº. 13, pp.41-61. [Accessed 02 April 2024, https://harg.kasi.re.kr/pro_plus/down/201205/201205_029-040.pdf]
Case study 3: Atlantic pirate ships in the 1650s-1730s
The alternative community built by pirates during the “Golden Age” of piracy in the Atlantic Ocean in the late 17th and early 18th century challenges dominant understandings of citizenship. Citizenship is often defined as the experience of belonging within the physical and metaphorical boundaries of a nation-state (with associated rights and duties), while global citizenship can be seen as an expanded version of this: a sense of belonging, and obligation to, a global whole. By contrast, the culture created by pirates was decidedly anti nation-state. At the same time, pirate ships became sites of transnational loyalty to a new way of life, with rights and duties bestowed on all those who voluntarily took part. This reminds us that experiences of global citizenship can emerge in direct opposition to dominant forms of citizenship that force people into the margins.
Although pirates have a long and varied history continuing into the present day, the typical pirates that dominate popular culture (from Treasure Island to Pirates of the Caribbean, from Black Sails to Our Flag Means Death) are based on those who attacked merchant and navy ships in a short period from the late 1600s to the early 1700s. In his acclaimed book, Villains of All Nations, Marcus Rediker argues that pirates became such a threat at this time because they destabilised the growth of global capitalism, which relied on maritime transport of goods, and especially at this time, enslaved people (between 1716-1726, Rediker estimates that pirates captured and plundered more than 2,400 vessels). Pirates therefore became a key target for extermination by European nations, even though many of them (especially their captains) had originally come from the same shores. Historians have emphasised that pirate ships were multilingual and multi-ethnic places, often comprised of sailors from England, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, African nations, and more. This created a unique environment where ex- sailors were partly united through experience (especially that of violent discipline and poor conditions on board merchant and navy ships), and partly united in the joint creation of something new that transcended borders.
Pirates in this period created a common set of rules and expectations that, whilst tailored to each crew, maintained a consistent format and culture from ship to ship. The formal list was called the “articles”: a constitution of sorts which laid out the details of how bounty was to be divided as well as rules for behaviour and justice. Rediker posits that these articles are evidence for the ways pirates created a new egalitarian society onboard the ship, giving poor sailors the chance to participate in a system of governance based on loyalty and fairness. By contrast, Fox argues that pirate articles primarily emulated the society they had abandoned, especially in creating power hierarchies amongst the crew. Either way, we see that pirates created and maintained a sense of belonging to a broader whole. This extended beyond looking after the interests of pirates themselves: there is evidence for pirates seeking to bring justice for all exploited sailors through their actions. For instance, pirate crews punished despotic merchant captains based on the sailors’ verdict of how they had been treated onboard. Another example is that pirates who were captured and hanged by the British state would often use the moment before execution to make dramatic speeches to the crowd, criticising the regime for oppressing poor sailors and freebooters, and putting piracy into a wider class-based context.
A final example of this group identification was the cultivation of flags, usually involving ominous skeletons on a black background: by raising these, pirates publicly declared their allegiance to a group of self-organised outlaws resisting the powerful nation states of the time. This added to an alternative, mobile, and global, sense of citizenship which, for some, was a desperate solution to exploitative socio-economic circumstances.
Natalia Hussein
Sources
*Cartwright, M. (2021). Golden Age of Piracy. World History Encyclopaedia. [Accessed 02 April 2024 at https://www.worldhistory.org/Golden_Age_of_Piracy/]
*Cartwright, M. (2021). Ten Notorious Dutch Pirates. World History Encyclopaedia. [Accessed 02 April 2024 at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1883/ten-notorious-dutch- pirates/]
*Fox, E.T. (2013). Piratical Schemes and Contracts’: Pirate Articles and their Society, 1660- 1730. PhD Thesis, University of Exeter.
*Rediker, M. (2005). Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Beacon Press.
Case Study 4: Indian Ocean Port Cities and Cosmopolitanism
The interconnectedness of coastal cities bordering the Indian Ocean offers us a way to understand global citizenship as a local practice, carried out through the tangible acts of trade, literature, religion, and more. From early settlements to bustling cities of the 19th century, historians have often analysed the region through the lens of “cosmopolitanism”, focusing on the ways that individuals could engage with a wide variety of cultures and ideas in a particular place, creating a shared experience.
By the 19th century, historical cities such as Colombo (in present day Sri Lanka), Bombay (present day Mumbai in India), Aden (in present day Yemen), Jakarta (in present day Indonesia), Surat (in India), and towns on the island of Zanzibar, had acted as hubs of connected activity for several centuries. Indian Ocean linkages were partly the result of a forced process from the imperial projects of the Dutch, Portuguese, British and French in the region from the 17th century onwards: transporting goods, people, and local knowledge.
However, locally initiated connections had also been created and maintained long before colonial involvement. For example, from 3000 BCE onwards, the Indian Ocean was active as a zone of agricultural exchanges, where plants such as yams and bananas were transported and the knowledge of how to cultivate them was brought to new lands. Fast forward to the 16th -19th centuries, and mobile groups such as labourers, traders, elites, diplomats, and religious missionaries facilitated the circling of ideas across languages and cultures. Cosmopolitan cities provided a base for the spread of print material such as translated literature and press, forming the basis of a shared experience of the world. For example, in Bombay in the late 1800s, you could find Indian literature and Islamic texts translated into Persian, Arabic, English, Urdu, Malay, and Swahili. While direct ideas of global citizenship likely remained confined to intellectuals, working people around the Indian Ocean would regularly have encountered and taken part in diverse foods, entertainment, and religious practices.
By the start of the First World War in 1914, historians have written about Indian Ocean civil society “conceiving a whole beyond ethnicity, denomination, nationality and social diversity” (Bose and Manjapra, referenced in Sivasundaram’s “The Indian Ocean”, 2018), indicating a shared globalised consciousness which developed alongside – and made use of – colonial administrations. And yet, it should not be forgotten that this contact between diverse peoples also fuelled tensions and racialised hierarchies. For instance, Arab and Indian cultures were often seen as superior to Malay or African cultures, fuelling inequality. Ordinary people were also often subject to exploitation by successive empires, from the Ottomans (from modern Turkey), Mughals (spanning modern India to Afghanistan), and Omani Sultanate in Zanzibar, to the Portuguese, British and French. The story of global citizenship in Indian Ocean cities is therefore one of both tension and connection, each dynamic shaping the other.
Natalia Hussein
Sources
*Sherry, B. The Cosmopolitan Indian Ocean, c. 1450–1700. World History Project. [Accessed 10 Jan 2024 at https://www.oerproject.com/OER-Materials/OER-Media/PDFs/AP World-History/Unit4/The-Cosmopolitan-Indian-Ocean].
*Sivasundaram, S. (2018). The Indian Ocean. In Armitage, D. Bashford, A. and Sivasundaram, S. (eds.), Oceanic Histories. Cambridge University Press.
*Subrahmanyam, S. (2018). The Hidden Face of Surat: Reflections on a Cosmopolitan Indian Ocean Centre, 1540-1750. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 61(1-2), 205-255.