Political Systems & State Building
This political system in medieval Europe relied on land-for-service relationships between lords and vassals.
What is Feudalism?
This trade network connected East Asia, Central Asia, and Europe.
What are the Silk Roads?
This religion spread primarily through trade networks rather than conquest.
What is Islam?
This navigation tool helped sailors calculate latitude.
What is an astrolabe?
This technology helped the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires expand.
What is gunpowder?
Rulers used religion, art, and ideology for this purpose to justify their authority.
What is the legitimization of authority?
Gold and salt dominated trade across this African network
What is the Trans-Saharan trade network?
This term describes the blending of religious and cultural traditions.
What is syncretism?
This disease spread along trade routes and devastated Eurasian populations.
What is the Black Death?
This global exchange reshaped diets, populations, and economies.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
This Islamic political structure combined religious and political leadership.
What is a caliphate?
These merchant communities spread goods, religions, and cultural practices abroad
What are diasporic communities?
Buddhism changing as it spread to China is an example of this process.
What is cultural diffusion or adaptation?
Labor shortages caused by the Black Death led to this major social change.
What is the decline of serfdom or rising wages?
This coerced labor system supported Spanish colonial economies.
What is the ecomienda system?
Gunpowder weapons allowed these states to expand and centralize authority.
What are land-based empires?
This innovation helped merchants avoid carrying physical money on long journeys.
What is credit or bills of exchange?
This belief system emphasized hierarchy, filial piety, and social order in East Asia.
What is Confucianism?
Indigenous Americans lacked this, making European diseases especially deadly.
What is immunity?
These ideas challenged monarchies and emphasized natural rights and equality.
What are Enlightenment ideas?
Compare how rulers in Song China and medieval Europe structured power and maintained control.
Song China relied on a centralized bureaucracy based on Confucian ideals and civil service exams, while medieval Europe used decentralized feudal relationships between lords and vassals.
Explain how long-distance trade contributed to the growth of cities and social classes in Afro-Eurasia.
Trade increased wealth, encouraged urbanization along trade routes, strengthened merchant classes, and generated tax revenue that supported states and infrastructure.
Explain how syncretism helped religions successfully spread across Afro-Eurasia.
Syncretism allowed religions to blend with local beliefs and practices, making them more acceptable and adaptable to different cultures, such as Buddhism incorporating Confucian ideas in China.
Analyze one major economic or political consequence of the Black Death in Eurasia.
The labor shortage weakened feudalism by increasing peasant bargaining power, raising wages, and contributing to social and political instability.
Evaluate how Enlightenment ideas challenged traditional political authority in the 18th century.
Enlightenment thinkers promoted natural rights, popular sovereignty, and reason, undermining the legitimacy of absolute monarchies and inspiring revolutionary movements.