Fifteenth Century Civilizations Notes

The Worlds of the Fifteenth Century: Chapter 12

Developments throughout the 15^th century

• Central, East, Southeast Asia
  • Ming Dynsasty China, 1368-1644
  • Conquests of Timur, 1370-1406
  • Zheng He's maritime voyages, 1405-1433
  • Spread of Islam into Southeast Asia
  • Rise of Malacca
  • Civil war among competing warlords in Japan

• South Asia/India
  • Timur's invasion of India, 1398
  • Various Muslim sultanates in northern India
  • Rise of Hindu state ofVijayanagar in southern India
  • Founding of Mughal Empire, 1526

• Middle East
  • Expansion of Ottoman Empire
  • Ottoman seizure of Constantinople, 1453
  • Founding of Safavid Empire in Persia, 1501
  • Ottoman siege of Vienna, 1529

• Christendom/Europe
  • European Renaissance
  • Portuguese voyages of exploration along West African coast
  • Completion of reconquest of Spain, ending Muslim control
  • End of the Byzantine Empire, 1453
  • End of Mongol rule in Russia; reign of Ivan the Great, 1462-1505

• Africa
  • Songhay Empire in West Africa, 1464-1591
  • Kingdom of the Kongo in West Central Africa
  • Expansion of Ethiopian state in East Africa
  • Kingdom of Zimbabwe/Mwene Mutapa in southern Africa

• The Americas/Western Hemisphere
  • Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica, 1345-1521
  • Inca Empire along the Andes, 1438-1533
  • Iroquois confederacy (New York State)
  • “Complex” Paleolithic societies in Australia
  • Chiefdoms and stratified societies on Pacific islands
  • Yap as center of oceanic trading network with Guam and Palau

Australia:

• remains “Paleolithic” according to Western historians
• developed manipulation of their environment
  • “firestick farming,” which is still used at Yosemite
• gatherer-hunter society flourishes; permanent village settlements exist in northwest
  • large, sturdy houses
  • economic specialization: ranked societies with occasional slavery
  • chiefdoms with “big men”
  • extensive storage of food

The Igbo and Iroquois

• small village-based communities, rather than city-states or empires
• societies were at the center of things, with own history of migration, cultural transformation, social conflict, incorporation of new people, political rise and fall, interaction with strangers
• IGBO
  • West African peoples east of the Niger River
  • could have developed into a small state, but rejected kingship
  • relied on title societies and social ranking, women's associations, hereditary ritual experts, balance of power among kinship groups
  • traded actively with other small societies and distant peoples-copper, iron, cotton, fish
  • shifted from matrilineal to patrilineal system of tracing descent
• IROQUOIS
  • located in New York State
  • productive agriculture of maize- and bean-farming
  • settlements grew and distinct peoples emerged-resulted in frequent warfare
    • Five Iroquois-speaking peoples: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca-agreed to settle differences peacefully through a confederation council of clan leaders
    • Iroquois League expressed limited government, social equality, personal freedom
    • very female-based civilization: descent was matrilineal, married couples lived with wife's family, women controlled agriculture and property. Women could select and depose primary male leaders

Pastoral Peoples—Central Asia and West Africa:

• nomadic pastoral peoples directly affected civilizations
• CENTRAL ASIA
  • Mongolian Empire relied on pastoral expansion
  • Timur's army of nomads devastated Russia, Persia, India
  • Timur's pastoral group controlled the area between Persia and Afghanistan
    • sophisticated elite culture
    • rulers patronized artistic occupations
  • Timur's conquest-last great military success of nomadic Central Asia
  • fell to expansion of the Russian and Chinese Empires
• WEST AFRICA
  • independence from established empires
  • largest pastoral society is the Fulbe-herding people
    • migration eastward since 1000 CE
    • small communities among agricultural people, paid grazing fees and taxes
    • resented subordination to agricultural peoples
    • slowly adopted Islam while migrating

Ming Dynasty China (1368-1644)

• China's recovery from Mongolian rule and the plague
• promoted all non-Mongolian influences-Confucianism, gender roles from earlier dynasties
• prominent emperor: Emperor Yongle (ruled 1402-1422)
• capital relocated to Beijing
• reestablished civil service examination system
• economic rebound

European state-building

• states learned to tax their citizens more effectively
• constant need for war over rival claims for territory
• The Renaissance
• religious themes expanded but were also challenged by Renaissance art
• maritime voyages through the fifteenth century prominent, competed with China

Islam

• expansion of the Ottoman Empire through Southeastern Europe and North Africa
• established by Turkic warriors, who became dominant people of the Islamic world by ruling over the Arabs who created this faith
• Ottoman sultans sought to renew unity to the Islamic world
• Safavid Empire
  • began with a Sufi religious order
  • forcibly imposed Shia version of Islam as the official religion of the state
  • sharp divide into the political and religious life of hearland Islambecause almost all of the surrounding people practiced Sunni form of Islam
• Songhay Empire
  • Islam was a growing faith but limited to urban elites
  • culturally divided empire, the monarch Sonni Ali (ruled 1465-1492) practiced proper Islam but also performed as a magician
  • majorcenter for Islamic learning and commerce
• Mughal Empire
  • located in India, governed largely non-Muslim populations
  • Islamized Turkic group invaded India
  • established unified control over most of the Indian peninsula
  • brief political unity which laid foundation for British colonial rule
  • accommodated Hiindu subjects with some Muslim influences
• this period known as the “second flowering of Islam”

The Americas

• The Aztec Empire
  • built by the Mexica people who came from northern Mexico
  • developed military capacity, served as mercenaries, negotiated elite marriage alliances, built Tenochtitlan
  • amazing commerce
  • loosely structured government with unstable conquest state
  • frequent rebellion by the peoples
  • featured canals, dikes, causeways, bridges
  • sacrificial rituals meant to impress enemies, allies, subjects, and the gods
• The Inca Empire
  • also a source of great commerce
  • bureaucratic empire based under the absolute emperor
  • state owned land and resources and each province had a governor
  • quipus were used to record births, deaths, marriages, and other population data
  • some places in the empire showed resistance, others were willing to accommodate
  • system of manufacturing goods

The Silk Road

The Silk Road is arguably the most well-known road of commerce during the classical era. Compared to the Sand and Sea Roads, the Silk Road demonstrated extremely high versatility in its ability to transport materials from China to as far as Turkey and Greece. The Silk Road posed major significance for its time in transporting not only silk, but textiles, precious minerals, weapons, precious minerals, foods and spices, as well as sickness, as in the Black Death, and the ideas of Confucian, Islamic, and Buddhist thought.

Since the development of silk-making from silkworms in China, the techniques of silk fabrication spread quickly to India, and through communication along the Silk Road, throughout Eurasia. Considering that China began manufacturing silk as long ago as 3000 BCE, their perfection of the craft is particularly admirable (Strayer 317). Furthermore, it is the extent to which the Silk Road reached through Eurasia that makes it admirable; traders made their way through the treacherous mountain ranges in Asia to Mongolia, India, Persia, and Arabia. The long-lasting nature of the Silk Road promotes its success as well; the Silk Road was a means of trade for over 2000 years.

The long-term effect of the Silk Road is its influence on trade as we know it today. As compared to today, the level of commerce transacted through the Silk Road is relatively small. However, it was a groundbreaking market because it paved the way for new modes of trade and travel. It inspired the spread of items and ideas, and for this it must be given credit where credit is due.

Dr. Sakena Yacoobi

 On October 22, 2014, I attended the presentation of guest speaker Dr. Sakena Yacoobi in the Notre Dame de Namur chapel. Dr. Yacoobi's life and commitments are based on the spread of education throughout South Asia, especially in terms of creating opportunities for young women to succeed in academics and in life in general. Her struggle comes from understanding the clashing between traditional gender roles prescribed by a culture that does not know anything else and the development of the knowledge that women are people deserving of any opportunities they make for themselves. Since her beginnings in creating schools for young men and women to build skills, learn to read and write, and gain general knowledge that will help them to navigate the world around them, tens of thousands of young people have been taking the chance to educate themselves.

The most captivating story that Dr. Yacoobi told was that of the young men who originally seemed to mean to do her harm. At one point when she was traveling between villages, a band of young men with guns and long, unkempt beards stopped her van. Dr. Yacoobi refused to let anyone speak to them but her. When she asked them what they wanted, they said that they'd seen her travel between villages and that she should know what they wanted. Eventually, they came to the understanding that the young men would be educated under Dr. Yacoobi, as long as they were willing to do what she asked of them. Her first request was that they cut their beards and keep a clean appearance.

Her request of the young men ties in to the idea that men too must be educated to provide a world with safe education for young women as well. If we educate only our young women, we leave young men in the dark without allowing them to understand a woman's struggle, and so they continue to build lives that refuse to take a woman's opinion seriously. This problem does not come from an inherent stupidity of men, rather a refusal of their society to allow them to think any differently. Dr. Yacoobi advocates that we must allow our men to learn alongside women, and if we can come to a mutual understanding, then the disconnect between men and women will be lessened. I think this is a practice that needs to go on in the United States as well; we have to teach boys from as young an age as possible the truth about feminism, about male privilege, about intersectional feminism. Too many times do we assume that the white man means to degrade men and women of color, and too little do we question society's role in creating that Frankenstein monster. If we, like Dr. Sakena Yacoobi, can educate our boys and girls to a proper standard, then we can hopefully rearrange those traditional gender roles toward a more balanced gender platform.

Truth-Confucianism

Our focus on Confucius in class has gone to a philosophical level--seeing as Confucius is one of the seminal thinkers of his time, this is not particularly surprising.  Most of the Confucian sayings we looked at from The Analects involve the nature of truth in man.  A particular quote that's been on my mind since discussing it in class is as follows: "The object of the superior man is truth, not food."  Confucius' discussion of the superior man vs. the mean man has a lot to do with seeking knowledge for knowledge's sake.  The superior man attempts to gain knowledge because it is necessary and righteous.  The mean man attempts to gain knowledge as to gain wealth.

The importance of truth to the superior man is a foggy sort of concept.  What is truth?  Ought the truth mean the same thing to everyone?  If not, how do we find our own truth?

The way I see it, most people these days choose the idea of "food" over truth.  They choose to gain wealth, to become well-known, to "sell out," if you will, because attaining wealth and fame is more immediately pleasurable in this world than finding truth.  The way that this piece of Confucian thinking works creates binary oppositions: the concept of truth cannot coexist with the concept of food.  The superior man cannot coexist with the mean man.  At what point, then, at what surrender to the temptation of food or gaining of knowledge, does one become mean or superior?

Reading about Confucius asks the reader what her truth is.  As for me?  I'm not sure yet.  The way that my life has panned out so far seems to aim for an altruism based on passing on knowledge and compassion to others; I'm an idealist who ultimately wants to teach and write with the purpose of sending the message that life is not as difficult as it seems.  Though things are ugly and difficult and I would love to open people's eyes to the calamity our world faces, we can come out of it stronger, better, more intelligent, more whole.  But, of course, that's me.  I can't speak for the next person who reads this blog; I can't speak for myself in the next twenty years.  Things change.  The idea of truth changes. Truth now is surely a concept very, very different from truth in Confucius' time.  And it will change again over the next 2500 years, should we make it that far.

So who am I to say that I am superior for seeking truth?

Culture and Religion in Eurasia/North Africa

Perhaps my favorite part of the chapter four examination of the culture and religion in Eurasia and North Africa is Strayer's discussion on traditionally "Eastern" religions.  It is unfortunate that the Western-centric world has instilled in the rest of the world such a bias in the means of praising Christian religions, but in studying world history we might be able to focus on Eastern religions.
Having been raised Catholic, I have learned a lot about Christianity and its roots in Judaism, but never until college did I learn, at an extensive level, more about Islam (which is far closer to Christianity and Judaism than other Eastern religions in terms of ideas), Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism.
My favorite to have studied of all these religions is Hinduism.  However, the Strayer text emphasizes Hinduisms' commitment to duty and devotion, which, while that aspect is a large part of practicing the Hindu tradition, does not fully communicate Hindu values.  Hinduism respects an individual's praying rituals as a part of that individual's routine; Hindu services are not routinely held like Sunday church in Christianity.  One practices her religion at her own pace, practicing prayer, yoga, and other offerances to the Hindu gods (which are actually different representations of ONE god) in her own time.  Strayer's focus on duty and devotion to studying the Bhagavad Gita are accurate, but overblown--I think part of the reason for this is to emphasize the individualism practiced in Buddhism and Confucianism.  Of course, we understand that Strayer's representation cannot fully capture the reality of an age-old religion in two paragraphs or so, but I do wish that Strayer had covered a little more fully the extent at which Hinduism is individual, as well as unity through duty and devotion.

"A Paleolithic Woman in the Twentieth Century"-Answering Questions

“A Paleolithic Woman in the Twentieth Century”

Nisa's account is useful in learning about the culture of women in early Paleolithic people. Her account shows evidence of her family being the gatherer-hunter society that was prominent in Paleolithic times: “We lived in the bush and my father set traps and killed steenbok and duiker and gemsbok and we lived, eating the animals and foods of the bush. We collected food, ground it in a mortar, and ate it” (Strayer 48). She shows an awareness of a wider world in calling other people that she may interact with “stingy” but addresses that her whole life has been lived “in the bush.” In calling others stingy, this addresses that Nisa understands a family outside of her own in the bush, as well as her interactions with her other lovers.

Nisa's account indicates that San attitudes toward sex are liberal but somewhat structured. Since she is expected to have sex with her husband, there is some evidence of cultural expectations on a wife, but in taking a lover, the society shows its leniency towards sex as a pleasurable act, and not just one for married people: “But sitting with just one man? We don't do that. Does one man have enough thoughts of you?” (49). These attitudes are much less strict than those in contemporary society; there is an expected behavior one must assume with each lover, and in marriage one is expected never to take lovers whom are not the spouse. Even in relationships, we are expected to only have sex with our designated partner, not lingering outward or searching for others to appease our sexual desires.

Nisa sees God as an all-knowing, all-powerful being whose idea of humanity is unimportant compared to His greatness. When her husband passes away, she becomes upset with God, labeling him as stingy as the people her family does not interact with: “God is stingy! He just takes [people] from you. God's heart is truly far from people” (49). Her view on healing rituals seems to be somewhat to attempt to spite God or let God know that humans are capable of having their own will without His help. When she practices n/um, the San healing ritual, she says that it “is powerful, but it is also very tricky. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't because God doesn't always want a sick person to get better” (50). I think the independence from religion Nisa demonstrates due to her own personal experiences is something less orthodox in San culture, but interesting nonetheless.

Nisa's overall assessment of San culture is likely slightly romanticized but on the whole, sounds realistic. Since she does not know any other life, it is impossible for her to compare her lifestyle with an industrialized lifestyle. The details of her life become gritty at times, such as the death of her husband, and in these passages, she admits the difficulty of her life and the problems with the life she has been given: “The death of your parents, husband, or children—they are equal in the amount of pain you feel when you lose them” (49). However, the more romanticized parts come from Nisa's love of simplicity, how life is set in a certain order and does not become complicated or complex and messy: “Here I am, long since an adult, yet even now, if a person doesn't give something to me, I won't give anything to that person” (48). It seems that Nisa is truly happy to live a San life, and would not trade it for anything else.

Strayer Chapter One-Paleolithic Era Part One

Probably the most fascinating part of this first bit of Strayer's first chapter is the dynamic of the Paleolithic human society.  Apart from spreading their kin so far over the globe--starting in Africa and moving to the farthest reaches of the Arctic, the Pacific Islands, Australia--the early groups of Paleolithic humans possessed a kind of tolerance that is hard to find today.  The female population whose focus was gathering (as opposed to the male population, which focused on hunting) brought to each "tribe," if we can call it such a biased term, the majority of the food source, so the women of the household, indeed, were "bringing home the bacon."
To be quite honest, most of this blog post will cover my appreciation for Strayer's attention toward the early female population.  Aside from the greater food roles that women played in the Paleolithic Era, polygamy was an acceptable concept in the societies, but gradually fell away because women chose not to "share" their husbands with other wives.  Things like rape, domestic violence, virginity were unheard of, which made the world a safer place for women than now, although our perception of such a far past is typically barbaric and violent.  We see the stereotypical "cavemen" as sex-hungry beasts who want only food and coitus from their claimed wives, but the wives had so much more freedom than we would expect.
The inclusion of the Venus of Willendorf indicates the importance of femininity in a spiritual sense.  We know from that statuette as well as other artistic expressions and indications that fertility and the cycles women go through (birth, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, death) were viewed in greater terms than they are now--that is, they are important and women are to be praised for going through them.  The expectations for women then were not subject to the kind of bias that we are now.
I look forward to reading more about the early human history Strayer has to impart, and the terms under which he defines them, I am glad to be observing.