Russia & China
These were the two gunpowder Dynasties of China.
Who were the Ming and the Qing?
These were the Great islamic Gunpowder Empires. (Name at least 3)
What do the Timurid, Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires have in common?
Name at least two European States that could qualify as Gunpowder Empires?
What do France, Spain, Austria, Russia, and Britain share in common?
This was the best example of a Gunpowder Empire in Africa as a result from their centuries long struggles against European Christian states and other Islamic states trying to conquer it from the East.
Why was Morocco relevant in the history of Gunpowder empires?
Aside from territorial expansion this was the other most common goal of the leaders of gunpowder empires that defined the way their states operated.
What was political centralization (or power concentration)?
He overthrew the Golden Horde and released Russia from its vassal status to become an independent state. He also began Russian expansion to the East.
Who was Ivan the Great (Ivan III)?
These were the two main reasons why the Timurid empire collapsed after the death of Tamerlane.
What did the succession struggles and the enormous state debt do to the Timurid Empire?
Led by the House of Trastamara, this state forcefully enforced the conversion of its Southern population to Catholicism or face expulsion from the country.
How did Castillian and Aragonese rulers enforce religious unity as a means of power consolidation and concentration as they tried to build Spain?
These were the reasons why the Aztec never bothered to create a centralized formal bureaucracy and tax collection system like most of the other gunpowder empires.
What was the effect of biogeographic isolation, the lack of real challenges by neighboring empires, and religious practices that demanded ritual wars in the Aztec style of government?
These were the only two land-based empires that did not meet the criteria to also be called gunpowder empires.
What do the Inca and the Aztec share in common?
The first were the gunpowder elite force created by the Russian rulers as the core of their army and the second was the elite repression force tasked with intimidating the boyars and the peasents into submission to the will of the Czar.
Who were the Streltsy and the Oprichnina?
This is the main reason why the Safavids could never get along with the Ottomans or the Mughals despite sharing a belief in Islam.
What was the main effect of the prevalence of the Shi'a branch of Islam in the Safavid state instead of the Sunni branch as in the Ottoman and Mughal empires?
The first is the name of the Japanese regional nobility and the other is the name of the elite soldier class employed in the centralization wars in Japan.
Who were the Daimyo and the Samurai?
This is the unique Inca system whereby their subjects paid their taxes largely through labor and public works.
What was the Incan Mit'a system?
This was the main costly disadvantage for gunpowder autocrats of relying on religion as one of the basis to concentrate power on themselves.
Why was religious fragmentation, factionalism, and general diversity a problem for gunpowder empires?
These were the name given by the Nurchens (or Manchus) to their new gunpowder armed forces employed in the conquest of China.
What were the Banner Armies?
This is the name of the system used by the Ottomans to procure young boys to supply their elite slave armies and slave bureaucracies.
What was the Devshirme?
This was the first state to fully embrace gunpowder weapons as a tool for state centralization in Western Europe and the other is the reason that motivated it to do so.
What did France and the Hundred years War have to do with the popularization of the land-based empire model in Europe?
This is the main reason the Songhai empire despite being incredibly rich, never truly embraced the mass adoption of gunpowder weapons, keeping them only for a few elite units.
What was the main outcome for the Songhai of living in a region where most other neighbors didn't have access to gunpowder weapons nor the size to challenge them?
These are the main two reasons why gunpowder empires tended to have problems industrializing and generally stayed agricultural and artisanal.
What were the effects of heavy tax burdens and emphasis on religious and cultural conformity on the gunpowder empires?
Ivan the Terrible subcontracted this rich family to hire Cossak and Tartar forces to expand Russian control into Siberia.
Who were the Stroganovs?
The first is the name of the elite force of soldiers serving the ottoman Sultan and the second was the term used to reference the peculiar tax system employed by the Ottoman state.
Who were the Janissaries and what was 'tax farming'?
King Sejong in Korea decreed the creation of this in order to differentiate his state more clearly from China, simplify administration and trade, and increase overall literacy of the population.
What was the importance of the Hangul alphabet in Korea?
These series of small Sahel states faced centuries of religious strife between different strains of Islam until Usman dan Fodio forcefully united them to create the Sokhoto Caliphate.
What happened to the Hausa city-states?
These were the four key steps taken by most gunpowder empires to enforce their legitimacy and keep control of their territory.
What do creating elite military forces, fomenting art, religion and monumental projects, creating reliable bureaucracies, and enforcing efficient tax collection mechanisms share in common?