2000 BCE–300 CE: (The New Kind of Town and the Merchant Class — The Early Commercial Revolutions Bringing into Being a New Economic Basis for Towns Functioni…

2000 BCE–300 CE: (The New Kind of Town and the Merchant Class — The Early Commercial Revolutions Bringing into Being a New Economic Basis for Towns Functioning as Centers for Manufacturing Goods for Long-Distance Trade or as Crossroads for Transport or Both, a New Class of Merchants Taking On Roles as Primary Buyers Sellers and Capitalizers of Transportation, and in West Africa Skilled Producers Banding Together to Secure Their Productive Positions, in the Western and Central Sudan Belt and Later in the Congo Basin the New Economy Preceding the Emergence of States, Growing Directly Out of a Previous Age of Villages and Intermediate-Distance Trade Without an Intervening Era of Kingdoms): The early commercial revolutions had a major socioeconomic consequence: they brought into being a new economic basis for towns, with the new kind of town functioning first of all as a center for the manufacture of goods for trade over distance, or as a crossroads in the transport of such goods, or as both. In those centers a new class of society, merchants, gradually took on the roles of primary buyers, sellers, and capitalizers of the transportation of goods; and, particularly in West Africa, the skilled producers of valued goods banded together to secure their productive positions in the new dispensation. In the western and central Sudan belt of Africa, as well as separately and later in the Congo basin, the new kind of economic relations and the rise of commercial centers preceded the emergence of states. The commercial revolution in those regions grew directly out of a previous age of villages and intermediate-distance trade. Differently from what took place in the Levantine-Mediterranean world, in the African cases there had been no intervening, previous age of kingdoms and highly unequal societies. Towns and long-distance commercial relations began to take shape in West Africa by early in the second millennium BCE. Political chiefdoms and kingdoms arose later, in the second half of the millennium and in the first millennium BCE, and still later in Central Africa. Not having arisen out of a prior era of highly unequal societies and economic relations, the new kind of economy tended to take hold in a more inclusive fashion among the founding participant populations south of the Sahara. This is a critical distinction. In the Levantine-Mediterranean world, the commercial revolution took place within societies that were already stratified, already hierarchical, already unequal — and the merchants who emerged operated within and often reinforced those existing structures of inequality. In West Africa, the commercial revolution preceded state formation. Towns, trade networks, and merchant classes emerged from village-level societies without passing through an intervening stage of kingdom and priesthood. The result was a more inclusive commercial order — one in which skilled producers and independent traders could participate on more equal terms, one in which women entrepreneurs could thrive, one in which the economic benefits of long-distance trade were not monopolized by a pre-existing elite. Africa offers the world an alternative model of commercial development — one in which trade creates towns, rather than towns creating trade, and in which commerce precedes and produces political complexity rather than being subordinated to it.