Objectives 15 and 16:
Global Cultural Diffusion and
Eurasian Empires
Global cultural diffusion
• The exchange and
subsequent
transformation of
things, ideas,
religious and
philosophical
traditions,
technologies and
diseases over space
and through time
Paper: China Baghdad Europe
Southernization
by Lynda Shaffer Journal of World History 1994
• “a rich south and a poor north”
• The process of spreading “southern”
ideas, technologies, cash crops and
mathematics to the “north”
• Prosperity is linked to heat
• Southernization laid the foundation for
westernization
What is “south”
What is “north”?
It begins in India…
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Cinnamon
Pepper
Sugar
Cotton
Arabic numerals
“zero”
Lentils
Champa rice
Buddhism
40º North
Fine Spice Trade
• Nutmeg
• Mace
• Cloves
Malaysia
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Malay sailors
Balanced lug sails
Monsoon winds
Prototype for Arab
lateen sail and
European boats
Trading world of Indian Ocean
Basin, 600-1600 CE
The Spread of Religions
Then to China…
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Porcelain
Iron goods
Silk
Indigo
Compass
Gunpowder
Paper
Cultural diffusion during the
“classical era”
“Muslim Synthesis”
Mongol Empire
How does this lead to
Westernization?
• Transmission of…
• cash crop agriculture
technology
• Gunpowder
• Paper
• compass
Rise of the West
• Seizure of southern lands in tropical
climates in the Americas
• Can grow southern crops, sugar and
cotton
• Use southern technologies, gunpowder,
balanced lug sail and compass, to acquire
these lands
Agents of diffusion
6th-12th centuries
• Muslims
• Crusaders
• Mongols
Mongols in Baghdad
The Mongols and Eurasian Empire
• Built the largest
empire in history
stretching from
Poland to China
• 13.8 million square
miles
Chinggis/Genghis Khan
• 100 million people
The Mongol Empire at its height
Who were the Mongols?
• From the steppes of
eastern central Asia
• Nomadic peoples
• United under the
leadership of Temujin
a.k.a Chinggis Khan
Steppe
From Temujin to “Universal Ruler”
• Born 1167
• Orphaned at 10
• “Mastered the art of
steppe diplomacy”
• 1206 made Chinggis
Khan
Chinese depiction of Chinggis
Khan
The wisdom of Chinggis Khan:
“Man’s greatest joy is in victory: to
conquer one’s enemies, to pursue
them, to deprive them of their
possessions, to make their beloved
weep, to ride on their horses, and to
embrace their wives and
daughters…”
Chronology of the Mongol Empire
• 1206-1227
Reign of Chinggis Khan
• 1211-1234
Conquest of northern China
• 1219-1221
Conquest of Persia
• 1237-1241
Conquest of Russia
• 1258
Capture of Baghdad
• 1264-1279
Conquest of southern China
How did Japan resist Mongol
invasion?
• The Mongols
attempted to invade
Japan twice
[1274 and 1281]
• Twice they were
repelled by typhoons
• “Kamikaze” or
“divine wind”
Inspiration for WWII “kamikaze”
The Mongol Art of War
• Great horsemen and
archers
• Large, quickly moving
armies
• Masters at psychological
warfare:
“By putting cities to the
sword, they let terror run
ahead of them”
John Fairbank
A “ger”
Contemporary impressions of the
Mongols
“In one stroke, a world which billowed with
fertility was laid desolate, and the regions
thereof became a desert, and the greater
part of the living and their skin and bones
crumbling in the dust; and the mighty were
humbled and immersed in the calamities
of perdition…”
13th century Persian
Another description:
The Mongols were “terrible to look at and
indescribable, with large heads like
buffaloes’, narrow eyes like a fledgling’s, a
snub nose like a cat’s, projecting snouts
like a dog’s, narrow loins like an ant’s,
short legs like a hog’s, and by nature with
no beards at all…”
An Armenian observer
And according to one Chinese
observer:
“They smell so heavily that one
cannot approach them. They
wash themselves in urine…”
Shortly after Chinggis Khan’s death, his empire split
into four Khanates
China: the Yuan Dynasty
1279-1368
• Most famous ruler:
Khubilai Khan
• Government administered
by Mongols and nonChinese advisors
• Allowed religious freedom
but dismantled Confucian
exam system
Khubilai Khan
Painting by Liu Guandao of Khubilai Khan on a hunting
expedition, 1280
“Pax Mongolia?”
• Under the Mongols, there
was unprecedented longdistance trade
• Mongols encouraged the
exchange of people,
technology, and
information across their
empire
• Weatherford: the
Mongols were
“civilization’s unrivaled
cultural carriers…”
Marco Polo en route to China
Mongol script and currency
The First World Travelers!
• Ibn Battuta and Marco
Polo were among the
first individuals to
traverse much of
Eurasia
• This was possible
because of the
stability of the era
Long-distance travelers were
required to carry passports
Travels of Marco Polo and
Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta 1304-1368
• Moroccan legal scholar
• Traveled from subSaharan Africa to China
by way of India, Persia,
many other regions
• Served as legal advisor in
Muslim territories
Ibn Battuta
Marco Polo 1254-1329
• A merchant from
Venice who traveled
the world and served
at the court of
Khubilai Khan
• Wrote The Tales of
Marco Polo
Also exchanged over trading
routes….
• The bubonic plague
• Originated in SW China
• Spread by Mongols to
central China
[40 million died]
• Reached Europe mid-14th
century, killing one-third
of the population!
Spread of the bubonic plague east to west
“Every hour of every day there was such a rush to carry
the huge number of corpses that there was not enough
blessed burial ground, especially with the usual custom
of giving each body its own place. So when the ground
was filled, they made huge trenches in every courtyard,
in which they stacked hundreds of bodies in layers like
goods stowed in the hold of a ship…”
Decameron
Socio-economic effects of the
“Black Death”
• Made people question
organized religion
• Caused persecution
of minorities
• Changed feudal
hierarchies
Ring around the
roses, ring around
the roses!
At-choo! At-choo!
We all fall down!
“The Dance of Death” Michael Wolgemut
Woodcut, 1493
The Turks
• Originally part of the Xiongnu confederation from
central Asia
• Nomadic border peoples participants in
empire power holders
• As Turks converted to Islam, they became strict
enforcers of orthodoxy
• Eventual founders of the Ottoman empire
Turkish empires and their neighbors, c. 1210