WHAP AP Review
Period 3
600 C.E. to 1450
Chapters 13-22
The Big Picture
• What makes a nation? Empire? Should we
look at shared culture or geographical
boundaries?
• Change: trade, migration, invasion, internal
developments
• Compare: trade and economic systems
• How does the environment impact human
decision making?
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Islam
Monotheistic, like Judaism and Christianity
Muslims, Allah, Muhammad, Qu’ran
Five Pillars of Islam
Caliphates: theocracy in the early years, Sunni vs. Shia
– Ummayad: Capital in Damascus, Arabic official language, gold
and silver coins, tax for nonbelievers, growth, spread to Spain
– Abbasid: replaced Ummayad around 750, capital at Baghdad,
trade, algebra, libraries
• Sufis=mystics, missionaries
• Women: (as shown in the Qu’ran) considered equal before
Allah, subservient to men, infanticide forbidden, women
could have influence outside of home, men could have 4
wives, adopted veiling
• Decline of Caliphates: internal rivalries, Mongol invasions
Byzantine Empire
• Centralized---theme system
• Eastern part of old Roman Empire
• Christianity split too in 1054 (the Great Schism):
Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity
• Spoke Greek, unique domes, coined money, mosaics
• Rulers had absolute authority, Caesaropapism
• Justinian: Justinian Code, Hagia Sophia
• Effect on Russia: St. Cyril---converted Slavic peoples,
created Slavic alphabet and translated Bible, Russian
princes converted
Western Europe
• After Western Roman Empire fell, Europe was broken into
separate kingdoms.
• Franks: Germanic tribe, under King Clovis, converted to
Catholicism, capital at Paris, created a common culture
• Charles Martel: defeated Muslims at Battle of Tours,
founded Carolingian Dynasty
• Pepin: succession certified by the pope
• Charlemagne: Charles the Great, Holy Roman Empire, art
and education, religion, feudalism, empire divided
amongst his grandsons in Treaty of Verdun in 843
• Vikings and Magyars: Scandinavia/Hungary, raided Europe,
in France called Normans, over time stopped attacking and
settled, converted to Christianity
Feudalism
• Social, economic and political system of the Middle
Ages in Europe
• King had power over a kingdom, nobles (lords) gave
military service in exchange for land, lords split up
land and gave it to vassals (this could continue many
times), peasants worked the land, serfs tied to the
land. Everyone had obligations.
• Land was called fiefs, later manors. Self-sufficient,
three-field system
• Code of Chivalry
• Women: had no power, admired for beauty and
compassion, Primogeniture
High Middle Ages
• Increase of trade
• More merchants, middle-class emerges
• Towns grow form alliances for trade like Hanseatic
League
• Architecture=Gothic cathedrals
• Crusades: contact with Muslim world, went to
reclaim Holy Land, failure
• Scholasticism: faith and reason together, Thomas
Aquinas, universities for men---not women
• Movement against heretics, Jews----Inquisition
• Bubonic Plague/Black Death
Nation-States
• Nationalism
• Kingdoms went away and nations/countries
formed---language (French, English)
• England: William the Conqueror, Magna Carta,
Parliament with two houses
• France: Capetians, Bourbons
• Hundred Years’ War: between France and England
over land, Joan of Arc
• Spain: Queen Isabella married Ferdinand uniting
two major kingdoms, non-Christians forced to
convert to Christianity or leave
Russia
• For a time fell under Mongol rule, had to pay
tribute
• Moscow princes started to gain power
• Ivan III declared himself czar
• Moscow=the Third Rome
• Ivan the Terrible centralized power over Russia
using secret police, tyranny
• Nationalism
China
• Tang: 618, poetry, tribute system
• Song: 960, encyclopedias and histories, printing, fell
to Mongols who establish Yuan dynasty in 1279
• Both Tang and Song had bureaucracy based on
merit, civil service exams, Grand Canal,
communication network, paper money, gunpowder,
compass, fast-ripening rice
• Women: Wu Zhao--only empress, foot-binding
• Religion: Nestorians, Manicheans, Zoroastrians,
Islam, Daoism, and Confucianism but Buddhism had
most impact (Neo-Confucianism)
• Ming: 1368
Japan
• Isolated
• Yamato: first ruling family
• Shinto religion: the way of the gods, kami---nature and all
of the forces of nature
• Buddhist missionaries sent to Japan from China
• Education not as important as birth
• Fujiwara: golden age especially in literature
• Feudalism: Shogun=chief general, daimyo=lords/nobles,
samurai=like knights, Code of Bushido (like code of
chivalry), women not held in high esteem
• How is Japanese feudalism similar to or different from
feudalism in Europe?
Vietnam and Korea
• Korea became a vassal state of Tang (China)
– Tribute, gift-giving
– Schools and imperial court organized like Chinese
– No bureaucracy based on merit though
– Confucianism and Chan Buddhism to Korea
• Viet people resisted tributary relationship
– Confucian education accepted
– Active trade
– Vietnamese maintained local traditions and actively
revolted against Tang
India
• Birthplace of two major religions---Hinduism and
Buddhism. Now Islam comes in.
• Muslims invaded and set up in Delhi under a
sultan=Delhi Sultanate
• Hindu temples sometimes destroyed depending
on sultan.
• Compare Hinduism and Islam? Where do these
differences take them? Think Gandhi, Jinnah and
partition of India in 1947.
• Colleges, irrigation systems improved, mosques
Mongols
• Nomadic, horsemen, archers, conquerors
• Genghis (Chingiss) Khan: unified the Mongol
tribes and started expansion
• Hordes/small empires over China, central Asia,
India, Persia
• Controlled the Silk Roads, safe
• No “culture”, no “Golden Age”---How does
that compare to other civilizations?
Africa
• Swahili Coast: Bantu-speaking people,
coasters/traders, east coast, traded with
Muslims, stone mosques, converted to Islam
• Ghana, Mali and Songhai: west Africa, subSaharan, caravans across Sahara for salt at
first, gold(!)
– Islam: at first, fought against it, Mansa Musa
made pilgrimage to Mecca
• Arts: oral literature, bronze sculptures
Americas: Aztecs
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Also known as Mexica
Central Mexico
Tenochtitlan was capital
Expansionist policy and professional army
Warriors were elite in social structure
Huge empire, but conquered areas governed
themselves
• Roads
• Women: ran household, could inherit property,
weavers
• Human sacrifices, bloodletting
Americas: Incas
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Andes Mountains of Peru
Professional army
Bureaucracy
Roads and tunnels
No large animals, so human labor
Capital at Cuzco
Women: work fields, weave cloth, care for household,
pass property to daughters, play a role in religion
• Polytheistic: sun god, human sacrifice, morals,
mummification
• Machu Picchu
• No writing but quipu
Trade Networks
• Mediterranean trade between western Europe, Byzantine
Empire, and Islamic Empire
• Hanseatic League: city-states on Baltic and North Sea
• Silk Road: porcelain, paper, military technologies, religions,
food
• Indian Ocean: had to understand monsoons
• Land routes of the Mongols
• China and Japan
• India and Persia
• Trans-Saharan trade between West Africa and Islamic Empire
• Lines of Credit, Checks
• Disease=Bubonic Plague/Black Death
• Diplomats/Missionaries
Expansion of Religion and Empire
• Mongol expansion into Russia, Persia, India & China
• Germanic tribes into southern Europe & England
• Vikings’ expansion from Scandinavia into England and
western Europe
• Magyars’ push from eastern Europe into western
Europe
• Islamic Empire’s push into Spain, India, & Africa
• The Crusades: 1096, to reclaim Holy Land, failure but
with an impact
• Buddhist missionaries to Japan
• Orthodox Christian missionaries into eastern Europe
Other Reasons to Be On the Move
• Populations grew
• Urbanization: people moved from countryside
to cities for more opportunities
• Cities: places where people wanted to be,
new capitals established
• Pilgrimages
Technology and Innovations
• See handouts
Role of Women
• Like before, restrictions on women’s freedoms
depended on their socio-economic class
• We see higher class lose their rights as time
goes by
• Veiling, foot binding, child marriage
• Africa: matrilineal and egalitarian before
Christianity and Islam
• See handout
Big Picture
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Spread and growth of religion
Centralization vs. decentralization
Do boundaries make a nation?
Cultural divisions: religions, empires vs.
feudalism
• Interaction!