ASUB - World Civilization Before 1660 - Eddie Supratman - Chapter 18
Long Distance Trade
Patterns
Silks roads
Indian Ocean basin sea lanes
Trans-Saharan trade routes
Trade cities
Development, emporia; Melaka
Nomadic invasions destructive, but globalize trade
e.g. Mongols in 13th century China
Marco Polo
Best known traveler
Merchant who travels to China with father and uncle
Stories of Adventure
Trade spurred by lucrative trade markets
Diplomacy
Mongol-Christian diplomacy
Created by trade after 1 000 AD
13th century, both recognize Muslims as common enemy
Pope Innocent IV invites Mongols to convert to Christianity
Mongol counter offer: accept Mongol rule or face destruction
Rabban Sauma
Nestorian Christian priest
1287 Persian Mongols send him to the pope proposing an attack on Jerusalem
Did not win European support
1295, Persia accepts Islam
Ibn Battuta
Islamic scholar, bureaucrat, and traveler
Punished according to sharia
Lashes for drinking alcohol
Missions
Sufi Missionaries
Sufi missionaries travel throughout new Muslim territories, 1000-1500 AD
Christian missionaries
Follow crusaders
Roman Catholic priests travel east to serve expatriate
Christianity has limited appeal for east Asia
Cultural exchange
Culture
European troubadours take Muslim love songs
Agricultural and technological diffusion
Exchange between Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scientists
Agriculture
Muslims introduce citrus fruits, Asian rice, and cotton
Sugarcane
Muslims introduce to Europe
High demand
Europeans use Muslim precedent of having large slave populations to work on sugarcane plantations
Plagues
Little Ice Age
1000-1300 AD
Agricultural decline and famine
Bubonic Plague
Came from southwest China
Carried by fleas on rodents
Mongols campaign spread disease to Chinese interior
The spread of the plague
Mongols, merchants, and travelers
1346, Black sea ports; 1347, Mediterranean ports; 1348, western Europe
Inflamed and discolored lymph nodes
Buboes, "bubonic"
60-70% mortality
Extreme north kills fleas
India and sub-Sahara unaffected for unknown reasons
Social and Economic Effects
Massive labor shortage
Demand for higher wages
Government try to freeze wages
riots result
Healing the World
Chinese Recovery, the Ming Dynasty
Hongwu
1368-1644 proclaims new Ming (brilliant) dynasty
The Ming
Restablish Confucian education
Minister suspected of treason education, direct emperor rule follows
Mandarins and Eunuchs
Reliance on emissaries called mandarins
Sterile eunuchs couldn't build hereditary power base
Centralized power lasts until 1911
Economic recovery
Conscripted labor to rebuild and repair irrigation
Porcelain and silk manufacturing
Culture
Promotes Chinese tradition to eradicate Mongol legacy
Emperor Yongle commissions 23,000-roll encyclopedia
Yongle Encyclopedia
Impoverished orphan raised by Buddhist monks, worked up military ranks, became emperor
Europe
Taxes and armies build large states
Italian States
Direct taxes and long-term bonds strengthen authority
France and England
Levied taxes, large standing armies
1461-1483 Louis XI had army of 15 000
Spain
Fernando of Aragon marries Isabel of Castile, 1469
Unites Spain
Completes reconquista through Iberian peninsula and Italy
Small wars
Developped military and Navy
The Renaissance
Italian Renaissance Art
"Rebirth" of classical culture
Italian artists use perspective
Work with real human anatomy and musculature
(1452-1519) Leonardo da Vinci
Linear perspective
Donatello; Buonarotti
Architecture
Domed cathedrals
Imitate Roman domes
Humanists
Humanities: literature, history, moral philosophy
Devoted Christians
1466-1535 Desiderius Erasmis publishes Greek-Latin edition of the New Testament
Devoted Classicists
Petrarch and other Latin texts ignored by the church
Humanist Moral Thought
Rejected monastic life for virtuous life that's involved in the world
Marriage, business
Reconciled Christianity with the modern world
Connection to Large World
Artists explore Byzantine and Asia
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man
Exploration
Chinese Exploration
Zheng He's Expeditions
Give trade control to the Crown
Demonstrates China's naval power
Naval power
Establishes presence and reputation in the Indian Ocean
End of Voyages
Confucian ministers mistrust Zheng He
New Mongol threat from the north
1405-1433 Yongle engages Admiral Zheng He to mount 7 massive expeditions
European Exploration
Portugal
needed profit and converts
Portuguese explore Atlantic early
Search for sea route to Indian Ocean basin
Prince Henrique (Henry the Navigator) seizes Ceuta
Encourages exploration
Atlantic colonization
Madeiras, Azores Islands, etc.
Sugarcane plantations
Slaves
West African exploration
Dramatic slave trade increase
12 million moved to Americas for slave labor
Indian Ocean Trade
Attempt to avoid to Muslim middlemen
1488, Bartolomeu Dias sails around cape of Good Hope
1497-1499, Vasco da Gama sails this route to India and Back
Christopher Columbus
Search for western sea route to Indian Ocean
Portuguese reject his proposal
Fernando and Isabel of Spain underwrites voyage, Columbus departs in 1492
Lands in San Salvador, thinking he reached East Asian islands
