Download transregional interaction in the third

PART THREE
THE BIG PICTURE
AN AGE OF ACCELERATING
CONNECTIONS
500 – 1500
Chapter 7: Commerce and Culture 500-1500
Chapter 8: China and the World: East Asian Connections 500-1300
Chapter 9: The Worlds of Islam: Afro-Eurasian Connections 600-1500
Chapter 10: The Worlds of Christendom: Contraction, Expansion, and Division 500-1300
Chapter 11: Pastoral Peoples on the Global Stage: The Mongol Moment 1200-1500
Chapter 12: The Worlds of the Fifteenth Century
PART THREE
DEFINING A MILLENIUM
1.) THIRD-WAVE CIVILIZATIONS: SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING BLENDED
2.) THE TIES THAT BIND: TRANSREGIONAL INTERACTION IN THE THIRD-WAVE ERA
Most historians mark the end of the second wave-era as between roughly 200 and 850 CE, when many
of the second-wave states and civilizations (Han dynasty China, Roman Empire, Gupta India, Meroe,
Axum, Maya, Teotihuacan, Moche) experienced severe disruption, decline, or collapse. Most
historians agree that the transatlantic voyages of Christopher Columbus beginning in 1492 represent
the beginning of the modern era because the coupling of the Eastern and Western hemispheres set in
motion historical processes that transformed most of the world and led it to where it is today.
But how are we to understand the thousand years (roughly 500-1500) between the end of the secondwave era and the beginning of modern world history? It has been defined as the post-classical era, a
medieval or “middle” period between the ancient and the modern, or an age of third-wave civilizations.
These terms indicate where this period falls in the larger time frame of world history, but none of them
are descriptive.
THIRD-WAVE CIVILIZATIONS: SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD,
SOMETHING BLENDED
A large part of the problem lies in the different trajectories of various regions of the world during this
millennium. There are no clearly defined features that encompass all major civilizations or human
communities during this period and distinguish them from what went before. There are, however, some
distinct patterns during this third-wave era.
SOMETHING NEW
In some areas, new but smaller civilizations arose where none had existed before.
 Along the East African coast – Swahili civilization emerged in a string of 30+ city-states, very
much engaged in the commercial life of the Indian Ocean basin
 In West Africa - The Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay emerged, stimulated and sustained
by long-distance trade across the Sahara
 In the area of present-day Ukraine and Western Russia – Kievan Rus took shape with a good
deal of cultural borrowing from Mediterranean civilization
 East and Southeast Asia – witnessed new centers of civilization. Those in Japan, Korea, and
Vietnam were strongly influenced by China, while Srivijaya on the Indonesian island of Sumatra
and later the Angkor kingdom, centered in present-day Cambodia, drew on the Hindu and
Buddhist traditions of India
 In Arabia – Islamic civilization emerged
Each of the third-wave civilizations were culturally unique, but like their predecessors of the first and
second-wave they too featured states, cities, specialized economic roles, and sharp class and gender
inequalities. Thus all represent a continuation of a well-established pattern in world history- the
globalization of civilization. As newcomers to the growing number of civilizations, all borrowed heavily
from older and more established centers of civilization.
The largest and most widely influential of the new third-wave civilizations was that of Islam. It began
in Arabia in the seventh century CE, projecting the Arab people into a prominent role as builders of an
enormous empire while offering a new and attractive religion. Viewed as a new civilization defined by
its religion, the world of Islam came to encompass many other centers of civilization – Egypt,
Mesopotamia, Persia, India, the interior of West Africa, and the coast of East Africa, Spain, southeastern
Europe, and more. It was a uniquely cosmopolitan and “umbrella” civilization that that “came closer
than any had ever come to uniting all of mankind under its ideals.”
SOMETHING OLD
Another, and quite different historical pattern during the third-wave millennium involved those older
civilizations that persisted or were reconstructed.
 The Byzantine Empire - embracing the eastern half of the old Roman Empire, it continued the
patterns of Mediterranean Christian civilization and persisted until 1453, when it was overrun by
the Ottoman Turks.
 In China – following almost 4 centuries of fragmentation, the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties
(589-1279) restored China’s imperial unity and reasserted its Confucian tradition.
 In India – Indian civilization retained its ancient patterns of caste and Hinduism amid vast
cultural diversity, even as parts of India fell under the control of Muslim rulers
Variations on this theme of continuing or renewing older traditions took shape in the Western
Hemisphere, where two centers of civilization – in Mesoamerica and in the Andes – had long been
established.
 In Mesoamerica – the collapse of classical Maya civilization and the great city-state of
Teotihuacan by 900 CE opened the way for others to give new shape to civilization in the region.
The most well-known were the Mexica, or Aztec, people who created a powerful and
impressive state in the fifteenth century.
 On the western-rim of South America – a Quechua-speaking people, now known as the Inca,
incorporated various centers of Andean civilization into a huge empire.
SOMETHING BLENDED
Another pattern took shape in Western Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Would-be kings and church-leaders alike sought to maintain links with the older Greco-Roman-JudeoChristian traditions of classical Mediterranean civilization. In the absence of empire, new and
decentralized societies emerged, led now by Germanic peoples and centered in Northern and Western
Europe. It was a hybrid civilization, combining old and new, Greco-Roman and Germanic elements in a
distinctive blending. For 5 centuries, this region was a “backwater” compared to the vibrant,
prosperous, and powerful civilizations of Byzantium, the Islamic world, and China. After 1000, however,
Western Civilization emerged as a growing and expansive set of competitive city-states.
THE TIES THAT BIND: TRANSREGIONAL INTERACTION IN THE THIRD-WAVE ERA
Although the different patterns of development within particular civilizations have made it difficult to
define the Third-Wave era in an all-encompassing fashion, a common theme emerges because during
this time the world’s regions, cultures, and peoples interacted with one another far more extensively.
More than before, change in human societies was the product of contact with strangers and their
ideas, armies, goods, or diseases. In a variety of places, local cosmopolitan regions emerged in which
trade, migration, or empire had brought peoples of different cultures together in a restricted space.
Examples:
Island Southeast Asia
Coastal East Africa
Central Asian cities
Parts of Western Europe
The Islamic Middle East
The Incan Empire
These “mini-globalizations” became a distinctive feature of third-wave civilizations.
PATTERNS OF INTERACTION: LONG-DISTANCE TRADE AND LARGE EMPIRES
LONG-DISTANCE TRADE
During the third-wave millennium, long-distance trade grew – along the Silk Roads of Eurasia, within
the Indian Ocean basin, across the Sahara, and along the Mississippi and other rivers. Everywhere it
acted as an agent of change for its participants.
 In places where such commerce was practiced extensively, it required that more people devote
their energies to producing for a distant market rather than for the consumption of their own
communities.
 Those who controlled trade often became extremely wealthy, exciting outrage and envy among
the less fortunate.
 Many societies learned about new products via these trade routes. For example, Europe’s
knowledge of pepper and other spices derived from Roman seaborne trade with India beginning
in the 1st century CE.
 Exchange had political consequences - many new states or empires were constructed on the
basis of resources derived from long-distance commerce.
 Religious ideas, technologies, and diseases also made their ways along the paths of commerce
LARGE EMPIRES
Not only did large empires incorporate many distinct cultures within a single political system, their
size and stability provided security that encouraged travelers and traders to journey long-distances
from their homelands. The empires of the third-wave were larger than their predecessors: the Arab
Empire stretched from Spain to India, the Mongol Empire stretched across Central Asia, and in the
Western Hemisphere, the Inca Empire ran 2500 miles along the “spine” of the Andean mountains.
The largest of these empires were the creation of nomadic or pastoral people. Earlier empires – in the
Mediterranean basin, China, India, and Persia - had been the work of settled farming societies. But now
– in the years between 500 and 1500 – people with a history of a nomadic or herding way of life
entered the world stage as empire-builders – Arabs, Berbers, Turks, Mongols, Aztecs – ruling over
agricultural people and established civilizations.
TOGETHER – LARGE-SCALE EMPIRES AND LONG-DISTANCE TRADE FACILITATED THE SPREAD OF IDEAS,
TECHNOLOGIES, FOOD, CROPS, AND GERMS FAR BEYOND THEIR POINT OF ORIGIN.
RELIGION
 Buddhism spread from India to much of Asia
 Christianity encompassed Europe and took root in distant Russia; it contracted in the Middle
East and North Africa
 Hinduism attracted followers in southeast Asia
 Islam became an Afro-Eurasian phenomenon with an enormous reach
TECHNOLOGY
Technologies were diffused widely.
 Until the 6th century, China maintained a monopoly on the manufacture of raw silk, but then
this technology spread beyond East Asia, allowing the development of a silk industry in the
eastern Mediterranean and later in Italy.
 India – contributed crystallized sugar, a system of numerals and the concept of zero,
techniques for making cotton, and many food crops
 In the Americas – corn diffused from Mesoamerica to North America, where it stimulated
population growth and the development of more complex societies
DISEASE
Disease linked many distant communities. The Black Death decimated many parts of Eurasia and North
Africa as it made it deadly way from east to west in the 14th century.
AGENTS OF CHANGE
A focus on these connections across cultural boundaries puts the historical spotlight on merchants,
travelers, missionaries, migrants, soldiers, and administrators – people who traveled abroad rather
than those who stayed at home. What happens when cultures interact and strangers meet? How did
external stimuli produce change in societies? How do people and societies decide what to accept and
what to reject when confronted with new ideas or practices? In what ways do they alter foreign
customs or traditions to correspond to their own values and better fit their needs?
GENDER ROLES IN THE THIRD-WAVE ERA
MALE: The vast majority of rulers, traders, soldiers, religious officials, and long-distance travelers were
men, as were most heads of households and families. The building of states and empires meant war and
conquest – fostering distinctly masculine warrior values and reinforcing the dominant position of men.
FEMALE: Women sustained the family life that was the foundation of all human community; they were
the repositories of language, religious ritual, group knowledge, and local history. Their labor generated
many of the products that entered long-distance trade routes as well as those that fed and clothed their
communities.
.