th
14
Century Timelines
Episode Four: Century of the
Scythe (1300-1400)
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999
/millennium/learning/timelines/
The Larger Fourteenth-Century World Context
For many living in the Eurasian world, the 14th
century was a dismal period marked by severe
weather, disease, starvation, war, and death. The
first gunpowder weapons were brought into Europe
as early as 1323. Their first use in a European
battle was in 1346 at the Battle of Crecy, where the
firing of cannons did little more than scare the
horses. Eventually Europeans replaced wood and
bronze cannons with ones made of cast iron, a
durable metal that could withstand gunpowder
explosions.
The Plague
Bacterial strains of the plague had survived from
previous outbreaks as endemic diseases in
Central Asia. Infected fleas, snuggling in rodent
fur, traveled with caravan cargoes strapped to the
backs of camels. Where caravans stopped, fleas
infected humans. Disease decimated the Mongol
army and nomadic traders. The plague arrived in
China, where people were already suffering from
drought, famine, war, earthquakes, and floods. (A
Chinese census recorded a population of 123
million in 1200; a census of the same territory in
1393 recorded a population of only 65 million.)
The Plague
The plague spread to India. To the north and west
panicked Kurds tried unsuccessfully to escape by
retreating to their mountain enclaves. The famed
Mamluk warriors, victorious in battle against the
Mongols, isolated themselves in their Egyptian
fortresses only to be shattered by the plague.
Estimates of Egyptian losses climbed to one-third
of the population. Rats transported the dreaded
disease from port to port in ship cargoes too.
Fearful travelers boarded a Geonese ship for
Messina hoping to escape the plague in the
Crimea; they unwittingly brought the plague to
Europe.
The Plague
Some Europeans suspected that the disease was
caused by infection; others blamed the Jews. Two
thousand Jews in Strausbourg and 600 in
Brussels were slaughtered. Meanwhile, the
Chinese became suspicious of foreign Muslims.
By the end of the century, a conservative
Neoconfucianist Ming dynasty had replaced the
Yuan Dynasty of the Mongols. Gradually the
plague subsided, although periodic outbreaks of
the disease would continue until people adopted
new habits of personal hygiene and controlled the
rat population.
Islands of Prosperity
Curiously, some places managed to escape.
While Venice, Genoa, and Florence suffered
outbreaks of the plague, Milan was spared.
South of the Sahara, Mali was untouched. But
Malians were faced with different sort of problem.
They lived in a warm, tropical climate where they
had gold but little salt. Salt was a necessity in
such a climate, so blocks of salt were transported
from Saharan mines to be swapped for gold. The
gold was transported north, minted into coins,
and became a basis for trade between
merchants from Cairo and Europe to southwest
Asia and India.
Islands of Prosperity
At times there was too much gold in circulation.
Mansa Musa, the ruler of Mali, caused an
inflationary spiral in prices as he lavishly spent
African gold in Cairo on his pilgrimage to Mecca.
Islands in the Indian Ocean, like the eastern
Javan kingdom of Majapahit, also escaped the
plague. Javans of Southeast Asia continued to
prosper because their location between the
South China Sea and the Indian Ocean was key
to the lucrative spice trade. Their rich cultural
tradition represented a synthesis of Indian,
Chinese, and native traditions.
Indian Ocean Trade
During this century the Mongol Empire
disintegrated. Merchants shipped their wares
through the Indian Ocean rather than risk
disruptions overland. The Indian Ocean was the
most important trade route in the world by 1400.
Highly prized luxury goods like pearls, gold,
gems, silks, and spices were transported, along
with staples like grain, timber, cotton textiles,
and pepper. Trade tended to split into two
shipping areas: the eastern half of the Indian
Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, and the western
half with the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, and
Red Sea.
Indian Ocean Trade
Muslims transported goods through
western waters to India where cargo was
transferred to Chinese junks bound for
ports in southeast Asia and the Orient.
Muslim sailors used astrolabes to locate
their position at sea. For the most part,
Indian Ocean trade was multi-ethnic,
decentralized, and co-operative, with
Muslims taking the lead.
Chinese Junks
Chinese junks were the largest, most
technologically advanced ships of the period. The
era’s equivalent to modern ocean liners, junks
carried as many as 1000 passengers and a
thousand tons of cargo. A privileged passenger
could sleep in one of the hundred private cabins.
Junks were divided into water tight compartments
below the deck for safety. Sailors used a huge
stern post rudder to steer, and were aided by
currents and monsoon winds that filled the
bamboo sails. The Chinese compass guided the
way.
The Americas
In the Americas, Aztecs moved into the valley of
Mexico in 1326. They were able to reclaim marshy
islands in Lake Texcoco as their territory. In this
unpromising environment, they built their own
gardens by scooping up rich mud from swamp
lands or the bottom of the lake, which they
dumped on floating woven mats anchored in place.
These became the raised fields and floating
gardens that supplied Aztecs their food. Each year
they renewed the soil with a fresh supply of rich
mud from the lake. Aztecs began the construction
of their capital Tenochtitlan in the lake, which was
connected by causeways to the mainland.
Conclusion
On the one hand, the 14th century was like other
periods in world history when large numbers of
people suffered and died in a series of
cataclysmic events. These upheavals led to
labor shortages and changes in the social
structure in Europe. In Asia, they led to the
decimation of the Mongol army and the
overthrow of the Mongol Dynasty in China at the
end of the century. On the other hand, many
people not only lived unaffected by the caevents
of the century, they flourished. By the 15th
century, outbreaks of the plague begin to
subside, populations recovered, and commerce
expanded.
Ibn Battuta 1304 - 1377
In 1325 Ibn Battuta left Morocco for a
pilgrimage to Mecca. Three decades and
75,000 miles later, medieval Islam's most
extraordinary traveler had covered nearly
the entire Muslim world. For the sheer
adventure of it, Battuta traipsed from
Spain to the east coast of China. An
invaluable picture of the 14th century, his
book, Travels, is one of the greatest
peripatetic tales of all time.
–
Ibn Khaldun 1332 - 1406
Shuttling between both Mediterranean coasts, Tunisian
diplomat Ibn Khaldun may qualify as the 14th century's
most frequent flee-er; he was surely one of its most
brilliant minds. In and out of favor, and prison, he
scrutinized human nature. When he wrote a history of the
Muslim world, his stunning array of ideas included the
importance of a group's social cohesion in attaining its
goals, as well as history's cyclical nature. Five centuries
later historian Arnold Toynbee described Khaldun's
pioneering work as "undoubtedly the greatest of its kind
that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or
place."
EGYPT - Summary
Cairo was one center particularly hardhit by disaster. At ten times the size of
Paris or London, Cairo was one of the
greatest cities in the world. But it lost
20,000 people a day to a mysterious
and devastating disease called the
Black Death.
The bubonic plague was a pest-borne
bacterial infection, which originated in
Central Asia and spread along the
flourishing trade routes both to the
East and West. Christendom was
especially hard hit. People struggled to
understand why the disease had struck.
Many looked for scapegoats. Jews were
massacred and heretics burned.
But when people noticed that the Jews
and heretics were also dying, they
began to blame themselves instead,
recognizing the plague as a scourge sent
by God. China, the Islamic world, and
Christendom were all held back from
expansion while the disease ran its
course.
MALI - Summary
Beyond the reach of the Black Death,
other cultures flourished. In West
Africa, where the great Sahara desert
provided a barrier against disease spread
from the north, the empire of Mali was
busy trading its abundant gold for
essentials such as salt.
An Islamic traveler from Tangier named
Ibn Battuta wrote at length about what
he saw in the empire of Mali. The
mosques, libraries, and schools of the
region's cities were gathering places for
Muslim intellectuals and became
comfortably familiar to him. Ibn Battuta
was particularly impressed by the
humility of King Mansa Musa's subjects
and their devotion to the Islamic faith.
Among the Mongols, all men rode
horses; by contrast, in Mansa Musa's
army only a tiny elite of professional
soldiers rode. The skill of these
cavalry units enabled Mansa Musa to
dominate large swathes of the desert
and grasslands of west Africa.
The gold that provided him with the
means to support such a huge empire
became well known as far away as
Europe. It was said that when he went
on pilgrimages to Mecca, his
extravagances upset the economies of
the towns he visited.
UZBEKISTAN - Summary
In Central Asia, another empire was
able to flourish. A nomadic
conqueror, known as Timur, laid siege
to vast swathes of territory. He began
life as a sheep rustler, then rose to
become a leader of armies. Claiming
Mongol descent, he aspired to rival
Genghis Khan.
But as a convert to Islam, he also saw
himself as a champion of the faith.
Using terror and slaughter, he created
an empire that stretched from the
Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. He
used his gathered wealth to build
extraordinary monuments in
Samarkand and Bukhara, inside
present-day Uzbekistan.
Timur's ambitions seemed to know no
limits. Almost blind and too weak to
walk, he set off on one last campaign
to conquer China. But he died before
the invasion could begin - and his
empire did not survive his death.
Timur's memory lives on among the
people of Uzbekistan, who hail him as
a national hero and a symbol of might.
INDONESIA - Summary
Across the Indian Ocean, at the heart of
the world's busiest trade routes, lay the
island of Java, home to the kingdom of
Majapahit. The regular monsoon winds
of the Indian Ocean had helped sailors
move East and West across the water
for millennia.
For half the year the winds blew in one
direction and for the other half in the
opposite direction. In between, ships
idled in ports waiting to take off again.
The main island of Indonesia, Java,
was one such stopover point. It was
also an important provider of
specialized woods, spices, and rice.
Much of Java's culture had its roots
in India. Buddhism and Hinduism
had mixed with local Javanese
traditions to create hybrid faiths.
Some of the traditions that
originated in the 14th century are
kept alive on a large island to the
east of Java, called Bali.
Here they tell the story of Hayan Wuruk,
one of the kingdom's greatest leaders.
Like others in this century, he had
ambitions to create a huge empire
stretching to China and India. But for
the most part he was content to simply
receive visitors from afar, offering them
grand feasts and displays. The island
flourished under his rule.
ENGLAND - Summary
Back in Christendom, things were
going from bad to worse. Not only
were the people afflicted with the
plague, but temperatures were
plunging. A mini-ice age had struck.
Icebergs floated farther south, and the
northern seas grew treacherous.
Marginal lands to the north were
deserted and crops everywhere failed
to grow. The poor suffered the most.
What little food there was became
astronomically expensive. Turning to
their rulers for help, the poor were
rewarded with oppressive laws and
harsh taxes.
Peasants across Europe began to
challenge their rulers - rebellions
erupted. The poor sought justice and
equality, but their demands were largely
refused. In the next century, some
would decide to seek properity beyond
the bounds of Christendom, across the
oceans.
History of Britain
5. King Death 1348 – 1500
This is the story of the Black Death - a squalid disease
that killed within a week and a national trauma that
utterly transformed Britain.
The class of survivors created a country of higher wages
and peasants with a determined sense of their own
worth, farmers and traders who formed the backbone of
the Peasants' Revolt.
Richard II's attempts to quell the revolt sealed his fate as
his crown is seized by Henry Bolingbroke, whose
descendants pitched England into twenty years of the
Wars of the Roses.
14th Century Segments
Egypt
Mali
Uzbekistan
Indonesia
England
History of Britain
14th Century Legacies
European deaths from famine, the plague, and wars led to labor
shortages, disruptions within the leadership of institutions like the Church,
and changes in class structure. This change set the stage for later changes
of the 15th and 16th centuries.
Scandinavians ended colonization efforts in Iceland and North America.
The Americas would be rediscovered.
As Mongol power disintegrated, overland trade became more sporadic
without Mongol protection. Shipping replaced overland caravans.
Europeans excluded from this exchange were motivated to seek new
routes to the east in the 15th century.
Successful revolts against the Mongols led to a new centralization of
authority defended by a land based military in Korea, Japan, China, Iran,
and Russia.