- Empires
- Summary
- "Why was the Chinese empire repeatedly put back together in roughly the same area, while Rome – as a state – never revived?" (p. 54).
- Russia's eastward expansion was not genocidal vs. USA's westward expansion. Why? Russia's pragmatic Eurasian model of rewarding elites and accommodating religious diversity, inherited from ‘their mixed Mongol, Byzantine, and European past’ (p. 251)
- monotheistic religion as both a powerful cultural homogenizing force and a granter of universal power, as well as a potential agent for internal dispute and imperial fracture
- Ottoman c.f. Spanish empires
- Europeans as "Mongols of the sea"
- There was nothing particularly new about 19C European imperialism. Growth in wealth and technology gave European powers an advantage, but these empires still had to respond to the age-old demands of governance and administration. Also, they didn't do as well or endure as long as earlier empires.
- Crusader Kingdoms/Outremer
- Global Middle Ages is an emerging field of study (Peter Frankopan article)
- Sub-Saharan Africa is no longer an acceptable category; racist/colonialist, ignores connections across the Sahara
- So much African history!
- Axum, Nubia, Lalibela, Ile-Ife, Almoravid Empire, Almohad Caliphate
- Epic of Sundiata
- Ajami script/writing
- World's oldest center of learning in Fez, Morocco under the Almohad Empire = University of al-Qarawiyyin (Atlas Obscura article)
- Cool things about Axum
- There was a First Hegira to Axum/Ethiopia!
- Ezana of Axum converted to Cy only a few years after Constantine!
- Adulis = major port/trade center
- Ethiopia had an early colonial encounter when Jesuits convinced the king to convert to Roman Catholicism in the early 17C, which set off a long civil war, after which Ethiopia learned its lesson and thus was never colonized again.
- About the Sokoto Caliphate, founded shortly after the American/French revolutions by the revolutionary Usman dan Fodio; a powerful 19C African empire!
- Religions consolidated leading up to 1000; 92% of believers today follow religions that were already firmly in place by 1000 CE (few have been added since)
- Medieval Islam/Abbasids were wealthy b/c they encouraged tropical crops from India and Iran that could be cultivated year-round
- Due to strong south-westerly currents through island SEA, ocean levels there are 1.5 feet higher than elsewhere. These currents make it easy to go SW from China into the Indian Ocean, but it's more difficult to move northward
- Sources for Vikings = the two Vinland sagas (Erik the Red's saga + Greenlanders' Saga)
- "Vikings" means raiders; the more appropriate term is Norse
- Helgo Treasures find near Stockholm, including a Gandhara Buddha and Egyptian ladle -- Shows the extent of Norse exchange networks
- Did the Norse reach the Maya @ Chichen Itza? Temple of Warriors imagery may suggest so.
- Voyagers from Africa may have reached the Yucatan peninsula; story of Spanish friar Alonso Ponse
- Cahokia = the largest urban complex in the continental United States before 1492. Some evidence suggests Cahokia trade networks reached all the way to the Maya in Mexico (obsidian tools, notched teeth, ceramics with traces of chocolate, hero twins myth)
- Chaco Canyon in NM was a hub of trade for various peoples/merchants, exporting turquoise to the Maya in exchange for parrot/macaw feathers and chocolate; we can see Maya influences in architecture.
- Maya worshipped a god of trade, Merchant God L. They imported metals from the south, as far as Colombia; but no direct trade occurred any further south because of Panama's dense jungles (an obstacle even today). However, knowledge of Andean metallurgy practices (lost-wax technique) did migrate up to the Maya.
- Rus rose to power as middlemen trading slaves, furs, and high-quality swords to Byzantine and Muslim consumers. Archeological evidence includes buried coins in Scandinavia, most of which have Arabic writing but in total show a wide range of trade contacts. Unlike European colonists/settlers, the Rus traveled in search of profits for themselves, rather than at the behest of a monarch. Rather than wiping out or subjecting the peoples they encountered, they tended to intermarry and assimilate. In Muslim lands, they posed as Christians to avoid paying taxes under Abbasid law, but eventually Vladmir did convert to Eastern Orthodox Christianity after considering also Judaism, Islam, and Roman Christianity. Rus "princes" (there was no single king) rose to power by taxing commerce.
- Byzantine emperor hired Rus (called Varangians) as guards; see runes graffiti in Hagia Sophia
- Around the year 1000, many rulers chose to convert to associate themselves with neighbors as military allies and trade partners. It also gave them the tools for governing, with access to literate clerics and clergy. For example, bluetooth technology is named after Norse king Harald Bluetooth, who united Norway and Denmark by converting to Christianity.
- In 1000, the Byzantine Church was more powerful than the Roman, but things reversed in the next 2 centuries due to the East-West Schism in 1054, the Byzantine defeat by Seljuks at Manzikert in 1071, the Massacre of the Latins in 1182, 1204 sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade
- Tadmekka inscriptions in Arabic are the earliest physical evidence of the expansion of Islam into Africa, and also reveal a trade center between early Islam and Africa.
- Great Zimbabwe exported gold, imported beads and Chinese celadon
- Islamic law encouraged freeing of slaves. (Muslims could own non-Muslim or previously-enslaved Muslims but technically couldn't enslave free Muslims.) Muslims could marry slaves but had to free the mother before he died, and had to recognize any offspring as legitimate. Therefore, this helped Islam spread, but it also meant a constant need to import new slaves, which came from Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. In the Muslim world, female slaves greatly outnumbered male slaves. Nearly as many slaves taken across the Sahara to the Muslim world between 650-1900 as were taken across the TAST. "Before 1600 the slave trade from the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocan was greater than that across the Atlantic."
- Camels were domesticated b/w 300-600 CE, which boosted trans-Saharan trade routes (before traveled by wheeled vehicles).
- Asbestos cloth from West Africa at Charlemagne's court
- Anti-globalization riots against wealthy foreign merchants: against Venetians in Constantinople, against Amalfi Italians in Cairo in 996, against Muslim merchants in 879 Tang China led by Huang Chao
- Central Asia's split between Muslim Samanids, Ghaznavids (M
ahmud, who enlisted Hindus and is known as the first "sultan"), Karakhanids, and Seljuks in the west; vs. in the east, the Buddhist Kitan's Liao Dynasty (Abaoji) in China which was recognized by the Song as their peers in the Chanyuan Treaty - See Al-Biruni's study "On India" describing Mahmud's campaign into India
- Mahmud's rude rejection of an emissary from the Liao Dynasty Kitans
- Artifacts from the tomb of the Liao Princess Chen show the luxury and trade ties of the Kitans of the Liao Dynasty
- The language of Madagascar, Malagasy, is related to Malayo-Polynesian languages rather than Bantu/African
- The story of Mau Piailug, Micronesian sailor
- Southeast Asian "temple states" -- Srivijaya (Belitung shipwreck evidence of trade with Tang China, fake Arabic inscriptions intended for a Muslim market); Chola kingdom of south India (main source of cotton, which people in SEA prefered to Chinese silk because cooler); Angkor/Khmer Empire.
- SEA - There was a shift in the direction of commerce around 1000, where SEA merchants started to have more contact with China than India.
- Song China as "The Most Globalized Place on Earth" (960-1276)
- importance of aromatics, esp. aloeswood
- important trade centers = Guangzhou (esp. during Tang Dynasty), Quanzhou surpassed Guangzhou by 1200
- Arabic-speaking Muslims of Quanzhou were China's largest foreign community before 1500
- Cirebon shipwreck
- Song's 3-level taxation system: Emperor took 10% of imported cargoes directly, trade officials took "fine goods" at less-than-market price, and lastly a tax on "coarse goods" (bulk goods) was paid by foreign merchants before they were allowed to sell to Chinese purchasers.
- Around 1000, 1st paper money in Sichuan came about because a shortage of copper led to government-issued iron coins, which were too heavy, so 16 local merchants were granted permission to start using promissory notes on paper instead. Eventually by 1170 the Song govt established a permanent paper system backed by silver.
- Horses were the most important overland import during Song times.
- Unlike Islamic states, China had no need to import slaves b/c they had their own massive labor supply.
- After the Jurchens took over the northern part of the Song territory and captured the capital in 1127, the Southern Song survived by taxing trade. Great quote from Emperor Gaozong on p. 212.
- First public pharmacy founded by the Chinese government in 1076 in Kaifeng. (Not Muslims?!)
Wealth from trade allowed Fujian/Quanzhou farmers to shift away from subsistence to cash crops. - 1225 Superintendent of Maritime Trade in Quanzhou Zhao Rukuo, wrote an important account of trade in Quanzhou
- 1270's Quanzhou shipwreck (p. 220-21)
- Chinese never sailed past the Philippines b/c of fear of the "Ultimate Drain"
