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APWH Review Period 3
REGIONAL INTERACTIONS
600 CE to 1450 CE
For years, traditional European studies called the Early Middle Ages
the "Dark Ages"—a nickname that described the drudgery of life
after the fall of Rome, the dearth of intellectual thought and scientific
innovation during this time, and the general lack of flattering lighting.
Or most of those, anyway. Scholars think now that the Dark Ages
might not have been quite so dark after all, at least figuratively
speaking, but things were looking a little dicey in Europe for a while.
That's the problem with empires…can't live with 'em, can't live without
'em.
The rest of the world, however, seemed to be getting along just fine.
Some might say it was thriving, even. China was at work developing
some serious technological innovations that you might have heard
of...like, say, printing and gunpowder. On the Arabian Peninsula, over
in the Middle East, Islam emerged. Finally, who could forget that the
Mongols were busy creating the single largest global empire in all of
history?
The Big Changes
There was a lot going on in the Middle Ages (or medieval times, for
those of you who like a little more pizzazz with your history) but we
can boil the changes down to three main categories: religion, trade,
and government. We'll go over each of them in turn.
• Religion. First, the three major religions of Buddhism, Christianity,
and Islam proved themselves to be particularly prone to growth
throughout all of Afro-Eurasia. Sometimes they grew through
force and sometimes through faith, but nobody could question
their influence.
• Trade. The rise of trade, meanwhile, went hand in hand with the
spread of religion. Without established trade routes like the Silk
Road (still not made of silk, unfortunately), religion wouldn't
have logged as many miles across the world as it did. Without
missionary zeal, on the other hand, people wouldn't have
discovered quite as many new cultures to trade with. Weird how
things work out.
• Government. After the collapse of what historians call the
"classical empires," many rulers began questioning the oncegolden rule of imperial centralization. The empires of the
previous era had concentrated all their power in a single
emperor and a single capital city—which clearly turned out
great for everyone—and governments began embracing a more
varied distribution of power with the introduction of feudalism
across Europe and in Japan.
As you might have noticed, each of these categories has to do with
the fact that the world was beginning to shrink more rapidly than ever
because Afro-Eurasia was establishing new connections with other
parts of the world.
The downside to all of this connectivity? Things like the Black Death,
a strain of bubonic plague that made its way from China to Europe in
the 1300s and wiped out millions of people in the process.
The Big Continuities
To keep things simple, we're also going to introduce the two primary
continuities that kept on trucking during this period.
• Intellectual progress. Building on the advances in math and
philosophy by the Greeks, Romans, Gupta, Han, and Central
Asians, intellectuals across Eurasia made tremendous
achievements.
• Elements of the big empires of the previous period persisted well
after those empires fell apart. In Europe, churches were built
like Roman public buildings, cities were planned on Roman
models, and many, many rulers claimed to be bringing back the
old Western Roman Empire. In China, Chinese culture became
highly defined by Han Dynasty language and ideology. In
Central Asia, Greek religion and culture outlasted Alexander the
Great for a thousand years.
Remember what we said about the whole anti-centralization thing?
Here's the second part of that story. While some places experimented
with newer forms of government, other parts of the world remained
committed to the idea of a strong, centralized authority. Despite a few
significant changes during this period, it was still good to be
emperor...and that wouldn't change for a few more hundred years.
HUMANS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Long distance trade continued to expand in this period. As traders
pushed out farther and faster, they had to learn about and adapt to an
increasing range of environmental conditions. Vikings built extremely
shallow-draft longboats to navigate the icy Baltic Sea and continental
Europe's river systems. Traders in the Sahara bred camels to be
increasingly resistant to dehydration. In Central Asia, bigger horses
were bred to haul goods up and down hills and mountains.
Polynesians learned to transplant food sources like breadfruit and
yams to less hospitable islands.
The migration of Polynesians and other similar groups continued to
transform the world's environment. An ever-increasing amount of the
world was brought under cultivation. The world's biodiversity
decreased as forests and jungles were removed and replanted with
food crops.
Technology in the Dark Ages: Doing Surprisingly Well
During this era, the centers of cultural innovation were
unquestionably the Middle East and China. They were like today's
Silicon Valley. Cool ideas popping up all over the place.
Many of these inventions had tremendous impact on the ways that
humans interacted with the environment. Not all of them (it's hard to
claim that chess, which was invented in India at the time, radically
shifted human-environmental interaction), but most.
China was the real big boy of invention, especially during the Tang
and Song dynasties. Water-powered mills sprang up in China at
this time, which was one of the earliest ways that humans capitalized
on waterpower to make other stuff. This idea spread rapidly
throughout the world, as farmers could build mills on rivers and
creeks and use the waterpower to grind wheat. Totally awesome.
Likewise, the Chinese had huge innovations in ocean exploration—
most notably the magnetic compass and the cotton sail. Cotton
sails were much more durable than the paper that had been used
previously, and magnetic compasses? Pretty important. All of these
ideas, especially when they spread to Europe, had a huge impact on
man's ability to explore.
There are some other inventions worth knowing that were not so
clearly related to the environment, but since we're talking about
inventions, we may as well mention them here. In China during this
era, moveable type was invented, which is a way of printing. The
Chinese also invented paper currency, porcelain (an extremely
desired commodity), and gunpowder. Man, these guys invented
cash money, guns, and bling? Impressive.
The Islamic World, mostly centered in the Middle East, also had
some substantial innovations at the time. They developed the first
two-axis star maps, called astrolabes, which made accurate
navigation by the stars possible.
Non-environmental inventions include algebra; chess; medical
advancements, like the syringe and distilled alcohol; and, best of
all, universities. Our kinds of people.
In Europe, even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, a lot of thinking was
still going on in the monasteries and universities. Developments in
Christian theology went hand in hand with developments in
philosophy, math, and physics. However, Western Europe was at
a disadvantage because they were comparatively isolated from the
networks of information exchange in the Middle East and Central
Asia.
In particular, the status of Constantinople as a center of trade made
it a first adopter of Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese advances.
However, following Constantinople's conquest in 1204 CE by
Western European Crusaders, many of its art, books, and wealth
were shipped back to France and Italy, in part starting the European
Renaissance.
After this conquest, Constantinople went into decline, while Western
Europe picked up their trade contacts. Western Europe purchased
many classical books from the Middle East and North Africa, and
became linked in with the world's intellectual and technological
development.
Over in the Americas, the big technological changes were
agricultural. In the Andes, farmers developed newer and more
effective ways to terrace mountainsides for agriculture. In
Mesoamerica, farmers began to create farmland by piling dirt and
plant matter in Mexico's many shallow lakes. This automatically
irrigated the crops. Instead of using plows to turn over fields,
Mesoamerican farmers just pushed their depleted soil to the lakebed
and built new plots. This system, called the chinampa system,
replaced slash-and-burn and allowed for permanent agricultural
settlement. Local towns and cities grew even larger off a smaller area
of farmland.
CULTURE
There were two main ways that cultures came into contact with each
other: The first was through the Afro-Eurasia-wide trade network. The
second was through warfare.
Kind of paradoxical, right? You'd think that war would push cultures
apart, which of course it also did, but in many cases the conquest of
one culture by another actually facilitated contact between the
cultures. Not entirely illogical, but also kind of bizarre.
Islam and the World
Islam had a huge impact on this era. It was founded by Muhammad,
who lived in the city of Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia from 570
to 632 CE. According to the tradition of Islam, Muhammad went into
the desert, where the angel Gabriel told him to write down what he
was saying. The book that he wrote, the Koran (or Qur'an), literally
translates to "recitation," because Gabriel apparently said, "Recite!"
as soon as he saw Muhammad.
Islam, meaning "submission," is a monotheistic religion that continues
in the traditions of both Judaism and Christianity. Abraham, Moses,
and Jesus are all referenced in the Koran as prophets of God, or
Allah. ("Allah" means God in Arabic.) However, Muhammad is
believed to be the last prophet, the final one, who most clearly
explained the religion, which is organized around five pillars:
1) confess faith in one God, 2) pray five times a day 3) give charity to
those in need, 4) fast during the month of Ramadan, and 5) make the
pilgrimage to the city of Mecca once in your lifetime.
Muhammad was a mixture of prophet, politician, and military general,
and he was remarkably successful in spreading the religion
throughout the Arabian Peninsula, which had otherwise been
occupied mostly by nomadic polytheists.
When Muhammad died in 632, he had united almost the whole
peninsula. His successors got into disagreement over who should
rule: some, known as the Sunni, believed that the next leader should
be chosen by consensus of the peoples of the Arabic Peninsula.
Others felt that only one of Muhammad's direct descendants should
rule and became known as the Shi'a. Over time, other doctrinal
differences would drive the Sunni and Shi'a apart and even give rise
to new Islamic denominations like the Sufis. In the modern age, the
Sunni are Islam's largest denomination.
A few different empires sprung out of Islam and ruled in what are
called caliphates, or empires run by religious leaders. They are the
Umayyad and the Abbasid empires, and we'll get to them later.
Islamic caliphates spread quickly across the Middle East and North
Africa. The caliphate of Morocco in North Africa invaded and
conquered southern Spain from the Visigoths, southern relatives of
the Goths, and ruled there for almost eight hundred years.
Caliphates in Egypt and the Middle East stripped the Eastern Roman
Empire of its most profitable possessions along the Eastern
Mediterranean Coast. These caliphates' conquests created several
hybrid cultures: In North Africa, the Arabic culture mixed with existing
Roman and African cultural traits. In Sub-Saharan African, it became
integrated into Bantu society. In Central Asia, it merged with existing
Persian and Greek influences.
It's a common fallacy that, as soon as these regions were conquered,
everyone therein converted to Islam. Actually, caliphates encouraged
conversion to Islam with tax breaks and the opportunity to serve in
government but did not demand it. Over time, while many populations
converted to Islam, not all did. Jerusalem had a sizable Jewish
population until the whole city was put to the sword by the First
Crusade. About 10% of modern-day Egyptians and Palestinians are
Christians of the Eastern tradition. Small but significant Zoroastrian
populations remain in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey.
However, where relations between Islam and Christianity got
complicated was with the holy sites of pilgrimage. Because both
Muslims and Christians believed in Jesus, the status of whether
Jesus's tomb in Jerusalem was a church or a mosque caused some
serious tension. Similar problems arose in Bethlehem and with
Abraham's rock altar. In 1096, the Christian Pope Urban called
Europe to war to take back the Christian holy sites and re-consecrate
them as churches. There were a lot of reasons for the Pope to call
this war, most of them non-religious in nature. The Pope was facing
some serious disobedience by the monarchs of Europe and wanted
to unite them under his banner. Europe as a whole also had a serious
land shortage that was fixed by sending hundreds of thousands of
homeless pilgrims behind the armies.
The end result was a whole slew of military campaigns known as the
Crusades, which lasted about 150 years. They were extremely
destructive. As mentioned above, in the First Crusade Jerusalem's
entire population was killed. When the Egyptian caliphate retook
Jerusalem generations later, they enslaved a slice of the population
and deported the rest. The Eastern Roman Empire objected to all
these Catholic armies passing their borders and looting, and in return
the Crusaders sacked Constantinople. The entire region saw
significant deaths and depopulation of not only Catholics and
Muslims, but also Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. In the
end, the Catholics gave up on attempting to establish a kingdom in
the region.
It's weird though. The wars were terrible, and a lot of people died,
quite unjustly, but the Crusades did a tremendous job in bringing
cultures together, whether they liked it or not. European knights
would go off to fight in the war and come home with some of the
Islamic world's ideas, which they in turn often got from China. Many
made trade contacts among Middle Eastern merchants and set up
new and improved trade routes into Asia. The Crusades, oddly,
ended up bringing Western Europe much closer to the rest of the
world.
China and the Rest of Asia
China remained largely influenced by Confucianism and Buddhism,
and throughout this era, Chinese culture spread widely—to places
like Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.
From 618 to 907, China was ruled by the Tang Dynasty. Tang China
was known for excellence in literature. Tang poetry is still considered
the height of Chinese poetry. Writers in the Tang also created China's
first known fictional short stories and novels.
The Tang was also noted for an unprecedented and uncommon
acceptance of foreigners within China. Under the Tang, foreign
colonies of Central Asians, South Asians, and even Eastern
Europeans were founded within China. These cultural influences
greatly impacted Tang society, leading to new foods, music, art, and
religious ideas. Buddhism in China at this time reached its peak, both
in terms of number of followers and political influence. However, near
the end of the Tang, Chinese society took a turn inwards. Buddhists
were persecuted and pushed out of the public sphere, and the rights
of foreigners were restricted. This trend continued for the rest of the
period, though many foreign communities still remained. In particular,
trading cities were known for large populations of foreign merchants.
Following the Tang Dynasty was a brief period of disunity, and
following that was the Song Dynasty (960 to 1279). During the Song,
a new intellectual movement called Neo-Confucianism took hold of
China. Inspired by the success of Buddhist missionaries, NeoConfucian philosophers attempted to add spiritual significance and
cosmology to Confucianism, turning it into a more all-encompassing
philosophy. Neo-Confucian bureaucrats attempted to make the
government more engaged in commoners' lives through public
schools, hospitals, and pension programs.
This period had an unprecedented degree of influence on Japan.
Japan up until that point had been largely isolated, but during the 7th
century, they began to send emissaries and students to the Tang.
These emissaries were tasked with learning Chinese legal and
political structures and reporting back to the court of the Emperor of
Japan. The Japanese court collected notes until 710, when they
overhauled their state on the Chinese model. They built a Chinesestyle city to be their new capital at Nara, instituted a small
bureaucracy, and established a system to write Japanese words with
Chinese characters. During this period, they also adopted elements
of Chinese literature and philosophy.
Buddhist missionaries also spread from China to Japan during this
time. Buddhism became popular and coexisted with Japan's
indigenous religion, Shintoism. Shintoism was based on the worship
of thousands of minor deities, ruling over areas of nature. Since the
biggest of their deities, the goddess of the sun, was believed to be
the Emperor's distant ancestor, the Japanese court supported Shinto
as the state religion. Since Buddhism did not directly contradict any
Shinto ideas, there was little tension between the two religions.
In the 12th century, following a brutal civil war, the daimyo were
united by a powerful military general called a "shogun." The shogun
stripped the Emperor of all his non-ceremonial powers and
established a new feudal government. Until 1868 CE, all Japanese
governments were led by shoguns.
Korea began as a semi-nomadic society with influences from both
China and Japan. Tang China and Japan fought over control of
Korea. Tang China eventually became dominant, and though Korea
was never part of their empire, it paid annual tribute to the Tang
court. Later, Chinese influence increased further when NeoConfucianism became the all-consuming ideology of the Korean
court.
Mongols and Culture
The Mongols are an exceptionally unique empire. First of all, they
were ridiculously awesome warriors. They were skilled horsemen and
mastered the whole "look Ma, no hands" riding technique, which
meant they could ride and shoot arrows at the same time. If you had
to fight against the Mongols, you were almost guaranteed to lose.
In light of that, the Mongols conquered an area stretching from China
to Eastern Europe. However, unlike most other expanding empires,
which would force a rigid adoption of cultural practices, government,
you name it, the Mongols only wanted to conquer. That's it. They
weren't interested in changing your lifestyle or modifying customs and
practices; they simply wanted to conquer, pillage, and then leave,
while collecting taxes along the way.
In this regard, the Mongols created a huge, united area that included
incredibly diverse cultures. In uniting these areas, the Mongols
created greater interaction between them. The Mongols helped to
solidify the Silk Roads, which had always been important, but
became much more so during their empire.
This is not always a good thing. When the Black Death struck in
China in the 1300s, it was able to spread rapidly to the rest of Afro-
Eurasia, including Europe. The death toll was massive throughout the
world: upwards of 90% in some places.
In general, the thing to remember about Mongols is that they are not
known for their own culture, but merely for bringing cultures together
by conquering them.
STATE BUILDING
Europe
In the 5th century CE, Rome fell. Well, kinda. The city of Rome had
been conquered by Goths, the ancestors of modern-day French and
German people. The new Goth rulers of Rome talked a big game
about how they were going to revive and strengthen the Western
Roman Empire, but, like the plans of so many modern goth garage
bands, it just never really came together. This led to chaos in
Western Europe as Roman generals, Gothic chieftains, city
governors, and bishops all scrambled to divide up what was left.
Eventually, out of the chaos, a couple of people started to get their
stuff together and actually make some governing happen. Among
these was Charlemagne, a duke from France. Charlemagne came to
power by promising the Catholic Church that he would do two things:
1) conquer the pagans of North Europe and force them to convert to
Catholicism, and 2) send an army south to Spain to prevent to Muslim
Moors from conquering the Catholics there. In return, the Catholic
Church ordered their bishops to support Charlemagne with their
political connections, money, and armies (yeah, some bishops had
armies then; they were pretty hard-core).
Charlemagne built up a gigantic state called the Holy Roman Empire,
claiming that he was bringing back the old Roman days. In actuality,
his "empire" was run similarly to a confederation of Goth tribes. Each
area had a duke, similar to a chieftain, who voted on who the next
Emperor would be. The big continuity with Roman days was the
continued authority of Catholicism.
The Holy Roman Empire quickly lost its territory in France and Spain
but held on in Germany and north Italy until Napoleon conquered it a
thousand years later.
In the meantime, Eastern Europe was doing all right for itself. The
Eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine Empire, stopped
listening to Rome way before the Goths hit the scene. When Rome
fell, the Eastern Romans were kind of "meh" about the whole thing.
The big change caused by the fall of Rome, from the Eastern Roman
perspective, was that they felt the Western Roman Christians had
been corrupted by barbarians, and they stopped respecting the
Western Roman bishops' opinions on stuff. As a result, the Western
Roman Christians went their own way and became known as
Catholics, while the Christians of Eastern Europe, Africa, and the
Middle East stopped caring about Rome and became known as
Orthodox.
Compared to the Holy Roman Empire, the government system in the
ERE kept a lot of the old Roman titles and government structures.
The most famous ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine
Empire was Justinian I, who established a new code of law (the
Justinian Code), which continued the tradition of writing down laws.
He was also all up on the construction of the Hagia Sophia, a huge
domed church that later became a mosque and is now a museum.
Outside of the Holy Roman Empire and the Eastern
Roman/Byzantine Empire, the rest of Europe was fairly divided.
Modern France was split into two kingdoms and several independent
duchies. Southern Spain was part of the Moroccan Caliphate, and the
north was split in half by warring kingdoms. The only uniting factor of
all these diverse states was the Catholic Church, which they had all
learned to follow while they were controlled by the Western Roman
Empire.
Before we go into other parts of the world, it's worth mentioning two
oddballs that we want to lump into Europe: One is Russia…and then
there are the Vikings, who are kind of awesome, in the same way
that pirates and ninjas are awesome.
Vikings came from Scandinavia, where climate shifts led to there
being a lot more people than food. Vikings unable to grow food at
home raided Western Europe using their longboats, and wreaked a
lot of havoc. However, they also founded a lot of trading settlements
that are now major cities, like Dublin and Copenhagen. They even
established a settlement on Newfoundland in what is now eastern
Canada. And, in their river voyages through Russia to
Constantinople, they founded a whole bunch of cities that would
eventually form the core of the Russian Empire.
Vikings also had a political system that is the ancestor of modern
constitutional monarchies. In Viking cities, all the Viking knights,
called Jarls, would meet to vote on whether the king could spend
money or go to war. These assemblies were the earliest parliaments
in the world. The Parliament of Iceland was established by Vikings in
930 CE and has met continuously ever since.
As time went on, new forms of political organization and agricultural
technologies made it more feasible for Vikings to stay at home and
farm, so they mostly gave up their wanderin' ways.
After the Vikings slowed down, their descendants in Russia started
speeding up. The first to build an empire was Ivan the Terrible.
Yeah, he wasn't that good of a guy, but he deserves credit for first
establishing the idea of a united Russia. Like the Holy Roman
Emperor and the Eastern Roman Emperor, Ivan relied on a religious
authority—in this case the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow—to
legitimize his reign and tell everyone in the country that he was the
best man for the job. He called himself tsar (or czar or csar), which
was a Slavic pronunciation of "Caesar." Yeah, just like every other
megalomaniacal ruler, Ivan was on the "Bring Back the Caesars
Roman Empire Reunion Tour."
However, a lot of people in Europe who weren't megalomaniacal
rulers weren't as psyched about the whole giant oppressive empire
thing. Many cities thought that the pre-Roman "independent and kind
of democratic city-state" thing was where it was at. Some cities,
called "free cities," still were technically controlled by one kingdom or
another but were tax-free and decided all their issues with municipal
elections. Others, like Venice and Genoa in Italy, were full citystates who decided everything with highly corrupt election systems.
The word "citizen" originally just meant "inhabitant of a city" because
in Europe only people in cities had elections or could vote.
Something that all Western European societies had in common was
the use of a political system called feudalism. The basic idea was
that a king, who is the strongest noble, owned all of the land. He
divided the land among his nobles, who lent him their armies when he
needed military aid. The nobles had vassals, who split the land even
more. Finally, there were serfs, or peasants who were indentured
servants bought and sold as part of the land they worked by their
lords. They worked the lords' fields in exchange for protection and the
use of much smaller fields.
Asia
Once again, the big story in Asia is China. This era saw three major
dynasties: the Tang, the Song, and the Ming…with Mongol rule
mixed in there for a bit as well.
The Tang was a huge empire—one that far surpassed the borders of
the preceding dynasties—and the dynasty was in power from 618 to
907. It collapsed into civil war, and then the Song Dynasty swept into
power in 960 and ruled until the Mongol invasions in 1279.
Of special note, the Tang Dynasty actually had a woman ruler for a
short period of time, Empress Wu, who went from being the
emperor's concubine to the empress. Under her rule, for the first time,
initial Chinese government appointments were made not on the basis
of a candidate's aristocratic birth but on a candidate's performance on
a special kind of examination. These "civil service examinations"
were incredibly hardcore. The highest level of exam was given in a
locked cell over a period of three days and had a pass rate between 2
and 4 percent. Exam candidates submitted their papers with their
student numbers instead of names to prevent favoritism. Topics on
the exam included the law, public revenue, governance, Confucian
philosophy, and ethics. In order to have a chance of passing these
exams, candidates had to have been in private schools for most of
their lives. As a result, those who passed the exams were almost
exclusively already rich.
After Empress Wu was deposed, this system fell out of use. However,
later, the Song Dynasty, in the spirit of Neo-Confucianism, made it
the only legal way to receive a government appointment. From the
Song Dynasty until the 1911 Revolution, all functioning government
posts were filled by successful exam candidates.
The Song Dynasty eventually ended when the Mongols invaded
and was replaced by the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Yuan
Dynasty was a 60-year-long disaster. Though the Mongols kept the
Song bureaucracy and examination system, they bankrupted the
government through repeated failed military invasions of Japan and
Vietnam. To make matters worse, the Mongol rulers were devoutly
Buddhist and devoted ridiculous amounts of state resources to
building and maintaining monasteries. Public works fell apart. In most
countries this would be bad, but in China this was disastrous. This is
because millennia of erosion had silted up the Yellow River, requiring
constant government expenditure to build up dikes and prevent the
river from flooding. When the Yuan government was forced to cancel
dike construction due to budget concerns, the resulting floods killed
or drove off millions of people from the North China Plain.
Not surprisingly, the Yuan was soon replaced by the Ming Dynasty
(1344–1644) and was probably the high point of Chinese wealth and
achievement. It was during the Ming Dynasty that the famous
Forbidden Palace was built, a massive, expansive network of palaces
for the emperor. It was also during the Ming Dynasty that the
Chinese sent out one of the most ambitious global explorations of all
time, in the form of Zheng He.
As mentioned in the culture unit, early in this period Japan was
influenced by Chinese culture, law, and politics. The Japanese
emperor set up a Chinese-style government bureaucracy.
Unlike in China, in Japan this system fell apart over time. Japan's
imperial family became extremely large. Distant branches of the
family were occasionally ordered to take new surnames and go to the
countryside in order to make room for the Emperor's closer relatives.
These exiled clans, by virtue of their imperial birth, often operated
outside the authority of the capital bureaucrats. Over time, they
developed into a social class of semi-independent landlords called
daimyo. Also over time, the bureaucracy of the capital lost so much
of its authority that it became functionally useless. The system
became very similar to European feudalism, in which the daimyo
were allowed to own land and serfs as long as they paid occasional
taxes and lent military support to the Emperor every now and then.
Near the end of this period, Muslim colonists established the city of
Malacca, near modern-day Singapore. The nearby straits of Malacca
were then and continue to be the busiest naval trade route in the
world. Malacca spread its power briefly over a large chunk of what is
now Indonesia.
Further south, in Polynesia, new empires of ocean-going
agriculturalists arose. Polynesians set up colonies across the South
Pacific. Some, such as Papua New Guinea, were incorporated into
their empire, while further away ones, such as New Zealand, Samoa,
Hawaii, and Easter Island, were not.
The Middle East
The arrival of Islam gave the Middle East a reason to unite—
something that had previously evaded the region. It was originally
Muhammad himself who brought unity to the area, and subsequent
caliphates ushered in two different substantial empires.
The first one that you need to know was the Umayyad Empire (661–
750), with its capital in Damascus in present day Syria. Its main
characteristic was its ability to expand and spread as far as Spain
and North Africa, exceeding Rome in its size and scope. Ultimately,
the Umayyad Empire collapsed due to the revolt of a Shi'a ruler.
This Shi'a ruler founded the Abbasid Empire (750–1258), which
relocated its capital to Baghdad. Unlike the Ummayads, the Abbasids
established a large bureaucracy that centrally planned the Empire's
economy. The Abbasids also used their political power to move Silk
Road trade away from land routes in north central Asia and towards
land and sea routes passing through Baghdad. Following the Abbasid
capture of several Tang garrisons in Central Asia, the Abbasid
government imported Chinese industrial technology in an attempt to
improve productivity in Mesopotamia near Baghdad. At its height,
Baghdad was the second largest and richest city in the world, after
Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty.
The Abbasids eventually lost a great deal of their territory. Turkey and
north Central Asia were overrun by the Seljuk Turks, and Egypt and
Morocco splintered off to form new Sunni caliphates. There were a
wide variety of political structures in these caliphates. Some, like the
Abbasids, maintained central bureaucracies, while others embraced
feudalism and granted power to sultans and emirs (kings and dukes).
The Sum of All Parts: The Mongols
The Mongol Empire began when Mongolia and parts of China were
conquered by Genghis Khan in the early 1200s. The Mongols were
incredibly dominant but had little to no interest in cultural imperialism.
Genghis Khan was the first Mongol ruler, and when he died, his
empire was divided among several of his relatives. His son Kublai
Khan went on to conquer China and establish the Yuan Dynasty,
while other sons, brothers, and nephews took their armies into
Central Asia and the Middle East. The descendants of Mongols
conquered all of Central Asia, the Middle East, and a chunk of
Europe including Russia and parts of Poland.
It's an interesting turn of events that the Mongols pillaged and
plundered everywhere they went, but in the process absorbed a lot of
local culture. Eastern Mongols converted to Buddhism, while Western
Mongols converted to Islam. All of them were pretty easy-going when
it came to culture, social structures, and religion under their control.
Similar to the early Achaemenids, so long as each region paid taxes
and sent troops, the Mongols couldn't care less.
Mongol khans fought a lot of people but rarely fought each other.
Their rule in Asia is often referred to by the term "pax Mongolia"
because of the relative peace and stability they brought.
Africa
For most of this period, the largest state in East Africa was Aksum, in
modern-day Ethiopia. This was a Christian kingdom near the Red
Sea, in the center of a major trade route between North Africa and
the Arab peninsula. This kingdom maintained a strong military and
naval presence, protecting their trade routes from foreign powers and
pirates alike. They also made a tidy profit as a pilgrimage site,
because a church in Aksum claimed, and still claims, to possess the
original Ark of the Covenant. While Aksum came to conquer a large
portion of East Africa, the basis of the state's power was commerce.
The decline of Aksum came about as a result of Abbasid policy. As
part of the Abbasid attempt to route trade through Baghdad, they
attacked the Red Sea and southern Sahara trade routes, instead
concentrating trade with Africa overland through Alexandria. Aksum
fell into decline and was replaced by the Ethiopian Empire in the 11th
century. The Ethiopian Empire was more similar to a conventional
feudal society, with an agricultural economic base and a
decentralized power structure.
Further south in East Africa, Arab and Indian colonists founded trade
hubs. The colonies acted as cultural melting pots, combining the
Arab, Indian, and Bantu cultures into the Swahili culture. The Swahili
language was Bantu-based but incorporated a lot of vocabulary from
Arabic and the Indian language of Prakrit.
Trade was also a major factor in the states that arose on the West
Coast of Africa during this period. While East Africa benefited from
trade, West Africa was a gold mine. Literally. For them, that isolation
did not last too long.
The Muslim traders who eventually crossed the Sahara brought with
them religion and warfare, and established West Africa as a Muslim
stronghold.
The Americas
We already explored the Maya culture, but during this era several
other civilizations appeared in the Americas. Remember, there was
no interaction with Afro-Eurasia, so in many ways, the Americas were
a world of their own, developing at their own pace.
The isolation actually made the pace of development slower, because
less interaction meant fewer ideas flowing. The civilizations in the
Americas did not benefit from such cultural interaction. In this era, we
essentially have two substantial civilizations: the Aztecs and the
Incas.
The Aztecs were located in present-day Mexico. Their capital,
Tenochtitlan, was on an island in a shallow lake that has since been
drained and built over to create Mexico City. The Aztec Empire came
about when Tenochtitlan allied with two other massive city-states in
the region, creating an unstoppable imperial juggernaut.
The Aztecs are by far most well-remembered for their religion. They
were fanatical about the sun, which was the center of their universe,
and worshiped it relentlessly. They must have had fantastic tans.
Their biggest way to worship the sun was through human sacrifice,
which according to some accounts, occurred at a terrifying pace. One
European explorer recorded as many as 10,000 sacrifices over the
course of a week.
Where do you get 10,000 people to lie on a slab and be cut up with a
jagged knife? Simple. War. The Aztecs were largely about expansion
into new agricultural zones and wanted to terrify everyone they
conquered into staying in line. Like the evil dudes in the Hunger
Games, they took people from everywhere they conquered as
sacrifices to terrify the remaining population. Aztec expansion was
accomplished through the use of vast levies of peasants, often
fielding armies of 50,000 terrified conscripts or more. As was seen so
many times in Eurasia, though, there were drawbacks to using a
heavy-handed touch. By the end of this period a large percentage of
the Aztecs' subjects were ready to revolt and sided with the Spanish
when they showed up.
The Incas relied less on fear and more on governance. They created
the world's most top-heavy social structure, with one in nine people
earning a living as a public servant. However, this insane
bureaucracy actually worked fairly well, and the Incas ran an effective
state and army, They did practice human sacrifice but not nearly as
much as the Aztecs, and it wasn't quite as central to their ruling style.
Both of these intriguing civilizations would meet their demise when
the Europeans arrived and brought with them catastrophic diseases,
as we will study in the next unit.
ECONOMIC SYSTEMS
The Best Things in Life Are Free?
The amount of goods, ideas, and people moving around Afro-Eurasia
skyrocketed during this period.
Silk Roads
There was fierce competition for control of the Silk Roads. From 600
to 750 CE, a monopoly on overland trade into China was held by a
succession of Central Asian Empires, who organized a sophisticated
trade network centred on the Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan.
Samarkand was a true crossroads city, with cultural influences
including Greek and Chinese philosophy, Christianity, Buddhism, and
Zoroastrianism. The primary goods coming out of China were—you
guessed it—silk, and also paper, high-quality tools, and other
manufactured goods, while the primary goods heading into China
were precious metals, plant and animal specimens, spices, cotton,
and slaves.
Indian Ocean
Following the Abbasid takeover of Central Asia in 751 CE, they
blocked the northern trade and set up sea routes from Baghdad to
Calicut in India and from Calicut to Guangzhou (Canton in China).
Despite repeated attempts to establish viable China-style industries,
they were never able to compete with Chinese goods on either price
or quality. The same was true of the rest of the world, and this trade
imbalance ensured that currency and precious metals would flow into
China for the next thousand years.
Even after the Abbasid Caliphate collapsed in the 10th century, the
Indian Ocean trade dominated the trade to China. All those naval
inventions by the Chinese—the compass, advanced sails, etc.—
meant that sea trade became increasingly feasible…and profitable.
The Indian Ocean is very exposed, so the boats that traveled in these
waters tended to be larger and more stable, like the massive Chinese
junks that could carry humongous amounts of cargo. The most
famous trade fleet was that of Zheng He, who sailed the Indian
Ocean to trade and to advertise the glory of the Ming Dynasty.
The ports along the Indian Ocean were probably some of the most
cosmopolitan in the world at the time. What we think of New York City
today—loud, populated, lots of different languages, and mean taxi
drivers—was how cities along the Indian Ocean, like Malacca, used
to be.
Trans-Sahara
Once Muslim merchants in the north learned about the gold of
Western Africa, they became more than happy to brave the desert in
order to get to the bling. Gold could be bought fairly cheaply in West
Africa because there was a high demand for products plentiful in
North Africa, like horses, salt, and books. Once West Africa became
linked to North Africa, it supplied the majority of the gold for all AfroEurasia. Islamic trade states began to arise along the routes to West
Africa. Eventually, one state, called Mali, declared itself to be a new
caliphate and conquered much of the region. Mali's capital was a
small city called Niani, but the empire is most known for its control of
a different city, the giant trade city of Timbuktu. Timbuktu was the site
of Sangore University, a huge Islamic school whose library
possessed millions of books, the largest collection in Africa. The
destruction of Sangore University by invaders in the next period is a
large reason why comparatively little is known about Africa's history
today.
Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League was a network of northern European citystates that were situated in the North Atlantic and created a loose
economic alliance. To be honest, the main reason it is worth
mentioning is because it set the precedent of putting aside politics in
the interest of unity and economic opportunity. It was sort of a
challenge to the traditional European way of bickering with your
neighbors about everything.
In addition to the Hanseatic League, other economic structures
sprang up around the world. In the Middle East, governments
established thousands of "caravanserais," large inns specifically
designed to accommodate caravans on the road. Advanced systems
of credit became common around the world, with creditors keeping
written ledgers of debts or issuing bills of exchange. Some trading
houses in China even operated on joint-stock principles, similar to
modern corporations.
SOCIAL STRUCTURES
Role of Women
Among all the changes in this period, a sweeping worldwide evolution
of the role of women in society wasn't one of them. Women were
certainly involved in all of the above trends—connecting the world,
adopting cultural traits, spreading religions and ideas—but women's
actions in general often weren't taken down in the historical record.
One thing that is known is that, in Afro-Eurasia, the expansion of
industries like textile weaving and crafts production offered women
increased opportunities to work outside the home.
However, patriarchy persisted…and often evolved. In Song China,
the practice of painfully binding women's feet at a young age to
increase marriagability developed. Arranged marriages were still the
norm everywhere in the world. But there are exceptions to every
trend, and many women achieved high status. This was particularly
noticeable in West Africa, Vietnam, and among the Mongols.
Labor Organization
The Eastern Roman Empire and the Chinese dynasties had a form
of labor organization deceptively called "free peasant agriculture."
These peasants weren't exactly free and were often conscripted by
the government for public works projects or the army, but they were
not explicitly owned by anyone and had some freedom of movement.
Free peasants generally had a strong understanding of their own
rights and revolted when they felt those rights were being violated. In
South America under the Incas, peasants were technically free but
owed the government the mit'a, a yearly tax of several weeks of
slave-like labor.
In feudal societies, peasants were considered property and packaged
in with the land. In Europe, people were considered free if they were
attached to no land and instead lived in towns or cities. Often, these
people would be organized into trade guilds that were part trade
union, part cartel. Guilds maintained employment standards and
advocated for their members, but also fixed prices and drove out
competition to ensure monopolies.
KEY TERMS
Islam: The second-largest religion in the world after Christianity.
Muhammad: The founder of Islam. He lived from 570 CE to 632 CE
in what is now Saudi Arabia.
Mecca: The city of Muhammad's birth and the location of the holiest
pilgrimage site in Islam.
Sunni: The largest denomination of Islam. Sunni focuses on the
need for the consensus of all people in the selection of Muslim
leaders and the interpretation of Muslim scriptures.
Shi'a: The second-largest denomination of Islam. Shi'a focuses on
the importance of Muhammad's descendants, as they believe that
God's selection is more important than broader consensus. Several
of Muhammad's prominent descendants have become the scriptural
authorities for the Shi'a faith.
Umayyad: The largest historical Islamic caliphate. It lasted from 661
to 750.
Koran: The holy book of Islam, believed to have been spoken to
Muhammad by the angel Gabriel.
Abbasid: A large Shi'a caliphate based in Baghdad. Lasted from 750
to 1258.
Crusades: A series of wars between Catholic and Islamic armies
over control of pilgrimage sites and trade routes in the Middle East.
Waged intermittently between 1095 and 1272.
Mali: An Empire in West Africa, famous for the metropolis of
Timbuktu. Lasted from 1230 to 1667.
Timbuktu: The largest city in West Africa. Also site of the largest
university and library in Africa.
Ibn Battuta: A traveler from North Africa who wrote travel accounts of
Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
Swahili: A language and culture that developed in East Africa as a
result of interactions between Bantu peoples and Arab and Indian
colonists.
Eastern Roman Empire: An empire that split from the Western
Roman Empire in 395 and lasted until 1453. Its capital was at
Constantinople.
Byzantine Empire: An alternate name for the Eastern Roman
Empire, which split from the Western Roman Empire in 395 and
lasted until 1453.
Vikings: Scandinavian people involved in raid warfare and
colonization of northern and eastern Europe prior to 1000 CE.
Feudalism: A decentralized system of government and labor
organization. Nobles are given land in exchange for loyalty to the king
and military service. They gain ownership over not only their land but
also the common people on it, who become serfs. Common in
medieval Europe and Japan.
Charlemagne: The founder of the Holy Roman Empire. Lived from
768 to 814.
Goths: An ethnolinguistic group from Scandinavia, they conquered
most of Western Europe in the 5th century CE.
Aztec Empire: An empire created by three allied city-states in
modern day central Mexico. It lasted from 1428 to 1521.
Inca Empire: A large centralized empire in the South American
Andes Mountains. It lasted from 1438 to 1533.
Tang Dynasty: A Chinese dynasty known for openness to foreign
influences, particularly Buddhism. It lasted from 618 to 907.
Song Dynasty: A Chinese dynasty known for the development of the
ideology of Neo-Confucianism. It lasted from 960 to 1279.
Yuan Dynasty: A dynasty established in China by the Mongol
invader Kublai Khan. It lasted from 1271 to 1368.
Ming Dynasty: The Chinese Dynasty that overthrew the Mongols.
They are famous for launching Zheng He's voyages. Lasted from
1368 to 1664,
Civil service examination: First established in the Tang but not used
consistently until the Song. This was an examination held by the
Imperial Academy to identify candidates to serve in China's
bureaucracy.
Empress Wu: The only woman to reign in name in Chinese history.
Was the first monarch to use civil service examinations for all
appointments. Reigned from 684 to 705.
Samurai: Professional warriors who served Japanese feudal lords,
called daimyo.
Daimyo: Japanese feudal lords, similar to European knights and
barons.
Mongols: A Turkic ethnic group from eastern Central Asia, who
conquered most of Asia in the 13th to 15th centuries.
Genghis Khan: The first Mongol ruler to unify all Mongols under his
banner.
Mit'a: A "labor tax" in the Inca Empire, in which commoners owed
the government several weeks of hard physical labor per year.