In many areas of the Near East the Late Roman period, in terms of population size, settlement density and levels of exploitation, marks a pre-modern high. The territorial expansion of Rome began in earnest in the second century BCE, and had its roots in the competitive aristocratic politics of the republic. The crisis of the mid-third century was surmounted, but it left emperors in no doubt that relations with the Persians had to be their first priority, and that major deployments anywhere other than the Persian front would depend on peace there. The Nabataean kingdom in what is now Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia was annexed in 106 to create the province of Arabia. The rise of Islam as it actually happened is comprehensible only in the context of the history of the Roman empire, a history that culminated in what James Howard-Johnston has evocatively dubbed the 'the last great war of Antiquity'.

This chapter discusses the medieval Indian economic history before the Ghorian conquests of the late twelfth century. Global historical factors which appear to have contributed to the decline in prosperity of both areas include invasion by fresh waves of barbarian central Asian tribes; the closure of the silk-route through the Tarim basin and north-west India to the Arabian Sea, and the rise of Islam. The coastal areas of Gujarat and Coromandel remained within the network of maritime trade, and the conditions which obtained there differed from the increasing isolation and impoverishment of northern India. During this period, landholding became the chief basis of social and political status. There was an increasing fragmentation and hereditarization of local power under what has variously been termed 'the Samanta system' or 'Indian feudalism'. In urban life the fissiparous direction of Indian society was reflected in the proliferation jati (caste) groups and the increasing rigidity of the hold of brahmanical Hinduism and the varndsramadharm.