dynasty, even if they were willing to sponsor technological
innovations and permit greater commercial freedom,
provided that this was under their control. Things got worse
under the Ming and Qing dynasties as the control of the
state on economic activity tightened and overseas trade
was banned. There were certainly markets and trade in
Ming and Qing China, and the government taxed the
domestic economy quite lightly. However, it did little to
support innovation, and it exchanged the development of
mercantile or industrial prosperity for political stability. The
consequence of all this absolutist control of the economy
was predictable: the Chinese economy was stagnant
throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
while other economies were industrializing. By the time
Mao set up his communist regime in 1949, China had
become one of the poorest countries in the world.
T HE A BSOLUTISM OF P RESTER J OHN
Absolutism as a set of political institutions and the
economic consequences that flowed from it were not
restricted to Europe and Asia. It was present in Africa, for
example, with the Kingdom of Kongo, as we saw in chapter
2. An even more durable example of African absolutism is
Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, whose roots we came across in
chapter 6, when we discussed the emergence of feudalism
after the decline of Aksum. Abyssinian absolutism was
even more long-lived than its European counterparts,
because it was faced with very different challenges and
critical junctures.
After the conversion of the Aksumite king Ezana to
Christianity, the Ethiopians remained Christian, and by the
fourteenth century they had become the focus of the myth of
King Prester John. Prester John was a Christian king who
had been cut off from Europe by the rise of Islam in the
Middle East. Initially his kingdom was thought to be located
in India. However, as European knowledge of India
increased, people realized that this was not true. The king
of Ethiopia, since he was a Christian, then became a
natural target for the myth. Ethiopian kings in fact tried hard
to forge alliances with European monarchs against Arab
invasions, sending diplomatic missions to Europe from at