Factors that Contributed to the Abolition of Slavery
 The philosophers of the European Enlightenment wrote about the equal rights of
men and of their natural rights such as life, liberty and property
 As Enlightenment ideas grew in popularity, so, too, did the idea that all men were
created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights
 Thus the adaptation of the Enlightenment idea challenging established social
hierarchies contributed to the growth of the movement to abolish slavery in the
Atlantic world
 Social hierarchies based on nobility and birth were not attractive in this Age of
Reason
 The European Enlightenment changed attitudes regarding privilege and power
The Haitian Revolution
 The French Revolution is most closely associated with the revolution in Haiti
 Prior to its independence, Haiti was a French colony known as St. Domingue, its
slave-based sugar and coffee industries had been fast-growing and successful, and it
had become the most profitable colony in the Americas
 The French Revolution had a great impact on St. Domingue as its white minority
split into Royalist and Revolutionary factions while the mixed-race population
campaigned for civil rights and the slaves of northern St. Domingue organized and
planned a massive rebellion which began on August 22, 1791
 Toussaint L’Ouverture led the rebellion and his successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines,
ordered the execution of whites remaining after the Napoleonic attempts to
reconquer St. Domingue and reimpose slavery
 The colony declared independence on January 1, 1804
Similarities – North American and South American Revolutions
 The North and South American independence movements of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries shared revolutionary demands based on Enlightenment
political ideas
 Enlightenment thinkers throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and
embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change
 New ideas of government and law circulated, ideas such as popular sovereignty,
consent of the governed, and natural rights
 The American and French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment
ideals
 The French Revolution of 1789 was the culmination of the High Enlightenment
vision of throwing out the old authorities to remake society along rational lines, but
it devolved into bloody terror that showed the limits of its own ideas and led, a
decade later, to the rise of Napoleon – still, its goal of egalitarianism attracted the
admiration of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and inspired both the Haitian
war of independence
Social Darwinism
 Theory that persons, groups, and races are subject to laws of natural selection
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Social Darwinists held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for
existence ruled by “survival of the fittest”
Social Darwinism was used to example the rise of monopolists in the United States –
monopolists were the fittest members of the business world and naturally rose to the
top as opposed to using unfair practices to dominate the market and imperialists
conquered because they were superior to conquered peoples
Of course, this was a misapplication of Charles Darwin’s ideas regarding natural
selection and survival of the fittest as Darwin was writing of species as opposed to
individuals or “races” within species
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution had the greatest role in providing a
justification for imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Effect of Vasco da Gama’s Voyages
 The Portuguese nobleman Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon, Portugal in 1497 on
a mission to reach India and open a sea route from Europe to the East
 After sailing down the western coast of Africa and rounding the Cape of Good
Hope, his expedition made numerous stops in Africa before reaching the trading
post of Calicut, India, in May 1498
 In 1948, the Portuguese established an all-water route to India by circumnavigating
Africa thereby entering the Indian Ocean trade network
 A major long-term effect of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India in the late 1490s was
it led to the integration of European merchants into the Indian Ocean economy
 Europeans were now actively participating in the Indian Ocean economy
The Triple Entente in World War I
 In the early 1900s, France, Russia, and Great Britain made up the Triple Entente
 Earlier, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy formed the Triple Alliance
 The nations of the Triple Alliance agreed to support each other if attacked by either
France or Russia
 A general fear of the growth of the German military led to the formation of the
Triple Entente
 The Alliance system was one of the causes of World War I as what began as a
conflict between two parties in the Balkans erupted into a conflict of many nations
Peasant Revolts and the Dynastic Cycle
 The Mandate of Heaven or the right to rule stated clearly that the emperor and the
dynasty ruled as long as the emperor was competent – in other words, as long as the
country functioned well
 If famines, plagues, floods, and war befell China, then the emperor and his dynasty
had lost the Mandate of Heaven
 Losing the Mandate of Heaven justified rebellions and often rebellions were peasant
rebellions as peasants suffered the most when government failed to provide for its
people
 Indeed, the fall of the Chinese dynasties between 600 and 1450 was often aided by
peasant revolts
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To lose the Mandate of Heaven was to justify rebellion which might lead to the
collapse of a dynasty and then the creation of a new dynasty as the dynastic cycle
continued
The Bolshevik’s New Economic Policy under Lenin
 Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik or Communist Revolution in Russia
in 1917
 While he favored government ownership of property – as a result of a civil war
between communists and non-communists – the economy had suffered
 Lenin implemented the New Economic Policy to improve the economy and he did
this by allowing some elements of free market capitalism in the economy
 Yes, Lenin and leading Bolshevik elements sought to bring back free enterprise and
the profit motive in order to jump-start an economy severely dislocated by World
War I and the Russian Civil War
 Lenin’s New Economic Policy allowed peasants who had previously been forced by
the Communists to hand over all their produce to the war effort were now allowed
to keep some of their produce to sell for profit - some (the kulaks) became quite
rich; in addition, small traders were allowed to set up businesses
Leader of the Bolshevik Party after Lenin
 Stalin was the political figure who eventually emerged to lead the Bolshevik Party
after the death of Lenin
 Vladimir Lenin led the Russian Revolution and founded the Soviet state; following
his death in 1923, he was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, who adopted more dictatorial
methods of governing than Lenin
 Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
from 1929 to 1953
 Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an
industrial and military superpower
 However, Stalin ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his
brutal reign.
Facts about the Ottoman Empire
 The Ottomans originally were seminomadic Turks
 The Ottomans had an elite fighting force of slave troops made of Christian boys Janissaries
 In the Ottoman Empire, Islamic religious scholars served administrative functions
 The Ottoman period spanned more than 600 years and came to an end only in 1922,
when it was replaced by the Turkish Republic and various successor states in
southeastern Europe and the Middle East
 At its height the empire encompassed most of southeastern Europe to the gates
of Vienna, including present-day Hungary, the Balkan region, Greece and parts of
Ukraine; portions of the Middle East now occupied by Iraq, Syria, Israel, and
Egypt; North Africa as far west as Algeria; and large parts of the Arabia Peninsula
Similarities – Inca Empire and Roman Empires
 Both empires were able to integrate distant provinces through extensive roadways
 Yes, it is said that all roads lead to Rome but it could also be said that all roads lead
to Cusco [Cuzco]
 The Romans and the Incas built many roads to connect their empires and control
their subjects
 The Inca road began at the center of the Inca universe: Cusco, a city in the Peruvian
Andes, said to be built in the shape of a crouching puma
 It actually was not a single road but a network of royal roads, an instrument of
power designed for military transport, religious pilgrimages and to move supplies
Champa Rice
 A rapid increase of East Asian populations was an important long-term
demographic impact of the spread of rice varieties in East Asia during the period
circa 600 C.E. to 1200 C.E.
 During Song Dynasty times, new developments in rice cultivation – especially the
introduction of new strains of rice from what is now Central Vietnam, along
with improved methods of water control and irrigation – spectacularly increased
rice yields
 Farmers developed many varieties of rice, including drought resistant and early
ripening varieties, as well as rice suited for special purposes such as brewing
 Drought-resistant rice developed in Champa, a kingdom in what is now Vietnam
 Champa rice grew even when the rains did not arrive
Japanese Expansion after 1914
 The Japanese most vigorously sought to achieve territorial expansion in the years
following 1914 in China
 In the 1930s, China was a divided country – in 1927 Chiang Kai-Shek had formed a
Nationalist Government – the Kuomintang (the KMT), but his dictatorial regime
was opposed by Mao Zedong’s Communists (CCP) and civil war between the
Communists and Nationalists erupted in 1930
 In 1931, Japan, eager for the vast natural resources to be found in China and seeing
her obvious weakness, invaded and occupied Manchuria
 Japan created a nominally independent state called Manchukuo, but the Chinese
Emperor who ruled it was a puppet of the Japanese
 In the 1930’s the Chinese suffered continued territorial encroachment from the
Japanese, using their Manchurian base, and the whole north of the China was
gradually taken over
The Compass
 Some world historians have argued that the growth of European influence in the
period 1450-1750 was due in large part to non-European inventions such as the
compass
 In Europe, the magnetic compass first appeared in Amalfi, Italy, around the turn of
the 14th century
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But it is not known if the magnetic compass was also invented in the West or if it
migrated to Europe along trade routes from China
However, it is clear that because sea trade and military advantage were of far more
strategic importance to Western nations, they pushed the technology of the magnetic
compass far more intensely than did the Chinese
The European Age of Exploration relied greatly on the magnetic compass
Dates of Abolition of Slavery in the United States and Abolition of Serfdom in Russia
 Slavery and serfdom were abolished in the 1860s in the United States and Russia
 The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution formally abolished slavery in
the United States in 1865
 The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declared that “Neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction”
 The emancipation of the serfs formally occurred in Russia in 1861
 Tsar Alexander II issued the proclamation of the emancipation of the serfs
Nationalism and Ethnic Minorities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
 The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a multiethnic empire
 Many of the ethnic groups within the empire longed for their own nations, their own
countries
 Indeed rebellious ethnic minorities in the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian
Empires during the late nineteenth century were motivated primarily by
nationalism
 Nationalists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire wanted one nation for one culture or
one ethnic group; they did not want to be a minority group within a multiethnic
empire
 The Ottoman Empire and Russian Empire were also multiethnic empires with
groups wanting their own nations – separatists and nationalists who longed for their
own homelands
The Meiji Reformation
 The policies of the Meiji reformers brought about the promotion of rapid
industrialization in Japan
 In 1868, the emperor was restored to power and feudalism was abolished in Japan
 The Meiji Restoration was a result of Commodore Perry’s ending of the Tokugawa
policy of isolationism and the realization that the West had risen in power and that
Japan must change in order to ensure its independence
 During the Meiji Restoration, the modernization and industrialization of Japan
occurred
 Japan became a modern industrial nation and eventually an imperial power too
The Cult of Domesticity
 In the cult of domesticity, a woman must be a perfect wife and mother
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A woman is a consumer, a shopper for self and family
A woman’s sphere is the domestic sphere, the sphere of home and family and
separate from the work world of men
It was the cult of true womanhood in the 1800s and was largely accepted in middle
and upper-class families in the West
The Industrial Revolution ushered in a new era in gender relations in America and
Europe, an era in which men became the ones who left the house to make money
and the women stayed behind to care for it.
Facts about the Tokugawa Shogunate
 After 1603, the Tokugawa Shogunate disallowed any Japanese from traveling
outside the home islands
 The Tokugawa Shogunate prohibited trade with Western nations, prohibited
Japanese from going abroad to trade, and reaffirmed Japan’s official relations with
China and Korea within the East Asian international structure
 Following the “Act of Seclusion” (1636) setting forth these conditions, Japan was
effectively “secluded” from interchange with Western Europe (but not with East
Asia) for the next 200 years
 Only the Dutch retained a small outpost on an island in Nagasaki Harbor; books
obtained from the Dutch were translated into Japanese and “Dutch learning”
formed the basis of the Japanese knowledge of developments in the West throughout
this period
 To prevent division among the Japanese people [as missionaries often accompanied
European traders] and to maintain the Great Peace that the Tokugawa shoguns had
created, Japan was isolated during the Tokugawa Shogunate
The Spread of Disease on Mongol Trade Routes
 The Mongols conquered the lands of the Silk Roads and therefore secured these
important trade routes
 Trade flourished on the Silk Roads due to the Pax Mongolia [period of peace in the
Mongol Empire] as the Mongols protected travelers and merchants on the Silk
Roads
 Of course, as trade increased – more people traveled – and more germs spread
 Trade along the Mongol road system across Central Asia was a major contributing
factor to the spread of the plague to Cairo, Beijing, and Florence in the fourteenth
century
 The Black Death spread on Mongol trade routes
Dutch Boers and Afrikaners in South Africa
 South Africa is an African country that continued to have a sizeable segment of the
population with European ancestry in the 1990s
 The first Europeans to settle in South Africa were the Dutch Boers; their
descendants were known as Afrikaners
 The British assumed control of the colony and came into conflict with the Dutch
Boers; eventually the British left and handed political power to the white minority
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For many years, South Africa was ruled by a white minority that denied the Black
South African majority equal rights
A system known as apartheid or “apartness” was created that led to racial
segregation in South Africa; Black South Africans were denied the vote; and whites
controlled the most profitable lands
China and Global Trade before Introduction of Indian Opium in China by British
 As global trade expanded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, China
exported more than it imported, thus absorbing a large amount of the world’s silver
 Europeans greatly desired Chinese goods and the Chinese did not desire European
goods; to pay for Chinese goods, Europeans used silver and as such, silver flowed
into China and out of Europe
 This did not please the Europeans and by the early 1800s, a “solution” was found in
the sale of opium
 Once opium – a highly addictive drug – was introduced to China, silver began to
flow out of China
 Yet – remember that in the 1500s and 1600s – silver flowed into China!
Columbian Exchange and Trade Connections between Americas and Europe, Africa, and
Asia
 The Columbian Exchange was the great global cultural that began with the arrival
of Columbus in the Americas
 The Columbian Exchange was the exchange of crops, peoples, diseases, and
livestock between the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia
 From 1500 to 1750, the Americas had sustained economic interactions with Europe,
Africa, and East Africa as crops from the Americas flowed to these lands
 Potatoes and corn greatly benefitted the peoples of Europe, Africa, and East Asia
[China, Korea, and Japan] as these highly caloric crops greatly increased
populations
 Yet the Columbian Exchange had tragic effects on Native American Indians who
died from new diseases introduced by Europeans such as smallpox and to enslaved
Africans who replaced dying Native American Indians on plantations in the
Americas
The Opium Wars
 The British bought many Chinese goods and its silver flowed into China to pay for
these goods; however, the British wanted the Chinese to buy British goods and have
some Chinese silver flow into Britain
 The Chinese, however, did not want British goods and even said, “Your country has
nothing we need”
 When the British discovered that the poppy plant grew in their colony of India and
that it could be transformed into opium, a highly addictive drug, then the British
had a product that addicts would need and flooded the Chinese market with opium
addicting many Chinese to the drug
 A such, opium linked Great Britain, India, and China in the nineteenth century
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It also led to the first Opium War in 1839 when the Chinese tried to abolish the
trade and the British sought to continue the trade
The Value of Myths for Historians
 Myths are useful historically because myths provide insights into the values and
traditions of their societies
 A myth is a traditional story of possible historical events that serves to reveal the
world view of a people or explain a practice or belief but a myth cannot be proven –
it is believed as opposed to factually proven
 Yet even though a myth is not factually proven, it reveals what the people of a
culture value – what they believe in
 As such, myths are very useful for they reveal the values, morals, and ideas of a
culture
 Historians use myths to understand the cultural point of view of a group of people
Facts about the Phoenicians
 The Phoenicians were a seafaring people from modern-day Lebanon
 They also are credited for their development of an alphabetic writing system
 The Phoenicians’ alphabetic writing system was adapted by the Greeks and
eventually adapted by the English
 An alphabet is based on symbols for the sounds of a language as opposed to a word
– thus, an alphabet is easier to learn as there are fewer sounds in any language than
number of words
 The Phoenicians were a people who occupied the coast of the Levant (eastern
Mediterranean); their major cities were Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Arwad – all were
fiercely independent, rival cities and, unlike the neighboring inland states, the
Phoenicians represented a confederation of maritime traders rather than a defined
country
Islamic Transmittal of Greek and Arab Learning to Medieval Europe via Islamic Spain
 The transmittal of Greek and Arab learning was the most important effect of
Islamic expansion on the civilization of medieval Europe
 The Muslims were experiencing a golden age when the Western Europeans were
experiencing a medieval period marked by frequent warfare (particularly in the
early years of the Middle Ages) and a decline in education
 The one country in Western Europe conquered by the Muslims was Spain – Islamic
Spain flourished during the Middle Ages and became a cultural bridge to Western
Europe – allowing ideas from the Islamic golden age to eventually enter the region
 The Muslims had preserved Greek and Roman learning – at a time when Germanic
invaders were burning libraries in Rome
 Thus, coupled with their great advances in mathematics and science and their
preservation of Greek and Roman learning, Islamic expansion brought new ideas
and old but forgotten ideas to Western Europe
 Islamic civilization experienced a golden age under the Abbasid Dynasty, which
ruled from the mid-8th century until the mid-13th century
The Pax Mongolica
 Having conquered a vast empire in Asia, the Mongols were able to guarantee the
security and safety of travelers
 There were some conflicts among the various Mongol Khanates, but recognition
that trade and travel were important for all the Mongol domains meant that traders
were generally not in danger during the 100 years or so of Mongol domination and
rule over Eurasia
 Yes, during the 13th century, long-distance trade in Eurasia increased primarily
because The Mongols worked to secure trade routes and ensure the safety of
merchants passing through their vast territories
 The Mongols promoted inter-state relations through the so-called “Pax Mongolica”
– the Mongolian Peace
 In China, under Mongol rule, merchants had a higher status than they had in
traditional China and during their [merchants’] travels, they could rest and secure
supplies through a postal-station system that the Mongols had established
Reason for Sunni and Shi’a Split
 The split between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims occurred as a result of disagreement
over leadership succession issues
 Muhammad, the founder of Islam and the last prophet according to Islam [the “Seal
of the Prophets”] had died unexpectedly without naming a successor
 Having no sons, a question arose over who the legitimate ruler of the Islamic umma
or community should be
 One group of Muslims, the Sunni [the majority of Muslims] believed that any pious
Muslim man could rule the umma
 The Shi’a, however, disagreed as they believed that only a descendant of the
Prophet Muhammad – through his son-in-law ‘Ali – could rule
Facts about the Abbasid Caliphate
 In Abbasid times, the Arabs learned from China the technique of making paper
 The battle of Talas occurred in 751 between the Abbasid Caliphate’s Arab-Persian
army and the Chinese army and is often said to be one of the most important battles
in Central Asian history because it marked a decisive point in history in deciding
that Central Asia would come under the influence of the Muslim world and not the
Chinese
 The Abbasid caliphate in 751 was in its ascendency, having replaced the Umayyad
Caliphate in 750
 The Abbasid and the Chinese armies met along the Talas river in Central Asia
 The battle also had dramatic repercussions for the history of technology as well,
because Chinese prisoners, captured at Talas and subsequently taken to
Samarkand, taught the Arabs there how to manufacture paper, thus introducing
that revolutionary technique into the Islamic world
The Five Pillars of Islam and the Eightfold Path of Buddhism
 The Five Pillars are to Muslims as the Noble Eightfold Path is to Buddhists
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In contrast to many other religions, the basic practice of Islam is simplicity itself –
the believer worships God directly without the intercession of priests or clergy or
saints
The believer’s duties are summed up in five simple rules, the Five Pillars of Islam:
Belief, Worship, Fasting, Almsgiving, and Pilgrimage.
The first Pillar of Islam is for the believer to testify, in Arabic, that “There is no god
but God and that Muhammad is His messenger.”
The second Pillar of Islam is to worship God five times a day – at dawn, noon, midafternoon, sunset, and nightfall; to do so, the believer washes according to a
particular ritual and prostrates himself or herself on the ground in the direction of
Mecca, while reciting certain phrases
The third Pillar of Islam is to abstain from food and drink, as well as smoking and
sex, between sunrise and sunset during the month of Ramadan, the ninth month in
the Muslim calendar
The fourth Pillar of Islam is to give alms (zakat) to the poor; Muslims are supposed
to donate a fixed amount of their property to charity every year
The fifth Pillar of Islam is to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in
one’s lifetime, if one is able, during the first days of Dhu'l-Hijja, the twelfth month
of the Muslim calendar
Facts about Sufis
 Sufis were Islamic mystics
 Sufis were very effective missionaries because they tolerated observances of some
non-Islamic customs
 Sufis sought and emotional and mystical union with Allah and used emotional
sermons and song and dance to encourage devotion
 Sufism is a mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the
truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God
 Sufism consists of a variety of mystical paths that are designed to ascertain the
nature of humanity and of God and to facilitate the experience of the presence of
divine love and wisdom in the world
Reasons for the Crusades
 The Crusades began in 1095, when armies of Christians from Western Europe
responded to Pope Urban II’s plea to go to war against Muslim forces in the Holy
Land
 There were many reasons for the Crusades like racial and religious prejudice,
geopolitical conflict between Europe and the Middle East, religious fervor, and the
personal greed of many Europeans to gain wealth and land
 The Black Death, however, was not a reason for or a cause of the Crusades because
the Black Death occurred after the Crusades
 The Black Death entered Western Europe on trades routes in 1347 but the Crusades
began in 1095
 Near the end of the 13th century, the rising Mamluk dynasty in Egypt drove the
European invaders out of Palestine and Syria in 1291
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The Crusades are considered successful failures in that the Crusaders did not
permanently regain control of the Holy Land but gained many valuable ideas and
products from the Muslims and their golden age
Reasons for Successful Expansion of Ottoman Empire in the period 1450 to 1600
 The Ottomans’ adoption of the latest gunpowder and artillery technology
contributed the most to the Ottoman Empire’s successful expansion in Europe and
the Middle East in the period from 1450 to 1600
 During the late 14th century, the Janissary corps became the most important
element of the Ottoman army
 The Janissary corps was originally staffed by Christian youths from the Balkan
provinces who were converted to Islam on being drafted into the Ottoman service
 Subject to strict rules, including celibacy, they became highly skilled soldiers
 The Ottoman Empire was also a gunpowder empire
 In its early years, the Ottoman adopted new military technology to excel in warfare
Sumerian Cuneiform
 Cuneiform is the name of the ancient Sumerian writing system
 The earliest known writing dates back to around 3,000 B.C.E. and was invented by
the Sumerians
 Cuneiform texts were drawn on damp clay tablets using a pointed tool
 Cuneiform means “wedge-shaped,” because people wrote it using a reed stylus cut
to make a wedge-shaped mark on a clay tablet
 The best known piece of literature from ancient Mesopotamia is the story of
Gilgamesh, a legendary ruler of Uruk, and his search for immortality
Facts about the Neolithic Revolution
 A major effect of the Neolithic Revolution was the establishment of sedentary village
communities
 In the Neolithic Revolution, people learned to domesticate plants and animals,
people learned to farm
 Farming allowed for sedentary lifestyles as crops must be tended and food is
produced locally
 The nomadic lifestyles of hunters-gatherers were no longer possible as farms need
daily tending
 This dramatic shift from nomadism to sedentary societies marked the Neolithic
Revolution – of course, it is important to remember that the Neolithic Revolution
occurred in different places and at different times around the world and that in a
few places, it did not occur at all as a few people in the world are still huntersgatherers today
The Tokugawa Shogunate and the Act of Seclusion
 The isolationism of the Tokugawa government included forbidding Japanese from
going abroad
 In theory, no foreigners in and no Japanese out to prevent cultural diffusion
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Of course, there was the port of Nagasaki that allowed the Chinese and Dutch to
trade
With the exception of the Dutch trading post on the island of Deshima in Nagasaki
Harbor, Japan remained inaccessible to all European nations for some 150 years
after 1639, when the Tokugawa government adopted a policy of severely restricted
economic and cultural contact with the West
The Dutch language was therefore the only medium by which the Japanese in the
late 18th century could study European technology
When the Tokugawa Shogunate collapsed and the Meiji Restoration began, Dutch
learning became very important -
Reasons for the Weakening of the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s
 Weak rulers and state corruption were internal factors or forces that weakened the
Ottoman Empire beginning in the 1600s
 The Ottoman Empire began to decline in the late 1600s
 It ceased to expand and began to face economic competition from India and Europe
 Internal corruption and poor leadership led to a steady decline until the empire was
abolished and the country of Turkey was declared a republic in 1923
 The once great empire began to experience a decline in its fortunes in the 1600s
Janissaries
 The Janissaries were Christian boys taken from conquered territories and raised as
Special Forces
 The devshirme system began in the late 14th century; Christian boys were recruited
by force to serve the Ottoman government
 The boys were generally taken from the Balkan provinces, converted to Islam, and
then passed through a series of examinations to determine their intelligence and
capabilities
 At the conclusion of each stage of the boys’ training, the boys passed through a
selection and promotion process; the academic education at the palace schools was
one of the finest in the Islamic world and among its aims was to produce obedience,
as well as high morals
 Because of their loyalty to the state, the boys would become guards, gatekeepers,
scribes, pages, governors, soldiers, or prime ministers, depending on their merit and
seniority
 Although the boys were essentially transformed into state slaves, most considered it
an honor as it led to a highly privileged position in Ottoman administration
Reasons for the Decline of the Qing Dynasty in the 1800s
 By the early 1800s, Manchu leaders in China met with popular discontent and
widespread reaction against corruption and economic malaise
 The Qing Dynasty had received the Mandate of Heaven in the 1600s and its early
rulers ruled effectively and wisely
 Over time, the dynasty began to decline
 Europeans also began to flood the Chinese market with opium
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Yes, subsequent Qing rulers were unable to meet the problems caused by increased
population pressure and concentration of land ownership
The Manchu armies deteriorated, and popular unrest, aggravated by severe floods
and famine, were factors contributing to the Taiping (1850-64) rebellion and other
rebellions
Efforts at modernization and Westernization met opposition from conservative
officials especially through the efforts of the dowager empress Cixi
Bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption became widespread, a notable example
being the diversion of funds intended for building a Chinese navy to instead
construct an ornamental marble warship at the imperial Summer Palace outside
Beijing
The first Opium War, the Anglo-French War, the Sino-Japanese War, and the
Boxer Rebellion (1900) all resulted in defeats for China and the granting of major
concessions to foreign powers
Why Creoles were “Cautious Revolutionaries” during Independence Movements
 Creoles were individuals born in the Americas of European ancestry
 Although they were frequently wealthy landowners, they were never appointed to
the top military and political posts because they were view by the Spanish rulers as
being not as sophisticated as individual born in Spain
 So, creoles wanted to replace peninsulares (individuals born in Spain) as the new
elite of Spanish America
 They were “cautious revolutionaries” in that they wanted to change their status but
they did not want to completely change the class hierarchy – they did not want
Indians and Africans to rise in status or receive land from land redistribution – the
creoles wanted to increase their wealth and power but not the wealth and power of
lower classes
 Creole elites who yearned for independence were “cautious revolutionaries” because
they feared that slaves and other oppressed groups would target local elites as part
of a general social upheaval and that their lives and riches would be in jeopardy or
danger
Johannes Gutenberg
 Johannes Gutenberg was responsible for the invention of movable type in the West
 Johannes Gutenberg was a German inventor who developed a method of movable
type and used it to create one of the Western world’s first major printed books, the
“Forty-Two-Line” Bible
 Already familiar with bookmaking, Gutenberg perfected small metal type
 Infinitely more practical than carving complete wood blocks for printing, each type
was a single letter or character
 Movable type had been used in Asia hundreds of years earlier, but Gutenberg’s
innovation was developing a casting system and metal alloys which made production
easier
 Books were produced faster and therefore sold at lower prices
 The printing press increased literacy in Western Europe and spread ideas
Dharma and Karma – In Hinduism and Buddhism
 Dharma and karma are important concepts in Hinduism and Buddhism
 Karma is the universal causal law by which good or bad actions determine the
future modes of an individual’s existence
 Karma affects reincarnation or samsara in that good deeds lead to better future
lives
 The word “karma” is derived from the Sanskrit word karman – meaning “act”
 “A man turns into something good by good action and into something bad by bad
action”
 Dharma is the moral duty of each caste member in the Hindu caste system
 Buddhists use the term “Dharma” to refer to the teachings of the Buddha
Facts about Mali
 Mali was a powerful African state in the 1300s because it was a major center of
trade and religious instruction and possessed large deposits of gold and metal ore
 Mali was a trading empire that flourished in West Africa from the 13th to the 16th
century
 The kingdom of Mali grew up along the Niger River and eventually spread across
1,200 miles from the city of Gao to the Atlantic Ocean
 The emergence of Mali – like Ghana before it and Songhai after it – was attributed
to the coupling of the lucrative gold trade from the Sudan with the salt brought by
North African Muslim traders
 The acceptance of Islam by the rulers of Mali and Songhay encouraged trade
between their empires and North Africa
The Gunpowder Empires of the Islamic World in the Early Modern Era
 Safavid Persia, Ottoman Turkey, Mughal India were considered the Gunpowder
Empires in the Islamic world
 Scholars often use the term “gunpowder empire” to describe each of these three
empires [Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal], focusing attention on their military
exploits, which were, indeed, impressive
 Each made use of newly-developed firearms, especially cannon and small arms, to
create their empires and to equip their armies, each state developed a highly
centralized administration that could mobilize the financial, manpower and natural
resources necessary to purchase gunpowder arms and then supervise the
deployment of those arms and the training of soldiers to use the weapons
 But all three empires were also centers of impressive cultural (artistic, literary and
architectural) achievements
 In addition, each was also all based on Islam in one form or another
 In the Safavid Empire, for example, it was Shah Ismail I who really established the
Shiite faith as the dominant religion of Iran/Persia
The Japanese Feudal Hierarchy and the Role of the Emperor
 Shogun, Daimyo [Lords], Samurai [Warriors], Peasants
 The shogun [most powerful lord] held effective political power
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The samurai class was transformed into a new aristocracy
The emperor was the symbolic head of the country
The emperor was a mere figurehead who reigned but did not rule as the Shogun
held the political power
Facts about Patriarchal Gender Systems
 In patriarchal gender systems, women are inferiors and must be protected
 Patriarchy is a social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the
clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of
descent and inheritance in the male line
 In a patriarchal society, there is control by men and men have a disproportionately
large share of power
 A patriarchal society consists of a male-dominated power structure throughout
organized society and in individual relationships
 A patriarchy, from the ancient Greek patriarches, was a society where power was
held by and passed down through the elder males
 When modern historians and sociologists describe a “patriarchal society,” they
mean that men hold the positions of power: head of the family unit, leaders of social
groups, boss in the workplace and heads of government
The Significance of the Industrial Revolution
 The Industrial Revolution began in England in 1750; it involved the use of machines
in factories to produce goods – it increase the production of manufactured goods
and reduced the prices of manufactured goods and ultimately led to increased
standards of living as more people had more goods
 Most world historians would agree that the key to European predominance in the
world economy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the
Industrial Revolution
 The Industrial Revolution led to better weapons and a greater ability to dominate
the world economy
 Industrialized nations were able to conquer other lands and acquire the natural
resources of other lands to produce more manufactured goods
 Britain, with its head start in manufacturing, its many world markets, and its
dominant navy, would dominate industry for most of the 19th century, however,
towards the end of that century, the United States and Germany would begin to
challenge Britain's industrial power
Extraterritoriality
 “Extraterritoriality” can best be described as exemption of foreigners from the laws
of the country in which they live
 Extraterritoriality is exemption from the application or jurisdiction of local law or
tribunals
 After the Opium War, British citizens in China were exempt from punishment in
Chinese courts – they were tried only in British courts in China
 Thus, the Chinese government had no control over Europeans in China
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Extraterritoriality was disliked by the Chinese – it allowed foreigners to do as they
pleased in China
Trade in the Post-Classical Era and the Growth of Cities
 Trade and urbanization go together
 Urbanization is movement to cities
 Trading centers or trading ports often become cities
 Interregional trade represents the most significant cause of the growth of cities in
Afro-Eurasia in the period 1000–1450
 As trade flourished in the post-classical era along the Silk Roads and in the Indian
Ocean, cities emerged as centers were traders could exchange goods and rest before
their long journeys to other lands