Week 1
Early Modern Period
Problems of conventional periodization - based in Euro understandings of time/modernity and Euro events
Zheng He
Muslim/heterodox, GIGANTIC ship (but destroyed - why?), traveled around the Indian ocean
Quipu
Inca device for recording information, consisting of variously colored threads knotted in different ways -
Incas in 15thc - one of the most tightly integrated empires in the world - roads and bridges!!! No writing, but huge bureacratic state - record-keeping thru quipu
Brazil and Brazilwood
1500 - Pedro Álvares Cabral "bumps" into Brazil on his way to India - swung too far west - what does he find there?
No urban societies as in mesoamerica or andean region - smaller societies - ok, so what are the economic incentives to stay there? BRAZILWOOD
Flowering plant, produces a red dye, premier wood excellent for bows and string instruments
Portolan Charts
compass roses at starting points, follow a line and you end up there (p accurate north/south, not so much east/west)
Origins of the chart somewhat mysterious, probably Mallorca - had been under muslim rule - "Mallorcan cartographic school" refers to collection of predominantly Jewish cartographers, cosmographers and navigational instrument-makers and some Christian and Muslim associates that flourished in Mallorca in the 13th, 14th, and 15thc until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in the 15thc
Military Advantages of Pastoral Societies
Mobility (defense and offense), provisioning troops, lack of vulnerable infrastructure, health advantages, military participation and training
Infectious Disease in Sedentary vs. Pastoral Societies
• Sedentary & urban populations and infectious diseases more at risk
◦ Population size
◦ Disease macro-regions
◦ Livestock (domesticated and in close proximity)
Atlantic Gyres and Long-Distance Sailing
The problem of winds and currents in the north Atlantic - north and south gyres. Solution:return by the sea - sailing perpendicular to the winds
Cocolitzli
• Indigenous demographic collapse: prolonged, episodic
◦ HUGE dropoffs in population due to smallpox and cocolitzli (unknown illness, "the great pestilence" - maybe measles? probably salmonella)
◦ Probably one of the reasons Mexico is not more fully Nahuatl-speaking (other conquests retained their languages)
Matteo Ricci
Jesuit missionary in China; dressed as a Confucian scholar (was a Confucian scholar!) - at first dressed as a Buddhist monk, BUT the philosophical heart of the gentry/elite scholarly class was Confucianism
Saw no incompatibility btwn Confucianism and Catholicism
Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci - Methods of memorization - method of loci
Map!!!!
Toluid Civil War and Kublai Khan's Rule in China
Q of traditional mongol state or Chinese-style (large population to rule over --> need support) - brought in Chinese advisors, styled himself as a Chinese emperor
Social and Cultural Impacts of the Black Death (List 3)
◦ Shortage of cheap labor in Western Europe
◦ Wage increases (until checked by legislation eg Statute of Laborers and taille), increasing purchasing powers of rural laborers
◦ Widespread anti-semitism (Glatter and Finkelman and FMF?)
◦ Urban areas and artisans benefited?
◦ Power of the nobility declined (to a certain extent)
◦ Cynicism toward church officials (sometimes)
◦ Morbid art
◦ Abandonment of marginal villages
◦ Partial reforestation
◦ Increase in livestock
◦ More emphasis on labor-saving tech (wind and water mills)
◦ Decline and end of serfdom in Western Europe (?)
‣ Brenner thesis (from labor lords to land lords)
◦ Fall of Mongol power in China - rise of Ming dynasty, fall of Mongol power in Persia
◦ Peasant rebellions (esp Wat Tyler's rebellion in 1381)
Tenochtitlan
Mexica capital, floating city - 4x the size of Seville, PLUS suburbs
Speaks to expanding and complex empire - alliance between 3 city-states
Goa
1507 - Hormuz taken, 1510 - Conquest of Goa (eventually capital of the Portuguese state of India)
Goa became a center of the horse trade - huge source of income - horses impt for cavalry warfare, you can't breed horses in India (too tropical); India's richest state per capita - "tourist attraction" state - relaxed social rules
Yongle Emperor
Ambitious and Non-Conforming Third Ming Emperor
◦ Does not follow traditions of Chinese statecraft:
‣ Purge of Confucian scholars (big deal, following a lot of tension between palace - family members, eunuchs, favorites, etc. - and Confucian scholars, who were educated elite bureaucrats)
‣ Power to eunuchs, secret police
‣ Massive voyages to Indian Ocean (Zheng He)
‣ Moves capital to Beijing!
‣ Repairs and reopens Grand Canal
• Longest canal/artificial river
• Connects Yangtze river delta and Yellow River, Beijing to Hangzhou
• Played a huge role in reunifying north and south China - much cheaper, faster, easier to move things by water, and you can avoid oceanic routes
Genghis Khan: Cultural Hero or Genocidal Terrorist? (Offer One Idea for Each)
Hero - Transmission of ideas and tech, hemispheric integration, religious toleration, pluralism, meritocracy, commitment to commerce, "making of modern world?" According to Jack Weatherford, he was instrumental in the spread of: gunpowder, trousers, bowed instruments, "hurrah," playing cards, crops (carrots, lemons), carpets, tea, paper currency
Monster - Millions of peasants slaughtered, driven out to make room for pastoral nomadism?; Extermination of entire cities that killed Mongol emissaries or that rebelled after submitting (lots of good evidence for this); Brutal treatment of cities that refused to submit or had to be conquered
Also worth remembering that Rome was pretty brutal too... pax romana/pax mongolica both peaces built on blood
Circassians and Elite Enslaved People
Men for the army, women for the imperial harem (Ottoman Empire, Persian Safavid and Qajar dynasties, Mamluk sultanate)
Circassian Dancers, "cult of the body," cult of beauty (Circassian women long thought to be the most beautiful all over the old world)
Mississippian Culture
Partial collapse c1400 - why? (LIA, env. stress, deforestation, overhunting, rejection of social stratification?)
Natchez, the last Mississippian state? Defeated and dispersed by the French c1730
Cartaz System
The Portuguese idea of monopolizing trade really never came to fruition --> alternative: cartaz system/protection racket - selling protection from their own violence - if you don't have the cartaz and we catch you at sea, we'll attack (Entrepreneurs in violence across maritime Asia)
Tlaxcala and the "Flower Wars"
between triple alliance of the Mexica empire and some surrounding states --> enemies (Tlaxcala) eventually joined forced w the spaniards against the Mexica
Ritual war that took place from the mid-1450s to the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519.
The Barfield Thesis
The nomadic empires, maintained w/ resources supplied by agrarian empires like China, developed an "outer frontier" strategy - violently raiding for loot to terrify the Chinese court; except for Mongols, nomads avoided conquering Chinese territory bc they needed a stable China to exploit. Mongols did not initially want to conquer China, drawn into it by Jurchen Chin.
Argument - nomadic empires so dependent on Chinese resources that unifications of the nomads and of the Chiense at the same time were not coincidental - when the nomads were forced to depend on their own resources, their political system collapsed.
Strait of Malacca
‣ "Whoever is Lord of Malacca has his Hand on the throat of Venice" Tomé Pires (1465?-1524 or 1540) - not really correct but an influential idea
‣ Imptce of Malacca bc of the Monsoon Wind Pattern - meeting point for people coming from different points (winter for China, summer for Eur and others)
Nezahualcoyotl
Ruler (tlatoani) of the city-state of Texcoco
Poet, supporter of intellectual pursuits
He called for a coalition consisting of many of the most important pre-Hispanic cities of the time: Tenochtitlan, Tlacopan, Tlatelolco, Huexotzingo, Tlaxcala and Chalco.
Texcoco as "the Athens of the Western World"
Jesuit Theocratic State in Paraguay
◦ Initial Jesuit failure in Latin America due to Bandeirantes: Portuguese-speaking slave raiders, fortune/gold etc. seekers (eg Domingos Jorge Velho, who we will see more of later)
◦ Jesuit response --> Jesuit theocratic "State"
‣ Economic basis - self-sufficiency (various craft occupations), export of cattle/cattle products and yerba mate
‣ Some education in Spanish, but mostly Guarani
‣ Life in the missions: the Jesuits entertained - social life organization, frequent festivals, enlivening the community - BIG into music, theater
‣ Long-lasting effects in Paraguay - official language both Spanish and Guarani, somewhat isolated from other Latin American countries for a while, War of the Triple Alliance (Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina vs Paraguay, basically total war - lost ~90% of the male population of Paraguay)
Basques (Name the Ones We've Met, + 1 Fact)
Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Miguel López de Legazpi, Andrés de Urdaneta
Basque whaling
Basque overrepresentation in the Spanish imperial venture; diaspora into the New World (esp Argentina, Chile, Colombia)