AP World History / Ways of the World second edition by Robert W. Strayer. Summary of Chapter 12 An Age of Accelerating Connections 500-1500, The worlds of the fifteenth century.

1. CHAPTER 12
THE WORLDS OF THE
FIFTEENTH CENTURY
An Age of Accelerating
Connections 500-1500
AP WORLD HISTORY
WAYS OF THE WORLD
R. STRAYER
2015 SOFISANDOVAL

2. •“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)

3. PALEOLITHIC PERSISTANCE:
AUSTRALIAAND 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.

4. 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

5. 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.

6. PASTORAL PEOPLE: CENTRALASIA
AND WESTAFRICA
• 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.

7. 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)

8. 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)

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. CIVILIZATIONS 15TH CENTURY:
ISLAMIC WORLD
• Islamic civilization fragmented into 4: Ottoman Empire,
Safavid Empire (Iran), Mughal Empire (India) and
Songhay Empire (Africa)

16. 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.

17. 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”

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. THE AMERICAS

23. 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…

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. INCAS POLITICALAND 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.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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”.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. • 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.

35. 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

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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.

41. 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.

42. 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.