Ch. 1 Many Worlds of the Fifteenth Century Flashcards
(39 cards)
Marco Polo
Marco Polo (1254 - 1324) – a Venetian merchant that traveled to Asia for trade and made many remarkable observations on his journeys.
Treasure Fleet
TREASURE FLEET – a massive fleet of giant ships from the Chinese city of NANJING, then the most populous city in the world.
Admiral Zheng He (1371–1433), a Muslim from the southwestern region of the empire, led the fleet into the South China Sea and across Southeast Asia reaching the kingdom of Calicut in southwestern India.
- There were many voyages with commercial, diplomatic, and strategic accomplishments.
- These voyages of the treasure Fleet continued into the 1430s.
Admiral Zheng He
Admiral Zheng He (1371–1433), a Muslim from the southwestern region of the empire, led the TREASURE FLEET into the South China Sea and across Southeast Asia reaching the kingdom of Calicut in southwestern India.
- There were many voyages with commercial, diplomatic, and strategic accomplishments.
- These voyages of the Treasure Fleet continued into the 1430s.
Prince Henry
Prince Henry (1394–1460), a son of the Portuguese king, financed a series of expeditions into the Atlantic Ocean, leading to the establishment of plantations on islands in the Atlantic Ocean and trading posts on the west coast of Africa.
- The wealth these expeditions brought directly to Portugal, including gold from Africa and sugar from Madeira Island, inspired additional expeditions.
Caravels
CARAVELS – 15th-century Portuguese vessels much smaller than their immense Chinese counterparts, but better able to maneuver in shallow coastal waters.
Vasco de Gama
Vasco da Gama – Captained a fleet of Four Portuguese Caravels and became the first Europeans to round the Cape of Good Hope, Africa’s southern tip, and cross from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
Afonso de Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515) was a Portuguese nobleman who seized Goa, a city north of Calicut (on the Southwest coast of India), creating Portugal’s base as it attempted to gain a greater share of wealth from the world’s most lucrative commercial crossroads.
- And also to spread Christianity in Asia.
- NOTE: ‘Spreading’ their religion was always a priority with both Christians and Muslims of the day.
Afro-Eurasian Supercontinent
AFRO-EURASIAN SUPERCONTINENT – Although it is common to divide the world’s landmass into six or seven continents, prior to 1500, it made historical sense to consider Europe, Asia, and Africa as a single Afro-Eurasian supercontinent across which ideas, commodities, and peoples flowed for thousands of years.
- This is a Primary theme in this course
C.E. and B.C.E.
CE – Common Era
BCE – Before Common Era
- These are alternative non-religious notations that are gaining favor used instead of BC (“before Christ”) and AD (anno Domini, “in [the] year of [the] Lord”).
- Even so, the difference between CE And BCE remains the point at which Jesus Christ was allegedly born (aka. day zero in year zero AD (or CE as it were)
State vs. Sovereignty
STATE – is the organized exercise of power over a certain territory and the people who live in it.
- If you focus on WHAT governments do (make and enforce laws, raise armies, declare wars, and collect taxes) rather than HOW governments do these things, or how they claim the right to do these things, then you’ve got the basic idea of what a state is.
- To think about STATES is to think about the accumulation, preservation, and use of the power to do these things.
In contrast…
SOVEREIGNTY – is about more than just enforcing your will through violence. It requires LEGITIMACY, meaning that a ruler must not only show the ability to rule but also justify his or her claim to that rule.
- So Sovereignty = Statehood + Legitimacy
- An Entity attempting to act like a STATE is claiming sovereignty. But, in order to actually move from being a STATE, which is simply exerting its superior power, to becoming a SOVEREIGNTY, the entity must show that they are LEGITIMATE leaders for that territory.
- SOVEREIGNTY means the entity is making and enforcing rules for interactions within a given territory and continuously defending against internal and external threats
- THUS, States, therefore, tend to survive by delivering benefits to enough people to reduce the need for massive or constant physical violence imposed on the entire population.
- Those who claim sovereignty link these demonstrations of HOW they can exercise power to claims of WHY they should be able to do so. This is a claim of LEGITIMACY.
Examples of Enduring Political Systems
Rome under the Five Good Emperors (96 CE–180 CE) or…
Han dynasty China (206 BCE–220 CE)
- Both made long-distance travel and commerce easier in many ways.
- Both states built infrastructure to collect and redistribute resources
- Both maintained control over territories and people through the use of legal systems as much as armies.
Empire
EMPIRE – is the successful assertion of sovereignty over large expanses of territory in which ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse peoples live.
- Empires are states in which those who rule act as if only practical considerations—oceans or mountain ranges, for instance—can limit their sovereignty and legitimacy.
- Empires create imbalances among the various peoples and territories under the sovereign’s authority, with some receiving greater benefits from the political and economic system than others.
Religion and Legitimacy
For a STATE to become a SOVEREIGNTY, it needed LEGITIMACY.
In the years prior to the 18th Century, religious leaders and centers had the power to confer legitimacy upon a leader. And so, there was fierce competition for religious centers.
- This legitimating power made RELIGION an important tool used by those who aspired to exercise sovereignty.
- This was especially true of Christianity and Islam, both because these religions were extraordinarily successful in attracting followers and because both faiths required their followers to spread their religion by converting nonbelievers.
- From the fourth century on, Christianity became important to empire builders as a faith tradition that could support claims of political authority; Islam emerged with similar characteristics during the seventh century.
Christendom and dar al-Islam
Because there were so many factions within each of Christianity and Islam, terms were used to refer to the entirety of Christians (CHRISTENDOM) and the entirety of Islam (DAR AL-ISLAM)) regardless of their divergent beliefs.
Biological Old Regime
OLD REGIME (or BIOLOGICAL OLD REGIME) – refers to the fact that there was an incredibly small amount of technological progress for the average person for thousands of years up until about 1500.
- In the year 1150, it took a traveler about 9 days to travel 150 miles over land.
- Traveling over the same land 200 years later, took the same amount of time.
- There was virtually no advancement in technology that significantly improved the lives of these people who lived two centuries apart (For perspective, think of how we live today vs. someone who lived in 1820 – a massive difference).
- In fact, the lack of progress over those 200 years was typical of life prior to the industrial revolution.
- In fact, constraints of daily life had remained steady, rooted in a relationship between energy and human productivity that had changed little since humans first began sedentary agricultural THOUSANDS of years earlier.
- Scholars like Robert Marks refer to these realities, with their enduring constraints on population and productivity growth, as the biological OLD REGIME.
Mongol Empire
MONGOL EMPIRE – In the early 1200s the Mongol chieftain Chinggis Khan (ca. 1162–1227) and his heirs, descended from nomads of the Eurasian steppe, built the largest empire ever on the land-mass of Afro-Eurasia.
- Mongol authority came at a high price in lives and resources, as Mongols were portrayed as destroyers of order.
- More recent scholars balance this view with what the Mongols built in its place. Some even use the term Pax Mongolica (Mongolian Peace) to characterize the Mongol Empire at its height, as people, goods, and ideas flowed back and forth across Eurasia, using routes protected by the Mongol military’s highly skilled horsemen, but more importantly by the order imposed by the Mongol khan.
- In China, rebel armies fought the Mongols, laying the groundwork for the rise of the Ming dynasty in the 1360s.
Pax Mongolica
PAX MONGOLICA (Mongolian Peace) refers to the characterization of the Mongol Empire at its height in a positive light, as people, goods, and ideas flowed back and forth across Eurasia, using routes protected by the Mongol military’s and by the order imposed by the Mongol khan.
- This is in contrast to the sweeping traditionally negative characterization of the ‘Mogol Hordes’ who brought destruction with them everywhere.
14th Century Crisis
The 14th Century (1300s) seemed to be racked with devastation. This is important because rulers and societies of the 15th century were responding to these multiple upheavals that preceded them.
- England and France engaged in a seemingly endless cycle of battles that came to be known as the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). Armies and leaders from across Europe joined the fighting intermittently.
- More important in shaping lives across a wider landscape, a cooling climate trend affected agricultural production. Ongoing warfare and the changing climate led to frequent and widespread food shortages in the fourteenth century.
- Deprivation, religious disputes, and discontent with rulers drove popular revolts across Europe.
- In the middle of the century of crises arrived the most devastating of them all: the Bubonic plague—known as the Black Death because of its symptoms and lethality—spread from China through oceanic and overland trade networks across much of Afro-Eurasia.
- Historians estimated that the population of Europe fell by 25% from 80 million to 60 million during the era of the Black Death.
- For comparison, that would be like 2 billion people dying today.
- Covid has so far killed about 1/2,000th of that amount or 0.0005%
- Historians estimated that the population of Europe fell by 25% from 80 million to 60 million during the era of the Black Death.
Ming Dynasty
China reigned as the wealthiest and most populous empire in the world in the fifteenth century. The ruling MING DYNASTY had come to power in 1368 after defeating the Yuan dynasty, which had been established by the Mongol conquerors.
- The new dynasty was called Ming, meaning “bright,” to proclaim that this was a new Chinese empire after two centuries of Mongol rule.
- The imperial palace, known as the FORBIDDEN CITY (still standing as the largest complex of its kind in the world) embodied the new dynasty’s power.
- The strength of the empire varied over time, but there weren’t enough government officials to regularly interact with the population across such a large landmass.
- Instead, China’s strength lay in its commercial vigor and regional autonomy, which yielded an economy that could produce and distribute staple foods within the empire as well as luxury goods like silk and porcelain.
- This was the Dynasty that built the Treasure Fleet captained by Admiral Zheng He.
Voyages of Zheng He
Admiral Zheng He, the leader of the Treasure Fleet during the Ming Dynasty was touted as being peaceful.
- The massive fleet boasted 28,000 sailers and boats 400 feet long, many times larger than European ships of the time.
- Scholars have wondered if the (relatively) nonviolent nature of the Treasure Fleet could have created a different future if it had remained standing into the colonial expansion of Europe.
- This type of expansion led by Chinese, might have shaped the world much differently than the often-violent colonial expansions that European nations – led first by Spain and Portugal – would undertake from the end of the 15th century on.
- But the Treasure Fleet ended its voyages in 1433 and no primary source seems to explain why.
- Though it’s probably not a coincidence that Zheng He died in 1433 as the Fleet was returning from Africa – perhaps making it easier for opponents of the Fleet and its purpose (to spread a Chinese World order, though not occupy territory) to scuttle the program.
Timurid Dynasty and the Vijayanagara
(Central and South Asia)
TIMURID DYNASTY – founded by Timur, also known as Tamerlane (1336–1405). A Muslim descendant of Mongol rulers, Timur built a vast empire in southwest Asia populated by Mongols, Persians, Kazakhs, Turks, and others.
- Timur’s descendants could not hold the empire together; but in the sixteenth century, one of them (Babur) did succeed in creating a new South Asian Muslim empire, the Mughal.
VIJAYANAGARA – From the fourteenth century through the seventeenth century, much of South Asia was ruled by a Hindu dynasty, the Vijayanagara.
- Determined to keep the power of Muslim rulers from spreading south and to keep other Hindu kingdoms in check.
- Vijayanagara rulers were aided by Muslim mercenaries who trained Hindu warriors in new military strategies and tactics.
- This training would then be used against the (Christian) Portuguese incursions of the sixteenth century.
NOTE: These complex interactions (Religious in-fighting) illustrate the limitations of understanding conflict and expansion as primarily religious in nature.
Ottoman Empire
OTTOMAN EMPIRE – Straddled the dividing line between Asia and Europe, serving as a key Afro-European link. As it grew in this strategic location linking South Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, and Europe, the Ottoman Empire could be either a bridge or a barrier for stitching together the northern regions of the supercontinent.
MEHMED II (1432–1481) (The Conqueror) – was one of the Ottomans’ most important sultans. He was Muslim but was neither Arab (from the Arabian Peninsula) nor a speaker of Arabic as his native language. (The same was true for Zheng He, the Admiral of China’s Treasure Fleet)
- This ethnic diversity within Islam shows us that Islam, like Christianity, had evolved into a religion open to all rather than limited to a specific ethnic or linguistic group.
- Mehmed II established separate communities, called MILLETS, organized by religious tradition, whether it be Muslim, Christian, or Jewish.
- For each community, a religious leader appointed by, and therefore most likely loyal to, the Ottoman government made most legal and political decisions.
- In 1453, as sultan, Mehmed orchestrated the conquest of Constantinople, one of the world’s largest cities and a center of Christian authority since the fourth century.
Millet
MILLETS were separate communities organized by religious tradition, whether it be Muslim, Christian, or Jewish.
- For each community, a religious leader appointed by, and therefore most likely loyal to, the Ottoman government made most legal and political decisions.
- Mehmed II established Millets across the Ottoman Empire.
Christian and Muslim In-Fighting
Neither ISLAM nor CHRISTIANITY was unified (nor are they even now).
- The “Christian authority” in Constantinople did not recognize the pope in Rome – the Orthodox Church split from “Roman” Catholicism in 1054.
- On the Muslim side, the Ottomans laid claim to the traditions of Sunni Islam, which was the largest division within that faith, but by no means universal, the primary divisions being the Sunnis and the Shi’a.
- The key difference between Sunni Islam and Shi`a Islam is that:
- Shi`a Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad appointed his son-in-law and cousin, Ali, to be his successor and the first caliph while Sunni Muslims do not.
- Thus, Shi`a Muslims would thus not recognize Sunni claims about a caliphate.
- This conflict continues to this day.
- Shi`a Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad appointed his son-in-law and cousin, Ali, to be his successor and the first caliph while Sunni Muslims do not.
- The key difference between Sunni Islam and Shi`a Islam is that:
