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Southernization
In modern history we are familiar with a global process called "Westernization"
through which Western ideas, technologies and institutions have spread throughout
the world and altered the course of nearly all societies. This was achieved both
through force (in the form of imperialism and colonialism) and imitation. A similar
process called "Southernization " has been identified by Professor Lynda Shaffer*
of Tufts University as having played a parallel role during the pre-modern era. The
focal and originating points of Southernization were India and Southeast Asia, both
in the southern part of the northern hemisphere (See map). Indian innovations
included cotton and sugar manufacturing, mathematics and even Buddhism;
Southeast Asia contributed the opening of new maritime trade routes, the production
and marketing of spices and a more drought-resistant rice.
The earliest agents of Southernization were Indian and Malay merchants and
their clients in Africa, the Middle East and China. All societies touched by them were
transformed in one way or another by these innovations and products. By the 8th
century, the Arabs, who had taken control of much of the Afro-Eurasian
Intercommunicating Zone, became the major agents of Southernization and were
responsible for transmitting southern products throughout their domain and beyond.
The result was what Professor Shaffer calls "a rich south and a poor north." The

modern reversal of that situation is at least partly due to the fact that the north (what
we call western Europe today) became "Southernized"i.e., gained contact with the
Afro-Eurasian Intercommunicating Zone in such places as Spain and Sicily from the
1 Ith century on. Inheriting
the technological, scientific and economic innovations of this zone stimulated the
Europeans to grow and expand to the point that they created a new
intercommunicating zone in the Atlantic Ocean basin which in many ways became
the starting point for the modern process of Westernization and the creation of "a
rich north and a poor south."
*In Journal of World History, Volume 5, Number I, Spring 1994.
196 e Readings in Global History
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