Chapter 12: The Worlds of the 15th Century

1. Chapter 12: The Worlds of the Fifteenth Century

I. The Shapes of Human Communities

• Paleolithic people: Australia, Siberia, parts of Africa and America. -> changed over time.
• Australia: Europeans arrived 18th century
• 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.
• Turkic leader: Timur, (West Uzbekistan) – brought immense devastation again to Russia, Persia and India
• Hosted a elite culture, combining Turkic and Persian elements
• 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.
• After the Mongol rule in China and plague: population sharply reduced, destructiveness
• Ming Dynasty (1368-1645) Promoted Confucian learning
• 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)
• 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
• Renaissance (parallel to Ming Dynasty restoration of China)
• Renaissance writers and artists were men (great majority)
• Renaissance culture reflected the urban bustle and commercial preoccupations of Italian cities
• A new Europe.

II. Civilizations of the Fifteenth Century: Comparing China and Europe

• Europe was also launching expeditions 1415 (Portugal), farther down the west coast of Africa. (finance by the State and blessed by the Pope)
• Two expeditions marked major breakthroughs:
• 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.
• Difference of Chinese and European: Size
• Columbus captained 3 ships and a crew of 90
• Gama had 4 ships and 170 sailors
• Sheng He´s ships of 1000s
• Europeans were seeking the wealth of Africa and Asia (gold, spices, silk)
• European effort brought the worlds oceans and growing numbers of the world’s people under its control
• Zheng He’s voyages were so long neglected
• led nowwhere
• Europe initial expeditions
• smaller but promising
• were the first steps on a journey to world power.
• Europe had no unified political authority
• no power to order and end to its maritime outreach.
• China a single unified empire
• Europe 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.
• Zheng He’s voyages were very shallow in official circles or elite
• were later opposed.

III. Civilizations of the Fifteenth Century: The Islamic World

• Islamic civilization fragmented into 4: Ottoman Empire, Safavid Empire (Iran), Mughal Empire (India) and Songhai Empire (Africa)
• Ottoman Empire lasted many centuries (14th to 19th centuries)
• was creation of Turkic warrior groups that migrated to Anatolia
• 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.
• Otoman rulers to saw themselves as successors to the Roman Empire
• Europeans spoke fearfully of the “Terror of the Turk”
• The rise of Malacca, major Muslim port.
• demonstrated a blending of Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim traditions.

IV. Civilizations of the Fifteenth Century: The Americas

• 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
• Conquered peoples and cities were required to regularly deliver to their Aztec rulers impressive quantities of:
• textiles and clothing
• military supplies
• jewelry
• animal products
• Tenochtitlan
• great canals
• bridges
• causeways
• streets
• etc.
• pochteca obtained were slaves
• were destined for sacrifice in bloody rituals so central to religious life
• The sun was central to all life
• Aztec world viewed as cathastrophe
• The sun required the life giving force found in human blood
• Aztec state was to supply blood, largely through its wars of expansion and from prisioners of war
• who were destined for sacrifice
• Incas incorporated the lands and cultures of earlier Andean civilizations the Chavin, Moche, Wari and Tiwanaku
• The Inca empire owned all the land and resources divided in 80 provinces
• Each one with an Inca governor
• organized in hierarchical units of 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5,000 and 10,000 people
• headed by local officials, who were appointed by the Inca governor
• Incas to compared to Aztec tribute system, the Incas demanded labor service
• 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 arrangements
• 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.
• Inca men venerated the sun
• women venerated the moon
• Aztec empire
• both male and female priests presided over rituals
• women exercised local authority under a title “female person in charge of people”\
• defined roles
• Incas
• male and female had political officials to help govern the empire.
• 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
• there was still always the importance of women.

V. Webs of Connection

• Even though, people in the 15th century lived in entirely separate and self contained communities, almost all were caught up to one degree in various and overlapping webs of influence, communication and exchange
• 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.
• Buddhism largely vanished from parts of South Asian homeland but remained a link among China, Korea, Tibet and Japan
• Islam brought together people
• The pilgrimage to Mecca, Africans, Arabs, Turks and Indians gave birth to a common faith.
• 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
• People of Tonga and Samoa (Fiji) intermarried and exchanged goods.
• 15th century the balance was shifting- changing

VI. A Preview of Coming Attractions: Looking Ahead to the Modern Era, 1500–2012

• cultures and commerce linked people, none of those connections operated on a global scale.
• Global empires
• global economy
• global cultural exchanges
• global migrations
• global diseases 
• global wars
• have made the past 500 years a unique phase in human journey
• 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.
• People began to work for wages, to produce for the market
• Modern societies were generally governed by states that were powerful and intrusive than earlier states and empires
• mix of established religions and ideas
• values of modern science
• Tensions between the rich and poor within societies were now paralled by new economic inequialities among entire regions and civilizations
• 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.