CHAPTER 12 THE WORLDS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

An Age of Accelerating Connections 500-1500

AP WORLD HISTORYWAYS OF THE WORLD

R. STRAYER

2015 SOFISANDOVAL

• “Columbus was a perpetrator of genocide…, a slave trader, a thief, a pirate, and most certainly not a hero. To celebrate Columbus is to congratulate the process and history of the invasion” (Winona LaDuke, 1992)

PALEOLITHIC PERSISTANCE:AUSTRALIA AND NORTH AMERICA

• Paleolithic people: Australia, Siberia, parts of Africa and America. -> changed over time.

• Australia: Europeans arrived 18th century (Despite the absence of agriculture, Australia´s people mastered the environment “firestick farming”. Easier to hunt…)

• North America: Chinookan, Tulalip…- Complex or affuemt gathering hunting cultures. – organized clan leaders “big men”.

• 15th century numbers contracted greatly as the Agricultural Revolution unfolded across the planet.

AGRICULTURAL VILLAGE: THE IGBO AND THE IROQUOIS

• Usually small villaged based communities organized in therms of kingship relations.

• Created societies largely without oppressive political authority, class inequalities, and seclusion of women like in the common civilizations.

• East Niger River: West Africa - Igbo people• Igbo people: reject kingship or state building. • “Igbo have no kings” – social cohesion, “stateless

society”• They traded among themselves (cotton, fish,

copper,…)• Artistic traditions reflected the measure of cultural

unity.• Ended with the slave trade

IROQUOIS PEOPLE• What is now NY State – Iroquois

speaking peoples of the region, fully agricultural, adopting maize and bean farming. – trading, but frequent warefare erupted among 5 Iroquois speaking people: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca.

• Made agreement known as: Great Law of Peace, the Five Nations.

• Peaceful confederation- clan leaders, 50- gave expression to values of limited government, and social inequality, personal freedom.

PASTORAL PEOPLE: CENTRAL ASIA AND WEST AFRICA• Turkic leader: Timur, (West Uzbekistan)

– brought immense devastation again to Russia, Persia and India. (Died when preparing invasion to China)

• Hosted a elite culture, combining Turkic and Persian elements; capital in Samarkand.

• Timurs conquest proved to be the last great military success of nomadic peoples in central Asia.

• Their homelands were swallowed by the expanding Russia and Chinese Empires.

MING DYNASTY• After the Mongol rule in China and plague: population

sharply reduced, destructiveness. • Ming Dynasty (1368-1645) Promoted Confucian

learning• Emperor Yongle: ordered building of Forbidden City

(Beijing), and Temple of Heavean. – Re established examination system

• Power now concentrated in the emperor himself. – acted quickly to restore damage of Mongols. -> Economy rebounded and international trade flourished.

• Impressive maritime expeditions: 300 ships, 28 years with 27,000 crew (soldiers, physicians, astrologers, officials, translators) – Visiting Indonesia, India, Arabia, East Africa. = Zheng He captain.

• Many dozens came back to give abundant gifts to emperor Yongle (zebras, giraffes, etc…)

• Emperor Yongle dies – no more expeditions (waste of money and resources for the next dynasty)

EUROPEAN COMPARISONS: STATE BUILDING

• In Europe: similar processes of demographic recovery, political consolidation, cultural flowering.

• Western Europe escape the Mongol invasion, but the black death devastated Europe.

• Europe fragmented – separate independent states. -> divided Christendom (Spain, Portugal, France, England, Italy…)

• Russia state centered (Moscow) emerged after Mongol invasion.

• England and France (100year war) -1337 to 1453 over territories in France,

• Cultural bloosoming: Renaissance (parallel to Ming Dynasty restoration of China)

RENAISSANCE• Paralleled the revival of all things in Confucian

Ming Dynasty. • Europe> Cities celebrated and reclaimed the

Greco Roman tradition. Vibrant commercial cities of Italy *1300-1500 reflected Reniassance / new era.

• The elite patronnized great Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael – sculptures more naturalistic.

• Renaissance artists now included portraits, scenes from ancient mythology.

• Humanists- reflections on grammar, history, politics, poetry. Niccolo Machiavellis *The Prince.

RENAISSANCE• Renaissance writers and artists were men

(great majority), few exceptions such as Christine de Pizan, her writings pushed against the misogyny. – City of Ladies

• “I could find no evidence from my own experience to bear out such a negative view of female nature and habits.”

• Renaissance figures were more interested in capturing the unique qualities of particular individuals and in describing the world as it was.

• Renaissance culture reflected the urban bustle and commercial preoccupations of Italian cities.

• A new Europe.

EUROPEAN COMPARISONS: MARITIME VOYAGING

• Europe was also lauching maritime expeditions 1415 (Portugal), farther down the west coast of Africa. (finance by the State and blessed by the Pope).

• Two expeditions marked major breakthroughts: 1492 Christopher Columbus funded by Spain and Portugal made his way to the Atlantic. = The Americas.

• 5 years later (1497) Vasco de Gama launched a voyage that took him to the south of Africa along the East African coast, across the Indian Ocean to South India.

DIFFERENCES CHINESE VS EUROPEAN

• Difference of Chinese and European: SIZE• Columbus captained 3 ships and a crew of 90. While Gama

had 4 ships and 170 sailors. – compared to Sheng He´s ships of 1000s

• Motivation: Europeans were seeking the wealth of Africa and Asia (gold, spices, silk) & Christian converts (allies) to fight with the Crusades *VS Muslims.

• China: didnt need any allies in the Indian Ocean vasin. Nor did China wanted to impulse the Chinese culture or religion (as Europeans did).

• Europeans soon tried to monopolize by force the commerce of the Indian Ocean and violently carved out huge empires in the Americas.

COMPARISONS: EUROPE AND CHINA• European effort, which soon brought the worlds oceans

and growing numers of the world’s people under its control.

• Zheng He’s voyages were so long neglected. They led nowwhere. Where in Europe inital expeditions, smaller but promising were the first steps on a journey to world power.

• Europe had NO unified political authority with no power to order and end to its maritime outreach. – unlike China a single unified empire.

• Europe’s elite had an interest in overseas expansion.- saw opportunity for expansion.

• Europe’s monarchs eyed the revenue from taxing overseas trade.

• Church foresaw the possibility of widespread conversion.

COMPARISONS• Zheng He’s voyages were very shallow in official circles or

elite. Later, these were opposed. • Chinese believed strongly in the absolute superiority of

their culture that felt that other would bring to them gifts. • Europeans also believed they were unique, particularly in

religious terms as possessors of Christianity *one true religion.

• Europeans were seeking greater rich from East *Muslims blocked access to these trasures and posed a military and religious threat.

• The Chinese withdrawal from the Indian Ocean actually facilitated European entry.

CIVILIZATIONS 15TH CENTURY: ISLAMIC WORLD• Islamic civilization fragmented into 4: Ottoman Empire,

Safavid Empire (Iran), Mughal Empire (India) and Songhay Empire (Africa)

OTTOMAN AND SAFAVID EMPIRES• Ottoman Empire which lasted many

centuries (14th to 19th centuries). Was the creation of Turkic warrior groups that migrated to Anatolia. By 15th century: a state.

• Ottoman empire extended its control to much of the Middle East, North Africa, and the lands of Black Sea and Eastern Europe.

• Ottoman Empire was a state of enormous significance in the world of the 15th century and beyond.

• Huge in territory, long duration, incorporation of many diverse people, economic and cultural sophistication = a great empire in the world history.

OTTOMAN EMPIRE• Ottoman sultans claimed the legacy

of the earlier Abbasid Empire. They sought to bring a renewed unity to Islamic world.

• In the Crusades, Europeans had taken the aggressice initiative in that encounter, but the rise of the Ottoman Empire reverse their roles.

• The seizure of Constantinople in 1453 marked the final of Christian Byzantium and allowed Otoman rulers to see themselves as successors to the Roman Empire.

• Europeans spoke fearfully of the “Terror of the Turk”

SAFAVID EMPIRE• Safavid Empire – its leadership was also Turkic, emerged

from the Sufi religious order. But later evolved to a Shia version of Islam. *unique identity of Persian Iranian culture.

FRONTIERS OF ISLAM: SONGHAY AND MUGHAL EMPIRES

While the Ottoman and Safavid Empires brought a new political unity a sharp division to the heartland of Islam. 2 other states perdormed a similar role on the expanding Africa and Asian frontiers. • Songhay Empire through the Trans-Saharan trade

routes derived much of their revenue from that taing commerce. (urban elites in Islam)

• Songhay cultural division arouse from the monarch SONNI ALI (1465-1492) who gave alms (money for the poor) and fasted during Ramadan in proper Islamic style, but also enjoyed a reputation as a magician (soldiers invisible to their enemies).

• Songhay empire, became a major center of Islamic learning and commerce.

• Sonni Ali´s successor made the pilgrimage to Mecca and name himself as CALIPH OF THE LAND OF BLACKS.

MUGHAL EMPIRE• The Mughal also had similarities with Songhay

empire. Both largely governed non muslim populations.

• Ottoman empire initiated a new phace of communication and interaction with Christendom. So did the Mughal with Hindu civilizations.

• Mughal Empire was the creation of Islamized Turkic group, which invaded India in 1526. Established a unified control over most of the Indian peninsula.

• During its first 150 years, the Mughal empire, undertook a remarkable effort to blend many Hindu groups and variety of Muslims into an effective partnership.

• Trying to imitate the Ottoman, that provided a religious autonomy for their Christian peoples.

FLOWERING OF ISLAM• In south India another distinctly kingdom

emerged. VIJAYANAGARA. -> Borrowed architectural Muslim styles and employed Muslim mercenaries in its forces.

• Together these 4 empires: OTTOMAN, SAFAVID, SONGHAY AND MUGHAL. Brought Islamic world a greater measure of political coherence, military power and economic prosperity for the Islam. = SECOND FLOWERING OF ISLAM.

• Spread of Islamic faith to Southeast Asia – Indian Ocean commerce. (Java and Sumatra, Indonesia)- Islamic Law.

• The rise of Malacca, major Muslim port. – demostrated a blending of Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim traditions.

THE AMERICAS

THE AZTEC EMPIRE• The empire known to history as the Aztec

state was largely the work of Mexica people, semi nomadic from northern Mexico who had migrated southward by 1320 established on a small island in Lake Texoco.

• The Mexica developed military capacity. Built up their own capital in the city of Tenochtitlán.

• Population at its core of 6 million. • Conquered peoples and cities were required

to regularly deliver to their Aztec rulers impressive quantities of textiles and clothing, military supplies, jewelry, animal products. –tribute collectors

• Tenochtitlan great canals, bridges, causeways, streets…

AZTEC EMPIRE• The extent of the empire and rapid

population growth stimulated the development of markets and the production of craft goods.

• Marketplace: Largest Tlatelolco – every king of merchandise. Merchants known as: POCHTECA

• Among the goods that pochteca obtained were slaves, whom were destined for sacrifice in bloody rituals so central to religious life.

RELIGIOUS LIFE AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD

• The sun was central to all life and identified with the Aztec patron deity of HUITZILOPOCHTLI. (Constant battle everyday to the darkness) = Aztec world viewed as cathastrophe.

• The sun required the life giving force found in human blood. To nourish the gods in.

• Aztec state was to supply blood, largely through its wars of expansion and from prisioners of war, who were destined for sacrifice.

• The growth of Aztec empire became the means for maintaining cosmic order.

• As the empire grew, priests and rulers became mutually dependent on human sacrifices.

• Massive sacrificial rituals, together display of great wealth, served to impress enemies and allies.

NEZAHUALCOYOTL• Nezahualcoyotl a poet and king of Texcoco described

his view of life:Truly do we live on Earth?

Not forever on earth, only a little while here. Although it be jade, it will be broken.

Although it be gold, it is crushed.Although it be a quetzal feather, it is torn.

Not forever on earth only a little while here.

THE INCA EMPIRE• Quechua speaking people, known to us as

the Inca, was building the largest imperial state along the Andes mountains.

• Incas incorporated the lands and cultures of earlier Andean civilizations the Chavin, Moche, Wari and Tiwanaku. With up to 10 million people.

• Inca state emcompassed practically the whole of Andean civilization.

• Incas erected a rather more bureaucratic empire. The king *ruler regarded as divine, descendant of the creator god Viracocha and the son of the sun god Inti.

INCAS POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

• The Inca empire owned all the land and resources divided in 80 provinces. Each one with an Inca governor. Provinces organized in hierarchical units of 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5,000 and 10,000 people.

• Each headed by local officials, who were appointed by the Inca governor.

• Separate set of inspectors, provided the imperial center with an independent check of the officials and governors. Also gathered information on births, deaths, marriages, recorded on Quipus. *Knotted cords served as accounting device.

• Conquered people had to learn Quechua.• Still in the present, millions of people from

Ecuador and Chile speak Quechua.

INCAS BUILDING EMPIRE• Incas required their peoples to acknowledge

the Incas deities, but were largely free to carry on their own religious traditions.

• Like Aztec empire, the Inca state represented an specially dense and extended networkd of economic relationships within the American web.

• Incas to compared to Aztec tribute system, the Incas demanded labor service. MITA

• Everyone had work for the state for periods or fulltime *conquered. Work in the “sun farms” which supported temples and religious institutions, mines, military trainning, or state construction projects.

AND WOMEN?• For particular skills, known as “chosen women”

who were removed from their homes as young girls, trained in Inca ideology, set to prodice corn beer, cloth. – later given as wives to men of distinction: wives of the sun.

• The Inca and Aztec civilizations differed sharply in the political and economic arrangementes. But resembled in their gender systems.

• Scholars call GENDER PARALLELISM = women and men operate in two separate but equivalent spheres, each gender enjoying autonomy in its own sphere.

• Incas,men recognize descent from father and women from mother, while Aztec equally.

COMPARISONS INCAS AND AZTECS• Inca men venerated the sun, and women venerated

the moon. • Aztec empire, both male and female priests presided

over rituals. • Incas, male and female had political officials to help

govern the empire. • Aztecs society, women exercised local authority

under a title “female person in charge of people”. • Social roles were clearly defined, but the domestic

labor such as childbirth, cooking, cleaning were NOT regarded as inferior.

• Aztec: sweeping was a powerful and sacred act with symbolic significance “act of purification and preventative against evil elements penetrating the center of Aztec universe, the home”.

GENDER PARALLELISM• NONE OF THIS MEANT

GENDER EQUALITY. • Men occupied the top positions

in both political and religious life. • Male infidelity was treated more

lightly than women. • Incas and Aztec empires

expanded, military life, limited to men. Still there was always the importance of women.

WEBS OF CONNECTION• Eventhough, people in the 15th century lived

in entirely separate and self contained communities, almost all were caught up to one degree in various and overlaping webs of influence, communication and exchange.

• Webs of empires, large scale political systems that brought together a variety of culturally different people.

• Christians and Muslims encountered each other directly in the Ottoman Empire, as Hindu and Muslims in the Mughal Empire.

• Religion too linked far people from England to Russia, although there is a division of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

• In the 16th centuries protestant reformation would shatter permanently the Christian unity of the Latin West.

• Buddhism largely vanished from parts of South Asian homeland but remained a link among China, Korea, Tibet and Japan.

• Islam also actively brought together people. The pilgrimage to Mecca, Africans, Arabs, Turks and Indians gave birth to a common faith. – Yet divisions and conflicts persisted within the Islam (Sunni Ottoman Empire vs Shia Safavid Empire).

• Still 15th century had commerce that everlasted and also broked.

COMMERCIAL NETWORKS

• Siberian furs were found in the Silk Road trading network.

• Nigeria received horses brought overland from drier parts of the north.

• Canoe commerce along waterways in Amazon and North America Orinoco rivers.

• Coastal shipping in Caribbean along the Pacific coast.

• Micronesian Island of Yap, was the center of trading network (Palau)

• People of Tonga and Samoa (Fiji) intermarried and exchanged goods.

• 15th century the balance was shifting-changing

WEBS OF TRADE• Mongols controlled the Silk road,

then after the plague, commerce contracted.

• Ottoman Empire also blocked commercial between Europe and China.

• Still Islamic culture allowed vast regions to smoothed the passage of goods among different people *trans Saharan trade routes.

LOOKING AHEAD-> MODERN ERA• While ties of Empires, cultures and

commerce linked people, none of those connections operated on a global scale.

• The situation changed when Europeans in the 16th century forged a set of global relationships that generated sustained interaction among all of these regions.

• Outcomes that flowed from it marked the beginning of what world historians commonly call the modern age. *5 centuries that followed after the voyages of Columbus.

• Linked the worlds of Afro Asian, Americas, Pacific Oceania – with enormous consequences.

BEGINNING OF MODERN ERA• Global empires, global economy, global cultural

exchanges, global migrations, global diseases and global wars have made the past 500 years a unique phase in human journey.

• The emergence of a radically new kind of human society, first in Europe during the 19th century and then in various forms of the world.

• The core feature of such societies was INDUSTRIALIZATION, rooted in sustained growth of technological innovations.

• Human ability to create wealth in shorts period of time.

• Economic and industrial revolution was an equally distinctive jump in human numbers affecting also species.

MODERN SOCIETIES• People began to work for wages, to produce for

the market. • Urban wealth: mearchants, bankers, industrialists,

educated professionals, at the expense of landowning elites, generating factory working class and diminishing the role of peasants and artisans.

• Modern societies were generally governed by states that were powerful and intrusive than earlier states and empires.

• New national identities became increasingly prominent, competieng with local loyalties.

• The mix of established religions and ideas were now added the challenging outlook and values of modern science.

MODERN SOCIETIES• Tensions between the rich and poor within societies

were now paralled by new economic inequialities among entire regions and civilizations. – altered the global balance of power

• Western Europe and North America became both a threat and a source of envy to much of the rest of the world. Modern societies emerged and spread with destructive patterns of human life.

• Europeans people created new societies all across the Americas and as far away as Australia and New Zeland.

• Their languages were spoken and their Christian religion was widely practiced throughout the Americas and parts of Asia and Africa.

WORLD HISTORY• Scientific and Industrial revolutions first took

shape, whin enormously powerfull intellectual and economic consequences for the entire planet.

• Liberalism, nationalism, feminism, socialism all bore the imprint of their European origin.

• Despite their many differences of people of Asia, Africa, Middle East and the Americas all found themselves confronted by powerful and intrusive Europeans.

• The impact of this intrusion and how various people responded to it: by resistance, submission, acceptance and imitation, represent critically important threads in the world history.

WHAT IF…• WHAT IF THE GREAT KHAN OF THE MONGOL FORCES

MANAGED TO ASSAULT ON GERMANY AND THE POPE?

• WHAT IF THE CHINESE HAD DECIDED IN 1433 TO CONTINUE THEIR HUGE MARITIME EXPEDITIONS AND PERHAPS MOVING ON TO DISCOVER THE AMERICAS?

• WHAT IF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE HAD TAKEN VIENNA IN 1529?

• SUCH ESCENARIO SUGGESTS A WHOLLY DIFFERENT FUTURE FOR WORLD HISTORY THAN THE ONE THAT IN FACT OCCURRED.

What if approach to history reminds us that alternative possibilities existed in the past and that the only

certainty about the future is that we will be surprised.