Canaanite Civilization
The Levantine producing society of the late third and second millennia BCE — Phoenician, Hebrew, Ugaritic — with commercial capitalism as its instrument of expansion
Also known as: Canaanite, Canaanite Civilization, Levantine Bronze Age civilization, Phoenician-Hebrew civilization
Canaanite civilization is Quigley's analytical unit for the producing society of the Levant and eastern Mediterranean from roughly the late third millennium BCE, encompassing the Phoenicians, Hebrews, Ugaritic peoples, and related Semitic groups (EoC 235). It arose on the periphery of Mesopotamian civilization and developed commercial capitalism as its instrument of expansion — the earliest case in Quigley's typology of an explicitly commercial instrument (EoC 241). Its position at the western approaches to the Syrian Saddle, where overland trade from Mesopotamia met seaborne trade in the eastern Mediterranean, supplied the geographic precondition for commerce as an organising principle (EoC 241). Quigley treats it together with Minoan civilization in chapter 8 of Evolution of Civilizations.
Origin and Geographic Setting
Canaanite civilization, in Quigley's analysis, arose on the peripheral edge of Mesopotamian civilization in the late third millennium BCE (EoC 148). Its geographic setting — the Levant, the western corridor of the Syrian Saddle — was the precise point at which overland trade routes from Mesopotamia met the eastern Mediterranean sea-lanes, the juncture between the demand for raw materials, especially metals, created by the high standard of living of Mesopotamia and the supply of those materials from Anatolia, Cyprus, and the western Mediterranean (EoC 241). Quigley follows the textual evidence in identifying the population as Semitic-speaking peoples who, over the course of the second millennium BCE, differentiated into Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew branches, with the Amorites moving inland to become the population of Babylonia (EoC 196). The Canaanites and Phoenicians, Quigley stresses, are not separate peoples but the same population: "the Canaanite pagans in this period were to be found not only in Palestine but also in Syria, where they were already engaged in the Levantine trading activities we associate with the Phoenicians. In fact they were early Phoenicians, although historians usually call them by the names of their respective cities" (EoC 248).
Instrument of Expansion: Commercial Capitalism
Canaanite civilization, Quigley argues, developed commercial capitalism as its instrument of expansion — the earliest case in his typology of an explicitly commercial instrument (EoC 241). "It is extremely likely," he writes, "that Canaanite society developed commercial capitalism as its instrument of expansion because its core area, the Levant, was on the western approaches to the Syrian Saddle at the point where these approaches shifted from waterborne to land transportation. This point was the juncture between the demand for raw materials, especially metals, created by the high standard of living of Mesopotamian civilization" and the western supply (EoC 241). Phoenician and proto-Phoenician trading posts as far west as southern Anatolia (Cappadocia) by 2200 BCE are the early evidence of this commercial reach (EoC 241). The Canaanite cities — Ugarit at Ras Shamra, Alalakh in northern Syria, the later Phoenician centres of Tyre, Sidon, Byblos — each operated as a node in a maritime trading network that connected the Mesopotamian demand zone with the Aegean and western Mediterranean supply zones. The Canaanite social structure responded: a mercantile aristocracy emerged whose wealth came from long-distance trade rather than from land or priestly tribute, a literate scribal-administrative class developed to manage commercial records (and produced, eventually, the alphabet), and a specialised artisan class developed to add value to imported raw materials (especially the famous Phoenician purple-dye industry, glass, and metalwork). Commercial capitalism, Quigley adds, has powerful tendencies to become institutionalised: "institutionalization arises when pursuit of profit becomes dominant over the real, if remote, goals of any economic system" — when accumulation of money for its own sake displaces the productive reinvestment that drives expansion (EoC 242). This is precisely the institutionalisation Quigley would later trace, in a different key, in his Western case, where commercial capitalism in the late seventeenth century also institutionalised into a vested-interest mercantilism before being reformed into industrial capitalism. The Canaanite case had no such reform — and in its absence, the civilization could not survive.
The Seven Stages Applied
Quigley reads the Canaanite case through the seven-stage model as follows. Mixture: late third millennium BCE encounters of Semitic pastoral peoples with the urban-irrigated agricultural pattern radiating from Mesopotamia (EoC 196). Gestation: roughly the first half of the second millennium. Expansion: the great age of Levantine trade in the second millennium, including the Ugaritic period at Ras Shamra and Alalakh (EoC 248). Age of Conflict: from roughly 800 BCE in the Levant, somewhat later in the central and western Mediterranean, with growing social unrest in Palestine, religious animosities, and external pressure (EoC 252). Universal Empire: the Assyrian-Babylonian-Persian succession that absorbed the Levant; Quigley treats this absorption as effectively the universal empire stage rather than an internal Canaanite empire. Decay and Invasion: the Assyrian destruction of the northern Hebrew kingdom (Samaria, 722 BCE) and the Babylonian destruction of the southern (Judaea, 586 BCE), with deportation of the leading citizens (EoC 252).
The Hebrew Sub-Group and the Religious Trajectory
Quigley pays specific attention to the Hebrew subgroup within Canaanite society — a group that, he writes, "always were a group within Canaanite society" and that successively redefined itself: a social group, then a religious group at the time of Moses, then a political group at the time of Joshua, then again primarily a religious group after the Assyrian destruction of the Hebrew state, though with persistent tendencies to revert to political or biological (endogamous) self-definition (EoC 246). The Assyrian and Babylonian deportations rigidified the upper-class religious orthodoxy of those exiled to Babylon, while the peasants left behind retained older Canaanite religious patterns — a tension Quigley reads as the structural source of the prophetic critique of "Canaanite fertility ideas" (EoC 252). The Phoenician sub-group, meanwhile, exported the Canaanite commercial pattern westward, eventually establishing Carthage as its great western pole — a civilization-fragment that survived as a peripheral commercial empire until destroyed by Rome in 146 BCE.
The Crisis That Ended Expansion
Quigley dates the end of Canaanite Expansion to roughly 800 BCE in the Levant itself, somewhat later in the western Mediterranean (EoC 252). The crisis was multi-causal: growing social unrest in Palestine, the renewed split between the two Hebrew kingdoms, religious animosities sharpened by the survival of Canaanite fertility religion among peasants and by Phoenician influence at court (the Jezebel case being canonical), renewed Egyptian pressure under Necho (608 BCE), increasing Aramean pressures, and above all the brutal Assyrian assaults that left the Levantine cities looted, sacked, and made tributary (EoC 252). This complex of external invasion plus internal social and religious conflict illustrates Quigley's general claim that the Age of Conflict is multiply over-determined: when the instrument of expansion institutionalises, every prior latent tension surfaces simultaneously.
Significance: Commercial Capitalism Before Capitalism
Canaanite civilization matters in Quigley's typology because it shows that commercial capitalism — the same kind of instrument of expansion that would re-emerge in Western Europe in the late medieval period and drive the second Western Age of Expansion (1420–1650) — is not a Western invention but an analytical type that can power any civilization in the right geographic setting (EoC 241). This is also why the Phoenician contribution to Classical civilization — alphabet, metalwork techniques, mythological material, units of weight and measure including money, and many musical instruments — is so substantial: the Canaanite commercial network was the physical and cultural pipeline by which Mesopotamian technique reached the Aegean (EoC 288). Chapter 8 of Evolution of Civilizations (pp. 239–268) is Quigley's detailed working-out, paired with the Minoan case.
Cited in
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 241 Quigley
It is extremely likely that Canaanite society developed commercial capitalism as its instrument of expansion because its core area, the Levant, was on the western approaches to the Syrian Saddle at the point where these approaches shifted from waterborne to land transportation.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 242 Quigley
Commercial capitalism, as an instrument of expansion, has powerful tendencies to become institutionalized, to the injury of continued economic advance. Such institutionalization arises when pursuit of profit becomes dominant over the real, if remote, goals of any economic system.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 248 Quigley
The Canaanite pagans in this period were to be found not only in Palestine but also in Syria… In fact they were early Phoenicians, although historians usually call them by the names of their respective cities. Of these cities the best known are probably Ras Shamra and Alalakh in northern Syria.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 252 Quigley
The flourishing situation that we have described began to decline, shortly after 800 B.C. in the Levant… There was growing social unrest in Palestine, a renewed split between the two Hebrew kingdoms, democratic and puritanical agitations among certain religious leaders.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 252 Quigley
The northern kingdom of Palestine (then called Samaria) was destroyed in 722 and the southern one (Judaea) in 586. The more prominent citizens, perhaps one-tenth of the population, were deported to Babylon.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 246 Quigley
The Hebrews always were a group within Canaanite society… [They] became, once more, primarily a religious group, although there always were tendencies to become a political group… or to become a biological group (by insisting on endogamy).
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 148 Quigley
Canaanite, Hittite, and Minoan civilizations arose on the edges of Mesopotamian civilization.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 288 Quigley
The contributions of the Phoenicians to the period of mixture [of Classical civilization] are well known. Coming late, they included the alphabet, many techniques in metalwork… units of weight and measures (including money).
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 196 Quigley
Various branches of these two groups became distinguished in different areas so that some of the Canaanites came to be known as Ugarites, Phoenicians, and Hebrews, while some of the Amorites came to be called Babylonians.