Innovation
The word innovation raises a problem of great importance in the history of technology. Strictly, an innovation is something entirely new, but there is no such thing as an unprecedented technological innovation because it is impossible for an inventor to work in a vacuum and, however ingenious his invention, it must arise out of his own previous experience. The task of distinguishing an element of novelty in an invention remains a problem of patent law down to the present day, but the problem is made relatively easy by the possession of full documentary records covering previous inventions in many countries. For the millennium of the Middle Ages, however, few such records exist, and it is frequently difficult to explain how particular innovations were introduced to western Europe. The problem is especially perplexing because it is known that many inventions of the period had been developed independently and previously in other civilizations, and it is sometimes difficult if not impossible to know whether something is spontaneous innovation or an invention that had been transmitted by some as yet undiscovered route from those who had originated it in other societies.
The problem is important because it generates a conflict of interpretations about the transmission of technology. On the one hand there is the theory of the diffusionists, according to which all innovation has moved westward from the long-established civilizations of the ancient world, with Egypt and Mesopotamia as the two favourite candidates for the ultimate source of the process. On the other hand is the theory of spontaneous innovation, according to which the primary determinant of technological innovation is social need. Scholarship is as yet unable to solve the problem so far as technological advances of the Middle Ages are concerned because much information is missing. But it does seem likely that at least some of the key inventions of the period—the windmill and gunpowder are good examples—were developed spontaneously. It is quite certain, however, that others, such as silk working, were transmitted to the West, and, however original the contribution of Western civilization to technological innovation, there can be no doubt at all that in its early centuries at least it looked to the East for ideas and inspiration.
Byzantium
The immediate eastern neighbour of the new civilization of medieval Europe was Byzantium, the surviving bastion of the Roman Empire based in Constantinople (Istanbul), which endured for 1,000 years after the collapse of the western half of the empire. There the literature and traditions of Hellenic civilization were perpetuated, becoming increasingly available to the curiosity and greed of the West through the traders who arrived from Venice and elsewhere. Apart from the influence on Western architectural style of such Byzantine masterpieces as the great domed structure of Hagia Sophia, the technological contribution of Byzantium itself was probably slight, but it served to mediate between the West and other civilizations one or more stages removed, such as the Islamic world, India, and China.
Islam
The Islamic world had become a civilization of colossal expansive energy in the 7th century and had imposed a unity of religion and culture on much of southwest Asia and North Africa. From the point of view of technological dissemination, the importance of Islam lay in the Arab assimilation of the scientific and technological achievements of Hellenic civilization, to which it made significant additions, and the whole became available to the West through the Moors in Spain, the Arabs in Sicily and the Holy Land, and through commercial contacts with the Levant and North Africa.
India
Islam also provided a transmission belt for some of the technology of East and South Asia, especially that of India and China. The ancient Hindu and Buddhist cultures of the Indian subcontinent had long-established trading connections with the Arab world to the west and came under strong Muslim influence themselves after the Mughal conquest in the 16th century. Indian artisans early acquired an expertise in ironworking and enjoyed a wide reputation for their metal artifacts and textile techniques, but there is little evidence that technical innovation figured prominently in Indian history before the foundation of European trading stations in the 16th century.
China
Civilization flourished continuously in China from about 2000 bce, when the first of the historical dynasties emerged. From the beginning it was a civilization that valued technological skill in the form of hydraulic engineering, for its survival depended on controlling the enriching but destructive floods of the Huang He (Yellow River). Other technologies appeared at a remarkably early date, including the casting of iron, the production of porcelain, and the manufacture of brass and paper. As one dynasty followed another, Chinese civilization came under the domination of a bureaucratic elite, the mandarins, who gave continuity and stability to Chinese life but who also became a conservative influence on innovation, resisting the introduction of new techniques unless they provided a clear benefit to the bureaucracy. Such an innovation was the development of the water-powered mechanical clock, which achieved an ingenious and elaborate form in the machine built under the supervision of Su Song in 1088. This was driven by a waterwheel that moved regularly, making one part-revolution as each bucket on its rim was filled in turn.
The links between China and the West remained tenuous until modern times, but the occasional encounter such as that resulting from the journey of Marco Polo in 1271–95 alerted the West to the superiority of Chinese technology and stimulated a vigorous westward transfer of techniques. Western knowledge of silk working, the magnetic compass, papermaking, and porcelain were all derived from China. In the latter case, Europeans admired the fine porcelain imported from China for several centuries before they were able to produce anything of a similar quality. Having achieved a condition of comparative social stability, however, the Chinese mandarinate did little to encourage innovation or trading contacts with the outside world. Under their influence, no social group emerged in China equivalent to the mercantile class that flourished in the West and did much to promote trade and industry. The result was that China dropped behind the West in technological skills until the political revolutions and social upheavals of the 20th century awakened the Chinese to the importance of these skills to economic prosperity and inspired a determination to acquire them.
Despite the acquisition of many techniques from the East, the Western world of 500–1500 was forced to solve most of its problems on its own initiative. In doing so it transformed an agrarian society based upon a subsistence economy into a dynamic society with increased productivity sustaining trade, industry, and town life on a steadily growing scale. This was primarily a technological achievement, and one of considerable magnitude.