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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.