Take the lead in succeeding in your history

course.
Taking your first college history course might seem like a challenge. These excerpts from
the Bedford Tutorials for History will give you tools for succeeding in your history course.
Taking Effective Notes
Lectures and reading assignments present large amounts of information that can be
overwhelming. Here are a few tips for taking effective notes.

Establish Shortcuts to Facilitate Taking Legible Notes

To speed up your note-taking and yet still have notes you can read, use abbreviations and
symbols to indicate commonly used words and ideas. Text-messaging conventions are
transferrable to note-taking — for example, use “w/o” for “without” and “b/c” for “because.”
In your history class, you can use “c.” for “century” and establish other shortcuts for
commonly used historical terminology.

Organize Your Notes and Be Selective

Every time you begin a new set of notes, include the date and subject at the top of the
page. Focus on the big ideas and include the concrete examples and details needed to
illustrate and support those ideas. Your goal is to create notes that are brief yet
understandable.
Working with Primary Sources
A primary source is a document, object, or image created during the time period under
study. Sometimes, historical documents can be difficult to understand because of their form
or language. Here are questions you can ask when analyzing primary sources.

Who produced this document, when, and where?

Identifying the author of a primary source is important because it helps expose the
author's point of view. We need to know something about how the author or artist
viewed the world and how he or she came to produce the document or visual
source.

Who was the intended audience of the document?

There is often a close connection between a document and its intended audience.
The historical importance of a document is partly determined by who read it.

What are the main points of the document?

While reading, start to make connections between the main points of the document
and the specific choices the author made in style, organization, content, and
emphasis.

What does this document reveal about the time and place in which it was
written?
Often there is no single right answer to this question because readers bring their
own goals and purposes to their analyses and use the evidence found in the
document to draw their own conclusions about the document's historical meaning.
Avoiding Plagiarism and Managing Sources
Most students are aware that plagiarism can be committed on purpose, but unintentional or
accidental plagiarism is also problematic. Keeping track of source material has always been
tough, and technology has made it easy to cut text from an online source and copy it into
your paper. You may have intended to modify or acknowledge it later but then forgot where
it came from. Omitting a citation of a source by accident is still a breach of academic ethics.
Here are four steps that you can use to help avoid plagiarism.

Step 1: Manage Sources Efficiently

Many academic professionals and students take notes and keep track of sources using
index cards. Write one piece of evidence — a quote, a fact, an idea — on each card along
with the original source of that data. This can also be done electronically, by creating a
single file for each source that you consult and housing all of these files in a folder called
“Sources.”

Step 2: Use Sources Properly

Using sources properly as you take notes and incorporate them into your writing is another
crucial component of the research and writing process. You will not be able to cite your
sources properly if you don't know which note is a quote, which note is a partial paraphrase
of another author's point, and which one is paraphrased fully.

Step 3: Acknowledge Sources Appropriately

There are some general rules about what types of information require citation or
acknowledgment and what types do not. Widely accepted facts or common knowledge do
not need to be cited, but another person's words or ideas (even if not quoted verbatim)
require a citation.

Step 4: Cite Sources Completely and Consistently

Historians and others writing about history have adopted the citation guidelines from the
Chicago Manual of Style (CMS). The citations are indicated by superscript numbers within
the text that refer to a note with a corresponding number either at the bottom of the page
(footnote) or at the end of the paper (endnote). Here are just a few brief examples of CMS-
style notes.
David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in
Book:
the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 73.
Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, “Before Othello:
Journal Article: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans,” William and
Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54 (January 1997): 19–44.

Instructors: For more information on the Bedford Tutorials for History, contact your
Bedford/St. Martin’s representative, or visit macmillanlearning.com/historytutorials.
About the Cover Image
Warrior from the Terra-cotta Army Guarding the
Tomb of Qin Shihuangdi, 3rd Century B.C.E. This
forceful head sits on top of one of thousands of life-
size terra-cotta warriors buried in pits close to the
tomb of Qin Shihuangdi, first emperor of a unified
China (r. 246–221 B.C.E.). In life, the Qin emperor
assembled a huge army as he defeated his rivals,
built roads to allow soldiers to move rapidly, and
drafted workers to build a wall on China’s northern
border. Assassination plots led him to become fearful
about his safety even in the afterlife, so he ordered
artisans to create soldiers, horses, and chariots out
of ceramic to protect him. These were made in large
government workshops, with faces created using
molds and then individualized so that every face is
different. The figures, originally painted bright colors
to make them appear even more lifelike, were
arranged in military formation and carried real bronze
weapons, including spears, swords, and crossbows.
Maps
 A History of
World Societies
VALUE EDITION
 VALUE EDITION

A History of World Societies

Eleventh Edition

Volume 1: To 1600
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Patricia Buckley Ebrey
University of Washington
Roger B. Beck
Eastern Illinois University
Jerry Dávila
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Clare Haru Crowston
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
John P. McKay
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
FOR BEDFORD/ST. MARTIN’S
Vice President, Editorial, Macmillan Learning Humanities: Edwin Hill
Program Director for History: Michael Rosenberg
Senior Program Manager for History: William J. Lombardo
History Marketing Manager: Melissa Rodriguez
Director of Content Development: Jane Knetzger
Senior Developmental Editor: Heidi L. Hood
Senior Content Project Manager: Christina M. Horn
Senior Workflow Manager: Jennifer Wetzel
Production Assistant: Brianna Lester
Senior Media Project Manager: Michelle Camisa
Media Editor: Tess Fletcher
Associate Editor: Mary Posman Starowicz
Copy Editor: Jennifer Brett Greenstein
Indexer: Leoni Z. McVey
Composition: Jouve
Cartographer: Mapping Specialists, Ltd.
Photo Editor: Christine Buese
Photo Researcher: Bruce Carson
Permissions Editor: Eve Lehmann
Senior Art Director: Anna Palchik
Text Design: Lumina Datamatics, Inc.
Cover Design: William Boardman
Cover Art: China: Detail of a warrior, Head and Chest, from the terra-cotta army guarding the tomb
of Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of a unified China (r. 246–221 B.C.E.), Xi’an/Pictures from
History/Bridgeman Images

Copyright © 2018, 2015, 2012, 2009 by Bedford/St. Martin’s

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes or in writing by
the Publisher.

2 1 0 9 8 7
f e d c b a

For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116

ISBN: 978-1-319-27087-2 (Volume 1)(mobi)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the text and art selections they cover;
these acknowledgments and copyrights constitute an extension of the copyright page.
 Preface
Why This Book This Way

We are pleased to publish the Value Edition of A History of World Societies,

Eleventh Edition. The Value Edition provides the social and cultural focus,
comprehensive regional organization, and global perspective that have long
been hallmarks of A History of World Societies in a two-color, trade-sized
format at a low price. Featuring the full narrative of the eleventh edition of
the comprehensive parent text and select images, maps, and pedagogical
tools, the Value Edition continues to incorporate the latest and best
scholarship in the field in an accessible, student-friendly manner. Each of
the authors on our collaborative team is a regional expert with deep
experience in teaching world history, who brings insights into the text from
the classroom, as well as from new secondary works and his or her own
research in archives and libraries. The pedagogical tools of the Value
Edition — both print and digital — have been carefully designed to help
students think historically and master the material.
The Story of A History of World Societies
In this age of global connections, with their influence on the economy,
migration patterns, popular culture, and climate change, among other
aspects of life, the study of world history is more vital and urgent than ever
before. An understanding of the broad sweep of the human past helps us
comprehend today’s dramatic changes and enduring continuities. People
now migrate enormous distances and establish new lives far from their
places of birth, yet migration has been a constant in history since the first
humans walked out of Africa. Satellites and cell phones now link nearly
every inch of the planet, yet the expansion of communication networks is a
process that is thousands of years old. Children who speak different
languages at home now sit side by side in schools and learn from one
another, yet intercultural encounters have long been a source of innovation,
transformation, and at times, unfortunately, conflict.
This book is designed for twenty-first-century students who will spend
their lives on this small interconnected planet and for whom an
understanding of only local or national history will no longer be sufficient.
We believe that the study of world history in a broad and comparative
context is an exciting, important, and highly practical pursuit. It is our
conviction, based on considerable experience in introducing large numbers
of students to world history, that a book reflecting current trends in
scholarship can excite readers and inspire an enduring interest in the long
human experience.
Our strategy has been twofold. First, we have made social and cultural
history the core elements of our narrative. We know that engaging students’
interest in the past is often a challenge, but we also know that the emphasis
on individual experience in its social and cultural dimensions connects with
students and makes the past vivid and accessible. We seek to re-create the
lives of ordinary people in appealing human terms and also to highlight the
interplay between men’s and women’s lived experiences and the ways they
reflect on these to create meaning. Thus, in addition to foundational works
of philosophy and literature, we include popular songs and stories. We
present objects along with texts as important sources for studying history,
and this has allowed us to incorporate the growing emphasis on material
culture in the work of many historians. At the same time, we have been
mindful of the need to give great economic, political, and intellectual
developments the attention they deserve. We want to give individual
students and instructors an integrated perspective so that they can pursue —
on their own or in the classroom — the themes and questions that they find
particularly exciting and significant.
Second, we have made every effort to strike an effective global and
regional balance. The whole world interacts today, and to understand the
interactions and what they mean for today’s citizens, we must study the
whole world’s history. Thus we have adopted a comprehensive regional
organization with a global perspective that is clear and manageable for
students. For example, Chapter 7 introduces students in depth to East Asia,
and at the same time the chapter highlights the cultural connections that
occurred via the Silk Road and the spread of Buddhism. We study all
geographical areas, conscious of the separate histories of many parts of the
world, particularly in the earliest millennia of human development. We also
stress the links among cultures, political units, and economic systems, for
these connections have made the world what it is today. We make
comparisons and connections across time as well as space, for
understanding the unfolding of the human story in time is the central task of
history. We further students’ understanding of these connections with the
addition of new timelines in each chapter that put regional developments
into a global context.
Primary Sources for Historical Thinking
For those who are using LaunchPad, A History of World Societies offers an
extensive program of primary source assignments to help students master a
number of key learning outcomes, among them critical thinking, historical
thinking, analytical thinking, and argumentation, as well as learning
about the diversity of world cultures. For this eleventh edition, we have
added a new feature, Thinking Like a Historian (one in each chapter),
which typically groups five or six textual or visual sources around a central
question, with additional questions to guide students’ analysis of the
evidence and a “Putting It All Together” assignment that asks them to
synthesize the sources with what they have learned in class and use the
evidence to create an argument. Topics include “Slavery in Roman and
Germanic Society” (Chapter 8), “When and Why Did Foot Binding Begin?”
(Chapter 13), “Forced Relocation of Armenians to Persia” (Chapter 17),
“The Rights of Which Men?” (Chapter 22), and “The Relationships
Between Mosquitoes, People, and Epidemics” (Chapter 33).
To encourage comparisons across chapters and across cultures, we have
sharpened the focus of the Global Viewpoints feature, which provides
students with perspectives from two cultures on a key issue. This feature
offers a pair of primary documents on a topic that illuminates the human
experience, allowing us to provide more concrete examples of differences
in the ways people thought. Anyone teaching world history has to
emphasize larger trends and developments, but students sometimes get the
wrong impression that everyone in a society thought alike. We hope that
teachers can use these passages to get students thinking about diversity
within and across societies. The 33 Global Viewpoints assignments — one
in each chapter — introduce students to working with sources, encourage
critical analysis, and extend the narrative while giving voice to the people
of the past. Each includes a brief introduction and questions for analysis.
Carefully chosen for accessibility, each pair of documents presents views on
a diverse range of topics such as “Roman and Chinese Officials in Times of
Disaster” (Chapter 6), “Early Descriptions of Africa from Egypt” (Chapter
10), “Aztec and Spanish Views on Christian Conversion in New Spain”
(Chapter 16), “Declarations of Independence: The United States and
Venezuela” (Chapter 22), and “Gandhi and Mao on Revolutionary Means”
(Chapter 29).
A third type of original source feature, Analyzing the Evidence (two in
each chapter), features an individual visual or written source, longer and
more substantial than those in other features, chosen to extend and
illuminate a major historical issue considered in each chapter, with
headnotes and questions that help students understand the source and
connect it to the information in the rest of the chapter. Selected for their
interest and carefully integrated into their historical context, these in-depth
looks at sources provide students with firsthand encounters with people of
the past and should, we believe, help students “hear” and “see” the past.
Topics include “The Teachings of Confucius” (Chapter 4), “Orthodox Icon
of Jesus” (Chapter 8), “Abu Hamid al-Ghazali on the Etiquette of
Marriage” (Chapter 9), “Courtly Love Poetry” (Chapter 14), “Lamu Old
Town, Lamu Island, Kenya” (Chapter 20), “Rain, Steam, and Speed — the
Great Western Railway” (Chapter 23), “Reyita Castillo Bueno on Slavery
and Freedom in Cuba” (Chapter 27), “C. L. R. James on Pan African
Liberation” (Chapter 31), “A Member of China’s Red Guards on
Democratic Reform” (Chapter 32), and “A Brazilian Band on
Globalization” (Chapter 33).
Taken together, the primary source features in the LaunchPad for this
book offer the tools for building historical skills, including chronological
reasoning, explaining causation, evaluating context, and assessing
perspective. The suggestions for essays based on the primary sources
encourage students to further expand their skills as they use their
knowledge to develop historical arguments and write historical analyses. In
LaunchPad these features are each accompanied by autograded questions
that test students on their basic understanding of the sources so instructors
can ensure students read the sources, quickly identify and help students who
may be struggling, and focus more class time on thoughtful discussion and
instruction.
In addition, our primary source documents collection, Sources of
World Societies, includes written and visual sources that closely align the
readings with the chapter topics and themes of this edition. The documents
are available in a fully assignable and assessable electronic format within
each chapter in LaunchPad, and the multiple-choice questions — now
accompanying each source — measure comprehension and hold students
accountable for their reading.
Finally, our new Bedford Document Collections modules in
LaunchPad, which are also available for customizing the print text, provide
a flexible repository of discovery-oriented primary source projects ready to
assign. Each curated project — written by a historian about a favorite topic
— poses a historical question and guides students through analysis of the
sources. Examples include “The Silk Road: Travel and Trade in Premodern
Inner Asia”; “The Spread of Christianity in the Sixteenth and Early
Seventeenth Centuries”; “The Singapore Mutiny of 1915: Understanding
World War I from a Global Perspective”; and “Living Through Perestroika:
The Soviet Union in Upheaval, 1985–1991.”
Student Engagement with Biography
In our years of teaching world history, we have often noted that students
come alive when they encounter stories about real people in the past. To
give students a chance to see the past through ordinary people’s lives, each
chapter includes one of the popular Individuals in Society biographical
essays, each of which offers a brief study of an individual or group,
informing students about the societies in which the individuals lived. This
feature grew out of our long-standing focus on people’s lives and the
varieties of historical experience, and we believe that readers will
empathize with these human beings who themselves were seeking to define
their own identities. The spotlighting of individuals, both famous and
obscure, perpetuates the book’s continued attention to cultural and
intellectual developments, highlights human agency, and reflects changing
interests within the historical profession as well as the development of
“micro-history.” NEW features include essays on Catarina de San Juan, an
Indian woman who was enslaved by Portuguese traders and transported to
Mexico (Chapter 16); Rebecca Protten, a former slave from Antigua who
was part of a mixed-race marriage with a German Moravian missionary
(Chapter 19); and Samuel Crompton, inventor of the spinning mule
(Chapter 23).
Geographic Literacy
We recognize students’ difficulties with geography, and so the LaunchPad
of the new edition retains our Mapping the Past map activities. Included
in each chapter, these activities ask students to analyze a map and make
connections to the larger processes discussed in the narrative, giving them
valuable practice in reading and interpreting maps. Throughout the textbook
and online in LaunchPad, nearly 100 full-size maps illustrate major
developments in the chapters. In LaunchPad, 75 spot maps are embedded
in the narrative to show specific areas under discussion.
Helping Students Understand the Narrative
We know firsthand and take seriously the challenges students face in
understanding, retaining, and mastering so much material that is often
unfamiliar. With the goal of making this the most student-centered edition
yet, we continued to enhance the book’s pedagogy on many fronts. To focus
students’ reading, each chapter opens with a chapter preview with focus
questions keyed to the main chapter headings. These questions are repeated
within the chapter and again in the “Review and Explore” section at the end
of each chapter that provides helpful guidance for reviewing key topics.
“Review and Explore” also includes “Make Comparisons and Connections”
questions that prompt students to assess larger developments across
chapters, thus allowing them to develop skills in evaluating change and
continuity, making comparisons, and analyzing context and causation.
Within the narrative, a chapter summary reinforces key chapter events
and ideas for students. This is followed by the chapter-closing Connections
feature, which synthesizes main developments and makes connections and
comparisons between countries and regions to explain how events relate to
larger global processes, such as the influence of the Silk Road, the effects of
the transatlantic slave trade, and the ramifications of colonialism. This also
serves as a bridge to the subsequent chapters.
Key terms are bolded in the text and listed in the Chapter Review
section to promote clarity and comprehension, and phonetic spellings —
increased in this edition — are located directly after terms that readers are
likely to find hard to pronounce.
The high-quality art and map program has been thoroughly revised and
features over 130 contemporaneous illustrations. To make the past
tangible, and as an extension of our attention to cultural history, we include
artifacts in the illustration program. As in earlier editions, all illustrations
have been carefully selected to complement the text, and all include
captions that inform students while encouraging them to read the text more
deeply. Numerous high-quality full-size maps illustrate major
developments in the narrative.
In addition, whenever an instructor assigns the LaunchPad e-Book
(which can be bundled for free with the print book), students get not only
acccess to all the additional special features and primary sources of the
comprehensive edition but also full access to LearningCurve, an online
adaptive learning tool that promotes mastery of the book’s content and
diagnoses students’ trouble spots. With this adaptive quizzing, students
accumulate points toward a target score as they go, giving the interaction a
game-like feel. Feedback for incorrect responses explains why the answer is
incorrect and directs students back to the text to review before they attempt
to answer the question again. The end result is a better understanding of the
key elements of the text. Instructors who actively assign LearningCurve
report their students come to class prepared for discussion and their students
enjoy using it. In addition, LearningCurve’s reporting feature allows
instructors to quickly diagnose which concepts students in their classes are
struggling with so they can adjust lectures and activities accordingly. The
LaunchPad e-Book with LearningCurve is thus an invaluable asset for
instructors who need to support students in all settings, from traditional
lectures to hybrid, online, and newer “flipped” classrooms. In LaunchPad,
instructors can also assign the Guided Reading Exercise for each chapter,
which prompts students to read actively to collect information that answers
a broad analytic question central to the chapter as a whole. Through these
tools and more, LaunchPad can make the textbook even easier for students
to understand and use. To learn more about the benefits of LearningCurve
and LaunchPad’s other features, see the “Versions and Supplements”
section on page xvii.
All the features and tools in the book, large and small, are intended to
give students and instructors an integrated perspective so that they can
pursue — on their own or in the classroom — the historical questions that
they find particularly exciting and significant.
Textual Changes
This edition is enhanced by the incorporation of new scholarship and
subject areas that immerse students in the dynamic and ongoing work of
history. Updates to the eleventh edition include more about Byzantium,
Hungary, the Balkans, and the Ottomans (Chapters 14–15); more about
technology acquisition and the role of technology in European exploration
and more comparisons of Portuguese and Spanish colonization (Chapter
16); more global context for the “little ice age” and more information on the
economic and social crises and the popular revolts that occurred in Europe
and Asia partly as a result of the climate change (Chapter 18); new coverage
on the religious repression of Huguenots under Louis XIII and Cardinal
Richelieu (Chapter 18); new material on differences among English,
Spanish, and French interactions with indigenous people in the Americas as
well as more about the Indians who allied with the French (Chapter 18);
reorganized and expanded coverage of the Enlightenment with two new
sections covering major thinkers, currents of Enlightenment thought, key
debates, global aspects of Enlightenment thought, and the role of women
(Chapter 19); new coverage of how colonial contact forged European
national identities (Spanish, French, English) as well as “Indian” and
“African” identities (Chapter 19); revised coverage of Latin American
revolutions with more on the background to the revolutions, the emergence
and spread of liberal political ideas, the abolition of slavery, and the events
of the revolutions in different parts of Latin America (Chapter 22); new
material on the Congress of Vienna and the new “neutral” states of some
territories, the neglect of small states, subject peoples, and the question of
the future of the European territories of the Ottoman Empire (Chapter 24);
revised and expanded coverage of social and economic conflicts that helped
spark the 1848 revolutions (Chapter 24); revised discussion of export-led
growth in the Americas, giving added focus to social movements (Chapter
27); a sharpened focus on the Cold War as a global phenomenon, enhanced
discussion of U.S. intervention in Guatemala and of the Cuban Revolution,
enhanced discussion of the Vietnam War as a conflict with global
ramifications, and revised treatment of the postwar reconstruction of Japan
(Chapter 31); updated discussion of the European Union in the context of
the Greek economic crisis, the refugee crisis, and Britain’s vote to exit the
European Union (Chapter 32); expanded discussion of China’s emergence
as a global economic power and updated treatment of the Arab Spring
(Chapter 32); updated and expanded discussion of nuclear proliferation,
global health in the context of the Zika outbreak, the role of the Islamic
State (ISIS) in the contemporary Middle East, the refugee crisis in Europe,
and smartphone use in the developing world (Chapter 33).
Helping Instructors Teach with Digital Resources
As noted, A History of World Societies is offered in Macmillan’s premier
learning platform, LaunchPad, an intuitive and interactive e-Book and
course space. Free when packaged with the print book or available at a low
price when used on its own, LaunchPad grants students and teachers access
to a wealth of online tools and resources built specifically for this text to
enhance reading comprehension and promote in-depth study. LaunchPad’s
course space and interactive e-Book are ready to use as is (or can be edited
and customized with your own material) and can be assigned right away.
Developed with extensive feedback from history instructors and
students, LaunchPad for A History of World Societies includes the
complete narrative and special features of the comprehensive edition print
book; the companion reader, Sources of World Societies; and
LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool designed to get students to read
before they come to class. With an expanded set of source-based
questions in the test bank and in LearningCurve, instructors now have
more ways to test students on their understanding of sources and narrative
in the book. The addition of the new Bedford Document Collections
modules in LaunchPad means instructors have a flexible repository of
discovery-oriented primary source projects to assign and to extend the text,
making LaunchPad for A History of World Societies a one-stop shop for
working with sources and thinking critically in a multitude of modes.
LaunchPad also offers several other distinctly useful assignment options
to help students get the most from their reading, including Guided Reading
Exercises that prompt students to be active readers of the chapter narrative
and autograded primary source quizzes to test comprehension of written
and visual sources in the book, the companion reader, and the Bedford
Document Collections modules. These features, plus additional primary
source documents, video sources and tools for making video
assignments, map activities, flashcards, and customizable test banks,
make Launchpad a great asset for any instructor who wants to enliven
world history for students.
With training and support just a click away, LaunchPad can help you
take your teaching into a new era. To learn more about the benefits of
LearningCurve and LaunchPad, see “Versions and Supplements” on page
xvii.
Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to thank the many instructors who critiqued the book in
preparation for this revision:

Gene Barnett, Calhoun Community College; Amanda Carr-Wilcoxson,

Pellissippi State Community College; Ted Cohen, Lindenwood University;
Fiona Foster, Tidewater Community College; Paul J. Fox, Kennesaw State
University; Duane Galloway, Rowan-Cabarrus Community College;
Margaret Genvert, Salisbury University; Richard Bach Jensen,
Northwestern State University; Kelly Kennington, Auburn University; Alex
Pavuk, Morgan State University; Franklin Rausch, Lander University; Ryan
L. Ruckel, Pearl River Community College; Dr. Anthony R. Santoro,
Christopher Newport University; Chuck Smith, University of the
Cumberlands; Molly E. Swords, University of Idaho; Scott N. West,
University of Dayton; Dr. Kari Zimmerman, University of St. Thomas; and
Michael Andrew Žmolek, University of Iowa

It is also a pleasure to thank the many editors who have assisted us over
the years, first at Houghton Mifflin and now at Bedford/St. Martin’s
(Macmillan Learning). At Bedford/St. Martin’s, these include senior
development editor Heidi Hood, associate editor Mary Posman Starowicz,
program manager Laura Arcari, director of development Jane Knetzger,
senior program director Michael Rosenberg, photo researcher Bruce
Carson, text permissions editor Eve Lehmann, and senior content project
manager Christina Horn, with the guidance of senior managing editor
Michael Granger. Other key contributors were copy editor Jennifer Brett
Greenstein, proofreader Angela Morrison, indexer Leoni McVey, and cover
designer William Boardman.
Many of our colleagues at the University of Illinois, the University of
Washington, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and Eastern Illinois
University continue to provide information and stimulation, often without
even knowing it. We thank them for it. The authors recognize John P.
McKay, Bennett D. Hill, and John Buckler, the founding authors of this
textbook, whose vision set a new standard for world history textbooks. The
authors also thank the many students over the years with whom we have
used earlier editions of this book. Their reactions and opinions helped shape
our revisions to this edition, and we hope it remains worthy of the ultimate
praise they bestowed, that it is “not boring like most textbooks.” Merry
Wiesner-Hanks would, as always, like to thank her husband, Neil, without
whom work on this project would not be possible. Patricia Ebrey thanks her
husband, Tom. Clare Haru Crowston thanks her husband, Ali, and her
children, Lili, Reza, and Kian, who are a joyous reminder of the vitality of
life that we try to showcase in this book. Roger Beck thanks Ann for
supporting him through five editions now, and for sharing his love of
history. He is also grateful to the World History Association for all past,
present, and future contributions to his understanding of world history. Jerry
Dávila thanks Liv, Ellen, and Alex, who are reminders of why history
matters.
Each of us has benefited from the criticism of his or her coauthors,
although each of us assumes responsibility for what he or she has written.
Merry Wiesner-Hanks has written Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 14, and 15; Patricia
Buckley Ebrey has written Chapters 3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 13, 17, 21, and 26; Roger
B. Beck has written Chapters 10, 20, 25, and 28–30; Clare Haru Crowston
has written Chapters 16, 18, 19, and 22–24; and Jerry Dávila has written
Chapters 11, 27, and 31–33.
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Patricia Buckley Ebrey
Roger B. Beck
Jerry Dávila
Clare Haru Crowston
John P. McKay
 Versions and Supplements
Adopters of A History of World Societies and their students have access to
abundant print and digital resources and tools, the acclaimed Bedford Series
in History and Culture volumes, and much more. The LaunchPad course
space for A History of World Societies provides access to the narrative as
well as a wealth of primary sources and other features, along with
assignment and assessment opportunities at the ready. See below for more
information, visit the book’s catalog site at macmillanlearning.com, or contact
your local Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative.
Get the Right Version for Your Class
To accommodate different course lengths and course budgets, A History of
World Societies is available in several different versions and formats to best
suit your course needs. The comprehensive A History of World Societies
includes a full-color art program and a robust set of features. Offered now
for the first time, A History of World Societies, Concise Edition, also
provides the full narrative, with a streamlined art and feature program, at a
lower price. A History of World Societies, Value Edition, offers a trade-sized
two-color option with the full narrative and selected art and maps at a
steeper discount. The Value Edition is also offered at the lowest price point
in loose-leaf, and all versions are available as e-Books. For the best value of
all, package a new print book with LaunchPad at no additional charge to get
the best each format offers — a print version for easy portability with a
LaunchPad interactive e-Book and course space with LearningCurve and
loads of additional assignment and assessment options.
Combined Volume (Chapters 1–33): available in paperback, Concise, Value, loose-leaf, and
e-Book formats and in LaunchPad
Volume 1: To 1600 (Chapters 1–16): available in paperback, Concise, Value, loose-leaf, and
e-Book formats and in LaunchPad
Volume 2: Since 1450 (Chapters 16–33): available in paperback, Concise, Value, loose-leaf,
and e-Book formats and in LaunchPad

As noted below, any of these volumes can be packaged with additional

titles for a discount. To get ISBNs for discount packages, visit
macmillanlearning.com or contact your Bedford/St. Martin’s representative.
 Assign LaunchPad — an
Assessment-Ready Interactive e-Book and Course
Space
Available for discount purchase on its own or for packaging with new books
at no additional charge, LaunchPad is a breakthrough solution for history
courses. Intuitive and easy to use for students and instructors alike,
LaunchPad is ready to use as is, and can be edited, customized with your
own material, and assigned quickly. LaunchPad for A History of World
Societies includes Bedford/St. Martin’s high-quality content all in one
place, including the full interactive e-Book and the companion reader
Sources of World Societies, plus LearningCurve formative quizzing, guided
reading activities designed to help students read actively for key concepts,
autograded quizzes for each primary source, and chapter summative
quizzes. Through a wealth of formative and summative assessments,
including the adaptive learning program of LearningCurve (see the full
description ahead), students gain confidence and get into their reading
before class. Through the Bedford Document Collections for World History
(see full description ahead), embedded within LaunchPad, instructors get a
flexible repository of discovery-oriented primary source projects ready to
assign. These features, plus additional primary source documents, video
sources and tools for making video assignments, map activities, flashcards,
and customizable test banks, make LaunchPad an invaluable asset for any
instructor.
LaunchPad easily integrates with course management systems, and with
fast ways to build assignments, rearrange chapters, and add new pages,
sections, or links, it lets teachers build the courses they want to teach and
hold students accountable. For more information, visit launchpadworks.com
or to arrange a demo, contact us at history@macmillan.com.
 Assign LearningCurve So Your
Students Come to Class Prepared
Students using LaunchPad receive access to LearningCurve for A History of
World Societies. Assigning LearningCurve in place of reading quizzes is
easy for instructors, and the reporting features help instructors track overall
class trends and spot topics that are giving students trouble so they can
adjust their lectures and class activities. This online learning tool is popular
with students because it was designed to help them rehearse content at their
own pace in a nonthreatening, game-like environment. The feedback for
wrong answers provides instructional coaching and sends students back to
the book for review. Students answer as many questions as necessary to
reach a target score, with repeated chances to revisit material they haven’t
mastered. When LearningCurve is assigned, students come to class better
prepared.
iClicker, Active Learning Simplified
iClicker offers simple, flexible tools to help you give students a voice and
facilitate active learning in the classroom. Students can participate with the
devices they already bring to class using our iClicker Reef mobile apps
(which work with smartphones, tablets, or laptops) or iClicker remotes.
We’ve now integrated iClicker with Macmillan’s LaunchPad to make it
easier than ever to synchronize grades and promote engagement –– both in
and out of class. iClicker Reef access cards can also be packaged with
LaunchPad or your textbook at a significant savings for your students. To
learn more, talk to your Macmillan Learning representative or visit us at
www.iclicker.com.
Take Advantage of Instructor Resources
Bedford/St. Martin’s has developed a rich array of teaching resources for
this book and for this course. They range from lecture and presentation
materials and assessment tools to course management options. Most can be
found in LaunchPad or can be downloaded or ordered at
macmillanlearning.com.

Bedford Coursepack for Blackboard, Canvas, Brightspace by D2L, or

Moodle. We can help you integrate our rich content into your course
management system. Registered instructors can download coursepacks that
include our popular free resources and book-specific content for A History
of World Societies. Visit macmillanlearning.com to find your version or
download your coursepack.
Instructor’s Resource Manual. The instructor’s manual offers both
experienced and first-time instructors tools for presenting textbook material
in engaging ways. It includes content learning objectives, annotated chapter
outlines, and strategies for teaching with the textbook, plus suggestions on
how to get the most out of LearningCurve and a survival guide for first-time
teaching assistants.
Guide to Changing Editions. Designed to facilitate an instructor’s
transition from the previous edition of A History of World Societies to this
new edition, this guide presents an overview of major changes as well as of
changes in each chapter.
Online Test Bank. The test bank includes a mix of fresh, carefully crafted
multiple-choice, matching, short-answer, and essay questions for each
chapter. Many of the multiple-choice questions feature a map, an image, or
a primary source excerpt as the prompt. All questions appear in Microsoft
Word format and in easy-to-use test bank software that allows instructors to
add, edit, resequence, filter by question type or learning objective, and print
questions and answers. Instructors can also export questions into a variety
of course management systems.
The Bedford Lecture Kit: Lecture Outlines, Maps, and Images. Look
good and save time with The Bedford Lecture Kit. These presentation
materials include fully customizable multimedia presentations built around
chapter outlines that are embedded with maps, figures, and images from the
textbook and are supplemented by more detailed instructor notes on key
points and concepts.
Print, Digital, and Custom Options for More Choice and
Value
For information on free packages and discounts up to 50%, visit
macmillanlearning.com, or contact your local Bedford/St. Martin’s sales
representative.
NEW Sources of World Societies, Third Edition. Designed to accompany
A History of World Societies, each chapter of this primary source collection
contains approximately five written and visual sources that present history
from the perspectives of well-known figures and ordinary individuals alike.
Sources of World Societies provides a broad selection of 165 primary source
documents and images as well as editorial apparatuses to help students
understand the sources. Each chapter also includes a selection of sources
dedicated to varied viewpoints on a specific topic. This companion reader is
an exceptional value for students and offers plenty of assignment options
for instructors. Available free when packaged with the print text and
included in the LaunchPad e-Book with autograded quizzes for each source.
Also available on its own as a downloadable e-Book.
NEW The Bedford Document Collections for World History. Found in
the LaunchPad for A History of World Societies and available to customize
the print text, this collection provides a flexible repository of discovery-
oriented primary source projects ready to assign. Each curated project —
written by a historian about a favorite topic — poses a historical question
and guides students through analysis of the sources. Examples include “The
Silk Road: Travel and Trade in Premodern Inner Asia”; “The Spread of
Christianity in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries”; “The
Singapore Mutiny of 1915: Understanding World War I from a Global
Perspective”; and “Living Through Perestroika: The Soviet Union in
Upheaval, 1985–1991.” For more information, visit macmillanlearning.com.
NEW The Bedford Document Collections for World History Custom
Print Modules. Choose one or two document projects from the collection
(see above) and add them in print to a Bedford/St. Martin’s title, or select
several to be bound together in a custom reader created specifically for your
course. Either way, the modules are affordably priced. For more
information, contact your Bedford/St. Martin’s representative.
NEW Bedford Tutorials for History. Designed to customize textbooks
with resources relevant to individual courses, this collection of brief units,
each 16 pages long and loaded with examples, guides students through
basic skills such as using historical evidence effectively, working with
primary sources, taking effective notes, avoiding plagiarism and citing
sources, and more. Up to two tutorials can be added to a Bedford/St.
Martin’s history survey title at no additional charge, freeing you to spend
your class time focusing on content and interpretation. For more
information, visit macmillanlearning.com/historytutorials.
The Bedford Series in History and Culture. More than 100 titles in this
highly praised series combine first-rate scholarship, historical narrative, and
important primary documents for undergraduate courses. Each book is
brief, inexpensive, and focused on a specific topic or period. New titles in
the series include Apartheid in South Africa: A Brief History with
Documents by David M. Gordon; Politics and Society in Japan’s Meiji
Restoration: A Brief History with Documents by Anne Walthall and M.
William Steele; and The Congo Free State and the New Imperialism: A
Brief History with Documents by Kevin Grant. For a complete list of titles,
visit macmillanlearning.com. Package discounts are available.
Rand McNally Atlas of World History. This collection of almost 70 full-
color maps illustrates the eras and civilizations in world history from the
emergence of human societies to the present. Free when packaged.
The Bedford Glossary for World History. This handy supplement for the
survey course gives students historically contextualized definitions for
hundreds of terms — from abolitionism to Zoroastrianism — that they will
encounter in lectures, reading, and exams. Free when packaged.
Trade Books. Titles published by sister companies Hill and Wang; Farrar,
Straus and Giroux; Henry Holt and Company; St. Martin’s Press; Picador;
and Palgrave Macmillan are available at a 50% discount when packaged
with Bedford/St. Martin’s textbooks. For more information, visit
macmillanlearning.com/tradeup.
A Pocket Guide to Writing in History. Updated to reflect changes made in
the 2017 Chicago Manual of Style revision, this portable and affordable
reference tool by Mary Lynn Rampolla provides reading, writing, and
research advice useful to students in all history courses. Concise yet
comprehensive advice on approaching typical history assignments,
developing critical reading skills, writing effective history papers,
conducting research, using and documenting sources, and avoiding
plagiarism — enhanced with practical tips and examples throughout — has
made this slim reference a bestseller. Package discounts are available.
A Student’s Guide to History. This complete guide to success in any history
course provides the practical help students need to be successful. In
addition to introducing students to the nature of the discipline, author Jules
Benjamin teaches a wide range of skills from preparing for exams to
approaching common writing assignments, and explains the research and
documentation process with plentiful examples. Package discounts are
available.
 Brief Contents
1 The Earliest Human Societies, to 2500 B.C.E.
2 Complex Societies in Southwest Asia and the Nile Valley,
3800–500 B.C.E.
3 The Foundation of Indian Society, to 300 C.E.
4 China’s Classical Age, to 221 B.C.E.
5 The Greek Experience, 3500–30 B.C.E.
6 The World of Rome, ca. 1000 B.C.E.–400 C.E.
7 East Asia and the Spread of Buddhism, 221 B.C.E.–845 C.E.
8 Continuity and Change in Europe and Western Asia, 200–
850
9 The Islamic World, 600–1400
10 African Societies and Kingdoms, 1000 B.C.E.–1500 C.E.
11 The Americas, 3200 B.C.E.–1500 C.E.
12 Cultural Exchange in Central and Southern Asia, 300–
1400
13 States and Cultures in East Asia, 800–1400
14 Europe and Western Asia in the Middle Ages, 800–1450
15 Europe in the Renaissance and Reformation, 1350–1600
16 The Acceleration of Global Contact, 1450–1600
 Contents
Preface

Versions and Supplements

Maps, Figures, and Tables

CHAPTER 1

The Earliest Human Societies, to 2500 B.C.E.

Evolution and Migration
Understanding the Early Human Past • Hominid Evolution • Homo Sapiens,
“Thinking Humans” • Migration and Differentiation

Later Paleolithic Society, ca. 200,000–9000 B.C.E.

Foraging for Food • Family and Kinship Relationships • Cultural Creations and
Spirituality

The Development of Agriculture in the Neolithic Era, ca. 9000

B.C.E.
The Development of Horticulture • Animal Domestication and the Rise of Pastoralism
• Plow Agriculture

Neolithic Society
Social Hierarchies and Slavery • Gender Hierarchies and Inheritance • Trade and
Cross-Cultural Connections

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 1 Review

CHAPTER 2

Complex Societies in Southwest Asia and the Nile

Valley, 3800–500 B.C.E.
Writing, Cities, and States
Written Sources and the Human Past • Cities and the Idea of Civilization • The
Rise of States, Laws, and Social Hierarchies

Mesopotamia from Sumer to Babylon

Environmental Challenges, Irrigation, and Religion • Sumerian Politics and Society
• Writing, Mathematics, and Poetry • Empires in Mesopotamia • Life Under
Hammurabi

The Egyptians
The Nile and the God-King • Egyptian Society and Work • Migrations, Revivals,
and Collapse • Iron and the Emergence of New States

The Hebrews
The Hebrew State • The Jewish Religion • Hebrew Society

The Assyrians and the Persians

Assyria, the Military Monarchy • The Rise and Expansion of the Persian Empire •
The Religion of Zoroaster

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 2 Review

CHAPTER 3

The Foundation of Indian Society, to 300 C.E.

The Land and Its First Settlers, ca. 3000–1500 B.C.E.
The Aryans During the Vedic Age, ca. 1500–500 B.C.E.
Aryan Dominance in North India • Life in Early India • Brahmanism

India’s Great Religions

Jainism • Siddhartha Gautama and Buddhism • Hinduism

Western Contact and the Mauryan Unification of North India, ca.

513–185 B.C.E.
Encounters with the West • Chandragupta and the Founding of the Mauryan Empire
• The Reign of Ashoka, ca. 269–232 B.C.E.
Small States and Trading Networks, 185 B.C.E.–300 C.E.
Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 3 Review

CHAPTER 4

China’s Classical Age, to 221 B.C.E.

The Emergence of Civilization in China
The Impact of Geography • Early Agricultural Societies of the Neolithic Age

The Shang Dynasty, ca. 1500–1050 B.C.E.

Shang Society • Bronze Metalworking • The Development of Writing

The Early Zhou Dynasty, ca. 1050–400 B.C.E.

Zhou Politics • Life During the Early Zhou Dynasty

The Warring States Period, 403–221 B.C.E.

New Technologies for War • The Victorious States

Confucius and His Followers

Confucius • The Spread of Confucian Ideas

Daoism, Legalism, and Other Schools of Thought

Daoism • Legalism • Yin and Yang

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 4 Review

CHAPTER 5

The Greek Experience, 3500–30 B.C.E.

Greece in the Bronze Age, ca. 3000–800 B.C.E.
The Minoans and Mycenaeans • The “Dark Age”

The Development of the Polis in the Archaic Age, ca. 800–500

B.C.E.
Organization of the Polis • Overseas Expansion • The Growth of Sparta • The
Evolution of Athens

Turmoil and Culture in the Classical Period, 500–338 B.C.E.

 The Deadly Conflicts, 499–404 B.C.E. • Athenian Arts in the Age of Pericles •
Families and Sexual Relations • Public and Personal Religion • The Flowering of
Philosophy

Hellenistic Society, 323–30 B.C.E.

From Polis to Monarchy, 404–200 B.C.E. • Building a Hellenized Society • The
Growth of Trade and Commerce

Hellenistic Religion, Philosophy, and Science

Religion in the Hellenistic World • Philosophy and Its Guidance for Life •
Hellenistic Science and Medicine

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 5 Review

CHAPTER 6

The World of Rome, ca. 1000 B.C.E.–400 C.E.

The Romans in Italy
The Etruscans • The Founding of Rome • The Roman Conquest of Italy • The
Roman State • Social Conflict in Rome

Roman Expansion and Its Repercussions

Overseas Conquests and the Punic Wars, 264–133 B.C.E. • New Influences and Old
Values in Roman Culture • The Late Republic and the Rise of Augustus, 133–27
B.C.E. • The Successes of Augustus

Rome and the Provinces

Political and Military Changes in the Empire • Life in Imperial Rome • Prosperity
in the Roman Provinces • Eastward Expansion and Contacts Between Rome and
China

The Coming of Christianity

Factors Behind the Rise of Christianity • The Life and Teachings of Jesus • The
Spread of Christianity • The Growing Acceptance and Evolution of Christianity

Turmoil and Reform

Political Measures • Economic Issues • The Acceptance of Christianity

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 6 Review

CHAPTER 7

East Asia and the Spread of Buddhism, 221 B.C.E.–845

C.E.

The Age of Empire in China: The Qin and Han Dynasties

The Qin Unification, 221–206 B.C.E. • The Han Dynasty, 206 B.C.E.–220 C.E. •
Han Intellectual and Cultural Life • Inner Asia and the Silk Road • Life in Han
China • China and Rome • The Fall of the Han and the Age of Division

The Spread of Buddhism Out of India

Buddhism’s Path Through Central Asia • The Appeal and Impact of Buddhism in
China

The Chinese Empire Re-created: Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–

907)
The Sui Dynasty, 581–618 • The Tang Dynasty, 618–907 • Tang Culture

The East Asian Cultural Sphere

Vietnam • Korea • Japan

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 7 Review

CHAPTER 8

Continuity and Change in Europe and Western Asia,

250–850
The Byzantine Empire
Sources of Byzantine Strength • The Sassanid Empire and Conflicts with Byzantium
• Justinian’s Code of Law • Byzantine Intellectual Life • Life in Constantinople

The Growth of the Christian Church

The Evolution of Church Leadership and Orthodoxy • The Western Church and the
Eastern Church • Christian Monasticism

Christian Ideas and Practices

Christianity and Classical Culture • Saint Augustine on Sin, Grace, and Redemption
• The Iconoclastic Controversy
Migrating Peoples
Social and Economic Structures • Tribes, Warriors, and Laws • Migrations and
Political Change

Christian Missionaries and Conversion

Missionaries’ Actions • The Process of Conversion

Frankish Rulers and Their Territories

The Merovingians and Carolingians • The Warrior-Ruler Charlemagne

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 8 Review

CHAPTER 9

The Islamic World, 600–1400

The Origins of Islam
Arabian Social and Economic Structure • Muhammad’s Rise as a Religious Leader
• The Tenets of Islam

Islamic States and Their Expansion

Islam’s Spread Beyond Arabia • Reasons for the Spread of Islam • The Caliphate
and the Split Between Shi’a and Sunni Alliances • The Abbasid Caliphate •
Administration of the Islamic Territories

Fragmentation and Military Challenges, 900–1400

Breakaway Territories and Shi’a Gains • The Ascendancy of the Turks • The
Mongol Invasions

Muslim Society: The Life of the People

The Social Hierarchy • Slavery • Women in Classical Islamic Society •
Marriage, the Family, and Sexuality

Trade and Commerce

Cultural Developments
The Cultural Centers of Baghdad and Córdoba • Education and Intellectual Life •
The Mystical Tradition of Sufism

Muslim-Christian Encounters
Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 9 Review
CHAPTER 10

African Societies and Kingdoms, 1000 B.C.E.–1500 C.E.

The Land and Peoples of Africa
Early African Societies
Agriculture and Its Impact • Bantu Migrations • Life in the Kingdoms of the
Western Sudan, ca. 1000 B.C.E.–800 C.E.

The Trans-Saharan Trade

The Berbers of North Africa • Effects of Trade on West African Society • The
Spread of Islam in Africa

African Kingdoms and Empires, ca. 800–1500

The Kingdom of Ghana, ca. 900–1100 • The Kingdom of Mali, ca. 1200–1450 •
Ethiopia: The Christian Kingdom of Aksum • The East African City-States •
Southern Africa and Great Zimbabwe

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 10 Review

CHAPTER 11

The Americas, 3200 B.C.E.–1500 C.E.

Societies of the Americas in a Global Context
Trade and Technology • Settlement and Environment

Ancient Societies
Olmec Agriculture, Technology, and Religion • Hohokam, Hopewell, and
Mississippian Societies • Kinship and Ancestors in the Andes

The Incas
The Inca Model of Empire • Inca Imperial Expansion • Imperial Needs and
Obligations

The Maya and Teotihuacan

Maya Agriculture and Trade • Maya Science and Religion • Teotihuacan and the
Toltecs

The Aztec Empire

 The Mexica: From Vassals to Masters • Life in the Aztec Empire • The Limits of
the Aztec Empire

American Empires and the Encounter

The Last Day of the Aztecs • The Fall of the Incas

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 11 Review

CHAPTER 12

Cultural Exchange in Central and Southern Asia, 300–

1400
Central Asian Nomads
Nomadic Society • The Turks • The Mongols

Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Empire

Chinggis Khan • Chinggis’s Successors • The Mongols as Rulers

East-West Communication During the Mongol Era

The Movement of Peoples • The Spread of Disease, Goods, and Ideas

India, Islam, and the Development of Regional Cultures, 300–

1400
The Gupta Empire, ca. 320–480 • India’s Medieval Age and the First Encounter with
Islam • The Delhi Sultanate • Life in Medieval India

Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Growth of Maritime

Trade
State Formation and Indian Influences • The Srivijayan Maritime Trade Empire •
The Spread of Indian Culture in Comparative Perspective • The Settlement of the
Pacific Islands

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 12 Review

CHAPTER 13

States and Cultures in East Asia, 800–1400

The Medieval Chinese Economic Revolution, 800–1100
China During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, 960–1368
The Song Dynasty • The Scholar-Officials and Neo-Confucianism • Women’s
Lives in Song Times • China Under Mongol Rule

Korea Under the Koryŏ Dynasty, 935–1392

Japan’s Heian Period, 794–1185
Fujiwara Rule • Aristocratic Culture

The Samurai and the Kamakura Shogunate, 1185–1333

Military Rule • Cultural Trends

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 13 Review

CHAPTER 14

Europe and Western Asia in the Middle Ages, 800–1450

Political Developments
Invasions and Migrations • “Feudalism” and Manorialism • The Restoration of
Order • Law and Justice

The Christian Church

Papal Reforms • Monastic Life • Popular Religion • The Expansion of
Western and Eastern Christianity

The Crusades
Background and Motives • The Course of the Crusades • Consequences of the
Crusades

The Life of the People

The Life and Work of Peasants • The Life and Work of Nobles • Towns, Cities,
and the Growth of Commercial Interests • The Expansion of Trade and the
Commercial Revolution

Learning and Culture

Universities and Scholasticism • Cathedrals and a New Architectural Style •
Vernacular Literature and Drama

Crises of the Later Middle Ages

 The Great Famine and the Black Death • The Hundred Years’ War • Challenges
to the Christian Church • Peasant and Urban Revolts

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 14 Review

CHAPTER 15

Europe in the Renaissance and Reformation, 1350–

1600
Renaissance Culture
Wealth and Power in Renaissance Italy • The Rise of Humanism • Christian
Humanism • Printing and Its Social Impact • Art and the Artist

Social Hierarchies
Race and Slavery • Wealth and the Nobility • Gender Roles

Politics and the State in the Renaissance

France • England • Spain • The Habsburgs

The Protestant Reformation

Criticism of the Church • Martin Luther • Protestant Thought and Its Appeal •
The Radical Reformation and the German Peasants’ War • Marriage and Women’s
Roles • The Reformation and German Politics • England’s Shift Toward
Protestantism • Calvinism and Its Moral Standards

The Catholic Reformation

Papal Reforms and the Council of Trent • New Religious Orders

Religious Violence
French Religious Wars • Civil Wars in the Netherlands • The Great European
Witch-Hunt

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 15 Review

CHAPTER 16

The Acceleration of Global Contact, 1450–1600

The Afroeurasian Trade World
 The Trade World of the Indian Ocean • Peoples and Cultures of the Indian Ocean
• Trade with Africa and the Middle East • Genoese and Venetian Middlemen

The European Voyages of Discovery

Causes of European Expansion • Technology and the Rise of Exploration • The
Portuguese in Africa and Asia • Spain’s Voyages to the Americas • Spain
“Discovers” the Pacific • Early Exploration by Northern European Powers

Conquest and Settlement

Spanish Conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires • Portuguese Brazil • Colonial
Administration • Indigenous Population Loss and Economic Exploitation •
Patterns of Settlement

The Era of Global Contact

The Columbian Exchange • Sugar and Early Transatlantic Slavery • Spanish
Silver and Its Economic Effects • The Birth of the Global Economy

Changing Attitudes and Beliefs

Religious Conversion • European Debates About Indigenous Peoples • New
Ideas About Race

Chapter Summary • Connections • Chapter 16 Review

Glossary

Index

About the Authors

 Maps, Figures, and Tables
Chapter 1
MAP 1.1 Human Migration in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Eras
MAP 1.2 The Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism

Chapter 2
MAP 2.1 Spread of Cultures in Southwest Asia and the Nile Valley, ca. 3000–1640
B.C.E.
MAP 2.2 Empires and Migrations in the Eastern Mediterranean
MAP 2.3 The Assyrian and Persian Empires, ca. 1000–500 B.C.E.
FIGURE 2.1 Sumerian Writing
FIGURE 2.2 Origins of the Alphabet

Chapter 3
MAP 3.1 Harappan Civilization, ca. 2500 B.C.E.
MAP 3.2 The Mauryan Empire, ca. 250 B.C.E.

Chapter 4
MAP 4.1 The Geography of Historical China
MAP 4.2 The Shang and Early Zhou Dynasties, ca. 1500–400 B.C.E.
TABLE 4.1 Pronouncing Chinese Words

Chapter 5
MAP 5.1 Classical Greece, ca. 450 B.C.E.
MAP 5.2 Greek Colonization, ca. 750–550 B.C.E.
MAP 5.3 Alexander’s Conquests, 336–324 B.C.E.

Chapter 6
MAP 6.1 Roman Italy and the City of Rome, ca. 218 B.C.E.
MAP 6.2 Roman Expansion, 262 B.C.E.–180 C.E.

Chapter 7
MAP 7.1 The Han Empire, 206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.
MAP 7.2 The Silk Trade in the Seventh Century C.E.
MAP 7.3 The Spread of Buddhism, ca. 500 B.C.E.–800 C.E.
 MAP 7.4 Korea and Japan, ca. 600 C.E.

Chapter 8
MAP 8.1 The Byzantine and Sassanid Empires, ca. 600
MAP 8.2 The Barbarian Migrations, ca. 340–500
MAP 8.3 The Spread of Christianity, ca. 300–800

Chapter 9
MAP 9.1 The Expansion of Islam, 622–900
MAP 9.2 The Expansion of Islam and Its Trading Networks in the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries

Chapter 10
MAP 10.1 The Geography of Africa
MAP 10.2 African Kingdoms and Trade, ca. 800–1500
TABLE 10.1 Estimated Magnitude of Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, 650–1500

Chapter 11
MAP 11.1 The Olmecs, ca. 1500–300 B.C.E.
MAP 11.2 Major North American Agricultural Societies, ca. 600–1500 C.E.
MAP 11.3 The Inca Empire, 1532
MAP 11.4 The Maya World, 300–900 C.E.
MAP 11.5 The Aztec (Mexica) Empire in 1519

Chapter 12
MAP 12.1 The Mongol Empire
MAP 12.2 South and Southeast Asia in the Thirteenth Century
MAP 12.3 The Spice Trade, ca. 100 B.C.E.–1500 C.E.

Chapter 13
MAP 13.1 East Asia in 1000 and 1200

Chapter 14
MAP 14.1 Invasions and Migrations of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries
MAP 14.2 The Crusades, 1096–1270
MAP 14.3 The Course of the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Europe

Chapter 15
MAP 15.1 The Global Empire of Charles V, ca. 1556
MAP 15.2 Religious Divisions in Europe, ca. 1555

Chapter 16
MAP 16.1 The Fifteenth-Century Afroeurasian Trading World
MAP 16.2 Overseas Exploration and Conquest in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
MAP 16.3 Seaborne Trading Empires in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
1
The Earliest Human Societies

to 2500 B.C.E.
Chapter Preview

Evolution and Migration

• How did humans evolve, and where did they migrate?

Later Paleolithic Society, ca. 200,000–9000 B.C.E.

• What were the key features of Paleolithic society?

The Development of Agriculture in the Neolithic Era, ca. 9000 B.C.E.

• How did plant and animal domestication develop, and what effects did it have
on human society?

Neolithic Society
• How did growing social and gender hierarchies and expanding networks of
trade increase the complexity of human society in the Neolithic period?

WHEN DOES HISTORY BEGIN? PREVIOUS GENERATIONS OF HISTORIANS generally

answered that question with “when writing begins.” Thus they started their histories with the
earliest-known invention of writing, which happened about 3500–3200 B.C.E. in the Tigris
and Euphrates River Valleys of Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. Anything before that was
“prehistory.” That focus on only the last five thousand years leaves out most of the human
story, however, and today historians no longer see writing as such a sharp dividing line.
They explore all eras of the human past through many different types of sources, and some
push the beginning of history back to the formation of the universe, when time itself began.
This very new conceptualization of “big history” is actually similar in scope to the world’s
oldest histories, because for thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of years many
peoples have narrated histories of their origins that also begin with the creation of the
universe.
Exploring the entire human past means beginning in Africa, where millions of years ago
humans evolved from a primate ancestor. They migrated out of Africa in several waves,
walking along coasts and over land, eventually spreading across much of the earth. Their
tools were initially multipurpose sharpened stones and sticks, but gradually they invented
more specialized tools that enabled them to obtain food more easily, make clothing, build
shelters, and decorate their surroundings. Environmental changes, such as the advance
and retreat of the glaciers, shaped life dramatically and may have led to the most significant
change in all of human history, the domestication of plants and animals.
Evolution and Migration
How did humans evolve, and where did they migrate?

Studying the earliest era of human history involves methods that seem
simple — looking carefully at an object — as well as new high-tech
procedures, such as DNA analysis. Through such research, scholars have
examined early human evolution, traced the expansion of the human brain,
and studied migration out of Africa and across the planet. Combined with
spoken language, that larger brain enabled humans to adapt to many
different environments and to be flexible in their responses to new
challenges.

Understanding the Early Human Past

People throughout the world have developed systems of classification that
help them understand things: earth and sky; seen and unseen; animal,
vegetable, and mineral; past, present, and future. Among these systems of
classification was one invented in eighteenth-century Europe that divided
all living things on earth into groups. Each of these divisions — such as that
between plants and animals — is further subdivided into smaller and
smaller groups, such as class, order, family, and genus. The final important
division is the species, which is generally defined as a group of organisms
that can interbreed with one another and produce fertile offspring of both
sexes.
In their natural state, members of a species resemble one another, but
over time they can become increasingly dissimilar. (Think of Chihuahuas
and Great Danes, both members of the same species.) Ever since humans
began shaping the world around them, this process has often been the result
of human action. But in the long era before humans, the increasing
dissimilarity resulted, in the opinion of most scientists, from the process of
natural selection. Small variations within individuals in one species enabled
them to acquire more food and better living conditions and made them more
successful in breeding, thus allowing them to pass their genetic material on
to the next generation. When a number of individuals within a species
became distinct enough that they could no longer interbreed successfully
with others, they became a new species. Species also become extinct,
particularly during periods of mass extinctions such as the one that killed
the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. Natural processes of species
formation and extinction continue, although today changes in the biosphere
— the living matter in the world — result far more from human action than
from natural selection.
The scientists who developed this system of organizing the world placed
humans within it, using the same means of classification that they used for
all other living things. Humans were in the animal kingdom, the order of
Primates, the family Hominidae, and the genus Homo. Like all
classifications, this was originally based on externally visible phenomena:
humans were placed in the Primates order because, like other primates, they
have hands that can grasp, eyes facing forward to allow better depth
perception, and relatively large brains; they were placed in the hominid
(HOM-uh-nid) family along with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans
because they shared even more features with these great apes. Over 98
percent of human DNA is the same as that of chimpanzees, which indicates
to most scientists that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor.
That common ancestor probably lived between 5 million and 7 million
years ago.
Physical remains were the earliest type of evidence studied to learn
about the distant human past, and scholars used them to develop another
system of classification, one that distinguished between periods of time
rather than types of living creatures. (Constructing models of time is called
“periodization.”) They gave labels to eras according to the primary
materials out of which tools that survived were made. Thus the earliest
human era became the Stone Age, the next era the Bronze Age, and the next
the Iron Age. They further divided the Stone Age into the Old Stone Age, or
Paleolithic era, the long period that began when hominids first made tools
about 2.5 million years ago, during which people used stone, bone, and
other natural products to make their tools and gained food largely by
foraging — that is, by gathering plant products, trapping or catching small
animals and birds, and hunting larger prey. This was followed by the New
Stone Age, or Neolithic era, which saw the beginning of agricultural and
animal domestication. People around the world adopted agriculture at
various times, and some never did, but the transition between the Paleolithic
(pay-lee-oh-LITH-ik) and the Neolithic (nee-oh-LITH-ik) is usually set at
about 9000 B.C.E., the point at which agriculture was first developed.*
* A note on dates: This book generally uses B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common
Era) when giving dates, a system of chronology based on the Christian calendar and now used widely
around the world. Scholars who study the very earliest periods of hominid and human history usually
use the phrase “years ago” to date their subjects, as do astrophysicists and geologists; this is often
abbreviated as B.P. (Before the Present). Because the scale of time covered in Chapter 1 is so vast, a
mere two thousand years does not make much difference, and so B.C.E. and “years ago” have similar
meaning in this chapter.
Geologists refer to the last twelve thousand years as the Holocene
(meaning very recent) epoch. The entire history of the human species fits
well within the Holocene and the previous geologic epoch, the Pleistocene
(PLIGH-stuh-seen), which began about 2.5 million years ago.
The Pleistocene was marked by repeated advances in glaciers and
continental ice sheets. Glaciers tied up huge quantities of the earth’s water,
leading to lower sea levels, making it possible for animals and eventually
humans to walk between places that were separated by oceans during
interglacial times. Animals and humans were also prevented from migrating
to other places by the ice sheets themselves, however, and the colder
climate made large areas unfit to live in. Climate thus dramatically shaped
human cultures.

Hominid Evolution
Using many different pieces of evidence from all over the world,
archaeologists, paleontologists, and other scholars have developed a view of
human evolution whose basic outline is widely shared, though there are
disagreements about details. Most primates, including other hominids such
as chimpanzees and gorillas, have lived primarily in trees, but at some point
a group of hominids in East Africa began to spend more time on the ground,
and between 6 and 7 million years ago they began to walk upright at least
some of the time.
Over many generations, the skeletal and muscular structure of some
hominids evolved to make upright walking easier, and they gradually
became fully bipedal. The earliest fully bipedal hominids, whom
paleontologists place in the genus Australopithecus (aw-strah-loh-PITH-uh-
kuhs), lived in southern and eastern Africa between 2.5 and 4 million years
ago. Walking upright allowed australopithecines (aw-strah-loh-PITH-uh-
seens) to carry and use things, which allowed them to survive better and
may have also spurred brain development.
Fossil Footprints from Laetoli in
Tanzania About 3.5 million years ago,
several australopithecines walked in wet
ash from a volcanic eruption. Their
footprints, discovered by the archaeologist
Mary Leakey, indicate that they walked fully
upright and suggest that they were not
solitary creatures, for they walked close
together.
 About 3.4 million years ago some hominids began to use naturally
occurring objects as tools, and sometime around 2.5 million years ago one
group of australopithecines in East Africa began to make and use simple
tools, evolving into a different type of hominid that later paleontologists
judged to be the first in the genus Homo. Called Homo habilis (HOH-moh
HAB-uh-luhs) (“handy human”), they made sharpened stone pieces, which
archaeologists call hand axes, and used them for various tasks. This
suggests greater intelligence, and the skeletal remains support this, for
Homo habilis had a larger brain than did the australopithecines.
About 2 million years ago, another species, called Homo erectus (HOH-
moh ee-REHK-tuhs) (“upright human”), evolved in East Africa. Homo
erectus had still larger brains and made tools that were slightly specialized
for various tasks, such as handheld axes, cleavers, and scrapers.
Archaeological remains indicate that Homo erectus lived in larger groups
than had earlier hominids and engaged in cooperative gathering, hunting,
and food preparation. The location and shape of the larynx suggest that
members of this species were able to make a wider range of sounds than
were earlier hominids, so they may have relied more on vocal sounds than
on gestures to communicate ideas to one another.
One of the activities that Homo erectus carried out most successfully
was moving (Map 1.1). Gradually small groups migrated out of East Africa
onto the open plains of central Africa, and from there into northern Africa.
From 1 million to 2 million years ago, the earth’s climate was in a warming
phase, and these hominids ranged still farther, moving into western Asia by
as early as 1.8 million years ago. Bones and other materials from China and
the island of Java in Indonesia indicate that Homo erectus had reached there
by about 1.5 million years ago, migrating over large landmasses as well as
along the coasts. (Sea levels were lower than they are today, and Java could
be reached by walking.) Homo erectus also walked north, reaching what is
now Spain by at least 800,000 years ago and what is now Germany by
500,000 years ago. In each of these places, Homo erectus adapted gathering
and hunting techniques to the local environment, learning how to find new
sources of plant food and how to best catch local animals. Although the
climate was warmer than it is today, central Europe was not balmy, and
these hominids may have used fire to provide light and heat, cook food, and
keep away predators. Many lived in the open or in caves, but some built
simple shelters, another indication of increasing flexibility and problem
solving.

MAP 1.1 Human Migration in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Eras

Homo Sapiens, “Thinking Humans”

Homo erectus was remarkably adaptable, but another hominid proved still
more so: Homo sapiens (HOH-moh SAY-pee-enz) (“thinking humans”). A
few scientists think that Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus in a
number of places in Afroeurasia, but the majority think that, like hominid
evolution from earlier primates, this occurred only in East Africa. The
evidence is partly archaeological, but also genetic. One type of DNA, called
mitochondrial DNA, indicates that modern humans are so similar
genetically that they cannot have been evolving for the last 1 million or 2
million years. This evidence suggests that the evolution of Homo sapiens
has instead taken place for only about 200,000 years. Because there is
greater human genetic variety today in Africa than in other parts of the
world, the evidence also suggests that Homo sapiens have lived there the
longest, so that Africa is where they first emerged.
Although there is some debate about where and when Homo sapiens
emerged, there is little debate about what distinguished these humans from
earlier hominids: a bigger brain, in particular a bigger forebrain, the site of
conscious thought. The ability to think reflectively allowed for the creation
of symbolic language, that is, for language that follows certain rules and
that can refer to things or states of being that are not necessarily present.
Greater intelligence allowed Homo sapiens to better understand and
manipulate the world around them, and symbolic language allowed this
understanding to be communicated within a group and passed from one
generation to the next. Through spoken language Homo sapiens began to
develop collective explanations for the world around them that we would
now call religion, science, and philosophy. Spoken language also enabled
Homo sapiens to organize socially into larger groups, thus further
enhancing their ability to affect the natural world.
The advantages of a larger brain seem evident to us, so we may not
think to ask why hominids evolved this way. Large brains also bring
disadvantages, however. They take more energy to run than other parts of
the body, which means that large-brained animals have to eat more than
small-brained ones. Large brains create particular problems for bipedal
mammals because the narrow pelvic structure that works best for upright
walking makes giving birth to a large-headed infant difficult and painful.
The question of why hominids developed ever-larger brains might best
be answered by looking at how paleontologists think it happened. As Homo
habilis, Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens made and used tools, the
individuals whose mental and physical abilities allowed them to do so best
were able to obtain more food and were more likely to mate and have
children who survived. Thus bigger brains led to better tools, but the
challenges of using and inventing better tools also created selective pressure
that led to bigger brains.
The same thing may have happened with symbolic language and
thought. A slightly bigger brain allowed for more complex thought and
better language skills. These thinking and speaking skills enabled
individuals to better attract mates and fend off rivals, which meant a greater
likelihood of passing on the enhanced brain to the next generation. As we
know from contemporary research on the brain, learning language promotes
the development of specific areas of the brain.
The growth in brain size and complexity may also have been linked to
social organization. Individuals who had better social skills were more
likely to mate than those who did not — this has been observed in
chimpanzees and, of course, in modern humans — and thus to pass on their
genetic material. Social skills were particularly important for females
because the combination of bipedalism and growing brain size led to
selective pressure for hominid infants to be born at an even earlier stage in
their development than other primate infants were. Thus the period when
human infants are dependent on others is very long, and mothers with good
social networks to assist them were more likely to have infants who
survived. Humans are unique in the duration and complexity of their care
for children. Cooperative child rearing, along with the development of
social skills and the adaptability this encouraged, may have been an impetus
to brain growth.
All these factors operated together in processes that promoted bigger
and better brains. In the Paleolithic period, Homo sapiens’ brains invented
highly specialized tools made out of a variety of materials that replaced the
more general-purpose stone tools made by Homo erectus: barbed fishhooks
and harpoons, snares and traps for catching small animals, bone needles for
sewing clothing, awls for punching holes in leather, nets for catching fish,
sharpened flint pieces bound to wooden or bone handles for hunting or
cutting, and slings for carrying infants. By 25,000 years ago, and perhaps
earlier, humans in some parts of the world were weaving cloth, nets, and
baskets out of bark, rushes, grasses, and other natural materials, and by
17,000 years ago they were using bows and atlatls (AHT-lah-tuhlz) —
notched throwing sticks made of bone, wood, or antler — to launch arrows
and barbs with flint points bound to wooden shafts. The archaeological
evidence for increasingly sophisticated language and social organization is
less direct than that for tool use, but it is hard to imagine how humans could
have made the tools they did — or would have chosen to decorate so many
of them — without both of these.

Migration and Differentiation

Like Homo erectus had earlier, groups of Homo sapiens moved. By 200,000
years ago they had begun to spread across Africa, and by 120,000 years ago
they had begun to migrate out of Africa to Eurasia (see Map 1.1). They
most likely walked along the coasts of India and Southeast Asia, and then
migrated inland. At the same time, further small evolutionary changes led to
our own subspecies of anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens
(which literally translates as “thinking thinking humans”). Homo sapiens
sapiens moved into areas where there were already Homo erectus
populations, eventually replacing them and leaving Homo sapiens as the
only survivors and the ancestors of all modern humans.
The best-known example of interaction between Homo erectus and
Homo sapiens sapiens is that between Neanderthals (named after the
Neander Valley in Germany, where their remains were first discovered) and
a group of anatomically modern humans called Cro-Magnons.
Neanderthals (nee-AHN-der-tals) lived throughout Europe and western
Asia beginning about 200,000 years ago, had brains as large as those of
modern humans, and used tools, including spears and scrapers for animal
skins, that enabled them to survive in the cold climate of Ice Age central
Europe and Russia. They built freestanding houses and decorated objects
and themselves with red ochre, a form of colored clay. They sometimes
buried their dead carefully with tools, animal bones, and perhaps flowers,
which suggests that they understood death to have a symbolic meaning.
Cro-Magnon peoples had moved into parts of western Asia where
Neanderthals lived by about 70,000 years ago, and into Europe by about
45,000 years ago. The two peoples appear to have lived side by side for
millennia, hunting the same types of animals and gathering the same types
of plants. The last evidence of Neanderthals as a separate species comes
from about 30,000 years ago, and it is not clear exactly how they died out.
They may have been killed by Cro-Magnon peoples, or they simply may
have lost the competition for food as the climate worsened around 30,000
years ago and the glaciers expanded.
Homo erectus migrated great distances, but Homo sapiens sapiens made
use of greater intelligence and better toolmaking capabilities to migrate still
farther. They had used simple rafts to reach Australia by at least 50,000
years ago, and by 35,000 years ago had reached New Guinea. By at least
15,000 years ago, humans had walked across the land bridges then linking
Siberia and North America at the Bering Strait and had crossed into the
Americas. Because by 14,000 years ago humans were already in southern
South America, ten thousand miles from the land bridges, many scholars
now think that people came to the Americas much earlier. They think
humans came from Asia to the Americas perhaps as early as 20,000 or even
30,000 years ago, walking or using rafts along the coasts. (See Chapter 11
for a longer discussion of this issue.)
With the melting of glaciers, sea levels rose, and parts of the world that
had been linked by land bridges, including North America and Asia as well
as many parts of Southeast Asia, became separated by water. This cut off
migratory paths but also spurred innovation. Humans designed and built
ever more sophisticated boats and learned how to navigate by studying
wind and current patterns, bird flights, and the position of the stars. They
sailed to increasingly remote islands, including those in the Pacific, the last
parts of the globe to be settled. The western Pacific islands were inhabited
by about 2000 B.C.E., Hawaii by about 500 C.E., and New Zealand by about
1000 C.E. (For more on the settlement of the Pacific islands, see “The
Settlement of the Pacific Islands” in Chapter 12.)
Once humans had spread out over much of the globe, groups often
became isolated from one another, and people mated only with other
members of their own group or those who lived nearby, a practice
anthropologists call endogamy. Thus, over thousands of generations,
although humans remained one species, Homo sapiens sapiens came to
develop differences in physical features, including skin and hair color, eye
and body shape, and amount of body hair. Language also changed over
generations, so that thousands of different languages were eventually
spoken. Groups created widely varying cultures and passed them on to their
children, further increasing diversity among humans.
Beginning in the eighteenth century, European natural scientists sought
to develop a system that would explain human differences at the largest
scale. They divided people into very large groups by skin color and other
physical characteristics and termed these groups “races,” a word that had
originally meant lineage. They first differentiated these races by continent
of origin — Americanus, Europaeus, Asiaticus, and Africanus — and then
by somewhat different geographic areas. The word Caucasian was first
used by the German anatomist and naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
(1752–1840) to describe light-skinned people of Europe and western Asia
because he thought that their original home was most likely the Caucasus
Mountains on the border between Russia and Georgia. He thought that they
were the first humans and the most attractive. This meaning of race has had
a long life, though biologists and anthropologists today do not use it, as it
has no scientific meaning or explanatory value. All humans are one species
with less genetic variety than chimpanzees.
Later Paleolithic Society, ca. 200,000–9000
B.C.E.
What were the key features of Paleolithic society?

Eventually human cultures became widely diverse, but in the Paleolithic

period people throughout the world lived in ways that were similar to one
another. Archaeological evidence and studies of modern foragers suggest
that people lived in small groups of related individuals and moved
throughout the landscape in search of food. Most had few material
possessions, only what they could carry, although in areas where food
resources were especially rich, such as along seacoasts, they built structures
and lived more permanently in one place. In the later Paleolithic, people in
many parts of the world created art and music and developed religious ideas
that linked the natural world to a world beyond.

Foraging for Food

Paleolithic peoples have often been called hunter-gatherers, but recent
archaeological and anthropological research indicates that both historical
and contemporary hunter-gatherers have depended much more on gathered
foods than on hunted meat. Thus most scholars now call them foragers, a
term that highlights the flexibility and adaptability in their search for food.
Most of the foods foragers ate were plants, and much of the animal protein
in their diet came from foods gathered or scavenged rather than hunted
directly: insects, shellfish, small animals caught in traps, fish and other sea
creatures caught in weirs and nets, and animals killed by other predators.
 Paleolithic Hand Axes Like most
Paleolithic stone tools, these two hand axes
from Libya in northern Africa were made by
chipping flakes off stone to form a
sharpened edge. Although they are
traditionally called axes, they were used for
a variety of purposes, including skinning,
cutting, and chopping.

Paleolithic peoples did hunt large game. Groups working together

forced animals over cliffs, threw spears, and, beginning about 15,000 B.C.E.,
used bows and atlatls to shoot projectiles so that they could stand farther
away from their prey while hunting. The final retreat of the glaciers also
occurred between about 13,000 and 8000 B.C.E., and the warming climate
was less favorable to the very large mammals that had roamed the open
spaces of many parts of the world. Wooly mammoths, mastodons, and
wooly rhinos all died out in Eurasia in this megafaunal extinction, as did
camels, horses, and sloths in the Americas and giant kangaroos and
wombats in Australia. In many places, these extinctions occurred just about
the time that modern humans migrated into an area, and increasing numbers
of scientists think that they were at least in part caused by human hunting,
as many types of large animals vanished in Australia about 45,000 B.C.E.,
shortly after humans arrived, long before the final climate warming.
Most foraging societies that exist today, or did so until recently, have
some type of division of labor by sex, and also by age, with children and
older people responsible for different tasks than adult men and women are.
Men are more often responsible for hunting and women for gathering plant
and animal products. This has led scholars to assume that in Paleolithic
society men were also responsible for hunting, and women for gathering,
although this may not have been the case. The stone and bone tools that
remain from the Paleolithic period give no clear evidence of who used
them, and the division of labor may have been somewhat flexible,
particularly during periods of scarcity.
Obtaining food was a constant preoccupation, but it was not a constant
job. Studies of recent foragers indicate that, other than in times of
environmental disasters such as prolonged droughts, people need only about
ten to twenty hours a week to gather food and carry out the other tasks
needed to survive, such as locating water and building shelters. Moreover,
the diet of foragers is varied and nutritious; it is low in fat and salt, high in
fiber, and rich in vitamins and minerals. The slow pace of life and healthy
diet did not mean that Paleolithic life spans approached those of the modern
world, however. People avoided such contemporary killers as heart disease
and diabetes, but they often died at young ages from injuries, infections,
animal attacks, and interpersonal violence. Mothers and infants died in
childbirth, and many children died before they reached adulthood.
Total human population thus grew very slowly during the Paleolithic,
from perhaps half a million humans in the world about 30,000 years ago to
about 5 million 10,000 years ago. Moreover, the population was widely
scattered, with small bands of people occupying very large territories. The
low population density meant that human impact on the environment was
relatively small, although still significant. In addition to contributing to the
extinction of some large animals, Paleolithic people may have also shaped
their environments by setting fires, which encouraged the growth of new
plants and attracted animals that fed on them, making hunting or snaring
game easier. This practice was a factor in the spread of plants that thrived
best with occasional burning, such as the eucalyptus in Australia.

Family and Kinship Relationships

Small bands of humans — twenty or thirty people was a standard size for
foragers in harsh environments — were scattered across broad areas, but
this did not mean that each group lived in isolation. Their travels in search
of food brought them into contact with one another, not simply for talking
and celebrating, but also for providing opportunities for the exchange of
sexual partners, which was essential to group survival. Mating
arrangements varied in their permanence, but many groups seem to have
developed a somewhat permanent arrangement whereby a man or woman
left his or her original group and joined the group of his or her mate, what
would later be termed marriage.
Within each band, and within the larger kin groups, individuals had a
variety of identities; they were simultaneously fathers, sons, husbands, and
brothers, or mothers, daughters, wives, and sisters. Each of these identities
was relational (parent to child, sibling to sibling, spouse to spouse), and
some of them, especially parent to child, gave one power over others.
Paleolithic people were not differentiated by wealth, for in a foraging
society accumulating material goods was not advantageous. But they were
differentiated by such factors as age, gender, and position in a family, and
no doubt by personal qualities such as intelligence, courage, and charisma.
Stereotypical representations of Paleolithic people often portray men
going off to hunt while women and children crouched around a fire, waiting
for the men to bring back meat. Studies of the relative importance of
gathering to hunting, women’s participation in hunting, and gender relations
among contemporary foraging peoples have led some analysts to turn these
stereotypes on their heads. They see Paleolithic bands as egalitarian groups
in which the contributions of men and women to survival were recognized
and valued, and in which both men and women had equal access to the
limited amount of resources held by the group. Other scholars argue that
this is also a stereotype, overly romanticizing Paleolithic society. They note
that, although social relations among foragers were not as hierarchical as
they were in other types of societies, many foraging groups had one person
who held more power than others, and that person was almost always a
man. This debate about gender relations is often part of larger discussions
about whether Paleolithic society — and by implication, “human nature” —
was primarily peaceful and nurturing or violent and brutal, and whether
these qualities are gender related. Like much else about the Paleolithic,
sources about gender and about violence are fragmentary and difficult to
interpret; there may simply have been a diversity of patterns, as there is
among more modern foragers.
Whether peaceful and egalitarian or violent and hierarchical,
heterosexual relations produced children, who were cared for as infants by
their mothers or other women who had recently given birth. Breast milk
was the only food available that infants could easily digest, so mothers
nursed their children for several years. Along with providing food for
infants, extended nursing brings a side benefit: it suppresses ovulation and
thus acts as a contraceptive. Foraging groups needed children to survive,
but too many could tax scarce food resources. Other than for feeding,
children were most likely cared for by other male and female members of
the group as well as by their mothers during the long period of human
childhood.

Cultural Creations and Spirituality

Beginning in the Paleolithic, human beings expressed themselves through
what we would now term the arts or culture: painting and decorating walls
and objects, making music with their voices and a variety of instruments,
imagining and telling stories, dancing alone or in groups. Evidence from the
Paleolithic, particularly from after about 50,000 years ago, includes flutes,
carvings, jewelry, and paintings done on cave walls and rock outcroppings
that depict animals, people, and symbols. In many places these paintings
also show the outline of a human hand — often done by blowing pigment
around it — or tracings of the fingers.
At the same time that people marked and depicted the world around
them, they also appear to have developed ideas about supernatural forces
that controlled some aspects of the natural world and the place of humans in
it, what we now term spirituality or religion. Paleolithic burials, paintings,
and objects suggest that people may have thought of their world as
extending beyond the visible. People, animals, plants, natural occurrences,
and other things around them had spirits, an idea called animism. The only
evidence of Paleolithic animism that survives is physical, of course, but
more recent animist traditions carry on this understanding of the spiritual
nature and interdependence of all things.
Death took people from the realm of the living, but for Paleolithic
groups people continued to inhabit an unseen world, along with spirits and
deities, after death; thus kin groups included deceased as well as living
members of a family. The unseen world regularly intervened in the visible
world, for good and ill, and the actions of dead ancestors, spirits, and gods
could be shaped by living people. Concepts of the supernatural pervaded all
aspects of life; hunting, birth, death, and natural occurrences such as
eclipses, comets, and rainbows all had religious meaning. Supernatural
forces were understood to determine the basic rules for human existence,
and upsetting these rules could lead to chaos.
Ordinary people learned about the unseen world through dreams and
portents, and messages and revelations were also sent more regularly to
shamans, spiritually adept men and women who communicated with the
unseen world. Shamans created complex rituals through which they sought
to ensure the health and prosperity of an individual, family, or group. Many
cave paintings show herds of prey animals, and several include a masked
human figure usually judged to be a shaman performing some sort of ritual.
Objects understood to have special power, such as carvings or masks in the
form of an animal or person, could give additional protection, as could
certain plants or mixtures eaten, sniffed, or rubbed on the skin. Shamans
thus also operated as healers, with cures that included what we would term
natural medicines and religious healing.
The Development of Agriculture in the
Neolithic Era, ca. 9000 B.C.E.
How did plant and animal domestication develop, and what effects did it have on
human society?

Foraging remained the basic way of life for most of human history. In a few
especially fertile areas, however, the natural environment provided enough
food that people could become more settled. As they remained in one place,
they began to plant seeds as well as gather wild crops, to raise certain
animals instead of hunting them, and to selectively breed both plants and
animals to make them more useful to humans. This seemingly small
alteration was the most important change in human history; because of its
impact it is often termed the Agricultural Revolution. Plant and animal
domestication marked the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic. It
allowed the human population to grow far more quickly than did foraging,
but it also required more labor, which became increasingly specialized.

The Development of Horticulture

Areas of the world differed in the food resources available to foragers. In
some, acquiring enough food to sustain a group was difficult, and groups
had to move constantly. In others, moderate temperatures and abundant
rainfall allowed for verdant plant growth; or seas, rivers, and lakes provided
substantial amounts of fish and shellfish. Groups in such areas were able to
become more settled. About 15,000 years ago, the earth’s climate entered a
warming phase, and the glaciers began to retreat. As the earth became
warmer, the climate became wetter, and more parts of the world were able
to support sedentary or semi-sedentary groups of foragers.
In several of these places, foragers began planting seeds in the ground
along with gathering wild grains, roots, and other foodstuffs. By
observation, they learned the optimum times and places for planting. They
removed unwanted plants through weeding and selected the seeds they
planted in order to get crops that had favorable characteristics, such as
larger edible parts. Through this human intervention, certain crops became
domesticated, that is, modified by selective breeding so as to serve human
needs, in this case to provide a more reliable source of food. Archaeologists
trace the development and spread of plant raising by noting when the seeds
and other plant parts they discover show evidence of domestication.
This early crop planting was done by individuals using hoes and digging
sticks, and it is often termed horticulture to distinguish it from the later
agriculture using plows. Intentional crop planting developed first in the part
of southwest Asia archaeologists call the Fertile Crescent, which runs from
present-day Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan north to Turkey and then south
along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to the Iran-Iraq border (Map 1.2).
About 9000 B.C.E. people there began to plant seeds of the wild wheat and
barley they had already been harvesting, along with seeds of legume crops,
such as peas and lentils, and of the flax with which they made linen cloth.
By about 8000 B.C.E. people were growing sorghum and millet in parts of
the Nile River Valley, and perhaps yams in western Africa. By about 7000
B.C.E. they were growing domesticated rice, millet, and legumes in China;
yams and taro in Papua New Guinea; and perhaps squash in Mesoamerica.
In each of these places, the development of horticulture occurred
independently, and it may have happened in other parts of the world as well.
 MAP 1.2 The Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism Local plants and animals were
domesticated in many different places. Agriculturalists and pastoralists spread the
knowledge of how to raise them, and spread the plants and animals themselves through
migration, trade, and conquest.

Nowhere do archaeological remains alone answer the question of who

within any group first began to cultivate crops, but the fact that, among
foragers, women were primarily responsible for gathering plant products
suggests that they may also have been the first to plant seeds in the ground.
In many parts of the world, crops continued to be planted with hoes and
digging sticks for millennia, and crop raising remained primarily women’s
work, while men hunted or later raised animals.
Why, after living successfully as foragers for tens of thousands of years,
did humans in so many parts of the world all begin raising crops at about
the same time? The answer to this question is not clear, but crop raising
may have resulted from population pressures in those parts of the world
where the warming climate provided more food. More food meant lower
child mortality and longer life spans, which allowed communities to grow.
When population growth outstripped the local food supply, people had a
choice: they could move to a new area — the solution that foragers had
relied on when faced with the problem of food scarcity — or they could
develop ways to increase the food supply to keep up with population
growth, a solution that the warming climate was making possible. They
chose the latter and began to plant more intensively, beginning cycles of
expanding population and intensification of land use that have continued to
today.
A recent archaeological find at Göbekli Tepe (gyeh-BEHK-lee TEH-
peh) in present-day Turkey, at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent,
suggests that cultural factors may have played a role in the development of
agriculture. Here, around 9000 B.C.E. hundreds of people came together to
build rings of massive, multi-ton, elaborately carved limestone pillars and
then covered them with dirt and built more. The people who created this site
lived some distance away, where archaeological evidence indicates they
first carved the pillars. The evidence also reveals that they ate wild game
and plants, not crops. The project may have unintentionally spurred the
development of new methods of food production that would allow the many
workers to be fed efficiently. Indeed, it is very near here that evidence of the
world’s oldest domesticated wheat has been discovered. Archaeologists
speculate that the symbolic, cultural, or perhaps religious importance of the
structure can help explain why the people building it changed from foraging
to agriculture.
Whatever the reasons for the move from foraging to crop raising, within
several centuries of initial crop planting, people in the Fertile Crescent,
parts of China, and the Nile Valley were relying on domesticated food
products alone. They built permanent houses near one another in villages
surrounded by fields, and they invented new ways of storing foods, such as
in pottery made from clay. Villages were closer together than were the
camps of foragers, so population density as well as total population grew.
A field of planted and weeded crops yields ten to one hundred times as
much food — measured in calories — as the same area of naturally
occurring plants. It also requires much more labor, however, which was
provided both by the greater number of people in the community and by the
longer hours those people worked. Farming peoples were often in the fields
from dawn to dusk. Early farmers were also less healthy than foragers were.
Their narrower range of foodstuffs made them more susceptible to disease
and nutritional deficiencies such as anemia.
Foragers who lived at the edge of horticultural communities appear to
have recognized the negative aspects of crop raising, for they did not
immediately adopt this new way of life. Instead farming spread when a
village became too large and some residents moved to a new area. Because
the population of farming communities grew so much faster than that of
foragers, however, horticulture quickly spread into fertile areas. By about
6500 B.C.E. farming had spread northward from the Fertile Crescent into
Greece, and by 4000 B.C.E. farther northward all the way to Britain; by 4500
B.C.E. it had spread southward into Ethiopia. At the same time, crop raising
spread out from other areas in which it was first developed, and slowly
larger and larger parts of China, South and Southeast Asia, and East Africa
became home to horticultural villages.
People adapted crops to their local environments, choosing seeds that
had qualities that were beneficial, such as drought resistance. They also
domesticated new kinds of crops. In the Americas, for example, by about
3000 B.C.E. corn was domesticated in southern Mexico and potatoes and
quinoa in the Andes region of South America, and by about 2500 B.C.E.
squash and beans in eastern North America. These crops then spread, so that
by about 1000 B.C.E. people in much of what is now the western United
States were raising corn, beans, and squash. In the Indus Valley of South
Asia, people were growing dates, mangoes, sesame seeds, and cotton along
with grains and legumes by 4000 B.C.E. Accordingly, crop raising led to
dramatic human alteration of the environment.
Certain planted crops eventually came to be grown over huge areas of
land, so that some scientists describe the Agricultural Revolution as a
revolution of codependent domestication: humans domesticated crops, but
crops also “domesticated” humans so that they worked long hours
spreading particular crops around the world. Of these, corn has probably
been the most successful; more than half a million square miles around the
world are now planted in corn.
In some parts of the world horticulture led to a dramatic change in the
way of life, but in others it did not. Horticulture can be easily combined
with gathering and hunting, as plots of land are usually small; many
cultures, including some in Papua New Guinea and North America,
remained mixed foragers and horticulturists for thousands of years.
Especially in deeply wooded areas, people cleared small plots by chopping
and burning the natural vegetation, and planted crops in successive years
until the soil eroded or lost its fertility, a method termed “slash and burn.”
They then moved to another area and began the process again, perhaps
returning to the first plot many years later, after the soil had rejuvenated
itself. Groups using shifting slash-and-burn cultivation remained small and
continued to rely on the surrounding forest for much of their food.

Animal Domestication and the Rise of Pastoralism

At roughly the same time that they domesticated certain plants, people also
domesticated animals. The earliest animal to be domesticated was the dog,
which separated genetically as a subspecies from wolves at least 15,000
years ago and perhaps much earlier. The relationship provided both humans
and dogs with benefits: humans gained dogs’ better senses of smell and
hearing and their body warmth, and dogs gained new food sources and safer
surroundings. Not surprisingly, humans and domestic dogs migrated
together, including across the land bridges to the Americas and on boats to
Pacific islands.
Dogs fit easily into a foraging lifestyle, but humans also domesticated
animals that led them to completely alter their way of life. In about 9000
B.C.E., at the same time they began to raise crops, people in the Fertile
Crescent domesticated wild goats and sheep, probably using them first for
meat, and then for milk, skins, and eventually fleece (see Map 1.2). They
learned from observation and experimentation that traits are passed down
from generation to generation, and they began to breed the goats and sheep
selectively for qualities that they wanted. Sometimes they trained dogs to
assist them in herding, and then selectively bred the dogs for qualities that
were advantageous for this task.
 Head of a Sheep Carved in sandstone at the
southern end of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys
about 3200 B.C.E., this head was originally part of a
full sculpture of a sheep. By this time, meat, milk,
skins, and fleece from domesticated sheep were
essential to settled agriculturalists and nomadic
pastoralists in much of southwest Asia, and their
importance came to be reflected in material culture.

Sometime after goats and sheep, pigs were domesticated in both the
Fertile Crescent and China, as were chickens in southern Asia. Like
domesticated crops, domesticated animals eventually far outnumbered their
wild counterparts. Animal domestication also shaped human evolution;
groups that relied on animal milk and milk products for a significant part of
their diet tended to develop the ability to digest milk as adults, while those
that did not remained lactose intolerant as adults, the normal condition for
mammals.
Sheep and goats allow themselves to be herded, and people developed a
new form of living, pastoralism, based on herding and raising livestock. In
areas with sufficient rainfall and fertile soil, pastoralism can be relatively
sedentary and thus is easily combined with horticulture; people built pens
for animals, or in colder climates constructed special buildings or took them
into their houses. They learned that animal manure increases crop yields, so
they gathered the manure from enclosures and used it as fertilizer.
Increased contact with animals and their feces also increased human
contact with various sorts of disease-causing pathogens. This was
particularly the case where humans and animals lived in tight quarters. Thus
pastoralists and agriculturalists developed illnesses that had not plagued
foragers, and the diseases became endemic, that is, widely found within a
region without being deadly. Ultimately people who lived with animals
developed resistance to some of these illnesses, but foragers’ lack of
resistance to many illnesses meant that they died more readily after coming
into contact with new endemic diseases, as was the case when Europeans
brought smallpox to the Americas in the sixteenth century.
In drier areas, flocks need to travel long distances from season to season
to obtain enough food, so some pastoralists became nomadic. Nomadic
pastoralists often gather wild plant foods as well, but they tend to rely
primarily on their flocks of animals for food. Pastoralism was well suited to
areas where the terrain or climate made crop planting difficult, such as
mountains, deserts, dry grasslands, and tundras. Eventually other grazing
animals, including cattle, camels, horses, yak, and reindeer, also became the
basis of pastoral economies in Central and West Asia, many parts of Africa,
and far northern Europe.

Plow Agriculture
Horticulture and pastoralism brought significant changes to human ways of
life, but the domestication of certain large animals had an even bigger
impact. Cattle and water buffalo were domesticated in some parts of Asia
and North Africa in which they occurred naturally by at least 7000 B.C.E.,
and horses, donkeys, and camels by about 4000 B.C.E. All these animals can
be trained to carry people or burdens on their backs and to pull loads
dragged behind them. The domestication of large animals dramatically
increased the power available to humans to carry out their tasks, which had
both an immediate effect in the societies in which this happened and a long-
term effect when these societies later encountered societies in which human
labor remained the only source of power.
The pulling power of animals came to matter most, because it could be
applied to food production. Sometime in the seventh millennium B.C.E.,
people attached wooden sticks to frames that animals dragged through the
soil, thus breaking it up and allowing seeds to sprout more easily. These
simple scratch plows were modified over millennia to handle different types
of soil and other challenges. Using plows, Neolithic people produced a
significant amount of surplus food, which meant that some people in the
community could spend their days performing other tasks, increasing the
division of labor. Surplus food had to be stored, and some began to
specialize in making products for storage, such as pots, baskets, and other
kinds of containers. Others specialized in making tools, houses, and other
items needed in village life, or in producing specific types of food,
including alcoholic beverages made from fermented fruits and grains.
Families and households became increasingly interdependent, trading food
for other commodities or services. In the same way that foragers had
continually improved their tools and methods, people improved the
processes through which they made things. Sometime between 4000 and
3500 B.C.E. pot makers in Mesopotamia invented the potter’s wheel.
Between 3500 and 3000 B.C.E. people in several parts of the world adapted
wheels for use on carts and plows pulled by animals, combining wheels
with axles to allow them to spin freely. Wheeled vehicles led to road
building, and wheels and roads together made it possible for people and
goods to travel long distances more easily, whether for settlement, trade, or
conquest.
Stored food was also valuable and could become a source of conflict, as
could other issues in villages where people lived close together. Villagers
needed more complex rules than did foragers about how food was to be
distributed and how different types of work were to be valued. Certain
individuals began to specialize in the determination and enforcement of
these rules, and informal structures of power gradually became more
formalized as elites developed. These elites then distributed resources to
their own advantage, often using force to attain and maintain their power.
Neolithic Society
How did growing social and gender hierarchies and expanding networks of trade
increase the complexity of human society in the Neolithic period?

The division of labor that plow agriculture allowed led to the creation of
social hierarchies, the divisions between rich and poor, elites and common
people that have been a central feature of human society since the Neolithic
era. Plow agriculture also strengthened differentiation based on gender, with
men becoming more associated with the world beyond the household and
women with the domestic realm. Social hierarchies were reinforced over
generations as children inherited goods and status from their parents. People
increasingly communicated ideas within local and regional networks of
exchange, just as they traded foodstuffs, tools, and other products.

Social Hierarchies and Slavery

Within foraging groups, some individuals already had more authority
because of their links with the world of gods and spirits, positions as heads
of kin groups, or personal characteristics. These three factors gave
individuals advantages in agricultural societies, and the advantages became
more significant over time as there were more resources to control. Priests
and shamans became full-time religious specialists, exchanging their
services in interceding with the gods for food. In many communities,
religious specialists were the first to work out formal rules of conduct that
later became oral and written codes of law. The codes often required people
to accord deference to priests as the representatives of the gods, so that they
became an elite group with special privileges.
Individuals who were the heads of large families or kin groups had
control over the labor of others, and this power became more significant
when that labor brought material goods that could be stored. Material goods
— plows, sheep, cattle, sheds, pots, carts — gave one the ability to amass
still more material goods, and the gap between those who had them and
those who did not widened. Storage also allowed wealth to be retained over
long periods of time and handed down from one family member to another,
so that over generations small differences in wealth grew larger. The ability
to control the labor of others could also come from physical strength, a
charismatic personality, or leadership talents, and such traits may have also
led to greater wealth.
Wealth itself could command labor, as individuals or families could buy
the services of others to work for them or impose their wishes through
force, hiring soldiers to threaten or carry out violence. Eventually some
individuals bought others outright. Slavery predates written records, but it
developed in almost all agricultural societies. Like animals, slaves were a
source of physical power for their owners, providing them an opportunity to
amass still more wealth and influence.

Gender Hierarchies and Inheritance

Along with hierarchies based on wealth and power, the development of
agriculture was intertwined with a hierarchy based on gender. The system in
which men have more power and access to resources than women, and
some men are dominant over other men, is called patriarchy. Every society
in the world that has left written records has been patriarchal, but as
patriarchy came before writing, we can conclude that it originated in the
early Neolithic, the Paleolithic, or perhaps even in the hominid past.
Plow agriculture heightened patriarchy. Although farming with a hoe
was often done by women, plow agriculture came to be a male task, perhaps
because of men’s upper-body strength or because plow agriculture was
more difficult to combine with care for infants and small children than was
horticulture. At the same time that cattle began to be raised for pulling
plows and carts rather than for meat, sheep began to be raised primarily for
wool. Spinning thread and weaving cloth became primarily women’s work.
Spinning and weaving were generally done indoors and involved simpler
and cheaper tools than did plowing; they could also be taken up and put
down easily, and so could be done at the same time as other tasks.
Though in some ways this arrangement seems complementary, with
each sex doing some of the necessary labor, plow agriculture increased
gender hierarchy. Men’s responsibility for plowing and other agricultural
tasks took them outside the household more often than women’s duties did,
enlarging their opportunities for leadership. This role may have led to their
being favored as inheritors of family land and the right to farm communally
held land. Accordingly, over generations, women’s independent access to
resources decreased, and it became increasingly difficult for women to
survive without male support.
As inherited wealth became more important, men wanted to make sure
that their sons were theirs, so they restricted their wives’ movements and
activities. This was especially the case among elite families. Among
foragers and horticulturalists, women needed to be mobile for the group to
survive; their labor outdoors was essential. Among agriculturalists, the labor
of animals, slaves, and hired workers could substitute for that of women in
families that could afford them. Thus in some Neolithic societies, there is
evidence that women spent more and more of their time within the
household. Social norms and ideals gradually reinforced this pattern, so that
by the time written laws and other records emerged in the second
millennium B.C.E., elite women were expected to work at tasks that would
not take them beyond the household or away from male supervision. Non-
elite women also tended to do work that could be done within or close by
the household, such as cooking, cloth production, and the care of children,
the elderly, and small animals.
Social and gender hierarchies were enhanced over generations as wealth
was passed down unequally, and they were also enhanced by rules and
norms that shaped sexual relationships, particularly heterosexual ones.
However their power originated, elites began to think of themselves as a
group set apart from the rest by some element that made them distinctive —
such as military prowess, natural superiority, or connections with a deity.
They increasingly understood this distinctive quality to be hereditary and
tended to marry within their group, a social endogamy we might think of as
the selective breeding of people. They developed traditions — later codified
as written laws — that stipulated how such marriages would pass status and
wealth to the next generation. Relationships between elite men and non-
elite women generally did not function in this way, or did so to a lesser
degree; the women were defined as concubines or mistresses, or simply as
sexual outlets for powerful men. Relations between an elite woman and a
non-elite man generally brought shame and dishonor to the woman’s family
and sometimes death to the man. (Early rules and laws about sex generally
did not pay much attention to same-sex relations because these did not
produce children who could threaten systems of inheritance.)
No elite can be completely closed to newcomers, however, because the
accidents of life and death, along with the genetic problems caused by
repeated close intermarriage, make it difficult for any small group to
survive over generations. Thus mechanisms were developed in many
cultures to adopt boys into elite families, to legitimate the children of
concubines and slave women, or to allow elite girls to marry men lower on
the social hierarchy. All systems of inheritance also need some flexibility.
The inheritance patterns in some cultures favored male heirs exclusively,
but in others close relatives were favored over those more distant, even if
this meant allowing daughters to inherit. The drive to keep wealth and
property within a family or kin group often resulted in women’s inheriting,
owning, and in some cases managing significant amounts of wealth, a
pattern that continues today. Hierarchies of wealth and power thus
intersected with hierarchies of gender in complex ways.

Trade and Cross-Cultural Connections

The increase in food production brought by the development of plow
agriculture allowed Neolithic villages to grow ever larger. By 7000 B.C.E. or
so, some villages in the Fertile Crescent may have had as many as ten
thousand residents. One of the best known of these, Çatal Hüyük (cha-
TAHL hoo-YOOK) in what is now modern Turkey, shows evidence of trade
as well as of the specialization of labor. Çatal Hüyük’s residents lived in
mud-brick houses whose walls were covered in white plaster. The men and
women of the town grew wheat, barley, peas, and almonds and raised sheep
and perhaps cattle, though they also seem to have hunted. They made
textiles, pots, figurines, baskets, carpets, copper and lead beads, and other
goods. They gathered, sharpened, and polished obsidian, a volcanic rock
that could be used for knives, blades, and mirrors, and then traded it with
neighboring towns. From here the obsidian was exchanged still farther
away, for Neolithic societies slowly developed local and then regional
networks of exchange and communication.
Among the goods traded in some parts of the world was copper. Pure
copper occurs close to the surface in some areas, and people, including
those at Çatal Hüyük, hammered it into shapes for jewelry and tools. More
often, copper, like most metals, occurs mixed with other materials in a type
of rock called ore, and by about 5500 B.C.E. people in the Balkans had
learned that copper could be extracted from ore by heating it in a smelting
process. Smelting techniques were discovered independently in many
places around the world, including China, Southeast Asia, West Africa, and
the Andes region. Pure copper is soft, but through experimentation artisans
learned that it would become harder if they mixed it with other metals such
as arsenic, zinc, or tin during heating, creating an alloy called bronze.
Because it was stronger than copper, bronze had a far wider range of
uses, so much so that later historians decided that its adoption marked a
new period in human history, the Bronze Age. It began about 3000 B.C.E. in
some places, and by about 2500 B.C.E. bronze technology was having an
impact in many parts of the world, especially in weaponry. The end of the
Bronze Age came with the adoption of iron technology, which also varied in
its beginnings from 1200 B.C.E. to 300 B.C.E. All metals were expensive and
hard to obtain, however, which meant that stone, wood, bone, leather, bark,
and grasses remained important materials for tools and weapons long into
the Bronze Age, and the only materials in the vast parts of the world where
metals were unobtainable.
Objects were not the only things traded over increasingly long distances
during the Neolithic period, for people also carried ideas as they traveled.
Knowledge about the seasons and the weather was vitally important for
those who depended on crop raising, and agricultural peoples in many parts
of the world began to calculate recurring patterns in the world around them,
slowly developing calendars. Scholars have demonstrated that people built
circular structures of mounded earth or huge upright stones to help them
predict the movements of the sun and stars.
 Stone Circle at Nabta Playa, Egypt, ca. 4800 B.C.E. This circle of stones, erected when
the Egyptian desert received much more rainfall than it does today, may have been a type
of calendar marking the summer solstice. Circular arrangements of stones or ditches were
constructed in many places during the Neolithic era, and most no doubt had calendrical,
astronomical, and/or religious purposes.

The rhythms of the agricultural cycle and patterns of exchange also

shaped religious beliefs and practices. Shamans and priests developed ever
more elaborate rituals designed to assure fertility, in which the gods were
often given something from a community’s goods in exchange for their
favor. In many places gods came to be associated with patterns of birth,
growth, death, and regeneration. Like humans, the gods came to have a
division of labor and a social hierarchy. Thus, as human society was
becoming more complex, so was the unseen world.
Chapter Summary
Through studying the physical remains of the past, sometimes with very
new high-tech procedures such as DNA analysis, scholars have determined
that human evolution involved a combination of factors, including
bipedalism, larger brain size, spoken symbolic language, and longer periods
of infancy. Humans invented ever more complex tools, many of which were
made of stone, from which later scholars derived the name for this earliest
period of human history, the Paleolithic era. These tools allowed Paleolithic
peoples to shape the world around them. During this era, humans migrated
out of Africa, adapting to many different environments and developing
diverse cultures. Early humans lived in small groups of related individuals,
moving through the landscape as foragers in the search for food.
Beginning about 9000 B.C.E. people living in southwest Asia, and then
elsewhere, began to plant seeds as well as gather wild crops, raise certain
animals, and selectively breed both plants and animals to make them more
useful to humans. This domestication of plants and animals was the most
important change in human history and marked the beginning of the
Neolithic era. The domestication of large animals led to plow agriculture,
through which humans could raise much more food, and the world’s
population grew. Plow agriculture allowed for a greater division of labor,
which strengthened social hierarchies based on wealth and gender.
Neolithic agricultural communities developed technologies to meet their
needs and often traded with one another for products that they could not
obtain locally. Religious ideas came to reflect the new agricultural society.

CONNECTIONS

The human story is often told as a narrative of unstoppable progress toward

greater complexity. The small kin groups of the Paleolithic gave way to
Neolithic villages that grew ever larger until they became cities. Egalitarian
foragers became stratified by divisions of wealth and power that were
formalized as aristocracies, castes, and social classes. Oral rituals of
worship, healing, and celebration in which everyone participated grew into
a dizzying array of religions, philosophies, and branches of knowledge
presided over by specialists. The rest of this book traces this story and
explores the changes over time that are the central thread of history.
As you examine what can seem to be a staggering number of
developments, it is also important to remember that many things were slow
to change and that some aspects of human life in the Neolithic, or even the
Paleolithic, continued. Foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, and agriculture
have been the primary economic activities of most people throughout the
entire history of the world. Though today there are only a few foraging
groups in very isolated areas, there are significant numbers of
horticulturalists and pastoralists, and their numbers were much greater just a
century ago. At that point the vast majority of the world’s people still made
their living directly through agriculture. The social patterns set in early
agricultural societies — with most of the population farming the land and a
small number of elite who lived off their labor — lasted for millennia. You
have no doubt recognized other similarities between the early peoples
discussed in this chapter and the people you see around you, and it is
important to keep these continuities in mind as you embark on your
examination of human history.
Chapter 1 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

hominids (p. 3)
Paleolithic era (p. 3)
foraging (p. 3)
Neolithic era (p. 3)
Neanderthals (p. 8)
endogamy (p. 9)
megafaunal extinction (p. 10)
division of labor (p. 10)
animism (p. 12)
shamans (p. 13)
Agricultural Revolution (p. 13)
domesticated (p. 15)
horticulture (p. 15)
pastoralism (p. 18)
social hierarchies (p. 19)
patriarchy (p. 20)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. How did humans evolve, and where did they migrate? (p. 2)
2. What were the key features of Paleolithic society? (p. 9)
3. How did plant and animal domestication develop, and what effects did it have on
human society? (p. 13)
4. How did growing social and gender hierarchies and expanding networks of trade
increase the complexity of human society in the Neolithic period? (p. 19)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. Why is the Agricultural Revolution called the most important change in human
history?
2. What continuities persisted between the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras?
3. Why and how did social hierarchies develop?
4. Along with basic ways of life such as foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, and
agriculture, what other aspects of society that developed in the Neolithic do you
see around you today? What might account for these continuities stretching across
millennia?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 4 million years ago • Australopithecus evolve in Africa

ca. 2,500,000–9000 B.C.E. • Paleolithic era
ca. 500,000–2 million years• Homo erectus evolve and spread out of Africa
ago
ca. 200,000 years ago • Homo sapiens evolve in Africa
ca. 120,000 years ago • Homo sapiens migrate out of Africa to Eurasia
ca. 50,000 years ago • Human migration to Australia
ca. 30,000–200,000 years • Neanderthals flourish in Europe and western Asia
ago
ca. 20,000–30,000 years • Possible human migration from Asia to the Americas
ago
ca. 25,000 B.C.E. • Earliest evidence of woven cloth and baskets
ca. 15,000 B.C.E. • Earliest evidence of bows and atlatls
ca. 15,000 B.C.E. • Humans cross the Bering Strait land bridge to the
Americas
ca. 13,000–8000 B.C.E. • Final retreat of glaciers
ca. 9000 B.C.E. • Beginning of the Neolithic; horticulture; domestication of
sheep and goats
ca. 7000 B.C.E. • Domestication of cattle; plow agriculture
ca. 4500–4000 B.C.E. • Invention of pottery wheel
3800 B.C.E. • First cities in Sumer (Ch. 2)
ca. 3500–3200 B.C.E. • Earliest known writing; development of wheeled
transport
2800–1800 B.C.E. • Harappan civilization in India (Ch. 3)
ca. 2500 B.C.E. • Bronze technology becomes common in many areas;
beginning of the Bronze Age
2
Complex Societies in Southwest Asia and
the Nile Valley

3800–500 B.C.E.
Chapter Preview

Writing, Cities, and States

• How does writing shape what we can know about the past, and how did
writing develop to meet the needs of cities and states?

Mesopotamia from Sumer to Babylon

• How did the peoples of Mesopotamia form states and develop new
technologies and institutions?

The Egyptians
• How did the Egyptians create a prosperous and long-lasting society?

The Hebrews
• How did the Hebrews create an enduring written religious tradition?

The Assyrians and the Persians

• How did the Assyrians and the Persians consolidate their power and control
the subjects of their empires?

FIVE THOUSAND YEARS AGO, HUMANS WERE LIVING IN MOST PARTS of the planet.
They had designed technologies to meet the challenges presented by deep forests and
jungles, steep mountains, and blistering deserts. As the climate changed, they adapted,
building boats to cross channels created by melting glaciers and finding new sources of
food when old sources were no longer plentiful. In some places the new sources included
domesticated plants and animals, which allowed people to live in much closer proximity to
one another than they had as foragers.
That proximity created opportunities, as larger groups of people pooled their knowledge
to deal with life’s challenges, but it also created problems. Human history from that point on
can be seen as a response to these opportunities, challenges, and conflicts. As small
villages grew into cities, people continued to develop technologies and systems to handle
new issues. To control their more complex societies, people created governments,
militaries, and taxation systems. In some places they invented writing to record taxes,
inventories, and payments, and they later put writing to other uses. The first places where
these new technologies and systems were introduced were the Tigris and Euphrates River
Valleys of southwest Asia and the Nile Valley of northeast Africa, areas whose histories
became linked through trade, military conquests, and migrations.
Writing, Cities, and States
How does writing shape what we can know about the past, and how did writing
develop to meet the needs of cities and states?

The remains of buildings, burial sites, weapons, tools, artwork, and other
handmade objects provide our only evidence of how people lived, thought,
felt, and died during most of the human past. Beginning about 5,000 years
ago, however, people in some parts of the world developed a new
technology, writing. Writing developed to meet the needs of more complex
urban societies that are often referred to as “civilizations.” In particular,
writing met the needs of the state, a new political form that developed
during the time covered in this chapter.

Written Sources and the Human Past

Historians who study human societies that developed systems of writing
continue to use many of the same types of physical evidence as do those
who study societies without writing. For some cultures, the writing or
record-keeping systems have not yet been deciphered, so our knowledge of
these people also depends largely on physical evidence. Scholars can read
the writing of a great many societies, however, adding greatly to what we
can learn about them.
Much ancient writing survives only because it was copied and recopied,
sometimes years after it was first produced. The survival of a work means
that someone from a later period — and often a long chain of someones —
judged it worthy of the time, effort, and resources needed to produce copies.
The copies may not be completely accurate. Historians studying ancient
works thus often try to find as many early copies as they can and compare
them to arrive at the version they think is closest to the original.
The works considered worthy of copying tend to be those that are about
the political and military events involving major powers, those that record
religious traditions, or those that come from authors who were later
regarded as important. By contrast, written sources dealing with the daily
life of ordinary men and women were few to begin with and were rarely
saved or copied because they were not considered significant.
 Some early written texts survive in their original form because people
inscribed them in stone, shells, bone, or other hard materials, intending
them to be permanent. Stones with inscriptions were often erected in the
open in public places for all to see, so they include text that leaders felt had
enduring importance, such as laws, religious proclamations, decrees, and
treaties. (The names etched in granite on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Washington, D.C., are perhaps the best-known modern example, but
inscriptions can be found on nearly every major public building.)
Sometimes this permanence was accidental: in ancient Mesopotamia (in the
area of modern Iraq), all writing was initially made up of indentations on
soft clay tablets, which then hardened. Hundreds of thousands of these
tablets have survived, the oldest written in cuneiform (see “Writing,
Mathematics, and Poetry”) and dating to about 3200 B.C.E. From these
written records historians have learned about many aspects of everyday life.
By contrast, writing in Egypt at the same time was often done in ink on
papyrus sheets, made from a plant that grows abundantly in Egypt. Some of
these papyrus sheets have survived, but papyrus is much more fragile than
hardened clay, so most have disintegrated. In China, the oldest surviving
writing is on bones and turtle shells from about 1200 B.C.E., but it is clear
that writing was done much earlier on less permanent materials such as silk
and bamboo. (For more on the origins of Chinese writing, see “The
Development of Writing” in Chapter 4.)

Cities and the Idea of Civilization

Along with writing, the growth of cities has often been a way that scholars
mark the increasing complexity of human societies. In the ancient world,
residents of cities generally viewed themselves as more advanced and
sophisticated than rural folk — a judgment still made today by urban
dwellers. They saw themselves as more “civilized,” a word that comes from
the Latin adjective civilis, which refers to either a citizen of a town or of a
larger political unit such as an empire.
This depiction of people as either civilized or uncivilized was gradually
extended to whole societies. Beginning in the eighteenth century European
scholars described those societies in which political, economic, and social
organizations operated on a large scale as “civilizations.” Civilizations had
cities; laws that governed human relationships; codes of manners and social
conduct that regulated how people were to behave; and scientific,
philosophical, and theological ideas that explained the larger world.
Generally only societies that used writing were judged to be civilizations.
Until the middle of the twentieth century, historians often referred to the
earliest places where writing and cities developed as the “cradles of
civilization,” proposing a model of development for all humanity patterned
on that of an individual person. However, the idea that all human societies
developed (or should develop) in a uniform process from a “cradle” to a
“mature” civilization has now been largely discredited, and some world
historians choose not to use the word civilization at all because it could
imply that some societies are superior to others. But they have not rejected
the idea that about 5,000 years ago a new form of human society appeared.

The Rise of States, Laws, and Social Hierarchies

Cities concentrated people and power, and they required more elaborate
mechanisms to make them work than had small agricultural villages and
foraging groups. These mechanisms were part of what political scientists
call “the state,” an organization in which a share of the population is able to
coerce resources out of everyone else in order to gain and then maintain
power. In the earliest states, the interest that gained power was often one
particular family or kin group, a set of religious leaders, or even a
charismatic or talented individual able to handle the problems of dense
urban communities. These same types of states continue to today as
monarchies, theocracies, and dictatorships, joined by types of states that
developed more recently, such as democracies, in which power is
understood to reside in “the people.”
However they were and are established, states coerce people through
violence, or the threat of violence, and develop armies and police forces for
this purpose; even in democracies, people can be forced to do things they
do not want to do with the threat of imprisonment or other punishment.
Using armed force to gain resources is not very efficient, however, so states
developed other ways to do this, such as bureaucracies and systems of
taxation. States also need to keep track of people and goods, so they
sometimes developed systems of recording information and accounting,
usually through writing, though not always. In the Inca Empire of the
Andes, for example, information about money, goods, and people was
recorded on collections of colored knotted strings called khipus (see
“Societies of the Americas in a Global Context” in Chapter 11). These
systems allowed for the creation of more elaborate rules of behavior, often
written down in the form of law codes, which facilitated further growth in
state power, or in the form of religious traditions, which specified what sort
of behavior is pleasing to the gods or other supernatural forces and thus
convinced people to act in certain ways.
Written laws and traditions generally create more elaborate social
hierarchies, in which divisions between elite groups and common people
are established more firmly. They also generally heighten gender
hierarchies. Those who gain power in states are most often men, so they
tend to establish laws and norms that favor males in marriage, property
rights, and other areas.
Whether we choose to call the process “the birth of civilization,” or “the
development of complex society,” or “the growth of the state,” in the fourth
millennium B.C.E. Neolithic agricultural villages expanded into cities that
depended largely on food produced by the surrounding countryside while
people living in cities carried out other tasks. The organization of a more
complex division of labor was undertaken by an elite group, which enforced
its will through laws, taxes, and bureaucracies backed up by armed force or
the threat of it. Social and gender hierarchies became more complex and
rigid. All this happened first in Mesopotamia, then in Egypt, and then in
India and China.
Mesopotamia from Sumer to Babylon
How did the peoples of Mesopotamia form states and develop new technologies and
institutions?

States first developed in Mesopotamia, where sustained agriculture reliant

on irrigation from the Euphrates (you-FRAY-teez) and Tigris Rivers
resulted in larger populations, a division of labor, and the growth of cities.
Priests and rulers developed ways to control and organize these complex
societies. Conquerors from the north unified Mesopotamian city-states into
larger empires and spread Mesopotamian culture over a large area.

Environmental Challenges, Irrigation, and Religion

Mesopotamia was part of the Fertile Crescent, where settled agriculture first
developed (see “The Development of Horticulture” in Chapter 1). The
earliest agricultural villages in Mesopotamia were in the northern, hilly
parts of the river valleys, where there is abundant rainfall for crops. Farmers
had brought techniques of crop raising southward by about 5000 B.C.E., to
the southern part of Mesopotamia known as Sumer (SOO-mer). In this arid
climate farmers developed large-scale irrigation, which required organized
group effort but allowed the population to grow. By about 3800 B.C.E. one of
these agricultural villages, Uruk (OO-rook), had expanded significantly,
becoming what many historians view as the world’s first city. Over the next
thousand years, other cities emerged in Sumer, trading with one another and
creating massive hydraulic projects including reservoirs, dams, and dikes to
prevent major floods. These cities built defensive walls, marketplaces, and
large public buildings; each came to dominate the surrounding countryside,
becoming city-states independent from one another, though not very far
apart.
 Sumerian Harpist This small clay tablet, carved
between 2000 B.C.E. and 1500 B.C.E., shows a
seated woman playing a harp. Her fashionable dress
and hat suggest that she is playing for wealthy
people, perhaps at the royal court. Images of
musicians are common in Mesopotamian art, which
indicates that music was important in Mesopotamian
culture and social life.

The city-states of Sumer relied on irrigation systems that required

cooperation and at least some level of social and political cohesion. The
authority to run this system was, it seems, initially assumed by Sumerian
priests. Encouraged and directed by their religious leaders, people built
temples on tall platforms in the center of their cities. Temples grew into
elaborate complexes of buildings with storage space for grain and other
products and housing for animals. (Much later, by about 2100 B.C.E., some
of the major temple complexes were embellished with a huge stepped
pyramid, called a ziggurat, with a shrine on the top.) Surrounding the
temple and other large buildings were the houses of ordinary citizens, each
constructed around a central courtyard.
To Sumerians, and to later peoples in Mesopotamia as well, many
different gods and goddesses controlled the world, a religious idea later
scholars called polytheism. Each deity represented cosmic forces such as
the sun, moon, water, and storms. The gods judged good and evil and would
punish humans who lied or cheated. People believed that humans had been
created to serve the gods and generally anticipated being well treated by the
gods if they honored them through rituals and temples.

Sumerian Politics and Society

Exactly how kings emerged in Sumerian society is not clear. Scholars have
suggested that during times of crisis a chief priest or sometimes a military
leader assumed what was supposed to be temporary authority over a city.
He established an army, trained it, and led it into battle. Temporary power
gradually became permanent kingship, and kings in some Sumerian city-
states began to hand down the kingship to their sons, establishing
patriarchal hereditary dynasties in which power was handed down through
the male line. The symbol of royal status was the palace, which came to
rival the temple in its grandeur.
Kings made alliances with other powerful individuals, often through
marriage. Royal family members were responsible for many aspects of
government. Kings worked closely with religious authorities and relied on
ideas about their connections with the gods, as well as the kings’ military
might, for their power. Royal children, both sons and daughters, were
sometimes priests and priestesses in major temples. Acting together, priests,
nobles, and kings in Sumerian cities used force, persuasion, and threats of
higher taxes to maintain order, keep the irrigation systems working, and
keep food and other goods flowing.
The king and the nobles held extensive tracts of land, as did the temple;
these lands were worked by the palace’s or the temple’s clients — free men
and women who were dependent on the palace or the temple. They received
crops and other goods in return for their labor. Although this arrangement
assured the clients of a livelihood, the land they worked remained the
possession of the palace or the temple. Some individuals and families
owned land outright and paid their taxes in the form of agricultural products
or items they made. At the bottom rung of society were slaves. Like
animals, slaves were a source of physical power for their owners, providing
them an opportunity to amass more wealth and influence.
Each of these social categories included both men and women, but their
experiences were not the same, for Sumerian society made distinctions
based on gender. Most elite landowners were male, but women who held
positions as priestesses or as queens ran their own estates independently of
their husbands and fathers. Some women owned businesses and took care
of their own accounts. They could own property and distribute it to their
offspring. Sons and daughters inherited from their parents, although a
daughter received her inheritance in the form of a dowry, which technically
remained hers but was managed by her husband or husband’s family after
marriage. The Sumerians established the basic social, economic, and
intellectual patterns of Mesopotamia and influenced their neighbors to the
north and east.

Writing, Mathematics, and Poetry

The origins of writing probably date back to the ninth millennium B.C.E.,
when people in southwest Asia used clay tokens as counters for record
keeping. By the fourth millennium people had realized that impressing the
tokens on soft clay, or drawing pictures of the tokens on clay, was simpler
than making tokens. This breakthrough in turn suggested that more
information could be conveyed by adding pictures of other objects, and
slowly the new technology of writing developed. The result was a complex
system of pictographs in which each sign pictured an object, such as “star”
(line A of Figure 2.1). These pictographs were the forerunners of the
Sumerian form of writing known as cuneiform (kyou-NEE-uh-form), for
which the first surviving examples date from about 3200 B.C.E.
 FIGURE 2.1 Sumerian Writing

Pictographs were initially limited in that they could not represent

abstract ideas, but the development of ideograms — signs that represented
ideas — made writing more versatile. Thus the sign for “star” could also be
used to indicate “heaven,” “sky,” or even “god.” The real breakthrough
came when scribes started using signs to represent sounds. For instance, the
symbol for “water” (two parallel wavy lines) could also be used to indicate
“in,” which sounded the same as the spoken word for “water” in Sumerian.
The development of the Sumerian system of writing was piecemeal,
with scribes making changes and additions as they were needed. The system
became so complicated that the Sumerians established scribal schools,
which by 2500 B.C.E. flourished throughout the region. Students at the
schools were all male, and most came from families in the middle range of
urban society. Scribal schools were primarily intended to produce
individuals who could keep records of the property of temple officials,
kings, and nobles. Thus writing first developed as a way to enhance the
growing power of elites, not to record speech.
 Sumerians wrote numbers as well as words on clay tablets, and some
surviving tablets show multiplication and division problems. The Sumerians
and later Mesopotamians made significant advances in mathematics using a
numerical system based on units of sixty, ten, and six, from which we
derive our division of hours into sixty minutes and minutes into sixty
seconds. They also developed the concept of place value — that the value
of a number depends on where it stands in relation to other numbers.
Written texts were not an important part of Sumerian religious life, nor
were they central to the religious practices of most of the other peoples in
this region. Stories about the gods circulated orally and traveled with people
when they moved up and down the rivers. Sumerians also told stories about
heroes and kings, many of which were eventually reworked into the world’s
first epic poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh (GIL-guh-mesh), which was later
written down.

Empires in Mesopotamia
The wealth of Sumerian cities also attracted conquerors from the north.
Around 2300 B.C.E. Sargon, the king of a region to the north of Sumer,
conquered a number of Sumerian cities with what was probably the world’s
first permanent army and created a large state. The symbol of his triumph
was a new capital, the city of Akkad (AH-kahd). Sargon also expanded the
newly established Akkadian empire westward to northern Syria, which
became the breadbasket of the empire. He encouraged trading networks that
brought in goods from as far away as the Indus River in South Asia and
what is now Turkey (Map 2.1). Sargon spoke a different language than did
the Sumerians, one of the many languages that scholars identify as
belonging to the Semitic language family, which includes modern-day
Hebrew and Arabic. Akkadians adapted cuneiform writing to their own
language, and Akkadian became the diplomatic language used over a wide
area.
 MAP 2.1 Spread of Cultures in Southwest Asia and the Nile Valley, ca. 3000–1640
B.C.E.
This map illustrates the spread of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures through the
semicircular stretch of land often called the Fertile Crescent. From this area, the
knowledge and use of agriculture spread throughout western Asia, northern Africa, and
Europe.

Sargon tore down the defensive walls of Sumerian cities and appointed
his own sons as their rulers to help him cement his power. He also
appointed his daughter, Enheduana (en-hoo-DWANN-ah) (2285–2250
B.C.E.), as high priestess in the city of Ur. Here she wrote a number of
hymns, becoming the world’s first author to put her name to a literary
composition.
Sargon’s dynasty appears to have ruled Mesopotamia for about 150
years, and then collapsed, in part because of a period of extended drought.
Various city-states then rose to power, one of which was centered on the
city of Babylon. Babylon was in an excellent position to dominate trade on
both the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and it was fortunate in having a very
able ruler in Hammurabi (hahm-moo-RAH-bee) (r. 1792–1750 B.C.E.).
Initially a typical king of his era, he unified Mesopotamia later in his reign
by using military force, strategic alliances with the rulers of smaller
territories, and religious ideas. As had earlier rulers, Hammurabi linked his
success with the will of the gods. He connected himself with the sun-god
Shamash, the god of law and justice, and encouraged the spread of myths
that explained how Marduk, the primary god of Babylon, had been elected
king of the gods by the other deities in Mesopotamia. Babylonian ideas and
beliefs thus became part of the cultural mixture of Mesopotamia, which
spread far beyond the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys to the shores of the
Mediterranean Sea and the Harappan cities of the Indus River Valley (see
“The Land and Its First Settlers, ca. 3000–1500 B.C.E.” in Chapter 3).

Life Under Hammurabi

Hammurabi’s most memorable accomplishment was the proclamation of an
extensive law code, introduced about 1755 B.C.E. Hammurabi’s law code
set a variety of punishments for breaking the law, including fines and
physical punishment such as mutilation, whipping, and burning. It
demanded that the punishment fit the crime, calling for “an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth,” at least among social equals, although higher-
ranking people could pay a fine to lower-ranking victims instead of having
an arm broken or losing an eye.
 Law Code of Hammurabi
Hammurabi ordered his code to be
inscribed on stone pillars and set
up in public throughout the
Babylonian empire. At the top of
the pillar Hammurabi (left) is
depicted receiving the rod and ring
of authority from Shamash, the
god of law and justice.

Hammurabi’s code provides a wealth of information about daily life in

Mesopotamia, although, like all law codes, it prescribes what the lawgivers
hope will be the situation rather than providing a description of real life. We
cannot know if its laws were enforced, but we can use it to see what was
significant to people in Hammurabi’s society. Because of farming’s
fundamental importance, the code dealt extensively with agriculture.
Tenants faced severe penalties for neglecting the land or not working it at
all. The code also regulated other trades, and artisans had to guarantee the
quality of their goods and services to consumers. Hammurabi gave careful
attention to marriage and the family. As elsewhere in the area, marriage had
aspects of a business agreement. The groom or his father offered the
prospective bride’s father a gift, and if this was acceptable, the bride’s
father provided his daughter with a dowry, which technically remained hers.
A father could not disinherit a son without just cause, and the code ordered
the courts to forgive a son for his first offense. On family matters and other
issues, Hammurabi’s code influenced other law codes, including those later
written down in Hebrew Scripture (see “The Jewish Religion”).
The Egyptians
How did the Egyptians create a prosperous and long-lasting society?

At about the same time that Sumerian city-states expanded and fought with
one another in the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, a more cohesive state under
a single ruler grew in the valley of the Nile River in North Africa. This was
Egypt, which for long stretches of history was prosperous and secure. At
various times groups invaded and conquered Egypt or migrated into Egypt
seeking better lives. Often these newcomers adopted aspects of Egyptian
culture, and Egyptians also carried their traditions with them when they
established an empire and engaged in trade.

The Nile and the God-King

No other single geographical factor had such a fundamental and profound
impact on Egyptian life, society, and history as the Nile River (see Map
2.2). The Nile flooded once a year for a period of several months, bringing
fertile soil and moisture for farming. Through the fertility of the Nile and
their own hard work, Egyptians produced an annual agricultural surplus,
which in turn sustained a growing and prosperous population. The Nile also
unified Egypt, serving as a highway that promoted easy communication.
The political power structures that developed in Egypt came to be
linked with the Nile. Somehow the idea developed that a single individual,
a king, was responsible for the rise and fall of the Nile. The king came to be
viewed as a descendant of the gods and thus a god himself. This belief came
about before the development of writing in Egypt, so the precise details of
its origins have been lost. Political unification most likely proceeded
slowly, but stories told about early kings highlighted one who had united
Upper Egypt (the upstream valley in the south) and Lower Egypt (the delta
area of the Nile that empties into the Mediterranean Sea) into a single
kingdom around 3100 B.C.E. Historians later divided Egyptian history into
dynasties, or families, of kings, and more recently into periods with
distinctive characteristics. The political unification of Egypt in the Archaic
Period (3100–2660 B.C.E.) ushered in the period known as the Old Kingdom
(2660–2180 B.C.E.).
 The focal point of religious and political life in the Old Kingdom was
the king, who commanded the wealth, resources, and people of Egypt. The
king’s surroundings had to be worthy of a god, and only a magnificent
palace was suitable for his home; in fact, the word pharaoh, which during
the New Kingdom (1570–1070 B.C.E.) came to be used for the king,
originally meant “great house.” Just as the kings occupied a great house in
life, so they reposed in great pyramids after death. Built during the Old
Kingdom, these massive stone tombs contained all the things needed by the
king in his afterlife and also symbolized the king’s power and his
connection with the sun-god.
Like the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians were polytheistic, worshipping
many gods of all types, some mightier than others. They developed
complex ideas of their gods that reflected the world around them, and these
views changed over the many centuries of Egyptian history as gods took on
new attributes and often merged with one another. During the Old
Kingdom, Egyptians considered the sun-god Ra the creator of life. Much
later, during the New Kingdom (see “Migrations, Revivals, and Collapse”),
the pharaohs of a new dynasty favored the worship of a different sun-god,
Amon. As his cult grew, Amon came to be identified with Ra, and
eventually the Egyptians combined them into one sun-god, Amon-Ra.
The Egyptians likewise developed views of an afterlife that reflected the
world around them and that changed over time. During the later part of the
Old Kingdom, the walls of kings’ tombs were carved with religious texts
that provided spells that would bring the king back to life and help him
ascend to heaven. Toward the end of the Old Kingdom, the tombs of
powerful nobles also contained such inscriptions, an indication that more
people expected to gain everlasting life. In the Middle Kingdom (2080–
1640 B.C.E.), new types of spells appeared on the coffins of even more
people, a further expansion in admissions to the afterlife. During the New
Kingdom, a time when Egypt came into greater contact with the cultures of
the Fertile Crescent, Egyptians developed even more complex ideas about
the afterlife, recording these in written funerary manuscripts that have come
to be known as the Book of the Dead. These texts explained that the soul
left the body to become part of the divine after death and told of the god
Osiris (oh-SIGH-ruhs), who died each year and was then brought back to
life by his wife Isis (IGH-suhs) when the Nile flooded. Osiris eventually
became king of the dead, weighing dead humans’ hearts to determine
whether they had lived justly enough to deserve everlasting life. Egyptians
also believed that proper funeral rituals, in which the physical body was
mummified, were essential for life after death, so Osiris was assisted by
Anubis, the jackal-headed god of mummification.
To ancient Egyptians, the king embodied justice and order — harmony
among people, nature, and the divine. Kings did not always live up to this
ideal, of course. The two parts of Egypt were difficult to hold together, and
several times in Egypt’s long history there were periods of civil war and
political fragmentation, which scholars term the First (2180–2080 B.C.E.)
and Second (1640–1570 B.C.E.) Intermediate Periods. Yet the monarchy
survived, and in each period a strong warrior-king arose to restore order and
expand Egyptian power.

Egyptian Society and Work

Egyptian society reflected the pyramids that it built. At the top stood the
pharaoh, who relied on a circle of nobles, officials, and priests to administer
his kingdom. All of them were assisted by scribes, who used a writing
system perhaps adapted from Mesopotamia or perhaps developed
independently. Egyptian scribes actually created two writing systems: one
called hieroglyphics for engraving important religious or political texts on
stone or writing them on papyrus made from reeds growing in the Nile
Delta, and a much simpler system called hieratic that allowed scribes to
write more quickly and was used for the documents of daily life. The cities
of the Nile Valley were also home to artisans of all types, along with
merchants and other tradespeople. A large group of farmers made up the
broad base of the social pyramid.
For Egyptians, the Nile formed an essential part of daily life. During the
flooding season — from June to October — farmers worked on the
pharaoh’s building programs and other tasks away from their fields. When
the water began to recede, they diverted some of it into ponds for future
irrigation and began planting wheat and barley, using plows pulled by oxen
or people. From October to February farmers planted and tended crops, and
from February until the next flood they harvested them. As in Mesopotamia,
common people paid their obligations to their superiors in products and in
labor. People’s labor obligations in the Old Kingdom may have included
forced work on the pyramids and canals, although recent research suggests
that most people who built the pyramids were paid for their work. Some
young men were drafted into the pharaoh’s army, which served as both a
fighting force and a labor corps.
The lives of all Egyptians centered around the family. Just as in
Mesopotamia, marriage was a business arrangement. A couple’s parents
arranged the marriage, which seems to have taken place at a young age.
Once couples were married, having children, especially sons, was a high
priority, as indicated by surviving charms to promote fertility and prayers
for successful childbirth. Boys continued the family line, and only they
could perform the proper burial rites for their father.
Most Egyptian men had only one wife, but among the wealthy some had
several wives or concubines. Ordinary women were expected to obey their
fathers, husbands, and other men, but they possessed considerable
economic and legal rights. They could own land in their own names,
operate businesses, and testify in court. Literature and art depict a world in
which ordinary husbands and wives enjoyed each other’s company.

Migrations, Revivals, and Collapse

While Egyptian civilization flourished in the Nile Valley, various groups
migrated throughout the Fertile Crescent and then accommodated
themselves to local cultures (Map 2.2). Some settled in the Nile Delta,
including a group the Egyptians called Hyksos. Although they were later
portrayed as a conquering horde, the Hyksos were actually migrants looking
for good land, and their entry into the delta, which began around 1800
B.C.E., was probably gradual and generally peaceful. The newcomers began
to worship Egyptian deities and modeled their political structures on those
of the Egyptians.
 MAP 2.2 Empires and Migrations in the Eastern Mediterranean
The rise and fall of empires in the eastern Mediterranean were shaped by internal
developments, military conflicts, and the migration of peoples to new areas.

The Hyksos brought with them methods of making bronze that had
become common in the eastern Mediterranean by about 2500 B.C.E. (see
“Trade and Cross-Cultural Connections” in Chapter 1) and techniques for
casting it into weapons that became standard in Egypt. They thereby
brought Egypt fully into the Bronze Age culture of the Mediterranean
world. The Hyksos also introduced horse-drawn chariots and the composite
bow, made of multiple materials for greater strength, which along with
bronze weaponry revolutionized Egyptian warfare. The migration of the
Hyksos, combined with a series of famines and internal struggles for power,
led Egypt to fragment politically in what later came to be known as the
Second Intermediate Period.
In about 1570 B.C.E. a new dynasty of pharaohs arose, pushing the
Hyksos out of the delta and conquering territory to the south and northeast.
These warrior-pharaohs inaugurated what scholars refer to as the New
Kingdom, a period characterized not only by enormous wealth and
conscious imperialism but also by a greater sense of insecurity because of
new contacts and military engagements. By expanding Egyptian power
beyond the Nile Valley, the pharaohs created the first Egyptian empire, and
they celebrated their triumphs with giant statues and rich tombs on a scale
unparalleled since the pyramids of the Old Kingdom.
The New Kingdom pharaohs include a number of remarkable figures.
Among these was Hatshepsut (haht-SHEP-soot) (r. ca. 1479–ca. 1458
B.C.E.), one of the few female pharaohs in Egypt’s long history. Amenhotep
III (ah-men-HOE-tep) (r. ca. 1388–ca. 1350 B.C.E.) corresponded with other
powerful kings in Babylonia and other kingdoms in the Fertile Crescent.
Amenhotep III was succeeded by his son, who took the name Akhenaton
(ah-keh-NAH-tuhn) (r. 1351–1334 B.C.E.). He renamed himself as a mark of
his changing religious ideas, choosing to worship a new sun-god, Aton,
instead of the traditional Amon or Ra. Akhenaton’s wife Nefertiti (nehf-uhr-
TEE-tee) supported his religious ideas, but this new religion, imposed from
above, failed to find a place among the people, and after his death
traditional religious practices returned.
One of the key challenges facing the pharaohs after Akhenaton was the
expansion of the kingdom of the Hittites. At about the same time that the
Sumerians were establishing city-states, speakers of Indo-European
languages migrated into Anatolia, modern-day Turkey. Indo-European is a
large family of languages that includes English, most of the languages of
modern Europe, ancient Greek, Latin, Persian, Hindi, Bengali, and Sanskrit
(for more on Sanskrit, see “The Aryans During the Vedic Age, ca. 1500–500
B.C.E.” in Chapter 3). It also includes Hittite, the language of one of the
peoples who migrated into this area. Information about the Hittites comes
from archaeological sources and also from written cuneiform tablets that
provide details about politics and economic life. These records indicate that
beginning about 1600 B.C.E. Hittite kings began to conquer more territory
(see Map 2.2). As the Hittites expanded southward, they came into conflict
with the Egyptians, who were establishing their own larger empire. There
were a number of battles, but both sides seem to have recognized the
impossibility of defeating the other, and in 1258 B.C.E. the Egyptian king
Ramesses II (r. ca. 1290–1224 B.C.E.) and the Hittite king Hattusili III (hah-
too-SEE-lee) (r. ca. 1267–1237 B.C.E.) concluded a peace treaty.
The treaty brought peace between the Egyptians and the Hittites for a
time, but this stability did not last. Within several decades of the treaty,
groups of seafaring peoples whom the Egyptians called “Sea Peoples”
raided, migrated, and marauded in the eastern Mediterranean, disrupting
trade and in some cases looting and destroying cities. These raids,
combined with the expansion of the Assyrians (see “Assyria, the Military
Monarchy”), led to the collapse of the Hittite Empire and the fragmentation
of the Egyptian empire. There is evidence of drought, and some scholars
have suggested that a major volcanic explosion in Iceland cooled the
climate for several years, leading to a series of poor harvests. All of these
developments are part of a general “Bronze Age Collapse” in the period
around 1200 B.C.E. that historians see as a major turning point.
The political and military story of battles, waves of migrations, and the
rise and fall of empires can mask striking continuities in the history of
Egypt and its neighbors. Disrupted peoples and newcomers shared practical
concepts of agriculture and metallurgy with one another, and wheeled
vehicles allowed merchants to transact business over long distances.
Merchants, migrants, and conquerors carried their gods and goddesses with
them, and religious beliefs and practices blended and changed. Cuneiform
tablets, wall inscriptions, and paintings testify to commercial exchanges and
cultural accommodation, adoption, and adaptation, as well as war and
conquest.

Iron and the Emergence of New States

The Bronze Age Collapse was a time of massive political and economic
disruption, but it was also a period of the spread of new technologies,
especially iron. Iron is the most common element in the earth, but most iron
on or near the earth’s surface occurs in the form of ore, which must be
smelted at high temperatures to extract the metal. This process was invented
independently during the second millennium B.C.E. in several parts of the
world, including Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), Nigeria, and most likely
southern India. Early iron was too brittle to be of much use, but ironworkers
continued to experiment and improve their products, and iron weapons
gradually became stronger and cheaper than their bronze counterparts.
Thus, in the schema of dividing history into periods according to the main
material out of which tools are made (see “Understanding the Early Human
Past” in Chapter 1), the Iron Age began in about 1100 B.C.E. Iron weapons
became important items of trade around the Mediterranean and throughout
the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, and the technology for making them
traveled as well.
The decline of Egypt allowed new powers to emerge. South of Egypt
along the Nile was a region called Nubia, which as early as 2000 B.C.E.
served as a conduit of trade through which a variety of products flowed
north from sub-Saharan Africa. As Egypt expanded during the New
Kingdom, it took over northern Nubia, incorporating it into the growing
Egyptian empire. The Nubians adopted many features of Egyptian culture,
including Egyptian gods, the use of hieroglyphs, and the building of
pyramids. Many Nubians became officials in the Egyptian bureaucracy and
officers in the army, and there was significant intermarriage between the
two groups.
 Nubian Cylinder Sheath
This small silver sheath
made about 520 B.C.E.,
perhaps for holding rolled
papyrus, shows a winged
goddess on one side and
the Egyptian god Amon-
Ra (not visible in this
photograph) on the other.
It and others like it were
found in the tombs of the
king of Kush and suggest
ways that Egyptian
artistic styles and
religious ideas influenced
cultures farther up the
Nile.

With the contraction of the Egyptian empire, an independent kingdom,

Kush, rose to power in Nubia, with its capital at Napata in what is now
Sudan. The Kushites conquered southern Egypt, and in 727 B.C.E. the
Kushite king Piye (PIGH) (r. ca. 747–716 B.C.E.) swept through the entire
Nile Valley to the delta in the north. United once again, Egypt enjoyed a
brief period of peace during which the Egyptian culture continued to
influence that of its conquerors. In the seventh century B.C.E. invading
Assyrians pushed the Kushites out of Egypt, and the Kushite rulers moved
their capital farther up the Nile to Meroë (MER-oh-ee), where they built
hundreds of pyramids. Meroë became a center of iron production, exporting
iron goods to much of Africa and across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean
to India. Gold and cotton textiles also provided wealth to the Kushite
kingdom, which in the third century B.C.E. developed its own alphabet.
While Kush expanded in the southern Nile Valley, another group rose to
prominence along the Mediterranean coast of modern Lebanon. These
people established the prosperous commercial centers of Tyre (TIRE),
Sidon, and Byblos. They were master shipbuilders, and from about 1100
B.C.E. to 700 B.C.E. many of the residents of these cities became the seaborne
merchants of the Mediterranean. Their most valued products were purple
and blue textiles, from which originated their Greek name, Phoenicians
(fih-NEE-shuhns), meaning “Purple People.” They also worked bronze and
iron, which they shipped processed or as ore, and made and traded glass
products, gold, ivory, and other types of rare goods. Phoenician ships often
carried hundreds of jars of wine, and the Phoenicians introduced grape
growing to new regions around the Mediterranean, dramatically increasing
the amount of wine available for consumption and trade.
The variety and quality of the Phoenicians’ trade goods generally made
them welcome visitors. They established colonies and trading posts
throughout the Mediterranean and as far west as the Atlantic coast of
modern-day Portugal. The Phoenicians’ voyages brought them into contact
with the Greeks, to whom they introduced many aspects of the older and
more urbanized cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
The Phoenicians’ overwhelming cultural achievement was the spread of
a completely phonetic system of writing — that is, an alphabet (Figure 2.2).
Writers of cuneiform and hieroglyphics had developed signs that were used
to represent sounds, but these were always used with a much larger number
of ideograms. Sometime around 1800 B.C.E. workers in the Sinai Peninsula,
which was under Egyptian control, began to use only phonetic signs to
write, with each sign designating one sound. This system vastly simplified
writing and reading and spread among common people as a practical means
of record keeping and communication. Egyptian scribes and officials
continued to use hieroglyphics, but the Phoenicians adapted the simpler
system for their own language and spread it around the Mediterranean. The
Greeks modified this alphabet for their own language, and the Romans later
based their alphabet — the script we use to write English today — on
Greek. Alphabets based on the Phoenician alphabet were also created in the
Persian Empire and formed the basis of Hebrew, Arabic, and various
alphabets of South and Central Asia.
FIGURE 2.2 Origins of the Alphabet
List of hieroglyphic, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Greek, and
Roman sign forms.
The Hebrews
How did the Hebrews create an enduring written religious tradition?

The legacy of another people who took advantage of Egypt’s collapse to

found an independent state may have been even more far-reaching than that
of the Phoenicians. For a period of several centuries, the Hebrews
controlled first one and then two small states on the western end of the
Fertile Crescent. The Hebrews created a new form of religious belief, a
monotheism based on the worship of an all-powerful god they called
Yahweh (YAH-way). Beginning in the late seventh century B.C.E. the
Hebrews began to write down their religious ideas, traditions, laws, advice
literature, prayers, hymns, history, and prophecies in a series of books.
These were gathered together centuries later to form the Hebrew Bible,
which Christians later adopted and termed the “Old Testament” to parallel
specific Christian writings in the “New Testament.” The Hebrew Bible later
became the core of the Hebrews’ religion, Judaism, named after Judah, the
southern of the two Hebrew kingdoms. Jews today revere these texts, as do
many Christians, and Muslims respect them, all of which gives them
particular importance.

The Hebrew State

The Hebrews were nomadic pastoralists who may have migrated into the
Nile Delta from the east seeking good land for their herds of sheep and
goats. According to the Hebrew Bible, they were enslaved by the Egyptians
but were led out of Egypt by a charismatic leader named Moses. The
Hebrews settled in the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River
known as Canaan and were organized into tribes, each tribe consisting of
numerous families who thought of themselves as related to one another.
They slowly adopted agriculture and, not surprisingly, at times worshipped
the agricultural gods of their neighbors. In this they followed the common
historical pattern of newcomers by adapting the culture of an older, well-
established people.
The Bible reports that the greatest danger to the Hebrews came from a
group known as the Philistines (FIH-luh-steenz), who migrated to and
established a kingdom in Canaan. The Hebrews found a leader in Saul, who
with his men fought the Philistines. Saul subsequently established a
monarchy over the Hebrew tribes, an event conventionally dated to about
1025 B.C.E. Saul’s work was carried on by David of Bethlehem, who
captured the city of Jerusalem, which he made the religious and political
center of the realm. David’s son Solomon (r. ca. 965–925 B.C.E.) launched a
building program that the biblical narrative describes as including cities,
palaces, fortresses, and roads. The most symbolic of these projects was the
Temple of Jerusalem. The Temple of Jerusalem was intended to be the
religious heart of the kingdom, a symbol of Hebrew unity and of Yahweh’s
approval of the Hebrew state.
This state did not last long. At Solomon’s death his kingdom broke into
political halves. The northern part became Israel, with its capital at Samaria,
and the southern half was Judah, with Jerusalem remaining its center. War
broke out between the northern and southern halves, and the Assyrians
wiped out the northern kingdom in 722 B.C.E. Judah survived numerous
invasions until the Babylonians crushed it in 587 B.C.E. The survivors were
sent into exile in Babylonia, a period commonly known as the Babylonian
Captivity. In 538 B.C.E. the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered the
Babylonians and permitted some forty thousand exiles to return to
Jerusalem (see “The Rise and Expansion of the Persian Empire”). They
rebuilt the temple, although politically the area was simply part of the
Persian Empire.

The Jewish Religion

During and especially after the Babylonian Captivity, the most important
Hebrew texts of history, law, and ethics were edited and brought together in
the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Fundamental to an
understanding of the Jewish religion is the concept of the Covenant, an
agreement that people believed to exist between themselves and Yahweh.
According to the Bible, Yahweh appeared to the tribal leader Abraham,
promising him that he would be blessed, as would his descendants, if they
followed Yahweh. (Because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all regard this
event as foundational, they are referred to as the “Abrahamic religions.”)
Yahweh next appeared to Moses when he was leading the Hebrews out of
Egypt, and Yahweh made a covenant with the Hebrews: if they worshipped
Yahweh as their only god, he would consider them his chosen people and
protect them from their enemies. Individuals such as Abraham and Moses
who acted as intermediaries between Yahweh and the Hebrew people were
known as “prophets.” Much of the Hebrew Bible consists of writings in the
prophets’ voices, understood as messages from Yahweh to the Hebrews.
Worship was embodied in a series of rules of behavior, the Ten
Commandments, which Yahweh gave to Moses; these required certain kinds
of religious observances and forbade the Hebrews to steal, kill, lie, or
commit adultery, thus creating a system of ethical absolutes. From the Ten
Commandments a complex system of rules of conduct was created and later
written down as Hebrew law. The later prophets such as Isaiah created a
system of ethical monotheism, in which goodness was understood to come
from a single transcendent god whom the Hebrews were to worship, and in
which religious obligations included fair and just behavior toward other
people as well as rituals.
Like Mesopotamian deities, Yahweh punished people, but the Hebrews
also believed he would protect them all, not simply kings and powerful
priests, and make them prosper if they obeyed his commandments. The
religion of the Hebrews was thus addressed to not only the elites but also
the individual. Because kings or other political leaders were not essential to
its practice, the rise or fall of a kingdom was not crucial to the religion’s
continued existence. Religious leaders were important in Judaism, but
personally following the instructions of Yahweh was the central task for
observant Jews in the ancient world.

Hebrew Society
The Hebrews were originally nomadic, but they adopted settled agriculture
in Canaan, and some lived in cities. Over time, communal use of land gave
way to family or private ownership, and devotions to the traditions of
Judaism replaced tribal identity.
Family relationships reflected evolving circumstances. Marriage and the
family were fundamentally important in Jewish life. Celibacy was frowned
upon, and almost all major Jewish thinkers and priests were married. As in
Mesopotamia and Egypt, marriage was a family matter, too important to be
left solely to the whims of young people. The bearing of children was seen
in some ways as a religious function. Sons were especially desired because
they maintained the family bloodline while keeping ancestral property in
the family. A firstborn son became the head of the household upon his
father’s death. Mothers oversaw the early education of the children, but as
boys grew older, their fathers provided more of their education.
The development of urban life among Jews created new economic
opportunities, especially in crafts and trade. People specialized in certain
occupations, and, as in most ancient societies, these crafts were family
trades.
The Assyrians and the Persians
How did the Assyrians and the Persians consolidate their power and control the
subjects of their empires?

Small kingdoms like those of the Phoenicians and the Jews could exist only
in the absence of a major power. In the ninth century B.C.E. one major power
arose in the form of the Assyrians, who starting in northern Mesopotamia
created an empire through often-brutal military conquests. And from a base
in what is now southern Iran, the Persians established an even larger
empire, developing effective institutions of government.

Assyria, the Military Monarchy

Starting from a base in northern Mesopotamia around 900 B.C.E., the
Assyrians began a campaign of expansion and domination, conquering,
exacting tribute, and building new fortified towns, palaces, and temples. By
means of almost constant warfare, the Assyrians created an empire that
stretched from their capital of Nineveh on the Tigris River to central Egypt.
Revolt against the Assyrians inevitably promised the rebels bloody battles
and cruel sieges followed by surrender, accompanied by systematic torture
and slaughter, and sometimes deportations.
Assyrian methods were certainly harsh, but in practical terms Assyria’s
success was due primarily to the size of its army and to the army’s
sophisticated and effective military organization. In addition, the Assyrians
developed a wide variety of siege machinery and techniques, including
excavations to undermine city walls and battering rams to knock down
walls and gates. Never before in this area had anyone applied such technical
knowledge to warfare. The Assyrians also knew how to coordinate their
efforts, both in open battle and in siege warfare. Not only did the Assyrians
know how to win battles, but they also knew how to take advantage of their
victories. As early as the eighth century B.C.E., the Assyrian kings began to
organize their conquered territories into an empire. The lands closest to
Assyria became provinces governed directly by Assyrian officials.
Kingdoms beyond the provinces were not annexed but became dependent
states.
 Assyrian Warriors Attack a City In this Assyrian carving from a royal throne room made
about 865 B.C.E., warriors cross a river on inflated skins, which both support them and
provide air for breathing underwater. Such innovative techniques, combined with a large
army and effective military organization, allowed the Assyrians to establish a large empire.

By the seventh century B.C.E. Assyrian power seemed firmly established.

Yet the downfall of Assyria was swift and complete. Babylon won its
independence in 626 B.C.E. and joined forces with a new group, the Medes,
an Indo-European-speaking people from Persia. Together the Babylonians
and the Medes destroyed the Assyrian Empire in 612 B.C.E., paving the way
for the rise of the Persians.

The Rise and Expansion of the Persian Empire

As we have seen, Assyria rose to power from a base in the Tigris and
Euphrates River Valleys of Mesopotamia, which had seen many earlier
empires. The Assyrians were defeated by a coalition that included not only
a Mesopotamian power — Babylon — but also a people with a base of
power in a part of the world that had not been the site of earlier urbanized
states: Persia (modern-day Iran) (Map 2.3).
 MAP 2.3 The Assyrian and Persian Empires, ca. 1000–500 B.C.E.
The Assyrian Empire at its height around 650 B.C.E. included almost all of the old centers
of power in the ancient Near East. By 500 B.C.E., however, the Persian Empire was far
larger, extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indus River.

Iran’s geographical position and topography explain its traditional role

as the highway between western and eastern Asia. Nomadic peoples
migrating south from the broad steppes of Russia and Central Asia have
streamed into Iran throughout much of history. (For an in-depth discussion
of these groups, see Chapter 12.) Confronting the uncrossable salt deserts,
most have turned either westward or eastward, moving on until they
reached the advanced and wealthy urban centers of Mesopotamia and India.
Cities did emerge along these routes, however, and Iran became the area
where nomads met urban dwellers.
 Among these nomads were Indo-European-speaking peoples who
migrated into this area about 1000 B.C.E. with their flocks and herds. They
were also horse breeders, and the horse gave them a decisive military
advantage over those who already lived in the area. One of these groups
was the Medes, who settled in northern Iran. With the rise of the Medes, the
balance of power in western Asia shifted east of Mesopotamia for the first
time.
In 550 B.C.E. Cyrus the Great (r. 559–530 B.C.E.), king of the Persians
(another Indo-European-speaking group) and one of the most remarkable
statesmen of antiquity, conquered the Medes. Cyrus then set out to win
control of the shore of the Mediterranean and thus of the terminal ports of
the great trade routes that crossed Iran and Anatolia and to secure eastern
Iran from the threats of nomadic invasions. In a series of major campaigns
Cyrus achieved both goals, thereby consolidating the Persian Empire,
though he ultimately died on the battlefield in eastern Iran.
After his victories, Cyrus made sure the Persians were portrayed as
liberators, and in some cases he was more benevolent than most conquerors.
According to his own account, he freed all the captive peoples, including
the Hebrews, who were living in forced exile in Babylon. He returned the
Hebrews’ sacred objects to them and allowed those who wanted to do so to
return to Jerusalem, where he paid for the rebuilding of their temple.
Cyrus’s successors continued the Persian conquests, creating the largest
empire the world had yet seen. Darius (r. 521–486 B.C.E.) conquered Scythia
in Central Asia, along with much of Thrace and Macedonia, areas north of
the Aegean Sea (see Map 2.3). Darius began to call himself “King of
Kings.” Invasions of Greece by Darius and his son Xerxes were
unsuccessful, but the Persian Empire lasted another two hundred years,
until it became part of the empire of Alexander the Great (see “From Polis
to Monarchy, 404–200 B.C.E.” in Chapter 5).
The Persians also knew how to preserve the peace they had won on the
battlefield. To govern the empire, they created an efficient administrative
system based in their newly built capital city of Persepolis. Under Darius,
they divided the empire into districts and appointed either Persian or local
nobles as administrators called satraps to head each one. The satrap
controlled local government, collected taxes, heard legal cases, and
maintained order. He was assisted by a council and also by officials and
army leaders sent from Persepolis who made sure that he knew the will of
the king and that the king knew what was going on in the provinces. The
Persians allowed the peoples they conquered to maintain their own customs
and beliefs as long as they paid the proper amount of taxes and did not
rebel, thus creating a culture that blended older and newer religious
traditions and ways of seeing the world. Because Persian art depicted both
Persians and non-Persians realistically, it is an excellent source of
information about the weapons, tools, clothing, and even hairstyles of many
peoples of the area.
Communication and trade were eased by a sophisticated system of roads
linking the empire from the coast of Asia Minor to the valley of the Indus
River. These roads meant that the king was usually in close touch with
officials and subjects, and they simplified the defense of the empire by
making it easier to move Persian armies. The roads also aided the flow of
trade, which Persian rulers further encouraged by building canals, including
one that linked the Red Sea and the Nile.

The Religion of Zoroaster

Persian religion was originally polytheistic and tied to nature, with
Ahuramazda (ah-HOOR-uh-MAZ-duh) as the chief god. Around 600 B.C.E.
the ideas of Zoroaster (zoh-roh-ASS-tuhr), a thinker and preacher whose
dates are uncertain, began to gain prominence. Zoroaster is regarded as the
author of key religious texts, which were later gathered together in a
collection of sacred texts called the Avesta. He introduced new spiritual
concepts, stressing devotion to Ahuramazda alone and emphasizing the
individual’s responsibility to choose between the forces of creation, truth,
and order and those of nothingness, chaos, falsehood, and disorder.
Zoroaster taught that people possessed free will and that they must rely on
their own consciences to guide them through an active life in which they
focused on “good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.” Their decisions
were crucial, he warned, for there would come a time of reckoning. At the
end of time, the forces of order would win, and the victorious Ahuramazda,
like the Egyptian god Osiris, would preside over a last judgment to
determine each person’s eternal fate.
Zoroaster’s writings were communicated by teachers, and King Darius
began to use Zoroastrian language and images. Under the protection of the
Persian kings, Zoroastrian ideas spread throughout Iran and the rest of the
Persian Empire, and then into central China. Zoroastrianism survived the
fall of the Persian Empire to influence Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism,
largely because of its belief in a just life on earth and a happy afterlife.
Good behavior in the world, even though unrecognized at the time, would
receive ample reward in the hereafter. Evil, no matter how powerful a
person had been in life, would be punished after death. In some form or
another, Zoroastrian concepts still pervade many modern religions, and
Zoroastrianism still exists as a religion.
Chapter Summary
Beginning about 5,000 years ago, people in some parts of the world
invented writing, in large part to meet the needs of the state. States first
developed in the southern part of Mesopotamia known as Sumer, where
priests and rulers invented ways to control and organize people who lived in
cities reliant on irrigation. Conquerors from the north unified
Mesopotamian city-states into larger empires and spread Mesopotamian
culture over a large area.
During the third millennium B.C.E. Egypt grew into a cohesive state
under a single ruler. For long stretches of history, Egypt was prosperous and
secure in the Nile Valley, although at times various groups migrated into or
invaded and conquered this kingdom. During the period known as the New
Kingdom, warrior-kings created a large Egyptian empire. After the collapse
of the New Kingdom, the Nubian rulers of Kush conquered Egypt, and
another group, the Phoenicians, came to dominate trade in the
Mediterranean, spreading a letter alphabet. Another group, the Hebrews,
created a new form of religious belief based on the worship of a single all-
powerful god.
In the ninth century B.C.E. the Assyrians used a huge army and
sophisticated military tactics to create an empire from a base in northern
Mesopotamia. The Persians established an even larger empire, developing
effective institutions of government and building roads. The Persians
generally allowed their subjects to continue their own customs, traditions,
and religions. Around 600 B.C.E. a new religion grew in Persia based on the
teachings of the prophet Zoroaster.

CONNECTIONS

“History is written by the victors” goes a common saying often incorrectly

attributed to British prime minister Winston Churchill, who led Britain
during World War II. This is not always true; people who have been
vanquished in wars or devastated by oppression have certainly made their
stories known. But in other ways it is always true, for writing created
records and therefore was the origin of what many people understand as
history. Writing was invented to serve the needs of people who lived close
to one another in cities and states, and almost everyone who could write
lived in states. Because most written history, including this book,
concentrates on areas with states and complex societies, the next two
chapters examine the societies that were developing in India and China
during the period discussed in this chapter. In Chapter 5 we pick up on
developments in the Mediterranean that link to those in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, and Persia discussed in this chapter.
It is important to remember that, as was the spread of agriculture, the
growth of the state was a slow process. States became the most powerful
and most densely populated forms of human society, and today almost
everyone on the planet is at least hypothetically a citizen of a state or, as we
now call them, nation (or sometimes of more than one, if he or she has dual
citizenship). Just three hundred years ago, however, only about a third of
the world was governed by states; in the rest of the world, people lived in
bands of foragers, villages led by kin leaders, family groups of pastoralists,
chiefdoms, confederations of tribes, or other forms of social organization.
In 500 B.C.E. perhaps only a little over 5 percent of the world’s population
lived in states.
The first inquiries into the past in the West were written at just about
this time, by the Greek writer Herodotus (heh-ROD-duh-tuhs) (ca. 484–ca.
425 B.C.E.), who used the word historia to describe them, from which we get
the word history. In his histories, Herodotus pays primary attention to the
Persians and the Greeks, both of whom had writing and states, but he also
discusses many peoples who had neither. In their attempts to provide a
balanced account of all the world’s peoples, not just those who lived in
places where writing developed, historians today are also looking beyond
written sources. Those sources invariably present only part of the story, as
Winston Churchill — a historian as well as a political leader — noted in
something he actually did say: “History will bear me out, particularly as I
shall write that history myself.”
Chapter 2 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

polytheism (p. 31)

cuneiform (p. 33)
epic poem (p. 33)
Hammurabi’s law code (p. 35)
pharaoh (p. 36)
Indo-European languages (p. 40)
Iron Age (p. 41)
Phoenicians (p. 42)
Yahweh (p. 43)
Zoroastrianism (p. 49)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. How does writing shape what we can know about the past, and how did writing
develop to meet the needs of cities and states? (p. 28)
2. How did the peoples of Mesopotamia form states and develop new technologies
and institutions? (p. 30)
3. How did the Egyptians create a prosperous and long-lasting society? (p. 36)
4. How did the Hebrews create an enduring written religious tradition? (p. 43)
5. How did the Assyrians and the Persians consolidate their power and control the
subjects of their empires? (p. 45)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. Thinking about continuities, as well as change, what aspects of life in the Neolithic
period continued with little change in the states of Mesopotamia and Egypt? What
were the most important differences?
2. Most peoples in the ancient world gained influence over others and became
significant in history through military conquest and the establishment of states and
empires. By contrast, how did the Phoenicians and the Hebrews shape the
development of world history? What does this suggest about the importance of
cultural as well as political developments in world history?
3. How were the empires that developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia similar
to one another? Which of the characteristics you have identified as a similarity do
you predict will also be found in later empires, and why?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 3800 B.C.E. • Establishment of first cities in Sumer

ca. 3200 B.C.E. • Earliest surviving cuneiform writing
ca. 2800–1800 B.C.E. • Harappan civilization in India (Ch. 3)
ca. 2660–2180 B.C.E. • Old Kingdom in Egypt
ca. 2500 B.C.E. • Bronze weaponry becomes common in Mesopotamia
ca. 2500 B.C.E. • First cities in Peru (Ch. 11)
ca. 2300 B.C.E. • Establishment of Akkadian empire
1792–1750 B.C.E. • Hammurabi rules Babylon
ca. 1600 B.C.E. • Hittites begin to expand their empire
ca. 1570–1070 B.C.E. • New Kingdom in Egypt
ca. 1500–1050 B.C.E. • Shang Dynasty in China (Ch. 4)
ca. 1500–300 B.C.E. • Olmec civilization in Mexico (Ch. 11)
ca. 1200 B.C.E. • Bronze Age Collapse; destruction and drought
ca. 1100 B.C.E. • Beginning of the Iron Age; Phoenicians begin to trade in
the Mediterranean
ca. 965–925 B.C.E. • Hebrew kingdom ruled by Solomon
ca. 900–612 B.C.E. • Assyrian Empire
800–500 B.C.E. • Rise of Sparta and Athens in Greece (Ch. 5)
722 B.C.E. • Kingdom of Israel destroyed by the Assyrians
587 B.C.E. • Kingdom of Judah destroyed by the Babylonians
550 B.C.E. • Cyrus the Great consolidates the Persian Empire
3
The Foundation of Indian Society

to 300 C.E.
Chapter Preview

The Land and Its First Settlers, ca. 3000–1500 B.C.E.

• What does archaeology tell us about the Harappan civilization in India?

The Aryans During the Vedic Age, ca. 1500–500 B.C.E.

• What kind of society and culture did the Indo-European Aryans create?

India’s Great Religions

• What ideas and practices were taught by the founders of Jainism, Buddhism,
and Hinduism?

Western Contact and the Mauryan Unification of North India, ca. 513–185
B.C.E.
• What was the result of Indian contact with the Persians and Greeks, and what
were the consequences of unification under the Mauryan Empire?

Small States and Trading Networks, 185 B.C.E.–300 C.E.

• How was India shaped by political disunity and contacts with other cultures
during the five centuries from 185 B.C.E. to 300 C.E.?

DURING THE CENTURIES WHEN THE PEOPLES OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA and

Egypt were developing urban civilizations, people in India were wrestling with the same
challenges — food production, building of cities, political administration, and questions
about human life and the cosmos. Like the civilizations of the Nile River Valley and
southwestern Asia, the earliest Indian civilization centered on a great river, the Indus. From
about 2800 B.C.E. to 1800 B.C.E., the Harappan culture thrived and expanded over a huge
area.
A very different Indian society emerged after the decline of this civilization. It was
dominated by the Aryans, warriors who spoke an early version of Sanskrit. The Indian caste
system and the Hindu religion, key features of Indian society that continued into modern
times, had their origins in early Aryan society. By the middle of the first millennium B.C.E.,
the Aryans had set up numerous small kingdoms throughout north India. This was the great
age of Indian religious creativity, when Buddhism and Jainism were founded and the early
Brahmanic religion of the Aryans developed into Hinduism.
The first major Indian empire, the Mauryan Dynasty, emerged in the wake of the Greek
invasion of north India in 326 B.C.E. This dynasty reached its peak under King Ashoka, who
actively promoted Buddhism both within his realm and beyond it. Not long after his reign,
however, the empire broke up, and for several centuries India was politically divided.
Although India never had a single language and only periodically had a centralized
government, cultural elements dating back to the ancient period — the core ideas of
Brahmanism, the caste system, and the early epics — spread through trade and other
contact, even when the subcontinent was divided into competing kingdoms.
The Land and Its First Settlers, ca. 3000–
1500 B.C.E.
What does archaeology tell us about the Harappan civilization in India?

The subcontinent of India, a landmass as large as western Europe, juts

southward into the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Today this region is
divided into the separate countries of Pakistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh,
and Sri Lanka, but these divisions are recent, and for this discussion of
premodern history, the entire subcontinent will be called India.
In India, as elsewhere, the possibilities for both agriculture and
communication have always been shaped by geography. Most areas in India
are warm all year, with average temperatures ranging from 79°F in the
north to 85°F in the south. Monsoon rains sweep northward from the Indian
Ocean each summer. The lower reaches of the Himalaya Mountains in the
northeast are covered by dense forests. Immediately to the south are the
fertile valleys of the Indus and Ganges Rivers. These lowland plains, which
stretch all the way across the subcontinent, were tamed for agriculture over
time, and India’s great empires were centered there. To their west are the
deserts of Rajasthan and southeastern Pakistan, historically important in
part because their flat terrain enabled invaders to sweep into India from the
northwest. South of the great river valleys rise the jungle-clad Vindhya
Mountains and the dry, hilly Deccan Plateau. Only along the western coast
of this part of India do the hills give way to narrow plains where crop
agriculture flourished (see Map 3.2). India’s long coastlines and predictable
winds fostered maritime trade with other countries bordering the Indian
Ocean.
Agriculture was well established in India by about 7000 B.C.E. Wheat
and barley were the early crops, probably having spread in their
domesticated form from what is today the Middle East. Farmers also
domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats and learned to make pottery.
The story of the first civilization in India is one of the most dramatic in
the ancient world. From the Bible, people knew about ancient Egypt and
Sumer for centuries, but it was not until 1921 that archaeologists found
astonishing evidence of a thriving and sophisticated Bronze Age urban
culture dating to about 2500 B.C.E. at Mohenjo-daro in what is now Pakistan.
Since 1921 thousands of additional sites of this Harappan (huh-RAH-
puhn) civilization have been found in both India and Pakistan.
Harappan civilization extended over a vast area and evolved over a
period of nearly a millennium (Map 3.1). It extended over nearly five
hundred thousand square miles in the Indus Valley, making it more than
twice as large as ancient Egypt or Sumer. Yet Harappan civilization was
marked by striking uniformity in the layout and construction of towns.
Figurines of pregnant women have been found throughout the area,
suggesting common religious ideas and practices. It was a literate
civilization, like those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but its script has not yet
been deciphered.
 MAP 3.1 Harappan Civilization, ca. 2500 B.C.E.
The earliest civilization in India developed in the
Indus River Valley in the west of the subcontinent.

Like Mesopotamian cities, Harappan cities were centers for crafts and
trade and were surrounded by extensive farmland. Craftsmen produced
ceramics decorated with geometric designs. The Harappans were the
earliest known manufacturers of cotton cloth, and this cloth was so
abundant that goods were wrapped in it for shipment. Trade was extensive.
As early as the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the third millennium B.C.E. (see
“Empires in Mesopotamia” in Chapter 2), trade between India and
Mesopotamia carried goods and ideas between the two cultures, probably
by way of the Persian Gulf. The Harappan port of Lothal had a stone dock
700 feet long, next to which were massive granaries and bead-making
factories.
 The cities of Mohenjo-daro in southern Pakistan, and Harappa, some
400 miles to the north, were huge for this period, more than 3 miles in
circumference, with populations estimated at 35,000 to 40,000. Both were
defended by great citadels that towered 40 to 50 feet above the surrounding
plain. The cities, with their straight streets, had obviously been planned and
built before being settled — they were not the outcomes of villages that
grew and sprawled haphazardly. The houses were substantial, many two
stories tall, some perhaps three. The focal point of a house was a central
courtyard onto which the rooms opened.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the elaborate planning of these
cities was their complex system of drainage. Each house had a bathroom
with a drain connected to brick-lined sewers located under the major streets.
Openings allowed the refuse to be collected, probably to be used as
fertilizer on nearby fields. No other ancient city had such an advanced
sanitation system.
Both Mohenjo-daro and Harappa also contained numerous large
structures, which archaeologists think were public buildings. One of the
most important was the large ventilated storehouse for the community’s
grain. Mohenjo-daro also had a marketplace or place of assembly, a palace,
and a huge pool some 39 feet long by 23 feet wide by 8 feet deep, thought
by some to have been used for ritual purification. In contrast to ancient
Egypt and Mesopotamia, no great tombs have been discovered in Harappa,
making it more difficult to envision the life of the elite.
The prosperity of the Indus civilization depended on constant and
intensive cultivation of the rich river valley. Although rainfall seems to have
been greater than in recent times, the Indus, like the Nile, flowed through a
relatively dry region made fertile by annual floods and irrigation. And as in
Egypt, agriculture was aided by a long, hot growing season and near-
constant sunshine.
Because no one has yet deciphered the written language of the
Harappan people, their political, intellectual, and religious life is largely
unknown. There clearly was a political structure with the authority to
organize city planning and facilitate trade, but we do not even know
whether there were hereditary kings.
Soon after 2000 B.C.E., the Harappan civilization mysteriously declined,
with people leaving the cities to live in rural villages. The decline cannot be
attributed to the arrival of powerful invaders, as was once thought. Rather it
was internally generated. Some scholars suspect an environmental crisis,
perhaps a severe drought, an earthquake that led to a shift in the course of
the river, or a buildup of salt and alkaline in the soil until they reached
levels toxic to plants. Others speculate that long-distance commerce
collapsed, leading to an economic depression. Yet others theorize that the
population fell prey to diseases, such as malaria, that caused people to flee
the cities.
After the Harappan cities were abandoned, for the next thousand years
India had no large cities, no kiln-fired bricks, and no written language.
The Aryans During the Vedic Age, ca. 1500–
500 B.C.E.
What kind of society and culture did the Indo-European Aryans create?

After the decline of the Harappan civilization, a people who called

themselves Aryans became dominant in north India. They were speakers of
an early form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language closely related to
ancient Persian and more distantly related to Latin, Greek, Celtic, and their
modern descendants, such as English. For example, the Sanskrit nava,
“ship,” is related to the English word naval; deva, “god,” to divine; and
raja, “ruler,” to regal. The word Aryan itself comes from Arya, “noble” or
“pure” in Sanskrit, and has the same linguistic root as Iran and Ireland. The
Aryans flourished during the Vedic Age (ca. 1500–500 B.C.E.). Named for
the Vedas, a large and significant body of ancient sacred works written in
Sanskrit, this period witnessed the Indo-Aryan development of the caste
system and the Brahmanic religion and the writing of the great epics that
represent the earliest form of Indian literature.

Aryan Dominance in North India

Until relatively recently, the dominant theory was that the Aryans came into
India from outside, perhaps as part of the same movements of people
whereby the Hittites occupied parts of Anatolia, the Achaeans entered
Greece, and the Kassites conquered Sumer — all in the period from about
1900 B.C.E. to 1750 B.C.E. Some scholars, however, have proposed that the
Indo-European languages spread to this area much earlier; to them it seems
possible that the Harappan people were speakers of an early Indo-European
language. If that was the case, the Aryans would be one of the groups
descended from this early population.
Modern politics complicates analysis of the appearance of the Aryans
and their role in India’s history. Europeans in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries developed the concept of Indo-European languages, and they did
so in an age both highly conscious of race and in the habit of identifying
races with languages. The racist potential of the concept was exploited by
the Nazis, who glorified the Aryans as a superior race. Even in less
politicized contexts, the notion of a group of people who entered India from
outside and made themselves its rulers is troubling to many. Does it mean
that the non-Aryans are the true Indians? Does it add legitimacy to those
who in later times conquered India from outside? Does it justify or
undermine the caste system? One of the difficulties faced by scholars who
wish to take a dispassionate view of these issues is that the evidence for the
earlier Harappan culture is entirely archaeological, while the evidence for
the Aryans is almost entirely based on linguistic analysis of modern
languages and orally transmitted texts of uncertain date.
The central source of information on the early Aryans is the Rig Veda,
the earliest of the Vedas, originally an oral collection of hymns, ritual texts,
and philosophical treatises composed in Sanskrit between 1500 B.C.E. and
500 B.C.E. Like Homer’s epics in Greece, which were written in the same
period (see “The ‘Dark Age’ ” in Chapter 5), these texts were transmitted
orally. They portray the Aryans as warrior tribes who glorified military skill
and heroism; loved to drink, hunt, race, and dance; and counted their wealth
in cattle. The Aryans did not sweep across India in a quick campaign, nor
were they a disciplined army led by one conqueror. Rather they were a
collection of tribes that frequently fought with each other and only over the
course of several centuries came to dominate north India.
 Earthenware Horse Figurines The Aryans were
great horsemen, perhaps explaining the inclusion of
these models of horses in a tomb in north India
during the Vedic period.

The key to the Aryans’ success probably lay in their superior military
technology. Those they fought often lived in fortified towns and put up a
strong defense against them, but Aryan warriors had superior technology,
including two-wheeled chariots, horses, and bronze swords and spears.
Their epics present the struggle for north India in religious terms,
describing their chiefs as godlike heroes and their opponents as irreligious
savages who did not perform the proper sacrifices. In time, however, the
Aryans clearly absorbed much from those they conquered, such as
agricultural techniques and foods.
At the head of each Aryan tribe was a chief, or raja (RAH-juh), who led
his followers in battle and ruled them in peacetime. The warriors in the tribe
elected the chief for his military skills. Next in importance to the chief was
the priest. In time, priests evolved into a distinct class possessing precise
knowledge of complex rituals and of the invocations and formulas that
accompanied them, rather like the priest classes in ancient Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and Persia. Below them in the pecking order was a warrior
nobility who rode into battle in chariots and perhaps on horseback. The
warrior class met at assemblies to reach decisions and advise the raja. The
common tribesmen tended herds and worked the land. To the conquered
non-Aryans fell the drudgery of menial tasks. It is difficult to define
precisely their social status. Though probably not slaves, they were
certainly subordinate to the Aryans and worked for them in return for
protection.
Over the course of several centuries, the Aryans pushed farther east into
the valley of the Ganges River, at that time a land of thick jungle populated
by aboriginal forest peoples. The tremendous challenge of clearing the
jungle was made somewhat easier by the introduction of iron around 1000
B.C.E., probably by diffusion from Mesopotamia.
As Aryan rulers came to dominate large settled populations, the style of
political organization changed from tribal chieftainship to territorial
kingship. In other words, the ruler now controlled an area with people
living in permanent settlements, not a nomadic tribe that moved as a group.
Moreover, kings no longer needed to be elected by the tribe; it was enough
to be invested by priests and to perform the splendid royal ceremonies they
designed. The priests, or Brahmins, supported the growth of royal power in
return for royal confirmation of their own power and status. The Brahmins
also served as advisers to the kings. In the face of this royal-priestly
alliance, the old tribal assemblies of warriors withered away. By the time
Persian armies reached the Indus around 513 B.C.E., there were sixteen
major Aryan kingdoms in north India.

Life in Early India

Caste was central to the social life of these north Indian kingdoms. Early
Aryan society had distinguished among the warrior elite, the priests,
ordinary tribesmen, and conquered subjects. These distinctions gradually
evolved into the caste system, which divided society into strictly defined
hereditary groups. Society was conceived of as four hierarchical strata
whose members did not eat with or marry each other. These strata, or
varnas, were Brahmin (priests), Kshatriya (KSHAT-tree-ya) (warriors and
officials), Vaishya (VIGH-sha) (merchants), and Shudra (peasants and
laborers). The caste system allowed the numerically outnumbered Aryans to
maintain dominance over their subjects and not be culturally absorbed by
them.
Social and religious attitudes supported the caste system. Aryans
considered the work of artisans impure. They left all such work to the local
people, who were probably superior to them in these arts anyway. Trade, by
contrast, was not viewed as demeaning. Brahmanic texts of the period refer
to trade as equal in value to farming, serving the king, or being a priest.
In the Rig Veda, the caste system is attributed to the gods:
When they divided [the primeval man], into how many different portions did they arrange
him? What became of his mouth, what of his two arms? What were his two thighs and
his two feet called?
His mouth became the brahman, his two arms was made into the [kshatriya]; his two thighs
became the vaishyas, of his two feet the shudra was born.1

As priests, the Brahmins were expected to memorize every syllable and

tone of the Vedas so that their rituals would please the gods. They not only
conducted the traditional ceremonies but also developed new ones for new
circumstances. As agriculture became more important to the Aryans, for
example, Brahmins acted as agents of Agni, the god of fire, to purify the
land for crops. The Brahmins also knew the formulas and spells that were
effective against diseases and calamities.
Those without places in the four varnas — that is, newly conquered
peoples and those who had lost their caste status through violations of ritual
— were outcastes. That simply meant that they belonged to no caste. In
time, some of them became “untouchables” because they were “impure.”
They were scorned because they earned their living by performing such
“polluting” jobs as slaughtering animals and dressing skins.
Slavery was a feature of early social life in India, as it was in Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and elsewhere in antiquity. People captured in battle often
became slaves, but captives could also be ransomed by their families. At
birth, slave children automatically became the slaves of their parents’
masters. Indian slaves could be bought, used as collateral, or given away. At
the same time, a clever, hard-working, or fortunate slave could buy his and
his family’s way out of slavery.
Like most nomadic tribes, the Aryans were patrilineal and patriarchal
(tracing descent through males and placing power in the senior men of the
family). Thus the roles of women in Aryan society probably were more
subordinate than were the roles of women in the cultures of south India,
many of which were matrilineal (tracing descent through females). But even
in Aryan society women were treated somewhat more favorably than in
later Indian society. They were not yet given in child-marriage, and widows
had the right to remarry. In epics such as the Ramayana, women are often
portrayed as forceful personalities, able to achieve their goals both by using
feminine ploys to cajole men and by direct action.

Brahmanism
The Aryans recognized a multitude of gods who shared some features with
the gods of other early Indo-European societies such as the Persians and
Greeks. Ordinary people dealt with these gods through priests who made
animal sacrifices to them. By giving valued things to the gods, people
strengthened both the power of the gods and their own relationships with
them. Gradually, under the priestly monopoly of the Brahmins, correct
sacrifice and proper ritual became so important that most Brahmins
believed that a properly performed ritual would force a god to grant a
worshipper’s wish. Ordinary people could watch a ceremony, such as a fire
ritual, which was often held outdoors, but could not perform the key steps
in the ritual.
The Upanishads (oo-PAH-nih-shadz), composed between 750 B.C.E. and
500 B.C.E., record speculations about the mystical meaning of sacrificial
rites and about cosmological questions of man’s relationship to the
universe. They document a gradual shift from the mythical worldview of
the early Vedic Age to a deeply philosophical one. Associated with this shift
was a movement toward asceticism (uh-SEH-tuh-sihz-uhm) — severe self-
discipline and self-denial.
Ancient Indian cosmology (theories of the universe) focused not on a
creator who made the universe out of nothing, but rather on endlessly
repeating cycles. Key ideas were samsara, the reincarnation of souls by a
continual process of rebirth, and karma, the tally of good and bad deeds
that determined the status of an individual’s next life. Good deeds led to
better future lives, evil deeds to worse future lives — even to reincarnation
as an animal. Reward and punishment worked automatically; there was no
all-knowing god who judged people and could be petitioned to forgive a
sin, and each individual was responsible for his or her own destiny in a just
and impartial world.
To most people, especially those on the low end of the economic and
social scale, these ideas were attractive. By living righteously and doing
good deeds, people could improve their lot in the next life. Yet there was
another side to these ideas: the wheel of life could be seen as a treadmill,
giving rise to a yearning for release from the relentless cycle of birth and
death. One solution offered in the Upanishads was moksha, or release from
the wheel of life. Brahmanic mystics claimed that life in the world was
actually an illusion and that the only way to escape the wheel of life was to
realize that ultimate reality was unchanging.
The unchanging ultimate reality was called brahman. Brahman was
contrasted to the multitude of fleeting phenomena that people consider
important in their daily lives. The individual soul or self was ultimately the
same substance as the universal brahman, in the same way that each spark
is in substance the same as a large fire.
The Upanishads gave the Brahmins a high status to which the poor and
lowly could aspire in a future life. The rulers of Indian society also
encouraged the new trends, since the doctrines of samsara and karma
encouraged the poor and oppressed to labor peacefully and dutifully. Thus,
although the new doctrines were intellectually revolutionary, in social and
political terms they supported the existing power structure.
India’s Great Religions
What ideas and practices were taught by the founders of Jainism, Buddhism, and
Hinduism?

By the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E., cities had reappeared in India, and
merchants and trade were thriving. Bricks were again baked in kilns and
used to build ramparts around cities. One particular kingdom, Magadha, had
become much more powerful than any of the other states in the Ganges
plain, defeating its enemies by using war elephants and catapults for hurling
stones. Written language had also reappeared.
This was a period of intellectual ferment throughout Eurasia — the
period of the early Greek philosophers, the Hebrew prophets, Zoroaster in
Persia, and Confucius and the early Daoists in China. In India it led to
numerous sects that rejected various elements of Brahmanic teachings. The
two most influential were Jainism and Buddhism. Their founders were
contemporaries living in the Ganges plain. Hinduism emerged in response
to these new religions but at the same time was the most direct descendant
of the old Brahmanic religion.

Jainism
The key figure of Jainism, Vardhamana Mahavira (flourished ca. 520 B.C.E.),
was the son of the chief of a small state and a member of the warrior class.
Like many ascetics of the period, he left home to become a wandering holy
man. For twelve years, from ages thirty to forty-two, he traveled through
the Ganges Valley until he found enlightenment and became a “completed
soul.” Mahavira taught his doctrines for about thirty years, founding a
disciplined order of monks and gaining the support of many lay followers,
male and female.
Mahavira accepted the Brahmanic doctrines of karma and rebirth but
developed these ideas in new directions, founding the religion referred to as
Jainism. He asserted that human beings, animals, plants, and even
inanimate objects all have living souls enmeshed in matter, accumulated
through the workings of karma. The souls conceived by the Jains float or
sink depending on the amount of matter with which they are enmeshed. The
ascetic, who willingly undertakes suffering, can dissipate some of the
accumulated karma and make progress toward liberation. If a soul at last
escapes from all the matter weighing it down, it becomes lighter than
ordinary objects and floats to the top of the universe, where it remains
forever in bliss.

Bronze Jain Altarpiece This ninth- or tenth-century

bronze sculpture, 10 inches tall, was probably
commissioned by a Jain layman or laymen. The
central figure is a Jain saint seated in lotus posture,
surrounded by other Jain holy men and minor deities.
Elephants and lions hold up the base, and there are
devotees kneeling below the throne on either side.

Mahavira’s followers pursued such liberation by living ascetic lives and

avoiding evil thoughts and actions. The Jains considered all life sacred and
tried to live without destroying other life. A Jain who wished to avoid
violence to life became a vegetarian and took pains not to kill any creature,
even tiny insects in the air and soil. Farming was impossible for Jains, who
tended instead to take up trade. Among the most conservative Jains, priests
practiced nudity, for clinging to clothes, even a loincloth, was a form of
attachment. Lay Jains could pursue Jain teachings by practicing
nonviolence and not eating meat.
Although Jainism never took hold as widely as Hinduism and Buddhism
(discussed below), over the next few centuries it became an influential
strand in Indian thought, and it has several million adherents in India today.
Fasting and nonviolence as spiritual practices in India owe much to Jain
teachings. In the twentieth century Mohandas Gandhi, leader of the Indian
independence movement, was influenced by these ideas through his mother,
and the American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was in turn
influenced by Gandhi.

Siddhartha Gautama and Buddhism

Siddhartha Gautama (fl. ca. 500 B.C.E.), also called Shakyamuni (“sage of
the Shakya tribe”), is best known as the Buddha (“enlightened one”). He
was a contemporary of Mahavira and came from the same warrior social
class. He was born the son of a chief of one of the tribes in the Himalayan
foothills in what is now Nepal. At age twenty-nine, unsatisfied with his life
of comfort and troubled by the suffering he saw around him, he left home to
become a wandering ascetic. He traveled south to the kingdom of Magadha,
where he studied with yoga masters, but later took up extreme asceticism.
According to tradition, while meditating under a bo tree at Bodh Gaya, he
reached enlightenment — that is, perfect insight into the processes of the
universe. After several weeks of meditation, he preached his first sermon,
urging a “middle way” between asceticism and worldly life. For the next
forty-five years, the Buddha traveled through the Ganges Valley,
propounding his ideas, refuting his adversaries, and attracting followers. To
reach as wide an audience as possible, the Buddha preached in the local
language, Magadhi, rather than in Sanskrit, which was already becoming a
priestly language. Probably because he refused to recognize the divine
authority of the Vedas and dismissed sacrifices, he attracted followers
mostly from among merchants, artisans, and farmers, rather than Brahmins.
In his first sermon the Buddha outlined his main message, summed up
in the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths
are as follows: (1) pain and suffering, frustration, and anxiety are ugly but
inescapable parts of human life; (2) suffering and anxiety are caused by
human desires and attachments; (3) people can understand these
weaknesses and triumph over them; and (4) this triumph is made possible
by following a simple code of conduct, the Eightfold Path. The basic insight
of Buddhism is thus psychological. The deepest human longings can never
be satisfied, and even those things that seem to give pleasure cause anxiety
because we are afraid of losing them. Attachment to people and things
causes sorrow at their loss.
Buddhism differed from Brahmanism and later Hinduism in that it
ignored the caste system. Everyone, noble and peasant, educated and
ignorant, male and female, could follow the Eightfold Path. Moreover, the
Buddha was extraordinarily nondogmatic. Convinced that each person must
achieve enlightenment on his or her own, he emphasized that the path was
important only because it led the traveler to enlightenment, not for its own
sake. He compared it to a raft, essential to cross a river but useless once the
traveler reaches the far shore. There was no harm in honoring local gods or
observing traditional ceremonies, as long as one remembered the goal of
enlightenment and did not let sacrifices become snares or attachments. The
willingness of Buddhists to tolerate a wide variety of practices aided the
spread of the religion.
The Buddha’s followers transmitted his teachings orally until they were
written down in the second or first century B.C.E. These scriptures are called
sutras. The form of monasticism that developed among the Buddhists was
less strict than that of the Jains. Buddhist monks moved about for eight
months of the year (except the rainy season), begging for their one meal a
day, but they could bathe and wear clothes. Within a few centuries Buddhist
monks began to overlook the rule that they should travel. They set up
permanent monasteries, generally on land donated by kings or other
patrons. Orders of nuns also appeared, giving women the opportunity to
seek truth in ways men had traditionally used. The main ritual that monks
and nuns performed in their monastic establishments was the communal
recitation of the sutras. Lay Buddhists could aid the spread of Buddhist
teachings by providing food for monks and support for their monasteries,
and they could pursue their own spiritual progress by adopting practices
such as abstaining from meat and alcohol.
Because Buddhism had no central ecclesiastical authority like the
Christian papacy, early Buddhist communities developed several divergent
traditions and came to stress different sutras. One of the most important of
these, associated with the monk-philosopher Nagarjuna (fl. ca. 100 C.E.), is
called Mahayana, or “Great Vehicle,” because it was a more inclusive form
of the religion. One branch of Mahayana taught that reality is empty (that is,
nothing exists independently of itself). Another branch held that ultimate
reality is consciousness, that everything is produced by the mind.
Just as important as the metaphysical literature of Mahayana Buddhism
was its devotional side, influenced by the religions then prevalent in Central
Asia, such as Zoroastrianism (see “The Religion of Zoroaster” in Chapter
2). The Buddha became deified and was placed at the head of an expanding
pantheon of other Buddhas and bodhisattvas (boh-dih-SUHT-vuhz).
Bodhisattvas were Buddhas-to-be who had stayed in the world after
enlightenment to help others on the path to salvation. The Buddhas and
bodhisattvas became objects of veneration. With the growth of Mahayana,
Buddhism attracted more and more laypeople.
Buddhism remained an important religion in India until about 1200 C.E.
By that time it had spread widely through East, Central, and Southeast Asia.
After 1200 C.E. Buddhism declined in India, losing out to both Hinduism
and Islam, and the number of Buddhists in India today is small. Buddhism
never lost its hold in Nepal and Sri Lanka, however, and today it is also a
major religion in Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan.

Hinduism
Both Buddhism and Jainism were direct challenges to the old Brahmanic
religion. Both rejected animal sacrifice, which by then was a central
element in the rituals performed by Brahmin priests. Even more important,
both religions tacitly rejected the caste system, accepting people of any
caste into their ranks. Over the next several centuries (ca. 400 B.C.E.–200
C.E.), in response to this challenge, the Brahmanic religion evolved in a
more devotional direction, developing into the religion commonly called
Hinduism. In Hinduism Brahmins retained their high social status, but it
became possible for individual worshippers to have more direct contact
with the gods, showing their devotion without using priests as
intermediaries.
The bedrock of Hinduism is the belief that the Vedas are sacred
revelations and that a specific caste system is implicitly prescribed in them.
Hinduism is a guide to life, the goal of which is to reach union with
brahman, the unchanging ultimate reality. There are four steps in this
search, progressing from study of the Vedas in youth to complete asceticism
in old age. In their quest for brahman, people are to observe dharma
(DAHR-muh), the moral law.
Hinduism assumes that there are innumerable legitimate ways of
worshipping brahman, including devotion to personal gods. After the third
century B.C.E. Hinduism began to emphasize the roles and personalities of
thousands of powerful gods. These gods were usually represented by
images, either small ones in homes or larger ones in temples. People could
show devotion to their personal gods by reciting hymns or scriptures and by
making offerings of food or flowers before these images. A worshipper’s
devotion to one god did not entail denial of other deities; ultimately all were
manifestations of brahman, the ultimate reality. Hinduism’s embrace of a
large pantheon of gods enabled it to incorporate new sects, doctrines,
beliefs, rites, and deities.
 The God Vishnu Vishnu is depicted here coming to
the rescue of an elephant in the clutches of a
crocodile. It comes from the fifth-century-C.E.
Dasavatara Temple in Uttar Pradesh.

A central ethical text of Hinduism is the Bhagavad Gita (BAH-guh-

vahd GEE-tuh), a part of the world’s longest ancient epic, the
Mahabharata. It was passed down orally for centuries before being
recorded in its present form, perhaps as late as the fourth century C.E. The
Bhagavad Gita offers guidance on the most serious problem facing a Hindu
— how to live in the world and yet honor dharma and thus achieve release
from the wheel of life. The heart of the Bhagavad Gita is the spiritual
conflict confronting Arjuna, a human hero about to ride into battle against
his kinsmen. As he surveys the battlefield, struggling with the grim notion
of killing his relatives, Arjuna voices his doubts to his charioteer, none other
than the god Krishna. When at last Arjuna refuses to spill his family’s
blood, Krishna then clarifies the relationship between human reality and the
eternal spirit. He explains compassionately to Arjuna the duty to act — to
live in the world and carry out his duties as a warrior. Indeed, the Bhagavad
Gita emphasizes the necessity of action, which is essential for the welfare
of the world. For Arjuna the warrior’s duty is to wage war in compliance
with his dharma. Only those who live within the divine law without
complaint will be released from rebirth. One person’s dharma may be
different from another’s, but both individuals must follow their own
dharmas.
Hinduism provided a complex and sophisticated philosophy of life and
a religion of enormous emotional appeal that was attractive to ordinary
Indians. Over time it grew to be the most common religion in India.
Hinduism validated the caste system, adding to the stability of everyday
village life, since people all knew where they stood in society. Hinduism
also inspired the preservation of literary masterpieces in Sanskrit and the
major regional languages of India. Among these are the Puranas, which are
stories of the gods and great warrior clans, and the Mahabharata and
Ramayana, which are verse epics of India’s early kings.
Western Contact and the Mauryan
Unification of North India, ca. 513–185 B.C.E.
What was the result of Indian contact with the Persians and Greeks, and what were
the consequences of unification under the Mauryan Empire?

In the late sixth century B.C.E., with the creation of the Persian Empire that
stretched from the west coast of Anatolia to the Indus River (see “The Rise
and Expansion of the Persian Empire” in Chapter 2), west India was swept
up in events that were changing the face of the ancient Near East. A couple
of centuries later, by 322 B.C.E., the Greeks had supplanted the Persians in
northwest India. Chandragupta saw this as an opportunity to expand his
territories, and he successfully unified all of north India. The Mauryan
(MAWR-ee-uhn) Empire that he founded flourished under the reign of his
grandson, Ashoka, but after Ashoka’s death the empire declined.

Encounters with the West

India became involved in the turmoil of the sixth century B.C.E. when the
Persian emperor Darius conquered the Indus Valley and Kashmir in
northwest India about 513 B.C.E. Persian control did not reach eastward
beyond the Punjab, but even so, it fostered increased contact between India
and the Near East and led to the introduction of new ideas, techniques, and
materials into India — including the minting of silver coins and writing in
the Aramaic script to keep records.
The Persian Empire in turn succumbed to Alexander the Great, and in
326 B.C.E. Alexander led his Macedonian and Greek troops through the
Khyber Pass into the Indus Valley (see “From Polis to Monarchy, 404–200
B.C.E.” in Chapter 5). The India that Alexander encountered was composed
of many rival states. He defeated some of these states in the northwest and
heard reports of others.
The Greeks were intrigued by the Indian culture they encountered.
Alexander had heard of the sophistication of Indian philosophers and
summoned some to instruct him or debate with him. The Greeks were also
impressed with Indian cities, most notably Taxila, a major center of trade in
the Punjab. From Taxila, Alexander followed the Indus River south, hoping
to find the end of the world. His men, however, mutinied and refused to
continue. When Alexander turned back, he left his general Seleucus (suh-
LOO-kuhs) in charge of his easternmost region.

Chandragupta and the Founding of the Mauryan Empire

The one to benefit most from Alexander’s invasion was Chandragupta, the
ruler of a growing state in the Ganges Valley. He took advantage of the
crisis caused by Alexander’s invasion to expand his territories, and by 322
B.C.E. he had made himself sole master of north India (Map 3.2). In 304
B.C.E. he defeated the forces of Seleucus.
 MAP 3.2 The Mauryan Empire, ca. 250 B.C.E.
The Ganges River Valley was the heart of the
Mauryan Empire. Although India is protected from the
cold by mountains in the north, mountain passes in
the northwest allowed both migration and invasion.

With stunning effectiveness, Chandragupta applied the lessons learned

from Persian rule. He adopted the Persian practice of dividing the area into
provinces. Each province was assigned a governor, usually drawn from
Chandragupta’s own family. He established a complex bureaucracy to see to
the operation of the state and a bureaucratic taxation system that financed
public services through taxes on agriculture. He also built a regular army,
complete with departments for everything from naval matters to the
collection of supplies.
For the first time in Indian history, one man governed most of the
subcontinent, exercising control through delegated power. From his capital
at Pataliputra in the Ganges Valley, Chandragupta sent agents to the
provinces to oversee the workings of government and to keep him informed
of conditions in his realm. In designing his bureaucratic system,
Chandragupta enjoyed the able assistance of his great minister Kautilya,
who wrote a treatise called the Arthashastra on how a king should seize,
hold, and manipulate power. Kautilya urged the king to use propaganda to
gain support, and stressed the importance of seeking the enemies of his
enemies, who would make good allies. When a neighboring prince was in
trouble, that was the perfect time to attack him.
Megasthenes, a Greek ambassador sent by Seleucus, spent fourteen
years in Chandragupta’s court. He left a lively description of life there. He
described the city as square and surrounded by wooden walls, 22 miles on
each side, with 570 towers and 64 gates. It had a university, a library, and
magnificent palaces, temples, gardens, and parks. The king personally
presided over court sessions where legal cases were heard and petitions
received. The king claimed for the state all mines and forests, and there
were large state farms, granaries, shipyards, and spinning and weaving
factories. Even prostitution was controlled by the state. Only a portion of
the empire was ruled so directly, according to Megasthenes. In outlying
areas, local kings were left in place if they pledged loyalty. Megasthenes
described Chandragupta’s fear of treachery and assassination attempts:
Nor does the king sleep during the day, and at night he is forced at various hours to change
his bed because of those plotting against him…. When he leaves to hunt, he is thickly
surrounded by a circle of women, and on the outside by spear-carrying bodyguards. The
road is fenced off with ropes, and to anyone who passes within the ropes as far as the
women death is the penalty.2

Those measures apparently worked, as Chandragupta lived a long life.

According to Jain tradition, Chandragupta became a Jain ascetic and died a
peaceful death in 298 B.C.E. Although he personally adopted a nonviolent
philosophy, he left behind a kingdom with the military might to maintain
order and defend India from invasion.

The Reign of Ashoka, ca. 269–232 B.C.E.

Chandragupta’s grandson Ashoka proved to be one of India’s most
remarkable figures. The era of Ashoka was enormously important in the
religious history of the world, because Ashoka embraced Buddhism and
promoted its spread beyond India.
 As a young prince, Ashoka served as governor of two prosperous
provinces where Buddhism flourished. At the death of his father about 274
B.C.E., Ashoka rebelled against his older brother, who had succeeded as king,
and after four years of fighting won his bid for the throne. Crowned king,
Ashoka ruled intelligently and energetically.
In the ninth year of his reign, 261 B.C.E., Ashoka conquered Kalinga, on
the east coast of India. In a grim and savage campaign, Ashoka reduced
Kalinga by wholesale slaughter. As Ashoka himself admitted, “One hundred
and fifty thousand were forcibly abducted from their homes, 100,000 were
killed in battle, and many more died later on.”3 Instead of exulting like a
conqueror, however, Ashoka was consumed with remorse and revulsion at
the horror of war. He embraced Buddhism and used the machinery of his
empire to spread Buddhist teachings throughout India. He supported the
doctrine of not hurting humans or animals that was then spreading among
religious people of all sects in India. He banned animal sacrifices, and in
place of hunting expeditions he took pilgrimages. Two years after his
conversion, he undertook a 256-day pilgrimage to all the holy sites of
Buddhism, and on his return he sent missionaries to all known countries.
Ashoka’s remarkable crisis of conscience changed the way he ruled. He
emphasized compassion, nonviolence, and adherence to dharma. He
appointed officials to oversee the moral welfare of the realm and required
local officials to govern humanely. Ashoka erected stone pillars, on the
Persian model, with inscriptions to inform the people of his policies. He
also had long inscriptions carved into large rock surfaces near trade routes.
In his last important inscription he spoke of his efforts to encourage his
people toward the path of righteousness:
I have had banyan trees planted on the roads to give shade to man and beast; I have planted
mango groves, and I have had ponds dug and shelters erected along the roads at every eight
kos. Everywhere I have had wells dug for the benefit of man and beast. But this benefit is
but small, for in many ways the kings of olden time have worked for the welfare of the
world; but what I have done has been done that men may conform to righteousness.4

These inscriptions are the earliest fully dated Indian texts. (Until the script
in which they were written was deciphered in 1837, nothing was known of
Ashoka’s achievements.)
Ashoka felt the need to protect his new religion and to keep it pure. He
warned Buddhist monks that he would not tolerate schism — divisions
based on differences of opinion about doctrine or ritual. According to
Buddhist tradition, a great council of Buddhist monks was held at
Pataliputra, where the earliest canon of Buddhist texts was codified. At the
same time, Ashoka honored India’s other religions, even building shrines
for Hindu and Jain worshippers.

The North Gate at Sanchi This is one of four

ornately carved gates guarding the stupa at Sanchi in
the state of Madhya Pradesh in India. Containing the
relics of the Buddha, this Buddhist memorial shrine
was originally commissioned by Ashoka, but the
gateways were added later.

Despite his devotion to Buddhism, Ashoka never neglected his duties as

ruler of the Mauryan Empire. He tightened the central government of the
empire and kept a close check on local officials. He built roads and rest
spots to improve communication within the realm. These measures also
facilitated the march of armies and the armed enforcement of Ashoka’s
authority.
Ashoka ruled for thirty-seven years. After he died in about 232 B.C.E.,
the Mauryan Dynasty went into decline, and India broke up into smaller
units, much like those in existence before Alexander’s invasion. Even
though Chandragupta had instituted bureaucratic methods of centralized
political control and Ashoka had vigorously pursued the political and
cultural integration of the empire, the institutions they created were not
entrenched enough to survive periods with weaker kings.
Small States and Trading Networks, 185
B.C.E.–300 C.E.
How was India shaped by political disunity and contacts with other cultures during
the five centuries from 185 B.C.E. to 300 C.E.?

After the end of the Mauryan Dynasty in 185 B.C.E. and for much of
subsequent Indian history, political unity would be the exception rather than
the rule. By this time, however, key elements of Indian culture — the caste
system; the religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism; and
the great epics and legends — had given India a cultural unity strong
enough to endure even without political unity.
In the years after the fall of the Mauryan Dynasty, a series of foreign
powers dominated the Indus Valley and adjoining regions. The first were
hybrid Indo-Greek states ruled by the inheritors of Alexander’s defunct
empire stationed in what is now Afghanistan. The city of Taxila became a
major center of trade, culture, and education, fusing elements of Greek and
Indian culture.
The great, slow movement of nomadic peoples out of East Asia that
brought the Scythians to the Near East brought the Shakas to northwest
India. They controlled the region from about 94 B.C.E. to 20 B.C.E., when
they were displaced by a new nomadic invader, the Kushans, who ruled the
region of today’s Afghanistan, Pakistan, and west India as far south as
Gujarat.
During the Kushan period, which lasted to about 250 C.E., Greek culture
had a considerable impact on Indian art. Indo-Greek artists and sculptors
working in India adorned Buddhist shrines, modeling the earliest
representation of the Buddha on Hellenistic statues of Apollo. Another
contribution from the Indo-Greek states was coin cast with images of the
king, which came to be widely adopted by Indian rulers, aiding commerce
and adding evidence of rulers’ names and sequence to the historical record.
Places where coins are found also show patterns of trade.
Cultural exchange also went in the other direction. Old Indian animal
folktales were translated into Syriac and Greek, and these translated
versions eventually made their way to Europe. South India in this period
was also the center of active seaborne trade, with networks reaching all the
way to Rome. Indian sailing technology was highly advanced, and much of
this trade was in the hands of Indian merchants. Roman traders based in
Egypt followed the routes already used by Arab traders, sailing with the
monsoon from the Red Sea to the west coast of India in about two weeks,
and returning about six months later when the direction of the winds
reversed. In the first century C.E. a Greek merchant involved in this trade
reported that the traders sold coins, topaz, coral, crude glass, copper, tin,
and lead and bought pearls, ivory, silk (probably originally from China),
jewels of many sorts (probably many from Southeast Asia), and above all
cinnamon and pepper. More Roman gold coins of the first and second
centuries C.E. have been found near the southern tip of India than in any
other area.
During these centuries there were significant advances in science,
mathematics, and philosophy. Indian astronomers charted the movements of
stars and planets and recognized that the earth was spherical. In the realm of
physics, Indian scientists, like their Greek counterparts, conceived of matter
in terms of five elements: earth, air, fire, water, and ether. This was also the
period when Indian law was codified. The Code of Manu, which lays down
family, caste, and commercial law, was compiled in the second or third
century C.E., drawing on older texts.
Regional cultures tend to flourish when there is no dominant unifying
state, and the Tamils of south India were one of the major beneficiaries of
the collapse of the Mauryan Dynasty. The period from 200 B.C.E. to 200 C.E.
is considered the classical period of Tamil culture, when many great works
of literature were written under the patronage of the regional kings. Some of
the poems written then provide evidence of lively commerce, mentioning
bulging warehouses, ships from many lands, and complex import-export
procedures. From contact of this sort, the south came to absorb many
cultural elements from the north, but also retained differences. Castes were
present in the south before contact with the Sanskrit north, but took distinct
forms, as the Kshatriya (warrior) and Vaishya (merchant) varnas were
hardly known in the far south.
Chapter Summary
Civilization first emerged in the Indus River Valley of India in the third
millennium B.C.E. The large cities of this Harappan civilization were
carefully planned, with straight streets and sewers; buildings were of kiln-
dried brick. Harappan cities were largely abandoned by 1800 B.C.E. for
unknown reasons.
A few centuries later, the Aryans, speakers of an early form of the Indo-
European language Sanskrit, rose to prominence in north India, marking the
beginning of the Vedic Age. Aryan warrior tribes fought using chariots and
bronze swords and spears, gradually expanding into the Ganges River
Valley. The first stages of the Indian caste system date to this period, when
warriors and priests were ranked above merchants, artisans, and farmers.
The Vedas document the religious ideas of this age, such as the importance
of sacrifice and the notions of karma and rebirth.
Beginning around 500 B.C.E. three of India’s major religions emerged.
Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion, taught his followers to live
ascetic lives, avoid harming any living thing, and renounce evil thoughts
and actions. The founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, or the Buddha,
similarly taught his followers a path to liberation that involved freeing
themselves from desires, avoiding violence, and gaining insight. Hinduism
developed in response to the popularity of Jainism and Buddhism, both of
which rejected animal sacrifice and ignored the caste system. Hindu
traditions validated sacrifice and caste and developed devotional practice,
giving individuals a more personal relationship with the gods they
worshipped.
From contact with the Persians and Greeks in the sixth century B.C.E.
and fourth century B.C.E., respectively, new political techniques, ideas, and
art styles and the use of money entered the Indian repertoire. Shortly after
the arrival of the Greeks, much of north India was politically unified by the
Mauryan Empire under Chandragupta. His grandson Ashoka converted to
Buddhism and promoted its spread inside and outside of India.
After the decline of the Mauryan Empire, India was politically
fragmented for several centuries. Indian cultural identity remained strong,
however, because of shared literature and religious ideas. In the northwest,
new nomadic groups, the Shakas and the Kushans, emerged. Cultural
interchange was facilitated through trade both overland and by sea.

CONNECTIONS

India was a very different place in the third century C.E. than it had been in
the early phase of Harappan civilization more than two thousand years
earlier. The region was still divided into many different polities, but people
living there in 300 shared much more in the way of ideas and traditions.
The great epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana provided a
cultural vocabulary for groups that spoke different languages and had rival
rulers. New religions had emerged, notably Buddhism and Jainism, and
Hinduism was much more a devotional religion. Contact with ancient
Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, and Rome had brought new ideas, practices,
and products.
During this same time period, civilization in China underwent similar
expansion and diversification. China was farther away than India from other
Eurasian centers of civilization, and its developments were consequently
not as closely linked. In China, writing with a symbol for each word
appeared with the Bronze Age Shang civilization and was preserved into
modern times, in striking contrast to India and lands to its west, which
developed alphabetical writing systems. Still, some developments affected
both India and China, such as the appearance of chariots and horseback
riding. The next chapter takes up the story of these developments in early
China. In Chapter 12, after considering early developments in Europe, Asia,
Africa, and the Americas, we return to the story of India.
Chapter 3 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

Harappan (p. 55)

Aryans (p. 56)
Rig Veda (p. 58)
Brahmins (p. 58)
caste system (p. 59)
samsara (p. 60)
karma (p. 60)
brahman (p. 60)
Jainism (p. 61)
Four Noble Truths (p. 62)
Eightfold Path (p. 62)
Mahayana (p. 63)
bodhisattvas (p. 63)
dharma (p. 64)
Mauryan Empire (p. 69)
Code of Manu (p. 70)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. What does archaeology tell us about the Harappan civilization in India? (p. 54)
2. What kind of society and culture did the Indo-European Aryans create? (p. 56)
3. What ideas and practices were taught by the founders of Jainism, Buddhism, and
Hinduism? (p. 61)
4. What was the result of Indian contact with the Persians and Greeks, and what
were the consequences of unification under the Mauryan Empire? (p. 65)
5. How was India shaped by political disunity and contacts with other cultures during
the five centuries from 185 B.C.E. to 300 C.E.? (p. 69)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. In what ways did ancient India follow patterns of development similar to those seen
elsewhere?
2. What are the similarities and differences between the religious ideas and practices
of early India and those that emerged in the Nile River Valley and southwest Asia?
3. How was the development of India’s material culture affected by developments
elsewhere?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 2800–1800 B.C.E. • Harappan civilization

2660–1070 B.C.E. • Egypt’s Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms (Ch. 2)
ca. 1500–500 B.C.E. • Vedic Age: Aryans dominate in north India; caste
system develops; Rig Veda
750–500 B.C.E. • Upanishads, foundation of Brahmanic religion
ca. 520 B.C.E. • Founding of Jainism
513 B.C.E. • Persian conquest of parts of northwest India
ca. 500 B.C.E. • Founding of Buddhism
500–400 B.C.E. • Flowering of Greek art and philosophy (Ch. 5)
403–221 B.C.E. • China’s Warring States Period, golden age of Chinese
philosophy (Ch. 4)
ca. 400 B.C.E.–200 C.E. • Brahmanic religion develops into Hinduism
336–324 B.C.E. • Conquests of Alexander the Great (Ch. 5)
326 B.C.E. • Alexander the Great invades northwest India
ca. 322–185 B.C.E. • Mauryan Empire
269–232 B.C.E. • Reign of Ashoka; Buddhism spreads in Central Asia
ca. 3 B.C.E.–29 C.E. • Life of Jesus (Ch. 6)
4
China’s Classical Age

to 221 B.C.E.
Chapter Preview

The Emergence of Civilization in China

• What was the impact of China’s geography on the development of Chinese
societies?

The Shang Dynasty, ca. 1500–1050 B.C.E.

• What was life like during the Shang Dynasty, and what effect did writing have
on Chinese culture and government?

The Early Zhou Dynasty, ca. 1050–400 B.C.E.

• How was China governed, and what was life like during the Zhou Dynasty?

Txhe Warring States Period, 403–221 B.C.E.

• How did advances in military technology contribute to the rise of independent
states?

Confucius and His Followers

• What ideas did Confucius teach, and how were they spread after his death?

Daoism, Legalism, and Other Schools of Thought

• How did the teachings of Daoism, Legalism, and other schools of thought
differ from those of Confucianism?

IN COMPARISON TO INDIA AND MESOPOTAMIA, CHINA DEVELOPED in relative

isolation. Communication with West and South Asia was very difficult, impeded by high
mountains and vast deserts. Though there was some trade, the distances were so great
that they did not allow the kind of cross-fertilization that occurred in western Eurasia.
Moreover, there were no cultural breaks comparable to the rise of the Aryans in India or the
Assyrians in Mesopotamia to introduce new peoples and languages. The impact of early
China’s relative isolation is found in many distinctive features of its culture. Perhaps the
most important is its writing system; unlike the other major societies of Eurasia, China
retained a logographic writing system with a symbol for each word. This writing system
shaped not only Chinese literature and thought but also key social and political processes,
such as the nature of the ruling class and interactions with non-Chinese peoples.
Chinese history is commonly discussed in terms of a succession of dynasties. The
Shang Dynasty (ca. 1500–1050 B.C.E.) was the first to have writing, metalworking, cities,
and chariots. The Shang kings played priestly roles, serving as intermediaries with both
their royal ancestors and the high god Di. The Shang were overthrown by one of their
vassal states, which founded the Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1050). The Zhou rulers set up a
decentralized feudal governmental structure that evolved over centuries into a multistate
system, with the Zhou Dynasty itself not abolished until 256 B.C.E. As warfare between the
states intensified in the sixth century B.C.E., social and cultural change quickened.
Aristocratic privileges declined, and China entered one of its most creative periods, when
the philosophies of Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism were developed.
The Emergence of Civilization in China
What was the impact of China’s geography on the development of Chinese societies?

The term China, like the term India, does not refer to the same geographical
entity at all points in history. The historical China, also called China proper,
was smaller than present-day China, not larger like the historical India. The
contemporary People’s Republic of China includes Tibet, Inner Mongolia,
Turkestan, Manchuria, and other territories that in premodern times were
neither inhabited by Chinese nor ruled directly by Chinese states.

The Impact of Geography

China proper, about a thousand miles north to south and east to west,
occupies much of the temperate zone of East Asia (Map 4.1). The northern
part, drained by the Yellow River, is colder, flatter, and more arid than the
south. Rainfall in many areas is less than twenty inches a year, making the
land well suited to crops like wheat and millet. The dominant soil is loess
(LUHS) — fine wind-driven earth that is fertile and easy to work even with
simple tools. Because so much of the loess ends up as silt in the river, the
riverbed rises and easily floods unless diked. Drought is another perennial
problem for farmers in the north. The Yangzi (YANG-zuh) River is the
dominant feature of the warmer, wetter, and more lush south, a region well
suited to rice cultivation. The Yangzi and its many tributaries are navigable,
so boats were traditionally the preferred means of transportation in the
south.
 MAP 4.1 The Geography of Historical China
Chinese civilization developed in the temperate regions drained by the Yellow and Yangzi
Rivers.

Mountains, deserts, and grasslands separated China proper from other

early civilizations. Between China and India lay Tibet, with its vast
mountain ranges and high plateaus. North of Tibet are great expanses of
desert, and north of the desert, grasslands stretch from Ukraine to eastern
Siberia. Chinese civilization did not spread into any of these Inner Asian
regions, above all because they were not suited to growing crops. Inner
Asia, where raising animals is a more productive use of land than planting
crops, became the heartland of China’s traditional enemies, such as the
nomadic tribes of the Xiongnu (SHUHNG-noo) and Mongols.

Early Agricultural Societies of the Neolithic Age

From about 9000 B.C.E. agriculture was practiced in China beginning in the
Yellow River Valley. It apparently originated independently of somewhat
earlier developments in Egypt and Mesopotamia but was perhaps
influenced by developments in Southeast Asia, where rice was also
cultivated very early. By 7000 B.C.E. cattle had been domesticated and plow
agriculture began. By 5000 B.C.E. there were Neolithic village settlements in
several regions of China. The primary Neolithic crops were drought-
resistant millet, grown in the loess soils of the north, and rice, grown in the
wetlands of the lower reaches of the Yangzi River, where inhabitants
supplemented their diet with fish. In both areas pigs, dogs, and cattle were
domesticated, and by 3000 B.C.E. sheep had become important in the north
and water buffalo in the south. Silk production can also be traced back to
this period.

Neolithic Jade Plaque This small plaque (2½ inches

by 3¼ inches), dating from about 2000 B.C.E., is
similar to others of the Liangzhu area near modern
Shanghai. It is incised to depict a human figure that
merges into a monster mask. The lower part could be
interpreted as the figure’s arms and legs but at the
same time resembles a monster mask with bulging
eyes, prominent nostrils, and a large mouth.

Over the course of the fifth to third millennia B.C.E., many distinct
regional Neolithic cultures emerged. These Neolithic societies left no
written records, but we know from the material record that over time they
came to share more social and cultural practices. Fortified walls made of
rammed earth were built around settlements in many places, suggesting not
only increased contact between Neolithic societies but also increased
conflict. (For more on life in Neolithic societies, see Chapter 1.)
The Shang Dynasty, ca. 1500–1050 B.C.E.
What was life like during the Shang Dynasty, and what effect did writing have on
Chinese culture and government?

Archaeological evidence indicates that after 2000 B.C.E. a Bronze Age

civilization appeared in north China that shared traits with Bronze Age
civilizations elsewhere in Eurasia, such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, and
Greece. These traits included writing, metalworking, class stratification, and
cult centers. This civilization can be identified with the Shang Dynasty,
long known from early texts.

Shang Society
Shang civilization was not as densely urban as that of Mesopotamia, but
Shang kings ruled from large settlements (Map 4.2). The best excavated is
Anyang, from which the Shang kings ruled for more than two centuries. At
the center of Anyang were large palaces, temples, and altars. Outside the
central core were industrial areas where bronzeworkers, potters, stone
carvers, and other artisans lived and worked. Many homes were built partly
below ground level, probably as a way to conserve heat. Beyond these
urban settlements were farming areas and large forests. Deer, bears, tigers,
wild boars, elephants, and rhinoceros were still plentiful in north China in
this era.
 MAP 4.2 The Shang and Early Zhou Dynasties,
ca. 1500–400 B.C.E.
The early Zhou government controlled larger areas
than the Shang did, but the independent states of the
Warring States Period were more aggressive about
pushing out their frontiers, greatly extending the
geographical boundaries of Chinese civilization.

Texts found in the Shang royal tombs at Anyang show that Shang kings
were military chieftains. The king regularly sent out armies of three
thousand to five thousand men on campaigns, and when not at war they
would go on hunts lasting for months. They fought rebellious vassals and
foreign tribes, but the situation constantly changed as vassals became
enemies and enemies accepted offers of alliance. War booty was an
important source of the king’s revenue, especially the war captives who
could be enslaved. Bronze-tipped spears and battle axes were widely used
by Shang warriors, giving them an advantage over less technologically
advanced groups. Bronze was also used for the fittings of the chariots that
came into use around 1200 B.C.E. Chariot technology apparently spread by
diffusion across Eurasia, passing from one society to the next.
Shang power did not rest solely on military supremacy. The Shang king
was also the high priest, the one best qualified to offer sacrifices to the royal
ancestors and the high god Di. Royal ancestors were viewed as able to
intervene with Di, send curses, produce dreams, assist the king in battle,
and so on. The king divined his ancestors’ wishes by interpreting the cracks
made in heated cattle bones or tortoise shells prepared for him by
professional diviners.
Shang palaces were undoubtedly splendid but were constructed of
perishable material like wood, and nothing of them remains today, giving
China none of the ancient stone buildings and monuments so characteristic
of the West. What has survived are the lavish underground tombs built for
Shang kings and their consorts.
The one royal tomb not robbed before it was excavated was for Lady
Hao, one of the many wives of the king Wu Ding (ca. 1200 B.C.E.). The
tomb was filled with almost 500 bronze vessels and weapons, over 700 jade
and ivory ornaments, and 16 people who would tend to Lady Hao in the
afterlife. Human sacrifice did not occur only at funerals. Inscribed bones
report sacrifices of war captives in the dozens and hundreds.
Shang society was marked by sharp status distinctions. The king and
other noble families had family and clan names transmitted along patrilineal
lines, from father to son. Kingship similarly passed along patrilineal lines.
The kings and the aristocrats owned slaves, many of whom had been
captured in war. In the urban centers there were substantial numbers of
craftsmen who worked in stone, bone, and bronze.
Shang farmers were obligated to work for their lords (making them
essentially serfs). Their lives were not that different from the lives of their
Neolithic ancestors, and they worked the fields with similar stone tools.
They usually lived in small, compact villages surrounded by fields. Some
new crops became common in Shang times, most notably wheat, which had
spread from western Asia.

Bronze Metalworking
As in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, the development of more complex
forms of social organization in Shang China coincided with the mastery of
metalworking, specifically bronze. The bronze industry required the
coordination of a large labor force and skilled artisans. Most surviving
Shang bronze objects are vessels such as cups, goblets, steamers, and
cauldrons that would have originally been used during sacrificial
ceremonies.
The decoration on Shang bronzes seems to say something interesting
about Shang culture, but scholars do not agree about what that is. In the art
of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, representations of agriculture
(domesticated plants and animals) and of social hierarchy (kings, priests,
scribes, and slaves) are very common, matching our understandings of the
social, political, and economic development of those societies. In Shang
China, by contrast, images of wild animals predominate. Some animal
images readily suggest possible meanings. Birds, for example, suggest to
many the idea of messengers that can communicate with other realms,
especially realms in the sky. More problematic is the most common image,
the stylized animal face called the taotie (taow-tyeh). To some it is a
monster — a fearsome image that would scare away evil forces. Others
imagine a dragon — an animal whose vast powers had more positive
associations. Some hypothesize that it reflects masks used in rituals. Others
associate it with animal sacrifices, totemism, or shamanism. Without new
evidence, scholars can only speculate.

The Development of Writing

The survival of divination texts inscribed on bones from Shang tombs
demonstrates that writing was already a major element in Chinese culture
by 1200 B.C.E. Writing must have been developed earlier, but the early
stages cannot be traced, probably because writing was done on wood,
bamboo, silk, or other perishable materials.
The invention of writing had profound effects on China’s culture and
government. A written language made possible a bureaucracy capable of
keeping records and corresponding with commanders and governors far
from the palace. Hence literacy became the ally of royal rule, facilitating
control over a wide realm. Literacy also preserved the learning, lore, and
experience of early Chinese society and facilitated the development of
abstract thought.
 Like ancient Egyptian and Sumerian scripts, the Chinese script was
logographic: each word was represented by a single symbol. In western
Eurasia logographic scripts were eventually modified or replaced by
phonetic scripts, but that never happened in China. Because China retained
its logographic writing system, many years were required to gain full
mastery of reading and writing, which added to the prestige of education.
Why did China retain a logographic writing system even after
encounters with phonetic ones? Although phonetic systems have many real
advantages, especially with respect to ease of learning to read, there are
some costs to dropping a logographic system. Since characters did not
change when the pronunciation changed, educated Chinese could read texts
written centuries earlier without the need for translation. Moreover, as the
Chinese language developed regional variants, readers of Chinese could
read books and letters by contemporaries whose oral language they could
not comprehend. Thus the Chinese script played a large role in holding
China together and fostering a sense of connection with the past. In
addition, many of China’s neighbors (Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, in
particular) adopted the Chinese script, allowing communication through
writing between people whose languages were totally unrelated. In this
regard, Chinese characters were like Arabic numerals, which have the same
meaning however they are pronounced (Table 4.1).

TABLE 4.1 PRONOUNCING CHINESE WORDS

Letter Phonetic Equivalent in Chinese

a ah

e uh

ee; except after z, c, and ch, when the sound is closer to i in

i it

u oo; as in English food

c ts (ch, however, is like English ch)

q ch

z dz

zh j
The Early Zhou Dynasty, ca. 1050–400 B.C.E.
How was China governed, and what was life like during the Zhou Dynasty?

West of the Shang capital was the domain of Zhou (JOE), which had
inherited cultural traditions from the Neolithic cultures of the northwest and
absorbed most of the material culture of the Shang. In about 1050 B.C.E. the
Zhou rose against the Shang and defeated them in battle. Their successors
maintained the cultural and political advances that the Shang rulers had
introduced.

Zhou Politics
The early Zhou period is the first one for which transmitted texts exist in
some abundance. The Book of Documents (ca. 900 B.C.E.) describes the
Zhou conquest of the Shang as the victory of just and noble warriors over
decadent courtiers led by an irresponsible and sadistic king.
Like the Shang kings, the Zhou kings sacrificed to their ancestors, but
they also sacrificed to Heaven. The Book of Documents assumes a close
relationship between Heaven and the king, who was called the Son of
Heaven. In this book, Heaven gives the king a mandate to rule only as long
as he rules in the interests of the people. Because the last king of the Shang
had been decadent and cruel, Heaven took the mandate away from him and
entrusted it to the virtuous Zhou kings. This theory of the Mandate of
Heaven was probably developed by the early Zhou rulers as a kind of
propaganda to win over the former subjects of the Shang. It remained a
central feature of Chinese political ideology from the early Zhou period on.
Rather than attempt to rule all their territories directly, the early Zhou
rulers set up a decentralized feudal system. They sent relatives and trusted
subordinates with troops to establish walled garrisons in the conquered
territories. Such a vassal was generally able to pass his position on to a son,
so that in time the domains became hereditary. By 800 B.C.E. there were
about two hundred lords with domains large and small.
As generations passed and ties of loyalty and kinship grew more distant,
regional lords became so powerful that they no longer obeyed the
commands of the king. In 771 B.C.E. the Zhou king was killed by an alliance
of non-Chinese tribesmen and Zhou vassals. One of his sons was put on the
throne, and then for safety’s sake the capital was moved east to modern
Luoyang, just south of the Yellow River in the heart of the central plains
(see Map 4.2). However, the revived Zhou Dynasty never fully regained
control over its vassals, and China entered a prolonged period without a
strong central authority and with nearly constant conflict (the later Zhou
Dynasty, also called the Warring States Period).

Life During the Early Zhou Dynasty

During the early Zhou period, aristocratic attitudes and privileges were
strong. Inherited ranks placed people in a hierarchy ranging downward from
the king to the rulers of states with titles like duke and marquis, to the
hereditary great officials of the states, to the lower ranks of the aristocracy
— men who could serve in either military or civil capacities, known as shi
— and finally to the ordinary people (farmers, craftsmen, and traders).
Patrilineal family ties were very important in this society, and at the upper
reaches, at least, sacrifices to ancestors were one of the key rituals used to
forge social ties.
Glimpses of what life was like at various social levels in the early Zhou
Dynasty can be found in the Book of Songs (ca. 900 B.C.E.), which contains
the earliest Chinese poetry. Some of the songs are hymns used in court
religious ceremonies, such as offerings to ancestors. Others clearly had their
origins in folk songs. The seasons set the pace for rural life, and the songs
contain many references to seasonal changes, such as the appearance of
insects like grasshoppers and crickets. Some of these songs depict farmers
clearing fields, plowing and planting, gathering mulberry leaves for
silkworms, and spinning and weaving. Farming life involved not merely
cultivating crops like millet, hemp (for cloth), beans, and vegetables but
also hunting small animals and collecting grasses and rushes to make rope
and baskets.
Many of the folk songs are love songs that depict a more informal
pattern of courtship than the one that prevailed in later China. One stanza
reads:
I pray you, Zhongzi,
Do not come leaping over my wall,
Do not break my mulberry trees.
It’s not that I care about them,
 But I fear the words of my brothers.
You, Zhongzi, are to be loved,
But my brothers’ words —
are to be feared.1

There were also songs of complaint, such as this one in which the
ancestors are rebuked for failing to aid their descendants:
The drought is extreme,
And it cannot be stopped.
More fierce and fiery,
it is leaving me no place.
My end is near; —
I have none to look up to, none to look round to.
The many dukes and their ministers of the past
Give me no help.
Oh parents and ancestors,
How can you bear to see us like this?2

Bells of the Marquis of Zeng Music played a central role in court life in ancient China,
and bells are among the most impressive bronze objects of the period. The tomb of a
minor ruler who died about 400 B.C.E. contained 124 musical instruments, including
drums, flutes, mouth organs, pan pipes, zithers, a set of 32 chime stones, and this 64-
piece bell set. The bells bear inscriptions that name the two tones each bell could make,
depending on where it was struck. Five men, using poles and mallets and standing on
either side of the set of bells, would have played the bells by hitting them from outside.
 Social and economic change quickened after 500 B.C.E. Cities began
appearing all over north China. Thick earthen walls were built around the
palaces and ancestral temples of the ruler and other aristocrats, and often an
outer wall was added to protect the artisans, merchants, and farmers who
lived outside the inner wall. Accounts of sieges launched against these
walled citadels, with scenes of the scaling of walls and the storming of
gates, are central to descriptions of military confrontations in this period.
The development of iron technology in the early Zhou Dynasty
promoted economic expansion and allowed some people to become very
rich. By 500 B.C.E. iron was being widely used for both farm tools and
weapons. Late Zhou texts frequently mention trade across state borders in
goods such as furs, copper, dyes, hemp, salt, and horses. People who grew
wealthy from trade or industry began to rival rulers for influence. Rulers
who wanted trade to bring prosperity to their states welcomed traders and
began casting coins to facilitate trade.
Social mobility increased over the course of the Zhou period. Rulers
often sent out their own officials rather than delegate authority to hereditary
lesser lords. This trend toward centralized bureaucratic control created
opportunities for social advancement for the shi on the lower end of the old
aristocracy. Competition among such men guaranteed rulers a ready supply
of able and willing subordinates, and competition among rulers for talent
meant that ambitious men could be selective in deciding where to offer their
services.
Religion in Zhou times was not simply a continuation of Shang
practices. The practice of burying the living with the dead — so prominent
in the royal tombs of the Shang — steadily declined in the middle Zhou
period. New deities and cults also appeared, especially in the southern state
of Chu, where areas that had earlier been considered barbarian were being
incorporated into the cultural sphere of the Central States, as the core region
of China was called. By the late Zhou period, Chu was on the forefront of
cultural innovation and produced the greatest literary masterpiece of the era,
the Songs of Chu, a collection of fantastical poems full of images of elusive
deities and shamans who could fly through the spirit world.
The Warring States Period, 403–221 B.C.E.
How did advances in military technology contribute to the rise of independent
states?

By 400 B.C.E. advances in military technology were undermining the old

aristocratic social structure of the Zhou. Large, well-drilled infantry armies
able to withstand and defeat chariot-led forces became potent military
forces in the Warring States Period, which lasted from 403 B.C.E. to 221
B.C.E. Fueled by the development of new weaponry and war tactics, the
Chinese states destroyed each other one by one until only one state was left
standing — the state of Qin (CHIN).

New Technologies for War

By 300 B.C.E. states were sending out armies of a few hundred thousand
drafted foot soldiers, usually accompanied by horsemen. Adding to their
effectiveness was the development of the crossbow around 350 B.C.E. The
intricate bronze trigger of the crossbow allowed a foot soldier to shoot
farther than could a horseman carrying a light bow. One text of the period
reports that a skilled soldier with a powerful crossbow and a sharp sword
was the match of a hundred ordinary men. To defend against crossbows,
soldiers began wearing armor and helmets.
The introduction of cavalry in this period further reduced the need for a
chariot-riding aristocracy. Shooting bows and arrows from horseback was
first perfected by non-Chinese peoples to the north of China proper, who at
that time were making the transition to a nomadic pastoral economy. The
northern state of Jin developed its own cavalry to defend itself from the
attacks of these horsemen. Once it started using cavalry against other
Chinese states, they too had to master the new technology. From this time
on, acquiring and pasturing horses was a key component of military
preparedness.
As military competition intensified, rulers wanted to increase their
populations, to have more commoners to serve as foot soldiers and more
craftsmen to supply weapons. To increase agricultural output, they brought
new land into cultivation, drained marshes, and dug irrigation channels.
They wanted to undermine the power of lords over their subjects in order to
get direct access to the peasants’ labor power. Serfdom thus gradually
declined. Registering populations led to the extension of family names to
commoners at an earlier date than anywhere else in the world.
The development of infantry armies also created the need for a new type
of general, and rulers became less willing to let men lead troops merely
because of aristocratic birth. In The Art of War (453–403 B.C.E.), Sun Wu
described the ideal general as a master of maneuver, illusion, and deception.
He argued that heroism is a useless virtue that leads to needless deaths.
Discipline, however, is essential, and he insisted that the entire army had to
be trained to follow the orders of its commanders without questioning them.
He also explicitly called for use of deceit:
War is the Way of deceit. Thus one who is competent pretends to be incompetent; one who
uses [his army] pretends not to use it; one who draws near pretends to be distant; one who is
distant pretends to draw near. If [the enemy desires] some advantage, entice him [with it]….
Attack where he does not expect it and go where he has not imagined. This is how military
experts are victorious.3

The Victorious States

During the Warring States Period, states on the periphery of the Zhou realm
had more room to expand than did states in the center. With access to more
resources, they were able to pick off their neighbors, one after the other.
Still, for two centuries the final outcome was far from clear, as alliances
among states were regularly made and nearly as regularly broken.
By the third century B.C.E. there were only seven important states
remaining. These states were much more centralized than their early Zhou
predecessors. Their kings had eliminated indirect control through vassals
and in their place dispatched royal officials to remote cities, controlling
them from a distance through the transmission of documents and dismissing
them at will. Before the end of the third century B.C.E. one state, Qin,
conquered all of the others, a development discussed in Chapter 7.
Confucius and His Followers
What ideas did Confucius teach, and how were they spread after his death?

The Warring States Period was the golden age of Chinese philosophy, the
era when the “Hundred Schools of Thought” were in competition. During
the same period in which Indian sages and mystics were developing
religious speculation about karma, souls, and ultimate reality (see “India’s
Great Religions” in Chapter 3), Chinese thinkers were arguing about the
ideal forms of social and political organization and man’s connections to
nature.

Confucius
As a young man, Confucius (traditional dates: 551–479 B.C.E.) had served in
the court of his home state of Lu without gaining much influence. After
leaving Lu, he set out with a small band of students and wandered through
neighboring states in search of a ruler who would take his advice. We know
what he taught from the Analects, a collection of his sayings put together by
his followers after his death.
The thrust of Confucius’s thought was ethical rather than theoretical or
metaphysical. He talked repeatedly of an ideal age in the early Zhou
Dynasty when everyone was devoted to fulfilling his or her role: superiors
looked after those dependent on them; inferiors devoted themselves to the
service of their superiors; parents and children, husbands and wives all
wholeheartedly embraced what was expected of them. Confucius saw five
relationships as the basis of society: between ruler and subject; between
father and son; between husband and wife; between elder brother and
younger brother; and between friend and friend.
A man of moderation, Confucius was an earnest advocate of
gentlemanly conduct. He redefined the term gentleman (junzi) to mean a
man of moral cultivation rather than a man of noble birth. He repeatedly
urged his followers to aspire to be gentlemen rather than petty men intent
on personal gain. The Confucian gentleman found his calling in service to
the ruler. Confucius asserted that loyal advisers should encourage their
rulers to govern through ritual, virtue, and concern for the welfare of their
subjects, and much of the Analects concerns the way to govern well. To
Confucius the ultimate virtue was ren (humanity). A person of humanity
cares about others and acts accordingly:
[The disciple] Zhonggong asked about humanity. Confucius said, “When you go abroad,
behave to everyone as if you were receiving a great guest. Employ the people as though you
were assisting at a great sacrifice. Do not do unto others what you would not have them do
to you. Then neither in your country nor in your family will there be complaints against
you.”4

In the Confucian tradition, studying texts came to be valued over

speculation, meditation, and mystical identification with deities. Confucius
encouraged the men who came to study with him to master the poetry,
rituals, and historical traditions that we know today as Confucian classics.

The Spread of Confucian Ideas

The eventual success of Confucian ideas owes much to Confucius’s
followers in the three centuries following his death. The most important of
them were Mencius (ca. 370–300 B.C.E.) and Xunzi (SHOON-dzuh) (ca.
310–215 B.C.E.).
Mencius, like Confucius, traveled around offering advice to rulers of
various states. Over and over he tried to convert them to the view that the
ruler able to win over the people through benevolent government would
succeed in unifying “all under Heaven.” Mencius proposed concrete
political and financial measures to ease tax burdens and otherwise improve
the people’s lot. Men willing to serve an unworthy ruler earned his
contempt, especially when they worked hard to fill the ruler’s coffers or
expand his territory. In one conversation, the king of Qi (CHEE) asked if it
was true that the founder of the Zhou Dynasty had taken up arms against his
lord, the last king of Shang. Mencius replied that that was what the histories
said. The king then asked whether it was permissible for a subject to
assassinate his lord, and Mencius replied that the ruler in question was a
villain and a criminal, making killing him the right thing to do.
With his disciples and fellow philosophers, Mencius also discussed
other issues in moral philosophy, arguing strongly, for instance, that human
nature is fundamentally good, as everyone is born with the capacity to
recognize what is right and act on it. Anyone who saw a baby about to fall
into a well would immediately come to its rescue. This would not be
because he wanted a good reputation among his friends and neighbors or
because he disliked hearing the child cry, but rather because of his inborn
feeling of commiseration from which other virtues can grow.
Xunzi, a half century later, took the opposite view of human nature,
arguing that people are born selfish and that only through education and
ritual do they learn to put moral principle above their own interest. Much of
what is desirable is not inborn but must be taught:
The son yielding to or taking over the work of his father, or a younger brother yielding to or
taking over the work of his elder brother — these two lines of action are contrary to original
nature and violate natural feelings. Nevertheless, the way of filial piety is the pattern and
order of propriety and righteousness.5

Neither Confucius nor Mencius had had much actual political or

administrative experience, but Xunzi had worked for many years in the
court of his home state. Not surprisingly, he showed more consideration
than either Confucius or Mencius for the difficulties a ruler might face in
trying to rule through ritual and virtue. Xunzi was also a more rigorous
thinker than his predecessors and developed the philosophical foundations
of many ideas merely outlined by Confucius and Mencius. Although he did
not think gods respond to rituals, he did not propose abandoning rituals,
because the rites themselves have positive effects on performers and
observers. Not only do they let people express feelings and satisfy desires in
an orderly way, but because they specify graduated ways to perform the
rites according to social rank, ritual traditions sustain the social hierarchy.
Xunzi compared and contrasted ritual and music: music shapes people’s
emotions and creates feelings of solidarity, while ritual shapes people’s
sense of duty and creates social differentiation.
 Serving Parents with Filial Piety This twelfth-century-C.E. illustration of a passage in the
Classic of Filial Piety shows how commoners should serve their parents: by working hard
at productive jobs such as farming and tending to their parents’ daily needs. The married
son and daughter-in-law offer food or drink to the older couple as their own children look
on, thus learning how they should treat their own parents after they become aged.

The Confucian vision of personal ethics and public service found a

small but ardent following during the Warring States Period. In later
centuries rulers came to see men educated in Confucian virtues as ideal
advisers and officials. Neither revolutionaries nor flatterers, Confucian
scholar-officials opposed bad government and upheld the best ideals of
statecraft. Confucian political ideals shaped Chinese society into the
twentieth century.
The Confucian vision also provided a moral basis for the Chinese
family that continues into modern times. Repaying parents and ancestors
came to be seen as a sacred duty. Because people owe their very existence
to their parents, they should reciprocate by respecting their parents, making
efforts to please them, honoring their memories, and placing the interests of
the family line above personal preferences, all of which were aspects of
filial piety. Since the family line is a patrilineal line from father to son to
grandson, placing great importance on it has had the effect of devaluing
women.
Daoism, Legalism, and Other Schools of
Thought
How did the teachings of Daoism, Legalism, and other schools of thought differ from
those of Confucianism?

During the Warring States Period, rulers took advantage of the destruction
of states to recruit newly unemployed men to serve as their advisers and
court assistants. Lively debate often resulted as these strategists proposed
policies and refuted opponents. Followers took to recording their teachers’
ideas, and the circulation of these “books” (rolls of silk, or strips of wood or
bamboo tied together) served to stimulate further debate.
Many of these schools of thought directly opposed the ideas of
Confucius and his followers. Most notable were the Daoists, who believed
that the act of striving to improve society only made it worse, and the
Legalists, who argued that a strong government depended not so much on
moral leadership as on effective laws and procedures.

Daoism
Confucius and his followers believed in moral action. They thought men of
virtue should devote themselves to making the government work to the
benefit of the people. Those who came to be labeled Daoists disagreed.
They thought striving to make things better generally made them worse.
They sought to go beyond everyday concerns and to let their minds wander
freely. Rather than making human beings and human actions the center of
concern, they focused on the larger scheme of things, the whole natural
order identified as the Way, or Dao (DOW).
Early Daoist teachings are known from two surviving books, the Laozi
and the Zhuangzi, both dating to the third century B.C.E. Laozi (LOU-dzuh),
the putative author of the Laozi, may not be a historical figure, but the text
ascribed to him has been of enduring importance. A recurrent theme in this
brief, aphoristic text is the mystical superiority of yielding over assertion
and silence over words: “The Way that can be discussed is not the constant
Way.” Because purposeful action is counterproductive, the ruler should let
people return to a natural state of ignorance and contentment:
Do not exalt the worthy, so that the people shall not compete.
Do not value rare treasures, so that the people shall not steal.
Do not display objects of desire, so that the people’s hearts shall not be disturbed.
Therefore in the government of the sage,
He keeps their hearts vacuous,
Fills their bellies,
Weakens their ambitions,
And strengthens their bones.
He always causes his people to be without knowledge or desire,
And the crafty to be afraid to act.
By acting without action, all things will be in order.6

In the philosophy of the Laozi, the people would be better off if they knew
less, gave up tools, renounced writing, stopped envying their neighbors, and
lost their desire to travel or engage in war.
Zhuangzi (JWANG-dzuh) (369–286 B.C.E.), the author of the book of the
same name, shared many of the central ideas of the Laozi. The Zhuangzi is
filled with parables, flights of fancy, and fictional encounters between
historical figures, including Confucius and his disciples. A more serious
strain of Zhuangzi’s thought concerned death. He questioned whether we
can be sure life is better than death. When a friend expressed shock that
Zhuangzi was not weeping at his wife’s death but rather singing, Zhuangzi
explained:
When she died, how could I help being affected? But as I think the matter over, I realize that
originally she had no life; and not only no life; she had no form; not only no form, she had
no material force. In the limbo of existence and non-existence, there was transformation and
the material force was evolved. The material force was transformed to be form, form was
transformed to become life, and now birth has transformed to become death. This is like the
rotation of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter. Now she lies asleep in the
great house [the universe]. For me to go about weeping and wailing would be to show my
ignorance of destiny. Therefore I desist.7

Zhuangzi was similarly iconoclastic in his political philosophy. In one

parable a wheelwright insolently tells a duke that books are useless because
all they contain are the dregs of men long dead. The duke, offended,
threatens execution unless the wheelwright can explain his remark. The
wheelwright responds by arguing that truly skilled craftsmen respond to
situations spontaneously; they do not analyze or reason or even keep in
mind the rules they have mastered. The most important truths they know
cannot be written down or even explained to others. This strain of Daoist
thought denies the validity of verbal reasoning and the sorts of knowledge
conveyed through words.
Daoism can be seen as a response to Confucianism, a rejection of many
of its basic premises. Nevertheless, over the course of Chinese history,
many people felt the pull of both Confucian and Daoist ideas and studied
the writings of both schools. Even Confucian scholars who had devoted
much of their lives to public service might find that the teachings of the
Laozi or Zhuangzi helped to put their frustrations in perspective.

Legalism
Over the course of the fourth and third centuries B.C.E., one small state after
another was conquered, and the number of surviving states dwindled.
Rulers fearful that their states might be next were ready to listen to political
theorists who claimed expertise in the accumulation of power. These
theorists, labeled Legalists because of their emphasis on the need for
rigorous laws, argued that strong government depended not on the moral
qualities of the ruler and his officials, as Confucians claimed, but on the
establishment of effective laws and procedures. Legalism, though
eventually discredited, laid the basis for China’s later bureaucratic
government.
In the fourth century B.C.E. the western state of Qin radically reformed
itself along Legalist lines. The king of Qin abolished the aristocracy. Social
distinctions were to be based on military ranks determined by the objective
criterion of the number of enemy heads cut off in battle. In place of the old
fiefs, the Qin king created counties and appointed officials to govern them
according to the laws he decreed at court. To increase the population, Qin
recruited migrants from other states with offers of land and houses. To
encourage farmers to work hard and improve their land, they were allowed
to buy and sell it. Ordinary farmers were thus freed from serf-like
obligations to the local nobility, but direct control by the state could be even
more onerous. Taxes and labor service obligations were heavy. Travel
required a permit, and vagrants could be forced into penal labor service. All
families were grouped into mutual responsibility groups of five and ten
families; whenever anyone in the group committed a crime, all the others
were equally liable unless they reported it.
 Legalism found its greatest exponent in Han Feizi (ca. 280–233 B.C.E.),
who had studied with the Confucian master Xunzi but had little interest in
Confucian values of goodness or ritual. In his writings he warned rulers of
the political pitfalls awaiting them. They had to be careful where they
placed their trust, for “when the ruler trusts someone, he falls under that
person’s control.” Given subordinates’ propensities to pursue their own
selfish interests, the ruler should keep them ignorant of his intentions and
control them by manipulating competition among them. Warmth, affection,
or candor should have no place in his relationships with others.
In Han Feizi’s view, if rulers would make the laws and prohibitions
clear and the rewards and punishments automatic, then the officials and
common people would be easy to govern. Uniform laws get people to do
things they would not otherwise be inclined to do, such as work hard and
fight wars; such laws are thus essential to the goal of establishing
hegemony over all the other states.
The laws of the Legalists were designed as much to constrain officials
as to regulate the common people. The third-century-B.C.E. tomb of a Qin
official has yielded statutes detailing the rules for keeping accounts,
supervising subordinates, managing penal labor, conducting investigations,
and many other responsibilities of officials. Infractions were generally
punishable through the imposition of fines.
Legalism saw no value in intellectual debate or private opinion.
Divergent views of right and wrong lead to weakness and disorder. The
ruler should not allow others to undermine his laws by questioning them. In
Legalism, there were no laws above or independent of the wishes of the
rulers, no laws that might set limits on rulers’ actions in the way that natural
or divine laws did in Greek thought.
Rulers of several states adopted some Legalist ideas, but only the state
of Qin systematically followed them. The extraordinary but brief success
Qin had with these policies is discussed in Chapter 7.

Yin and Yang

Confucians, Daoists, and Legalists had the greatest long-term impact on
Chinese civilization, but the Hundred Schools of Thought also included
everyone from logicians, hedonists, and utopians to natural philosophers
who analyzed the workings of nature.
 A key idea developed by the natural philosophers was the concept of
yin and yang, first described in the divination manual called the Book of
Changes (ca. 900 B.C.E.), and developed into much more elaborate theories
by late Zhou theorists. Yin is the feminine, dark, receptive, yielding,
negative, and weak; yang is the masculine, bright, assertive, creative,
positive, and strong. Yin and yang are complementary poles rather than
distinct entities or opposing forces. The movement of yin and yang accounts
for the transition from day to night and from summer to winter. These
models based on observation of nature were extended to explain not only
phenomena we might classify as natural, such as illness, storms, and
earthquakes, but also social phenomena, such as the rise and fall of states
and conflict in families. In all these realms, unwanted things happen when
the balance between yin and yang gets disturbed.
 Phoenix and Tigers Divine animals, such as
dragons and phoenixes, are often portrayed in the art
of the Warring States Period, especially in the south,
where the art of lacquered wood was perfected.

In recent decades archaeologists have further complicated our

understanding of early Chinese thought by unearthing records of the
popular religion of the time — astrological manuals, handbooks of lucky
and unlucky days, medical prescriptions, exercises, and ghost stories. The
tomb of an official who died in 316 B.C.E., for example, has records of
divinations showing that illness was seen as the result of unsatisfied spirits
or malevolent demons, best dealt with through performing exorcisms or
offering sacrifices to the astral god Taiyi (Grand One).
Chapter Summary
After several thousand years of Neolithic cultures, Bronze Age civilization
developed in China, with cities, writing, and sharp social distinctions.
Shang kings led armies and presided at sacrifices to the high god Di and the
royal ancestors. The Shang armies’ bronze-tipped weapons and chariots
gave them technological superiority over their neighbors. War booty,
including slaves who were often sacrificed to the gods, provided the Shang
king with revenue.
The Zhou Dynasty, which overthrew the Shang in about 1050 B.C.E.,
parceled out its territory to hereditary lords. The earliest Chinese books date
to this period. The Book of Documents provides evidence of the belief in the
Mandate of Heaven, which justified Zhou rule. The Book of Songs offers
glimpses into what life was like for elites and ordinary people alike in the
early Zhou.
By the Warring States Period, which began in 403 B.C.E., the old
domains had become independent states. As states destroyed each other,
military technology made many advances, including the introduction of
cavalry, infantry armies, and the crossbow. This was also the golden age of
Chinese philosophy. Confucius and his followers promoted the virtues of
sincerity, loyalty, benevolence, filial piety, and duty. Mencius urged rulers
to rule through goodness and argued that human nature is good. Xunzi
stressed the power of ritual and argued that human nature is selfish and
must be curbed through education. Daoists and Legalists rejected all these
ideas. The Daoists Laozi and Zhuangzi looked beyond the human realm to
the entire cosmos and spoke of the relativity of concepts such as good and
bad and life and death. Legalists heaped ridicule on the Confucian idea that
a ruler could get his people to be good by being good himself and proposed
instead rigorous laws with strict rewards and punishments. Natural
philosophers explained the changes of seasons and health and illness in
terms of the complementary forces of yin and yang.
 CONNECTIONS

China’s transition from Neolithic farming villages to a much more

advanced civilization with writing, metalworking, iron coinage, crossbows,
philosophical speculation, and competing states occurred centuries later
than in Mesopotamia or India, but by the Warring States Period China was
at much the same stage of development as other advanced societies in
Eurasia. Although many elements of China’s civilization were clearly
invented in China — such as its writing system, its method of casting
bronze, and its Confucian philosophy — it also adopted elements that
diffused across Asia, such as the cultivation of wheat, the horse-driven
chariot, and riding horseback.
Greece, the subject of the next chapter, is located very close to the
ancient Near Eastern civilizations, so it developed more rapidly, as it was
able to borrow many elements of civilization from its neighbors. It was also
much smaller than China, yet in time had enormous impact on the wider
world. If we keep India and China in mind, the originality of the political
forms and ideas of early Greece will stand out more clearly. We return to
China’s history in Chapter 7, after looking at Greece and Rome.
Chapter 4 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

loess (p. 75)

Anyang (p. 78)
taotie (p. 80)
logographic (p. 80)
Book of Documents (p. 81)
Mandate of Heaven (p. 81)
shi (p. 82)
Book of Songs (p. 82)
Warring States Period (p. 84)
crossbow (p. 84)
ren (p. 86)
filial piety (p. 88)
Dao (p. 88)
Legalists (p. 90)
yin and yang (p. 91)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. What was the impact of China’s geography on the development of Chinese
societies? (p. 75)
2. What was life like during the Shang Dynasty, and what effect did writing have on
Chinese culture and government? (p. 78)
3. How was China governed, and what was life like during the Zhou Dynasty? (p. 81)
4. How did advances in military technology contribute to the rise of independent
states? (p. 84)
5. What ideas did Confucius teach, and how were they spread after his death? (p. 85)
6. How did the teachings of Daoism, Legalism, and other schools of thought differ
from those of Confucianism? (p. 88)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. Which features of early China’s history seem closest to developments in other
early civilizations, such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India?
2. Why do we refer to the ideas developed in India in the second half of the first
millennium B.C.E. as religion and to those developed in China during the same
period as philosophy? Is this a useful distinction? Why or why not?
3. Do Chinese Legalist ideas resemble ideas developed by other societies, including
much more modern societies?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 9000 B.C.E. • Farming begins in Yellow River Valley

ca. 7000 B.C.E. • Domestication of cattle; plow agriculture begins
ca. 2500 B.C.E. • Bronze Age begins in Mesopotamia (Ch. 2)
ca. 1500–1050 B.C.E. • Shang Dynasty; first writing in China
ca. 1500–500 B.C.E. • Vedic Age in India; caste system develops (Ch. 3)
ca. 1250 B.C.E. • Moses leads Hebrews out of Egypt (Ch. 2)
ca. 1050–256 B.C.E. • Zhou Dynasty
551–479 B.C.E. • Life of Confucius
509 B.C.E. • Roman Republic founded (Ch. 6)
ca. 500 B.C.E. • Iron technology in wide use
ca. 500 B.C.E. • Founding of Buddhism and Jainism in India (Ch. 3)
ca. 500–338 B.C.E. • Classical period in Greece; development of drama and
philosophy and major building projects in Athens (Ch.
5)
403–221 B.C.E. • Warring States Period; golden age of Chinese
philosophy
ca. 370–300 B.C.E. • Mencius
369–286 B.C.E. • Zhuangzi and the development of Daoism
ca. 350 B.C.E. • Infantry armed with crossbows
336–324 B.C.E. • Conquests of Alexander the Great (Ch. 5)
5
The Greek Experience

to 3500–30 B.C.E.
Chapter Preview

Greece in the Bronze Age, ca. 3000–800 B.C.E.

• How did the geography of Greece shape its earliest history?

The Development of the Polis in the Archaic Age, ca. 800–500 B.C.E.
• What was the role of the polis in Greek society?

Turmoil and Culture in the Classical Period, 500–338 B.C.E.

• In the classical period, how did war influence Greece, and how did the arts,
religion, and philosophy develop?

Hellenistic Society, 323–30 B.C.E.

• How did Alexander the Great’s conquests shape society in the Hellenistic
period?

Hellenistic Religion, Philosophy, and Science

• How did religion, philosophy, and science develop in the Hellenistic world?

HUMANS CAME INTO GREECE OVER MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS, IN waves of

migrants whose place of origin and cultural characteristics have been the source of much
scholarly debate. The people of ancient Greece built on the traditions and ideas of earlier
societies to develop a culture that fundamentally shaped the civilization of the western part
of Eurasia, much as the Chinese culture shaped the civilization of the eastern part. The
Greeks were the first in the Mediterranean and neighboring areas to explore many of the
questions about the world around them and the place of humans in it that continue to
concern thinkers today. Drawing on their day-to-day experiences as well as logic and
empirical observation, they developed ways of understanding and explaining the world
around them, which grew into modern philosophy and science. They also created new
political forms and new types of literature and art.
Historians, archaeologists, and classicists divide the history of the Greeks into three
broad periods: the Helladic period, which covered the Bronze Age, roughly 3000 B.C.E. to
800 B.C.E.; the Hellenic period, from the Bronze Age Collapse to the death of Alexander the
Great, the ruler of Macedonia who conquered Greece, in 323 B.C.E.; and the Hellenistic
period, stretching from Alexander’s death to the Roman conquest in 30 B.C.E. of the
kingdom established in Egypt by Alexander’s successors. During the Hellenic period,
Greeks developed a distinctive form of city-state known as the polis and made lasting
cultural and intellectual achievements. During the Hellenistic period, Macedonian and Greek
armies defeated the Persian Empire and built new cities and kingdoms, spreading Greek
ideas as far as India (see “Western Contact and the Mauryan Unification of North India” in
Chapter 3). During their conquests they blended their ideas and traditions with those of the
societies they encountered, creating a vibrant culture.
Greece in the Bronze Age, ca. 3000–800 B.C.E.
How did the geography of Greece shape its earliest history?

Hellas, as the Greeks call their land, encompasses the Greek peninsula with
its southern peninsular extension, known as the Peloponnesus (peh-luh-puh-
NEE-suhs), and the islands surrounding it, an area known as the Aegean
(ah-JEE-uhn) basin (Map 5.1). During the Bronze Age, which for Greek
history is called the “Helladic period,” early settlers in Greece began
establishing small communities contoured by the mountains and small
plains that shaped the land. The geographical fragmentation of Greece
encouraged political fragmentation. Early in Greek history several
kingdoms did emerge — including the Minoan on the island of Crete and
the Mycenaean on the mainland — but the rugged terrain prohibited the
growth of a great empire like those of Mesopotamia or Egypt.
 MAP 5.1 Classical Greece, ca. 450 B.C.E.
In antiquity the home of the Greeks included the islands of the Aegean and the western
shore of Turkey as well as the Greek peninsula itself. Crete, the home of Minoan
civilization, is the large island at the bottom of the map. The Peloponnesian peninsula,
where Sparta is located, is connected to the rest of mainland Greece by a very narrow
isthmus at Corinth.

The Minoans and Mycenaeans

On the large island of Crete, Bronze Age farmers and fishermen began to
trade their surpluses with their neighbors, and cities grew, housing artisans
and merchants. Beginning about 2000 B.C.E. Cretans voyaged throughout the
eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean, carrying the copper and tin needed
to make bronze as well as many other goods. Social hierarchies developed,
and in many cities certain individuals came to hold power. The Cretans
began to use writing about 1900 B.C.E., in a form later scholars called Linear
A, a script with hundreds of signs believed to be pictographs and syllables.
(For more on writing, see “Writing, Mathematics, and Poetry” in Chapter
2.) The few extant examples of this writing have not been deciphered. At
about the same time that writing began, rulers in several cities of Crete
began to build large structures with hundreds of interconnected rooms. The
archaeologists who discovered these huge structures called them palaces,
and they named the flourishing and vibrant culture of this era Minoan, after
the mythical king of Crete, Minos.
Few specifics are known about Minoan political life except that a king
and a group of nobles stood at its head. Minoan society was long thought to
have been relatively peaceful, but new excavations are revealing more and
more walls around cities, which has called the peaceful nature of Minoan
society into question. In terms of their religious life, Minoans appear to
have worshipped goddesses far more than gods. Whether this translated into
more egalitarian gender roles for real people is unclear, but surviving
Minoan art, which shows women as well as men leading religious activities,
watching entertainment, and engaging in athletic competitions, such as
leaping over bulls, suggests that it might have.
As Minoan culture was flourishing on Crete, a different type of society
developed on the mainland. This society was founded by groups who had
migrated in during the period after 2000 B.C.E. By about 1650 B.C.E. one
group of these immigrants had raised palaces and established cities at
Thebes, Athens, Mycenae (migh-SEE-nee), and elsewhere. These palace-
centers ruled by local kings formed a loose hegemony under the authority
of the king of Mycenae, and the archaeologists who first discovered traces
of this culture called it the Mycenaean (migh-see-NEE-ahn).
As in Crete, the political unit was the kingdom, and the king and his
warrior aristocracy stood at the top of society. The seat and symbol of the
king’s power was his palace, which was also the economic center of the
kingdom. Palace scribes kept records with a script known as Linear B,
which used roughly two hundred ideographic and syllabic signs. This script
appears to have descended from Linear A, but unlike the earlier script,
Linear B has been deciphered, and it is the earliest documented form of
written Greek.
The available written and archaeological evidence suggests a society in
which war was common. Mycenaean cities were all fortified by thick stone
walls, and graves contain spears, javelins, swords, helmets, and the first
examples of metal armor known in the world.

Mycenaean Dagger Blade This scene in gold and silver on the blade of an iron dagger
depicts hunters armed with spears and protected by shields defending themselves against
charging lions. The Mycenaeans were a robust, warlike people who enjoyed the thrill and
the danger of hunting.

Contacts between the Minoans and Mycenaeans were originally

peaceful, and Minoan culture and trade goods flooded the Greek mainland.
But most scholars think that around 1450 B.C.E., possibly in the wake of an
earthquake that left Crete vulnerable, the Mycenaeans attacked Crete,
destroying many towns and occupying Knossos (NOH-sohs), Crete’s
leading city. For about the next fifty years, the Mycenaeans ruled much of
the island. Then, between about 1300 B.C.E. and 1100 B.C.E., various
kingdoms in and beyond Greece ravaged one another in a savage series of
wars that destroyed both the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations.
The fall of the Minoans and Mycenaeans was part of what some
scholars see as a general collapse of Bronze Age civilizations in the eastern
Mediterranean, including the end of the Egyptian New Kingdom and the
fall of the Hittite Empire (see “Migrations, Revivals, and Collapse” in
Chapter 2). This collapse appears to have had a number of causes: internal
economic and social problems; invasions and migrations by outsiders;
changes in warfare and weaponry, particularly the adoption of iron
weapons, which made foot soldiers the most important factor in battles and
reduced the power of kings and wealthy nobles fighting from chariots; and
natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and droughts.

The “Dark Age”

In Greece these invasions, migrations, disasters, and social problems
worked together to usher in a period of poverty and disruption that
historians have traditionally called the “Dark Age” of Greece (ca. 1100–800
B.C.E.). Cities were destroyed, population declined, villages were
abandoned, and trade decreased. Even writing, which was not widespread
before this period, was a casualty of the chaos.
The Bronze Age Collapse led to the widespread and prolonged
movement of Greek peoples, both within Greece itself and beyond. They
dispersed beyond mainland Greece farther south to the islands of the
Aegean Sea and in greater strength across the Aegean to the shores of
Anatolia in modern-day Turkey (see Map 5.1). By the conclusion of the
Dark Age, the Greeks had spread their culture throughout the Aegean basin,
and like many other cultures around the Mediterranean and the Near East,
they had adopted iron.
Archaeological sources from the Dark Age are less rich than those from
the periods that came after, so they are often used in conjunction with
literary sources written in later centuries to give us a more complete picture
of the era. These included tales of the heroic deeds of legendary heroes
similar to the epic poems of Mesopotamia and the Ramayana in India.
Sometime in the eighth or seventh century B.C.E. many of these were
gathered together in two long epic poems: the Iliad, which tells the story of
the Trojan War, a war similar to those fought by Mycenaean kings, and the
Odyssey, which records the adventures of one of the heroes of that war.
These poems were recited orally, and once writing was reintroduced to
Greece, they were written down and attributed to a poet named Homer,
though scholars debate whether Homer was an actual historical individual.
The two poems present human and divine characters who are larger than
life but also petty, vindictive, pouting, and deceitful, flaws that drive the
action forward, usually with tragic results.
Greeks also learned about the gods and goddesses of their polytheistic
system from another poet, Hesiod (HEH-see-uhd), who most scholars think
lived sometime between 750 and 650 B.C.E. Hesiod’s Theogony combines
Mesopotamian and Hittite myths with a variety of Greek oral traditions to
tell a coherent story of the origin of the gods, and his Works and Days
portrays the gods watching over the earth, looking for justice and injustice,
while leaving the great mass of men and women to live lives of hard work
and endless toil.
The Development of the Polis in the Archaic
Age, ca. 800–500 B.C.E.
What was the role of the polis in Greek society?

Homer lived in the era after the Dark Age, which later historians have
termed the Archaic age (800–500 B.C.E.). The most important political
change in this period was the development of the polis (PAH-lihs) (plural
poleis [pah-LEH-is]), a word generally translated as “city-state.” During the
Archaic period, poleis established colonies throughout much of the
Mediterranean, spreading Greek culture, and two particular poleis rose to
prominence on the Greek mainland: Sparta and Athens.

Organization of the Polis

The Greek polis was not the first form of city-state to emerge. The earliest
states in Sumer were also city-states, as were many of the small Mycenaean
kingdoms. What differentiated the new Greek model from older city-states
was that the polis was more than a political institution — it was a
community of citizens with their own customs and laws. With one
exception, the poleis that emerged after 800 B.C.E. did not have kings but
instead were self-governing. The physical, religious, and political forms of
the polis varied from place to place, but everywhere it was relatively small,
reflecting the fragmented geography of Greece. The very smallness of the
polis, however, enabled Greeks to see how they fit individually into their
city and thus how the individual parts made up the social whole.
The polis included a city and its surrounding countryside. The
countryside was essential to the economy of the polis and provided food to
sustain the entire population. The people of the polis typically lived in a
compact group of houses within the city, which by the fifth century B.C.E.
was generally surrounded by a wall. Another feature was a usually elevated
area called the acropolis, where the people erected temples, altars, and
public monuments. The polis also contained a public square or marketplace,
the agora (EH-gohr-ah), where there were porticoes, shops, public
buildings, and courts. The agora was the political center of the polis.
 All poleis, with one exception, did not have standing armies. Instead
they relied on their citizens for protection. Very rich citizens often served as
cavalry, which was, however, never as important as the heavily armed
infantrymen known as hoplites. These commoners were the backbone of
the army, just as foot soldiers were in China during the Warring States
Period (see “The Warring States Period” in Chapter 4). Hoplites wore
bronze helmets and leather and bronze body armor, which they purchased
themselves.
 Spartan Hoplite This bronze figurine portrays an
armed foot soldier about to strike an enemy. His
massive helmet with its full crest gives his head
nearly complete protection, while a metal corselet
covers his chest and back, and greaves (similar to
today’s shin guards) protect his shins. In his right
hand he carries a thrusting spear (now broken off),
and in his left a large round shield.

Greek poleis had several different types of government. Sporadic

periods of violent political and social upheaval often led to the takeover of
power by one man, a type of government the Greeks called tyranny. Tyrants
were not always oppressive rulers, however, and sometimes used their
power to benefit average citizens. Democracy was rule by citizens, not the
people as a whole. Almost all Greek cities defined a citizen as an adult man
with at least one citizen parent. Thus citizens shared ancestry as well as a
place of residence. Women were citizens for religious and reproductive
purposes, but their citizenship did not give them the right to participate in
government. Free men who were not children of a citizen, known as
resident foreigners, and slaves were not citizens and had no political voice.
Oligarchy was government by a small group of wealthy citizens. Many
Greeks preferred oligarchy because it provided more political stability than
did democracy. Although oligarchy was the government of the prosperous,
it left the door open for political and social advancement. If members of the
polis could meet property or money qualifications, they could enter the
governing circle.

Overseas Expansion
The development of the polis coincided with the growth of the Greek world
in both wealth and numbers, bringing new problems. The increase in
population created more demand for food than the land could supply. The
resulting social and political tensions drove many people to seek new
homes outside of Greece (Map 5.2).
 MAP 5.2 Greek Colonization, ca. 750–550 B.C.E.
The Greeks established colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas,
spreading Greek culture and creating a large trading network.

Greeks traveled throughout the Mediterranean, sailing in great numbers

to Sicily and southern Italy, where there was ample space for expansion.
Some adventurous Greeks sailed farther west to Sardinia, France, Spain,
and perhaps even the Canary Islands. From these new outposts Greek
influence extended to southern France.
In contrast to earlier military invasions and migrations of peoples, these
were very often intentional colonizing ventures, organized and planned by a
specific polis seeking new land for its residents, or by the losers in a
political conflict within a polis who were forced to leave. Colonization
changed the entire Greek world, both at home and abroad. In economic
terms the expansion of the Greeks created a much larger market for
agricultural and manufactured goods.

The Growth of Sparta

During the Archaic period Sparta became the leading military power in
Greece. To expand their polis, the Spartans did not establish colonies but
instead conquered Messenia (muh-SEE-nee-uh), a region in the
southwestern Peloponnesus. They turned the Messenians into helots (HEH-
luhts), unfree residents forced to work state lands. The helots soon rose in a
revolt that took the Spartans thirty years to crush. Afterward, non-nobles
who had shared in the fighting as foot soldiers appear to have demanded
rights equal to those of the nobility and a voice in the government. Under
intense pressure the aristocrats agreed to remodel the state into a new
system.
The plan for the new system in Sparta was attributed to the lawgiver
Lycurgus (ligh-KUHR-guhs), who may or may not have been an actual
person. Political distinctions among Spartan men were eliminated, and all
citizens became legally equal. Two kings, who were primarily military
leaders, and a council of nobles shared executive power with five ephors
(EH-fuhrs), overseers elected by the citizens. Helots worked the land, while
Spartan citizens devoted their time to military training, and Sparta became
extremely powerful.
In the system attributed to Lycurgus, every citizen owed primary
allegiance to Sparta. Suppression of the individual along with an emphasis
on military prowess led to a barracks state. Even family life was sacrificed
to the polis. After long, hard military training that began at age seven,
citizens became lifelong soldiers. Because men often did not see their wives
or other women for long periods, not only in times of war but also in times
of peace, their most meaningful relations were same-sex ones. The Spartan
military leaders may have viewed such relationships as militarily
advantageous because they believed that men would fight even more
fiercely for lovers and comrades. An anecdote frequently repeated about
one Spartan mother sums up Spartan military values. As her son was setting
off to battle, the mother handed him his shield and advised him to come
back either victorious and carrying the shield, or dead and being carried on
it. Spartan men were expected to train vigorously, do with little, and like it,
qualities reflected even today in the word spartan.
Spartans expected women in citizen families to be good wives and strict
mothers of future soldiers. With men in military service much of their lives,
women in citizen families ran the estates and owned land in their own right,
and they were not physically restricted or secluded.

The Evolution of Athens

Like Sparta, Athens faced pressing social and economic problems during
the Archaic period, but instead of creating a state devoted to the military,
the Athenians created a state that became a democracy. For Athens, the late
seventh century B.C.E. was a time of turmoil. In 621 B.C.E. Draco (DRAY-
koh), an Athenian aristocrat, under pressure from small landholders and
with the consent of the nobles, published the first law code of the Athenian
polis. His code was harsh — and is thus the origin of the word draconian
— but it embodied the ideal that the law belonged to all citizens. Yet the
aristocracy still governed Athens oppressively, and the social and economic
situation remained dire. Noble landholders continued to force small farmers
and artisans into economic dependence. Many families were sold into
slavery as settlement for debts, while others were exiled and their land
mortgaged to the rich.
One person who recognized these problems was the aristocrat Solon
(SOH-luhn). Solon condemned his fellow aristocrats for their greed and
dishonesty. According to later sources, Solon’s sincerity and good sense
convinced other aristocrats that he was no crazed revolutionary. Moreover,
he gained the trust of the common people. Around 594 B.C.E. the nobles
elected him archon (AHR-kahn), chief magistrate of the polis, and gave
him extraordinary power to reform the state.
Solon immediately freed all people enslaved for debt, recalled all exiles,
canceled all debts on land, and made enslavement for debt illegal. Solon
allowed non-nobles into the old aristocratic assembly, where they could
vote in the election of magistrates. Later sixth-century-B.C.E. leaders further
broadened the opportunities for commoners to take part in government,
transforming Athens into a democracy.
The democracy functioned on the ideal that all full citizens should play
a role in government. In 487 B.C.E. the election of the city’s nine archons
was replaced by reappointment by lot, which meant that any citizen with a
certain amount of property had a chance of becoming an archon. Making
laws was the responsibility of two bodies, the boule (BOO-lee), or council,
composed of five hundred members, and the ecclesia (ee-KLEE-zhee-uh),
the assembly of all citizens. By supervising the various committees of
government and proposing bills and treaties to the ecclesia, the boule
guided Athenian political life. Nonetheless, the ecclesia, open to all male
citizens over eighteen years of age, had the final word through its votes.
Turmoil and Culture in the Classical Period,
500–338 B.C.E.
In the classical period, how did war influence Greece, and how did the arts, religion,
and philosophy develop?

From the time of the Mycenaeans, violent conflict was common in Greek
society, and this did not change in the fifth century B.C.E., the beginning of
what scholars later called the classical period of Greek history. First, the
Greeks beat back the armies of the Persian Empire. Then, turning their
spears against one another, they destroyed their own political system in a
century of warfare that began with the Peloponnesian War. Although
warfare was one of the hallmarks of the classical period, intellectual and
artistic accomplishments were as well.

The Deadly Conflicts, 499–404 B.C.E.

In 499 B.C.E. the Greeks who lived on the western coast of what is now
Turkey, an area then known as Ionia, unsuccessfully rebelled against the
Persian Empire, which had ruled the area for fifty years (see “The Rise and
Expansion of the Persian Empire” in Chapter 2). The Athenians provided
halfhearted help to the Ionians, and in retaliation the Persians struck at
Athens, only to be surprisingly defeated by the Athenian hoplites at the
Battle of Marathon. In 480 B.C.E. the Persian king Xerxes (ZUHRK-seez)
personally led a massive invasion of Greece. Under the leadership of
Sparta, many Greek poleis, though not all, united to fight the Persians in
what later historians termed the Persian wars. The larger Persian army
enjoyed early success, but the tide of the war quickly turned and the
invasion ended in failure.
The victorious Athenians and their allies then formed the Delian
League, a military alliance intended to liberate Ionia from Persian rule and
keep the Persians out of Greece. The Athenians, however, turned the league
into an Athenian empire. They reduced their allies to the status of subjects.
Athenian ideas of freedom and democracy did not extend to the citizens of
other cities, and cities that objected to or revolted over Athenian actions
were put down.
Under their great leader Pericles (PEHR-uh-kleez) (ca. 494–429 B.C.E.),
the Athenians grew so powerful and aggressive that they alarmed Sparta
and its allies. In 431 B.C.E. Athenian imperialism finally drove Sparta into
the conflict known as the Peloponnesian War. The Peloponnesian War lasted
a generation (431–404 B.C.E.) and brought in its wake disease, widespread
civil wars, destruction, famine, and huge loss of life. In 404 B.C.E. the
Athenians finally surrendered to Sparta and its allies, and Sparta stripped it
of its empire. Conflicts among the states of Greece continued, however.

Athenian Arts in the Age of Pericles

In the midst of the warfare of the fifth century B.C.E., Pericles turned Athens
into the showplace of Greece. He appropriated Delian League money to pay
for a huge building program to rebuild the city that had been destroyed
during the Persian occupation in 480 B.C.E. and to display to all Greeks the
glory of the Athenian polis. Workers erected temples and other buildings as
patriotic memorials housing statues and carvings, often painted in bright
colors, showing the gods in human form and celebrating the Athenian
victory over the Persians. (The paint later washed away, leaving the
generally white sculpture that we think of as “classical.”) The Acropolis in
the center of the city was crowned by the Parthenon, a temple that
celebrated the greatness of Athens and its patron goddess, Athena, who was
represented by a huge statue. Sculptors in Athens increasingly based their
statues of gods and heroes on studies of actual human anatomy.
Accordingly, the statues showed realistic musculature, although the figures
were always depicted in the prime form of young adulthood and with a
noble facial expression, as befit a deity. Most large-scale Greek paintings
have been lost, but Greek pottery was frequently decorated with painted
figures and scenes that sometimes show more ordinary humans as well as
divine figures. These men and women also had realistic musculature and
expressions, and they are going about the ordinary tasks of daily life —
working, cooking, going in and out of doors.
Other aspects of Athenian culture were also rooted in the life of the
polis. The polis sponsored plays as part of the city’s religious festivals and
required wealthy citizens to pay the expenses of their production. Many
plays were highly controversial, with overt political and social commentary,
but they were neither suppressed nor censored. Not surprisingly, given the
incessant warfare, conflict was a constant element in Athenian drama, and
playwrights used their art in attempts to portray, understand, and resolve
life’s basic conflicts.
Aeschylus (EHS-kuh-luhs) (525–456 B.C.E.) was the first dramatist to
explore such basic questions as the rights of the individual, the conflict
between the individual and society, and the nature of good and evil. In his
trilogy of plays, The Oresteia, he treats the themes of betrayal, murder, and
reconciliation, urging the use of reason and justice to reconcile fundamental
conflicts.
The plays of Sophocles (SAH-fuh-kleez) (496–406 B.C.E.) also deal with
matters personal, political, and divine. In Antigone — which tells of how a
king’s mistakes in judgment lead to the suicides of his son, his son’s
fiancée, and his wife — Sophocles emphasizes the precedence of divine law
over political law and family custom. In Oedipus the King, Sophocles tells
the story of a good man doomed by the gods to kill his father and marry his
mother. When Oedipus fails to avoid his fate, he blinds himself in despair
and flees into exile. In Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles treats the last days of
the broken man, whose patient suffering and uncomplaining piety
ultimately win the blessings and honor of the gods.
Euripides (yoo-RIH-puh-deez) (ca. 480–406 B.C.E.) likewise explored
the theme of personal conflict within the polis and sounded the depths of
the individual. With Euripides drama entered a new and more personal
phase. To him the gods mattered far less than people.
Athens also produced writers of comedies, who used humor as political
commentary in an effort to suggest and support the best policies for the
polis. Best known of the comedians is Aristophanes (eh-ruh-STAH-fuh-
neez) (ca. 445–386 B.C.E.), a merciless critic of cranks, quacks, and fools.
He used his art of sarcasm to dramatize his ideas on the right conduct of
citizens and their leaders for the good of the polis.

Families and Sexual Relations

The Athenians, like other Greeks, lived with comparatively few material
possessions in houses that were rather simple. A typical Athenian house
consisted of a series of rooms opening onto a central courtyard that
contained a well, an altar, and a washbasin. Larger houses often had a front
room where the men of the family ate and entertained guests, as well as
women’s quarters at the back. Meals consisted primarily of various grains,
especially wheat and barley, as well as lentils, olives, figs, grapes, fish, and
a little meat, foods that are now part of the highly touted “Mediterranean
diet.”
In the city a man might support himself as a craftsman, or he could
contract with the polis to work on public buildings. Certain crafts, including
spinning and weaving, were generally done by women. Men and women
without skills worked as paid laborers. Slavery was commonplace in
Greece, as it was throughout the ancient world. Slaves, who were paid for
their work, were usually foreigners.
Citizenship was the basis of political power for men in ancient Athens,
and was inherited. After the middle of the fifth century, only those whose
parents were both citizens were citizens, except for a few men given
citizenship as a reward for service to the city. Adult male citizens were
expected to take part in political decisions and be active in civic life, no
matter what their occupation. They were also in charge of relations between
the household and the wider community.
 Hetaera and Man at a Dinner Party In this scene
painted on the inside of a drinking cup, a hetaera
(one of Athens’s sophisticated courtesans known for
their intellectual accomplishments as well as sexual
allure) strokes the beard of a man who holds a
drinking cup. Sexual and comic scenes were
common on Greek pottery, particularly on objects
that would have been used at a private dinner party
hosted by a citizen, known as a symposium. Wives
did not attend symposia, but hetaerae and
entertainers were often hired to perform for the male
guests.

Women in Athens and elsewhere in Greece, like those in Mesopotamia,

brought dowries to their husbands upon marriage, which went back to their
fathers in cases of divorce. Women did not play a public role in classical
Athens, and we know the names of no female poets, artists, or philosophers.
Women in wealthier citizen families probably spent most of their time at
home, leaving the house only to attend some religious festivals, and perhaps
occasionally plays. The main function of women from citizen families was
to bear and raise children. In their quarters of the house women oversaw
domestic slaves and hired labor, and together with servants and friends
worked wool into cloth. Women from noncitizen families lived freer lives,
although they worked harder and had fewer material comforts. They
performed manual labor in the fields or sold goods and services in the
agora, going about their affairs much as men did.
Same-sex relations were generally accepted in all of ancient Greece. In
classical Athens part of a male adolescent citizen’s training might entail a
hierarchical sexual and tutorial relationship with an older man, who most
likely was married and may have had female sexual partners as well. These
relationships between young men and older men were often celebrated in
literature and art, in part because Athenians regarded perfection as possible
only in the male. Women were generally seen as inferior to men, dominated
by their bodies rather than their minds. A small number of sources refer to
female-female sexual desire, the most famous of which are a few of the
poems of Sappho (SEH-foh), a female poet of the sixth century B.C.E.
Same-sex relations did not mean that people did not marry, for
Athenians saw the continuation of the family line as essential. Sappho, for
example, appears to have been married and had a daughter. Sexual desire
and procreation were both important aspects of life, but ancient Greeks did
not necessarily link them.

Public and Personal Religion

Like most peoples of the ancient world, the Greeks were polytheists,
worshipping a variety of gods and goddesses who were immortal but
otherwise acted just like people. As elsewhere, Greek religion was primarily
a matter of ritual, with rituals designed to appease the divinities believed to
control the forces of the natural world. Processions, festivals, and sacrifices
offered to the gods were frequently occasions for people to meet together
socially. Migration, invasion, and colonization brought the Greeks into
contact with other peoples and caused their religious beliefs to evolve.
By the classical era, the primary gods were understood to live
metaphorically on Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece.
Besides these Olympian gods, each polis had its own minor deities, each
with his or her own local group of worshippers. The polis administered the
cults and religious festivals, and everyone was expected to participate in
these civic rituals. In contrast to Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Vedic India,
priests held little power in Greece; their purpose was to care for temples and
sacred property and to conduct the proper rituals, but not to make religious
or political rules or doctrines. Much religion was local and domestic, and
individual families honored various deities privately in their homes.
Along with public and family forms of honoring the gods, some Greeks
also participated in what later historians have termed mystery religions, in
which participants underwent an initiation ritual and gained secret
knowledge that they were forbidden to reveal to the uninitiated. Many of
these religions promised rebirth or an afterlife to adherents.
The Greeks also shared some Pan-Hellenic festivals, the chief of which
were held at Olympia to honor the god Zeus and at Delphi to honor the god
Apollo. The festivities at Olympia included athletic contests that inspired
the modern Olympic games. Held every four years after they started in 776
B.C.E., the contests attracted visitors from all over the Greek world and
lasted until the fourth century C.E., when they were banned by a Christian
emperor because they were pagan. The Pythian games at Delphi were also
held every four years, and these contests included musical and literary
competitions.

The Flowering of Philosophy

Just as the Greeks developed rituals to honor gods, they spun myths and
epics to explain the origins of the universe. Over time, however, some
Greeks began to question their old gods and myths, and they sought rational
rather than supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. These Greek
thinkers, based in Ionia, are called the Pre-Socratics because their rational
efforts preceded those of the better-known Socrates. Taking individual facts,
they wove them into general theories that led them to conclude that, despite
appearances, the universe is actually simple and subject to natural laws.
Drawing on their observations, the Pre-Socratics speculated about the
basic building blocks of the universe, and most decided that all things were
made of four simple substances: fire, air, earth, and water. Democritus (dih-
MAW-kruh-tuhs) (ca. 460–370 B.C.E.) broke this down further and created
the atomic theory that the universe is made up of invisible, indestructible
particles. The stream of thought started by the Pre-Socratics branched into
several directions. Hippocrates (hih-PAW-kruh-teez) (ca. 470–400 B.C.E.)
became the most prominent physician and teacher of medicine of his time.
He sought natural explanations for diseases and natural means to treat them.
Illness was caused not by evil spirits, he asserted, but by physical problems
in the body, particularly by imbalances in what he saw as four basic bodily
fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. In a healthy body these
fluids, called humors, were in perfect balance, and medical treatment of the
ill sought to help the body bring them back into balance. Hippocrates seems
to have advocated letting nature take its course and not intervening too
much, though later medicine based on the humoral theory would be much
more interventionist, with bloodletting emerging as the central treatment for
many illnesses.
The Sophists (SOFF-ihsts), a group of thinkers in fifth-century-B.C.E.
Athens, applied philosophical speculation to politics and language,
questioning the beliefs and laws of the polis to understand their origin. They
believed that excellence in both politics and language could be taught, and
they provided lessons for the young men of Athens who wished to learn
how to persuade others.
Socrates (SOK-ruh-teez) (ca. 470–399 B.C.E.), whose ideas are known
only through the works of others, also applied philosophy to politics and to
people. His approach when exploring ethical issues and defining concepts
was to start with a general topic or problem and to narrow the matter to its
essentials. He did so by continuously questioning participants in a
discussion or argument rather than lecturing, a process known as the
Socratic method. Many Athenians viewed Socrates with suspicion because
he challenged the traditional beliefs and values of Athens. His views
brought him into conflict with the government. The leaders of Athens tried
him for corrupting the youth of the city, and for impiety, that is, for not
believing in the gods honored in the city. In 399 B.C.E. they executed him.
Most of what we know about Socrates comes from his student Plato
(427–347 B.C.E.), who wrote dialogues in which Socrates asks questions and
who also founded the Academy, a school dedicated to philosophy. Plato
developed the theory that there are two worlds: the impermanent, changing
world that we know through our senses, and the eternal, unchanging realm
of “forms” that constitute the essence of true reality. According to Plato,
true knowledge and the possibility of living a virtuous life come from
contemplating ideal forms — what later came to be called Platonic ideals
— not from observing the visible world.
Plato’s student Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) believed that true knowledge
came from observation of the world, analysis of natural phenomena, and
logical reasoning, not contemplation. Aristotle thought that everything had a
purpose, so that to know something, one also had to know its function. The
range of Aristotle’s thought is staggering. His interests embraced logic,
ethics, natural science, physics, politics, poetry, and art. He studied the
heavens as well as earth and judged the earth to be the center of the
universe, with the stars and planets revolving around it. Plato’s idealism
profoundly shaped Western philosophy, but Aristotle came to have an even
wider influence. For many centuries in Europe, the authority of his ideas
was second only to the Bible’s, and his ideas had a great impact in the
Muslim world as well.
The philosophers of ancient Athens lived at roughly the same time as
major thinkers in religious and philosophical movements in other parts of
the world, including Mahavira (the founder of Jainism), the Buddha,
Confucius, and several prophets in Hebrew Scripture. All of these
individuals thought deeply about how to live a moral life, and all had
tremendous influence on later intellectual, religious, and social
developments. There is no evidence that they had any contact with one
another, but the parallels among them are strong enough that some
historians describe the period from about 800 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E. as the
“Axial Age,” by which they mean that this was a pivotal period of
intellectual and spiritual transformation.
Hellenistic Society, 323–30 B.C.E.
How did Alexander the Great’s conquests shape society in the Hellenistic period?

The Greek city-states wore themselves out fighting one another, and Philip
II, the ruler of Macedonia, a kingdom in the north of Greece, gradually
conquered one after another and took over their lands. He then turned
against the Persian Empire but was killed by an assassin. His son Alexander
continued the fight. Alexander conquered the entire Persian Empire from
Libya in the west to Bactria in the east (see Map 5.3). He also founded new
cities in which Greek and local populations mixed, although he died while
planning his next campaign. Alexander left behind an empire that quickly
broke into smaller kingdoms, but more important, his death in 323 B.C.E.
ushered in an era, the Hellenistic, in which Greek culture, the Greek
language, and Greek thought spread as far as India, blending with local
traditions.

From Polis to Monarchy, 404–200 B.C.E.

Immediately after the Peloponnesian War, Sparta began striving for empire
over all the Greeks but could not maintain its hold. In 371 B.C.E. an army
from the polis of Thebes destroyed the Spartan army, but the Thebans were
unable to bring peace to Greece. Philip II (r. 359–336 B.C.E.), ruler of the
kingdom of Macedonia on the northern border of Greece, turned the
situation to his advantage. By clever use of his wealth and superb army,
Philip won control of the northern Aegean, and in 338 B.C.E. he defeated a
combined Theban-Athenian army, conquering Greece.
After his victory, Philip united the Greek states with his Macedonian
kingdom and got the states to cooperate in a crusade to liberate the Ionian
Greeks from Persian rule. Before he could launch his crusade, Philip fell to
an assassin’s dagger in 336 B.C.E. His son Alexander vowed to carry on
Philip’s mission and led an army of Macedonians and Greeks into western
Asia. He won major battles against the Persians and seized Egypt from
them without a fight. He ordered the building of a new city where the Nile
meets the Mediterranean, a city that would soon be called Alexandria and
that within a century would grow into an enormous city, rivaling Chang-an
in China and Pataliputra in the Mauryan Empire of India.
By 330 B.C.E. the Persian Empire had fallen, but Alexander had no
intention of stopping, and he set out to conquer much of the rest of Asia.
After four years of fighting his soldiers crossed the Indus River (in the area
that is now Pakistan), and finally, at the Hyphasis River, the troops refused
to go farther. Alexander was enraged by the mutiny, but the army stood
firm. Still eager to explore the limits of the world, Alexander turned south
to the Arabian Sea and then back west (Map 5.3).

MAP 5.3 Alexander’s Conquests, 336–324 B.C.E.

Alexander’s campaign of conquest was extensive and speedy. More important than the
great success of his military campaigns was his founding of Hellenistic cities.
 Alexander died in Babylon in 323 B.C.E. from fever, wounds, and
excessive drinking. In just thirteen years he had created an empire that
stretched from his homeland of Macedonia to India, gaining the title “the
Great” along the way. His campaign swept away the Persian Empire, and in
its place he established a Macedonian monarchy, although this fell apart
with his death. Several of the chief Macedonian generals aspired to become
sole ruler, which led to civil wars that lasted for decades and tore
Alexander’s empire apart. By the end of these conflicts in about 300 B.C.E.,
the most successful generals had carved out their own smaller monarchies,
although these monarchies continued to be threatened by internal splits and
external attacks.
Ptolemy (TAH-luh-mee) seized Egypt, and his descendants, the
Ptolemies, ruled Egypt for nearly three hundred years, until the death of the
last Ptolemaic ruler, Cleopatra VII, in 30 B.C.E. Antigonus and his
descendants, the Antigonids (an-TIH-guh-nuhds), gained control of the
Macedonian kingdom in Europe, which they held until they were
overthrown by the Romans in 168 B.C.E. (see “Roman Expansion and Its
Repercussions” in Chapter 6). Seleucus won the bulk of Alexander’s
empire; his monarchy initially extended from western Asia to India,
although it gradually broke into smaller states. In terms of political stability
and peace, these monarchies were no improvement on the Greek polis.
To encourage obedience, Hellenistic kings often created ruler cults that
linked the king’s authority with that of the gods, or they adopted ruler cults
that already existed. This created a symbol of unity within kingdoms ruling
different peoples who at first had little in common. Kings sometimes gave
the cities in their territory all the external trappings of a polis, such as a
council or an assembly of citizens, but these had no power. The city was not
autonomous, as the polis had been, but had to follow royal orders.
Hellenistic rulers generally relied on paid professionals to staff their
bureaucracies and on trained, paid, full-time soldiers rather than citizen
hoplites to fight their wars.

Building a Hellenized Society

Alexander’s most important legacy was the spread of Greek ideas and
traditions across a wide area, a process scholars later called Hellenization.
To maintain contact with the Greek world as he moved farther eastward,
Alexander founded new cities and military colonies and settled Greek and
Macedonian troops and veterans in them. This practice continued after his
death. These cities and colonies became powerful instruments in the spread
of Hellenism and in the blending of Greek and other cultures. Wherever it
was established, the Hellenistic city resembled a modern city. It was a
cultural center with theaters, temples, and libraries — a seat of learning and
a place for amusement. The Hellenistic city was also an economic center —
a marketplace and a scene of trade and manufacturing.
The ruling dynasties of the Hellenistic world were Macedonian in
origin, and Greeks and Macedonians initially filled all important political,
military, and diplomatic positions. The prevailing institutions and laws were
Greek, and Greek became the common spoken language of the entire
eastern Mediterranean. Everyone who wanted to find an official position or
compete in business had to learn it. Those who did gained an avenue of
social mobility, and as early as the third century B.C.E. local people in some
Greek cities began to rise in power and prominence. Cultural influences in
the other direction occurred less frequently because they brought fewer
advantages. Few Greeks learned a non-Greek language unless they were
required to because of their official position. Greeks did begin to worship
local deities, but often these were somewhat Hellenized and their qualities
blended with those of an existing Greek god or goddess.
In the booming city of Alexandria, the Ptolemies generally promoted
Greek culture over that of the local Egyptians. This favoritism eventually
led to civil unrest, but it also led the Ptolemies to support anything that
enhanced Greek learning or traditions. Ptolemaic kings established what
became the largest library in the ancient world. Alexandria was also home
to the largest Jewish community in the ancient world, and here Jewish
scholars translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek for the first time.
The kings of Bactria and Parthia spread Greek culture far to the east,
and their kingdoms became outposts of Hellenism. Some Bactrian and
Parthian rulers converted to Buddhism, and the Buddhist ruler of the
Mauryan Empire in northern India, Ashoka, may have ordered translations
of his laws into Greek for the Greek-speaking residents of Bactria and
Parthia. In the second century B.C.E., after the collapse of the Mauryan
Empire, Bactrian armies conquered part of northern India, establishing
several small Indo-Greek states where the mixing of religious and artistic
traditions was particularly pronounced (see “Western Contact and the
Mauryan Unification of North India” in Chapter 3).
 Yet the spread of Greek culture was wider than it was deep, as it
generally did not extend far beyond the reaches of the cities. Many urban
residents adopted the aspects of Hellenism that they found useful, but
people in the countryside generally did not embrace it, nor were they
encouraged to.

The Growth of Trade and Commerce

Not only did Alexander’s conquests change the political face of the ancient
world, but the spread of Greeks eastward also created new markets, causing
trade to flourish. The economic connections of the Hellenistic world later
proved valuable to the Romans, allowing them to trade products and ideas
more easily over a broad area.
Alexander used the wealth of the Persian Empire to finance the building
of roads, the development of harbors, and especially, as noted earlier, the
founding of new cities. These cities opened whole new markets to
merchants. Whenever possible, merchants sent their goods by water, but
overland trade also became more prominent in the Hellenistic era. This
period also saw the development of standardized business customs, so that
merchants of different nationalities communicated in a way understandable
to them all. Trade was further facilitated by the coining of money, which
provided merchants with a standard way to value goods as well as a
convenient method of payment.
The increased volume of trade helped create prosperity that made
luxury goods affordable to more people. As a result, overland traders
brought easily transportable luxuries such as gold, silver, and precious
stones to market. They extended their networks into China, from which the
most prominent good in terms of volume was silk. The trade in silk later
gave the major east-west route its name: the Great Silk Road. In return the
peoples of the eastern Mediterranean sent east manufactured or extracted
goods, especially metal weapons, cloth, wine, and olive oil. (For more on
the Silk Road in East Asia, see “Inner Asia and the Silk Road” in Chapter
7.)
More economically important than trade in exotic goods were
commercial dealings in essential commodities like raw materials and grain
and industrial products such as pottery. Most trade in bulk commodities like
grain and wood was seaborne.
 For the cities of Greece and the Aegean, the trade in grain was essential
because many of them could not grow enough in their mountainous terrain.
Fortunately for them, abundant wheat supplies were available nearby in
Egypt and in the area north of the Black Sea. The Greek cities often paid for
their grain by exporting olive oil, wine, honey, dried fruit, nuts, and
vegetables. Another significant commodity supplied by the Greeks was fish,
which for export was salted, pickled, or dried.
Slaves were a staple of Hellenistic trade, traveling in all directions on
both land and sea routes. War provided prisoners for the slave market; to a
lesser extent, so did kidnapping and capture by pirates, although the origin
of most slaves is unknown. Both old Greek states and new Hellenistic
kingdoms were ready slave markets, and throughout the Mediterranean
world slaves were almost always in demand for work in shops, fields,
farms, mines, and the homes of wealthier people.
Despite the increase in trade, the Hellenistic period did not see
widespread improvements in the way most people lived and worked. Cities
flourished, but many people who lived in rural areas were actually worse
off than they had been before, because of higher levels of rents and taxes.
Technology was applied to military needs, but not to the production of food
or other goods. Manual labor, not machinery, continued to turn out the
agricultural produce, raw materials, and manufactured goods the Hellenistic
world used.
Hellenistic Religion, Philosophy, and Science
How did religion, philosophy, and science develop in the Hellenistic world?

The mixing of peoples in the Hellenistic era influenced religion,

philosophy, and science. The Hellenistic kings built temples to the old
Olympian gods and promoted rituals and ceremonies like those in earlier
Greek cities, but new deities also gained prominence. More people turned to
mystery religions that blended Greek and non-Greek elements. Others
turned to practical philosophies that provided advice on how to live a good
life. In the scholarly realm, Hellenistic thinkers made advances in
mathematics, astronomy, and mechanical design. Additionally, physicians
used observation and dissection to better understand the way the human
body works.

Religion in the Hellenistic World

When Hellenistic kings founded cities, they also built temples for the old
Olympian gods. In this way they spread Greek religious beliefs throughout
the Hellenistic world. Greeks and non-Greeks in the Hellenistic world also
honored and worshipped deities that had not been important in the Hellenic
period or that were a blend of imported Greek and indigenous gods and
goddesses. Tyche (TIGH-kee), for example, was a new deity, the goddess
and personification of luck, fate, chance, and fortune. Many people also
believed that magic rituals and spells that invoked Tyche along with other
Greek and non-Greek deities were effective, and they sought the assistance
of individuals reputed to have special knowledge or powers in convincing
supernatural forces to help them or to leave them alone.
Increasingly, many people were attracted to mystery religions, which in
the Hellenic period had been linked to specific gods in particular places,
which meant that people who wished to become members had to travel. But
new mystery religions, like Hellenistic culture in general, were not tied to a
particular place; instead they were spread throughout the Hellenistic world,
and temples of the new deities sprang up wherever Greeks lived.
Mystery religions incorporated aspects of both Greek and non-Greek
religions and claimed to save their adherents from the worst that fate could
do. Most taught that by the rites of initiation, in which the secrets of the
religion were shared, devotees became united with a deity who had also
died and risen from the dead. The sacrifice of the god and his victory over
death saved the devotee from eternal death. Similarly, mystery religions
demanded a period of preparation in which the converts strove to become
pure and holy, that is, to live by the religion’s precepts. Once aspirants had
prepared themselves, they went through the initiation, usually a ritual of
great emotional intensity symbolizing the entry into a new life.
Among the mystery religions, the Egyptian cult of Isis took the
Hellenistic world by storm. In Egyptian mythology Isis brought her
husband, Osiris, back to life (see “The Nile and the God-King” in Chapter
2), and during the Hellenistic era this power came to be understood by her
followers as extending to them as well. She promised to save any mortal
who came to her, and her priests asserted that she had bestowed on
humanity the gift of civilization and founded law and literature. Isis was
understood to be a devoted mother as well as a devoted wife, and she
became the goddess of marriage, conception, and childbirth. She became
the most important goddess of the Hellenistic world. Devotion to Isis, and
to many other mystery religions, spread to the Romans as well as the
Greeks when the two civilizations came into greater contact.
 Isis and Horus In this small statue
from Egypt, the goddess Isis is
shown suckling her son, Horus.
Worship of Isis spread throughout
the Hellenistic world; her followers
believed that Isis offered them life
after death, just as she had
brought Horus’s father, Osiris,
back to life.

Philosophy and Its Guidance for Life

While some people turned to mystery religions to overcome Tyche and
provide something permanent in a world that seemed unstable, others
turned to philosophy. Several new schools of philosophical thought
emerged in the Hellenistic period. One of these was Epicureanism, a
practical philosophy of serenity in an often-tumultuous world. Epicurus
(340–270 B.C.E.) decided that the principal goods of human life were
contentment and pleasure, which he defined as the absence of pain, fear,
and suffering. By encouraging the pursuit of pleasure, he was not
advocating drunken revels or sexual excess, which he thought caused pain,
but promoting moderation. Epicurus also taught that individuals could most
easily attain peace and serenity by ignoring the outside world and looking
instead into their personal feelings. His followers ignored politics because it
led to tumult, which would disturb the soul.
Zeno (335–262 B.C.E.), a philosopher from Cyprus, advanced a different
concept of human beings and the universe. Zeno first came to Athens to
form his own school, the Stoa. His philosophy, Stoicism (STOH-uh-sih-
zuhm), in turn, came to be named for his school. Zeno and his followers
considered nature an expression of divine will; in their view, people could
be happy only when living in accordance with nature. They stressed the
unity of humans and the universe, stating that all people were obliged to
help one another.
The Stoics’ most lasting practical achievement was the creation of the
concept of natural law. They concluded that as all people were kindred,
partook of divine reason, and were in harmony with the universe, one
natural law governed them all.

Hellenistic Science and Medicine

Hellenistic thinkers made advances in mathematics, astronomy, and
mechanical design. The most notable of the Hellenistic astronomers was
Aristarchus of Samos (ca. 310–230 B.C.E.). Aristarchus rightly concluded
that the sun is far larger than the earth and that the stars are enormously
distant from the earth. He also argued against Aristotle’s view that the earth
is the center of the universe, instead propounding the heliocentric theory —
that the earth and planets revolve around the sun.
In geometry Euclid (YOO-kluhd) (fl. ca. 300 B.C.E.), a mathematician
living in Alexandria, compiled a valuable textbook of existing knowledge.
His Elements of Geometry became the standard introduction to the subject.
 The greatest thinker of the Hellenistic period was Archimedes (ahr-kuh-
MEE-deez) (ca. 287–212 B.C.E.). A clever inventor, he devised new artillery
for military purposes. In peacetime he created the water screw to draw
water from a lower to a higher level. He also invented the compound pulley
to lift heavy weights. His chief interest, however, lay in pure mathematics.
He founded the science of hydrostatics (the study of fluids at rest) and
discovered the principle that the weight of a solid floating in a liquid is
equal to the weight of the liquid displaced by the solid.
Eratosthenes (ehr-uh-TOSS-thuh-neez) (285–ca. 204 B.C.E.), who was
the librarian of the vast Ptolemaic royal library in Alexandria, used
mathematics to further the geographical studies for which he is most
famous. He concluded that the earth is a spherical globe and calculated the
circumference of the earth geometrically with remarkable accuracy.
As the new artillery devised by Archimedes indicates, Hellenistic
science was used for purposes of war as well as peace. Theories of
mechanics were applied to build military machines. The catapult became
the most widely used artillery piece. As the Assyrians had earlier, engineers
built siege towers, large wooden structures that served as artillery platforms,
and put them on wheels so that soldiers could roll them up to a town’s
walls. Generals added battering rams to bring down large portions of walls.
If these new engines made warfare more efficient, they also added to the
misery of the people, as war often directly involved the populations of
cities. War and illness fed the need for medical advances, and doctors as
well as scientists combined observation with theory during the Hellenistic
period. Herophilus, who lived in the first half of the third century B.C.E.,
worked in Alexandria and studied the writings attributed to Hippocrates. He
approached the study of medicine in a systematic, scientific fashion: he
dissected dead bodies and measured what he observed. His students carried
on his work, searching for the causes and nature of illness and pain.
Medical study did not lead to effective cures for the infectious diseases
that were the leading cause of death for most people, however, and people
attempted to combat illness in a variety of ways. Medicines prescribed by
physicians or prepared at home often included natural products blended
with materials understood to work magically. People in the Hellenistic
world may have thought that fate determined what would happen, but they
also actively sought to make their lives longer and healthier.
Chapter Summary
Greece’s mountainous terrain encouraged the development of small,
independent communities and political fragmentation. Sometime after 2000
B.C.E. two kingdoms — the Minoan on Crete and the Mycenaean on the
mainland — did emerge, but these remained smaller than the great empires
of Mesopotamia, India, and China. The fall of these kingdoms led to a
period of disruption and decline known as the Greek Dark Age (ca. 1100–
800 B.C.E.). However, Greek culture survived, and Greeks developed the
independent city-state, known as the polis. Greeks also established colonies
and traveled and traded as far east as the Black Sea and as far west as the
Atlantic Ocean. Two poleis became especially powerful: Sparta, which
created a military state in which men remained in the army most of their
lives, and Athens, which created a democracy in which male citizens had a
direct voice. In the classical period, between 500 B.C.E. and 338 B.C.E.,
Greeks engaged in war with the Persians and with one another, but they also
created drama, philosophy, and magnificent art and architecture.
In the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. the Greek city-states were
conquered by the Macedonians under King Philip II and his son Alexander.
Alexander conquered the entire Persian Empire and founded new cities in
which Greek and local populations mixed. His successors continued to
build cities and colonies, which were centers of trade and spread Greek
culture over a broad area, extending as far east as India. The mixing of
peoples in the Hellenistic era influenced religion, philosophy, and science.
New deities gained prominence, and many people turned to mystery
religions that blended Greek and non-Greek elements as they offered
followers secret knowledge and eternal life. Others turned to practical
philosophies that provided advice on how to live a good life. Advances
were made in technology, mathematics, science, and medicine, but these
were applied primarily to military purposes, not to improving the way
ordinary people lived and worked.
 CONNECTIONS

The ancient Greeks built on the achievements of earlier societies in the

eastern Mediterranean, but they also added new elements, including drama,
philosophy, science, and realistic art. Eventually the Greek world was
largely conquered by the Romans, as you will learn in the following
chapter, and the various Hellenistic monarchies became part of the Roman
Empire. In cultural terms the lines of conquest were reversed: the Romans
derived their alphabet from the Greek alphabet, though they changed the
letters somewhat. Roman statuary was modeled on Greek and was often, in
fact, made by Greek sculptors, who found ready customers among wealthy
Romans. Furthermore, the major Roman gods and goddesses were largely
the same as Greek ones, though they had different names. Although the
Romans did not seem to have been particularly interested in the speculative
philosophy of Socrates and Plato, they were drawn to the more practical
philosophies of the Epicureans and Stoics. And like the Hellenistic Greeks,
many Romans turned to mystery religions that offered secret knowledge
and promised eternal life.
The influence of the ancient Greeks was not limited to the Romans, of
course. The cities and military colonies founded in the wake of Alexander’s
conquests spread Greek ideas and culture around the entire eastern
Mediterranean and eastward to Central and South Asia — today’s
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. As discussed in Chapter 3, art and
thought in northern India were shaped by the blending of Greek and
Buddhist traditions. And as you will see in Chapter 15, European thinkers
and writers made conscious attempts to return to classical ideals in art,
literature, and philosophy during the Renaissance. In the United States
political leaders from the Revolutionary era on decided that important
government buildings should be modeled on the Parthenon or other
temples. In some ways, capitol buildings in the United States are good
symbols of the legacy of Greece — gleaming ideals of harmony, freedom,
democracy, and beauty that (as with all ideals) do not always correspond
with realities.
Chapter 5 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

polis (p. 99)

hoplites (p. 100)
democracy (p. 101)
oligarchy (p. 101)
mystery religions (p. 107)
Platonic ideals (p. 108)
Hellenistic (p. 109)
Hellenization (p. 111)
Epicureanism (p. 114)
Stoicism (p. 114)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. How did the geography of Greece shape its earliest history? (p. 96)
2. What was the role of the polis in Greek society? (p. 99)
3. In the classical period, how did war influence Greece, and how did the arts,
religion, and philosophy develop? (p. 103)
4. How did Alexander the Great’s conquests shape society in the Hellenistic period?
(p. 109)
5. How did religion, philosophy, and science develop in the Hellenistic world? (p. 113)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. Philosophers and religious thinkers in ancient India, China, and Greece, such as
Mahavira and the Buddha (Chapter 3), Confucius and Zhuangzi (Chapter 4), and
Socrates and Zeno (this chapter), all developed ideas about the ultimate aim of
human life. What similarities and differences do you see among them?
2. The Persian Empire (Chapter 2) first brought India and the Mediterranean in
contact with one another, and these contacts increased with the conquests of
Alexander (Chapter 3 and this chapter). What were the major results of these
contacts in terms of politics, culture, and economics?
3. Cities had existed in the areas conquered by Alexander long before his conquests.
What would the residents of Sumer or Babylon (Chapter 2), the early cities of the
Indus River Valley (Chapter 3), and a Hellenistic city find unusual about one
another’s cities? What would seem familiar?
4. Looking at your own town or city, what evidence do you find of the cultural legacy
of ancient Greece?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 3000–800 B.C.E. • Helladic period (Bronze Age) in Greece

ca. 2000–1100 B.C.E. • Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations
ca. 1570–1070 B.C.E. • New Kingdom in Egypt (Ch. 2)
ca. 1500–1050 B.C.E. • Shang Dynasty in China (Ch. 4)
ca. 1500–500 B.C.E. • Vedic Age in India (Ch. 3)
ca. 1500–300 B.C.E. • Olmec civilization in Mexico (Ch. 11)
ca. 1200–323 B.C.E. • Hellenic period
ca. 1100–800 B.C.E. • Greece’s Dark Age; population declines, trade
decreases, writing disappears
ca. 800–500 B.C.E. • Archaic age; rise of the polis; Greek colonization of the
Mediterranean
ca. 700–500 B.C.E. • Sparta and Athens develop distinctive political
institutions
ca. 500–338 B.C.E. • Classical period; development of drama, philosophy,
and major building projects in Athens
499–404 B.C.E. • Persian and Peloponnesian wars
336–324 B.C.E. • Alexander the Great’s military campaigns
323–ca. 300 B.C.E. • Civil wars lead to the establishment of the Ptolemaic,
Antigonid, and Seleucid dynasties
323–30 B.C.E. • Hellenistic period
168 B.C.E. • Roman overthrow of the Antigonid dynasty
30 B.C.E. • Roman conquest of Egypt; Ptolemaic dynasty ends
6
The World of Rome

ca. 1000 B.C.E.–400 C.E.

Chapter Preview

The Romans in Italy

• How did the Romans come to dominate Italy, and what political institutions did
they create?

Roman Expansion and Its Repercussions

• How did Rome expand its power beyond Italy, and what were the effects of
this expansion?

Rome and the Provinces

• What was life like in Rome, and what was it like in the provinces?

The Coming of Christianity

• What was Christianity, and how did it affect life in the Roman Empire?

Turmoil and Reform

• How did the emperors respond to political, economic, and religious issues in
the third and fourth centuries?

LIKE THE PERSIANS UNDER CYRUS, THE MAURYANS UNDER Chandragupta, and the
Macedonians under Alexander, the Romans conquered vast territories. With a republican
government under the leadership of the Senate, a political assembly whose members were
primarily wealthy landowners, the Romans conquered all of Italy, then the western
Mediterranean basin, and then areas in the East that had been part of Alexander the
Great’s empire. As they did, they learned about and incorporated Greek art, literature,
philosophy, and religion, but the wars of conquest also led to serious problems that the
Senate proved unable to handle. After a grim period of civil war that ended in 31 B.C.E., the
emperor Augustus restored peace and expanded Roman power and law as far east as the
Euphrates River, creating the institution that the modern world calls the “Roman Empire.”
Later emperors extended Roman authority farther still, so that at its largest the Roman
Empire stretched from England to Egypt and from Portugal to Persia.
Roman history is generally divided into three periods: the monarchical period,
traditionally dated from 753 B.C.E. to 509 B.C.E., in which the city of Rome was ruled by
kings; the republic, traditionally dated from 509 B.C.E. to 27 B.C.E., in which it was ruled by
the Senate; and the empire, from 27 B.C.E. to 476 C.E., in which Roman territories were
ruled by an emperor.
The Romans in Italy
How did the Romans come to dominate Italy, and what political institutions did they
create?

The colonies established by Greek poleis (city-states) in the Hellenic era

included a number along the coast of southern Italy and Sicily. So many
Greek settlers came to this area that it later became known as Magna
Graecia — Greater Greece. These Greek colonies transmitted much of their
culture to people who lived farther north in the Italian peninsula. These
included the Etruscans (ih-TRUHS-kuhns), who built the first cities north of
Magna Graecia, and then the Romans, who eventually came to dominate the
peninsula. In addition to allying with conquered peoples and granting them
citizenship, the Romans established a republic ruled by a Senate. However,
social conflicts over the rights to power eventually erupted and had to be
resolved.

The Etruscans
The culture that is now called Etruscan developed in north-central Italy
about 800 B.C.E. The Etruscans most likely originated in Turkey or
elsewhere in southwest Asia, although when they migrated to Italy is not
clear. The Etruscans spoke a language that was very different from Greek
and Latin, but they adopted the Greek alphabet to write their language.
The Etruscans established permanent settlements that evolved into cities
resembling the Greek city-states (see “Organization of the Polis” in Chapter
5) and thereby built a rich cultural life, full of art and music, that became
the foundation of civilization in much of Italy. They spread their influence
over the surrounding countryside, which they farmed and mined for its rich
mineral resources. From an early period the Etruscans began to trade
natural products, especially iron, with their Greek neighbors to the south
and with other peoples throughout the Mediterranean in exchange for
luxury goods. Etruscan cities appear to have been organized in leagues, and
beginning about 750 B.C.E. the Etruscans expanded southward into central
Italy through military actions and through the establishment of colony
cities. In the process they encountered a small collection of villages
subsequently called Rome.

The Founding of Rome

Archaeological evidence indicates that the ancestors of the Romans began
to settle on the hills east of the Tiber during the early Iron Age, around 1000
B.C.E. to 800 B.C.E. Later Romans told a number of stories about the founding
of Rome. These mix legend and history, but they illustrate the traditional
ethics, morals, and ideals of Rome.
According to legend, Romulus and Remus founded the city of Rome, an
event later Roman authors dated precisely to 753 B.C.E. These twin brothers
were the sons of the war god Mars, and their mother, Rhea Silvia, was a
descendant of Aeneas, a brave and pious Trojan who left Troy after it was
destroyed by the Greeks in the Trojan War. The brothers, who were left to
die by a jealous uncle, were raised by a female wolf. When they were
grown they decided to build a city, but quarreled over its location; Romulus
killed Remus and named the city after himself. He also established a
council of advisers later called the Senate. He and his mostly male
followers expanded their power over neighboring peoples, in part by
abducting and marrying their women. The women then arranged a peace by
throwing themselves between their brothers and their husbands, convincing
them that killing kin would make the men cursed. The Romans, favored by
the gods, continued their rise to power. This founding myth ascribes
positive traits to the Romans: they are descended from gods and heroes, can
thrive in wild and tough settings, will defend their boundaries at all costs,
and mix with other peoples rather than simply conquering them. Also, the
story portrays women who were ancestors of Rome as virtuous and brave.
Later Roman historians continued the story by describing a series of
kings after Romulus, each elected by the Senate. According to tradition, the
last three kings were Etruscan, and another tale about female virtue was told
to explain why the Etruscan kings were overthrown. In this story, the son of
King Tarquin, the Etruscan king who ruled Rome, raped Lucretia, a virtuous
Roman wife, in her own home. She demanded that her husband and father
seek vengeance and then committed suicide in front of them. Her father and
husband and the other Roman nobles swore to avenge Lucretia’s death by
throwing out the Etruscan kings, and they did. The Romans generally
accepted this story as historical fact and dated the expulsion of the Etruscan
kings to 509 B.C.E. They thus saw this year as marking the end of the
monarchical period and the dawn of the republic, which had come about
because of a wronged woman and her demands.
Most historians today view the idea that Etruscan kings ruled the city of
Rome as legendary, but they stress the influence of the Etruscans on Rome.
The Etruscans transformed Rome into a real city with walls, temples, a
drainage system, and other urban structures. The Romans adopted the
Etruscan alphabet, which the Etruscans themselves had adopted from the
Greeks. Even the toga came from the Etruscans, as did gladiatorial combat
honoring the dead. In engineering and architecture the Romans adopted
some design elements and the basic plan of their temples, along with paved
roads, from the Etruscans.
In this early period the city of Rome does appear to have been ruled by
kings. A hereditary aristocracy advised the kings and may have played a
role in choosing them. And sometime in the sixth century B.C.E. a group of
aristocrats revolted against these kings and established a government in
which the main institution of power would be the Senate, an assembly of
aristocrats, rather than a single monarch. Executive power was in the hands
of leaders called consuls, who commanded the army in battle, administered
state business, and supervised financial affairs, but there were always two
of them and they were elected for one-year terms only, not for life. Rome
thereby became a republic, not a monarchy. Thus at the core of the myths is
a bit of history.

The Roman Conquest of Italy

In the years following the establishment of the republic, the Romans fought
numerous wars with their neighbors on the Italian peninsula. The Roman
army was made up primarily of citizens of Rome, who were organized for
military campaigns into legions. War also involved diplomacy, at which the
Romans became masters.
In 387 B.C.E. the Romans suffered a major setback when the Celts — or
Gauls, as the Romans called them — invaded the Italian peninsula from the
north and sacked the city of Rome. The Celts agreed to abandon Rome in
return for a thousand pounds of gold. In the century that followed, the
Romans rebuilt their city and recouped their losses. They brought Latium
and their Latin allies fully under their control and conquered Etruria. In a
series of bitter wars the Romans also subdued southern Italy and then
turned north. Their superior military institutions, organization, and
manpower allowed them to conquer or bring under their influence most of
Italy by about 265 B.C.E. (Map 6.1).

MAP 6.1 Roman Italy and the City of Rome, ca. 218 B.C.E.
As Rome expanded, it built roads linking major cities and offered various degrees of
citizenship to the territories it conquered or with which it made alliances. The territories
outlined in blue that are separate from the Italian peninsula were added by 218 B.C.E.,
largely as a result of the Punic Wars.

As they expanded their territory, the Romans spread their religious

traditions throughout Italy, blending them with local beliefs and practices.
Religion for the Romans was largely a matter of honoring one’s own
ancestors and kin, and showing loyalty to the state. The main goal of
religion was to secure the peace of the gods and to harness divine power for
public and private enterprises. Religious rituals were an important way of
expressing common civic values, which for Romans meant those evident in
their foundation myths: bravery, morality, seriousness, family, and home.
Victorious generals made sure to honor the gods of people they had
conquered and by doing so transformed them into gods they could also call
on for assistance in their future campaigns. As the Romans conquered the
cities of Magna Graecia, the Greek deities were absorbed into the Roman
pantheon.
Once they had conquered an area, the Romans did what the Persians had
earlier done to help cement their new territory: they built roads. Roman
roads facilitated the flow of communication, trade, and armies from the
capital to outlying areas.
In politics the Romans shared full Roman citizenship with many of their
oldest allies, particularly the inhabitants of the cities of Latium. In other
instances they granted citizenship without the franchise, that is, without the
right to vote or hold Roman office. These allies were subject to Roman
taxes and calls for military service but ran their own local affairs.

The Roman State

Along with citizenship, the republican government was another important
institution of Roman political life. The Romans summed up their political
existence in a single phrase: senatus populusque Romanus, “the Senate and
the Roman people,” which they abbreviated “SPQR.” This phrase stands for
the beliefs, customs, and laws of the republic — its unwritten constitution
that evolved over two centuries to meet the demands of the governed.
In the early republic, social divisions determined the shape of politics.
Political power was in the hands of a hereditary aristocracy — the
patricians, whose privileged legal status was determined by their birth as
members of certain families. The common people of Rome, the plebeians
(plih-BEE-uhns), were free citizens with a voice in politics, but they had
few of the patricians’ political and social advantages. While some plebeian
merchants rivaled the patricians in wealth, most plebeians were poor
artisans, small farmers, and landless urban dwellers.
 Coin Showing a Voter This coin
from 63 B.C.E. shows a citizen
dropping a tablet into a voting urn,
the Roman equivalent of today’s
ballot box. The V on the tablet
means a yes vote, and an
inscription on the coin identifies
the moneyer, the official who
controlled coin production and
decided what would be shown on
the coins. This moneyer, Lucius
Cassius Longinus, depicted a vote
held fifty years earlier about
whether an ancestor of his should
be named prosecutor in a trial
charging three vestal virgins with
unchastity. As was common
among moneyers, Longinus chose
this image as a way to advance
his political career, in this case by
suggesting his family’s long history
of public office.

The Romans created several assemblies through which men elected high
officials and passed ordinances. The most important of these was the
Senate. During the republic, the Senate advised the consuls and other
officials about military and political matters and handled government
finances. Because the Senate sat year after year with the same members,
while the consuls changed annually, it provided stability, and its advice
came to have the force of law. Another responsibility of the Senate was to
handle relations between Rome and other powers.
The highest officials of the republic were the two consuls, positions
initially open only to patrician men. The consuls commanded the army in
battle, administered state business, and supervised financial affairs. When
the consuls were away from Rome, praetors (PREE-tuhrz) could act in their
place. After the age of overseas conquests (see “Roman Expansion and Its
Repercussions”), the Romans divided their lands in the Mediterranean into
provinces governed by ex-consuls and ex-praetors.
A lasting achievement of the Romans was their development of law.
Roman civil law, the ius civile, consisted of statutes, customs, and forms of
procedure that regulated the lives of citizens. As the Romans came into
more frequent contact with foreigners, the praetors applied a broader ius
gentium, the “law of the peoples,” to such matters as peace treaties, the
treatment of prisoners of war, and the exchange of diplomats. In the ius
gentium, all sides were to be treated the same regardless of their nationality.
By the late republic, Roman jurists had widened this still further into the
concept of ius naturale, “natural law” based in part on Stoic beliefs (see
“Philosophy and Its Guidance for Life” in Chapter 5). Natural law,
according to these thinkers, is made up of rules that govern human behavior
that come from applying reason rather than customs or traditions, and so
apply to all societies. In reality, Roman officials generally interpreted the
law to the advantage of Rome, of course, at least to the extent that the
strength of Roman armies allowed them to enforce it. But Roman law came
to be seen as one of Rome’s most important legacies.

Social Conflict in Rome

Inequality between plebeians and patricians led to a conflict known as the
Struggle of the Orders. In this conflict the plebeians sought to increase their
power by taking advantage of the fact that Rome’s survival depended on its
army, which needed plebeians to fill the ranks of the infantry. According to
tradition, in 494 B.C.E. the plebeians literally walked out of Rome and
refused to serve in the army. Their general strike worked, and the patricians
made important concessions. They allowed the plebeians to elect their own
officials, the tribunes, who could bring plebeian grievances to the Senate for
resolution and could also veto the decisions of the consuls. Thus, as in
Archaic age Greece (see “The Development of the Polis in the Archaic
Age” in Chapter 5), political rights were broadened because of military
needs for foot soldiers.
The law itself was the plebeians’ primary target. Only the patricians
knew what the law was, and only they could argue cases in court. All too
often they used the law for their own benefit. The plebeians wanted the law
codified and published. After much struggle, in 449 B.C.E. the patricians
surrendered their legal monopoly and codified and published the Laws of
the Twelve Tables. The patricians also made legal procedures public so that
plebeians could argue cases in court. Several years later the patricians
passed a law that for the first time allowed patricians and plebeians to marry
one another.
After a ten-year battle, the Licinian-Sextian laws passed in 367 B.C.E.
gave wealthy plebeians access to all the offices of Rome, including the right
to hold one of the two consulships. Once plebeians could hold the
consulship, they could also sit in the Senate and advise on policy. Though
decisive, this victory did not automatically end the Struggle of the Orders.
That happened only in 287 B.C.E. with the passage of the lex Hortensia,
which gave the resolutions of the concilium plebis, the plebeian assembly,
the force of law for patricians and plebeians alike.
Roman Expansion and Its Repercussions
How did Rome expand its power beyond Italy, and what were the effects of this
expansion?

As the republican government was developing, Roman territory continued

to expand. The Romans conquered lands all around the Mediterranean,
bringing them unheard-of power and wealth. As a result, many Romans
became more cosmopolitan and comfortable, and they were especially
influenced by the culture of one conquered land: Greece. Yet social unrest
also came in the wake of the wars, opening unprecedented opportunities for
ambitious generals who wanted to rule Rome like an empire. A series of
civil wars ensued, wars that republican government did not survive.

Overseas Conquests and the Punic Wars, 264–133 B.C.E.

The Romans did not map out grandiose strategies to conquer the world.
Rather they responded to situations as they arose. This meant that they
sought to eliminate any state they saw as a military threat.
Their presence in southern Italy brought the Romans to the island of
Sicily, where they confronted another great power in the western
Mediterranean, Carthage (CAHR-thij). The city of Carthage had been
founded by Phoenicians as a trading colony in the eighth century B.C.E. (see
“Iron and the Emergence of New States” in Chapter 2). By the fourth
century B.C.E. the Carthaginians began to expand their holdings. At the end
of a long string of wars, the Carthaginians had created a mercantile empire
that stretched from western Sicily to beyond Gibraltar.
The conflicting ambitions of the Romans and Carthaginians led to the
first of the three Punic Wars. During the course of the first war, which
lasted from 264 B.C.E. to 241 B.C.E., Rome built a navy and defeated
Carthage in a series of sea battles. Sicily became Rome’s first province, but
despite a peace treaty, the conflict was not over.
Carthaginian armies moved into Spain, where Rome was also claiming
territory. The brilliant Carthaginian general Hannibal (ca. 247–183 B.C.E.)
marched an army of tens of thousands of troops — and, more famously,
several dozen war elephants — from Spain across what is now France and
over the Alps into Italy, beginning the Second Punic (PYOO-nik) War
(218–201 B.C.E.). Hannibal won three major victories, including a
devastating blow at Cannae in southeastern Italy in 216 B.C.E. He then
spread devastation throughout Italy. Yet Hannibal was not able to win areas
near Rome in central Italy.
The Roman general Scipio Africanus (ca. 236–ca. 183 B.C.E.) took Spain
from the Carthaginians and then struck directly at Carthage itself,
prompting the Carthaginians to recall Hannibal from Italy to defend the
homeland. In 202 B.C.E., near the town of Zama, Scipio defeated Hannibal in
one of the world’s truly decisive battles. Scipio’s victory meant that the
world of the western Mediterranean would henceforth be Roman. Roman
language, law, and culture, fertilized by Greek influences, would in time
permeate this entire region.
The Second Punic War contained the seeds of still other wars. Unabated
fear of Carthage led to the Third Punic War (149–146 B.C.E.), a needless,
unjust, and savage conflict that ended with obliteration of the city of
Carthage itself.
After the Second Punic War, the Romans turned east. Roman victory in
Macedonia turned Antigonid Macedonia into a Roman province. Then they
moved farther east and defeated the Seleucid monarchy. In 133 B.C.E. the
king of Pergamum in Asia Minor willed his kingdom to Rome when he
died. The Ptolemies of Egypt retained formal control of their kingdom, but
they obeyed Roman wishes in terms of trade policy. Declaring the
Mediterranean mare nostrum, “our sea,” the Romans began to create a
political and administrative machinery to hold the Mediterranean together
under a system of provinces ruled by governors sent from Rome.

New Influences and Old Values in Roman Culture

With the conquest of the Mediterranean world, Rome became a great city.
The spoils of war went to build theaters, stadiums, and other places of
amusement, and Romans and Italian townspeople began to spend more of
their time in leisure pursuits. This new urban culture reflected Hellenistic
influences. Romans developed a liking for Greek literature and art, and it
became common for an educated Roman to speak both Latin and Greek.
Furthermore, the Roman conquest of the Hellenistic East resulted in
wholesale confiscation of Greek paintings and sculpture to grace Roman
temples, public buildings, and private homes.
 The Greek custom of bathing also gained popularity in the Roman
world. Increasingly, Romans built large public buildings containing pools
supplied by intricate systems of aqueducts. These structures were more than
just places to bathe. Baths included gymnasia where men exercised, snack
bars and halls where people chatted and read, and even libraries and lecture
halls. Women had opportunities to bathe, generally in separate facilities or
at separate times, and both women and men went to the baths to see and be
seen. Conservative commentators objected to these new pastimes as a
corruption of traditional Roman values, but most Romans saw them as a
normal part of urban life.
 Roman Bath This Roman bath in Bath, England (a city to which it gave its name), was
built around a natural hot spring beginning in the first century C.E. The Romans spread
the custom of bathing, which they had adopted from the Greeks, to the outer reaches of
their empire. In addition to hot water, bathers used oil for massage and metal scrapers to
clean and exfoliate their skin. Many Roman artifacts have been unearthed at Bath,
including a number of curse tablets, small tablets made of lead calling on the gods to
harm someone, which were common in the Greco-Roman world. Not surprisingly, many of
the curse tablets found at Bath relate to the theft of clothing while people were bathing.

New customs did not change the core Roman social structures. The
male head of the household was called the paterfamilias, and he had great
power over his children. Fathers had the power to decide how family
resources should be spent, and sons did not inherit until after their fathers
had died. Women could inherit and own property, though they generally
received a smaller portion of any family inheritance than their brothers did.
The Romans praised women, like Lucretia of old, who were virtuous and
loyal to their husbands and devoted to their children. Very young children
were under their mother’s care, and most children learned the skills they
needed from their own parents. For children from wealthier urban families,
opportunities for formal education increased in the late republic. Boys and
girls might be educated in their homes by tutors, and boys also might go to
a school, paid for by their parents.
An influx of slaves from Rome’s conquests provided labor for the
fields, mines, and cities. To the Romans slavery was a misfortune that befell
some people, but it did not entail any racial theories. For loyal slaves the
Romans always held out the possibility of freedom, and manumission —
the freeing of individual slaves by their masters — became common.
Nonetheless, slaves rebelled from time to time in large-scale revolts, which
were put down by Roman armies.
Membership in a family did not end with death, as the spirits of the
family’s ancestors were understood to remain with the family. They and
other gods regarded as protectors of the household were represented by
small statues that were kept in a special cupboard, honored at family
celebrations, and taken with the family when they moved.

The Late Republic and the Rise of Augustus, 133–27 B.C.E.

The wars of conquest eventually created serious political problems for the
Romans. When the soldiers returned home, they found their farms
practically in ruins. Many were forced to sell their land to ready buyers who
had grown rich from the wars. These wealthy men created huge estates
called latifundia. Now landless, veterans moved to the cities, especially
Rome, but could not find work. These developments not only created unrest
in the city but also threatened Rome’s army by reducing its ranks, because
landless men, even if they were Romans and lived in Rome, were forbidden
to serve in the Roman army. The landless veterans found a leader in
Tiberius Gracchus (163–133 B.C.E.), an aristocrat who was appalled by the
situation. He proposed dividing public land among the poor. But a group of
wealthy senators murdered him, launching a long era of political violence
that would destroy the republic. Still, Tiberius’s brother Gaius Gracchus
(153–121 B.C.E.) passed a law providing the urban poor with cheap grain
and urged practical reforms. Once again senators tried to stem the tide of
reform by murdering him.
The next reformer, Gaius Marius (ca. 157–86 B.C.E.), recruited landless
men into the army to put down a rebel king in Africa. He promised them
land for their service. But after his victory, the Senate refused to honor his
promise. From then on, Roman soldiers looked to their commanders, not to
the Senate or the state, to protect their interests. Rome was also dividing
into two political factions, both of which wanted political power. Both
factions named individuals as supreme military commander, and each led
Roman troops against an external enemy but also against each other. One of
these generals, Sulla, gained power in Rome, and in 81 B.C.E. the Senate
made him dictator, an official office in the Roman Republic given to a man
who was granted absolute power temporarily to handle emergencies such as
war. Dictators were supposed to step down after six months, but Sulla held
this position for nine years, and after that it was too late to restore the
republican constitution.
The history of the late republic is the story of power struggles among
many famous Roman figures against a background of unrest at home and
military campaigns abroad. Pompey (PAHM-pee) used military victories in
Spain to force the Senate to allow him to run for consul. In 59 B.C.E. he was
joined in a political alliance called the First Triumvirate by Crassus, another
ambitious politician and the wealthiest man in Rome, and by Julius Caesar
(100–44 B.C.E.). Born of a noble family, Caesar, an able general, was also a
brilliant politician with unbridled ambition and a superb orator with
immense literary ability. Recognizing that military success led to power,
Caesar led his troops to victory in Spain and Gaul, modern France. The
First Triumvirate fell apart after Crassus was killed in battle in 53 B.C.E.
while trying to conquer Parthia, leaving Caesar and Pompey in competition
with each other for power. The result was civil war. The Ptolemaic rulers of
Egypt became mixed up in this war, particularly Cleopatra VII, who allied
herself with Caesar and had a son by him. Caesar emerged victorious, and
he began to make a number of legal and economic reforms, acting on his
own authority, though often with the approval of the Senate, which he
packed with his supporters. He issued laws about debt, the collection of
taxes, and the distribution of grain and land. Roman allies in Italy were to
have full citizenship. He founded new colonies, which were to be populated
by veterans and the poor.
Caesar was wildly popular with most people in Rome, but some
senators opposed his rise to what was becoming absolute power. In 44 B.C.E.
a group of conspirators assassinated him and set off another round of civil
war. His grandnephew, the eighteen-year-old Octavian (63 B.C.E.–14 C.E.),
joined with two of Caesar’s followers, Marc Antony and Lepidus, in the
Second Triumvirate. After defeating Caesar’s murderers, they had a falling-
out. Octavian forced Lepidus out of office and waged war against Antony,
who had now also become allied with Cleopatra. In 31 B.C.E. Octavian
defeated the combined forces of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of
Actium in Greece. His victory ended the age of civil war. For his success, in
27 B.C.E. the Senate gave Octavian the name Augustus, meaning “revered
one.” Although the Senate did not mean this to be a decisive break, that date
is generally used to mark the end of the Roman Republic and the start of the
Roman Empire.

The Successes of Augustus

After Augustus ended the civil wars, he faced the monumental problems of
reconstruction. He had to rebuild effective government, pay his army for its
services, care for the welfare of the provinces, and address the danger of
various groups on Rome’s frontiers. Augustus was highly successful in
meeting these challenges.
Augustus claimed that he was restoring the republic, but he was actually
transforming the government into one in which all power was held by a
single ruler. Augustus fit his own position into the republican constitution
not by creating a new office for himself but by gradually taking over many
of the offices that traditionally had been held by separate people.
The Senate named him often as both consul and tribune. He was also
named imperator (ihm-puh-RAH-tuhr), a title given to victorious
commanders, and held control of the army, which he made a permanent
standing organization. Furthermore, recognizing the importance of religion,
he had himself named pontifex maximus, or chief priest. The Senate also
gave him the honorary title princeps civitatis, “first citizen of the state.”
Augustus as Imperator In this marble
statue, found in the villa of Augustus’s
widow, Augustus is dressed in a military
uniform and in a pose usually used to show
leaders addressing their troops. This
emphasizes his role as imperator, the head
of the army. The figures on his breastplate
show various peoples the Romans had
defeated or with whom they had made
treaties, along with assorted deities.
Although Augustus did not declare himself a
god — as later Roman emperors would —
this statue shows him barefoot, just as gods
and heroes were in classical Greek
statuary, and accompanied by Cupid riding
 a dolphin, both symbols of the goddess
Venus, whom he claimed as an ancestor.

Considering what had happened to Julius Caesar, Augustus wisely

wielded all this power in the background, and his period of rule is officially
called the “principate.” The Senate continued to exist as a court of law and
deliberative body. Without specifically saying so, however, Augustus
created the office of emperor. The English word emperor is derived from
the Latin word imperator, an origin that reflects the fact that Augustus’s
command of the army was the main source of his power. In other reforms,
Augustus made provincial administration more orderly and improved its
functioning. He further professionalized the army and awarded grants of
land in the frontier provinces to veterans. He encouraged local self-
government and the development of cities. As a spiritual bond between the
provinces and Rome, Augustus encouraged the cult of Roma et Augustus
(Rome and Augustus) as the guardian of the state. The cult spread rapidly
and became a symbol of Roman unity, part of Roman civic religion.
Augustus had himself portrayed on coins standing alongside the goddess
Victory and on celebratory stone arches built to commemorate military
victories. In addition, he had temples, stadiums, marketplaces, and public
buildings constructed in Rome and other cities.
In the social realm, Augustus promoted marriage and childbearing
through legal changes that released free women and freedwomen (female
slaves who had been freed) from male guardianship if they had given birth
to a certain number of children. Men and women who were unmarried or
had no children were restricted in the inheritance of property.
Aside from addressing legal issues and matters of state, Augustus
actively encouraged poets and writers. For this reason the period of his rule
is known as the “golden age” of Latin literature. Roman poets and prose
writers celebrated human accomplishments in works that were highly
polished, elegant in style, and intellectual in conception.
Rome’s greatest poet was Virgil (70–19 B.C.E.), whose masterpiece is the
Aeneid (uh-NEE-id), an epic poem that is the Latin equivalent of the Greek
Iliad and Odyssey (see “The ‘Dark Age’ ” in Chapter 5). Virgil’s account of
the founding of Rome and the early years of the city gave final form to the
legend of Aeneas, the Trojan hero (and ancestor of Romulus and Remus;
see “The Founding of Rome”) who escaped to Italy at the fall of Troy. As
Virgil told it, Aeneas became the lover of Dido (DIGH-doh), the widowed
queen of Carthage, but left her because his destiny called him to found
Rome. Swearing the destruction of Rome, Dido committed suicide, and,
according to Virgil, her enmity helped cause the Punic Wars. In leaving
Dido, an “Eastern” queen, Aeneas put the good of the state ahead of
marriage or pleasure. The parallels between this story and the real events
involving Antony and Cleopatra were not lost on Augustus, who
encouraged Virgil to write the Aeneid and made sure it was circulated
widely immediately after Virgil died.
One of the most significant aspects of Augustus’s reign was Roman
expansion into northern and western Europe (Map 6.2). Augustus
completed the conquest of Spain, founded twelve new towns in Gaul, and
saw that the Roman road system linked new settlements with one another
and with Italy. After hard fighting, he made the Rhine River the Roman
frontier in Germania (Germany). Meanwhile, generals conquered areas as
far as the Danube River, and Roman legions penetrated the areas of modern
Austria, southern Bavaria, and western Hungary. The regions of modern
Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania also fell. Within this area the legionaries
built fortified camps. Roads linked these camps with one another, and
settlements grew up around the camps, eventually becoming towns. Traders
began to frequent the frontier and to do business with the people who lived
there; as a result, for the first time, central and northern Europe came into
direct and continuous contact with Mediterranean culture.
 MAP 6.2 Roman Expansion, 262 B.C.E.–180 C.E.
Rome expanded in all directions, eventually controlling every shore of the Mediterranean
and vast amounts of land.

Romans did not force their culture on native people in Roman

territories. However, just as earlier ambitious people in the Hellenistic
world knew that the surest path to political and social advancement lay in
embracing Greek culture and learning to speak Greek (see “Building a
Hellenized Society” in Chapter 5), those determined to get ahead now
learned Latin and adopted aspects of Roman culture.
Rome and the Provinces
What was life like in Rome, and what was it like in the provinces?

In the late eighteenth century the English historian Edward Gibbon dubbed
the stability and relative peace within the empire that Augustus created the
pax Romana, the “Roman peace,” which he saw as lasting about two
hundred years. People being conquered by the Romans might not have
agreed that things were so peaceful, but during this time the growing city of
Rome saw great improvements, and trade and production flourished in the
provinces. Rome also expanded eastward and came into indirect contact
with China.

Political and Military Changes in the Empire

For about fifty years after Augustus’s death in 14 C.E. the dynasty that he
established — known as the Julio-Claudians because all were members of
the Julian and Claudian clans — provided the emperors of Rome. Two of
the Julio-Claudians, Tiberius and Claudius, were sound rulers and created a
bureaucracy of able administrators to help them govern. Two of them,
Caligula and Nero, were weak and frivolous.
In 68 C.E. Nero’s inept rule led to military rebellion and widespread
disruption. Two years later Vespasian (r. 69–79 C.E.), who established the
Flavian dynasty, restored order. He also turned Augustus’s principate into a
hereditary monarchy and expanded the emperor’s powers. During the brief
reign of Vespasian’s son Titus, Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy erupted,
destroying Pompeii and other cities and killing thousands of people. The
Flavians (69–96 C.E.) paved the way for the Antonines (96–192 C.E.), a
dynasty of emperors under whose leadership the Roman Empire
experienced a long period of prosperity and the height of the pax Romana.
Wars generally ended victoriously and were confined to the frontiers.
Second-century emperors made further changes in government that helped
the empire run more efficiently while increasing the authority of the
emperor.
The Roman army also saw changes, transforming from a mobile unit to
a much larger defensive force, with more and more troops who were
noncitizens. Because army service could lead to citizenship, non-Romans
joined the army willingly to gain citizenship, receive a salary, and learn a
trade. The frontiers became firmly fixed and were defended by a system of
forts and walls. Behind these walls, the network of roads was expanded and
improved, both to supply the forts and to reinforce them in times of trouble.

Life in Imperial Rome

The expansion and stabilization of the empire created great wealth, much of
which flowed into Rome. The city, with a population of over a million, may
have been the largest city in the world at that time. Although Rome could
boast of stately palaces, noble buildings, and beautiful residential areas,
most people lived in shoddily constructed houses and took whatever work
was available. Many residents of the city of Rome were slaves, who ranged
from highly educated household tutors or government officials or widely
sought sculptors to workers who engaged in hard physical tasks.
Fire and crime were perennial problems even in Augustus’s day, and
sanitation was poor. In the second century urban planning and new
construction greatly improved the situation. For example, engineers built an
elaborate system that collected sewage from public baths, the ground floors
of buildings, and public latrines. They also built hundreds of miles of
aqueducts, most of them underground, to bring fresh water into the city
from the surrounding hills.
Rome grew so large that it became ever more difficult to feed its
residents. Emperors solved the problem by providing citizens with free oil,
wine, and grain for bread. By doing so, they also stayed in favor with the
people. They and other sponsors also entertained the people with
gladiatorial contests in which participants fought using swords and other
weapons. Some gladiators were criminals or prisoners of war, but by the
imperial period increasing numbers were volunteers, often poor immigrants
who saw gladiatorial combat as a way to support themselves. All gladiators
were trained in gladiatorial schools and were legally slaves, although they
could keep their winnings and a few became quite wealthy. The Romans
were even more addicted to chariot racing than to gladiatorial shows.
Winning charioteers were idolized just as sports stars are today.
 Gladiator Mosaic Made in the first half of the fourth century C.E.,
this mosaic from an estate outside Rome includes the name of each
gladiator next to the figure. At the top a gladiator stands in a victory
pose, while the fallen gladiator at the bottom is marked with the
symbol Ø, indicating that he has died in combat. Many of the
gladiators in this mosaic, such as those at the left, appear less fit
and fearsome than the gladiators depicted in movies, more closely
reflecting the reality that gladiatorial combat was a job undertaken
by a variety of people.

Prosperity in the Roman Provinces

As the empire grew and stabilized, many Roman provinces grew prosperous
through the growth of agriculture, trade, and industry, among other factors.
Peace and security opened Britain, Gaul, and the lands of the Danube to
settlers from other parts of the Roman Empire. Veterans were given small
parcels of land in the provinces, becoming tenant farmers. The garrison
towns that grew up around provincial military camps became the centers of
organized political life, and some grew into major cities.
The rural population throughout the empire left few records, but the
inscriptions that remain point to a melding of cultures. Latin blended with
the original language of an area and with languages spoken by those who
came into the area later. Slowly what would become the Romance
languages of Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Romanian evolved.
Religion was another site of cultural exchange and mixture. Romans
moving into an area learned about and began to venerate local gods, and
local people learned about Roman ones. Gradually hybrid deities and rituals
developed.
The Romans were the first to build cities in northern Europe, but in the
eastern Mediterranean they ruled cities that had existed before Rome itself
was even a village. Here there was much continuity in urban life from the
Hellenistic period. There was less construction than in the Roman cities of
northern and western Europe because existing buildings could simply be
put to new uses.
The expansion of trade during the pax Romana made the Roman Empire
an economic as well as a political force. Britain and Belgium became prime
grain producers, and Britain’s wool industry probably got its start under the
Romans. Italy and southern Gaul produced huge quantities of wine. Roman
colonists introduced the olive to southern Spain and northern Africa, which
soon produced most of the oil consumed in the western part of the empire.
In the East the olive oil production of Syrian farmers reached an all-time
high, and Egypt produced tons of wheat that fed the Roman populace.
The growth of industry in the provinces was another striking
development of this period, as cities in Gaul and Germany eclipsed the old
Mediterranean manufacturing centers. Lyons in Gaul and later Cologne in
Germany became the new centers of the glassmaking industry, and the
cities of Gaul were nearly unrivaled in the manufacture of bronze and brass.
Soldiers in the Roman army brought new methods of potterymaking
northwards, setting up facilities to make roof tiles, amphoras, and dishes for
their units. Some of these grew into industrial-scale kilns that were large
enough to fire tens of thousands of pots at once. Fancier pottery often
portrayed Greco-Roman gods and heroes, thus spreading Mediterranean
myths and stories throughout the empire and beyond. Aided by all this
growth in trade and industry, Europe and western Asia were linked in ways
they had not been before.

Eastward Expansion and Contacts Between Rome and China

As the Romans drove farther eastward, they encountered the Parthians, who
had established a kingdom in what is now Afghanistan and Iran in the
Hellenistic period (see “Building a Hellenized Society” in Chapter 5). In the
second century the Romans tried unsuccessfully to drive out the Parthians,
who came to act as a link between Roman and Chinese merchants. Chinese
merchants sold their wares to the Parthians, who then carried the goods
overland to Mesopotamia or Egypt, from which they were shipped
throughout the Roman Empire. In 226 C.E. the Parthians were defeated by
the Sassanids, a new dynasty in the area (see “The Sassanid Empire and
Conflicts with Byzantium” in Chapter 8). When the Romans continued their
attacks against this new enemy, the Sassanid king Shapur conquered the
Roman legions of the emperor Valerian, whom he took prisoner. Shapur
employed the captured Roman soldiers and engineers to build roads,
bridges, dams, and canals, and their designs and methods were later used
throughout the Sassanid empire.
Although warfare disrupted parts of western Asia, it did not stop trade
that had prospered from Hellenistic times (see “The Growth of Trade and
Commerce” in Chapter 5). Silk was still a major commodity from east to
west, along with other luxury goods. In return the Romans traded
glassware, precious gems, and slaves. The Parthians added exotic fruits,
rare birds, rugs, and other products.
The pax Romana was also an era of maritime trade, and Roman ships
sailed from Egyptian ports to the mouth of the Indus River, where Romans
purchased local merchandise and wares imported by the Parthians. Some
hardy mariners pushed down the African coast and into the Indian Ocean.
Roman coins have been found in Sri Lanka and Vietnam, clear evidence of
trade connections, although most likely no merchant traveled the entire
distance.
The period of this contact coincided with the era of Han greatness in
China (see “China and Rome” in Chapter 7). During the reign of the Roman
emperor Nerva (r. 96–98 C.E.), a Han emperor sent an ambassador, Gan
Ying, to make contact with the Roman Empire. Gan Ying made it as far as
the Persian Gulf ports, where he heard about the Romans from Parthian
sailors and reported back to his emperor that the Romans were wealthy, tall,
and strikingly similar to the Chinese. His report became part of a group of
accounts about the Romans and other “western” peoples that circulated
widely among scholars and officials in Han China. Educated Romans did
not have a corresponding interest in China. For them, China remained more
of a mythical than a real place, and they never bothered to learn more about
it.
The Coming of Christianity
What was Christianity, and how did it affect life in the Roman Empire?

During the reign of the emperor Tiberius (r. 14–37 C.E.), in the Roman
province of Judaea a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth preached,
attracted a following, and was executed on the order of the Roman prefect
Pontius Pilate. Christianity, the religion created by Jesus’s followers, came
to have an enormous impact first in the Roman Empire and later throughout
the world.

Factors Behind the Rise of Christianity

The civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic left their mark on Judaea,
where Jewish leaders had taken sides in the conflict. The turmoil created a
climate of violence throughout the area, and among the Jews movements in
opposition to the Romans spread. Many Jews came to believe that a final
struggle was near and that it would lead to the coming of a savior, or
Messiah, who would destroy the Roman legions and inaugurate a period of
happiness and plenty for Jews. This apocalyptic belief was an old one
among Jews, but by the first century C.E. it had become more widespread
than ever.
The pagan world also played its part in the story of early Christianity.
The term pagan, which originally referred to those who lived in the
countryside, came to refer to those who practiced religions other than
Judaism or Christianity. This included the traditional Roman civic religion
devoted to the gods of the hearth, home, and countryside, which had often
blended with the worship of other local deities as the Roman Empire
expanded. The cult of the emperor, spread through the erection of statues,
temples, and monuments, had been added to this, and for some people
mystery religions offered the promise of life after death (see Chapter 5).
Many people in the Roman Empire practiced all of these religions,
combining them in whatever way seemed most beneficial or satisfying to
them.

The Life and Teachings of Jesus

Into this climate of Messianic hope and Roman religious blending came
Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 3 B.C.E.–29 C.E.). According to Christian Scripture, he
was born to deeply religious Jewish parents and raised in Galilee. His
ministry began when he was about thirty, and he taught by preaching and
telling stories.
Like Socrates and the Buddha, Jesus left no writings. Accounts of his
sayings and teachings first circulated orally among his followers and were
later written down. The principal evidence for his life and deeds are the four
Gospels of the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). These Gospels are
records of Jesus’s teachings, written sometime in the late first century to
build a community of faith. Their authors had probably heard many
different people talk about what Jesus said and did, and there are
discrepancies among the four accounts. These differences indicate that early
followers had a diversity of beliefs about Jesus’s nature and purpose.
However, almost all the early sources agree on certain aspects of Jesus’s
teachings: he preached of a heavenly kingdom of eternal happiness in a life
after death and of the importance of devotion to God and love of others. His
teachings were based on Hebrew Scripture and reflected a conception of
God and morality that came from Jewish tradition. The Greek translation of
the Hebrew word Messiah is Christus, the origin of the English word
Christ. Was Jesus the Messiah, the Christ? A small band of followers
thought so, and Jesus claimed that he was. Yet Jesus had his own
conception of the Messiah. He would establish a spiritual kingdom, not an
earthly one.
The Roman official Pontius Pilate knew little about Jesus’s teachings.
He was concerned with maintaining peace and order. According to the New
Testament, crowds followed Jesus into Jerusalem at the time of Passover, a
highly emotional point in the Jewish year that marked the Jewish people’s
departure from Egypt under the leadership of Moses (see “The Hebrew
State” in Chapter 2). The prospect that these crowds would spark violence
alarmed Pilate. Some Jews believed that Jesus was the long-awaited
Messiah. Others hated and feared him because they thought him religiously
dangerous. To avert riot and bloodshed, Pilate condemned Jesus to death,
and his soldiers carried out the sentence. On the third day after Jesus’s
crucifixion, some of his followers claimed that he had risen from the dead.
For his earliest followers and for generations to come, the resurrection of
Jesus became a central element of faith.
The Spread of Christianity
Believers in Jesus’s divinity met in small assemblies or congregations, often
in one another’s homes, to discuss the meaning of Jesus’s message and to
celebrate a ritual (later called the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper)
commemorating his last meal with his disciples before his arrest. Because
they expected Jesus to return to the world very soon, they regarded earthly
life and institutions as unimportant. Only later did these congregations
evolve into what came to be called the religion of Christianity, with a
formal organization and set of beliefs.
The catalyst in the spread of Jesus’s teachings and the formation of the
Christian Church was Paul of Tarsus, a well-educated Hellenized Jew. Paul
traveled all over the Roman Empire and wrote letters of advice to many
groups. These letters were copied and widely circulated, transforming
Jesus’s ideas into more specific moral teachings. As a result of his efforts,
Paul became the most important figure in changing Christianity from a
Jewish sect into a separate religion, and many of his letters became part of
Christian Scripture.
The breadth of the Roman Empire was another factor behind the spread
of Christianity. If all roads led to Rome, they also led outward to the
provinces. This enabled early Christians to spread their faith easily
throughout the world known to them, as Jesus had told his followers to do.
The Romans also considered their empire universal, and the early Christians
combined the two concepts of universalism.
Though most of the earliest converts seem to have been Jews, Paul
urged that Gentiles, or non-Jews, be accepted on an equal basis. The earliest
Christian converts included people from all social classes. These people
were reached by missionaries and others who spread the Christian message
through family contacts, friendships, and business networks. Many women
were active in spreading Christianity. Paul greeted male and female
converts by name in his letters and noted that women often provided
financial support for his activities. The growing Christian communities
differed over the extent to which women should participate in the workings
of the religion; some favored giving women a larger role in church affairs,
while others were more restrictive.
People were attracted to Christian teachings for a variety of reasons.
Christianity was in many ways a mystery religion, offering its adherents
special teachings that would give them immortality. But in contrast to
traditional mystery religions, Christianity promised this immortality widely,
not only to a select few. Christianity also offered the possibility of
forgiveness, for believers accepted that human nature is weak and that even
the best Christians could fall into sin. But Jesus loved sinners and forgave
those who repented. Christianity was also attractive to many because it gave
the Roman world a cause. By spreading the word of Christ, Christians
played their part in God’s plan for the triumph of Christianity on earth.
Christianity likewise gave its devotees a sense of identity and community.
To stress the spiritual kinship of this new type of community, Christians
often called one another brother and sister. Also, many Christians took
Jesus’s commandment to love one another as a guide and provided support
for widows, orphans, and the poor, just as they would for family members.

The Growing Acceptance and Evolution of Christianity

At first, most Roman officials largely ignored the followers of Jesus,
viewing them simply as one of the many splinter groups within Judaism,
but slowly some came to oppose Christian practices and beliefs. They
considered Christians to be subversive dissidents because they stopped
practicing traditional rituals and they objected to the cult of the emperor.
Some Romans thought that Christianity was one of the worst of the mystery
cults, with immoral and indecent rituals. Pagans also feared that the Greco-
Roman gods would withdraw their favor from the Roman Empire because
of the Christian insistence that the pagan gods either did not exist or were
evil spirits. And many worried that Christians were trying to destroy the
Roman family with their insistence on a new type of kinship.
Persecutions of Christians, including torture and executions, were
organized by governors of Roman provinces and sometimes by the emperor,
beginning with Nero. Most persecutions were, however, local and sporadic
in nature. Responses to Christianity on the part of Roman emperors varied.
Some left Christians in peace, while others ordered them to sacrifice to the
emperor and the Roman gods or risk death.
By the second century Christianity was changing. The belief that Jesus
was soon coming again gradually waned, and as the number of converts
increased, permanent institutions were established. These included
buildings and a hierarchy of officials often modeled on those of the Roman
Empire. Bishops, officials with jurisdiction over a certain area, became
especially important. They began to assert that they had the right to
determine the correct interpretation of Christian teachings and to choose
their successors.
Christianity also began to attract more highly educated individuals who
developed complex theological interpretations of issues that were not clear
in scripture. Often drawing on Greek philosophy and Roman legal
traditions, they worked out understandings of such issues as how Jesus
could be both divine and human and how God could be both a father and a
son (and later a spirit as well, a Christian doctrine known as the Trinity).
Bishops and theologians often modified teachings that seemed upsetting to
Romans, such as Jesus’s harsh words about wealth and family ties. Given
all these changes, Christianity became more formal in the second century,
with power more centralized.
Turmoil and Reform
How did the emperors respond to political, economic, and religious issues in the
third and fourth centuries?

The prosperity and stability of the second century gave way to a period of
domestic upheaval and foreign invasion in the Roman Empire that
historians have termed the “crisis of the third century.” Trying to repair the
damage was the major work of the emperors Diocletian (r. 284–305) and
Constantine (r. 306–337). They enacted political and religious reforms that
dramatically changed the empire.

Political Measures
During the crisis of the third century the Roman Empire was stunned by
civil war, as different individuals, generally military commanders from the
border provinces, claimed rights to leadership of the empire. Beginning in
235, emperors often ruled for only a few years or even months. Army
leaders in the provinces declared their loyalty to one faction or another, or
they broke from the empire entirely, thus ceasing to supply troops or taxes.
Non-Roman groups on the frontiers took advantage of the chaos to invade
Roman-held territory along the Rhine and Danube, occasionally even
crossing the Alps to maraud in Italy. In the East, Sassanid armies advanced
all the way to the Mediterranean. By the time peace was restored, the
empire’s economy was shattered, cities had shrunk in size, and many
farmers had left their lands.
Diocletian, who had risen through the ranks of the military to become
emperor in 284, ended the period of chaos. Under Diocletian the princeps
became dominus, “lord,” reflecting the emperor’s claim that he was “the
elect of god.” To underscore the emperor’s exalted position, Diocletian and
his successor, Constantine, adopted the court ceremonies and trappings of
the Persian Empire.
Diocletian recognized that the empire had become too large for one man
to handle and so in 293 divided it into a western and an eastern half. He
assumed direct control of the eastern part, giving a colleague the rule of the
western part along with the title augustus. Diocletian and his fellow
augustus further delegated power by appointing two men to assist them.
Each man was given the title caesar to indicate his exalted rank.
After a brief civil war following Diocletian’s death, Constantine
eventually gained authority over the entire empire but ruled from the East.
Here he established a new capital for the empire at Byzantium, an old
Greek city on the Bosporus, a strait on the boundary between Europe and
Asia. He named it “New Rome,” though it was soon called Constantinople.
In his new capital Constantine built palaces, warehouses, public buildings,
and even a hippodrome for horse racing, modeling them on Roman
buildings. In addition, he built defensive works along the borders of the
empire, trying hard to keep it together, as did his successors. Despite their
efforts, however, the eastern and the western halves drifted apart.
The emperors ruling from Constantinople could not provide enough
military assistance to repel invaders in the western half of the Roman
Empire, and Roman authority there slowly disintegrated. In 476 a Germanic
chieftain, Odoacer, deposed the Roman emperor in the West. This date thus
marks the official end of the Roman Empire in the West, although the
Roman Empire in the East, later called the Byzantine Empire, would last for
nearly another thousand years.

Economic Issues
Along with political challenges, major economic problems also confronted
Diocletian and Constantine, including inflation and declining tax revenues.
In an attempt to curb inflation, Diocletian issued an edict that fixed
maximum prices and wages throughout the empire. He and his successors
dealt with the tax system just as strictly and inflexibly. Taxes became
payable in kind, that is, in goods and services instead of money. All those
involved in the growing, preparation, and transportation of food and other
essentials were locked into their professions, as the emperors tried to assure
a steady supply of these goods. In this period of severe depression, many
localities could not pay their taxes. In such cases local tax collectors, who
were themselves locked into service, had to make up the difference from
their own funds. This system soon wiped out a whole class of moderately
wealthy people and set the stage for the lack of social mobility that was a
key characteristic of European society for many centuries to follow.
The emperors’ measures did not really address Rome’s central economic
problems. During the turmoil of the third and fourth centuries, many free
farmers and their families were killed by invaders or renegade soldiers, or
abandoned farms ravaged in the fighting. Consequently, large tracts of land
lay untended. Landlords with ample resources began at once to claim as
much of this land as they could. The huge estates that resulted, called villas,
were self-sufficient and became islands of stability in an unsettled world. In
return for the protection and security landlords could offer, many small
landholders gave over their lands and their freedom. To guarantee a supply
of labor, landlords denied them the freedom to move elsewhere. Free men
and women were becoming tenant farmers bound to the land, who would
later be called serfs.

The Acceptance of Christianity

The crisis of the third century seemed to some emperors, including
Diocletian, to be the punishment of the gods. Diocletian increased
persecution of Christians, hoping that the gods would restore their blessing
on Rome. Yet his persecutions were never very widespread or long-lived,
and by the early fourth century most Romans tolerated Christianity, even if
they did not practice it. In several edicts, emperors reversed Diocletian’s
policy and instead ordered toleration of all religions. Constantine went
beyond toleration to favoring Christianity, expecting in return the support of
church officials in maintaining order, and late in his life he was baptized as
a Christian. Constantine also freed the clergy from imperial taxation and
endowed the building of Christian churches.
Helped in part by its favored position in the empire, Christianity slowly
became the leading religion, and emperors after Constantine continued to
promote it. In 380 the emperor Theodosius (r. 379–395) made Christianity
the official religion of the empire. He allowed the church to establish its
own courts and to use its own body of law, called “canon law.” With this he
laid the foundation for later growth in church power (see “The Growth of
the Christian Church” in Chapter 8).
Chapter Summary
The Italian peninsula was settled by many different groups, including
Greeks in the south and Etruscans in the north. The Etruscans expanded
southward into central Italy, where they influenced the culture of the small
town that was growing into the city of Rome. Rome prospered and
expanded its own territories, establishing a republican government led by
the Senate. In a series of wars the Romans conquered the Mediterranean,
creating an overseas empire that brought them unheard-of power and
wealth, but also social unrest and civil war. The meteoric rise to power of
Julius Caesar in the first century B.C.E. led to his assassination, but his
grandnephew Augustus finally restored peace and order to Rome. Under
Augustus, the republic became an empire.
Augustus and his successors further expanded Roman territories. The
city of Rome became the magnificent capital of the empire. The Roman
provinces and frontiers also saw extensive prosperity through the growth of
agriculture, industry, and trade connections. Christianity, a religion created
by the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, spread across the empire, beginning
in the first century C.E. Initially some Roman officials and emperors
persecuted Christians, but gradually hostility decreased. Emperors in the
fourth century first allowed Christianity and then made it the official
religion of the empire, one of many measures through which they attempted
to solve the problems created by invasions and political turmoil. Their
measures were successful in the East, where the Roman Empire lasted for
another thousand years, but not in the West, where the Roman Empire
ended in the fifth century.

CONNECTIONS

The Roman Empire, with its powerful — and sometimes bizarre — leaders,
magnificent buildings, luxurious clothing, and bloody amusements, has
long fascinated people. Politicians and historians have closely studied the
reasons for its successes and have even more closely analyzed the
weaknesses that led to its eventual collapse. Despite the efforts of emperors
and other leaders, the Western Roman Empire slowly broke apart and by the
fifth century C.E. no longer existed. By the fourteenth century European
scholars were beginning to see the fall of the Roman Empire as one of the
great turning points in Western history, the end of the classical era. That
began the practice of dividing Western history into different periods —
eventually, the ancient, medieval, and modern eras. Those categories still
shape the way that Western history is taught and learned.
This three-part conceptualization also shapes the periodization of world
history. As you saw in Chapter 4 and will see in Chapter 7, China is also
understood to have had a classical age. As you will read in Chapter 11, the
Maya of Mesoamerica did as well, stretching from 300 C.E. to 900 C.E. South
Asia is often described as having a classical period, which developed during
the Mauryan Empire that lasted from 322 B.C.E. to 185 B.C.E. as discussed in
Chapter 3 and extended to the Gupta Empire that ruled northern India from
ca. 320 C.E. to 480 C.E., which will be discussed in Chapter 12. The dates of
these ages are different from those of the classical period in the
Mediterranean, but there are striking similarities among all these
civilizations: successful large-scale administrative bureaucracies were
established, trade flourished, cities grew, roads were built, and new cultural
forms developed. In all these civilizations this classical period was followed
by an era of decreased prosperity and increased warfare and destruction.
Chapter 6 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

Senate (p. 121)

consuls (p. 123)
patricians (p. 124)
plebeians (p. 124)
Punic Wars (p. 126)
paterfamilias (p. 128)
pax Romana (p. 133)
Messiah (p. 137)
pagan (p. 137)
bishop (p. 139)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. How did the Romans come to dominate Italy, and what political institutions did they
create? (p. 120)
2. How did Rome expand its power beyond Italy, and what were the effects of this
expansion? (p. 125)
3. What was life like in Rome, and what was it like in the provinces? (p. 133)
4. What was Christianity, and how did it affect life in the Roman Empire? (p. 136)
5. How did the emperors respond to political, economic, and religious issues in the
third and fourth centuries? (p. 139)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. What allowed large empires in the ancient world, including the Persian (Chapter 2),
the Mauryan (Chapter 3), and the Roman, to govern vast territories and many
different peoples successfully?
2. Looking over the long history of Rome, do interactions with non-Romans or
conflicts among Romans themselves appear to be the most significant drivers of
change? Why? How is this different from other classical civilizations?
3. No classical Chinese thinkers knew about Roman political developments, but the
issues they considered, such as how to achieve order and what made government
strong, could also be applied to Rome. How do you think Confucians, Daoists, and
Legalists (Chapter 4) would have assessed the Roman Republic? The Roman
Empire?

CHRONOLOGY

753 B.C.E. • Traditional founding of the city of Rome

509 B.C.E. • Traditional date of the establishment of the Roman
Republic
ca. 500–338 B.C.E. • Classical period in Athens (Ch. 5)
ca. 322–185 B.C.E. • Mauryan Empire in India (Ch. 3)
ca. 265 B.C.E. • Romans control most of Italy
264–241 B.C.E.; 218–201 • Punic Wars
B.C.E.; 149–146 B.C.E.
206 B.C.E.–220 C.E. • Han Dynasty in China (Ch. 7)
44 B.C.E. • Assassination of Julius Caesar
31 B.C.E. • Octavian (Augustus) defeats Antony and Cleopatra
27 B.C.E. • Senate grants Octavian the title “Augustus,” marking the
beginning of the Roman Empire
14 B.C.E.– 68 C.E. • Julio-Claudian emperors; expansion into northern and
western Europe
ca. 3 B.C.E.–29 C.E. • Life of Jesus
69–96 C.E. • Flavian emperors; restoration of order after civil wars
96–192 C.E. • Antonine emperors; Roman Empire at its greatest
extent
100–800 C.E. • Moche civilization in Peru (Ch. 11)
224–651 C.E. • Sassanid dynasty in Persia (Ch. 8)
235–284 C.E. • Third-century crisis; civil war; invasions; economic
decline
284–337 C.E. • Diocletian and Constantine attempt to reconstruct the
empire
311 and 313 C.E. • Edicts of Toleration and Milan, allowing practice of
Christianity
380 C.E. • Theodosius makes Christianity the official religion of the
empire
476 C.E. • Odoacer deposes the last Roman emperor in the West
7
East Asia and the Spread of Buddhism

221 B.C.E.–845 C.E.

Chapter Preview

The Age of Empire in China: The Qin and Han Dynasties

• What were the social, cultural, and political consequences of the unification of
China under the strong centralized governments of the Qin and Han empires?

The Spread of Buddhism Out of India

• How did Buddhism find its way into East Asia, and what was its appeal and
impact?

The Chinese Empire Re-created: Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–907)

• What were the lasting accomplishments of the Sui and Tang Dynasties?

The East Asian Cultural Sphere

• What elements of Chinese culture were adopted by Koreans, Vietnamese,
and Japanese, and how did they adapt them to their own circumstances?

EAST ASIA WAS TRANSFORMED OVER THE MILLENNIUM FROM 221 B.C.E. to 800
C.E. At the beginning of this era, China had just been unified into a single state upon the
Qin defeat of all the rival states of the Warring States Period, but it still faced major military
challenges with the confederation of the nomadic Xiongnu to its north. At the time China
was the only place in East Asia with writing, large cities, and complex state organizations.
Over the next several centuries, East Asia changed dramatically as new states emerged. To
protect an emerging trade in silk and other valuables, Han China sent armies far into
Central Asia. War, trade, diplomacy, missionary activity, and the pursuit of learning led the
Chinese to travel to distant lands and people from distant lands to go to China. Among the
results were the spread of Buddhism from India and Central Asia to China and the
adaptation of many elements of Chinese culture by near neighbors, especially Korea and
Japan. Buddhism came to provide a common set of ideas and visual images to all the
cultures of East Asia, much the way Christianity linked societies in Europe.
Increased communication stimulated state formation among China’s neighbors: Tibet,
Korea, Manchuria, Vietnam, and Japan. Written Chinese was increasingly used as an
international language by the ruling elites of these countries, and the new states frequently
adopted political models from China as well. By 800 C.E. each of these regions was well on
its way to developing a distinct political and cultural identity.
The Age of Empire in China: The Qin and
Han Dynasties
What were the social, cultural, and political consequences of the unification of China
under the strong centralized governments of the Qin and Han empires?

In much the same period in which Rome created a huge empire, the Qin and
Han rulers in China created an empire on a similar scale. Like the Roman
Empire, the Chinese empire was put together through force of arms and
held in place by sophisticated centralized administrative machinery. The
governments created by the Qin and Han Dynasties affected many facets of
Chinese social, cultural, and intellectual life.

The Qin Unification, 221–206 B.C.E.

In 221 B.C.E., after decades of constant warfare, Qin (CHIN), the state that
had adopted Legalist policies during the Warring States Period (see
“Legalism” in Chapter 4), succeeded in defeating the last of its rivals, and
China was unified for the first time in many centuries. Deciding that the
title “king” was not grand enough, the king of Qin invented the title
“emperor” (huangdi) (hwang-dee). He called himself the First Emperor in
anticipation of a long line of successors. His state, however, did not long
outlast him.
 Army of the First Emperor The thousands of life-size ceramic
soldiers buried in pits about a half mile from the First Emperor’s
tomb help us imagine the Qin military machine. It was the Qin
emperor’s concern with the afterlife that led him to construct such a
lifelike guard. The soldiers were originally painted in bright colors,
and they held real bronze weapons.

Once he ruled all of China, the First Emperor and his shrewd Legalist
minister Li Si embarked on a sweeping program of centralization that
touched the lives of nearly everyone in China. To cripple the nobility of the
defunct states, who could have posed serious threats, the First Emperor
ordered the nobles to leave their lands and move to the capital. The private
possession of arms was outlawed to make it more difficult for subjects to
rebel. The First Emperor dispatched officials to administer the territory that
had been conquered and controlled the officials through a long list of
regulations, reporting requirements, and penalties for inadequate
performance.
To harness the enormous human resources of his people, the First
Emperor ordered a census of the population. Census information helped the
imperial bureaucracy to plan its activities: to estimate the labor force
available for military service and building projects and the tax revenues
needed to pay for them. To make it easier to administer all regions
uniformly, the Chinese script was standardized, outlawing regional
variations in the ways words were written. The First Emperor also
standardized weights, measures, coinage, and even the axle lengths of carts.
To make it easier for Qin armies to move rapidly, thousands of miles of
roads were built, which indirectly facilitated trade. Most of the labor on the
projects came from drafted farmers or convicts working out their sentences.
Some modern Chinese historians have glorified the First Emperor as a
bold conqueror who let no obstacle stop him, but traditionally he was
castigated as a cruel, arbitrary, impetuous, suspicious, and superstitious
megalomaniac. Hundreds of thousands of subjects were drafted to build the
Great Wall (ca. 230–208 B.C.E.), a rammed-earth fortification along the
northern border between the Qin realm and the land controlled by the
nomadic Xiongnu. After Li Si complained that scholars (especially
Confucians) used records of the past to denigrate the emperor’s
achievements and undermine popular support, the emperor had all writings
other than useful manuals on topics such as agriculture, medicine, and
divination collected and burned. As a result of this massive book burning,
many ancient texts were lost.
Like Ashoka in India a few decades earlier (see “The Reign of Ashoka”
in Chapter 3), the First Emperor erected many stone inscriptions to inform
his subjects of his goals and accomplishments. He had none of Ashoka’s
modesty, however. On one stone he described his conquest of the other
states this way (referring to himself in the third person, as was customary):
“He wiped out tyrants, rescued the common people, brought peace to the
four corners of the earth. His enlightened laws spread far and wide as
examples to All Under Heaven until the end of time. Great is he indeed!”1
Assassins tried to kill the First Emperor three times, and perhaps as a
consequence he became obsessed with discovering the secrets of
immortality. He spent lavishly on a tomb designed to protect him in the
afterlife. After he died in 210 B.C.E., the Qin state unraveled. The Legalist
institutions designed to concentrate power in the hands of the ruler made
the stability of the government dependent on his strength and character, and
his heir proved ineffective. The heir was murdered by his younger brother,
and uprisings soon followed.

The Han Dynasty, 206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

The eventual victor in the struggle for power that ensued in the wake of the
collapse of the Qin Dynasty was Liu Bang, known in history as Emperor
Gaozu (gow-dzoo) (r. 202–195 B.C.E.). The First Emperor of Qin was from
the Zhou aristocracy. Gaozu was, by contrast, from a modest family of
commoners, so his elevation to emperor is evidence of how thoroughly the
Qin Dynasty had destroyed the old order.
Gaozu did not disband the centralized government created by the Qin,
but he did remove its most unpopular features. Harsh laws were canceled,
taxes were sharply reduced, and a policy of noninterference was adopted in
an effort to promote economic recovery. With policies of this sort, relative
peace, and the extension of China’s frontiers, the Chinese population grew
rapidly, reaching 58 million in the census of 2 C.E. (Map 7.1). Few other
societies kept such good records, making comparisons difficult, but high-
end estimates for the Roman Empire are in a similar range (50–70 million).
 MAP 7.1 The Han Empire, 206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.
The Han Dynasty asserted sovereignty over vast regions from Korea in the east to Central
Asia in the west and Vietnam in the south. Once garrisons were established, traders were
quick to follow, leading to considerable spread of Chinese material culture in East Asia.
Chinese goods, especially silk, were in demand far beyond East Asia, promoting long-
distance trade across Eurasia.

The Han government was largely supported by the taxes and forced
labor demanded of farmers, but this revenue regularly fell short of the
government’s needs. To pay for his military campaigns, Emperor Wu, the
“Martial Emperor” (r. 141–87 B.C.E.), took over the minting of coins,
confiscated the land of nobles, sold offices and titles, and increased taxes on
private businesses. In 119 B.C.E. government monopolies were established in
the production of iron, salt, and liquor. These enterprises had previously
been sources of great profit for private entrepreneurs. Large-scale grain
dealing also had been a profitable business, and the government now took
that over as well.

Han Intellectual and Cultural Life

In contrast to the Qin Dynasty, which favored Legalism, the Han came to
promote Confucianism. The Han government’s efforts to recruit men
trained in the Confucian classics marked the beginning of the Confucian
scholar-official system, one of the most distinctive features of imperial
China.
However, the Confucianism that made a comeback during the Han
Dynasty was a changed Confucianism. Although Confucian texts had fed
the First Emperor’s bonfires, some dedicated scholars had hidden their
books, and others had memorized whole works. The ancient books
recovered in this way — called the Confucian classics — were revered as
repositories of the wisdom of the past. Confucian scholars treated these
classics with piety and attempted to make them more useful as sources of
moral guidance by writing commentaries on them. Other Han Confucians
developed comprehensive cosmological theories that explained the world in
terms of cyclical flows of yin and yang (see “Yin and Yang” in Chapter 4)
and the five phases (fire, water, earth, metal, and wood). Natural disasters
such as floods or earthquakes were viewed as signs that the emperor had
failed in his role of maintaining the proper balance among the forces of
Heaven and earth.
Han art and literature reveal a fascination with omens, portents, spirits,
immortals, and occult forces. Emperor Wu tried to make contact with the
world of gods and immortals through elaborate sacrificial offerings of food
and wine, and he welcomed astrologers, alchemists, seers, and shamans to
his court.
A major intellectual accomplishment of the Han Dynasty was history
writing. Sima Qian (SIH-mah chyen) (145–ca. 85 B.C.E.) wrote a
comprehensive history of China from the time of the mythical sage-kings of
high antiquity to his own day, dividing his account into a chronology
recounting political events, biographies of key individuals, and treatises on
subjects such as geography, taxation, and court rituals. As an official of the
emperor, he had access to important people and to the imperial library. Sima
Qian believed fervently in visiting the sites where history was made,
examining artifacts, and questioning people about events. The result of his
research, ten years or more in the making, was Records of the Grand
Historian, a massive work of literary and historical genius. In the chapter
devoted to moneymakers, he wrote of families that grew rich from trade or
manufacturing, concluding that wealth has no permanent master: “It finds
its way to the man of ability like the spokes of a wheel converging upon the
hub, and from the hands of the worthless it falls like shattered tiles.”2 For
centuries to come, Sima Qian’s work set the standard for Chinese historical
writing, although most of the histories modeled after it covered only a
single dynasty. The first of these was the work of three members of the Ban
family in the first century C.E.
The circulation of books like Sima Qian’s was made easier by the
invention of paper, which the Chinese traditionally date to 105 C.E. Scribes
had previously written on strips of bamboo and wood or rolls of silk. Cai
Lun, to whom the Chinese attribute the invention of paper, worked the
fibers of rags, hemp, bark, and other scraps into sheets of paper. Though
less durable than wood, paper was far lighter and became a convenient
means of conveying the written word.

Inner Asia and the Silk Road

The difficulty of defending against the nomadic pastoral peoples to the
north in the region known as Inner Asia is a major reason China came to
favor a centralized bureaucratic form of government. Resources from the
entire subcontinent were needed to maintain control of the northern border.
Chinese civilization did not spread easily to the grasslands north of
China proper, because those lands were too dry and cold to make good
farmland. Herding sheep, horses, camels, and other animals made better
economic use of those lands. By the third century B.C.E. several different
peoples practicing nomadic pastoralism lived in those regions, moving with
their herds north in summer and south in winter. Families lived in tents that
could be taken down and moved to the next camp. Herds were tended on
horseback, and everyone learned to ride from a young age. The differences
in their ways of life led Chinese farmers and Inner Asian herders to look
down on each other. For most of the imperial period, Chinese farmers
looked on the northern non-Chinese horsemen as gangs of bullies who
thought robbing was easier than working for a living. The nomads identified
glory with military might and viewed farmers as contemptible weaklings.
In the late third century B.C.E. the Xiongnu (shyuhng-new) (possibly the
same group that was known in the West as the Huns) formed the first great
confederation of nomadic tribes (see Map 7.1). The Qin’s Great Wall was
built to defend against the Xiongnu, and the Qin sent out huge armies in
pursuit of them. The early Han emperors tried to make peace with them,
offering generous gifts of silk, rice, cash, and even imperial princesses as
brides, but to little avail. Xiongnu power did not wane, and in 166 B.C.E.
140,000 Xiongnu raided to within a hundred miles of the Chinese capital.
Emperor Wu then decided that China had to push the Xiongnu back. He
sent several armies of 100,000 to 300,000 troops deep into Xiongnu
territory. These costly campaigns were of limited value because the
Xiongnu were a moving target. If the Xiongnu did not want to fight the
Chinese troops, they simply moved their camps. To try to find allies and
horses, Emperor Wu turned his attention west, toward Central Asia. From
an envoy he sent into Bactria, Parthia, and Ferghana in 139 B.C.E., the
Chinese learned for the first time of other civilized states comparable to
China. These regions, he reported, were familiar with Chinese products,
especially silk, and did a brisk trade in them.
In 114 B.C.E. Emperor Wu sent an army into Ferghana and gained
recognition of Chinese overlordship in the area, thus obtaining control over
the trade routes across Central Asia commonly called the Silk Road (Map
7.2).
 MAP 7.2 The Silk Trade in the Seventh Century C.E.
Silk — made from the cocoons of silkworms — was highly valued for the light, colorful,
and supple cloth that could be made from it. For centuries all the silk that reached the
non-Chinese world came from China, but in time other countries learned how to make it.

At the same time, Emperor Wu sent troops into northern Korea to

establish military districts that would flank the Xiongnu on their eastern
border. By 111 B.C.E. the Han government also had extended its rule south
into Nam Viet, which extended from south China into what is now northern
Vietnam.
During the Han Dynasty, China developed a tributary system to
regulate contact with foreign powers. States and tribes beyond its borders
sent envoys bearing gifts and received gifts in return. Over the course of the
dynasty, the Han government’s outlay on these gifts was huge, perhaps as
much as 10 percent of state revenue. Although the tributary system was a
financial burden to the Chinese, it reduced the cost of defense and offered
China confirmation that it was the center of the civilized world.
The silk given to the Xiongnu and other northern tributaries often
entered the trading networks of Persian, Parthian, and Indian merchants,
who carried it by caravans across Asia. There was a market both for skeins
of silk thread and for silk cloth woven in Chinese or Syrian workshops.
Caravans returning to China carried gold, horses, and occasionally
handicrafts of West Asian origin, such as glass beads and cups. Through the
trade along the Silk Road, the Chinese learned of new foodstuffs, including
walnuts, pomegranates, sesame, and coriander, all of which came to be
grown in China.
Maintaining a military presence so far from the center of China was
expensive. To cut costs, the government set up self-supporting military
colonies, recruited Xiongnu tribes to serve as auxiliary forces, and
established vast government horse farms. Still, military expenses threatened
to bankrupt the Han government.

Life in Han China

How were ordinary people’s lives affected by the creation of a huge Han
bureaucratic empire? The lucky ones who lived in Chang’an or Luoyang,
the great cities of the empire, got to enjoy the material benefits of increased
long-distance trade and a boom in the production of luxury goods.
The government did not promote trade per se. The Confucian elite, like
ancient Hebrew wise men, considered trade necessary but lowly.
Agriculture and crafts were more honorable because they produced
something, but merchants merely took advantage of others’ shortages to
make profits as middlemen. This attitude justified the government’s
takeover of the grain, iron, and salt businesses.
Markets were the liveliest places in the cities. Besides stalls selling
goods of all kinds, markets offered fortune-tellers, jugglers, acrobats, and
puppet shows. The markets were also used for the execution of criminals, to
serve as a warning to onlookers.
Government patronage helped maintain the quality of craftsmanship in
the cities. By the beginning of the first century C.E. China also had about
fifty state-run ironworking factories. In contrast to Roman blacksmiths, who
hammered heated iron to make wrought iron tools, the Chinese knew how
to liquefy iron and pour it into molds, producing tools with a higher carbon
content that were harder and more durable. Iron was replacing bronze in
tools, but bronzeworkers still turned out a host of goods, including jewelry
and mirrors. Bronze was also used for coins and for precision tools such as
carpenters’ rules and adjustable wrenches.
The bulk of the population in Han times and even into the twentieth
century consisted of peasants living in villages of a few hundred
households. Because the Han empire, much like the contemporaneous
Roman Empire, drew its strength from a large population of free peasants
who contributed both taxes and labor services to the state, the government
had to try to keep peasants independent and productive. To fight peasant
poverty, the government kept land taxes low (one-thirtieth of the harvest),
provided relief in times of famine, and promoted up-to-date agricultural
methods. Still, many hard-pressed peasants were left to choose between
migration to areas where new lands could be opened and quasi-servile
status as the dependents of a magnate. Throughout the Han period, Chinese
farmers in search of land to till pushed into frontier areas, expanding
Chinese domination at the expense of other ethnic groups, especially in
central and south China.
 Ceramic Model of a Pigsty Chinese farmers
regularly raised pigs, keeping them in walled-off pens
and feeding them scraps. This Han Dynasty model of
such a pigsty was placed in a tomb to represent the
material goods one hoped the deceased would enjoy
in the afterlife.

The Chinese family in Han times was much like Roman and Indian
families. In all three societies senior males had great authority, parents
arranged their children’s marriages, and brides normally joined their
husbands’ families. Other practices were more distinctive to China, such as
the universality of patrilineal family names, the practice of dividing land
equally among the sons in a family, and the great emphasis placed on the
virtue of filial piety. The brief Classic of Filial Piety, which claimed that
filial piety was the root of all virtue, gained wide circulation in Han times.
The virtues of loyal wives and devoted mothers were extolled in
Biographies of Exemplary Women, which told the stories of women from
China’s past. One of the most commonly used texts for the education of
women was Admonitions for Women by Ban Zhao, in which she extols the
feminine virtues, such as humility.
China and Rome
The empires of China and Rome were large, complex states governed by
monarchs, bureaucracies, and standing armies. Both lasted for centuries and
reached the people directly through taxation and conscription policies. Both
invested in infrastructure such as roads and waterworks. Both saw their
civilization as better than any other and were open to others’ learning their
ways. The two empires faced the similar challenge of having to work hard
to keep land from becoming too concentrated in the hands of hard-to-tax
wealthy magnates. In both empires people in neighboring areas that came
under political domination were attracted to the conquerors’ material goods,
productive techniques, and other cultural products, resulting in gradual
cultural assimilation. China and Rome also had similar frontier problems
and tried similar solutions, such as recruiting “barbarian” soldiers and
settling soldier-colonists.
Nevertheless, the differences between Rome and Han China are also
worth noting. The Roman Empire was linguistically and culturally more
diverse than China. In China there was only one written language; people in
the Roman Empire still wrote in Greek and several other languages, and
people in the eastern Mediterranean could claim more ancient civilizations.
China did not have comparable cultural rivals. Politically the dynastic
principle was stronger in China than in Rome, and there was no institution
comparable to the Roman Senate. In contrast to the graduated forms of
citizenship in Rome, citizenship in Han China made no distinctions between
original and added territories. The social and economic structures also
differed in the two empires. Slavery was much more important in Rome
than in China, and merchants were more favored.

The Fall of the Han and the Age of Division

In the second century C.E. the Han government suffered a series of blows. A
succession of child emperors required regents to rule in their place until
they reached maturity, allowing the families of empresses to dominate the
court. Emperors, once grown, turned to eunuchs (castrated palace servants)
for help in ousting the empresses’ families, only to find that the eunuchs
were just as difficult to control. In 166 and 169 scholars who had
denounced the eunuchs were arrested, killed, or banished from the capital
and official life. Then in 184 a millenarian religious sect rose in massive
revolt. The armies raised to suppress the rebels soon took to fighting among
themselves. After years of fighting, a stalemate was reached, with three
warlords each controlling distinct territories in the north, the southeast, and
the southwest. In 220 one of them forced the last of the Han emperors to
abdicate, formally ending the Han Dynasty.
The period after the fall of the Han Dynasty is often referred to as the
Age of Division (220–589). A brief reunification from 280 to 316 came to
an end when non-Chinese who had been settling in north China since Han
times attempted to take power. For the next two and a half centuries, north
China was ruled by one or more non-Chinese dynasties (the Northern
Dynasties), and the south was ruled by a sequence of four short-lived
Chinese dynasties (the Southern Dynasties) centered in the area of the
present-day city of Nanjing.
In the south a hereditary aristocracy entrenched itself in the higher
reaches of officialdom. These families saw themselves as maintaining the
high culture of the Han and looked on the emperors of the successive
dynasties as upstarts — as military men rather than men of culture. In this
aristocratic culture the arts of poetry and calligraphy flourished, and people
began collecting writings by famous calligraphers.
Establishing the capital at Nanjing, south of the Yangzi River, had a
beneficial effect on the economic development of the south. The south, with
its temperate climate and ample supply of water, offered nearly unlimited
possibilities for such development.
The Northern Dynasties are interesting as the first case of alien rule in
China. Ethnic tensions flared from time to time. In the late fifth century the
Northern Wei (way) Dynasty (386–534) moved the capital from near the
Great Wall to the ancient city of Luoyang, adopted Chinese-style clothing,
and made Chinese the official language. But the armies remained in the
hands of the non-Chinese Xianbei tribesmen. Soldiers who saw themselves
as marginalized by the pro-Chinese reforms rebelled in 524. For the next
fifty years north China was torn apart by struggles for power.
The Spread of Buddhism Out of India
How did Buddhism find its way into East Asia, and what was its appeal and impact?

In much the same period that Christianity was spreading out of its original
home in ancient Israel, Buddhism was spreading beyond India. Buddhism
came to Central, East, and Southeast Asia with merchants and missionaries
along the overland Silk Road, by sea from India and Sri Lanka, and also
through Tibet. Like Christianity, Buddhism was shaped by its contact with
cultures in the different areas into which it spread, leading to several
distinct forms.

Buddhism’s Path Through Central Asia

Under Ashoka in India (see “The Reign of Ashoka” in Chapter 3),
Buddhism began to spread to Central Asia. This continued under the
Kushan empire (ca. 50–250 C.E.). Over the next several centuries most of
the city-states of Central Asia became centers of Buddhism, from Bamiyan
northwest of Kabul, to Kucha, Khotan, Loulan, Turfan, and Dunhuang
(Map 7.3).
 MAP 7.3 The Spread of Buddhism, ca. 500 B.C.E.–800 C.E.
Buddhism spread throughout India in Ashoka’s time and beyond India in later centuries.
The different forms of Buddhism found in Asia today reflect this history. The Mahayana
Buddhism of Japan came via Central Asia, China, and Korea, with a secondary later route
through Tibet. The Theravada Buddhism of Southeast Asia came directly from India and
indirectly through Sri Lanka.

The form of Buddhism that spread from Central Asia to China, Japan,
and Korea was called Mahayana, which means “Great Vehicle,” reflecting
the claims of its adherents to a more inclusive form of the religion.
Influenced by the Iranian religions then prevalent in Central Asia,
Buddhism became more devotional. The Buddha came to be treated as a
god, the head of an expanding pantheon of other Buddhas and bodhisattvas
(Buddhas-to-be). With the growth of this pantheon, Buddhism became as
much a religion for laypeople as for monks and nuns.

Monumental Rock-Cut Buddha at Yungang The Xianbei rulers of

the Northern Wei funded the carving of Buddhist statues at
Yungang in the late fifth century. The tallest of these statues, shown
here, is about 45 feet high; it is one of about fifty-one thousand
Buddha images at the site. The massive stone Buddha at Bamiyan
in Afghanistan provided a model for cave temples like this one in
China.

The Appeal and Impact of Buddhism in China

Why did Buddhism find so many adherents in China during the three
centuries from 200 to 500 C.E.? There were no forced conversions, but still
the religion spread rapidly. In the unstable political environment, many
people were open to new ideas. To Chinese scholars the Buddhist concepts
of the reincarnation of souls, karma, and nirvana posed a stimulating
intellectual challenge. To rulers the Buddhist religion offered a source of
magical power and a political tool to unite Chinese and non-Chinese. In a
tumultuous age Buddhism’s emphasis on kindness, charity, and eternal bliss
was deeply comforting. As in India, Buddhism posed no threat to the social
order, and the elite who were drawn to Buddhism encouraged its spread to
people of all classes.
The monastic establishment grew rapidly in China. Like their Christian
counterparts in medieval Europe, Buddhist monasteries played an active
role in social, economic, and political life. Given the importance of family
lines in China, becoming a monk was a major decision, since a man had to
give up his surname and take a vow of celibacy, thus cutting himself off
from the ancestral cult. Those not ready to become monks or nuns could
pursue Buddhist goals as pious laypeople by performing devotional acts and
making contributions to monasteries.
In China women turned to Buddhism as readily as men. Although birth
as a female was considered lower than birth as a male, it was also viewed as
temporary, and women were encouraged to pursue salvation on terms nearly
equal to those of men. Joining a nunnery became an alternative for a
woman who did not want to marry or did not want to stay with her
husband’s family in widowhood. Later, the only woman ruler of China,
Empress Wu, invoked Buddhist principles to justify her role (see “The Tang
Dynasty”), further evidence of how Buddhism brought new understandings
of gender.
Buddhism had an enormous impact on the visual arts in China,
especially sculpture and painting. Before Buddhism, Chinese had not set up
statues of gods in temples, but now they decorated temples with a profusion
of images. Inspired by the cave temples of India and Central Asia,
Buddhists in China, too, carved caves into rock faces to make temples.
Not everyone was won over by Buddhist teachings. Critics of Buddhism
labeled it immoral, unsuited to China, and a threat to the state since
monastery land was not taxed and monks did not perform labor service.
Although twice rulers closed monasteries, no attempt was made to suppress
belief in Buddhism, and the religion continued to thrive in the subsequent
Sui and Tang periods.
The Chinese Empire Re-created: Sui (581–
618) and Tang (618–907)
What were the lasting accomplishments of the Sui and Tang Dynasties?

Political division was finally overcome when the Sui Dynasty conquered its
rivals to reunify China in 589. Although the dynasty lasted only thirty-seven
years, it left a lasting legacy in the form of political reform, the construction
of roads and canals, and the institution of written merit-based exams for the
appointment of officials. The Tang Dynasty that followed would last for
centuries and would build upon the Sui’s accomplishments to create an era
of impressive cultural creativity and political power.

The Sui Dynasty, 581–618

In the 570s and 580s the long period of division in China was brought to an
end under the leadership of the Sui (SWAY) Dynasty. The conquest of the
south involved naval as well as land battles, with thousands of ships on both
sides contending for control of the Yangzi River. The Sui reasserted Chinese
control over northern Vietnam and campaigned into Korea and against the
new force on the steppe, the Turks. The Sui strengthened central control of
the government by curtailing the power of local officials to appoint their
own subordinates and by instituting in 605 C.E. competitive written
examinations for the selection of officials.
The crowning achievement of the Sui Dynasty was the construction of
the Grand Canal, which connected the Yellow and Yangzi River regions.
Henceforth the rice-growing Yangzi Valley and south China played an ever
more influential role in the country’s economic and political life,
strengthening China’s internal cohesion and facilitating maritime trade with
Southeast Asia, India, and areas farther west.
Despite these accomplishments, the Sui Dynasty lasted for only two
reigns. The ambitious projects of the two Sui emperors led to exhaustion
and unrest, and in the ensuing warfare Li Yuan, a Chinese from the same
northwest aristocratic circles as the founder of the Sui, seized the throne.
The Tang Dynasty, 618–907
The dynasty founded by Li Yuan, the Tang, was one of the high points of
traditional Chinese civilization. Especially during this dynasty’s first
century, its capital, Chang’an, was the cultural center of East Asia, drawing
in merchants, pilgrims, missionaries, and students to a degree never
matched before or after. This position of strength gave the Chinese the
confidence to be open to learning from the outside world, leading to a more
cosmopolitan culture than in any other period before the twentieth century.
The first two Tang rulers, Gaozu (Li Yuan, r. 618–626) and Taizong (tie-
dzuhng) (r. 626–649), were able monarchs. Adding to their armies auxiliary
troops composed of Turks, Tanguts, Khitans, and other non-Chinese led by
their own chieftains, they campaigned into Korea, Vietnam, and Central
Asia. In 630 the Chinese turned against their former allies, the Turks,
gaining territory from them and winning for Taizong the title of Great
Khan.
In the civil sphere the Tang emperors built on the Sui precedent of using
written examinations to select officials. Candidates had to master the
Confucian classics and the rules of poetry, and they had to be able to
analyze practical administrative and political matters. Government schools
were founded to prepare the sons of officials and other young men for
service as officials.
The mid-Tang Dynasty saw two women — Empress Wu and Consort
Yang Guifei (yahng gway-fay) — rise to positions of great political power.
Empress Wu was the consort of the weak and sickly emperor Gaozong.
After Gaozong suffered a stroke in 660, she took full charge. She continued
to rule after Gaozong’s death, summarily deposing her own two sons and
dealing harshly with all opponents. In 690 she proclaimed herself emperor,
becoming the only woman to take that title in Chinese history. To gain
support, she circulated a Buddhist sutra that predicted the imminent
reincarnation of the Buddha Maitreya as a female monarch, during whose
reign the world would be free of illness, worry, and disaster. Although
despised by later Chinese historians as an evil usurper, Empress Wu was an
effective leader. It was not until she was over eighty that members of the
court were able to force her out in favor of her son.
Her grandson, the emperor Xuanzong (r. 713–756), presided over a
brilliant court and patronized leading poets, painters, and calligraphers. In
his later years, after he became enamored of his consort Yang Guifei, he did
not want to be bothered by the details of government and allowed her to
place friends and relatives in important positions in the government. One of
her favorites was the general An Lushan, who rebelled in 755. Xuanzong
had to flee the capital, and the troops that accompanied him forced him to
have Yang Guifei executed.
The rebellion of An Lushan was devastating to the Tang Dynasty. Peace
was restored only by calling on the Uighurs (WEE-gurz), a Turkish people
allied with the Tang, who looted the capital after taking it from the rebels.
The rebellion was finally suppressed in 763, but Tang strength was never
fully re-established. Many military governors came to treat their provinces
as hereditary kingdoms. In addition, palace eunuchs gained increasing
power at court.

Tang Culture
The reunification of north and south led to cultural flowering. The Tang
capital cities of Chang’an and Luoyang became great metropolises. In these
cosmopolitan cities, knowledge of the outside world was stimulated by the
presence of envoys, merchants, pilgrims, and students who came from
neighboring states in Central Asia, Japan, Korea, Tibet, and Southeast Asia.
Because of the presence of foreign merchants, many religions were
practiced, including Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism,
Judaism, and Islam, although none of them spread into the Chinese
population the way Buddhism had a few centuries earlier. Foreign fashions
in hair and clothing were often copied, and foreign amusements such as the
Persian game of polo found followings among the well-to-do. The
introduction of new musical instruments and tunes from India, Iran, and
Central Asia brought about a major transformation in Chinese music.
Five-Stringed Pipa/Biwa
This musical instrument,
decorated with fine wood
marquetry, was probably
presented by the Tang
court to a Japanese
envoy. It was among the
objects placed in a
Japanese royal storage
house (Shō sō in) in 756.
 The Tang Dynasty was the great age of Chinese poetry. Skill in
composing poetry was tested in the civil service examinations, and educated
men had to be able to compose poems at social gatherings. The pain of
parting, the joys of nature, and the pleasures of wine and friendship were all
common poetic topics. One of Li Bo’s (701–762) most famous poems
describes an evening of drinking with only the moon and his shadow for
company:
A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
…
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And we meet at last on the cloudy River of the sky.3

In Tang times Buddhism fully penetrated Chinese daily life. Stories of

Buddhist origin became widely known, and Buddhist festivals became
among the most popular holidays. Buddhist monasteries ran schools for
children and in remote areas provided lodging for travelers. Merchants
entrusted their money and wares to monasteries for safekeeping, in effect
transforming the monasteries into banks and warehouses.
At the intellectual and religious level, Buddhism was developing in
distinctly Chinese directions. Two schools that thrived were Pure Land and
Chan. Pure Land appealed to laypeople because the simple act of calling
on the Buddha Amitabha and his chief helper, the compassionate
bodhisattva Guanyin, could lead to rebirth in Amitabha’s paradise, the Pure
Land. Among the educated elite the Chan school (known in Japan as Zen)
also gained popularity. Chan teachings rejected the authority of the sutras
and claimed the superiority of mind-to-mind transmission of Buddhist
truths.
Opposition to Buddhism re-emerged in the late Tang period. In addition
to concerns about the fiscal impact of removing so much land from the tax
rolls and so many men from government labor service, there were concerns
about Buddhism’s foreign origins. As China’s international position
weakened, xenophobia surfaced. During the persecution of 845, more than
4,600 monasteries and 40,000 temples and shrines were destroyed, and
more than 260,000 Buddhist monks and nuns were forced to return to
secular life. Although this ban was lifted after a few years, the monastic
establishment never fully recovered. Buddhism retained a strong hold
among laypeople, and basic Buddhist ideas like karma and reincarnation
had become fully incorporated into everyday Chinese thinking. But
Buddhism was never again as central to Chinese life.
The East Asian Cultural Sphere
What elements of Chinese culture were adopted by Koreans, Vietnamese, and
Japanese, and how did they adapt them to their own circumstances?

During the millennium from 200 B.C.E. to 800 C.E., China exerted a powerful
influence on its immediate neighbors, who began forming states of their
own. By Tang times China was surrounded by independent states in Korea,
Manchuria, Tibet, the area that is now Yunnan province, Vietnam, and
Japan. All of these states were much smaller than China in area and
population, making China by far the dominant force politically and
culturally until the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, each of these separate
states developed a strong sense of its independent identity.
The earliest information about each of these countries is found in
Chinese sources. Han armies brought Chinese culture to Korea and
Vietnam, but even in those cases much cultural borrowing was entirely
voluntary as the elite, merchants, and craftsmen adopted the techniques,
ideas, and practices they found appealing. In Japan much of the process of
absorbing elements of Chinese culture was mediated via Korea. In Korea,
Japan, and Vietnam the fine arts — painting, architecture, and ceramics in
particular — were all strongly influenced by Chinese models. Tibet, though
a thorn in the side of Tang China, was as much in the Indian sphere of
influence as in the Chinese and thus followed a somewhat different
trajectory. Most significantly, it never adopted Chinese characters as its
written language, nor was it as influenced by Chinese artistic styles as were
other areas. Moreover, the form of Buddhism that became dominant in
Tibet came directly from India, not through Central Asia and China.
In each area Chinese-style culture was at first adopted by elites, but in
time many Chinese products and ideas, ranging from written language to
chopsticks and soy sauce, became incorporated into everyday life. By the
eighth century the written Chinese language was used by educated people
throughout East Asia. The books that educated people read included the
Chinese classics, histories, and poetry, as well as Buddhist sutras translated
into Chinese. The great appeal of Buddhism known primarily through
Chinese translation was a powerful force promoting cultural borrowing.
Vietnam
Vietnam’s climate is much like that of southernmost China — subtropical,
with abundant rain and rivers. The Vietnamese first appear in Chinese
sources as a people of south China called the Yue, who gradually migrated
farther south as the Chinese state expanded. The people of the Red River
Valley in northern Vietnam had achieved a relatively advanced level of
Bronze Age civilization by the first century B.C.E. The bronze heads of their
arrows were often dipped in poison to facilitate killing large animals such as
elephants, whose tusks were traded to China for iron. Power was held by
hereditary tribal chiefs who served as civil, religious, and military leaders,
with the king as the most powerful chief.
The collapse of the Qin Dynasty in 206 B.C.E. had an impact on this area
because a former Qin general, finding himself in the far south, set up his
own kingdom of Nam Viet. This kingdom covered much of south China and
was ruled by the king from his capital near the present site of Guangzhou.
Its population consisted chiefly of the Viet people. After killing all officials
loyal to the Chinese emperor, the king adopted the customs of the Viet and
made himself the ruler of a vast state that extended as far south as modern-
day Da Nang.
After almost a hundred years of diplomatic and military duels between
the Han Dynasty and the Nam Viet king and his successors, Nam Viet was
conquered in 111 B.C.E. by Chinese armies. Chinese administrators were
assigned to replace the local nobility. Chinese political institutions were
imposed, and Confucianism was treated as the official ideology. The
Chinese language was introduced as the medium of official and literary
expression, and Chinese characters were adopted as the written form for the
Vietnamese spoken language. The Chinese built roads, waterways, and
harbors to facilitate communication within the region and to ensure that
they maintained administrative and military control over it.
Chinese innovations that were beneficial to the Vietnamese were readily
integrated into the indigenous culture, but the local elite were not reconciled
to Chinese political domination. The most famous early revolt took place in
39 C.E., when two widows of local aristocrats, the Trung sisters, led an
uprising against foreign rule. After overwhelming Chinese strongholds, they
declared themselves queens of an independent Vietnamese kingdom. Three
years later a powerful army sent by the Han emperor re-established Chinese
rule.
 China retained at least nominal control over northern Vietnam through
the Tang Dynasty, and there were no real borders between China proper and
Vietnam during this time. The local elite became culturally dual, serving as
brokers between the Chinese governors and the native people.

Korea
Korea is a mountainous peninsula some 600 miles long extending south
from Manchuria and Siberia. At its tip it is about 120 miles from Japan
(Map 7.4). Archaeological, linguistic, and anthropological evidence
indicates that the Korean people share a common ethnic origin with other
peoples of North Asia, including those of Manchuria, Siberia, and Japan.
Linguistically, Korean is not related to Chinese.
 MAP 7.4 Korea and Japan, ca. 600 C.E.
Korea and Japan are of similar latitude, but Korea’s
climate is more continental, with harsher winters. Of
Japan’s four islands, Kyushu is closest to Korea and
mainland Asia.

Korea began adopting elements of technology from China in the first

millennium B.C.E., including bronze and iron technology. Chinese-Korean
contact expanded during the Warring States Period, when the state of Yan
extended into part of Korea. In about 194 B.C.E. Wiman, an unsuccessful
rebel against the Han Dynasty, fled to Korea and set up a state called
Choson in what is now northwest Korea and southern Manchuria. In 108
B.C.E.this state was overthrown by Han armies and four prefectures were
established there.
The impact of the Chinese prefectures in Korea was similar to that of
the contemporaneous Roman colonies in Britain in encouraging the spread
of culture and political forms. The Chinese never controlled the entire
Korean peninsula, however. The Han commanderies coexisted with the
native Korean kingdom of Koguryo˘, founded in the first century B.C.E.
Chinese sources describe this kingdom as a society of aristocratic tribal
warriors who had under them a mass of serfs and slaves, mostly from
conquered tribes. After the Chinese colonies were finally overthrown, the
kingdoms of Paekche and Silla emerged farther south on the peninsula in
the third and fourth centuries C.E., leading to what is called the Three
Kingdoms Period (313–668 C.E.). In all three Korean kingdoms Chinese was
used as the language of government and learning. Each of the three
kingdoms had hereditary kings, but their power was curbed by the existence
of very strong hereditary elites.
Buddhism was officially introduced in Koguryo˘ from China in 372 and
in the other states not long after. Buddhism connected Korea to societies
across Asia. Buddhist monks went back and forth between China and
Korea.
When the Sui Dynasty finally reunified China in 589, it tried to
establish control of at least a part of Korea. But the Korean kingdoms were
much stronger than their predecessors in Han times, and they repeatedly
repulsed Chinese attacks. The Tang government then tried allying itself with
one state, Silla, to fight the others. Silla and Tang jointly destroyed Paekche
in 660 and Koguryo˘ in 668. With its new resources Silla was able to repel
Tang efforts to make Korea a colony but agreed to vassal status. The
unification under Silla marked the first political unification of Korea.
For the next century Silla embarked on a policy of wholesale borrowing
of Chinese culture and institutions. Annual embassies were sent to
Chang’an, and large numbers of students studied in China.

Japan
The heart of Japan is four mountainous islands off the coast of Korea (see
Map 7.4). Since the land is rugged and lacking in navigable waterways, the
Inland Sea, like the Aegean in Greece, was the easiest avenue of
communication in early times. Hence the land bordering the Inland Sea —
Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu — developed as the political and cultural
center of early Japan. Geography also blessed Japan with a moat to protect
it from external interference — the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan.
Japan’s early development was closely tied to that of the mainland,
especially to Korea. Anthropologists have discerned several major waves of
immigrants into Japan. People of the Jōmon (joh-mohn) culture, established
by about 10,000 B.C.E. after an influx of people from Southeast Asia,
practiced hunting and fishing and fashioned clay pots. New arrivals from
northeast Asia brought agriculture and a distinct culture called Yayoi (yah-
yoh-ee) (ca. 300 B.C.E.–300 C.E.). During the Han Dynasty, objects of
Chinese and Korean manufacture found their way into Japan, an indication
that people were traveling back and forth as well. In the third century C.E.
Chinese histories begin to report on the land called Wa made up of
mountainous islands. It had numerous communities with markets, granaries,
tax collection, and class distinctions. The people liked liquor, ate with their
fingers, used body paint, and purified themselves by bathing after a funeral.
One of the most distinctive features of early Japan was its female rulers.
A Chinese historian of the time wrote:
The country formerly had a man as ruler. For some seventy or eighty years after that there
were disturbances and warfare. Thereupon the people agreed upon a woman for their ruler.
Her name was Pimiko [pee-mee-koe]. She occupied herself with magic and sorcery,
bewitching the people. Though mature in age, she remained unmarried. She had a younger
brother who assisted her in ruling the country. After she became the ruler, there were few
who saw her. She had one thousand women as attendants, but only one man. He served her
food and drink and acted as a medium of communication….
When Pimiko passed away, a great mound was raised, more than a hundred paces in
diameter. Over a hundred male and female attendants followed her to the grave. Then a king
was placed on the throne, but the people would not obey him. Assassination and murder
followed; more than one thousand were thus slain.
A relative of Pimiko named Iyo, a girl of thirteen, was then made queen and order was
restored.4

During the fourth through sixth centuries new waves of migrants from
Korea brought the language that evolved into Japanese as well as sericulture
(silkmaking), bronze swords, crossbows, iron plows, and the Chinese
written language. In this period a social order similar to Korea’s emerged,
dominated by a warrior aristocracy organized into clans. Clad in helmets
and armor, these warriors wielded swords, battle-axes, and often bows, and
some rode into battle on horseback. Those vanquished in battle were made
slaves. Each clan had its own chieftain, who marshaled clansmen for battle
and served as chief priest. By the fifth century the chief of the clan that
claimed descent from the sun-goddess, located in the Yamato plain around
modern Osaka, had come to occupy the position of monarch. These Yamato
rulers established the chief shrine of the sun-goddess near the seacoast,
where she could catch the first rays of the rising sun. This native religion
was later termed Shinto, the Way of the Gods, and it coexisted with
Buddhism, formally introduced in 538 C.E.
Beginning in the sixth century Prince Shōtoku (show-toe-coo) (574–
622) undertook a sweeping reform of the state designed to strengthen
Yamato rule by adopting Chinese-style bureaucratic practices (though not
the recruitment of officials by examination). In 604 he instituted a ladder of
official ranks similar to China’s, admonished the nobility to avoid strife and
opposition, and urged adherence to Buddhist precepts. Near his seat of
government, Prince Shōtoku built the magnificent Hōryūji (hoe-ryou-jee)
Temple and staffed it with monks from Korea. He also opened direct
relations with China, sending four missions during the brief Sui Dynasty.
State-building efforts continued through the seventh century and
culminated in the establishment in 710 of Japan’s first long-term true city,
the capital at Nara, north of modern Osaka. Nara, which was modeled on
the Tang capital of Chang’an, gave its name to an era that lasted until 794
and was characterized by the avid importation of Chinese ideas and
methods. As Buddhism developed a stronghold in Japan, it inspired many
trips to China to acquire sources and to study at Chinese monasteries.
Chinese and Korean craftsmen were often brought back to Japan, especially
to help with the decoration of the many Buddhist temples then under
construction. Musical instruments and tunes were imported as well, many
originally from Central Asia. Chinese practices were instituted, such as the
compilation of histories and law codes, the creation of provinces, and the
appointment of governors to collect taxes from them. By 750 some seven
thousand men staffed the central government.
Increased contact with the mainland had unwanted effects as well. In
contrast to China and Korea, both part of the Eurasian landmass, Japan had
been relatively isolated from many deadly diseases, so when diseases
arrived with travelers, people did not have immunity. The great smallpox
epidemic of 735–737 is thought to have reduced the population of about 5
million by 30 percent.
 The Buddhist monasteries that ringed Nara were both religious centers
and wealthy landlords, and the monks were active in the political life of the
capital. Copying the policy of the Tang Dynasty in China, the government
ordered every province to establish a Buddhist temple with twenty monks
and ten nuns to chant sutras and perform other ceremonies on behalf of the
emperor and the state. When an emperor abdicated in 749 in favor of his
daughter, he became a Buddhist monk, a practice many of his successors
would later follow.
Many of the temples built during the Nara period still stand, the wood,
clay, and bronze statues in them exceptionally well preserved. The largest of
these temples was the Tōdaiji, with its huge bronze statue of the Buddha,
which stood fifty-three feet tall and was made from more than a million
pounds of metal. When the temple and statue were completed in 752, an
Indian monk painted the eyes. Objects from the dedication ceremony were
placed in a special storehouse, and about ten thousand of them are still
there, including books, weapons, mirrors, screens, and objects of gold,
lacquer, and glass — most made in China but some coming from Central
Asia and Persia via the Silk Road.
Chapter Summary
After unifying China in 221 B.C.E., the Qin Dynasty created a strongly
centralized government that did away with noble privilege. The First
Emperor standardized script, coinage, weights, and measures. He also built
roads, the Great Wall, and a huge tomb for himself. During the four
centuries of the subsequent Han Dynasty, the harsher laws of the Qin were
lifted, but the strong centralized government was preserved. The Han
government promoted internal peace by providing relief in cases of floods,
droughts, and famines and by keeping land taxes low for the peasantry. The
Han government sent huge armies against the nomadic Xiongnu, whose
confederation threatened them in the north, but the Xiongnu remained a
potent foe. Still, Han armies expanded Chinese territory in many directions.
For nearly four centuries after the fall of the Han Dynasty, China was
divided among contending states. After 316 the north was in the hands of
non-Chinese rulers, while the south had Chinese rulers. In this period
merchants and missionaries brought Buddhism to China. Many elements of
Buddhism were new to China — a huge body of scriptures, celibate monks
and nuns, traditions of depicting Buddhas and bodhisattvas in statues and
paintings, and a strong proselytizing tradition. Rulers became major patrons
in both north and south.
Unlike the Roman Empire, China was successfully reunified in 589 C.E.
The short Sui Dynasty was followed by the longer Tang Dynasty. Tang
China regained overlordship of the Silk Road cities in Central Asia. The
Tang period was one of cultural flowering, with achievements in poetry
especially notable. Music was enriched with instruments and tunes from
Persia. Tang power declined after 755, when a powerful general turned his
army against the government. Although the rebellion was suppressed, the
government was not able to regain its strong central control. Moreover,
powerful states were formed along Tang’s borders. At court, eunuchs gained
power at the expense of civil officials.
Over the ten centuries covered in Chapter 7, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam
developed distinct cultures while adopting elements of China’s material,
political, and religious culture, including the Chinese writing system.
During the Tang era, ambitious Korean and Japanese rulers sought Chinese
expertise and Chinese products, including Chinese-style centralized
governments and the Chinese written language.

CONNECTIONS

East Asia was transformed in the millennium between the Qin unification in
221 B.C.E. and the end of the eighth century C.E. The Han Dynasty and four
centuries later the Tang Dynasty proved that a centralized, bureaucratic
monarchy could bring peace and prosperity to populations of 50 million or
more spread across China proper. By 800 C.E. neighboring societies along
China’s borders, from Korea and Japan on the east to the Uighurs and
Tibetans to the west, had followed China’s lead, forming states and building
cities. Buddhism had transformed the lives of all of these societies, bringing
new ways of thinking about life and death and new ways of pursuing
spiritual goals.
In the same centuries that Buddhism was adapting to and
simultaneously transforming the culture of much of eastern Eurasia,
comparable processes were at work in western Eurasia, where Christianity
continued to spread. The spread of these religions was aided by increased
contact between different cultures, facilitated in Eurasia by the merchants
traveling the Silk Road or sailing the Indian Ocean. Where contact between
cultures wasn’t as extensive, as in Africa (discussed in Chapter 10),
religious beliefs were more localized. The collapse of the Roman Empire in
the West during this period was not unlike the collapse of the Han Dynasty,
but in Europe the empire was never put back together at the level that it was
in China, where the Tang Dynasty by many measures was more splendid
than the Han. The story of these centuries in western Eurasia is taken up in
Chapters 8 and 9, which trace the rise of Christianity and Islam and the
movement of peoples throughout Europe and Asia. Before returning to the
story of East Asia after 800 in Chapter 13, we will also examine the empires
in Africa (Chapter 10) and the Americas (Chapter 11).
Chapter 7 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

Great Wall (p. 147)

Confucian classics (p. 149)
Records of the Grand Historian (p. 150)
Silk Road (p. 151)
tributary system (p. 151)
eunuchs (p. 155)
Age of Division (p. 155)
Grand Canal (p. 159)
Pure Land (p. 161)
Chan (p. 161)
Shinto (p. 165)
Nara (p. 165)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. What were the social, cultural, and political consequences of the unification of
China under the strong centralized governments of the Qin and Han empires? (p.
146)
2. How did Buddhism find its way into East Asia, and what was its appeal and
impact? (p. 155)
3. What were the lasting accomplishments of the Sui and Tang Dynasties? (p. 158)
4. What elements of Chinese culture were adopted by Koreans, Vietnamese, and
Japanese, and how did they adapt them to their own circumstances? (p. 161)
MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS
Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. What philosophies or other cultural elements in pre-imperial China (see Chapter 4)
help explain China’s development after 221 B.C.E.?
2. How did Buddhism in early India compare to Buddhism in Tang China?
3. How did the influence of Han and Tang China on neighboring regions compare to
the influence of Rome on its neighbors?

CHRONOLOGY

221–206 B.C.E. • China unified under Qin Dynasty

206 B.C.E.–220 C.E. • Han Dynasty
145–ca. 85 B.C.E. • Sima Qian, Chinese historian
114–111 B.C.E. • Under Emperor Wu, Han Dynasty extends its borders
into Central Asia, Korea, and Nam Viet
44 B.C.E. • Julius Caesar killed (Ch. 6)
ca. 3 B.C.E.–29 C.E. • Life of Jesus (Ch. 6)
200–500 C.E. • Buddhism gradually spreads in China
224–651 C.E. • Sassanid dynasty in Persia (Ch. 8)
372 C.E. • Buddhism introduced into Korea
380 C.E. • Christianity made state religion in Roman Empire (Ch.
6)
538 C.E. • Buddhism introduced into Japan
ca. 570–632 C.E. • Life of Muhammad (Ch. 9)
604 C.E. • Prince Shō toku introduces Chinese-style government
in Japan
618–907 C.E. • Tang Dynasty in China; great age of Chinese poetry
668 C.E. • Silla unifies Korea
690 C.E. • Empress Wu declares herself emperor of China
845 C.E. • Tang emperor begins persecution of Buddhism
8
Continuity and Change in Europe and
Western Asia

250–850
Chapter Preview

The Byzantine Empire

• How did the Byzantine Empire preserve the legacy of Rome?

The Growth of the Christian Church

• How did the Christian Church become a major force in Europe?

Christian Ideas and Practices

• How did Christian thinkers adapt classical ideas to Christian teachings, and
what new religious concepts and practices did they develop?

Migrating Peoples
• How did the barbarians shape social, economic, and political structures in
Europe and western Asia?

Christian Missionaries and Conversion

• How did the church convert barbarian peoples to Christianity?

Frankish Rulers and Their Territories

• How did the Franks build and govern a European empire?

FROM THE THIRD CENTURY ONWARD THE WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE slowly
disintegrated, and in 476 the Ostrogothic chieftain Odoacer deposed the Roman emperor in
the West and did not take on the title of emperor. This date thus marks the official end of the
Roman Empire in the West, although much of the empire had come under the rule of
various barbarian tribes well before that. Scholars have long seen this era as one of the
great turning points in Western history, but during the last several decades the focus has
shifted to continuities as well as changes. What is now usually termed “late antiquity” has
been recognized as a period of creativity and adaptation in Europe and western Asia, not
simply of decline and fall.
The two main agents of continuity were the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire and
the Christian Church. The Byzantine (BIZ-uhn-teen) Empire lasted until 1453, a thousand
years longer than the Western Roman Empire, and it preserved and transmitted much of
Greco-Roman law and philosophy. Missionaries and church officials spread Christianity
within and far beyond the borders of what had been the Roman Empire, carrying Christian
ideas and institutions west to Ireland and east to Central and South Asia. The main agent of
change in late antiquity was the migration of barbarian groups throughout much of Europe
and western Asia. They brought different social, political, and economic structures with
them, but as they encountered Roman and Byzantine culture and became Christian, their
own ways of doing things were also transformed.
The Byzantine Empire
How did the Byzantine Empire preserve the legacy of Rome?

The Byzantine (or Eastern Roman) Empire (Map 8.1) preserved the forms,
institutions, and traditions of the old Roman Empire, and its people even
called themselves Romans. Most important, however, is how Byzantium
protected the intellectual heritage of Greco-Roman civilization and then
passed it on.

MAP 8.1 The Byzantine and Sassanid Empires, ca. 600

Both the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires included territory that had earlier been part of
the Roman Empire. The Sassanid Persians fought Roman armies before the founding of
the Byzantine Empire. Later Byzantium and the Sassanids engaged in a series of wars
that weakened both and brought neither lasting territorial acquisitions.

Sources of Byzantine Strength

While the western parts of the Roman Empire gradually succumbed to
barbarian invaders, the Byzantine Empire survived Germanic, Persian, and
Arab attacks. In 540 a force of Xiongnu (whom the Greeks and Romans
called Huns) and Bulgars reached the gates of Constantinople. In 583 the
Avars, a mounted Mongol people who had swept across Russia and the
Balkans, seized Byzantine forts along the Danube and also reached the
walls of Constantinople. Between 572 and 630 the Greeks were repeatedly
at war with the Sassanid Persians (see “The Sassanid Empire and Conflicts
with Byzantium”). Beginning in 632 Muslim forces pressured the
Byzantine Empire (see “Islamic States and Their Expansion” in Chapter 9).
Why didn’t one or a combination of these enemies capture
Constantinople? The answer lies in strong military leadership and even
more in the city’s location and excellent fortifications. During the long
reign of the emperor Justinian (r. 527–565), Byzantine generals were able to
reconquer much of Italy and North Africa. The Byzantines ruled most of
Italy from 535 to 572 and the southern part of the peninsula until the
eleventh century. They ruled North Africa until it was conquered by Muslim
forces in the late seventh century. Massive triple walls, built by the
emperors Constantine and Theodosius II (r. 408–450) and kept in good
repair by later emperors, protected Constantinople from sea invasion.
Within the walls huge cisterns provided water, and vast gardens and grazing
areas supplied food so the defending people could hold out far longer than
the besieging army. Attacking Constantinople by land posed greater
geographical and logistical problems than a seventh- or eighth-century
government could solve. Because the city survived, the empire, though
reduced in territory, endured.

The Sassanid Empire and Conflicts with Byzantium

For several centuries the Sassanid empire of Persia was Byzantium’s most
regular foe. Ardashir I (r. 224–243), the ruler of a small state and the first of
the Sassanid dynasty, conquered the Parthian empire in 226 (see Map 6.2).
Ardashir kept expanding his holdings to the east and northwest. Like all
empires, the Sassanid depended on agriculture for its economic prosperity,
but its location also proved well suited for commerce (see Map 8.1). A
lucrative caravan trade linked the Sassanid empire to the Silk Road and
China. This trade brought about considerable cultural contact between the
Sassanids and the Chinese.
Whereas the Parthians had tolerated many religions, the Sassanid
Persians made Zoroastrianism (see “The Religion of Zoroaster” in Chapter
2) the official state religion. The king’s power rested on the support of
nobles and Zoroastrian priests who monopolized positions in the court and
in the imperial bureaucracy. A highly elaborate court ceremonial and ritual
exalted the status of the king and emphasized his semidivine pre-eminence
over his subjects. (The Byzantine monarchy, the Roman papacy, and the
Muslim caliphate subsequently copied aspects of this Persian ceremonial.)
Adherents to religions other than Zoroastrianism, such as Jews and
Christians, faced discrimination.
An expansionist foreign policy brought Persia into frequent conflict
with Rome and then with Byzantium. Neither side was able to achieve a
clear-cut victory until the early seventh century, when the Sassanids
advanced all the way to the Mediterranean and even took Egypt in 621.
Their victory would be very short-lived, however, as the taxes required to
finance the wars and conflicts over the succession to the throne had
weakened the Persians. The Byzantines crushed the Persians in a series of
battles ending with one at Nineveh in 627. Just five years later, the first
Arabic forces inspired by Islam entered Persian territories, and by 651 the
Sassanid dynasty had collapsed (see “Islam’s Spread Beyond Arabia” in
Chapter 9).

Justinian’s Code of Law

Byzantine emperors organized and preserved Roman law, making a lasting
contribution to the medieval and modern worlds. By the fourth century
Roman law had become a huge, bewildering mass. Its sheer bulk made it
almost unusable. The emperor Justinian appointed a committee of eminent
jurists to sort through and organize the laws. The result was the Corpus
Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law), a multipart collection of laws and legal
commentary issued from 529 to 534 that is often simply termed Justinian’s
Code and formed the backbone of Byzantine jurisprudence from that point
on.
Like so much of classical culture, Justinian’s Code was lost in western
Europe with the end of the Roman Empire, but it was rediscovered in the
eleventh century and came to form the foundation of law for nearly every
modern European nation.

Byzantine Intellectual Life

Just as they valued the law, the Byzantines prized education. As a result,
many masterpieces of ancient Greek literature survived to influence the
intellectual life of the modern world. Among members of the large reading
public, history was a favorite subject. The most remarkable Byzantine
historian was Procopius (ca. 500–ca. 562), who wrote the Secret History, a
vicious and uproarious attack on Justinian and his wife, the empress
Theodora.
Although the Byzantines discovered little that was new in mathematics
and geometry, they made advances in military applications. For example,
they invented an explosive liquid that came to be known as “Greek fire.”
The liquid was heated and propelled by a pump through a bronze tube, and
as the jet left the tube, it was ignited — somewhat like a modern
flamethrower.

Greek Fire In this illustration from a twelfth-century manuscript, sailors shoot Greek fire
toward an attacking ship from a pressurized tube that looks strikingly similar to a modern
flamethrower. The exact formula for Greek fire has been lost, but it was probably made
from a petroleum product because it continued burning on water. Greek fire was
particularly important in Byzantine defenses of Constantinople from Muslim forces in the
late seventh century.

The Byzantines devoted a great deal of attention to medicine, and their

general level of medical competence was far higher than that of western
Europeans. Yet their physicians could not cope with the terrible disease,
often called “the Justinian plague,” that swept through the Byzantine
Empire and parts of western Europe between 542 and 560. In 2013
scientists studying ancient teeth confirmed that this disease was bubonic
plague caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, probably originating in
northwestern India and carried to the Mediterranean region by ships. The
epidemic had profound political as well as social consequences. It
weakened Justinian’s military resources, thus hampering his efforts to
restore unity to the Mediterranean world.

Life in Constantinople
By the seventh century Constantinople was the greatest city in the Christian
world: a large population center, the seat of the imperial court and
administration, and the pivot of a large volume of international trade. Given
that the city was a natural geographical connecting point between East and
West, its markets offered goods from many parts of the world. Furs and
timber flowed across the Black Sea from the Rus (Russia) to the capital, as
did slaves across the Mediterranean from northern Europe and the Balkans
via Venice. Spices, silks, jewelry, and other luxury goods came to
Constantinople from India and China by way of Arabia, the Red Sea, and
the Indian Ocean. In return, the city exported glassware, mosaics, gold
coins, silk cloth, carpets, and a host of other products, with much foreign
trade in the hands of Italian merchants. At the end of the eleventh century
Constantinople may have been the world’s third-largest city, with only
Córdoba in Spain and Kaifeng in China larger.
Constantinople did not enjoy constant political stability. Between the
accession of Emperor Heraclius in 610 and the fall of the city to Western
Crusaders in 1204 (see “The Crusades” in Chapter 14), four separate
dynasties ruled at Constantinople. Imperial government involved such
intricate court intrigue, assassination plots, and military revolts that the
word byzantine is sometimes used in English to mean extremely entangled
and complicated politics.
The typical household in the city included family members and
servants, some of whom were slaves. Artisans lived and worked in their
shops, while clerks, civil servants, minor officials, and business people
commonly dwelled in multistory buildings perhaps comparable to the
apartment complexes of modern American cities. Wealthy aristocrats
resided in freestanding mansions that frequently included interior courts,
galleries, large reception halls, small sleeping rooms, reading and writing
rooms, baths, and chapels.
In the homes of the upper classes, the segregation of women seems to
have been the first principle of interior design. As in ancient Athens, private
houses contained a gynaeceum (guy-neh-KEE-uhm), or women’s
apartment, where women were kept strictly separated from the outside
world. The fundamental reason for this segregation was the family’s honor.
As it was throughout the world, marriage was part of a family’s strategy
for social advancement. Both the immediate family and the larger kinship
group participated in the selection of a bride or a groom, choosing a spouse
who might enhance the family’s wealth or prestige.
The Growth of the Christian Church
How did the Christian Church become a major force in Europe?

As the Western Roman Empire disintegrated, the Christian Church survived

and grew, becoming the most important institution in Europe. The
administrators of the church developed permanent institutions that drew on
the Greco-Roman tradition but also expressed Christian values.

The Evolution of Church Leadership and Orthodoxy

Believers in early Christian communities chose their own leaders, but over
time appointment by existing church leaders or secular rulers became the
common practice. During the reign of Diocletian (die-oh-KLEE-shun) (r.
284–305), the Roman Empire had been divided for administrative purposes
into geographical units called dioceses, and Christianity adopted this
pattern. Each diocese was headed by a bishop, who was responsible for
organizing preaching, overseeing the community’s goods, maintaining
orthodox (established or correct) doctrine, and delegating responsibilities
for preaching and teaching. The center of a bishop’s authority was his
cathedral, a word deriving from the Latin cathedra, meaning “chair.”
The early Christian Church benefited from the administrative abilities of
church leaders. Bishop Ambrose of Milan (339–397) was typical of the
Roman aristocrats who held high public office, converted to Christianity,
and subsequently became bishops. Like many bishops, Ambrose had a solid
education in classical law and rhetoric, which he used to become an
eloquent preacher. He had a strong sense of his authority and even
successfully resisted Emperor Theodosius’s (r. 379–395) efforts to take
control of church property. Ambrose’s assertion that the church was
supreme in spiritual matters and the state in secular issues was to serve as
the cornerstone of the church’s position on church-state relations for
centuries. Because of his strong influence, Ambrose came to be regarded as
one of the “fathers of the church,” that is, early Christian thinkers whose
authority was regarded as second only to the Bible in later centuries.
Although conflicts between religious and secular leaders were frequent,
the church also received support from the emperors. In 380 Theodosius
made Christianity the official religion of the empire, and later in his reign
he authorized the closure or destruction of temples and holy sites dedicated
to the traditional Roman and Greek gods. In return for such support, the
emperors expected the Christian Church’s assistance in maintaining order
and unity.
Christians disagreed with one another about many issues. In the fourth
and fifth centuries disputes arose over the nature of Christ. For example,
Arianism, developed by Arius (ca. 250–336), a priest of Alexandria, held
that Jesus was created by the will of God the Father and thus was not co-
eternal with him. Emperor Constantine, who legalized Christianity in 312,
rejected the Arian interpretation. In 325 he summoned a council of church
leaders to Nicaea (nigh-SEE-uh) in Asia Minor and presided over it
personally. The council produced the Nicene (nigh-SEEN) Creed, which
defined the position that Christ is “eternally begotten of the Father” and of
the same substance as the Father. Arius and those who refused to accept
Nicene Christianity were banished. Their interpretation of the nature of
Christ was declared a heresy, that is, a belief that contradicted the
interpretation the church leaders declared was correct, which was termed
orthodoxy. These actions did not end Arianism, however. Several later
emperors were Arian Christian, and Arian missionaries converted many
barbarian tribes, who were attracted by the idea that Jesus was God’s
second-in-command, which fit well with their own warrior hierarchies and
was less complicated than the idea of two persons with one substance. The
Nicene interpretation eventually became the most widely held
understanding of the nature of Christ, however, and is accepted today by the
Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and most
Protestant Churches.
The Nicene Creed says little specifically about the Holy Spirit, but in
the following centuries the idea that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are
“one substance in three persons” — the Trinity — became a central doctrine
in Christianity, though again there were those who disagreed. Disputes
about the nature of Christ also continued, with factions establishing
themselves as separate Christian groups. The Nestorians, for example,
regarded the divine and human natures in Jesus as distinct from one another,
whereas the orthodox opinion was that they were united. The Nestorians
split from the rest of the church in the fifth century after their position was
outlawed and settled in Persia. Nestorian Christian missionaries later
founded churches in Central Asia, India, and China.

The Western Church and the Eastern Church

The leader of the church in the West, the bishop of Rome, became more
powerful than his counterpart in the Byzantine East for a variety of reasons.
Most significantly, bishops of Rome asserted that Rome had a special place
in Christian history. According to tradition, Saint Peter, chief of Jesus’s
disciples, had lived in Rome and been its first bishop. Thus, as successors of
Peter, the bishops of Rome — known as popes — claimed a privileged
position in the church hierarchy, an idea called the Petrine Doctrine. They
urged other churches to appeal to Rome for the resolution of disputed issues
and sent letters of guidance to other bishops. (The Christian Church headed
by the pope in Rome was generally called the Roman Church in this era,
and later the Roman Catholic Church.)
The popes also expanded the church’s secular authority. They made
treaties with barbarian leaders, charged taxes, enforced laws, and organized
armies. The Western Christian Church headed by the pope in Rome would
become the most enduring nongovernmental institution in world history.
By contrast, in the East the emperor’s jurisdiction over the church was
fully acknowledged. As in Rome, there was a head of the church in
Constantinople, called the patriarch, but he did not develop the same
powers that the pope did in the West because there was never a similar
power vacuum into which he needed to step. He and other high church
officials were appointed by the emperor. The Eastern emperors looked on
religion as a branch of the state, and they considered it their duty to protect
the faith not only against heathen outsiders but also against heretics within
the empire. Following the pattern set by Constantine, the emperors
summoned councils of bishops and theologians to settle doctrinal disputes.
They and the Eastern bishops did not accept Rome’s claim to primacy, and
gradually the Byzantine Christian Church, generally called the Orthodox
Church, and the Roman Church began to diverge. In addition, other
branches of Christianity in the East, including the Nestorians, Maronites,
and Copts, developed their own distinctive theological ideas and patterns of
organization, which have continued to today.

Christian Monasticism
Christianity began and spread as a city religion. With time, however, some
especially pious Christians started to feel that a life of asceticism (extreme
material sacrifice, including fasting and the renunciation of sex) was a
better way to show their devotion to Christ’s teachings, just as followers of
Mahavira or the Buddha had centuries earlier in South Asia (see “India’s
Great Religions” in Chapter 3).
Ascetics often separate themselves from their families and normal social
life, and this is what Christian ascetics did. Individuals and small groups
withdrew from cities and moved to the Egyptian desert, where they sought
God through prayer in caves and shelters in the desert or mountains. These
individuals were called hermits or monks. Gradually, large groups of monks
emerged in the deserts of Upper Egypt, creating a style of life known as
monasticism. Many devout women were also attracted to this type of
monasticism, becoming nuns. Although monks and nuns led isolated lives,
ordinary people soon recognized them as holy people and sought them as
spiritual guides.
Church leaders did not really approve of the solitary life. Hermits
sometimes claimed to have mystical experiences — direct communications
with God. If hermits could communicate directly with the Lord, what need
had they for priests, bishops, and the institutional church? The church
hierarchy instead encouraged those who wanted to live ascetic lives of
devotion to do so in communities. Consequently, in the fourth, fifth, and
sixth centuries many different kinds of communal monasticism developed
in Gaul, Italy, Spain, Anglo-Saxon England, and Ireland.
In 529 Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–547) wrote a brief set of regulations
for the monks who had gathered around him at Monte Cassino, between
Rome and Naples. Benedict’s guide for monastic life, known as The Rule of
Saint Benedict, slowly replaced all others, and it has influenced all forms of
organized religious life in the Roman Church. The guide outlined a
monastic life of regularity, discipline, and moderation in an atmosphere of
silence. Under Benedict’s regulations, monks spent part of each day in
formal prayer, chanting psalms and other prayers from the Bible. The rest of
the day was passed in manual labor, study, and private prayer. The monastic
life as conceived by Saint Benedict provided opportunities for men of
different abilities and talents — from mechanics to gardeners to literary
scholars. The Benedictine form of religious life also appealed to women,
because it allowed them to show their devotion and engage in study.
Benedict’s twin sister, Scholastica (480–543), adapted the Rule for use by
her community of nuns.
Benedictine monasticism also succeeded partly because it was so
materially successful. In the seventh and eighth centuries Benedictine
monasteries pushed back forests and wastelands, drained swamps, and
experimented with crop rotation, making a significant contribution to the
agricultural development of Europe. Monasteries also conducted schools for
local young people. Some learned about prescriptions and herbal remedies
and went on to provide medical treatment for their localities. Others copied
manuscripts and wrote books. Local and royal governments drew on the
services of the literate men and able administrators the monasteries
produced.
Because all monasteries followed rules, men who lived a communal
monastic life came to be called regular clergy, from the Latin word regulus
(rule). In contrast, priests and bishops who staffed churches in which people
worshipped and who were not cut off from the world were called secular
clergy. According to official church doctrine, women were not members of
the clergy, but this distinction was not clear to most people, who thought of
nuns as members of the clergy.
Monasticism in the Orthodox world differed in fundamental ways from
the monasticism that evolved in western Europe. First, while The Rule of
Saint Benedict gradually became the universal guide for all western
European monasteries, each monastic house in the Byzantine world
developed its own set of rules for organization and behavior. Second,
education never became a central feature of the Orthodox houses. Since
bishops and patriarchs of the Orthodox Church were recruited only from the
monasteries, however, these institutions did exercise cultural influence.
Christian Ideas and Practices
How did Christian thinkers adapt classical ideas to Christian teachings, and what
new religious concepts and practices did they develop?

The growth of Christianity was tied not just to institutions such as the
papacy and monasteries but also to ideas. Initially, Christians rejected
Greco-Roman culture. Gradually, however, Christian leaders and thinkers
developed ideas that drew on classical influences, though there were also
areas of controversy that differed in the Western and Eastern Churches.

Christianity and Classical Culture

In the first century Christians believed that Christ would soon fulfill his
promise to return and that the end of the world was near; therefore, they
saw no point in devoting time to learning. By the second century, however,
these apocalyptic expectations were diminishing, and church leaders began
to incorporate elements of Greek and Roman philosophy and learning into
Christian teachings (see “The Growing Acceptance and Evolution of
Christianity” in Chapter 6). They found support for this incorporation in the
written texts that circulated among Christians. In the third and fourth
centuries these texts were brought together as the New Testament of the
Bible, with general agreement about most of what should be included but
sharp disputes about some books. Although some of Jesus’s sermons as
recorded in the Gospels (see “The Life and Teachings of Jesus” in Chapter
6) urged followers to avoid worldly attachments, other parts of the Bible
advocated acceptance of existing social, economic, and political structures.
Christian thinkers built on these, adapting Christian teachings to fit with
Roman realities and Roman ideas to fit with Christian aims, just as
Buddhist thinkers adapted Buddhist teachings when they spread them to
Central Asia, China, Korea, and Japan (see “The Spread of Buddhism Out
of India” in Chapter 7).
Saint Jerome (340–419), a theologian and linguist regarded as a father
of the church, translated the Old Testament and New Testament from
Hebrew and Greek, respectively, into vernacular Latin. Called the Vulgate,
his edition of the Bible served as the official translation until the sixteenth
century. Familiar with the writings of classical authors such as Cicero and
Virgil, Saint Jerome believed that Christians should study the best of
ancient thought because it would direct their minds to God. He maintained
that the best ancient literature should be interpreted in light of the Christian
faith.
Christian attitudes toward gender and sexuality provide a good example
of the ways early Christians first challenged and then largely adopted the
views of their contemporary world. In his plan of salvation Jesus considered
women the equal of men. Women were among the earliest converts to
Christianity and took an active role in its spread, preaching, acting as
missionaries, being martyred alongside men, and perhaps even baptizing
believers. Some women embraced the ideal of virginity and either singly or
in monastic communities declared themselves “virgins in the service of
Christ.” All this initially made Christianity seem dangerous to many
Romans who viewed marriage as the foundation of society and the proper
patriarchal order.
The Marys at Jesus’s Tomb This
late-fourthcentury ivory panel tells
the biblical story of Mary
Magdalene and another Mary who
went to Jesus’s tomb to anoint the
body (Matthew 28:1–7). At the top
guards collapse when an angel
descends from Heaven, and at the
bottom the Marys listen to the
angel telling them that Jesus has
risen. Here the artist uses Roman
artistic styles to convey Christian
subject matter, synthesizing
 classical form and Christian
teaching.

Not all Christian teachings about gender were radical, however. In the
first century male church leaders began to place restrictions on female
believers. Women were forbidden to preach and were gradually excluded
from holding official positions in Christianity other than in women’s
monasteries. In so limiting the activities of female believers, Christianity
was following well-established social patterns, just as it modeled its official
hierarchy after that of the Roman Empire.
Christian teachings about sexuality also built on and challenged
classical models. The rejection of sexual activity involved an affirmation of
the importance of a spiritual life, but it also incorporated hostility toward
the body found in some Hellenistic philosophies. Just as spirit was superior
to matter, the thinking went, the mind was superior to the body. Though
Christian teachings affirmed that God had created the material world and
sanctioned marriage, most Christian thinkers also taught that celibacy was
the better life and that anything that distracted one’s attention from the
spiritual world performed an evil function. For most clerical writers (who
were themselves male), this temptation came from women, and in some of
their writings women themselves are portrayed as evil, the “devil’s
gateway.” Thus the writings of many church fathers contain a strong streak
of misogyny (hatred of women), which was passed down to later Christian
thinkers.

Saint Augustine on Sin, Grace, and Redemption

One thinker had an especially strong role in shaping Christian views about
sexual activity and many other issues: Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430).
Augustine was born into an urban family in what is now Algeria in North
Africa. His father was a pagan; his mother, Monica, was a devout Christian.
He gained an excellent education, fathered a son, and experimented with
various religious ideas. In adulthood he converted to his mother’s religion,
eventually becoming bishop of the city of Hippo Regius.
Augustine’s autobiography, The Confessions, is a literary masterpiece
and one of the most influential books in Western history. Written in the
rhetorical style and language of late Roman antiquity, it marks a synthesis
of Greco-Roman forms and Christian thought. The Confessions describes
Augustine’s moral struggle, the conflict between his spiritual aspirations
and his sensual self. Many Greek and Roman philosophers had taught that
knowledge would lead to virtue. Augustine came to reject this idea,
claiming that people do not always act on the basis of rational knowledge.
Instead the basic or dynamic force in any individual is the will. When Adam
ate the fruit forbidden by God in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:6), he
committed the “original sin” and corrupted the will, wrote Augustine.
Adam’s sin did not simply remain his own but was passed on to all later
humans through sexual intercourse; even infants were tainted. Original sin
thus became a common social stain, in Augustine’s opinion, transmitted by
sexual desire. By viewing sexual desire as the result of Adam and Eve’s
disobedience to divine instructions, Augustine linked sexuality even more
clearly with sin than had earlier church fathers. According to Augustine,
because Adam disobeyed God, all human beings have an innate tendency to
sin: their will is weak. But Augustine held that God restores the strength of
the will through grace, which is transmitted in certain rituals that the church
defined as sacraments, such as baptism. Augustine’s ideas on sin, grace,
and redemption became the foundation of all subsequent Western Christian
theology, Protestant as well as Catholic.

The Iconoclastic Controversy

Augustine’s ideas about original sin did not become important in the
Eastern Orthodox Church, where other issues seemed more significant. In
the centuries after Constantine, the most serious dispute within the
Orthodox Church concerned icons — images or representations of God the
Father, Jesus, and the saints in painting, bas-relief, or mosaic. Icons were
important tools in conversion and in people’s devotional lives, but some
church leaders and emperors came to feel that the veneration of images had
gone too far.
The result of this dispute was a terrible theological conflict, the
iconoclastic controversy, that split the Byzantine world for a century. In
730 the emperor Leo III (r. 717–741) ordered the destruction of icons. The
removal of these images from Byzantine churches provoked a violent
reaction: entire provinces revolted, and the Byzantine Empire and the
Roman papacy severed relations. Since Eastern monasteries were the
fiercest defenders of icons, Leo’s son Constantine V (r. 741–775) seized
their property, executed some of the monks, and forced other monks into
the army. Theological disputes and civil disorder over the icons continued
intermittently until 843, when the icons were restored.
The implications of the iconoclastic controversy extended far beyond
strictly theological issues. Iconoclasm raised the question of the right of the
emperor to intervene in religious disputes. Iconoclasm antagonized the pope
and served to encourage him in his quest for an alliance with the Frankish
monarchy (see “The Warrior-Ruler Charlemagne”), which further divided
the two parts of Christendom. The ultimate acceptance of icons profoundly
influenced subsequent art within both Eastern and Western Christianity.
Migrating Peoples
How did the barbarians shape social, economic, and political structures in Europe
and western Asia?

The word barbarian comes from the Greek barbaros, meaning someone
who did not speak Greek. (To the Greeks, others seemed to be speaking
nonsense syllables; barbar is the Greek equivalent of “blah-blah” or “yada-
yada.”) The Greeks used this word to include people such as the Egyptians,
whom the Greeks respected. The Romans usually used the Latin version of
barbarian to mean the peoples who lived beyond the northeastern boundary
of Roman territory, whom they regarded as unruly, savage, and primitive.
That value judgment is generally also present when we use barbarian in
English, but there really is no other word to describe the many different
peoples who lived to the north of the Roman Empire. Thus historians of late
antiquity use the word barbarian to designate these peoples, who spoke a
variety of languages but had similarities in their basic social, economic, and
political structures (Map 8.2). Many of these historians find much to admire
in barbarian society.
 MAP 8.2 The Barbarian Migrations, ca. 340–500 Various barbarian groups migrated
throughout Europe and western Asia in late antiquity, pushed and pulled by a number of
factors. Many of them formed loosely structured states, of which the Frankish kingdom
would become the most significant.

Barbarians included many different ethnic groups with social and

political structures, languages, laws, and beliefs developed in central and
northern Europe and western Asia over many centuries. Among the largest
barbarian groups were the Celts (KELTS) (whom the Romans called Gauls)
and Germans; Germans were further subdivided into various tribes, such as
Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, and Franks. Celt and German are often
used as ethnic terms, but they are better understood as linguistic terms, a
Celt being a person who spoke a Celtic language and a German one who
spoke a Germanic language. Celts, Germans, and other barbarians brought
their customs and traditions with them when they moved south and west,
and these gradually combined with classical and Christian customs and
beliefs to form new types of societies. From this cultural mix the Franks
emerged as an especially strong and influential force, and they built a
lasting empire (see “The Warrior-Ruler Charlemagne”).

Social and Economic Structures

Barbarian groups usually resided in small villages, and climate and
geography determined the basic patterns of agricultural and pastoral life.
Many groups settled on the edges of clearings where they raised barley,
wheat, oats, peas, and beans. Men and women tilled their fields with simple
scratch plows and harvested their grain with small iron sickles. The kernels
of grain were eaten as porridge, ground up for flour, or fermented into
strong, thick beer. Most of people’s caloric intake came from grain in some
form.
Within the villages, there were great differences in wealth and status.
Free men and their families constituted the largest class, and the number of
cattle these men possessed indicated their wealth and determined their
social status. Free men also took part in tribal warfare. Slaves acquired
through warfare worked as farm laborers, herdsmen, and household
servants. Barbarian society was patriarchal: within each household the
father had authority over his wife, children, and slaves. Some wealthy and
powerful men had more than one wife, a pattern that continued even after
they became Christian, but polygamy was not widespread among ordinary
people. Once women were widowed, they sometimes assumed their
husbands’ rights over family property and took guardianship of their
children.

Tribes, Warriors, and Laws

The basic social and political unit among barbarian groups was the tribe or
confederation, made up of kin groups whose members believed they were
all descended from a common ancestor. Tribes were led by chieftains, who
were elected from among the male members of the most powerful family.
The chief led the tribe in war, settled disputes among its members,
conducted negotiations with outside powers, and offered sacrifices to the
gods. As barbarian groups migrated into and conquered parts of the Western
Roman Empire, their chiefs became even more powerful. Often chiefs
adopted the title of king.
Closely associated with the chief in some tribes was the comitatus
(kuhm-ee-TAH-tuhs), or war band. The warriors swore loyalty to the chief
and fought alongside him in battle. Warriors may originally have been
relatively equal to one another, but during the migrations and warfare of the
second through the fourth centuries, the war band was transformed into a
system of stratified ranks. When tribes settled down, warriors also began to
acquire land as both a mark of prestige and a means to power. Social
inequalities emerged and gradually grew stronger. These inequalities help
explain the origins of the European noble class.
Early barbarian tribes had no written laws, but beginning in the late fifth
century some chieftains began to collect, write, and publish lists of their
customs and laws. Barbarian law codes often included clauses designed to
reduce interpersonal violence. Any crime that involved a personal injury,
such as assault, rape, and murder, was given a particular monetary value,
called the wergeld (WUHR-gehld) (literally “man-money”) that was to be
paid by a person accused of a crime to the victim or the victim’s family. The
wergeld varied according to the severity of the crime and also the social
status and gender of the victim, and was designed to prevent an act of
violence from escalating into a blood-feud between families.
Like most people of the ancient world, barbarians worshipped hundreds
of gods and goddesses with specialized functions. They regarded certain
mountains, lakes, rivers, or groves of trees as sacred because these were
linked to deities. Among the Celts, religious leaders called druids had legal
and educational as well as religious functions, orally passing down laws and
traditions from generation to generation. Bards singing poems and ballads
also passed down myths and stories of heroes and gods, which were written
down much later.
 Visigothic Work and Play This page comes from one of the very
few manuscripts from the time of the barbarian invasions to have
survived, a copy of the first five books of the Old Testament — the
Pentateuch — made around 600, perhaps in Visigothic Spain or
North Africa. The top shows biblical scenes, while the bottom shows
people engaged in everyday activities: building a wall, drawing
water from a well, and trading punches.

Migrations and Political Change

Migrating groups that the Romans labeled barbarians had moved southward
and eastward off and on since about 100 C.E. (see “Migrating Peoples”).
Why did the barbarians migrate? In part, they were searching for more
regular supplies of food, better farmland, and a warmer climate. Conflicts
within and among barbarian groups also led to war and disruption, which
motivated groups to move. Roman expansion led to further movement of
barbarian groups but also to the blending of cultures.
The spread of the Celts presents a good example of both conflict and
assimilation. Celtic-speaking peoples had lived in central Europe since at
least the fifth century B.C.E. and had spread out from there to the Iberian
Peninsula in the west, Hungary in the east, and the British Isles in the north.
As Julius Caesar advanced northward into what he termed Gaul (present-
day France), he defeated many Celtic tribes (see Map 6.2). Celtic peoples
conquered by the Romans often assimilated to Roman ways, intermarrying
with Romans and adopting the Latin language and many aspects of Roman
culture. By the fourth century C.E., however, Gaul and Britain were under
pressure from Germanic groups moving westward. Roman troops withdrew
from Britain, and Celtic-speaking peoples clashed with Germanic-speaking
invaders, of whom the largest tribes were the Angles and the Saxons. Some
Celtic-speakers moved farther west. Others remained and intermarried with
Germanic peoples, their descendants forming a number of small Anglo-
Saxon kingdoms.
In eastern Europe, a significant factor in barbarian migration and the
merging of various Germanic groups was pressure from nomadic steppe
peoples from central Asia, most prominently the Huns, who attacked the
Black Sea area and the Eastern Roman Empire beginning in the fourth
century. Under the leadership of their warrior-king Attila, the Huns attacked
the Byzantine Empire in 447 and then turned westward, allying with some
Germanic groups and moving into what is now France. After Attila turned
his army southward and crossed the Alps into Italy, a papal delegation,
including Pope Leo I himself, asked him not to attack Rome. Though papal
diplomacy was later credited with stopping the advance of the Huns, their
dwindling food supplies and a plague that spread among their troops were
probably much more important factors. The Huns retreated from Italy, and
within a year Attila was dead. The Huns never again played a significant
role in European history. Their conquests had pushed many Germanic
groups together, however, which transformed smaller bands of people into
larger, more unified peoples who could more easily pick the Western
Roman Empire apart.
 After they conquered an area, barbarians generally established states
ruled by kings. However, the kingdoms did not have definite geographical
borders, and their locations shifted as tribes moved. Eventually, barbarian
kingdoms came to include Italy itself. The Western Roman emperors
increasingly relied on barbarian commanders and their troops to maintain
order, and, as we saw in Chapter 6, in 476 the barbarian chieftain Odoacer
(oh-doh-AY-suhr) deposed Romulus Augustus, the last person to have the
title of Roman emperor in the West. Odoacer did not take the title of
emperor, calling himself instead the king of Italy, so this date marks the
official end of the Roman Empire in the West. From Constantinople,
Eastern Roman emperors such as Justinian (see “Sources of Byzantine
Strength”) worked to reconquer at least some of the West from barbarian
tribes. They were occasionally successful but could not hold the empire
together for long.
Christian Missionaries and Conversion
How did the church convert barbarian peoples to Christianity?

The Mediterranean served as the highway over which Christianity spread to

the cities of the Roman Empire. Christian teachings were often spread into
the countryside and into areas beyond the borders of the empire by those
who had dedicated their lives to the church, such as monks. Such
missionaries were often sent by popes specifically to convert certain groups.

Missionaries’ Actions
Throughout barbarian Europe, religion was not a private or individual
matter; it was a social affair, and the religion of the chieftain or king
determined the religion of the people. Thus missionaries concentrated their
initial efforts not on ordinary people but on kings or tribal chieftains and the
members of their families. Because they had more opportunity to spend
time with missionaries, queens and other female members of the royal
family were often the first converts in an area, and they influenced their
husbands and brothers. Germanic kings sometimes accepted Christianity
because they came to believe that the Christian God was more powerful
than pagan gods and that the Christian God — in either its Arian or Roman
version — would deliver victory in battle.
Many barbarian groups were converted by Arian missionaries (see “The
Evolution of Church Leadership and Orthodoxy”), who also founded
dioceses. Bishop Ulfilas (ca. 310–383), for example, an Ostrogoth himself,
translated the Bible from Greek into the Gothic language even before
Jerome wrote the Latin Vulgate, creating a new Gothic script in order to
write it down. In the sixth and seventh centuries most Goths and other
Germanic tribes converted to Roman Christianity, sometimes peacefully
and sometimes as a result of conquest. Ulfilas’s Bible — and the Gothic
script he invented — were forgotten and rediscovered only a thousand years
later.
Tradition identifies the conversion of Ireland with Saint Patrick (ca.
385–461). After a vision urged him to Christianize Ireland, Patrick studied
in Gaul and in 432 was consecrated a bishop. He then returned to Ireland,
where he converted the Irish tribe by tribe, first baptizing the king.
The Christianization of the English began in earnest in 597, when Pope
Gregory I (pontificate 590–604) sent a delegation of monks to England. The
conversion of the English had far-reaching consequences because Britain
later served as a base for the Christianization of Germany and other parts of
northern Europe (Map 8.3). In eastern Europe Byzantine missionaries
gained converts among the Bulgars and Slavs. Between the fifth and tenth
centuries the majority of people living in Europe accepted the Christian
religion — that is, they received baptism, though baptism in itself did not
automatically transform people into Christians.

MAP 8.3 The Spread of Christianity, ca. 300–800 Originating in the area near
Jerusalem, Christianity spread throughout and then beyond the Roman world.
The Process of Conversion
When a ruler marched his people to the waters of baptism, the work of
Christianization had only begun. Churches could be built, and people could
be required to attend services and belong to parishes, but the process of
conversion was a gradual one.
How did missionaries and priests get masses of pagan and illiterate
peoples to understand Christian ideals and teachings? They did it through
preaching, assimilation of pagan customs, the ritual of penance, and
veneration of the saints. Those who preached aimed to present the basic
teachings of Christianity and strengthen the newly baptized in their faith
through stories about the lives of Christ and the saints.
Deeply ingrained pagan customs and practices, however, could not be
stamped out by words alone. Thus Christian missionaries often pursued a
policy of assimilation, easing the conversion of pagan men and women by
stressing similarities between their customs and beliefs and those of
Christianity and by mixing barbarian pagan ideas and practices with
Christian ones. For example, bogs and lakes sacred to Germanic gods
became associated with saints, as did various aspects of ordinary life, such
as traveling, planting crops, and worrying about a sick child. Aspects of
existing midwinter celebrations were assimilated into celebrations of
Christmas. Spring rituals involving eggs and rabbits (both symbols of
fertility) were added to celebrations of Easter. People joined with family
members, friends, and neighbors to celebrate these holidays, and also
baptisms, weddings, and funerals, presided over by a priest.
The ritual of penance was also instrumental in teaching people
Christian ideas. Christianity taught that certain actions and thoughts were
sins. Only by confessing sins and asking forgiveness could a sinning
believer be reconciled with God. Confession was initially a public ritual,
but by the fifth century individual confession to a parish priest was more
common. During this ritual the individual knelt before the priest, who
questioned him or her about sins he or she might have committed. The
priest then set a penance such as fasting or saying specific prayers to allow
the person to atone for the sin. Penance gave new converts a sense of the
behavior expected of Christians, encouraged the private examination of
conscience, and offered relief from the burden of sinful deeds.
Veneration of saints, people who had lived (or died) in a way that was
spiritually heroic or noteworthy, was another way that Christians formed
stronger connections with their religion. Saints were understood to provide
protection and assistance to worshippers, and parish churches often housed
saints’ relics, that is, bones, articles of clothing, or other objects associated
with them. The relics served as links between the material world and the
spiritual, and miracle stories about saints and their relics were an important
part of Christian preaching and writing.
Christians came to venerate the saints as powerful and holy. They
prayed to saints or to the Virgin Mary to intercede with God, or they simply
asked the saints to assist and bless them. The entire village participated in
processions marking saints’ days or important points in the agricultural
year, often carrying images of saints or their relics around the houses and
fields. The decision to adopt Christianity was often made first by an
emperor or king, but actual conversion was a local matter, as people came
to feel that the parish priest and the saints provided them with benefits in
this world and the world to come.
Frankish Rulers and Their Territories
How did the Franks build and govern a European empire?

Most barbarian kingdoms did not last very long, but one that did — and that
came to have a decisive role in history — was that of the confederation of
Germanic peoples known as the Franks. In the fourth and fifth centuries the
Franks settled within the empire and allied with the Romans, some attaining
high military and civil positions. Though at that time the Frankish kingdom
was simply one barbarian kingdom among many, rulers after the influential
Clovis used a variety of tactics to expand their holdings, enhance their
authority, and create a stable system. Charles the Great (r. 768–814),
generally known by the French version of his name, Charlemagne
(SHAHR-luh-mayne), created the largest state in western Europe since the
Roman Empire.

The Merovingians and Carolingians

The Franks believed that Merovech, a semi-legendary figure, founded their
ruling dynasty, which was thus called Merovingian (mehr-uh-VIHN-jee-
uhn). The reign of Clovis (r. ca. 481–511) was decisive in the development
of the Franks as a unified people. Through military campaigns, Clovis
acquired the central provinces of Roman Gaul and began to conquer
southern Gaul from other Germanic tribes. His wife, Clotild, a Roman
Christian, pressured him to convert, but he refused. His later biographer
Gregory of Tours, a bishop in the Frankish kingdom in the sixth century,
attributed his conversion to a battlefield vision, just as Emperor
Constantine’s biographers had reported about his conversion.
Most historians today conclude that Clovis’s conversion to Roman
Christianity was a pragmatic choice: it brought him the crucial support of
the bishops of Gaul in his campaigns against tribes that were still pagan or
had accepted the Arian version of Christianity. As the defender of Roman
Christianity against heretical tribes, Clovis went on to conquer the
Visigoths, extending his domain to include much of what is now France and
southwestern Germany.
 Following Frankish traditions in which property was divided among
male heirs, at Clovis’s death his kingdom was divided among his four sons.
For the next two centuries rulers of the various kingdoms fought one
another in civil wars, and other military leaders challenged their authority.
Merovingian kings based some aspects of their government on Roman
principles. For example, they adopted the Roman concept of the civitas —
Latin for a city and its surrounding territory. A count presided over the
civitas, raising troops, collecting royal revenues, and providing justice.
Within the royal household, Merovingian politics provided women with
opportunities, and some queens not only influenced but occasionally also
dominated events. Because the finances of the kingdom were merged with
those of the royal family, queens often had control of the royal treasury just
as more ordinary women controlled household expenditures.
At the king’s court an official called the mayor of the palace supervised
legal, financial, and household officials; the mayor of the palace also
governed in the king’s absence. In the seventh century the position as mayor
was held by members of an increasingly powerful family, the Carolingians
(ka-ruh-LIHN-jee-uhns), who advanced themselves through advantageous
marriages, a well-earned reputation for military strength, and the help of the
church. Carolingian derives from the Latin word for “Charles,” the name of
several members of this dynasty.
Eventually the Carolingians replaced the Merovingians as rulers of the
Frankish kingdom, cementing their authority when the Carolingian Charles
Martel defeated Muslim invaders in 732 at the Battle of Poitiers (pwah-tee-
AY) in central France. Muslims and Christians have interpreted the battle
differently. Muslims considered it a minor skirmish and attributed the
Frankish victory to Muslim difficulties in maintaining supply lines over
long distances and to ethnic conflicts and unrest in Islamic Spain. Charles
Martel and later Carolingians used the victory to portray themselves as
defenders of Christendom against the Muslims.
The Battle of Poitiers helped the Carolingians acquire more support
from the church, perhaps their most important asset. They further
strengthened their ties to the church by supporting the work of missionaries
who preached Christian principles — including the duty to obey secular
authorities — to pagan peoples and by allying themselves with the papacy
against other Germanic tribes.
The Warrior-Ruler Charlemagne
The most powerful of the Carolingians was Charlemagne. Through brutal
military expeditions that brought wealth and by peaceful travel, personal
appearances, shrewd marital alliances, and the sheer force of his
personality, Charlemagne sought to awe newly conquered peoples and
rebellious domestic enemies. By around 805 the Frankish kingdom included
all of continental Europe except Spain, Scandinavia, southern Italy, and the
Slavic fringes of the East.
For administrative purposes, Charlemagne divided his entire kingdom
into counties. Each of the approximately six hundred counties was governed
by a count. As a link between local authorities and the central government,
Charlemagne appointed officials called missi dominici, “agents of the lord
king.” Each year beginning in 802 two missi, usually a count and a bishop
or abbot, visited assigned districts. They checked up on the counts and their
districts’ judicial, financial, and clerical activities.

Charlemagne and His Wife This illumination from a

ninth-century manuscript portrays Charlemagne with
one of his wives. Marriage was an important tool of
diplomacy for Charlemagne, and he had a number of
wives and concubines.
 In the autumn of the year 800 Charlemagne visited Rome, where on
Christmas Day Pope Leo III crowned him emperor. The event had
momentous consequences. In taking as his motto Renovatio romani imperi
(Revival of the Roman Empire), Charlemagne was deliberately perpetuating
old Roman imperial ideas while identifying with the new Rome of the
Christian Church. From Baghdad, the Abbasid Empire’s caliph, Harun al-
Rashid (r. 786–809), congratulated Charlemagne on his coronation with the
gift of an elephant. The elephant survived for nearly a decade, though like
everyone else at Charlemagne’s capital of Aachen (AH-ken) on the western
border of modern Germany, it lived in a city that was far less sophisticated,
healthy, and beautiful than Abbasid Baghdad. Although the Muslim caliph
recognized Charlemagne as a fellow sovereign, the Byzantines regarded his
papal coronation as rebellious and Charlemagne as a usurper. His crowning
as emperor thus marked a decisive break between Rome and Constantinople
and gave church authorities in the West proof that the imperial title could be
granted only by the pope.
As he built an empire through conquest and strategic alliances,
Charlemagne also set in motion a cultural revival that later historians called
the “Carolingian Renaissance.” The Carolingian Renaissance was a rebirth
of interest in, study of, and preservation of the language, ideas, and
achievements of classical Greece and Rome. Scholars at Charlemagne’s
capital of Aachen copied Greco-Roman and Christian books and
manuscripts and created libraries housed in churches and monasteries.
Furthermore, Charlemagne urged monasteries to promote Christian
learning.
Charlemagne left his vast empire to his sole surviving son, Louis the
Pious (r. 814–840), who attempted to keep the empire intact. This proved to
be impossible. Members of the nobility engaged in plots and open warfare
against the emperor, often allying themselves with one of Louis’s three
sons. In 843, shortly after Louis’s death, those sons agreed to the Treaty of
Verdun, which divided the empire into three parts: Charles the Bald
received the western part, Lothair the middle and the title of emperor, and
Louis the eastern part, from which he acquired the title “the German.”
Though of course no one knew it at the time, this treaty set the pattern for
political boundaries in Europe that have been maintained through today,
including the modern states of Germany, France, and Italy. Other than in
brief periods under Napoleon and Hitler, Europe would never again see as
large a unified state as it had under Charlemagne, which is one reason he
has become a symbol of European unity in the twenty-first century.
The weakening of central power was hastened by invasions and
migrations from the north, south, and east. Thus Charlemagne’s empire
ended in much the same way that the Roman Empire had earlier, from a
combination of internal weakness and external pressure.
Chapter Summary
During the sixth and seventh centuries the Byzantine Empire survived
waves of attacks, owing to effective military leadership and to fortifications
around Constantinople. Byzantine emperors organized and preserved
Roman institutions, and the Byzantine Empire survived until 1453. The
emperor Justinian oversaw creation of a new uniform code of Roman law.
The Byzantines prized education, and because of them many aspects of
ancient Greek thought survived to influence the intellectual life of the
Muslim world and eventually that of western Europe.
Christianity gained the support of the fourth-century emperors, and the
church gradually adopted the Roman system of hierarchical organization.
The church possessed able administrators and leaders. Bishops expanded
their activities, and in the fifth century the bishops of Rome, taking the title
“pope,” began to stress their supremacy over other Christian communities.
Monasteries offered opportunities for individuals to develop deeper spiritual
devotion and also provided a model of Christian living and places for
education and learning. Christian thinkers reinterpreted the classics in a
Christian sense, incorporating elements of Greek and Roman philosophy
into Christian teachings.
Barbarian groups migrated throughout Europe and Central Asia
beginning in the second century. Among barbarians, the basic social unit
was the tribe, made up of kin groups and led by a tribal chieftain.
Missionaries and priests persuaded pagan and illiterate peoples to accept
Christianity. Most barbarian kingdoms were weak and short-lived, though
the kingdom of the Franks was relatively more unified and powerful. Rulers
first in the Merovingian dynasty, and then in the Carolingian, used military
victories, carefully calculated marriage alliances, and the help of the church
to enhance their authority. Carolingian government reached the peak of its
power under Charlemagne, who brought much of Europe under his
authority through military conquest and strategic alliances.
 CONNECTIONS

For centuries the end of the Roman Empire in the West was seen as a major
turning point in history: the fall of the sophisticated and educated classical
world to uncouth and illiterate tribes, and the beginning of a “Dark Ages”
that would last for centuries. Over the last several decades, however, many
historians have put a greater emphasis on continuities. Barbarian kings
relied on officials trained in Roman law, and Latin remained the language
of scholarly communication and the Christian Church. Greco-Roman art
and architecture still adorned the land, and people continued to use Roman
roads, aqueducts, and buildings. In eastern Europe and western Asia, the
Byzantine Empire preserved the traditions of the Roman Empire and
protected the intellectual heritage of Greco-Roman culture for another
millennium.
In the middle of the era covered in this chapter, a new force emerged
that had a dramatic impact on much of Europe and western Asia — Islam.
In the seventh and eighth centuries Sassanid Persia, much of the Byzantine
Empire, and the barbarian kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula fell to Arab
forces motivated by this new religion. As we have seen in this chapter, a
reputation as victors over Islam helped the Franks establish the most
powerful state in Europe. As we will see when we pick up the story of
Europe again in Chapter 14, Islam continued to shape European culture and
politics in subsequent centuries. In terms of world history, the expansion of
Islam may have been an even more dramatic turning point than the fall of
the Roman Empire. Here, too, however, there were continuities, as the
Muslims adopted and adapted Greek, Byzantine, and Persian political and
cultural institutions.
Chapter 8 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

Justinian’s Code (p. 174)

dioceses (p. 176)
heresy (p. 177)
popes (p. 177)
Orthodox Church (p. 178)
sacraments (p. 181)
iconoclastic controversy (p. 182)
wergeld (p. 184)
penance (p. 188)
saints (p. 188)
Merovingian (p. 189)
Carolingian (p. 190)
Treaty of Verdun (p. 191)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. How did the Byzantine Empire preserve the legacy of Rome? (p. 171)
2. How did the Christian Church become a major force in Europe? (p. 176)
3. How did Christian thinkers adapt classical ideas to Christian teachings, and what
new religious concepts and practices did they develop? (p. 179)
4. How did the barbarians shape social, economic, and political structures in Europe
and western Asia? (p. 182)
5. How did the church convert barbarian peoples to Christianity? (p. 186)
6. How did the Franks build and govern a European empire? (p. 189)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. The end of the Roman Empire in the West in 476 has long been viewed as one of
the most important turning points in history. Do you agree with this idea? Why or
why not?
2. How did the Christian Church adapt to Roman and barbarian society? How was it
different in 850 than it had been in 100, as discussed in Chapter 6?
3. In what ways were the spread of Buddhism (Chapter 7) and the spread of
Christianity similar? In what ways were they different?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 200–600 • Buddhism spreads into China, Japan, and Korea (Ch.
7)
224–651 • Sassanid dynasty
325 • Nicene Creed produced
340–419 • Life of Saint Jerome
354–430 • Life of Saint Augustine
380 • Theodosius makes Christianity official religion of Roman
Empire
ca. 385–461 • Life of Saint Patrick
476 • Odoacer deposes the last Roman emperor in the West
481–511 • Reign of Clovis
ca. 500–700 • Ascendency of Kingdom of Aksum (Ch. 10)
527–565 • Reign of Justinian
529 • Writing of The Rule of Saint Benedict
535–572 • Byzantines reconquer and rule Italy
ca. 600 • Christian missionaries convert Nubian rulers (Ch. 10)
ca. 600–900 • Peak of Maya civilization (Ch. 11)
618–907 • Tang Dynasty in China (Ch. 7)
632–750 • Expansion of Islam (Ch. 9)
639–642 • Islam introduced to Africa (Ch. 10)
730–843 • Iconoclastic controversy
768–814 • Reign of Charlemagne
843 • Treaty of Verdun divides Carolingian kingdom
9
The Islamic World

600–1400
Chapter Preview

The Origins of Islam

• From what kind of social and economic environment did Muhammad arise,
and what did he teach?

Islamic States and Their Expansion

• What made possible the spread of Islam, and what forms of government were
established to rule Islamic lands?

Fragmentation and Military Challenges, 900–1400

• How were the Islamic lands governed from 900 to 1400, and what new
challenges did rulers face?

Muslim Society: The Life of the People

• What social distinctions were important in Muslim society?

Trade and Commerce

• Why did trade thrive in Islamic lands?

Cultural Developments
• What new ideas and practices emerged in the arts, sciences, education, and
religion?

Muslim-Christian Encounters
• How did Muslims and Christians come into contact with each other, and how
did they view each other?

AROUND 610 IN THE CITY OF MECCA IN WHAT IS NOW SAUDI ARABIA, a merchant
called Muhammad had a religious vision that inspired him to preach God’s revelations to the
people of Mecca. By the time he died in 632, he had many followers in Arabia, and a
century later his followers controlled what is now Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, northern
Africa, Spain, and southern France. Within another century Muhammad’s beliefs had been
carried across Central Asia to the borders of China and India. The speed with which Islam
spread is one of the most amazing stories in world history, and scholars have pointed to
many factors that must have contributed to its success. Military victories were rooted in
strong military organization and the practice of establishing garrison cities in newly
conquered territories. The religious zeal of new converts certainly played an important role.
So too did the political weakness of many of the governments then holding power in the
lands where Islam extended, such as the Byzantine government centered in
Constantinople. Commerce and trade also spread the faith of Muhammad.
Although its first adherents were nomads, Islam developed and flourished in a
mercantile milieu. By land and sea, Muslim merchants transported a rich variety of goods
across Eurasia. On the basis of the wealth that trade generated, a gracious, sophisticated,
and cosmopolitan culture developed with centers at Baghdad and Córdoba. During the
ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the Islamic world witnessed enormous intellectual
vitality and creativity. Muslim scholars produced important work in many disciplines,
especially mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. This brilliant civilization profoundly
influenced the development of both Eastern and Western civilizations.
The Origins of Islam
From what kind of social and economic environment did Muhammad arise, and what
did he teach?

Much of the Arabian peninsula is desert. Outside the oasis towns were
Bedouin (BEH-duh-uhn) nomadic tribes who grazed sheep, goats, and
camels. Though always small in number, Bedouins were politically
dominant because of their toughness, solidarity, fighting traditions,
possession of horses and camels, and ability to control trade and lines of
communication. Mecca became the economic and cultural center of western
Arabia, in part because pilgrims came to visit the Ka’ba, a temple
containing a black stone thought to be a god’s dwelling place. Muhammad’s
roots were in this region.

Arabian Social and Economic Structure

The basic social unit of the Bedouins and other Arabs was the tribe.
Consisting of people connected through kinship, tribes provided protection
and support and in turn expected members’ total loyalty. Like the Germanic
peoples in the age of their migrations (see “Migrating Peoples” in Chapter
8), Arab tribes were not static entities but rather continually evolving
groups. A particular tribe might include both nomadic and sedentary
members.
In northern and central Arabia in the early seventh century, tribal
confederations led by their warrior elite were dominant. In the southern
parts of the peninsula, however, priestly aristocracies tended to hold
political power. Many oasis or market towns had a shrine to their guardian
deity where the priest would try to settle disputes among warring tribes. All
Arabs respected the shrines because they served as neutral places for such
arbitration.
The power of the northern warrior tribes rested on their fighting skills.
The southern religious aristocracy, by contrast, depended on its religious
and economic power. The political genius of Muhammad was to bind
together these different tribal groups into a strong, unified state.
Muhammad’s Rise as a Religious Leader
Much like the earliest accounts of Jesus and the Buddha, the earliest
account of the life of Muhammad (ca. 570–632) comes from oral traditions
passed down among followers. According to these traditions, Muhammad
was a merchant in the caravan trade who later married a wealthy widow. At
about age forty Muhammad had a vision of an angelic being who
commanded him to preach the revelations that God would be sending him.
Muhammad began to preach to the people of Mecca, urging them to give up
their idols and to submit to the one indivisible God. After his death, scribes
organized the revelations jotted down or memorized by followers. In 651
they published the version of them that Muslims consider authoritative, the
Qur’an (kuh-RAHN). Muslims revere the Qur’an for its sacred message
and for the beauty of its Arabic language.
 Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem Completed in 691 and revered by
Muslims as the site where Muhammad ascended to Heaven, the
Dome of the Rock is the oldest surviving Islamic sanctuary and,
after Mecca and Medina, the holiest place in Islam. Although
influenced by Byzantine and Persian architecture, it also has
distinctly Arab features, such as the 700 feet of carefully selected
Qur’anic inscriptions and vegetal motifs that grace the top of the
outer walls.

For the first two or three centuries after the death of Muhammad, there
was considerable debate about theological and political issues. Likewise,
religious scholars had to sort out and assess the hadith (huh-DEETH),
collections of the sayings and anecdotes about Muhammad. Muhammad’s
example as revealed in the hadith became the legal basis for the conduct of
every Muslim. The life of Muhammad provides the “normative example,”
or Sunna (SOON-ah), for the Muslim believer.

The Tenets of Islam

Islam, the strict monotheistic faith that is based on the teachings of
Muhammad, rests on the principle of the oneness and omnipotence of God
(Allah). The word Islam means “surrender to God,” and Muslim means “a
person who submits.” Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last of the
prophets, completing the work begun by Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Islam
appropriates much of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible but often
retells the narratives with significant shifts in meaning. Islam recognizes
Moses’s laws about circumcision, ritual bathing, and restrictions on eating
pork and shellfish, and the Qur’an calls Christians “nearest in love” to
Muslims. Muhammad insisted that he was not preaching a new message;
rather, he was calling people back to the one true God, urging his
contemporaries to reform their lives and return to the faith of Abraham, the
first monotheist.
Unlike the Old Testament, much of which is historical narrative, or the
New Testament, which is a collection of essays on the example and
teachings of Jesus, the Qur’an is a collection of directives issued in God’s
name. Its organization is not strictly topical or chronological. To deal with
seeming contradictions, later commentators explained the historical
circumstances behind each revelation.
The Qur’an prescribes a strict code of moral behavior. A Muslim must
recite the profession of faith in God and in Muhammad as his prophet:
“There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet.” A believer must
also pray five times a day, fast and pray during the sacred month of
Ramadan, make a pilgrimage (hajj) to the holy city of Mecca once during
his or her lifetime, and give alms to the Muslim poor. These fundamental
obligations are known as the Five Pillars of Islam.
Islam forbids alcoholic beverages and gambling. It condemns usury in
business — that is, lending money and charging the borrower interest —
and taking advantage of market demand for products to raise prices.
Muslim jurisprudence condemned licentious behavior by both men and
women and specified the same punishments for both.
As on the Christian Judgment Day, on the Islamic Judgment Day God
will separate the saved and the damned. The Qur’an describes in detail the
frightful tortures with which God will punish the damned and the heavenly
rewards of the saved and the blessed.
Islamic States and Their Expansion
What made possible the spread of Islam, and what forms of government were
established to rule Islamic lands?

According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad’s preaching at first did not

appeal to many people — for the first three years he attracted only fourteen
believers. In preaching a transformation of the social order and calling for
the destruction of the idols in the Ka’ba, Muhammad challenged the power
of the local elite and the pilgrimage-based economy. As a result, the
townspeople of Mecca turned against him, and he and his followers were
forced to flee to Medina. This hijra (hih-JIGH-ruh), or emigration, occurred
in 622, and Muslims later dated the beginning of their era from it.
At Medina, Muhammad attracted increasing numbers of believers,
many of whom were Bedouins who supported themselves by raiding
caravans en route to Mecca, setting off a violent conflict between Mecca
and Medina. After eight years of strife, Mecca capitulated. In this way, by
the time Muhammad died in 632, he had welded together all the Bedouin
tribes.
Muhammad displayed genius as both political strategist and religious
teacher. He gave Arabs the idea of a unique and unified umma (UH-muh),
or community, that consisted of all those whose bond was a common
religious faith. The umma was to be a religious and political community led
by Muhammad for the achievement of God’s will on earth. The Islamic
notion of an absolute higher authority transcended the boundaries of
individual tribal units and fostered political consolidation. All authority
came from God through Muhammad.

Islam’s Spread Beyond Arabia

After the Prophet’s death, Islam quickly spread far beyond Arabia. In the
sixth century two powerful empires divided the Middle East: the Greek-
Byzantine empire centered at Constantinople and the Persian-Sassanid
empire concentrated at Ctesiphon (near Baghdad in present-day Iraq). The
Byzantine Empire stood for Hellenistic culture and championed Christianity
(see Chapter 8). The Sassanid empire espoused Persian cultural traditions
and favored the religious faith known as Zoroastrianism (see “The Religion
of Zoroaster” in Chapter 2). From the fourth through sixth centuries the
Byzantines and Sassanids fought each other fiercely, each trying to expand
its territories at the expense of the other and to control and tax the rich trade
coming from Arabia and the Indian Ocean region. Many peripheral societies
were drawn into the conflict. The resulting disorder facilitated the growth of
Islamic states.
The second and third successors of Muhammad, Umar (r. 634–644) and
Uthman (r. 644–656), launched a two-pronged attack against the Byzantine
and Sassanid empires. One force moved north from Arabia against the
Byzantine provinces of Syria and Palestine (see Map 8.1). From Syria, the
Muslims conquered the rich province of Egypt. Simultaneously, Arab
armies swept into the Sassanid empire. The Muslim defeat of the Persians at
Nihawand in 642 signaled the collapse of this empire (Map 9.1).

MAP 9.1 The Expansion of Islam, 622–900 The rapid expansion of Islam in a relatively
short span of time testifies to the Arabs’ superior fighting skills, religious zeal, and
economic ambition as well as to their enemies’ weakness. Plague, famine, and political
troubles in Sassanid Persia contributed to Muslim victory there.
 The Muslims continued their drive eastward and in the mid-seventh
century occupied the province of Khurasan. By 700 the Muslims had
crossed the Oxus River and swept toward Kabul, today the capital of
Afghanistan. They then penetrated Kazakhstan and seized Tashkent. From
southern Persia, a Muslim force marched into the Indus Valley in northwest
India in 713 and founded an Islamic community there.
To the west, Arab forces moved across North Africa and crossed the
Strait of Gibraltar. In 711 at the Guadalete River they easily defeated the
Visigothic kingdom of Spain. Muslims controlled most of Spain until the
thirteenth century. Advances into France were stopped in 732 when the
Franks defeated Arab armies in a battle near the city of Tours, and Muslim
occupation of parts of southern France did not last long.

Reasons for the Spread of Islam

By the beginning of the eleventh century the crescent of Islam had flown
from the Iberian heartlands to northern India. How can this rapid and
remarkable expansion be explained? Most historians point to a combination
of the Arabs’ military advantages and the political weaknesses of their
opponents. The Byzantine and Sassanid Empires had just fought a grueling
century-long war and had also been weakened by the plague, which hit
urban, stationary populations harder than nomadic populations. Equally
important are the military strength and tactics of the Arabs. For example,
rather than scattering as landlords of peasant farmers over conquered lands,
Arab soldiers remained together in garrison cities, where their Arab
ethnicity, tribal organization, religion, and military success set them apart.
All soldiers were registered in the diwān (dih-WAHN), an administrative
organ adopted from the Persians or Byzantines. Soldiers received a monthly
ration of food for themselves and their families and an annual cash stipend.
In return, they had to be available for military service. Fixed salaries,
regular pay, and the lure of battlefield booty attracted rugged tribesmen
from Arabia.

The Caliphate and the Split Between Shi’a and Sunni Alliances
When Muhammad died in 632, he left a large Muslim umma, but this
community stood in danger of disintegrating into separate tribal groups.
Neither the Qur’an nor the Sunna offered guidance concerning the
succession.
In this crisis, according to tradition, a group of Muhammad’s ablest
followers elected Abu Bakr (573–634), the Prophet’s father-in-law and
close supporter, and hailed him as caliph (KAY-lihf), a term combining the
ideas of leader, successor, and deputy (of the Prophet). In the two years of
his rule (632–634), Abu Bakr governed on the basis of his personal prestige
within the Muslim umma. He sent out military expeditions, collected taxes,
dealt with tribes on behalf of the entire community, and led the community
in prayer.
Gradually, under Abu Bakr’s first three successors, Umar (r. 634–644),
Uthman (r. 644–656), and Ali (r. 656–661), the caliphate (KAL-uh-fate)
emerged as an institution. Umar succeeded in exerting his authority over the
Bedouin tribes involved in ongoing conquests. Uthman asserted the right of
the caliph to protect the economic interests of the entire umma. Also,
Uthman’s publication of the definitive text of the Qur’an showed his
concern for the unity of the umma. However, Uthman was from a Mecca
family that had resisted the Prophet until the capitulation of Mecca in 630,
and he aroused resentment when he gave favors to members of his family.
Opposition to Uthman coalesced around Ali, and when Uthman was
assassinated in 656, Ali was chosen to succeed him.
Uthman’s cousin Mu’awiya, a member of the Umayyad family who had
built a power base as governor of Syria, refused to recognize Ali as caliph.
In the ensuing civil war Ali was assassinated, and Mu’awiya (r. 661–680)
assumed the caliphate. Mu’awiya founded the Umayyad Dynasty and
shifted the capital of the Islamic state from Medina in Arabia to Damascus
in Syria. Although electing caliphs remained the Islamic ideal, beginning
with Mu’awiya, the office of caliph increasingly became hereditary. Two
successive dynasties, the Umayyad (661–750) and the Abbasid (750–1258),
held the caliphate.
From its inception the caliphate rested on the theoretical principle that
Muslim political and religious unity transcended tribalism. Mu’awiya
sought to enhance the power of the caliphate by making tribal leaders
dependent on him for concessions and special benefits. At the same time,
his control of a loyal and well-disciplined army enabled him to take the
caliphate in an authoritarian direction. Through intimidation he forced the
tribal leaders to accept his son Yazid as his heir, thereby establishing the
dynastic principle of succession.
The assassination of Ali and the assumption of the caliphate by
Mu’awiya had another profound consequence. It gave rise to a fundamental
division in the umma and in Muslim theology. Ali had claimed the caliphate
on the basis of family ties — he was Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law.
When Ali was murdered, his followers argued that Ali had been the
Prophet’s designated successor — partly because of the blood tie, partly
because Muhammad had designated Ali imam (ih-MAHM), or leader in
community prayer. These supporters of Ali were called Shi’a (SHEE-uh),
meaning “supporters” or “partisans” of Ali (Shi’a are also known as
Shi’ites). In succeeding generations, opponents of the Umayyad Dynasty
emphasized their blood descent from Ali and claimed to possess divine
knowledge that Muhammad had given them as his heirs.
Those who accepted Mu’awiya as caliph insisted that the central issue
was adhering to the practices and beliefs of the umma based on the
precedents of the Prophet. They came to be called Sunnis (SOO-neez),
which derived from Sunna (examples from Muhammad’s life). When a
situation arose for which the Qur’an offered no solution, Sunni scholars
searched for a precedent in the Sunna, which gained an authority
comparable to that of the Qur’an itself.
Both Sunnis and Shi’a maintain that authority within Islam lies first in
the Qur’an and then in the Sunna. Who interprets these sources? Shi’a
claim that the imam does, for he is invested with divine grace and insight.
Sunnis insist that interpretation comes from the consensus of the ulama, the
group of religious scholars.
Throughout the Umayyad period, the Shi’a constituted a major source
of discontent. They condemned the Umayyads as worldly and sensual
rulers, in contrast to the pious true successors of Muhammad. A rival Sunni
clan, the Abbasid (uh-BA-suhd), exploited the situation, agitating the Shi’a
and encouraging dissension among tribal factions.

The Abbasid Caliphate

In 747 the Abbasid leader Abu’ al-Abbas led a rebellion against the
Umayyads, and in 750 he won general recognition as caliph. Damascus had
served as the headquarters of Umayyad rule. Abu’ al-Abbas’s successor, al-
Mansur (r. 754–775), founded the city of Baghdad in 762 and made it his
capital. Thus the geographical center of the caliphate shifted eastward to
former Sassanid territories. The first three Abbasid caliphs crushed their
opponents, turned against many of their supporters, and created a new
ruling elite drawn from newly converted Persian families that had
traditionally served the ruler. The Abbasid revolution established a basis for
rule and citizenship more cosmopolitan and Islamic than the narrow, elitist,
and Arab basis that had characterized Umayyad government.
The Abbasids worked to identify their rule with Islam. They patronized
the ulama, built mosques, and supported the development of Islamic
scholarship. Although at first Muslims represented only a small minority of
the conquered peoples, Abbasid rule provided the religious-political milieu
in which Islam gained, over time, the allegiance of the vast majority of the
populations from Spain to Afghanistan.
The Abbasids also borrowed heavily from Persian culture. Following
Persian tradition, the Abbasid caliphs claimed to rule by divine right, as
reflected in the change of their title from “successor of the Prophet” to
“deputy of God.” A majestic palace with hundreds of attendants and
elaborate court ceremonies deliberately isolated the caliph from the people
he ruled. Subjects had to bow before the caliph and kiss the ground,
symbolizing his absolute power.
Under the third caliph, Baghdad emerged as a flourishing commercial,
artistic, and scientific center. Its population of about a million people
created a huge demand for goods and services, and Baghdad became an
entrepôt (trading center) for textiles, slaves, and foodstuffs coming from
Oman, East Africa, and India. The city also became intellectually
influential. Harun al-Rashid organized the translation of Greek medical and
philosophical texts. As part of this effort the Christian scholar Hunayn Ibn
Ishaq (808–873) translated Galen’s medical works into Arabic and made
Baghdad a center for the study and practice of medicine. Likewise, impetus
was given to the study of astronomy, as Muslim astronomers sought to
correct and complement Ptolemaic astronomy. Above all, studies in
Qur’anic textual analysis, history, poetry, law, and philosophy — all in
Arabic — reflected the development of a distinctly Islamic literary and
scientific culture.
An important innovation of the Abbasids was the use of slaves as
soldiers. The caliph al-Mu’taşim (r. 833–842) acquired several thousand
Turkish slaves who were converted to Islam and employed in military
service. Scholars have offered varied explanations for this practice: that the
use of slave soldiers was a response to a manpower shortage; that as highly
skilled horsemen, the Turks had military skills superior to those of the
Arabs and other peoples; and that al-Mu’taşim felt he could trust the Turks
more than the Arabs, Persians, Khurasans, and other recruits. In any case,
slave soldiers — later including Slavs, Indians, and sub-Saharan blacks —
became a standard feature of Muslim armies in the Middle East until the
twentieth century.

Administration of the Islamic Territories

The Islamic conquests brought into being a new imperial system. At the
head stood the caliph, who led military campaigns against unbelievers.
Theoretically, he had the ultimate responsibility for the interpretation of the
sacred law. In practice, however, the ulama interpreted the law as revealed
in the Qur’an and the Sunna. In the course of time, the ulama’s
interpretations constituted a rich body of law, the shari’a (shuh-REE-uh),
which covered social, criminal, political, commercial, and religious matters.
The qadis (KAH-dees), or judges, who were well versed in the sacred law,
carried out the judicial functions of the state. Nevertheless, Muslim law
prescribed that all people have access to the caliph, and he set aside special
times for hearing petitions and for directly redressing grievances.
The central administrative organ was the diwān, which collected the
taxes that paid soldiers’ salaries and financed charitable and public works,
such as aid to the poor and the construction of mosques, irrigation works,
and public baths. Another important undertaking was a relay network
established to rapidly convey letters and intelligence reports between the
capital and distant outposts.
The early Abbasid period witnessed considerable economic expansion
and population growth, complicating the work of government. New and
specialized departments emerged, each with a hierarchy of officials. The
most important new official was the vizier (vuh-ZEER), a position that the
Abbasids adopted from the Persians. The vizier was the caliph’s chief
assistant. Depending on the caliph’s personality, viziers could acquire
extensive power, and some used their offices for personal gain. Away from
the capital emirs, or governors, were given overall responsibility for public
order, maintenance of the armed forces, and tax collection. Below them,
experienced native officials often remained in office.
Fragmentation and Military Challenges, 900–
1400
How were the Islamic lands governed from 900 to 1400, and what new challenges did
rulers face?

In theory, the caliph and his central administration governed the whole
empire, but in practice, the many parts of the empire enjoyed considerable
local independence. At the same time, the enormous distance between many
provinces and the imperial capital made it difficult for the caliph to prevent
provinces from breaking away. Consequently, regional dynasties emerged in
much of the Islamic world, including Spain, Persia, Central Asia, northern
India, and Egypt. None of these states repudiated Islam, but they did stop
sending tax revenues to Baghdad. Moreover, states frequently fought costly
wars against their neighbors in their attempts to expand. Sometimes these
conflicts were worsened by Sunni-Shi’a antagonisms. All these
developments, as well as invasions by Turks and Mongols, posed
challenges to central Muslim authority.

Breakaway Territories and Shi’a Gains

One of the first territories to break away from the Baghdad-centered
caliphate was Spain. In 755 an Umayyad prince who had escaped death at
the hands of the Abbasids and fled to Spain set up an independent regime at
Córdoba (see Map 9.1). Other territories soon followed. In 800 the emir in
Tunisia in North Africa set himself up as an independent ruler and refused
to place the caliph’s name on the local coinage. And in 820 Tahir, the son of
a slave, was rewarded with the governorship of Khurasan because he had
supported the caliphate. Once he took office, Tahir ruled independently of
Baghdad.
 The Patio of the Lions at Alhambra, Fourteenth
Century The fortress that the Moorish rulers of Spain
built at Granada is considered one of the
masterpieces of Andalusian art, notable for the fine
carving of geometrical designs and Arabic
calligraphy.

In 946 a Shi’a Iranian clan overran Iraq and occupied Baghdad. The
caliph was forced to recognize the clan’s leader as commander in chief and
to allow the celebration of Shi’a festivals — though the caliph and most of
the people were Sunnis. A year later the caliph was accused of plotting
against his new masters, snatched from his throne, dragged through the
streets, and blinded. Blinding was a practice adopted from the Byzantines as
a way of rendering a ruler incapable of carrying out his duties. This incident
marked the practical collapse of the Abbasid caliphate. Abbasid caliphs,
however, remained as puppets of a series of military commanders and
symbols of Muslim unity until the Mongols killed the last Abbasid caliph in
1258 (see “The Mongol Invasions”).
 In another Shi’a advance, the Fatimids, a Shi’a dynasty that claimed
descent from Muhammad’s daughter Fatima, conquered North Africa and
then expanded into the Abbasid province of Egypt, founding the city of
Cairo as their capital in 969. For the next century or so, Shi’a were in
ascendancy in much of the western Islamic world.

The Ascendancy of the Turks

In the mid-tenth century the Turks began to enter the Islamic world in large
numbers. First appearing in Mongolia in the sixth century, groups of Turks,
such as the Seljuks, gradually appeared across the grasslands of Eurasia.
Skilled horsemen, they became prime targets for Muslim slave raids, as
they made good slave soldiers. Once the Turks understood that Muslims
could not be captured for slaves, more and more of them converted to Sunni
Islam and often became ghazi, frontier raiders, who attacked unconverted
Turks to capture slaves.
In the 1020s and 1030s Seljuk Turks overran Persia and then pushed
into Iraq and Syria. Baghdad fell to them on December 18, 1055, and the
caliph became a puppet of the Turkish sultan. The Turkish elite rapidly gave
up pastoralism and took up the sedentary lifestyle of the people they
governed.
The Turks brought badly needed military strength to the Islamic world.
They played a major part in recovering Jerusalem after it was held for
nearly a century, from 1099 to 1187, by the European Crusaders (who had
fought to take Christian holy lands back from the Muslims; see “The
Course of the Crusades” in Chapter 14). The influx of Turks from 950 to
1100 also helped provide a new expansive dynamic. At the Battle of
Manzikert in 1071, Seljuk Turks broke through Byzantine border defenses,
opening Anatolia to Turkish migration. Over the next couple of centuries,
perhaps a million Turks entered the area — including bands of ghazis and
dervishes (Sufi brotherhoods; see “The Mystical Tradition of Sufism”).

The Mongol Invasions

In the early thirteenth century the Mongols arrived in the Middle East.
Originally from the grasslands of Mongolia, in 1206 they proclaimed
Chinggis Khan (ca. 1162–1227) as their leader, and he welded Mongol,
Tartar, and Turkish tribes into a strong confederation that rapidly subdued
neighboring settled societies (see “Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Empire”
in Chapter 12).
In 1219–1221, when the Mongols first reached the Islamic lands, the
areas from Persia through the Central Asian cities of Herat and Samarkand
were part of the kingdom of Khwarizm. The ruler — the son of a Turkish
slave who had risen to governor of a province — had the audacity to
execute Chinggis’s envoy, and Chinggis retaliated with a force of a hundred
thousand soldiers that sacked city after city, often slaughtering the residents
or enslaving them and sending them to Mongolia. Millions are said to have
died. The irrigation systems that were needed for agriculture in this dry
region had been neglected for some time, and with the Mongol invasions
they suffered a fatal blow.
Not many Mongol forces were left in Persia after the campaign of
1219–1221, and another army, sent in 1237, captured the Persian city of
Isfahan. In 1251 the decision was taken to push farther west, taking
Baghdad in 1258 and killing the last Abbasid caliph. Mamluk soldiers from
Egypt, however, were able to withstand the Mongols and prevent them from
taking Egypt and the Islamic lands in North Africa. The desert ecology of
the region did not provide suitable support for the Mongol armies, which
required five horses for each soldier.
The Mongols ruled the central Muslim lands (referred to as the Il-
khanate) for eighty years. In 1295 the Mongol ruler Ghazan embraced Islam
and worked for the revival of Muslim culture. As the Turks had done
earlier, the Mongols, once converted, injected new vigor into the faith and
spirit of Islam. In the Il-khanate the Mongols governed through Persian
viziers and native financial officials.
Muslim Society: The Life of the People
What social distinctions were important in Muslim society?

When the Prophet appeared, Arab society consisted of independent Bedouin

tribal groups loosely held together by loyalty to a strong leader and by the
belief that all members of a tribe were descended from a common ancestor.
Heads of families elected the sheik, or tribal chief. He was usually chosen
from among elite warrior families who believed their bloodlines made them
superior. According to the Qur’an, however, birth counted for nothing; piety
was the only criterion for honor.
When Muhammad defined social equality, he was thinking about
equality among Muslims alone. But even among Muslims, a sense of pride
in ancestry could not be instantly eradicated. Claims based on birth
remained strong among the first Muslims, and after Islam spread outside of
Arabia, full-blooded Arab tribesmen regarded themselves as superior to
foreign converts.

The Social Hierarchy

In the Umayyad period, Muslim society was distinctly hierarchical. At the
top of the hierarchy were the caliph’s household and the ruling Arab
Muslims who constituted the ruling elite. It was a relatively small group,
greatly outnumbered by Muslim villagers and country people.
Converts constituted the second class in Islamic society, one that grew
slowly over time. Converts to Islam had to attach themselves to one of the
Arab tribes in a subordinate capacity. From the Muslim converts eventually
came the members of the commercial and learned professions —
merchants, traders, teachers, doctors, artists, and interpreters of the shari’a.
Over the centuries, Berber, Copt, Persian, Aramaean, and other converts to
Islam intermarried with their Muslim conquerors. Gradually, assimilation
united peoples of various ethnic backgrounds.
Dhimmis (zih-MEEZ) — including Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians
— formed the third stratum. Considered “protected peoples” because they
worshipped only one God, they were allowed to practice their religions,
maintain their houses of worship, and conduct their business affairs as long
as they gave unequivocal recognition to Muslim political supremacy and
paid a small tax. Because many Jews and Christians were well educated,
they were often appointed to high positions in provincial capitals as well as
in Damascus and Baghdad. However, their social position deteriorated
during the Crusades and the Mongol invasions, when there was a general
rise of religious loyalties. At those times, Muslims suspected the dhimmis,
often rightly, of collaborating with the enemies of Islam.
How did the experience of Jews under Islam compare with that of Jews
living in Christian Europe? Recent scholarship shows that in Europe Jews
were first marginalized in the Christian social order and then completely
expelled from it. In Islam Jews, though marginalized, participated fully in
commercial and professional activities, some attaining economic equality
with their Muslim counterparts. Islamic culture was urban and commercial
and gave merchants considerable respect.

Slavery
Slavery had long existed in the ancient Middle East, and Muslim expansion
ensured a steady flow of slaves captured in war. The Qur’an accepted
slavery much the way the Old and New Testaments did. But the Qur’an
prescribes just and humane treatment of slaves, explicitly encourages the
freeing of slaves, and urges owners whose slaves ask for their freedom to
give them the opportunity to buy it. In fact, the freeing of slaves was
thought to pave the way to paradise.
Women slaves worked as cooks, cleaners, laundresses, and nursemaids.
A few performed as singers, musicians, dancers, and reciters of poetry.
Many female slaves also served as concubines. Not only rulers but also high
officials and rich merchants owned many concubines. Down the economic
ladder, artisans and tradesmen often had concubines who assumed domestic
as well as sexual duties.
According to tradition, the seclusion of women in a harem protected
their virtue, and when men had the means the harem was secured by eunuch
(castrated) guards. Muslims also employed eunuchs as secretaries, tutors,
and commercial agents, possibly because eunuchs were said to be more
manageable and dependable than men with ordinary desires. Male slaves,
eunuchs or not, were also set to work as longshoremen on the docks, as
oarsmen on ships, in construction crews, in workshops, and in gold and
silver mines. Male slaves also fought as solderis.
 Slavery in the Islamic world differed in at least two fundamental ways
from the slavery later practiced in the Americas. First, race had no
particular connection to slavery among Muslims, who were as ready to take
slaves from Europe as from Africa. Second, slavery in the Islamic world
was not the basis for plantation agriculture, as it was in the southern United
States, the Caribbean, and Brazil in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Slavery was rarely hereditary in the Islamic world. Most slaves who were
taken from non-Muslim peoples later converted, which often led to
emancipation. To give Muslim slavery the most positive possible
interpretation, one could say that it provided a means to fill certain
socioeconomic and military needs and that it assimilated rather than
segregated outsiders.

Women in Classical Islamic Society

Before Islam, Arab tribal law gave women virtually no legal powers.
Parents accepted payments for their daughters, and their husbands could
terminate the union at will. Also, women had virtually no property or
succession rights. Seen from this perspective, the Qur’an sought to improve
the social position of women.
The Qur’an, like the religious scriptures of other traditions, emphasizes
moral precepts, not descriptions of social practice, and the text is open to
different interpretations. Modern scholars tend to agree that the Islamic
sacred book intended women to be the spiritual equals of men and gave
them considerable economic rights. In the early Umayyad period, moreover,
women played active roles in the religious, economic, and political life of
the community. They owned property, traveled widely, and participated
with men in public religious rituals and observances.
The Islamic ideal of women and men having equal value to the
community did not last. In the Abbasid period the practices of the Byzantine
and Persian lands that had been conquered, including seclusion of women,
were absorbed. The supply of slave women increased substantially. Some
scholars speculate that as wealth replaced ancestry as the main criterion of
social status, men more and more viewed women as possessions, as a form
of wealth. As society changed, the precepts of the Qur’an were interpreted
in more patriarchal ways.
Men were also seen as dominant in their marriages. The Qur’an states
that “men are in charge of women because Allah hath made the one to excel
the other, and because they (men) spend of their property (for the support of
women). So good women are obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah
hath guarded.”1 A thirteenth-century commentator on this passage argued
from it that women are incapable of and unfit for any public duties, such as
participating in religious rites, giving evidence in the law courts, or being
involved in any public political decisions.

Separating Men and Women in a Mosque In this

mid-sixteenth-century illustration of the interior of a
mosque, a screen separates the women, who are
wearing veils and tending children, from the men.
The women can hear what is being said, but the men
cannot see them.

The practices of veiling and seclusion of women have their roots in pre-
Islamic times, and they took firm hold in classical Islamic society. As Arab
conquerors subjugated various peoples, they adopted some of the
vanquished peoples’ customs. Veiling was probably of Byzantine or Persian
origin. The practice of secluding women also derives from Arab contacts
with Persia and other Eastern cultures. By 800 women in more prosperous
households stayed out of sight. The harem became another symbol of male
prestige and prosperity, as well as a way to distinguish upper-class from
lower-class women.

Marriage, the Family, and Sexuality

As in medieval Europe and traditional India and China, marriage in Muslim
society was considered too important an undertaking to be left to the
romantic emotions of the young. Families or guardians, not the prospective
bride and groom, identified suitable partners and finalized the contract.
Because it was absolutely essential that the bride be a virgin, marriages
were arranged shortly after puberty. Husbands were commonly ten to
fifteen years older. Youthful marriages ensured a long period of fertility.
A wife’s responsibilities depended on the wealth and occupation of her
husband. A farmer’s wife helped in the fields, ground the corn, carried
water, prepared food, and did the myriad tasks necessary in rural life.
Shopkeepers’ wives in the cities sometimes helped in business. In an upper-
class household, the wife supervised servants, looked after all domestic
arrangements, and did whatever was needed for her husband’s comfort.
In every case, children were the wife’s special domain. A mother
exercised authority over her children and enjoyed their respect. A Muslim
tradition asserts that “paradise is at the mother’s feet.” Thus, as in Chinese
culture, the prestige of the young wife depended on the production of
children — especially sons — as rapidly as possible. A wife’s failure to
have children was one of the main reasons for a man to divorce his wife or
take a second wife.
Like the Jewish tradition, Muslim law permits divorce. Although
divorce is allowed, it is not encouraged. One commentator cited the Prophet
as saying, “The lawful thing which God hates most is divorce.”2
In contrast to the traditional Christian view of sexual activity as
inherently shameful and only a cure for lust even within marriage, Islam
maintains a healthy acceptance of sexual pleasure for both males and
females. The Qur’an permits a man to have four wives, provided that all are
treated justly. Still, the vast majority of Muslim males were monogamous
because only the wealthy could afford to support more than one wife.
Trade and Commerce
Why did trade thrive in Islamic lands?

Unlike the Christian West or the Confucian East, the Islamic world looked
favorably on profit-making enterprises. According to the sayings of the
Prophet: “The honest, truthful Muslim merchant will stand with the martyrs
on the Day of Judgment. I commend the merchants to you, for they are the
couriers of the horizons and God’s trusted servants on earth.”3 The Qur’an,
moreover, has no prohibition against trade with Christians or other
unbelievers. In fact, non-Muslims, including the Jews of Cairo and the
Armenians in the central Islamic lands, were prominent in mercantile
networks.
Waterways served as the main commercial routes of the Islamic world
(Map 9.2). They included the Mediterranean and Black Seas; the Caspian
Sea and the Volga River, which gave access deep into Russia; the Aral Sea,
from which caravans departed for China; the Gulf of Aden; and the Arabian
Sea and the Indian Ocean, which linked the Persian Gulf region with
eastern Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and eventually Indonesia and the
Philippines.
 MAP 9.2 The Expansion of Islam and Its Trading Networks in the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries By 1500 Islam had spread extensively in North and East Africa,
and into the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India, and the islands of Southeast
Asia. Muslim merchants played a major role in bringing their religion as they extended
their trade networks. They were active in the Indian Ocean long before the arrival of
Europeans.

Cairo was a major Mediterranean entrepôt for intercontinental trade.

Foreign merchants sailed up the Nile to the Aswan region, traveled east
from Aswan by caravan to the Red Sea, and then sailed down the Red Sea
to Aden, where they entered the Indian Ocean on their way to India. They
exchanged textiles, glass, gold, silver, and copper for Asian spices, dyes,
and drugs and for Chinese silks and porcelains. Muslim and Jewish
merchants dominated the trade with India, and all spoke and wrote Arabic.
Their commercial practices included the sakk (the Arabic word is the root of
the English check), an order to a banker to pay money held on account to a
third party. Muslims also developed other business innovations, such as the
bill of exchange, a written order from one person to another to pay a
specified sum of money to a designated person or party, and the idea of the
joint stock company, an arrangement that lets a group of people invest in a
venture and share its profits (and losses) in proportion to the amount each
has invested.
Trade also benefited from improvements in technology. The adoption
from the Chinese of the magnetic compass, an instrument for determining
directions at sea by means of a magnetic needle turning on a pivot, greatly
helped navigation of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. The
construction of larger ships led to a shift in long-distance cargoes from
luxury goods such as pepper, spices, and drugs to bulk goods such as sugar,
rice, and timber. The teak forests of western India supplied the wood for
Arab ships.
Beginning in the late twelfth century Persian and Arab seamen sailed
down the east coast of Africa and established trading towns between
Somalia and Sofala (see “The East African City-States” in Chapter 10).
These thirty to fifty urban centers controlled by merchants linked
Zimbabwe in southern Africa with the Indian Ocean trade and the Middle
Eastern trade.
A private ninth-century list mentions a great variety of commodities
transported into and through the Islamic world by land and by sea:
Imported from India: tigers, leopards, elephants, leopard skins, red rubies, white sandal-
wood, ebony, and coconuts
From China: aromatics, silk, porcelain, paper, ink, peacocks, fiery horses, saddles, felts,
cinnamon
From the Byzantines: silver and gold vessels, embroidered cloths, fiery horses, slave girls,
rare articles in red copper, strong locks, lyres, water engineers, specialists in plowing and
cultivation, marble workers, and eunuchs
From Egypt: ambling donkeys, fine cloths, papyrus, balsam oil, and, from its mines, high-
quality topaz
From the Khazars [a people living on the northern shore of the Black Sea]: slaves, slave
women, armor, helmets, and hoods of mail
From Ahwaz [a city in southwestern Persia]: sugar, silk brocades, castanet players and
dancing girls, kinds of dates, grape molasses, and candy.4

One byproduct of the extensive trade through Islamic lands was the
spread of useful plants. Cotton, sugarcane, and rice spread from India to
other places with suitable climates. Citrus fruits made their way to Muslim
Spain from Southeast Asia and India. The value of this trade contributed to
the prosperity of the Abbasid era.
Cultural Developments
What new ideas and practices emerged in the arts, sciences, education, and religion?

Long-distance trade provided the wealth that made possible a gracious and
sophisticated culture in the cities of the Islamic world. Education helped
foster achievements in the arts and sciences, and Sufism brought a new
spiritual and intellectual tradition.

The Cultural Centers of Baghdad and Córdoba

Although cities and mercantile centers dotted the entire Islamic world, the
cities of Baghdad and Córdoba, at their peak in the tenth century, stand out
as the finest examples of cosmopolitan Muslim civilization. On Baghdad’s
streets thronged a kaleidoscope of races, creeds, costumes, and cultures.
Shops and marketplaces offered a dazzling and exotic array of goods from
all over the world.
The caliph Harun al-Rashid presided over a glamorous court. He invited
writers, dancers, musicians, poets, and artists to live in Baghdad, and he is
reputed to have rewarded one singer with one hundred thousand silver
pieces for a single song. This brilliant era provided the background for the
tales that appear in The Thousand and One Nights.
The central story of this fictional collection concerns the attempt of a
new bride, Scheherazade, to keep her husband, Shahyar, legendary king of
Samarkand, from killing her out of certainty that she will be unfaithful like
his first wife. In efforts to delay her execution, she entertains him with one
tale a night for 1,001 nights. In the end, Scheherazade’s efforts succeed, and
her husband pardons her. Among the tales she tells him are such famous
ones as “Aladdin and His Lamp,” “Sinbad the Sailor,” and “Ali Baba and
the Forty Thieves.” Though filled with folklore, the Arabian Nights (as it is
also called) has provided many of the images through which Europeans
have understood the Islamic world.
Córdoba in southern Spain competed with Baghdad for the cultural
leadership of the Islamic world. With a population of about 1 million,
Córdoba contained 1,600 mosques, 900 public baths, 213,177 houses for
ordinary people, and 60,000 mansions for generals, officials, and the
wealthy. In its 80,455 shops, 13,000 weavers produced silks, woolens, and
brocades that were internationally famous. Córdoba was also a great
educational center with 27 free schools and a library containing 400,000
volumes. (By contrast, the renowned Benedictine abbey of Saint-Gall in
Switzerland had about 600 books.) Moreover, Córdoba’s scholars made
contributions in chemistry, medicine and surgery, music, philosophy, and
mathematics. It was through Córdoba and Persia that the Indian game of
chess entered western Europe. The contemporary Saxon nun Hrosthwita of
Gandersheim (d. 1000) described Córdoba as the “ornament of the world.”5

Education and Intellectual Life

Muslim culture valued learning, especially religious learning, because
knowledge provided the guidelines by which men and women should live.
From the eighth century onward, formal education for young men involved
reading, writing, and the study of the Qur’an, believed essential for its
religious message and for its training in proper grammar and syntax.
Islam is a religion of the law, taught at madrasas (muh-DRA-suhs),
schools for the study of Muslim law and religion. Schools were urban
phenomena. Wealthy merchants endowed them, providing salaries for
teachers, stipends for students, and living accommodations for both. All
Islamic higher education rested on a close relationship between teacher and
students, so in selecting a teacher, the student (or his father) considered the
character and intellectual reputation of the teacher, not that of the
institution. Students built their subsequent careers on the reputation of their
teachers.
Learning depended heavily on memorization. In primary school a boy
began his education by memorizing the entire Qur’an. In adolescence a
student learned by heart an introductory work in one of the branches of
knowledge, such as jurisprudence or grammar. Later he analyzed the texts
in detail. Every class day, the teacher examined the student on the previous
day’s learning and determined whether the student fully understood what he
had memorized. Students, of course, learned to write, for they had to record
the teacher’s commentary on a particular text. But the overwhelming
emphasis was on the oral transmission of knowledge.
Because Islamic education focused on particular books, when the
student had mastered a text to his teacher’s satisfaction, the teacher issued
the student a certificate stating that he had studied the book or collection of
traditions with his teacher. The certificate allowed the student to transmit a
text to the next generation on the authority of his teacher.
As the importance of books suggests, the Muslim transmission and
improvement of papermaking techniques had special significance to
education. After Chinese papermaking techniques spread westward, Muslim
papermakers improved on them by adding starch to fill the pores in the
surfaces of the sheets. Even before the invention of printing, papermaking
had a revolutionary impact on the collection and diffusion of knowledge.
Muslim higher education, apart from its fundamental goal of preparing
men to live wisely and in accordance with God’s law, aimed at preparing
them to perform religious and legal functions as Qur’an — or hadith —
readers; as preachers in the mosques; as professors, educators, or copyists;
and especially as judges. Judges issued fatwas, or legal opinions, in the
public courts; their training was in the Qur’an, hadith, or some text forming
part of the shari’a.
On the issue of female education, Islamic culture was ambivalent.
Tradition holds that Muhammad said, “The seeking of knowledge is a duty
of every Muslim,” but, because of the basic Islamic principle that “men are
the guardians of women, because God has set the one over the other,” the
law excluded women from participating in the legal, religious, or civic
occupations for which the madrasa prepared young men. Moreover,
educational theorists insisted that men should study in a sexually isolated
environment. Nevertheless, many young women were educated at home.
According to one biographical dictionary covering the lives of 1,075
women, 411 of them had memorized the Qur’an, studied with a particular
teacher, and received a certificate.
In comparing Islamic higher education during the twelfth through
fourteenth centuries with that available in Europe or China at the same time
(see “The Scholar-Officials and Neo-Confucianism” in Chapter 13 and
“Universities and Scholasticism” in Chapter 14), there are some striking
similarities and some major differences. In both Europe and the Islamic
countries religious authorities ran most schools, while in China the
government, local villages, and lineages ran schools, and private tutoring
was very common. In the Islamic world, as in China, the personal
relationship of teacher and student was seen as key to education. In Europe
the reward for satisfactorily completing a course of study was a degree
granted by the university. In China, at the very highest levels, the state ran a
civil service examination system that rewarded achievement with
appointments in the state bureaucracy. In Muslim culture, by contrast, it
was not the school or the state but the individual teacher whose evaluation
mattered and who granted certificates.
Still, there were also some striking similarities in the practice of
education. Students in all three cultures had to master a sacred language
(Latin, Arabic, or classical Chinese). In all three cultures education rested
heavily on the study of basic religious, legal, or philosophical texts. Also, in
all three cultures memorization played a large role in the acquisition and
transmission of learning. Furthermore, teachers in all three societies
lectured on particular passages, and leading teachers might disagree fiercely
about the correct interpretations of a particular text, forcing students to
question, to think critically, and to choose among divergent opinions. In all
three societies these educational practices contributed to cultural cohesion
and ties among the educated living in scattered localities.
In the Islamic world the spread of the Arabic language, not only among
the educated classes but also among all the people, was the decisive element
in the creation of a common culture. Recent scholarship demonstrates that
after the establishment of the Islamic empire, the spread of the Arabic
language was more important than religion in fostering cultural change.
Whereas conversion to Islam was gradual, linguistic conversion occurred
much faster. Arabic became the official language of the state and its
bureaucracies in former Byzantine and Sassanid territories. Islamic rulers
required tribute from monotheistic peoples — the Persians and Greeks —
but they did not force them to change their religions. Conquered peoples
were, however, compelled to adopt the Arabic language. In time Arabic
produced a cohesive and “international” culture over a large part of the
Eurasian world. Among those who wrote in Arabic was the erudite Gregory
Bar-Hebraeus (1226–1286), a bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church. He
wrote widely on philosophy, poetry, language, history, and theology,
sometimes in Syriac, sometimes in Arabic.
As a result of Muslim creativity and vitality, modern scholars consider
the years from 800 to 1300 to be one of the most brilliant periods in the
world’s history. Near the beginning of this period the Persian scholar al-
Khwarizmi (d. ca. 850) harmonized Greek and Indian findings to produce
astronomical tables that formed the basis for later Eastern and Western
research. Al-Khwarizmi also studied mathematics, and his textbook on
algebra (from the Arabic al-jabr) was the first work in which the word
algebra is used to mean the “transposing of negative terms in an equation to
the opposite side.”
Muslim medical knowledge far surpassed that of the West in this era.
The Baghdad physician al-Razi (865–925), the first physician to make the
clinical distinction between measles and smallpox, produced an
encyclopedic treatise on medicine that was translated into Latin and
circulated widely in the West. In Córdoba the great surgeon al-Zahrawi (d.
1013) produced an important work in which he discussed the cauterization
of wounds (searing them with a branding iron) and the crushing of stones in
the bladder. Muslim science reached its peak in the work of Ibn Sina of
Bukhara (980–1037), known in the West as Avicenna. His al-Qanun
codified all Greco-Arab medical thought, described the contagious nature of
tuberculosis and the spreading of diseases, and listed 760 drugs.
Muslim scholars also wrote works on geography, jurisprudence, and
philosophy. Al-Kindi (d. ca. 870) was the first Muslim thinker to try to
harmonize the principles of ethical and social conduct discussed by Plato
and Aristotle and the religious precepts of the Qur’an. Inspired by Plato’s
Republic and Aristotle’s Politics, the distinguished philosopher al-Farabi (d.
950) wrote a political treatise describing an ideal city whose ruler is morally
and intellectually perfect and who has as his goal the citizens’ complete
happiness. Ibn Rushid, or Averroës (1126–1198), of Córdoba, a judge in
Seville and later the royal court physician, paraphrased and commented on
the works of Aristotle. He insisted on the right to subject all knowledge,
except the dogmas of faith, to the test of reason and on the essential
harmony of religion and philosophy.

The Mystical Tradition of Sufism

Like the world’s other major religions — Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism,
and Christianity — Islam also developed a mystical tradition: Sufism
(SOO-fih-zuhm). It arose in the ninth and tenth centuries as a popular
reaction to the materialism and worldliness of the later Umayyad regime.
Sufis sought a personal union with God — divine love and knowledge
through intuition rather than through rational deduction and study of the
shari’a. The earliest of the Sufis followed an ascetic routine (denial of
physical desires to achieve a spiritual goal), dedicating themselves to
fasting, prayer, meditation on the Qur’an, and the avoidance of sin.
 The woman mystic Rabi’a (717–801) epitomized this combination of
renunciation and devotion. An attractive woman who refused marriage so
that nothing would distract her from a total commitment to God, Rabi’a
attracted followers, for whom she served as a spiritual guide. One of her
poems captures her deep devotion: “O my lord, if I worship thee from fear
of hell, and if I worship thee in hope of paradise, exclude me thence, but if I
worship thee for thine own sake, then withhold not from me thine eternal
beauty.”6
Between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries groups of Sufis gathered
around prominent leaders called shaykhs; members of these groups were
called dervishes. Dervishes entered hypnotic or ecstatic trances, either
through the constant repetition of certain prayers or through physical
exertions such as whirling or dancing (hence the English phrase “whirling
dervish” for one who dances with abandonment).
Some Sufis acquired reputations as charismatic holy men to whom
ordinary Muslims came seeking healing, charity, spiritual consolation, or
political mediation between tribal and factional rivals. Other Sufis became
known for their writings. Probably the most famous medieval Sufi was the
Spanish mystic-philosopher Ibn al’Arabi (1165–1240). He traveled widely
in Spain, North Africa, and Arabia seeking masters of Sufism. In Mecca he
received a “divine commandment” to begin his major work, The Meccan
Revelation, which evolved into a personal encyclopedia of 560 chapters.
Also at Mecca, the wisdom of a beautiful young girl inspired him to write a
collection of love poems, The Interpreter of Desires, for which he
composed a mystical commentary. In 1223, after visits to Egypt, Anatolia,
Baghdad, and Aleppo, Ibn al’Arabi concluded his pilgrimage through the
Islamic world at Damascus, where he produced The Bezels [Edges] of
Wisdom, considered one of the greatest works of Sufism.
Muslim-Christian Encounters
How did Muslims and Christians come into contact with each other, and how did they
view each other?

During the early centuries of its development, Islam came into contact with
the other major religions of Eurasia — Hinduism in India, Buddhism in
Central Asia, Zoroastrianism in Persia, and Judaism and Christianity in
western Asia and Europe. However, the relationship that did the most to
define Muslim identity was the one with Christianity. To put this another
way, the most significant “other” to Muslims in the heartland of Islam was
Christendom. The close physical proximity and the long history of military
encounters undoubtedly contributed to making the Christian-Muslim
encounter so important to both sides.
European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims shared a common
Judeo-Christian heritage. In the classical period of Islam, Muslims learned
about Christianity from the Christians they met in conquered territories;
from the Old and New Testaments; from Jews; and from Jews and
Christians who converted to Islam. Before 1400 there was a wide spectrum
of Muslim opinion about Jesus and Christians. At the time of the Crusades
and the Christian reconquest of Muslim Spain (the reconquista, 722–1492),
polemical anti-Christian writings appeared. In other periods, Muslim views
were more positive.
In the Middle Ages, Christians and Muslims met frequently in business
and trade. Commercial contacts, especially when European merchants
resided for a long time in the Muslim East, gave them familiarity with
Muslim art and architecture. Also, Christians very likely borrowed aspects
of their higher education system from Islam.
In the Christian West, Islam had the greatest cultural impact in
Andalusia in southern Spain. Between roughly the eighth and twelfth
centuries Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in close proximity in
Andalusia, and some scholars believe the period represents a remarkable era
of interfaith harmony. Many Christians adopted Arab patterns of speech and
dress, gave up the practice of eating pork, and developed a special
appreciation for Arab music and poetry. Some Christian women of elite
status chose the Muslim practice of going out in public with their faces
veiled. These assimilated Christians, called Mozarabs (moh-ZAR-uhbz),
did not attach much importance to the doctrinal differences between the two
religions.

Playing Chess This page from a thirteenth-century

book on chess and other games depicts a Moor and
a Christian playing chess together.

However, Mozarabs soon faced the strong criticism of both Muslim

scholars and Christian clerics. Muslim teachers feared that close contact
between people of the two religions would lead to Muslim contamination
and become a threat to the Islamic faith. Christian bishops worried that a
knowledge of Islam would lead to confusion about essential Christian
doctrines. Both Muslim scholars and Christian theologians argued that
assimilation led to moral decline.
Thus, beginning in the late tenth century Muslim regulations closely
defined what Christians and Muslims could do. A Christian, however much
assimilated, remained an unbeliever, a word that carried a pejorative
connotation. Mozarabs had to live in special sections of cities; could not
learn the Qur’an, employ Muslim workers or servants, or build new
churches; and had to be buried in their own cemeteries. A Muslim who
converted to Christianity was sentenced to death. By about 1250 the
Christian reconquest of Muslim Spain had brought most of the Iberian
Peninsula under Christian control. With their new authority, Christian kings
set up schools that taught both Arabic and Latin to train missionaries.
Beyond Andalusian Spain, mutual animosity limited contact between
people of the two religions. The Muslim assault on Christian Europe in the
eighth and ninth centuries — with villages burned, monasteries sacked, and
Christians sold into slavery — left a legacy of bitter hostility. Christians felt
threatened by a faith that acknowledged God as creator of the universe but
denied the Trinity and that accepted Jesus as a prophet but denied his
divinity. Europeans’ perception of Islam as a menace helped inspire the
Crusades of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries (see “The Crusades”
in Chapter 14).
Despite the conflicts between the two religions, Muslim scholars often
wrote sympathetically about Jesus. For example, Ikhwan al-Safa, an
eleventh-century Islamic brotherhood, held that in his preaching Jesus
deliberately rejected the harsh punishments reflected in the Jewish Torah
and tried to be the healing physician, teaching by parables and trying to
touch people’s hearts by peace and love. The prominent theologian and qadi
(judge) of Teheran, Abd al-Jabbar (d. 1024), though not critical of Jesus,
argued that Christians had rejected Jesus’s teachings: they failed to observe
the ritual purity of prayer, substituting poems by Christian scholars for
scriptural prayers; they gave up circumcision, the sign of their covenant
with God and Abraham; they moved the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday;
they allowed the eating of pork and shellfish; and they adopted a Greek
idea, the Trinity, defending it by quoting Aristotle. Thus, al-Jabbar
maintained, Christians failed to observe the laws of Moses and Jesus and
distorted Jesus’s message.
In the Christian West, both positive and negative views of Islam
appeared in literature. The Bavarian knight Wolfram von Eschenbach’s
Parzival and the Englishman William Langland’s Piers the Plowman —
two medieval poems that survive in scores of manuscripts, suggesting that
they circulated widely — reveal broad-mindedness and tolerance toward
Muslims. Some travelers in the Middle East were impressed by the
kindness and generosity of Muslims and with the strictness and devotion
with which Muslims observed their faith. Frequently, however, Christian
literature portrayed Muslims as the most dreadful of Europe’s enemies,
guilty of every kind of crime. In his Inferno, for example, the great
Florentine poet Dante (1265–1321) placed the Muslim philosophers
Avicenna and Averroës with other virtuous “heathens,” among them
Socrates and Aristotle, in the first circle of Hell, where they endured only
moderate punishment. Muhammad, however, Dante consigned to the ninth
circle, near Satan himself, where he was condemned as a spreader of
discord and scandal and suffered perpetual torture.
Even when they rejected each other most forcefully, the Christian and
Islamic worlds had a significant impact on each other. Art styles,
technology, and even institutional practices spread in both directions.
During the Crusades Muslims adopted Frankish weapons and methods of
fortification. Christians in contact with Muslim scholars recovered ancient
Greek philosophical texts that survived only in Arabic translation.
Chapter Summary
Muhammad, born in the Arabian peninsula, experienced a religious vision,
after which he preached to the people to give up their idols and submit to
the one indivisible God. He believed in the same God as the Christians and
Jews and taught strict monotheism. Islam, the religion based on
Muhammad’s teachings, appropriated much of the Old and New Testaments
of the Bible. After Muhammad’s death, his followers gathered his
revelations, eventually producing the Qur’an.
Within the span of a century, Muslims carried their faith from the
Arabian peninsula through the Middle East, to North Africa and Spain, and
to the borders of India. Successors to Muhammad established the caliphate,
which through two successive dynasties coordinated rule over Islamic
lands. A key challenge faced by the caliphate was a fundamental division in
Muslim theology between the Sunnis and the Shi’a.
Over time, many parts of the Muslim empire gained considerable local
independence. Far-flung territories such as Spain began to break away from
the Baghdad-centered caliphate. By the tenth century Turks played a more
important role in the armies and came to be the effective rulers in much of
the Middle East. They were succeeded by the Mongols, who invaded the
Middle East in the thirteenth century and ruled the central Islamic lands for
eighty years.
Muslim society was distinctly hierarchical. In addition to a structure that
privileged the ruling Arab Muslims over converts to Islam, then over Jews,
Christians, and Zoroastrians, there were also a substantial number of slaves,
generally war captives. Slaves normally were converted to Islam and might
come to hold important positions, especially in the army. Distinctions
between men’s and women’s roles in Islamic society were strict. Over time,
the seclusion and veiling of women became common practices, especially
among the well-to-do.
Islam did not discourage trade and profitmaking. By land and sea
Muslim merchants transported a rich variety of goods across Asia, the
Middle East, Africa, and western Europe. As trade thrived, innovations such
as money orders, bills of exchange, and joint stock companies aided the
conduct of business.
Wealth from trade made possible a gracious and sophisticated culture in
the cities of the Islamic world, especially Baghdad and Córdoba. During
this period Muslim scholars produced important work in many disciplines,
especially mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. A new spiritual and
intellectual tradition arose in the mystical practices of Sufism. Muslims,
Christians, and Jews interacted in many ways during this period. At the time
of the Crusades and of the Christian reconquest of Islamic Spain, polemical
anti-Christian writings appeared, but in other periods Islamic views were
more positive. Many Christians converted in the early centuries of the
spread of Islam. Others such as the Mozarabs assimilated into Muslim
culture while retaining their religion.

CONNECTIONS

During the five centuries that followed Muhammad’s death, his teachings
came to be revered in large parts of the world, from Spain to Afghanistan.
Although in some ways similar to the earlier spread of Buddhism out of
India and Christianity out of Palestine, the spread of Islam occurred largely
through military conquests that extended Islamic lands. Still, conversion
was never complete; both Christians and Jews maintained substantial
communities within Islamic lands. Moreover, cultural contact among
Christians, Jews, and Muslims was an important element in the
development of each culture.
Muslim civilization in these centuries drew from many sources,
including Persia and Byzantium, and in turn had broad impact beyond its
borders. Muslim scholars preserved much of early Greek philosophy and
science through translation into Arabic. Trade connected the Muslim lands
both to Europe and to India and China.
During the first and second centuries after Muhammad, Islam spread
along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, which had been part of the
Roman world. The next chapter explores other developments in the
enormous and diverse continent of Africa during this time. Many of the
written sources that tell us about the African societies of these centuries
were written in Arabic by visitors from elsewhere in the Islamic world.
Muslim traders traveled through many of the societies in Africa north of the
Congo, aiding the spread of Islam to the elites of many of these societies.
Ethiopia was an exception, as Christianity spread there from Egypt before
the time of Muhammad and retained its hold in subsequent centuries.
Africa’s history is introduced in the next chapter.
Chapter 9 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

Qur’an (p. 197)

hadith (p. 197)
Sunna (p. 197)
Five Pillars of Islam (p. 198)
umma (p. 199)
diwān (p. 201)
imam (p. 202)
Shi’a (p. 202)
Sunnis (p. 202)
ulama (p. 202)
shari’a (p. 203)
emirs (p. 204)
dhimmis (p. 207)
madrasa (p. 214)
Mozarabs (p. 218)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. From what kind of social and economic environment did Muhammad arise, and
what did he teach? (p. 196)
2. What made possible the spread of Islam, and what forms of government were
established to rule Islamic lands? (p. 198)
3. How were the Islamic lands governed from 900 to 1400, and what new challenges
did rulers face? (p. 204)
4. What social distinctions were important in Muslim society? (p. 206)
5. Why did trade thrive in Islamic lands? (p. 211)
6. What new ideas and practices emerged in the arts, sciences, education, and
religion? (p. 213)
7. How did Muslims and Christians come into contact with each other, and how did
they view each other? (p. 217)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. How does the spread of Islam compare to the spread of earlier universal religions,
such as Buddhism (Chapter 7) and Christianity (Chapters 6, 8)?
2. In what ways was the development of culture in the Islamic lands shaped by trade
and thriving cities?
3. What are the similarities in the role of teachers and holy books in Islamic lands,
Europe (Chapter 8), and China (Chapter 7)? What are the differences?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 570–632 • Life of Muhammad

ca. 600–900 • Peak of Maya civilization (Ch. 11)
618–907 • Tang Dynasty in China; great age of Chinese poetry
(Ch. 7)
622 • Muhammad and his followers move from Mecca to
Medina
651 • Publication of the Qur’an
661 • Ali assassinated; split between Shi’a and Sunnis
711 • Muslims defeat Visigothic kingdom in Spain
711 • Islam reaches India (Ch. 12)
750–1258 • Abbasid caliphate
794–1185 • Heian era in Japan (Ch. 13)
950–1100 • Turks enter Middle East on a large scale
1054 • Latin, Greek churches split (Ch. 14)
1055 • Baghdad falls to Seljuk Turks
1066 • Norman Conquest of England (Ch. 14)
1099–1187 • Christian Crusaders hold Jerusalem
ca. 1100–1150 • Construction of Angkor Wat temple in the Khmer Empire
of Cambodia (Ch. 12)
1258 • Mongols capture Baghdad and kill the last Abbasid
caliph
10
African Societies and Kingdoms

1000 B.C.E.–1500 C.E.

Chapter Preview

The Land and Peoples of Africa

• How did Africa’s geography shape its history and contribute to its diverse
population?

Early African Societies

• How did agriculture affect life among the early societies in the western Sudan
and among the Bantu-speaking societies of central and southern Africa?

The Trans-Saharan Trade

• What characterized trans-Saharan trade, and how did it affect West African
society?

African Kingdoms and Empires, ca. 800–1500

• How were the East African city-states, Aksum, and Great Zimbabwe different
from and similar to the kingdoms of the western Sudan?

UNTIL FAIRLY RECENTLY, MUCH OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD KNEW LITTLE about the
African continent, its history, or its people. The continent’s sheer size, along with tropical
diseases and the difficulty of navigating Africa’s rivers inland, limited travel to a few intrepid
Muslim adventurers such as Ibn Battuta. Ethnocentrism and racism became critical factors
with the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1500s, followed in the nineteenth century
by European colonialism, which distorted and demeaned knowledge and information about
Africa. More recent scholarship has allowed us to learn more about early African
civilizations and to appreciate the richness, diversity, and dynamism of those cultures. We
know now that between about 400 and 1,500 civilizations, some highly centralized,
bureaucratized, and socially stratified, developed in Africa alongside communities with
looser forms of social organization often held together through common kinship bonds.
In West Africa several large empires closely linked to the trans-Saharan trade in salt,
gold, cloth, ironware, ivory, and other goods arose during this period. After 700 this trade
connected West Africa with Muslim societies in North Africa and the Middle East. Vast
stores of new information, contained in books and carried by visiting scholars, arrived from
an Islamic world that was experiencing a golden age.
Meanwhile, Bantu-speaking peoples spread ironworking and domesticated crops and
animals from modern Cameroon to Africa’s southern tip. They established kingdoms, such
as Great Zimbabwe, in the interior. At the same time, the Swahili established large and
prosperous city-states along the Indian Ocean coast.
The Land and Peoples of Africa
How did Africa’s geography shape its history and contribute to its diverse
population?

The world’s second-largest continent after Asia, Africa covers 20 percent of

the earth’s land surface, and African cultures are enormously diverse both
within and across regions. It is difficult and mistaken to make broad
generalizations about African life—statements that begin “African culture is
…” or “African people are …” are virtually meaningless. African peoples
are not and never have been homogeneous, and this rich diversity makes the
study of African history both exciting and challenging.
Five main climatic zones roughly divide the African continent (Map
10.1). Fertile land with unpredictable rainfall borders parts of the
Mediterranean in the north and the southwestern coast of the Cape of Good
Hope in the south. Inland from these areas are dry steppes with little plant
life. These steppes gradually give way to Africa’s great deserts: the vast
Sahara in the north—3.5 million square miles—and the Namib (NAH-
mihb) and Kalahari in the south. The Sahara’s southern sub-desert fringe is
called the Sahel (SA-hihl), from the Arabic word for “shore.” The savannas
(flat grasslands) extend in a swath across the continent’s widest part—parts
of south-central Africa and along the eastern coast—and account for some
55 percent of the African continent. Dense, humid tropical rain forests
stretch along coastal West Africa and on both sides of the equator in central
Africa. Africa’s climate is mostly tropical, with subtropical climates limited
to the northern and southern coasts and the regions of high elevation.
Rainfall is seasonal on most of the continent and is very sparse in desert and
semidesert areas.
MAP 10.1 The Geography of Africa Africa’s climate zones have always played a critical
role in the history of the continent and its peoples. These zones mirror each other north
and south of the equator: tropical forest, savanna, sub-desert, desert, and Mediterranean
climate.
 Geography and climate have significantly shaped African economic
development. In the eastern African plains, the earliest humans hunted wild
animals. The drier steppe regions favored herding. Wetter savanna regions,
like the Nile Valley, encouraged grain-based agriculture. Tropical forests
favored hunting and gathering and, later, root-based agriculture. Rivers and
lakes supported economies based on fishing.
Africa’s peoples are as diverse as the continent’s topography. In North
Africa contacts with Asian and European civilizations date back to the
ancient Phoenicians (fi-NEE-shuhns), Greeks, and Romans (see “Building a
Hellenized Society” in Chapter 5 and “Overseas Conquests and the Punic
Wars, 264–133 B.C.E.” in Chapter 6). Groups living on the coast or along
trade routes had the greatest degree of contact with outside groups. The
Berbers of North Africa, living along the Mediterranean, intermingled with
many different peoples—with Muslim Arabs, who first conquered North
Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries C.E. (see “Trade and Commerce”
in Chapter 9); with Spanish Muslims and Jews, many of whom settled in
North Africa following their expulsion from Spain in 1492 (see “Politics
and the State in the Renaissance” in Chapter 15); and with sub-Saharan
peoples, with whom they traded across the Sahara Desert. The Swahili
(swah-HEE-lee) peoples along the East African coast developed a maritime
civilization and had rich commercial contacts with southern Arabia, the
Persian Gulf, India, China, and the Malay Archipelago (ahr-kuh-PEL-uh-
goh).
 Nok Woman Hundreds
of terra-cotta sculptures
such as the figure of this
woman survive from the
Nok culture, which
originated in the central
plateau of northern
Nigeria in the first
millennium B.C.E.

The ancient Greeks called the peoples who lived south of the Sahara
Ethiopians, which means “people with burnt faces.” The Berbers also
described this region based on its inhabitants, coining the term Akal-n-
Iquinawen, which survives today as Guinea (GIN-ee). The Arabs used the
term Bilad al-Sudan, which survives as Sudan. The Berber and Arab terms
both mean “land of the blacks.” South of the Sahara, short-statured peoples,
sometimes inaccurately referred to as Pygmies, inhabited the equatorial rain
forests. South of those forests, in the continent’s southern third, lived the
Khoisan (KOI-sahn), people who were primarily hunters but also had
domesticated livestock.
Ancient Egypt, at the crossroads of three continents, was a melting pot
of different cultures, peoples, and languages. This diverse and cosmopolitan
population contributed to the great achievements of Egyptian culture. Many
scholars believe that Africans originating in the sub-Sahara resided in
ancient Egypt, primarily in Upper Egypt (south of what is now Cairo), but
that other ethnic groups constituted the majority of the population.
Merchants based in the capital, Alexandria, carried on trade with East Asia,
India, Arabia, East Africa, and across the Mediterranean Sea.
Early African Societies
How did agriculture affect life among the early societies in the western Sudan and
among the Bantu-speaking societies of central and southern Africa?

The introduction of new crops from Asia and the establishment of settled
agriculture profoundly changed many African societies, although the range
of possibilities largely depended on local variations in climate and
geography. Bantu-speakers took the knowledge of domesticated livestock
and agriculture, along with the ironworking skills that had developed in
northern and western Africa, and spread them south across central and
southern Africa. The most prominent feature of early West African society
was a strong sense of community based on blood relationships and religion.

Agriculture and Its Impact

Agriculture began very early in Africa. Knowledge of plant cultivation
moved west from the Levant (leh-VANT) (modern Israel and Lebanon),
arriving in the Nile Delta in Egypt about the fifth millennium B.C.E. Settled
agriculture then traveled down the Nile Valley and moved west across the
Sahel to the central and western Sudan. West Africans were living in
agricultural communities by the first century B.C.E. From there plant
cultivation spread to the equatorial forests. African farmers learned to
domesticate plants. Cereal-growing people probably taught forest people to
plant grains on plots of land cleared by a method known as “slash and
burn.” Gradually most Africans evolved a sedentary way of life: living in
villages, clearing fields, relying on root crops, and fishing. Hunting-and-
gathering societies survived only in scattered parts of Africa, particularly in
the central rain forest region and in southern Africa.
Between 1500 B.C.E. and 1000 B.C.E.. agriculture also spread southward
from Ethiopia along the Great Rift Valley of present-day Kenya and
Tanzania. Archaeological evidence reveals that the peoples of East Africa
grew cereals, raised cattle, and used wooden and stone tools. Cattle raising
spread more quickly than did planting, the herds prospering on the open
savannas that are free of tsetse (SEHT-see) flies, which are devastating to
cattle. Early East African peoples prized cattle highly. Many trading
agreements, marriage alliances, political compacts, and treaties were
negotiated in terms of cattle.
Cereals such as millet and sorghum are indigenous to Africa. Scholars
speculate that traders brought bananas, plantains, taros (a type of yam),
sugarcane, and coconut palms to Africa from Southeast Asia between 900
and 1100 C.E. Because tropical forest conditions were ideal for banana
plants, their cultivation spread rapidly. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa
native peoples also domesticated donkeys, pigs, chickens, geese, and ducks,
although all these came from outside Africa. The guinea fowl appears to be
the only animal native to Africa that was domesticated, despite the wide
varieties of animal species in Africa. All the other large animals—elephants,
hippopotamuses, giraffes, rhinoceros, and zebras—were simply too
temperamental to domesticate. The evolution from a hunter-gatherer life to
a settled life had profound effects. In contrast to nomadic societies, settled
societies made shared or common needs more apparent, and those needs
strengthened ties among extended families. Agricultural and pastoral
populations also increased, though scholars speculate that this increase did
not remain steady, but rather fluctuated over time. Nor is it clear that
population growth was accompanied by a commensurate increase in
agricultural output.
Early African societies were similarly influenced by the spread of
ironworking, though scholars dispute the route by which this technology
spread to sub-Saharan Africa. Some believe the Phoenicians brought the
iron-smelting technique to northwestern Africa, from which it spread
southward. Others insist it spread westward from the Meroë (MEHR-oh-ee)
region of the Nile. The great trans-Saharan trade routes may have carried
ironworking south from the Mediterranean coast. In any case, ancient iron
tools found at the village of Nok on the Jos Plateau in present-day Nigeria
seem to prove that ironworking industries existed in West Africa by at least
700 B.C.E. The Nok culture, which enjoys enduring fame for its fine terra-
cotta sculptures, flourished from about 800 B.C.E. to 200 C.E.

Bantu Migrations
The spread of ironworking is linked to the migrations of Bantu-speaking
peoples. Today the overwhelming majority of the 70 million people living
south and east of the Congo River speak a Bantu language. Lacking written
sources, modern scholars have tried to reconstruct the history of Bantu-
speakers on the basis of linguistics, oral traditions, archaeology, and
anthropology. Botanists and zoologists have played particularly critical
roles in providing information about early diets and environments. The
word Bantu is a linguistic classification, and linguistics (the study of the
nature, structure, and modification of human speech) has helped scholars
explain the migratory patterns of African peoples east and south of the
equatorial forest.
Bantu-speaking peoples originated in the Benue (BEY-nwey) region, the
borderlands of modern Cameroon and Nigeria. Between the first and second
millennium B.C.E. they began to spread south and east into the equatorial
forest zone. Historians still debate why they began this movement. Some
hold that rapid population growth sent people in search of land. Others
believe that the evolution of centralized kingdoms allowed rulers to expand
their authority, while causing newly subjugated peoples to flee in the hope
of regaining their independence.
Because the earliest Bantu-speakers lacked words for grains and cattle
herding, they probably were not initially involved in grain cultivation or
livestock domestication. During the next fifteen hundred years, Bantu-
speakers migrated throughout the savanna, adopted mixed agriculture, and
learned ironworking. Mixed agriculture (cultivating cereals and raising
livestock) and ironworking were practiced in western East Africa (the
region of modern Burundi) in the first century B.C.E. In the first millennium
C.E. Bantu-speakers migrated into eastern and southern Africa. Here the
Bantu-speakers, with their iron weapons, either killed, drove off, or
assimilated the hunting-gathering peoples they met. Some of the assimilated
inhabitants gradually adopted a Bantu language, contributing to the spread
of Bantu culture.
The settled cultivation of cereals, the keeping of livestock, and the
introduction of new crops such as the banana—together with Bantu-
speakers’ intermarriage with indigenous peoples—led over a long period to
considerable population increases and the need to migrate farther. The so-
called Bantu migrations should not be seen as a single movement sweeping
across Africa from west to east to south and displacing all peoples in its
path. Rather, those migrations were an extended series of group interactions
between Bantu-speakers and pre-existing peoples in which bits of culture,
languages, economies, and technologies were shared and exchanged to
produce a wide range of cultural variation across central and southern
Africa.1
The Bantu-speakers’ expansion and subsequent land settlement that
dominated eastern and southern African history in the first fifteen hundred
years of the Common Era were uneven. Significant environmental
differences determined settlement patterns. Some regions had plenty of
water, while others were very arid. These differences resulted in very
uneven population distribution. The greatest population density seems to
have been in the region bounded on the west by the Congo River and on the
north, south, and east by Lakes Edward and Victoria and Mount
Kilimanjaro (kil-uh-muhn-JAHR-oh). The rapid growth of the Bantu-
speaking population led to further migration southward and eastward. By
the eighth century the Bantu-speaking people had crossed the Zambezi
River and had begun settling in the region of present-day Zimbabwe (zim-
BAHB-wey). By the fifteenth century they had reached Africa’s
southeastern coast.

Life in the Kingdoms of the Western Sudan, ca. 1000 B.C.E.–800

C.E.

The Sudan (soo-DAN) is the region bounded by the Sahara to the north, the
Gulf of Guinea to the south, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the
mountains of Ethiopia to the east (see Map 10.1). In the western Sudan
savanna a series of dynamic kingdoms emerged in the millennium before
European intrusion began in the 1400s and 1500s.
Between 1000 B.C.E. and 200 C.E. the peoples of the western Sudan made
the momentous shift from nomadic hunting to settled agriculture. The rich
savanna proved ideally suited to cereal production, especially rice, millet,
and sorghum. People situated near the Senegal River and Lake Chad
supplemented their diet with fish. Food supply affects population, and the
region’s inhabitants increased dramatically in number. By 400 C.E. the entire
savanna, particularly around Lake Chad, the Niger (NIGH-juhr) River bend,
and present-day central Nigeria, had a large population.
Families and clans affiliated by blood kinship lived together in villages
or small city-states. The extended family formed the basic social unit. A
chief, in consultation with a council of elders, governed a village. Some
villages seem to have formed kingdoms. In this case, village chiefs were
responsible to regional heads, who answered to provincial governors, who
in turn were responsible to a king. The kings and their families formed an
aristocracy.
Kingship in the Sudan may have emerged from the priesthood. African
kings always had religious sanction or support for their authority, as they
had the ability to negotiate with the gods, and were often considered divine.
In this respect, early African kingship bears a strong resemblance to
Germanic kingship of the same period (see “Political Developments” in
Chapter 14).
Although the Mende (MEN-dee) in modern Sierra Leone was one of the
few African societies to be led by female rulers, women exercised
significant power and autonomy in many African societies. Among the
Asante (uh-SAN-tee) in modern-day Ghana, one of the most prominent
West African peoples, the king was considered divine but shared some royal
power with the Queen Mother. She was a full member of the governing
council and enjoyed full voting power in various matters of state. The
Queen Mother initially chose the future king from eligible royal candidates.
He then had to be approved by both his elders and the commoners. Among
the Yoruba in modern Nigeria, the Queen Mother held the royal insignia
and could refuse it if the future king did not please her. The institutions of
female chiefs, known as iyalode among the Yoruba (YOHR-uh-buh) and
omu among the Igbo (IG-boh) in modern Nigeria, were established to
represent women in the political process. The omu was even considered a
female co-ruler with the male chief.
Western Sudanese religions, like African religions elsewhere, were
animistic and polytheistic. Most people believed that a supreme being had
created the universe and was the source of all life. Nearly all African
religions also recognized ancestral spirits, which might seek God’s
blessings for families’ and communities’ prosperity and security as long as
these groups behaved appropriately. If not, the ancestral spirits might not
protect them from harm, and illness and misfortune could result. Some
African religions believed as well that nature spirits lived in such things as
the sky, forests, rocks, and rivers. These spirits controlled natural forces and
had to be appeased. Because special ceremonies were necessary to satisfy
the spirits, special priests with the knowledge and power to communicate
with them through sacred rituals were needed. Family and village heads
were often priests. Each family head was responsible for ceremonies
honoring the family’s dead and living members.2
 In some West African societies, oracles who spoke for the gods were
particularly important. Some of the most famous were the Igbo oracles in
modern Nigeria. These were female priestesses who were connected with a
particular local deity that resided in a sacred cave or other site. Inhabitants
of surrounding villages would come to the priestess to seek advice about
such matters as crops and harvests, war, marriage, legal issues, and religion.
Clearly, these priestesses held much power and authority, even over the
local male rulers.
Kinship patterns and shared religious practices helped bind together the
early western Sudan kingdoms. Islam’s spread across the Sahara by at least
the ninth century C.E., however, created a north-south religious and cultural
divide in the western Sudan. Islam advanced across the Sahel but halted
when it reached the West African savanna and forest zones. Societies in
these southern zones maintained their traditional animistic religious
practices. Muslim empires along the Niger River’s great northern bend
evolved into formidable powers ruling over sizable territory as they seized
control of the southern termini of the trans-Saharan trade. What made this
long-distance trade possible was the “ship of the desert,” the camel.
The Trans-Saharan Trade
What characterized trans-Saharan trade, and how did it affect West African society?

“Trans-Saharan trade” refers to the north-south trade across the Sahara

(Map 10.2). The camel had an impact on this trade comparable to the very
important impact of horses and oxen on European agriculture. Although
scholars dispute exactly when the camel was introduced from Central Asia
—first into North Africa, then into the Sahara and the Sudan—they agree
that it was before 200 C.E. The trans-Saharan trade brought lasting economic
and social change to Africa, facilitating the spread of Islam via Muslim
Arab traders, and affected the development of world commerce.
 MAP 10.2 African Kingdoms and Trade, ca. 800–1500 Throughout world history
powerful kingdoms have generally been closely connected to far-flung trade networks.

The Berbers of North Africa

Sometime in the fifth century C.E. the North African Berbers (BUHR-
buhrs) fashioned a saddle for use on the camel. The saddle gave the Berbers
and later the region’s Arabian inhabitants maneuverability on the animal
and thus a powerful political and military advantage: they came to dominate
the desert and to create lucrative routes across it. The Berbers determined
who could enter the desert, and they extracted large sums of protection
money from merchant caravans in exchange for a safe trip.

Tuareg Berber Camel Rider

Berbers such as this man on his
camel near Timbuktu in Mali have
crossed the Sahara Desert for
hundreds of years, transporting
primarily salt from the north and
returning with gold and other items
from West Africa.

Between 700 C.E. and 900 C.E. the Berbers developed a network of
caravan routes between the Mediterranean coast and the Sudan (see Map
10.2). The long expedition across the Sahara testifies to the traders’ spirit
and to their passion for wealth. Ibn Battuta, an Arab traveler in the
fourteenth century, when the trade was at its height, left one of the best
descriptions of the trans-Saharan traffic.
Nomadic raiders, the Tuareg (TWAH-rehg), posed a serious threat to
trans-Saharan traders. The Tuareg were Berbers who lived in the desert
uplands and preyed on the caravans as a way of life. To avoid being
victimized, merchants made safe-conduct agreements with them and
selected guides from among them. Large numbers of merchants crossed the
desert together to discourage attack; caravans of twelve thousand camels
were reported in the fourteenth century.
Berber merchants from North Africa controlled the caravan trade that
carried dates, salt (essential in tropical climates to replace the loss from
perspiration) from the Saharan salt mines, and some manufactured goods—
silk and cotton cloth, beads, mirrors—to the Sudan. These products were
exchanged for the much-coveted commodities of the West African savanna
—gold, ivory, gum, kola nuts (eaten as a stimulant), and enslaved West
African men and women who were sold to Muslim slave markets in
Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, and Cairo.

Effects of Trade on West African Society

The steady growth of trans-Saharan trade (Table 10.1) had three important
effects on West African society. First, trade stimulated gold mining. Parts of
modern-day Senegal, Nigeria, and Ghana contained rich veins of gold, and
scholars estimate that by the eleventh century nine tons of gold were
exported to the Mediterranean coast and Europe annually—a prodigious
amount for the time, since even with modern machinery and sophisticated
techniques, total gold exports from the same region in 1937 amounted to
only twenty-one tons. Some of this metal went to Egypt. From there it was
transported down the Red Sea and eventually to India (see Map 9.2) to pay
for the spices and silks demanded by Mediterranean commerce. In this way,
African gold linked the entire world, exclusive of the Western Hemisphere.

TABLE 10.1 ESTIMATED MAGNITUDE OF TRANS-SAHARAN SLAVE TRADE,

650–1500

Annual Average of Slaves

Years Traded Total
 650–800 1,000 150,000

800–900 3,000 300,000

900–1100 8,700 1,740,000

1100–1400 5,500 1,650,000

1400–1500 4,300 430,000

Source: R. A. Austen, “The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade: A Tentative Census,” in The

Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, ed. H. A.
Gemery and J. S. Hogendorn (New York: Academic Press, 1979).

Second, trade in gold and other goods created a desire for slaves. Slaves
were West Africa’s second-most-valuable export (after gold). Slaves worked
the gold and salt mines, and in Muslim North Africa, southern Europe, and
southwestern Asia there was a high demand for household slaves among the
elite. African slaves, like their early European and Asian counterparts, seem
to have been peoples captured in war. Recent research suggests, moreover,
that large numbers of black slaves were also recruited for Muslim military
service through the trans-Saharan trade. Table 10.1 shows the scope of the
trans-Saharan slave trade. The total number of blacks enslaved over an 850-
year period between 650 and 1500 C.E. may be tentatively estimated at more
than 4 million.3
Slavery in Muslim societies, as in European and Asian countries before
the fifteenth century, was not based on skin color. Muslims also enslaved
Caucasians who had been purchased, seized in war, or kidnapped from
Europe. Wealthy Muslim households in Córdoba, Alexandria, and Tunis
often included slaves of a number of races, all of whom had been
completely cut off from their cultural roots. Likewise, West African kings
who sold blacks to northern traders also bought a few white slaves—Slavic,
British, and Turkish—for their own domestic needs. Race had little to do
with the phenomenon of slavery.
The third important effect of trans-Saharan trade on West African
society was its role in stimulating the development of urban centers.
Scholars date the growth of African cities from around the early ninth
century. Families that had profited from trade tended to congregate in the
border zones between the savanna and the Sahara. They acted as middlemen
between the miners to the south and the Muslim merchants from the north.
By the early thirteenth century these families had become powerful
merchant dynasties. Muslim traders from the Mediterranean settled
permanently in the trading depots, from which they organized the trans-
Saharan caravans. The concentration of people stimulated agriculture and
the craft industries. Gradually cities of sizable population emerged. Jenne
(JENN-ay), Gao (GAH-oh), and Timbuktu (tim-buhk-TOO), which enjoyed
commanding positions on the Niger River bend, became centers of the
export-import trade. Sijilmasa (sih-jil-MAS-suh) grew into a thriving
market center. Koumbi Saleh, with between fifteen thousand and twenty
thousand inhabitants, was probably the largest city in the western Sudan in
the twelfth century. (By European standards, Koumbi Saleh was a
metropolis; London and Paris achieved this size only in the late thirteenth
century.) Between 1100 and 1400 these cities played a dynamic role in West
Africa’s commercial life and became centers of intellectual creativity.

The Spread of Islam in Africa

Perhaps the most influential consequence of the trans-Saharan trade was the
introduction of Islam to West Africa. In the eighth century Arab invaders
overran all of coastal North Africa. They introduced the Berbers living there
to Islam (see “Trade and Commerce” in Chapter 9), and gradually the
Berbers became Muslims. As traders, these Berbers carried Islam to sub-
Saharan West Africa. From the eleventh century onward militant
Almoravids (al-MAWR-uh-vids), a coalition of fundamentalist western
Saharan Berbers, preached Islam to the rulers of Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and
Kanem-Bornu. These rulers, admiring Muslim administrative techniques
and wanting to protect their kingdoms from Muslim Berber attacks,
converted to Islam. Some merchants also sought to preserve their elite
mercantile status with the Berbers by adopting Islam. Muslims quickly
became integral to West African government and society. Hence, from
roughly 1000 to 1400, Islam in West Africa was a class-based religion with
conversion inspired by political or economic motives. Rural people in the
Sahel region and the savanna and forest peoples farther south, however,
largely retained their traditional animism.
Conversion to Islam introduced West Africans to a rich and
sophisticated culture. By the late eleventh century Muslims were guiding
the ruler of Ghana in the operation of his administrative machinery.
Because efficient government depends on keeping and preserving records,
Islam’s arrival in West Africa marked the advent of written documents
there. Arab Muslims also taught Ghana’s rulers how to manufacture bricks,
and royal palaces and mosques began to be built of brick. African rulers
corresponded with Arab and North African Muslim architects, theologians,
and other intellectuals, who advised them on statecraft and religion. Islam
accelerated the development of the West African empires of the ninth
through fifteenth centuries.
After the Muslim conquest of Alexandria, Egypt, in 641 (see “Islamic
States and Their Expansion” in Chapter 9), Islam spread southward from
Egypt up the Nile Valley and west to Darfur (dahr-FOOR) and Wadai (wah-
digh). This Muslim penetration came not suddenly by military force but, as
in the trans-Saharan trade routes in West Africa, gradually through
commercial networks.
Muslim expansion from the Arabian peninsula across the Red Sea to the
Horn of Africa, then southward along the coast of East Africa, represents a
third direction of Islam’s growth in Africa. From ports on the Red Sea and
the Gulf of Aden (AHD-en), maritime trade carried Islam to East Africa and
the Indian Ocean. Between the eighth and tenth centuries Muslims founded
the port city of Mogadishu (maw-gah-DEE-shoo), today Somalia’s capital.
In the twelfth century Mogadishu developed into a Muslim sultanate.
Archaeological evidence, confirmed by Arabic sources, reveals a rapid
Islamic expansion along Africa’s east coast in the thirteenth century as far
south as Kilwa (KILL-wa), where Ibn Battuta visited a center for Islamic
law in 1331.
African Kingdoms and Empires, ca. 800–
1500
How were the East African city-states, Aksum, and Great Zimbabwe different from
and similar to the kingdoms of the western Sudan?

All African societies shared one basic feature: a close relationship between
political and social organization. Ethnic or blood ties bound clan members
together. What scholars call stateless societies were culturally
homogeneous ethnic societies, generally organized around kinship groups.
The smallest ones numbered fewer than a hundred people and were
nomadic hunting groups. Larger stateless, or decentralized, societies, such
as the Tiv in modern central Nigeria, consisted of perhaps several thousand
people who lived a settled and often agricultural and/or herding life. These
societies lacked a central authority figure, such as a king, capital city, or
military. A village or group of villages might recognize a chief who held
very limited powers and whose position was not hereditary, but more
commonly they were governed by local councils, whose members were
either elders or persons of merit. Although stateless societies functioned
successfully, their weakness lay in their inability to organize and defend
themselves against attack by the powerful armies of neighboring kingdoms
or by the European powers of the colonial era.
While stateless societies were relatively common in Africa, the period
from about 800 to 1500 is best known as the age of Africa’s great empires
(see Map 10.2). This period witnessed the flowering of several powerful
African states. In the western Sudan the large empires of Ghana, Mali
(MAH-lee), and Songhai (song-GAH-ee) developed, complete with sizable
royal bureaucracies. On the east coast emerged thriving city-states based on
sophisticated mercantile activities and, like the western Sudan, heavily
influenced by Islam. In Ethiopia, in central East Africa, kings relied on their
peoples’ Christian faith to strengthen political authority. In southern Africa
the empire of Great Zimbabwe, built on the gold trade with the east coast,
flourished.

The Kingdom of Ghana, ca. 900–1100

So remarkable was the kingdom of Ghana (GAH-nuh) during the age of
Africa’s great empires that Arab and North African visitors praised it as a
model for other rulers. Even in modern times, ancient Ghana holds a central
place in Africa’s historical consciousness. When the British Gold Coast
colony gained its independence in 1957, its new leaders paid tribute to their
heritage by naming their new country Ghana. Although modern Ghana lies
far from the site of the old kingdom, the name was selected to signify the
rebirth of ancient Ghana’s illustrious past.
The Soninke (so-NING-kee) people inhabited the nucleus of the
territory that became the Ghanaian kingdom. They called their ruler ghana,
or war chief. By the late eighth century Muslim traders and other foreigners
applied the king’s title to the region where the Soninke lived, the kingdom
south of the Sahara. The Soninke themselves called their land Wagadou
(WAH-guh-doo). Only the southern part of Wagadou received enough
rainfall to be agriculturally productive, and it was here that the civilization
of Ghana developed (see Map 10.2). Skillful farming and efficient irrigation
systems led to abundant crop production, which eventually supported a
population of as many as two hundred thousand.
In 992 Ghana captured the Berber town of Awdaghost (OW-duh-gost),
strategically situated on the trans-Saharan trade route. Thereafter Ghana
controlled the southern portion of a major caravan route. Before the year
1000 Ghana’s rulers had extended their influence almost to the Atlantic
coast and had captured a number of small kingdoms in the south and east.
By the early eleventh century the Ghanaian king exercised sway over a
territory approximately the size of Texas. No other power in the western
Sudan could successfully challenge him.
Throughout this vast West African territory, all authority sprang from
the king. Religious ceremonies and court rituals emphasized the king’s
sacredness and were intended to strengthen his authority. The king’s
position was hereditary in the matrilineal line—that is, the ruling king’s heir
was one of the king’s sister’s sons (presumably the eldest or fittest for
battle). According to the eleventh-century Spanish Muslim geographer al-
Bakri (1040?–1094), “This is their custom … the kingdom is inherited only
by the son of the king’s sister. He the king has no doubt that his successor is
a son of his sister, while he is not certain that his son is in fact his own.”4 A
council of ministers assisted the king in the work of government, and from
the ninth century on most of these ministers were Muslims. The royal
administration was well served by ideas, skills, and especially literacy
brought from the North African and Arab Muslim worlds. The king and his
people, however, clung to their ancestral religion and basic cultural
institutions.
The Ghanaian king held court in the large and vibrant city of Koumbi
Saleh (KOOM-bi SA-lah), which was actually two towns, one inhabited by
the king and his royal court and the other by Muslims. Al-Bakri provides a
valuable description of the Muslim part of the town in the eleventh century:
The city of Ghana consists of two towns lying on a plain, one of which is inhabited by
Muslims and is large, possessing twelve mosques—one of which is a congregational
mosque for Friday prayer; each has its imam, its muezzin and paid reciters of the Quran. The
town possesses a large number of jurisconsults and learned men.5

Either to protect themselves or to preserve their special identity, the

Muslims of Koumbi Saleh lived separately from the African artisans and
tradespeople. Ghana’s Muslim community was large and prosperous, and
Muslim religious leaders exercised civil authority over their fellow
Muslims. The presence of religious leaders and other learned Muslims
suggests that Koumbi Saleh was a city of vigorous intellectual activity.
Al-Bakri also described the royal court:
The town inhabited by the king is six miles from the Muslim one and is called Al Ghana….
The residence of the king consists of a palace and a number of dome-shaped dwellings, all
of them surrounded by a strong enclosure, like a city wall. In the town … is a mosque,
where Muslims who come on diplomatic missions to the king pray.6
The king adorns himself, as do the women here, with necklaces and bracelets; on their
heads they wear caps decorated with gold, sewn on material of fine cotton stuffing. When he
holds court in order to hear the people’s complaints and to do justice, he sits in a pavilion
around which stand ten horses wearing golden trappings; behind him ten pages stand,
holding shields and swords decorated with gold; at his right are the sons of the chiefs of the
country, splendidly dressed and with their hair sprinkled with gold…. When the king’s
coreligionists appear before him, they fall on their knees and toss dust on their heads—this
is their way of greeting their sovereign. Muslims show respect by clapping their hands.7

Justice derived from the king, who heard cases at court or on his travels
throughout his kingdom. As al-Bakri recounts:
When a man is accused of denying a debt or of having shed blood or some other crime, a
headman (village chief) takes a thin piece of wood, which is sour and bitter to taste, and
pours upon it some water which he then gives to the defendant to drink. If the man vomits,
his innocence is recognized and he is congratulated. If he does not vomit and the drink
remains in his stomach, the accusation is accepted as justified.8
This appeal to the supernatural for judgment was similar to the justice by
ordeal that prevailed among the Germanic peoples of western Europe at the
same time (see “Law and Justice” in Chapter 14).
The king’s elaborate court, the administrative machinery he built, and
the extensive territories he governed were all expensive. To support the
kingdom, the royal estates—some hereditary, others conquered in war—
produced annual revenue, mostly in the form of foodstuffs for the royal
household. The king also received tribute annually from subordinate
chieftains. Customs duties on goods entering and leaving the country
generated revenues as well. Salt was the largest import. Berber merchants
paid a tax to the king on the cloth, metalwork, weapons, and other goods
they brought into the country from North Africa; in return these traders
received royal protection from bandits. African traders bringing gold into
Ghana from the south also paid the customs duty.
Finally, the royal treasury held a monopoly on the export of gold. The
gold industry was undoubtedly the king’s largest source of income.
Medieval Ghana’s fame rested on gold. The ninth-century Persian
geographer al-Ya-qubi wrote, “Its king is mighty, and in his lands are gold
mines. Under his authority are various other kingdoms—and in all this
region there is gold.”9 The governing aristocracy—the king, his court, and
Muslim administrators—occupied the highest rung on the Ghanaian social
ladder. On the next rung stood the merchant class. Considerably below the
merchants stood the farmers, cattle breeders, gold mine supervisors, and
skilled craftsmen and weavers—what today might be called the middle
class. Some merchants and miners must have enjoyed great wealth, but, as
in all aristocratic societies, money alone did not grant prestige. High status
was based on blood and royal service. On the social ladder’s lowest rung
were slaves, who worked in households, on farms, and in the mines. As in
Asian and European societies of the time, slaves accounted for only a small
percentage of the population.
Apart from these social classes stood the army. Ghana’s king maintained
at his palace a standing force of a thousand men, comparable to the
bodyguards of the Roman emperors. These thoroughly disciplined, well-
armed, totally loyal troops protected the king and the royal court. They
lived in special compounds, enjoyed the king’s favor, and sometimes acted
as his personal ambassadors to subordinate rulers. In wartime this regular
army was augmented by levies of soldiers from conquered peoples and by
the use of slaves and free reserves.
The reasons for ancient Ghana’s decline are still a matter of much
debate. The most commonly accepted theory for Ghana’s rapid decline is
that the Berber Almoravid dynasty of North Africa invaded and conquered
Ghana around 1100 and forced its rulers and people to convert to Islam.
Some historians examining this issue have concluded that while Almoravid
and Islamic pressures certainly disrupted the empire, weakening it enough
for its incorporation into the rising Mali empire, there was no Almoravid
military invasion and subsequent forced conversion to Islam.10

The Kingdom of Mali, ca. 1200–1450

Ghana and its capital of Koumbi Saleh were in decline between 1100 and
1200. The old empire split into several small kingdoms that feuded among
themselves. One people, the Mandinka (man-DING-goh), from the
kingdom of Kangaba on the upper Niger River, gradually asserted their
dominance over these kingdoms. The Mandinka had long been part of the
Ghanaian empire, and the Mandinka and Soninke belonged to the same
language group. Kangaba formed the core of the new empire of Mali.
Building on Ghanaian foundations, Mali developed into a better-organized
and more powerful state than Ghana.
Mali owed its greatness to two fundamental assets. First, its strong
agricultural and commercial base supported a large population and provided
enormous wealth. Second, Mali had two rulers, Sundiata (soon-JAH-tuh)
and Mansa Musa, who combined military success with exceptionally
creative personalities.
The earliest surviving evidence about the Mandinka, dating from the
early eleventh century, indicates that they were extremely successful at
agriculture. Consistently large harvests throughout the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries meant a plentiful food supply, which encouraged steady
population growth. Kangaba’s geographical location also ideally positioned
the Mandinka in the heart of the West African trade networks. Earlier,
during the period of Ghanaian hegemony, the Mandinka had acted as
middlemen in the gold and salt traffic flowing north and south. In the
thirteenth century Mandinka traders formed companies, traveled widely,
and gradually became a major force in the entire West African trade.
 Mali’s founder, Sundiata (r. ca. 1230–1255) set up his capital at Niani,
transforming the city into an important financial and trading center. He then
embarked on a policy of imperial expansion. Through a series of military
victories, Sundiata and his successors absorbed into Mali other territories of
the former kingdom of Ghana and established hegemony over the trading
cities of Gao, Jenne, and Walata.

The Great Friday Mosque, Jenne The mosque at Jenne was built in the form of a
parallelogram. Inside, nine long rows of adobe columns run along a north-south axis and
support a flat roof of palm logs. A pointed arch links each column to the next in its row,
forming nine east-west archways facing the mihrab, the niche in the wall of the mosque
indicating the direction of Mecca, and from which the imam speaks. This mosque (rebuilt
in 1907 based on the original thirteenth-century structure) testifies to the considerable
wealth, geometrical knowledge, and manpower of Mali.

These expansionist policies were continued in the fourteenth century by

Sundiata’s descendant Mansa Musa (MAHN-sa MOO-sa) (r. ca. 1312–
1337), early Africa’s most famous ruler. In the language of the Mandinka,
mansa means “emperor.” Ultimately Mansa Musa’s influence extended
northward to several Berber cities in the Sahara, eastward to the trading
cities of Timbuktu and Gao, and westward to the Atlantic Ocean.
Throughout his territories, he maintained strict royal control over the
flourishing trans-Saharan trade. Thus this empire, roughly twice the size of
the Ghanaian kingdom and containing perhaps 8 million people, brought
Mansa Musa fabulous wealth.
Mansa Musa built on the foundations of his predecessors. Malian
society’s stratified aristocratic structure perpetuated the pattern set in
Ghana, as did the system of provincial administration and annual tribute.
The emperor took responsibility for the territories that formed the heart of
the empire and appointed governors to rule the outlying provinces and
dependent kingdoms. But Mansa Musa made a significant innovation: in a
practice strikingly similar to a system used in both China and France at the
time, he appointed royal family members as provincial governors.
In another aspect of administration, Mansa Musa also differed from his
predecessors. He became a devout Muslim. Although most of the Mandinka
remained animists, Islamic practices and influences in Mali multiplied.
The most celebrated event of Mansa Musa’s reign was his pilgrimage to
Mecca in 1324–1325, during which he paid a state visit to the Egyptian
sultan. Mansa Musa’s entrance into Cairo was magnificent. Preceded by
five hundred slaves, each carrying a six-pound staff of gold, he followed
with a huge host of retainers, including one hundred elephants each bearing
one hundred pounds of gold. The emperor lavished his wealth on the
citizens of the Egyptian capital. Writing twelve years later, al-Omari, one of
the sultan’s officials, recounts:
This man Mansa Musa spread upon Cairo the flood of his generosity: there was no person,
officer of the court, or holder of any office of the Sultanate who did not receive a sum of
gold from him. The people of Cairo earned incalculable sums from him, whether by buying
and selling or by gifts. So much gold was current in Cairo that it ruined the value of
money.11

As a result of this pilgrimage, for the first time the Mediterranean world
learned firsthand of Mali’s wealth and power, and the kingdom began to be
known as one of the world’s great empires. Mali retained this international
reputation into the fifteenth century. Musa’s pilgrimage also had significant
consequences within Mali. He gained some understanding of the
Mediterranean countries and opened diplomatic relations with the Muslim
rulers of Morocco and Egypt. His zeal for the Muslim faith and Islamic
culture increased. Musa brought back from Arabia the distinguished
architect al-Saheli, whom he commissioned to build new mosques in
Timbuktu and other cities. These mosques served as centers for African
conversion to Islam.
Timbuktu began as a campsite for desert nomads, but under Mansa
Musa it grew into a thriving entrepôt (trading center), attracting merchants
and traders from North Africa and all parts of the Mediterranean world.
They brought with them cosmopolitan attitudes and ideas. In the fifteenth
century Timbuktu developed into a great center for scholarship and
learning. Architects, astronomers, poets, lawyers, mathematicians, and
theologians flocked there. One hundred fifty schools, for men only, were
devoted to Qur’anic studies. The school of Islamic law enjoyed a distinction
comparable to the prestige of the Cairo school (see “Education and
Intellectual Life” in Chapter 9). The vigorous traffic in books that
flourished in Timbuktu made them the most common items of trade.
Timbuktu’s tradition and reputation for African scholarship lasted until the
eighteenth century.
Moreover, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many Arab and
North African Muslim intellectuals and traders married native African
women. The necessity of living together harmoniously, the traditional
awareness of diverse cultures, and Timbuktu’s cosmopolitan atmosphere
contributed to a rare degree of racial tolerance and understanding. After
visiting the court of Mansa Musa’s successor in 1352–1353, Ibn Battuta
observed:
[T]he Negroes possess some admirable qualities. They are seldom unjust, and have a greater
abhorrence of injustice than any other people. Their sultan shows no mercy to anyone who is
guilty of the least act of it. There is complete security in their country. Neither traveler nor
inhabitant in it has anything to fear from robbers…. They do not confiscate the property of
any white man who dies in their country, even if it be uncounted wealth. On the contrary,
they give it into the charge of some trustworthy person among the whites.12

The third great West African empire, Songhai, succeeded Mali in the
fifteenth century. It encompassed the old empires of Ghana and Mali and
extended its territory farther north and east to become one of the largest
African empires in history (see Map 10.2).

Ethiopia: The Christian Kingdom of Aksum

Just as the ancient West African empires were significantly affected by
Islam and the Arab culture that accompanied it, the African kingdoms that
arose in modern Sudan and Ethiopia in northeast Africa were heavily
influenced by Egyptian culture, and they influenced it in return. This was
particularly the case in ancient Nubia (NOO-bee-uh). Nubia’s capital was at
Meroë (see Map 10.2); thus the country is often referred to as the Nubian
kingdom of Meroë.
As part of the Roman Empire, Egypt was subject to Hellenistic and
Roman cultural forces, and it became an early center of Christianity. Nubia,
however, was never part of the Roman Empire; its people retained ancient
Egyptian religious ideas. Christian missionaries traveled to the Upper Nile
region and successfully converted the Nubian rulers around 600 C.E. By that
time, there were three separate Nubian states, of which the kingdom of
Nobatia, centered at Dongola, was the strongest. The Christian rulers of
Nobatia had close ties with the Aksum (AHK-soom) kingdom in Ethiopia,
and through this relationship Egyptian culture spread to Ethiopia.
Two-thirds of Ethiopia consists of the Ethiopian highlands, the rugged
plateau region of East Africa. The Great Rift Valley divides this territory
into two massifs (mountain masses), of which the Ethiopian Plateau is the
larger. Sloping away from each side of the Great Rift Valley are a series of
mountains and valleys. Together with this mountainous environment, the
three Middle Eastern religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have all
influenced Ethiopian society.
By the first century C.E. the Aksum kingdom in northwestern Ethiopia
was a sizable trading state. Merchants at Adulis (ah-DUL-uhs), its main port
on the Red Sea, sold ivory, gold, emeralds, rhinoceros horns, shells, and
slaves to the Sudan, Arabia, Yemen, and various cities across the Indian
Ocean in exchange for glass, ceramics, fabrics, sugar, oil, spices, and
precious gems. Adulis contained temples, stone-built houses, and irrigated
agriculture. Between the first and eighth centuries Aksum served as the
capital of an empire extending over much of what is now northern Ethiopia.
The empire’s prosperity rested on trade.
Islam’s expansion into northern Ethiopia in the eighth century weakened
Aksum’s commercial prosperity. The Arabs first ousted the Greek
Byzantine merchants who traded on the Dahlak Archipelago (in the
southern Red Sea) and converted the islands’ inhabitants. Then Muslims
attacked and destroyed Adulis. Some Aksumites converted to Islam; many
others found refuge in the rugged mountains north of the kingdom, where
they were isolated from outside contacts. Thus began the insularity that
characterized later Ethiopian society.
 Tradition ascribes to Frumentius (froo-MEN-shee-uhs) (ca. 300–380
C.E.), a Syrian Christian trader, the introduction of Coptic (KAHP-tik)
Christianity, an Orthodox form of Christianity that originated in Egypt, into
Ethiopia. Kidnapped as a young boy en route from India to Tyre (in
southern Lebanon), Frumentius was taken to Aksum, given his freedom,
and appointed tutor to the future king, Ezana (ee-ZAHN-ah). Upon Ezana’s
accession to the throne, Frumentius went to Alexandria, Egypt, where he
was consecrated the first bishop of Aksum around 328 C.E. He then returned
to Ethiopia with some priests to spread Christianity. Shortly after members
of the royal court accepted Christianity in about 350 C.E., it became the
Ethiopian state religion. Ethiopia’s future was to be inextricably linked to
Christianity, a unique situation in sub-Saharan Africa.
Ethiopia’s acceptance of Christianity led to the production of
ecclesiastical documents and royal chronicles, making Ethiopia the first
sub-Saharan African society that can be studied from written records. The
Scriptures were translated into Ge’ez (gee-EHZ), an ancient language and
script used in Ethiopia and Aksum. Pagan temples were dedicated to
Christian saints, and, as in early medieval Ireland and in the Orthodox
Church of the Byzantine world, monasteries were the Christian faith’s main
cultural institutions in Ethiopia. As the Ethiopian state expanded, vibrant
monasteries provided inspiration for the establishment of convents for nuns,
as in medieval Europe (see “Monastic Life” in Chapter 14).
Monastic records provide fascinating information about early Ethiopian
society. Settlements were formed on the warm and moist plateau lands.
Farmers used a scratch plow (unique in sub-Saharan Africa) to cultivate
wheat and barley, and they regularly rotated these cereals. Plentiful rainfall
seems to have helped produce abundant crops, which in turn led to
population growth. Because of ecclesiastical opposition to polygyny (the
practice of having multiple wives), monogamy was the norm, other than for
kings and the very rich. An abundance of land meant that young couples
could establish independent households. Widely scattered farms, with the
parish church as the central social unit, seem to have been the usual pattern
of existence.
Above the broad class of peasant farmers stood warrior-nobles. Their
wealth and status derived from their fighting skills, which kings rewarded
with grants of estates and with the right to collect tribute from the peasants.
To acquire lands and to hold warriors’ loyalty, Ethiopian kings pursued a
policy of constant territorial expansion. Nobles maintained order in their
regions, supplied kings with fighting men, and displayed their superior
status by the size of their households and their generosity to the poor.
Sometime in the fourteenth century six scribes in the Tigrayan (tee-
GREY-uhn) highlands of Ethiopia combined oral tradition, Jewish and
Islamic commentaries, apocryphal (noncanonical) Christian texts, and the
writings of the early Christian Church fathers to produce the Kebra Nagast
(The Glory of Kings). This history served the authors’ goals: it became an
Ethiopian national epic, glorifying a line of rulers descended from the
Hebrew king Solomon (see “The Hebrews” in Chapter 2), arousing patriotic
feelings, and linking Ethiopia’s identity to the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The book deals mostly with the origins of Emperor Menilek I (MEN-uh-lik)
of Ethiopia in the tenth century B.C.E.
The Kebra Nagast asserts that Queen Makeda (ma-KAY-da) of Ethiopia
(called Sheba in the Jewish tradition) had little governmental experience
when she came to the throne. So she sought the advice and wise counsel of
King Solomon (r. ca. 965–925 B.C.E.) in Jerusalem. Makeda learned Jewish
statecraft, converted to Judaism, and expressed her gratitude to Solomon
with rich gifts of spices, gems, and gold. During this visit, Solomon tricked
Makeda into allowing him into her bed. Their son, Menilek, was born some
months later. When Menilek reached maturity, he visited Solomon in
Jerusalem. There Solomon anointed him crown prince of Ethiopia and sent
a retinue of young Jewish nobles to accompany him home as courtiers.
Unable to face life without the Hebrews’ Ark of the Covenant, the courtiers
stole the cherished wooden chest, which the Hebrews believed contained
the Ten Commandments. God apparently approved the theft, for he lifted
the youths, pursued by Solomon’s army, across the Red Sea and into
Ethiopia. Thus, according to the Kebra Nagast, Menilek avenged his
mother’s shame, and God gave his legal covenant to Ethiopia, Israel’s
successor.13 Although written around twenty-three hundred years after the
events, the myths and legends contained in the Kebra Nagast effectively
served the purpose of building nationalistic fervor.
Based on this lineage, from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, and even
in the Ethiopian constitution of 1955, Ethiopia’s rulers claimed they
belonged to the Solomonic line of succession. Thus the church and state in
Ethiopia were inextricably linked.
 In the later thirteenth century the dynasty of the Solomonic kings
witnessed a literary and artistic renaissance particularly notable for works
of hagiography (biographies of saints), biblical exegesis (critical
explanation or interpretation of the Bible), and manuscript illumination. The
most striking feature of Ethiopian society from 500 to 1500 was the close
relationship between the church and the state. Christianity inspired fierce
devotion and equated doctrinal heresy with political rebellion, thus
reinforcing central monarchical power.

The East African City-States

Like Ethiopia, the East African city-states were shaped by their proximity to
the trade routes of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. In the first century C.E. a
merchant seaman from Alexandria in Egypt sailed down the Red Sea and
out into the Indian Ocean, where he stopped at seaports along the coasts of
East Africa, Arabia, and India. He took careful notes on all he observed, and
the result, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (erythraean comes from the
Greek word meaning “red,” which was used to designate the Red Sea as
well as the Indian Ocean), is the earliest surviving literary evidence of the
city-states of the East African coast. Although primarily preoccupied with
geography and navigation, the Periplus includes accounts of the local East
African peoples and their commercial activities. Since the days of the
Roman emperors, the Periplus testifies, the East African coast had strong
commercial links with India and the Mediterranean.
Greco-Roman ships sailed from Adulis on the Red Sea around the tip of
the Gulf of Aden and down the portion of the East African coast that the
Greeks called Azania, in modern-day Kenya and Tanzania (see Map 10.2).
These ships carried manufactured goods—cotton cloth, copper and brass,
iron tools, and gold and silver plate. At the African coastal emporiums,
Mediterranean merchants exchanged these goods for cinnamon, myrrh and
frankincense, captive slaves, and animal byproducts such as ivory,
rhinoceros horns, and tortoise shells. The ships then headed back north and,
somewhere around Cape Guardafui (gwahr-duh-FWEE) on the Horn of
Africa, caught the monsoon winds eastward to India, where ivory was in
great demand. In the early centuries of the Common Era many merchants
and seamen from the Mediterranean settled in East African coastal towns.
Succeeding centuries saw the arrival of more traders. The great emigration
from Arabia after the death of Muhammad accelerated Muslim penetration
of the area, which the Arabs called the Zanj, “land of the blacks,” a land
inhabited by Bantu-speaking peoples whom they also called the Zanj. Along
the coast, Arabic Muslims established small trading colonies whose local
peoples were ruled by kings and practiced various animistic religions.
Eventually—whether through Muslim political hegemony or gradual
assimilation—the coastal peoples slowly converted to Islam. Indigenous
African religions, however, remained strong in the continent’s interior.
Migrants from the Arabian peninsula and the Malay Archipelago had a
profound influence on the lives of the East African coastal people.
Beginning in the late twelfth century fresh waves of Arabs and of Persians
from Shiraz poured down the coast, first settling at Mogadishu, then
pressing southward to Kilwa. Everywhere they landed, they introduced
Islamic culture to the indigenous population. Similarly, from the first to the
fifteenth centuries Indonesians crossed the Indian Ocean and settled on the
African coast and on the large island of Madagascar. All these immigrants
intermarried with Africans, and the resulting society combined Asian,
African, and especially Islamic traits. The East African coastal culture was
called Swahili, after a Bantu language whose vocabulary and poetic forms
exhibit a strong Arabic influence.

Great Mosque at Kilwa Built between the thirteenth and fifteenth

centuries to serve the Muslim commercial aristocracy of Kilwa on
the Indian Ocean, the mosque attests to the wealth and power of
the East African city-states.
 By the late thirteenth century Kilwa had become the most powerful
Swahili coastal city, exercising political hegemony as far north as Pemba
and as far south as Sofala (see Map 10.2). In the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the coastal cities were great commercial empires, comparable to
the Italian city-state of Venice (see Chapter 14). Like Venice, Swahili cities
such as Kilwa, Mombasa (mohm-BAHS-uh), and Pemba were situated on
offshore islands. The tidal currents that isolated them from the mainland
also protected them from landside attack.
Much current knowledge about life in the East African trading societies
rests on the account of Ibn Battuta. He described Kilwa as “one of the finest
and most substantially built towns; all the buildings are of wood, and the
houses are roofed with al-dis [reeds].”14 On the mainland were fields and
orchards of rice, millet, oranges, mangoes, and bananas and pastures and
yards for cattle, sheep, and poultry. Yields were apparently high; Ibn Battuta
noted that the rich enjoyed three enormous meals a day and were very fat.
From among the rich mercantile families that controlled the coastal
cities arose rulers who governed both the main city and surrounding
territory. Such was the case with the island city of Kilwa and the nearby
mainland. These rulers took various titles, including king, sultan, and sheik.
Approaching the East African coastal cities in the late fifteenth century,
Portuguese traders were astounded at their enormous wealth and prosperity.
This wealth rested on the ruler’s monopolistic control of all trade in the
area. Some coastal cities manufactured goods for export, such as cloth and
iron tools. The bulk of the cities’ exports, however, consisted of animal
products—leopard skins, tortoise shell, ambergris, ivory—and gold. The
gold originated in the Mutapa region south of the Zambezi River, where the
Bantu mined it. As in tenth-century Ghana, gold was a royal monopoly in
the fourteenth-century coastal city-states. Kilwa’s prosperity rested on its
traffic in gold.
African goods satisfied the global aristocratic demand for luxury goods.
In Arabia leopard skins were made into saddles, shells were made into
combs, and ambergris was used in the manufacture of perfumes. Because
African elephants’ tusks were larger and more durable than those of Indian
elephants, African ivory was in great demand in India for sword and dagger
handles, carved decorative objects, and the ceremonial bangles used in
Hindu marriage rituals. Wealthy Chinese also valued African ivory for use
in sedan chair construction. In exchange for these natural products, the
Swahili cities brought in, among many other items, incense, glassware,
glass beads, and carpets from Arabia; textiles, spices, rice, and cotton from
India; and grains, fine porcelain, silk, and jade from China.
Slaves were another export from the East African coast. Reports of East
African slave trading began with the publication of the Periplus. The trade
accelerated with the establishment of Muslim settlements in the eighth
century and continued up through the arrival of the Portuguese in the late
fifteenth century, which provided a market for African slaves in the New
World (see Chapter 15). In fact, the global slave market fueled the East
African coastal slave trade until at least the beginning of the twentieth
century.
As in West Africa, traders obtained slaves primarily through raids and
kidnapping. The Arabs called the northern Somalia coast Ras Assir (Cape of
Slaves). From there, Arab traders transported slaves northward up the Red
Sea to the markets of Arabia and Persia. Muslim dealers also shipped blacks
from the Zanzibar (ZAN-zuh-bahr) region across the Indian Ocean to
markets in India.
As early as the tenth century sources mention persons with “lacquer-
black bodies” in the possession of wealthy families in Song China.15 In
1178 a Chinese official noted in a memorial to the emperor that Arab traders
were shipping thousands of blacks from East Africa to the Chinese port of
Guangzhou (Canton) by way of the Malay Archipelago.
It appears, however, that in Indian, Chinese, and East African markets,
slaves were never as valuable a commodity as ivory. Thus the volume of the
Eastern slave trade did not approach that of the trans-Saharan slave trade.16

Southern Africa and Great Zimbabwe

Southern Africa, bordered on the northwest by the Kalahari Desert and on
the northeast by the Zambezi (zam-BEE-zee) River (see Map 10.2), enjoys
a mild and temperate climate. Desert conditions prevail along the Atlantic
coast. Eastward toward the Indian Ocean rainfall increases, amounting to
fifty to ninety inches a year in some places. Temperate grasslands
characterize the interior highlands. Considerable variations in climate occur
throughout much of southern Africa from year to year.
Southern Africa has enormous mineral resources: gold, copper,
diamonds, platinum, and uranium. Preindustrial peoples mined some of
these deposits in open excavations down several feet, but fuller exploitation
required modern technology.
Southern Africa has a history that is very different from those of West
Africa, the Nile Valley, and the East African coast. Unlike the rest of coastal
Africa, southern Africa remained far removed from the outside world until
the Portuguese arrived in the late fifteenth century—with one important
exception. Bantu-speaking people reached southern Africa in the eighth
century. They brought skills in ironworking and mixed farming (settled crop
production plus cattle and sheep raising) and immunity to the kinds of
diseases that later decimated the Amerindians of South America (see
Chapter 16).
The earliest residents of southern Africa were hunters and gatherers. In
the first millennium C.E. new farming techniques from the north arrived.
Lack of water and timber (both needed to produce the charcoal used in iron
smelting) slowed the spread of iron technology and tools and thus of crop
production in southwestern Africa. These advances reached the western
coastal region by 1500. By that date, Khoisan-speakers were tending
livestock in the arid western regions. To the east, descendants of Bantu-
speaking immigrants grew sorghum, raised cattle and sheep, and fought
with iron-headed spears.
The nuclear family was the basic social unit among early southern
African peoples, who practiced polygyny and traced descent in the male
line. Several families formed bands numbering between twenty and eighty
people. Such bands were not closed entities; people in neighboring
territories identified with bands speaking the same language. As in most
preindustrial societies, a division of labor existed whereby men hunted and
women cared for children and raised edible plants. People lived in caves or
in camps made of portable material, and they moved from one watering or
hunting region to another as seasonal or environmental needs required.
In 1871 a German explorer came upon the ruined city of Great
Zimbabwe southeast of what is now Masvingo (mahz-VING-goh) in
Zimbabwe. The ruins consist of two vast complexes of dry-stone buildings,
a fortress, and an elliptically shaped enclosure commonly called the
Temple. Stone carvings, gold and copper ornaments, and Asian ceramics
once decorated the buildings. The ruins extend over sixty acres and are
encircled by a massive wall. The entire city was built from local granite
between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries without any outside influence.
Archaeologists consider Great Zimbabwe the most impressive monument in
Africa south of the Nile Valley and the Ethiopian highlands.
These ruins tell a remarkable story. Great Zimbabwe was the political
and religious capital of a vast empire. During the first millennium C.E.
settled crop cultivation, cattle raising, and work in metal led to a steady
buildup in population in the Zambezi-Limpopo region. The area also
contained a rich gold-bearing belt. Gold ore lay near the surface; alluvial
gold lay in the Zambezi River tributaries. In the tenth century the
inhabitants collected the alluvial gold by panning and washing; after the
year 1000 the gold was worked in open mines with iron picks. Traders
shipped the gold eastward to Sofala (see Map 10.2). Great Zimbabwe’s
wealth and power rested on this gold trade.
Great Zimbabwe declined in the fifteenth century, perhaps because the
area had become agriculturally exhausted and could no longer support the
large population. Some people migrated northward and settled in the Mazoe
River Valley, a tributary of the Zambezi. This region also contained gold,
and the settlers built a new empire in the tradition of Great Zimbabwe. This
empire’s rulers were called Mwene Mutapa (m-WEY-nee muh-TUH-pa),
and their power was also based on the gold trade down the Zambezi River
to Indian Ocean ports. It was this gold that the Portuguese sought when they
arrived on the East African coast in the late fifteenth century.
Chapter Summary
Africa is a huge continent with many different climatic zones and diverse
geography. The African peoples are as varied as the topography. North
African peoples were closely connected with the Middle Eastern and
European civilizations of the Mediterranean basin. New crops introduced
from Asia and the adoption of agriculture profoundly affected early
societies across western and northeastern Africa as they transitioned from
hunting and gathering in small bands to settled farming communities.
Beginning in modern Cameroon and Nigeria, Bantu-speakers spread across
central and southern Africa over a period of more than two thousand years.
Possessing iron tools and weapons, domesticated livestock, and a
knowledge of agriculture, these Bantu-speakers assimilated, killed, or drove
away the region’s previous inhabitants.
Africans in the West African Sahel participated in the trans-Saharan
trade, which affected West African society in three important ways: it
stimulated gold mining; it increased the demand for West Africa’s second-
most-important commodity, slaves; and it stimulated the development of
large urban centers in West Africa.
Similarly, the Swahili peoples in city-states along the East African coast
traded with Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, China, and the Malay
Archipelago. They depended on Indian Ocean commercial networks, which
they used to trade African products for luxury items from Arabia, Southeast
Asia, and East Asia. Great Zimbabwe, in southern Africa’s interior, traded
gold to the coast for the Indian Ocean trade.
The Swahili city-states and the Western Sudan kingdoms were both part
of the Islamic world. Arabian merchants brought Islam with them as they
settled along the East African coast, and Berber traders brought Islam to
West Africa. Differing from its neighbors, Ethiopia formed a unique enclave
of Christianity in the midst of Islamic societies. The majority of Bantu-
speaking peoples of Great Zimbabwe and central and southern Africa were
neither Islamic nor Christian.
 CONNECTIONS

Africa was an integral part of the vast trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean
trading networks that stretched from Europe to China. This trade brought
wealth to African kingdoms, empires, and city-states that developed
alongside the routes. But the trade in ideas more profoundly connected the
growing African states to the wider world, most notably through Islam,
which had arrived by the seventh century, and Christianity, which
developed a foothold in Ethiopia.
Prior to the late fifteenth century Europeans had little knowledge about
African societies. All this would change during the European Age of
Discovery. Chapter 16 traces the expansion of Portugal from a small, poor
European nation to an overseas empire, as it established trading posts and
gained control of the African gold trade. Portuguese expansion led to
competition, spurring Spain and then England to strike out for gold of their
own in the Americas. The acceleration of this conquest would forever shape
the history of Africa and the Americas (see Chapters 11 and 15) and
intertwine them via the African slave trade that fueled the labor needs of the
colonies in the Americas.
Chapter 10 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

Bantu (p. 228)

Sudan (p. 229)
Berbers (p. 230)
Mogadishu (p. 234)
stateless societies (p. 234)
Ghana (p. 235)
Koumbi Saleh (p. 236)
Timbuktu (p. 239)
Aksum (p. 240)
Swahili (p. 243)
Kilwa (p. 243)
Great Zimbabwe (p. 246)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. How did Africa’s geography shape its history and contribute to its diverse
population? (p. 224)
2. How did agriculture affect life among the early societies in the western Sudan and
among the Bantu-speaking societies of central and southern Africa? (p. 226)
3. What characterized trans-Saharan trade, and how did it affect West African
society? (p. 230)
4. How were the East African city-states, Aksum, and Great Zimbabwe different from
and similar to the kingdoms of the western Sudan? (p. 234)
MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS
Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. How did the geography and size of Africa affect African societies and their contact
with the rest of the world?
2. What different cultures influenced the African people living along the continent’s
eastern coast?
3. Based on the discussion in Chapter 9 on the spread of Islam and what you learned
in this chapter, how did Islam influence the different societies of West and East
Africa?
4. How might the Bantu migrations compare with earlier migrations, such as the Indo-
European migrations discussed in Chapter 2 or the Barbarian migrations
discussed in Chapter 8?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 1000 B.C.E.–1500 C.E. • Bantu-speakers expand across central and southern
Africa
ca. 300–900 C.E. • City-states rise in the Valley of Mexico and Maya
regions (Ch. 11)
ca. 570–632 C.E. • Life of Muhammad (Ch. 9)
ca. 600 C.E. • Christian missionaries convert Nubian rulers
ca. 639–642 C.E. • Islam introduced to Africa (Ch. 9)
641 C.E. • Muslim conquest of Alexandria, Egypt
700–900 C.E. • Berbers develop caravan routes
768–843 C.E. • Carolingian Empire founded by Charlemagne in Europe
(Ch. 8)
ca. 900–1100 C.E. • Kingdom of Ghana; bananas and plantains arrive in
Africa from Asia
1095–1270 C.E. • Christian Crusades in western Asia and North Africa
(Ch. 14)
ca. 1100–1450 C.E. • Great Zimbabwe built, flourishes
ca. 1200–1450 C.E. • Kingdom of Mali
1206–1360s C.E. • Mongol Empire rules across Central and East Asia (Ch.
12)
ca. 1312–1337 C.E. • Reign of Mansa Musa in Mali
1314–1344 C.E. • Reign of Amda Siyon in Ethiopia
1324–1325 C.E. • Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca
11
The Americas

3200 B.C.E.–1500 C.E.

Chapter Preview

Societies of the Americas in a Global Context

• How did ancient peoples of the Americas adapt to, and adapt, their
environment?

Ancient Societies
• What patterns established by early societies shaped civilization in
Mesoamerica and the Andes?

The Incas
• What were the sources of strength and prosperity, and of problems, for the
Incas?

The Maya and Teotihuacan

• How did the Maya and Teotihuacan develop prosperous and stable societies
in the classical era?

The Aztec Empire

• How did the Mexica build on the achievements of earlier Mesoamerican
cultures and develop new traditions to create their large empire?

American Empires and the Encounter

• What did the European encounter mean for peoples of the major American
empires?

WHEN PEOPLES OF THE AMERICAS FIRST CAME INTO SUSTAINED contact with
peoples from Europe, Africa, and Asia at the turn of the sixteenth century, their encounters
were uneven. Isolation from other world societies made peoples of the Americas vulnerable
to diseases found elsewhere in the world. When indigenous peoples were exposed to these
diseases through contact with Europeans, the devastating effects of epidemics facilitated
European domination. But this exchange also brought into global circulation the results of
thousands of years of work by peoples of the Americas in plant domestication that changed
diets worldwide, making corn, potatoes, and peppers into the daily staples of many
societies.
Domestication of these crops intensified farming across the Americas that sustained
increasingly complex societies. At times these societies grew into vast empires built on
trade, conquest, and tribute. Social stratification and specialization produced lands not just
of subjects and kings, but of priests, merchants, artisans, scientists, and engineers who
achieved extraordinary feats.
In Mesoamerica (MAY-so-america) — the region stretching from present-day central
Mexico to Nicaragua — the dense urban centers of Maya, Teo-tihuacan (TAY-oh-tee-hwa-
can), Toltec, and Aztec city-states and empires featured great monuments, temples, and
complex urban planning. Roadways and canals extended trade networks that reached from
South America to the Great Lakes region of North America. Precise calendars shaped
religious, scientific, medical, and agricultural knowledge.
In the Andes, the mountain range that extends from southernmost present-day Chile
north to Colombia and Venezuela, peoples adapted to the mountain range’s stark vertical
stratification of climate and ecosystems to produce agricultural abundance similar to that of
Mesoamerica. Andean technological, agricultural, and engineering innovations allowed
people to make their difficult mountain terrain a home rather than a boundary.
Societies of the Americas in a Global Context
How did ancient peoples of the Americas adapt to, and adapt, their environment?

Like people everywhere, civilizations of the Americas interpreted the

meaning of the world and their place in the cosmos. They organized
societies stratified not just by gender, class, and ethnicity but also by
professional roles and wealth, and they adapted to and reshaped their
physical and natural world. But they did all this on their own, without
outside influences and within a distinct environment.
If the differences between the civilizations in the Americas and other
world regions are remarkable, the similarities are even more so. By
studying the peoples of the Americas before their encounters with other
world societies, we gain a clearer view of universal aspects of the human
experience.

Trade and Technology

The domestication of crops and animals created an abundance of food and
livestock, which allowed people to take on new social roles and to develop
specialized occupations. As cities emerged, they became hubs of a universal
human activity: trade. These cities were home to priests who interpreted the
nature of the world, as well as a nobility from which kings emerged, some
of whom forged vast empires.
The differences in the development and application of three different
kinds of technologies — the wheel, writing and communications systems,
and calendars — capture this essential nature of human adaptability.
Because of conditions specific to the Americas, societies in
Mesoamerica and the Andes did not use wheels for transportation before
their encounters with other world peoples that began in 1492. In
Mesoamerica there were no large animals like horses or oxen to
domesticate as beasts of burden, so there was no way to power wagons or
chariots. In the Andes, domesticated llamas and alpacas served as pack
animals and were a source of wool and meat. But in the most densely
settled, cultivated, and developed areas, the terrain was too difficult for
wheeled transportation. Instead Andean peoples developed extensive
networks of roads that navigated steep changes in altitude, supported by
elaborate suspension bridges made from woven vegetable fibers.
Peoples of the Americas also did not develop alphabetical writing
systems, but this did not mean they did not communicate in writing or
record information. If we separate our understanding of the alphabetical
reading you are doing right now from its functions — communicating and
storing information — we can appreciate the ways in which Andean and
Mesoamerican civilizations accomplished both. Peoples of the Americas
spoke thousands of languages (hundreds are still spoken today).
Mesoamericans, beginning with the Olmecs (1500–300 B.C.E.), used
phonograms, characters that represent sound, and logograms, characters that
represent words or ideas, similar to those of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs
or Japanese kanji. Later civilizations wrote books on paper and deerskin,
some of which have survived to the present.
The Andean innovation for recording information was particularly
remarkable. The khipu (KEY-pooh) was an assemblage of colored and
knotted strings. Differences in color and type of knot, as well as the knots’
order and placement, served as a binary system akin to a contemporary
computer database. Khipus were used to record demographic, economic,
and political information that allowed imperial rulers and local leaders to
understand and manage complex data across a vast empire.
Mesoamerican peoples used a sophisticated combination of calendars.
These were based on a Calendar Round that combined a 365-day solar
calendar with a 260-day lunar calendar based on the numbers thirteen and
twenty, which were sacred to peoples of Mesoamerica. Annual cycles were
completed when twenty 13-day bundles converged with thirteen 20-day
bundles. Together with the solar calendar, these formed a 52-year cycle
whose precision was unsurpassed in the premodern world. It also provided
an incredibly intricate mechanism not only for following the solar and lunar
years but also for connecting these to aspects of daily life and religion. The
calendars helped users interpret their world.

Settlement and Environment

The ancient settlers of the Americas migrated from Asia, though their
timing and their route are debated. One possibility is that the first settlers
migrated across the Bering Strait from what is now Russia to Alaska and
gradually migrated southward sometime between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C.E.
But archaeological excavations have identified much earlier settlements,
perhaps dating to up to 20,000–30,000 years ago, along the Andes in South
America than they have for Mesoamerica or North America. Evidence from
some settlements suggest the possibility that seafaring migration may have
also occurred.
Like early settlers elsewhere in the world, populations of the Americas
could be divided into three categories: nomadic peoples, semi-sedentary
farming communities, and dense agricultural communities capable of
sustaining cities. Over time, urban settlement and empire formation
centered on two major regions. The first area was the region around Lake
Titicaca, where the Inca Empire (1438–1532) originated. Located at the
present-day border between Peru and Bolivia, Lake Titicaca is the highest
lake in the world (12,500 feet high) and the largest lake in South America
(3,200 square miles). The second area was the Valley of Mexico on the
central plateau of Mesoamerica, where empires such as the Aztec Empire
(1428–1521) formed cities around Lake Texcoco. Access to these large
freshwater lakes allowed agriculture to expand through irrigation, which in
turn supported growing urban populations.
The earliest farming settlements emerged around 10,000 B.C.E. when
communities began the long process of domesticating and modifying plants,
including squash, maize (corn), potatoes, peppers, and beans. The origins of
maize in Mesoamerica are unclear, though it became a centerpiece of the
Mesoamerican diet and spread across the Americas. Eaten together with
beans, maize provided Mesoamerican peoples with a diet sufficient in
protein despite the scarcity of meat. Mesoamericans processed kernels
through nixtamalization, boiling the maize in a solution of water and
mineral lime. The process broke down compounds in the kernels, increasing
their nutritional value, while enriching the resulting masa, or paste, with
dietary minerals including calcium, potassium, and iron.
The masa could be cooked with beans, meat, or other ingredients to
make tamales. It could also be rolled flat on a stone called a metate (MAY-
tah-teh) and baked into tortillas. Tortillas played roles similar to those of
bread in wheat-producing cultures: they could be stored, they were light and
easy to transport, and they were used as the basic building block of meals.
Aztec armies of the fifteenth century could travel long distances because
they carried tortillas for sustenance. Along an army’s route, communities
were obligated to provide tribute in tortillas.
 Making Tortillas A mother teaches her daughter to
roll tortillas on a metate. The dough at the right of the
metate was masa made with maize and lime. The
preparation process, known as nixtamalization,
enriched the maize paste by adding calcium,
potassium, and iron.

Andean peoples cultivated another staple of the Americas, the potato.

Potatoes first grew wild, but selective breeding produced many different
varieties. For Andean peoples, potatoes became an integral part of a
complex system of cultivation at varying altitudes. Communities created a
system of “vertical archipelagos” through which they took advantage of the
changes of climate along the steep escarpments of the Andes. Different
crops could be cultivated at different altitudes, allowing communities to
engage in intense and varied farming in what would otherwise have been
inhospitable territory.
Communities raised multiple crops and engaged in year-round farming
by working at different altitudes located within a day’s journey from home.
Some of these zones of cultivation were so distant — sometimes over a
week’s journey — that they were tended by temporary or permanent
colonies, called mitmaq, of the main settlement.
At higher elevations, members of these communities cultivated
potatoes. Arid conditions across much of the altiplano (AL-tee-plan-oh), or
high-plains plateau, meant that crops of potatoes could sometimes be
planted only every few years. But the climate — dry with daily extremes of
heat and cold — could be used to freeze-dry potatoes that could be stored
indefinitely. Above the potato-growing zone, shepherds tended animals
such as llamas and alpacas, which provided wool and dried meat, or ch’arki
(the origin of the word jerky). They also served as pack animals that helped
farmers bring in the crops from their high- and low-altitude plots. The
animals’ manure served as fertilizer for farming at lower altitudes.
At middle altitudes, communities used terraces edged by stone walls to
extend cultivation along steep mountainsides to grow corn. In the lowlands,
communities cultivated the high-protein grain quinoa, as well as beans,
peppers, and coca. Farmers chewed coca (the dried leaves of a plant native
to the Andes from which cocaine is derived) to alleviate the symptoms of
strenuous labor at extremely high altitudes. Coca also added nutrients such
as calcium to the Andean diet and played an important role in religious
rituals. In the lowlands communities also grew cotton, and in coastal areas
they harvested fish and mussels. Fishermen built inflatable rafts made of
sealskin. Communities specialized in the types of production their
ecosystems allowed.
Ancient Societies
What patterns established by early societies shaped civilization in Mesoamerica and
the Andes?

Between 1500 and 1200 B.C.E. emerging civilizations in Mesoamerica and

the Andes established lasting patterns of production, culture, and social
organization that would long influence societies of the Americas. In
Mesoamerica, Olmec civilization laid the foundation for future empires.
The imprint of Olmec civilization spread across long networks of trade that
would one day extend from Central America to the Mississippi Valley and
the Great Lakes of North America. In the Andes, Chavín and Moche
civilizations formed the early part of a long cycle of centralization and
decentralization. This political and economic centralization helped spread
technology, culture, and religion.

Olmec Agriculture, Technology, and Religion

The Olmecs were an early civilization that shaped the religion, trade
practices, and technology of later civilizations in Mesoamerica. They
flourished in the coastal lowlands of Mexico from 1500 to 300 B.C.E. The
Olmecs formed the first cities of Mesoamerica, and these cities served as
centers of agriculture, trade, and religion (Map 11.1). Through long-
distance trade, the Olmecs spread their culture and technology across
Mesoamerica, establishing beliefs and practices that became common to the
civilizations that followed.
 MAP 11.1 The Olmecs, ca. 1500–300 B.C.E. Olmec civilization
flourished in the coastal lowlands of southern Mexico along the
Caribbean coast. Olmec patterns of settlement, culture, religion,
organization, and trade are known almost solely through excavation
of archaeological sites.

The Olmecs settled along rivers in the coastal lowlands, where they
cultivated maize, squash, beans, and other plants. They supplemented their
diet with wild game and fish. But they lacked many other resources. In
particular, they carried stone for many miles for the construction of temples
and for carving massive monuments, many in the shape of heads. Across
far-flung networks the Olmecs traded rubber, cacao (from which chocolate
is made), pottery, and jaguar pelts, as well as the services of artisans such as
painters and sculptors, in exchange for obsidian, a volcanic glass that could
be carved to a razor-sharp edge and used for making knives, tools, spear
tips, and other weapons.
These ties between the Olmecs and other communities spread religious
practices, creating a shared framework of beliefs among later civilizations.
These practices included the construction of large pyramid temples, as well
as sacrificial rituals. Olmec deities, like those of their successors, were
combinations of gods and humans, included merged animal and human
forms, and had both male and female identities. People practicing later
religions based their gods on a fusion of human and spirit traits along the
lines of the Olmec were-jaguar: a half-man, half-jaguar figure.
The Olmecs also used a solar calendar with a 365-day year. This
calendar begins with the year 3114 B.C.E., though its origins and the
significance of this date are unclear. Archaeologists presume that the
Olmecs combined the solar calendar with a 260-day lunar calendar, to form
the combined Calendar Round. All the later Mesoamerican civilizations
used at least one of these calendars, and most used both of them.

Hohokam, Hopewell, and Mississippian Societies

Mesoamerican trading networks extended into southwestern North
America, where by 300 B.C.E. the Hohokam people and other groups were
using irrigation canals, dams, and terraces to enhance their farming of arid
lands (Map 11.2). Like the Olmecs and other Mesoamerican peoples, the
Hohokam built ceremonial platforms and played games with rubber balls
that were traded over a long distance in return for turquoise and other
precious stones. Along with trade goods came religious ideas, including the
belief in local divinities who created, preserved, and destroyed. The
Mesoamerican Feathered Serpent god became important to desert peoples.
They planted desert crops such as agave, as well as cotton and maize that
came from Mexico. Other groups, including the Anasazi (ah-nah-SAH-zee),
the Yuma, and later the Pueblo and Hopi, also built settlements in this area
using large sandstone blocks and masonry to construct thick-walled houses
that offered protection from the heat. Mesa Verde, the largest Anasazi town,
had a population of about twenty-five hundred living in houses built into
and on cliff walls. Roads connected Mesa Verde to other Anasazi towns,
allowing timber and other construction materials to be brought in more
easily. Eventually drought, deforestation, and soil erosion led to decline in
both the Hohokam and Anasazi cultures.
MAP 11.2 Major North American Agricultural Societies, ca. 600–1500 C.E. Many
North American groups used agriculture to increase the available food supply and allow
 greater population density and the development of urban centers. This map shows three
of these cultures: the Mississippian, Anasazi, and Hohokam.

In eastern North America, mound building began around 5500 B.C.E.

One of the most important mound-building cultures was the Hopewell (200
B.C.E.–600 C.E.), named for a town in Ohio near the site of the most
extensive mounds. Some mounds were burial chambers. Other mounds
formed animal or geometric figures. Hopewell earthworks also included
canals that enabled trading networks to expand, bringing products from the
Caribbean far into the interior. Those trading networks also carried maize,
allowing more intensive agriculture to spread throughout the eastern
woodlands of North America.
At Cahokia (kuh-HOE-kee-uh), near the confluence of the Mississippi
and Missouri Rivers in Illinois, archaeologists have identified the largest
mound complex in North America, part of a ceremonial center and city that
may have housed nearly forty thousand people. Work on this complex of
mounds, plazas, and houses — which covered 5½ square miles — began
about 1050 C.E. and was completed about 1250 C.E. A fence of wooden posts
surrounded the center of the complex. Several hundred mounds inside and
outside the fence served as tombs and as the bases for temples and palaces.
The largest mound rose in four stages to a height of one hundred feet and
was nearly one thousand feet long. On its top stood a large building, used
perhaps as a temple.
Cahokia trade reached far across North America. Mississippian mound
builders relied on agriculture to support their complex cultures, and by the
time Cahokia was built, maize agriculture had spread to the Atlantic coast.
Particularly along riverbanks and the coastline, fields of maize, beans, and
squash surrounded large, permanent villages containing many houses, all
encompassed by walls made of earth and timber.
At its peak in about 1150 Cahokia was the largest city north of
Mesoamerica. However, its construction stripped much of the surrounding
countryside of trees, which made spring floods worse and eventually
destroyed much of the city. An earthquake in the thirteenth century
furthered the destruction, and the city never recovered. The worsening
climate of the fourteenth century, which brought famine to Europe,
probably also contributed to Cahokia’s decline, and its population
dispersed.
Kinship and Ancestors in the Andes
In the Andes social organization and religion shaped ideas of spiritual
kinship as well as patterns of production and trade. The ayllu (IGH-you), or
clan, served as the fundamental social unit of Andean society. Kinship was
based on a shared ancestor and on worship of huaca, sacred spaces or
things that had spiritual characteristics and were sometimes linked to
ancestors. Huaca were often a part of the landscape, such as a spring or
stone. Members of an ayllu considered their huaca as more than a spirit: it
owned the lands the ayllu’s farmers tended, and it served as the center of
community obligations such as the pooling of labor.
Ancestor worship provided the foundations of Andean religion and
spirituality, served as the basis of authority, and guided food production. All
members of the ayllu owed allegiance to kurakas, or clan leaders, who
typically traced the most direct lineage to an ancestor identified with a
huaca. This lineage made them both temporal and spiritual leaders of their
ayllu. An Andean family’s identity came from membership in an ayllu’s
ancestral kinship, and its subsistence came from participation in the broader
community’s shared farming across vertical climate zones. People often
labored collectively and reciprocally.
Archaeologists periodize Andean history in cycles of centralization and
decentralization. There were three great periods of centralization, which
archaeologists call the Early, Middle, and Late Horizon. The Late Horizon,
which included the Inca Empire, was the briefest, cut short by the Spanish
conquest (see “Conquest and Settlement” in Chapter 16). The first period,
the Early Horizon (ca. 1200–200 B.C.E.), centered on the people of Chavín
(chah-VEEN), upland from present-day Lima. The Chavín spread their
religion along with technologies for the weaving and dyeing of wool and
cotton. Weaving became the most widespread means of recording and
representing information in the Andes.
After the end of the Early Horizon, regional states emerged, including
Moche (MOH-cheh) civilization, which flourished along a 250-mile stretch
of Peru’s northern coast between 100 and 800 C.E. The Moche people
developed complex irrigatino systems, with which they raised food crops
and cotton. Each Moche valley contained a large ceremonial center with
palaces and pyramids surrounded by settlements of up to ten thousand
people. Their dazzling gold and silver artifacts, as well as elaborate
headdresses, display great skill in pottery and metalwork.
 Politically, the Moche were organized into a series of small city-states
rather than one unified state, and warfare was common among them.
Beginning about 500 the Moche suffered several severe El Niños, changes
in ocean current patterns in the Pacific that bring searing drought and
flooding. They were not able to respond effectively to the devastation, and
their urban population declined.
Pan-Andean cultures re-emerged during the Middle Horizon (500–1000
C.E.), centered to the south in Tiwanaku (TEE-wan-ah-kooh), in Lake
Titicaca, and to the north at Wari, near present-day southern Peru. The city-
state of Wari’s dominion stretched from the altiplano north of Lake Titicaca
to the Pacific coast, drawing on Moche culture. Its reach between mountain
and coastal regions led to extensive exchanges of goods and beliefs. The
city-state of Tiwanaku extended its influence in the other direction, south of
the lake. Both Wari and Tiwanaku practiced ancestor worship, and
Tiwanaku religion centered on the figure of Viracocha, the god creator and
father of humanity, who was identified with the sun and storms.
Storms and climate shifts were central to Andean people’s worldview
because changes in climate, particularly abrupt changes brought by El Niño,
could devastate whole civilizations. El Niño disrupted Moche culture and
contributed to the decline of Wari and Tiwanaku. As the Middle Horizon
ended, the cities of Tiwanaku and Wari endured on a smaller scale, but
between 1000 and 1200 C.E. they lost their regional influence. The eras
between the Early, Middle, and Late Horizon, known as Intermediate
Periods, were times of decentralization in which local cultures and practices
re-emerged. It was out of these local developments that new centralizing
empires would over time emerge.
The Incas
What were the sources of strength and prosperity, and of problems, for the Incas?

Inca was the name of the governing family of the largest and last Andean
empire. The empire, whose people we will call the Incas, was called
Tawantinsuyu (TAH-want-een-soo-you), meaning “from the four parts,
one,” expressing the idea of a unified people stretching in all directions.

The Inca Model of Empire

In the Late Intermediate Period (1200–1470), the Pan-Andean influences of
Wari and Tiwanaku waned. City-states around Lake Titicaca competed and
fought. The strongest ones again emerged. To the north, the Chimu claimed
the legacy of the Moche and Wari. To the south, the city of Cuzco became
the hub of a growing kingdom under the hereditary control of the Incas
(Map 11.3). The ways Inca rulers adapted techniques of statecraft from Wari
and religious practices from Titicaca gave them powerful tools that helped
them build their empire.
MAP 11.3 The Inca Empire, 1532 Andean peoples
turned their stark mountain landscape to their
advantage by settling and farming in vertical
archipelagos. Settlements were located at temperate
altitudes, while farming and herding took place at
higher and lower altitudes.
 In the 1420s Viracocha Inca emerged as the first Inca leader to attempt
permanent conquest. Unlike the sinchis (SEEN-cheese), or kings, of other
city-states, Viracocha Inca fashioned himself an emperor and, in adopting
the name Viracocha, connected himself to the god of creation. Around 1438
rivals invaded Viracocha Inca’s territories and he fled. His son, Pachacuti,
remained in Cuzco and fended off the invaders. He crowned himself
emperor and embarked on a campaign of conquest. Pachacuti Inca
conquered the Chimu and incorporated beliefs and practices from this
northern civilization.
After conquering the Chimu, Pachacuti instituted practices that
expanded the empire across the Andes. He combined Andean ancestor
worship with the Chimu system of a split inheritance, a combination that
drove swift territorial expansion and transformed Tawantinsuyu into one of
the largest empires in the world. Under the system of ancestor worship, the
Incas believed the dead emperor’s spirit was still present, and they
venerated him through his mummy. Split inheritance meant that the dead
emperor retained all the lands he had conquered, commanded the loyalty of
all his subjects, and continued to receive tribute. A panaqa (pan-AH-kah), a
trust formed by his closest relatives, managed both the cult of his mummy
and his temporal affairs. Chimu split inheritance became a basic structure of
the empire’s organization.
When the ruler died, his corpse was preserved as a mummy in elaborate
clothing and housed in a sacred and magnificent chamber. A sixteenth-
century account of the death of Pachacuti Inca in 1471 described the
practices for burying and honoring him:
He was buried by putting his body in the earth in a large new clay urn, with him very well
dressed. Pachacuti Inca [had] ordered that a golden image made to resemble him be placed
on top of his tomb. And it was to be worshiped in place of him by the people who went
there…. [He had] ordered those of his own lineage to bring this statue out for the feasts that
were held in Cuzco. When they brought it out like this, they sang about the things that the
Inca did in his life, both in the wars and in his city. Thus they served and revered him,
changing its garments as he used to do, and serving it as he was served when he was alive.1

The panaqa of descendants of each dead ruler managed his lands and
used his income to care for his mummy, maintain his cult, and support
themselves, all at great expense. When a ruler died, one of his sons was
named the new Inca emperor. He received the title, but not the lands and
tribute — nor, for that matter, the direct allegiance of the nobility, bound as
it was to the deceased ruler. The new emperor built his own power and
wealth by conquering new lands.

Inca Imperial Expansion

The combination of ancestor worship and split inheritance provided the
logic and impulse for expanding Inca power. The desire for conquest
provided incentives for courageous (or ambitious) nobles: those who
succeeded in battle and gained new territories for the state could expect to
receive lands, additional wives, servants, herds of llamas, gold, silver, and
other status symbols. Common soldiers who distinguished themselves could
be rewarded and raised to noble status. Under Pachacuti Inca and his
successors, Inca domination was extended by warfare to the frontier of
present-day Ecuador and Colombia in the north and to present-day Chile in
the south, an area of about 350,000 square miles. Eighty provinces, scores
of ethnic groups, and 16 million people came under Inca control.
The Incas integrated regions they conquered by spreading their
language and their gods. Magnificent temples housed images of these gods.
Priests led prayers and elaborate rituals, and during occasions such as
natural disasters or military victories they sacrificed humans. The Incas’
official language, Quechua (KEH-chuh-wah), spread across the empire.
Along with another major Andean language, Aymara, it is still spoken by
millions in Peru, Bolivia, and regions of Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile.
 Machu Picchu The Inca ruins of Machu Picchu rise spectacularly above the steep valley
of the Urubamba River. The site was built around 1450 as a royal estate and abandoned
after the Spanish conquest.

Pressure for growth strained the Inca Empire. Conquerable lands

became scarce, so the Incas directed their attentions to the tropical Amazon
forest east of the Andes — an effort that led to military disasters. Inca
armies traditionally waged combat in massed formation, often engaging in
hand-to-hand combat. But in dense jungles armies could not maneuver or
maintain order against enemies who used guerrilla tactics. Another source
of stress came from revolts among subject peoples in conquered territories.
Even the system of roads and message-carrying runners couldn’t keep up
with the administrative needs of the empire. The average runner could cover
about 175 miles per day — a remarkable feat of physical endurance,
especially at a high altitude — but as the empire grew, so did the distances
communication needed to cover. The round trip from the capital at Cuzco to
Quito in Ecuador, for example, took ten to twelve days, so an emperor
might have to base urgent decisions on incomplete or out-of-date
information. The empire was overextended.

Imperial Needs and Obligations

At its height, the Inca Empire extended over 2,600 miles. The challenges of
sustaining an empire with that reach, not to mention one built so fast,
required extraordinary resourcefulness. The Inca Empire met these demands
by adapting aspects of local culture to meet imperial needs. For instance,
the empire demanded that the ayllus, the local communities with shared
ancestors, include imperial tribute in the rotation of labor and the
distribution of harvested foods. In return, community leaders received
goods from the empire.
As each Inca emperor conquered new lands and built his domain, he
mobilized people and resources by drawing on local systems of labor and
organization. Much as ayllus developed satellite communities called
mitmaq to take advantage of remote farming areas, the emperor relocated
families or even whole villages over long distances to consolidate territorial
control or quell unrest. What had been a community practice became a tool
of imperial expansion. The emperor sent mitmaq settlers, known as
mitmaquisuna, far and wide, creating diverse ethnic enclaves. Inca rulers
and nobles also married the daughters of elite families among the peoples
they conquered.
The reciprocal labor carried out within ayllus expanded into a labor tax
called the mit’a (MEE-tuh), which rotated among households in an ayllu
throughout the year. Tribute paid in labor provided the means for building
the infrastructure of empire. Rotations of laborers carried out impressive
engineering projects, allowing the vast empire to extend over the most
difficult and inhospitable terrain. An excellent system of roads facilitated
the movement of armies and the rapid communication of royal orders by
runners.
Like Persian and Roman roads, these feats of engineering linked an
empire. On these roads Inca officials, tax collectors, and accountants
traveled throughout the empire, using elaborate khipus to record financial
and labor obligations, the output of fields, population levels, land transfers,
and other numerical records. Only around 650 khipus are known to survive
today, because colonial Spaniards destroyed them, believing khipus might
contain religious messages that conflicted with their efforts to impose
Christianity.
The Maya and Teotihuacan
How did the Maya and Teotihuacan develop prosperous and stable societies in the
classical era?

In Mesoamerica the classical period (300 C.E.–900 C.E.) saw major advances
in religion, art, architecture, and farming, akin to those of the classical
civilizations of the Mediterranean. Long-lasting city-states rose in Maya
regions between 300 C.E. and 900 C.E. City-states also developed in the
Valley of Mexico, where Teotihuacan emerged as a major center of trade
between 300 C.E. and 650 C.E. The classical period was followed by the
postclassical Toltec Empire (900–1174 C.E.), which adapted the cultural,
ritual, and aesthetic practices that influenced later empires like the Aztecs.

Maya Agriculture and Trade

The Maya inhabited the highlands of Guatemala and the Yucatán peninsula
in present-day Mexico and Belize. Their physical setting shaped two
features of Maya society. First, the abundance of high-quality limestone
allowed them to build monumental architecture. Second, limestone
formations created deep natural wells called cenotes (say-NOH-tehs), which
became critical sources of water in an often-arid environment. Cenotes were
essential to farming and also became important religious and spiritual sites.
The staple crop of the Maya was maize, often raised in small remote plots
called milpas in combination with other foodstuffs, including beans, squash,
chili peppers, root crops, and fruit trees.
The entire Maya region may have had as many as 14 million
inhabitants. Sites like Uxmal, Uaxactún, Copán, Piedras Negras, Tikal,
Palenque, and Chichén Itzá (Map 11.4) emerged as independent city-states,
each ruled by a hereditary king. These cities featured ornate temples,
engraved pillars, palaces for nobles, pyramids where nobles were buried,
and courts for ball games. A hereditary nobility owned land, exercised
political power, and directed religious rituals. Artisans and scribes made up
the social level below. Other residents were farmers, laborers, and slaves,
the latter including prisoners of war.
 MAP 11.4 The Maya World, 300–900 C.E. The
Maya built dozens of cities linked together in trading
networks of roads and rivers. Only the largest of
them are shown here.

At Maya markets, jade, obsidian, beads of red spiny oyster shell, lengths
of cloth, and cacao beans — all in high demand in the Mesoamerican world
— served as media of exchange. The extensive trade among Maya
communities, plus a common language, promoted unity among the peoples
of the region. Merchants traded beyond Maya regions, particularly with the
Zapotecs of Monte Albán, in the Valley of Oaxaca, and with the
Teotihuacanos of the central valley of Mexico. Since this long-distance
trade played an important part in international relations, the merchants
conducting it were high nobles or even members of the royal family.
Maya Science and Religion
The Maya developed the most complex writing system in the Americas, a
script with nearly a thousand glyphs. They recorded important events and
observations in books made of bark paper and deerskin, on pottery, on stone
pillars called steles, and on buildings. The inscriptions include historical
references that record events in the lives of Maya kings and nobles. As was
common for elites everywhere, Maya leaders stressed the ancient ancestry
of their families.
Few Maya books survived the wrath of sixteenth-century Spanish
religious authorities, who viewed the books as heretical and ordered them
destroyed. A handful survived, offering a window into religious rituals and
practices, as well as Maya astronomy. From observation of the earth’s
movements around the sun, the Maya used a calendar of eighteen 20-day
months and one 5-day month, for a total of 365 days, along with the 260-
day lunar calendar based on 20 weeks of 13 days. When these calendars
coincided every 52 years, the Maya celebrated with feasting, ball-game
competitions, and religious observances that included blood sacrifice by
kings to honor the gods.
The Maya devised a form of mathematics based on the vigesimal (20)
rather than the decimal (10) system. More unusual was their use of the
number zero, which allows for more complex calculations. The Maya’s
proficiency with numbers made them masters of abstract knowledge —
notably in astronomy and mathematics.
Between the eighth and tenth centuries the Maya abandoned their
cultural and ceremonial centers. Archaeologists attribute their decline to a
combination of warfare and agricultural failures due to drought and land
exhaustion. Decline did not mean disappearance. The Maya ceased building
monumental architecture around 900 C.E., which likely marked the end of
the era of rule by powerful kings who could mobilize the labor required to
build it. The Maya persisted in farming communities, a pattern of settlement
that helped preserve their culture and language in the face of external
pressures.
Maya communities resisted invasions from warring Aztec armies by
dispersing from their towns and villages and residing in their milpas during
invasions. When Aztec armies entered the Yucatán peninsula or the
highlands of what is today Guatemala, communities vanished, leaving
Aztec armies with nothing to conquer. This tactic continued to serve Maya
communities under Spanish colonial rule. Though Spaniards claimed the
Yucatán, the Maya continued to use the strategy that had served them so
well in resisting the Aztecs. Many communities avoided Spanish
domination for generations. The last independent Maya kingdom
succumbed only in 1697, and resistance continued well into the nineteenth
century.

Teotihuacan and the Toltecs

The most powerful city in classical Mesoamerica emerged at Teotihuacan,
northwest of the lands of the Maya. At its height, between 300 and 600 C.E.,
its population reached as high as 250,000, making it one of the largest cities
in the world at that time. The heart of Teotihuacan was a massive
ceremonial center anchored by a colossal Pyramid of the Sun, 700 feet wide
and 200 feet tall, and a Pyramid of the Moon. Connecting them was the
Avenue of the Dead, 150 feet wide and 2 miles long, along which stood the
homes of scores of priests and lords. The monuments of Teotihuacan were
so massive that centuries later the Aztecs thought they had been built by
giants. A cave under the Pyramid of the Sun suggests the ceremonial
center’s origins. Caves symbolized the womb from which the sun and moon
were born. It is possible that it emerged like other pilgrimage sites around
the world that became important marketplaces.2
The monuments of the ceremonial district of Teotihuacan were matched
in grandeur by the city’s markets, which extended its influence across
Mesoamerica. The city’s trade empire lay in its control of a resource vital to
Mesoamerican society and religion: obsidian, a glasslike volcanic rock that
could be worked into objects with both material and spiritual uses. Obsidian
knives were used for daily tasks and for important rituals such as the blood
sacrifice practiced by the Maya.3
Religion accompanied trade. Teotihuacan was a religious and cultural
center whose influence extended over large distances. One factor in the
city’s success was its ethnic diversity. Teotihuacan grew through the
migration of outsiders along trade networks, and these groups built separate
ethnic neighborhoods. Two gods that were particularly important to
classical period civilizations were Tlaloc (Chac in Maya), the god of rain,
and Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent. The worship of these deities became
an enduring aspect of Mesoamerican religion that the Toltecs and the Aztecs
embraced.4
Teotihuacan thrived as a commercial and religious hub because it
controlled trade of the most valuable goods. This combination helped
Teotihuacan grow, and in turn the trade networks it sustained helped other
regions in Mesoamerica develop through contact with other groups and the
spread of technologies. Over time, improvements in other regions decreased
Teotihuacan’s comparative advantage, as its trading partners produced
increasingly valuable goods, spurring competition. By 600 its influence had
begun to decline, and in 650 the residents of the city seem to have burned
its ceremonial center in what may have been a revolt against the city’s
leadership. The city had ceased to be a major trade center by 900 C.E.5
The Toltecs (900–1200 C.E.) filled the void created by Teotihuacan’s
decline. The Toltecs inaugurated a new era, the postclassical, which ended
with the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. The postclassical period
saw fewer technological or artistic advances. Instead it was a time of
intensified warfare in Mesoamerica and a time of rapid and bold imperial
expansion through conquest. After the decline of Teotihuacan, the Toltecs
entered the Valley of Mexico and settled in Tula. The Toltecs’ legend of
their origins held that in 968 C.E. their people were led into the valley by a
charismatic king, Topiltzin. He assumed the name of Quetzalcoatl, the
Feathered Serpent god, with whom he later became merged in Aztec
mythology. In 987, amid infighting, Topiltzin-Quetzalcoatl and his
followers were expelled from Tula. They marched south, where they
conquered and settled in a Maya region.
The Toltec origin myth later merged with the mythology of the Aztecs,
who fashioned themselves modern Toltecs, and in turn these myths
continued to evolve after the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century to
explain their defeat. Through this long and distorted course, the legend went
like this: Topiltzin-Quetzalcoatl and his followers marked their journey into
exile by shooting arrows into saplings, forming crosslike images. Settled in
the east, he sent word that he would return to take back his rightful throne
in the Mesoamerican calendar year Ce Acatl. And by tradition, the god
Quetzalcoatl’s human manifestation was bearded and light skinned. Ce
Acatl corresponded to the European year 1519, when Hernán Cortés
marched into the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (light skinned, bearded, and
coming from the east bearing crosses). In this retelling of the myth of
Quetzalcoatl among the generations that followed the conquest, the demise
of the Aztec Empire at the hands of a vengeful god had been foretold by
half a millennium.
The Toltecs built a military empire and gradually absorbed the culture,
practices, and religion of their neighbors in the Valley of Mexico. Their
empire declined amid war, drought, and famine over the eleventh and
twelfth centuries. The last Toltec king died in 1174. After the demise of the
Toltec Empire, city-states in the Valley of Mexico competed with each other
militarily and to cast themselves as the legitimate descendants and heirs of
the Toltecs.
The Aztec Empire
How did the Mexica build on the achievements of earlier Mesoamerican cultures and
develop new traditions to create their large empire?

Aztec is the modern name given to the empire created by a Nahuatl-

speaking people, the Mexica, who settled on Lake Texcoco in the Valley of
Mexico between 1300 and 1345 (Map 11.5). They formed a vast and
rapidly expanding empire ruled by the twin cities of Tenochtitlan (tay-
nawch-TEET-lahn) and Tlatelolco, which by 1500 were probably larger
than any city in Europe except Istanbul. This was the Aztec Empire, a
network of alliances and tributary states with the Mexica at its core.
Examining the means by which they formed and expanded their empire, as
well as the vulnerabilities of that empire, can help us build a rich
understanding of Mesoamerican society.
 MAP 11.5 The Aztec (Mexica) Empire in 1519 The Mexica migrated into the central
valley of what is now Mexico from the north, conquering other groups and establishing an
empire, later called the Aztec Empire. The capital of the Aztec Empire was Tenochtitlan,
built on islands in Lake Texcoco.

The Mexica: From Vassals to Masters

In the early fourteenth century the seminomadic Mexica migrated to the
crowded and highly cultured Valley of Mexico. They found an environment
that, since the collapse of the Toltec Empire in the twelfth century, had
divided into small, fragile alliances that battled to claim the legacy of the
Toltecs. At the time of their arrival, control over much of the valley lay in
the hands of the Tepanec Alliance. The Mexica negotiated the right to settle
on a swampy island on Lake Texcoco in exchange for military service to the
Tepanecs. Here, in 1325, they founded the city of Tenochtitlan, which
would become the capital of the Aztec Empire.
The Mexica adopted the customs of their new region, organizing clan-
based communities called calpolli, incorporating the deities of their new
neighbors, and serving the Tepanecs. They gradually reclaimed land around
their island to form the two urban centers, Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco.
Mexica farmers adopted a technique used in parts of Lake Texcoco called
chinampa (chee-NAHM-pah) agriculture. Under this system, farmers built
up reeds and mud along the margins of Lake Texcoco to gradually extend
farming well into the lake.

Chinampa Farming This modern illustration shows farmers in the

Aztec Empire building chinampa farming plots by reclaiming land
from Lake Texcoco. Farmers created the plots by packing them with
vegetation and mud from the lake, supporting their boundaries by
planting willow trees. Chinampas allowed for intensive farming in a
region that had limited rainfall, and the canals between them
permitted easy transportation.

At its peak, the chinampa farming system formed vast areas of tidy
rectangular plots divided by canals that allowed for canoe transportation of
people and crops. When the Spanish entered Tenochtitlan (which they
called Mexico City) in November 1519, they were amazed at this city,
which seemed to rise straight out of the lake.
Over time, the Mexica improved their standing by asking a powerful
neighboring city-state to name a prince considered to be of noble Toltec
descent to rule them, forming a dynasty that would become the most
powerful in Mesoamerica. The new ruler, or tlatoani (tlah-TOH-annie),
Acamapichtli (ah-cama-PITCH-lee), increased the Mexica’s social rank and
gave them the ability to form alliances.
By the end of Acamapichtli’s reign (1372–1391), the Mexica had
adapted to their new environment and had adopted the highly stratified
social organization that would encourage the ambitions of their own warrior
class. Under the rule of Acamapichtli’s successors Huitzilihuitl (r. 1391–
1417) and Chimalpopoca (r. 1417–1427), the Mexica remained subordinate
to the Tepanec Alliance. But in 1427 a dispute over the succession of the
Tepanec king created an opportunity for the Mexica. The Mexica formed a
coalition with other cities in the Valley of Mexico, besieged the Tepanec
capital for nearly three months, and then defeated it. A powerful new
coalition had emerged: the Triple Alliance, with the Mexica as its most
powerful partner. The Aztec Empire was born.
To consolidate the new political order, Tlatoani Itzcoatl, guided by his
nephew Tlacaelel, burned his predecessors’ books and drafted a new
history. This history placed the warrior cult and its religious pantheon at the
center of Mexica history, making the god of war, Huitzilopochtli, the patron
deity of the empire. Huitzilopochtli, “Hummingbird of the South,” was a
god unique to the Mexica who, according to the new official origin stories
of the Mexica people, had ordered them to march south until they found an
island where he gave them the sign of an eagle eating a serpent, which
appeared to them in Tenochtitlan.
Under the new imperial order, government offices combined military,
religious, and political functions. Eventually, tlatoanis formalized these
functions into distinct noble and common classes. The Valley of Mexico
had sustained itself through chinampa agriculture, but as the empire grew,
tribute from distant conquered peoples increasingly fed the valley’s rapidly
growing population. The Mexica sustained themselves through military
conquest, imposing their rule over a vast part of modern Mexico.

Life in the Aztec Empire

Few social distinctions existed among the Aztecs during their early
migrations, but by the early sixteenth century Aztec society changed as the
warrior aristocracy asserted great authority. Men who had distinguished
themselves in war occupied the highest military and social positions in the
state. Generals, judges, and governors of provinces were appointed by the
emperor from among his servants who had earned reputations as war
heroes. These great lords, or tecuhtli (teh-COOT-lee), dressed luxuriously
and lived in palaces.
Beneath the aristocracy of military leaders and imperial officials was the
class of warriors. Theoretically, every free man could be a warrior, and
parents dedicated their male children to war, burying a male child’s
umbilical cord with arrows and a shield on the day of his birth. In practice,
the sons of nobles were more likely to become warriors because of their
fathers’ positions and influence in the state. At the age of six, boys entered a
school that trained them for war. They were taught to fight with a ma-cana,
a paddle-shaped wooden club edged with bits of obsidian, and learned to
live on little food and sleep and to accept pain without complaint. When a
man reached adulthood, he fought his first campaign. If he captured a
prisoner for ritual sacrifice, he acquired the title iyac, or warrior. If he
continued to succeed in later campaigns, he became a tequiua — one who
shared in the booty and was thus a member of the nobility. If a young man
failed in several campaigns to capture the required four prisoners, he
became a macehualli (plural macehualtin), a commoner.
The macehualtin were the ordinary citizens — the backbone of Aztec
society and the vast majority of the population. The word macehualli means
“worker” and implies boorish speech and vulgar behavior. Macehualtin
performed agricultural, military, and domestic services and carried heavy
burdens not required of noble warriors. They were assigned to work on the
temples, roads, and bridges. Unlike nobles, priests, orphans, and slaves,
macehualtin paid taxes. Macehualtin in the capital, however, possessed
certain rights: they held their plots of land for life, and they received a share
of the tribute paid by the provinces to the emperor.
Beneath the macehualtin were the tlalmaitl, the landless workers or
serfs who provided agricultural labor, paid rents, and were bound to the soil
— they could not move off the land. In many ways the tlalmaitl resembled
European serfs, but unlike serfs they performed military service when
called. Slaves were the lowest social class. Most were prisoners captured in
war or kidnapped from enemy tribes. People convicted of crimes could be
sentenced to slavery, and people in serious debt sometimes sold themselves.
Female slaves often became their masters’ concubines. Mexica slaves could
save money, buy property or slaves of their own, and purchase their
freedom. If a male slave married a free woman, their offspring were free.
Most slaves eventually gained their freedom.
 Women of all social classes operated within the domestic sphere. As the
little hands of the newborn male were closed around a tiny bow and arrow
indicating his warrior destiny, so the infant female’s hands were wrapped
around miniature weaving instruments and a small broom: weaving was a
sacred and exclusively female art, and the broom signaled a female’s
responsibility for the household shrines and for keeping the home swept and
free of contamination. Save for the few women vowed to the service of the
temple, marriage and the household were a woman’s fate, and marriage
represented social maturity for both sexes. Pregnancy became the occasion
for family and neighborhood feasts, and a successful birth launched
celebrations lasting from ten to twenty days.

The Limits of the Aztec Empire

Mesoamerican empires like that of the Aztecs were not like modern nation-
states that consolidate control of the territory within their borders. Instead
the Aztec Empire was a syndicate in which the Mexica, their allies, and
their subordinates thrived on trade and tribute backed by the threat of force.
When a city succumbed, its captive warriors were marched to
Tenochtitlan to be sacrificed. The defeated city was obligated to provide
tribute including corn, flowers, feathers, gold, and hides. But conquest
stopped short of assimilation. Rulers and nobles remained in place. Subjects
were not required to adopt Mexica gods, and local communities and their
leaders remained intact.
The death of a ruler is always a time of uncertainty, and this was
especially true in Mesoamerica under the Aztec Empire. For peoples of the
Valley of Mexico and beyond, this meant war was sure to arrive. The
council of high nobles who served the deceased ruler chose the new
tlatoani, who was often the commander of the army. Once the new tlatoani
was named, he would embark on a military campaign in order to answer the
questions his succession raised: Would he bring sacrificial victims to the
gods and thus ensure prosperity and fertility during his reign? Could he
preserve and strengthen the alliances that composed the empire? Could he
keep rivals at bay?
A success in the tlatoani’s inaugural military campaign provided new
tribute-paying subjects, produced a long train of sacrificial victims captured
in battle, maintained the stability of the empire’s alliances, warned off
potential foes, and kept conquered areas in subordination. After the
successful campaign, the new tlatoani invited the rulers of allied, subject,
and enemy city-states alike to his coronation ceremony — a pageant of
gifts, feasts, and bloody sacrifice that proclaimed Tenochtitlan’s might.
But success was not always possible, as the troubled rule of Tizoc (r.
1481–1486) demonstrated. After a series of wars that produced few
sacrifices, he was poisoned by his own subjects. His successor, Ahuitzotl (r.
1486–1502), faced the challenge of reinvigorating the empire through
renewed displays of strength. To symbolize the restoration of Tenochtitlan’s
power, he waged wars of conquest that exceeded anything ever seen,
culminating in two coronation ceremonies, the second of which involved
sacrificing over eighty thousand captive warriors.
Blood sacrifice was not new to the Aztecs. For centuries Mesoamerican
peoples had honored their gods this way, but the Aztecs elevated the warrior
cult as their central observance. They believed the earth had been destroyed
and re-created four times. The end of creation loomed after their age, the
fifth sun. Since the apocalypse might be forestalled through divine
intervention, their sacrifice could show that humans were worthy of divine
intervention. If ancient deities had given their lives to save the sun, how
could mortals refuse to do the same?
 Quetzalcoatl Bleeding Himself to Create Man This
image reflects Quetzalcoatl in his human form,
carrying out the sacrifice that created humanity. The
combination of spiritual and human forms allowed
rulers such as Topiltzin to also claim identities as
gods.

The ceremony observing the end of each fifty-two-year bundle reflected

the worldview of the Mexica. Had humans sacrificed enough for the gods to
intercede and ensure the sun would rise again? In preparation for the end,
families broke their earthenware vessels, cleansed their homes, and
extinguished all fires. Upon the new dawn, priests made a fire on the chest
of a living, powerful captive warrior. Noble warriors lit torches from this
new fire and relayed the flame of creation into each hearth in the empire.
For the next fifty-two years, all would know the fire in their hearth, like the
rising of the sun itself, was the fruit of a sacred warrior sacrifice.
 The need for sacrifice, as well as the glorification of the warriors who
provided it through battle, was a powerful rationale for the expansion of the
Aztec Empire. The role of the Aztecs’ sacrifice-based religious system is the
subject of scholarly debate: Did the religious system guide imperial
expansion? Or did imperial expansion guide the religious system? These
views are by no means incompatible: for the Aztecs, the peoples who came
under their rule, and the peoples who resisted them, the twin goals of
empire building and service to the gods were inseparable.
American Empires and the Encounter
What did the European encounter mean for peoples of the major American empires?

By 1500 the Incas and Aztecs strained under the burdens of managing the
largest empires the Americas had seen. Both faced the challenges of
consolidating their gains, bearing the costs of empire and of the swelling
nobility, and waging war in increasingly distant and difficult conditions.

The Last Day of the Aztecs

In 1502 the last Mexica to rule before the arrival of the Spaniards,
Moctezuma II, was named tlatoani. Moctezuma inherited a strained empire.
His predecessors had expanded the empire’s reach from the Caribbean coast
to the Pacific. At the margins of the empire the Aztecs encountered peoples
who were seminomadic or who, like the Maya, had abandoned their cities
to resist conquest. An empire that had expanded rapidly through conquest
found itself with little room to grow.
Aztec leaders had sought targets for conquest that were easy to
overpower or that produced goods that made for valuable tribute. This
created an empire riddled with independent enclaves that had resisted
conquest. The most powerful of these was Tlaxcala (tlah-SKAH-lah), at the
edge of the Valley of Mexico. In addition, even areas under Aztec rule
retained local leadership and saw themselves as subjected peoples, not as
Aztecs.
Finally, the costs of empire had become onerous. Generations of social
mobility through distinction in war had produced a bloated nobility both
exempt from and sustained by tribute. Tenochtitlan became dependent on
tributary maize in order to feed itself. The lack of new peoples to conquer
meant the empire had little promise of increased prosperity. The dwindling
flow of sacrificial victims meant the Mexica might be losing the great
cosmic struggle to keep creation from ending.
Faced with these challenges, Moctezuma II introduced reforms,
reducing the privileges (and thus the costs to the empire) of the lesser
nobility and narrowing the pathways of social mobility. However, the
austerity he imposed caused unrest. He also attempted to conquer the
autonomous enclaves left by his predecessors. As Moctezuma targeted these
enclaves, their ability to resist sapped their resources and strained their
morale without producing a corresponding reward for the empire in
sacrifice or tribute.
By the time he reached the gates of Tenochtitlan in 1519, the Spanish
conquistador Hernán Cortés had forged alliances with foes of the Aztecs,
particularly Tlaxcala, which had so ably resisted conquest. The Tlaxcalans
saw in the foreigners an opportunity to fight the Mexica. Cortés’s band of
six hundred Spaniards arrived in Tenochtitlan accompanied by tens of
thousands of Tlaxcalan soldiers. In Tlaxcala the defeat of Tenochtitlan
would be seen as the Tlaxcalans’ victory, not that of the handful of
Spaniards.
Whatever Moctezuma made of the strangers, he received them as guests
while he sought to understand the nature of this encounter and its
significance for his empire. Perhaps he hesitated, losing the opportunity to
act against them. Perhaps he concluded that he had no chance of defeating
them, since at that moment most of the men he could count on in battle
were tending to their crops and the capital had been so riddled with
resentment of his reforms that he was powerless to act.
Either way, Cortés and his men managed the encounter skillfully and
succeeded in taking Moctezuma prisoner. When the residents of
Tenochtitlan rose up to expel the Spaniards, Moctezuma was killed. Though
the Spaniards were expelled from the city, they left an unwelcome guest,
smallpox. The first epidemic of the disease swept through the city in 1520,
killing Moctezuma’s successor within a matter of months. Cuauhtemoc, the
last tlatoani of the Mexica, was named that same year.
The Aztec Empire and the Mexica people were not defeated by
technology, cultural superiority, or a belief that the Europeans were gods.
Instead they suffered a political defeat: their fall was owed more than
anything to the willingness of allies and enemies alike to join with the
Spaniards against them when they perceived an opportunity.
Through the lens of history, the destruction of the Aztec Empire seems
swift, but Tenochtitlan resisted for two years. During this time the
Spaniards and Tlaxcalans brokered alliances leaving the Mexica virtually
alone in their fight. In this sense, the end of the Aztec Empire looked a lot
like its beginning: people who had obeyed the Mexica now took advantage
of the opportunity to defeat them, just as the Mexica had done with the
Tepanec Alliance. Even so, abandoned by their allies, the besieged Mexica
fought on through famine and disease, defending their city street by street
until Cuauhtemoc surrendered to Cortés on August 13, 1521.

The Fall of the Incas

In 1525 Huayna Capac Inca, the grandson of Pachacuti Inca, became ill
while carrying out a military campaign in present-day Ecuador, at the
northern frontier of the empire. His illness was likely smallpox, introduced
by Europeans waging wars of conquest in Mesoamerica, and it would kill
him. But as he waged war, he also received news of the foreigners —
Spaniards — in the north and anticipated that they would come southward.
Huayna Capac’s death unleashed civil war between two of his sons over
succession to the throne. Huascar claimed it as the firstborn. Atahualpa (ah-
tuh-WAHL-puh), Huayna Capac’s favorite and an experienced commander
who had accompanied him in his Ecuadorean campaign, claimed it as well.
Atahualpa asserted that Huayna Capac’s dying wish was that Atahualpa
succeed him. The brothers fought until 1532, when Atahualpa vanquished
and imprisoned Huascar and consolidated his rule in Cuzco. That same year
a group of Spaniards led by Francisco Pizarro landed on the Peruvian coast,
pursuing rumors of a city of gold in the mountains.
Atahualpa agreed through emissaries to meet the Spaniards at the city of
Cajamarca in northern Peru. In a demonstration of his imperial authority, he
entered Cajamarca carried on a golden litter, accompanied by four military
squadrons totaling twenty-four thousand soldiers. Members of the nobility
followed, carried on their own litters. Their procession was preceded by a
multitude of servants who cleared the ground, removing all stones, pebbles,
and even bits of straw. Atahualpa met the Spanish intending to understand
them and hear them out. However, the meeting between Atahualpa and
Pizarro reflected deeply different worldviews.
Though Atahualpa had not planned to fight, Pizarro planned an ambush,
using the city walls to trap Atahualpa’s soldiers and kill a large number of
them. The Spaniards took Atahualpa prisoner and eventually executed him.
The Spaniards named a new indigenous leader, Manco Capac, whom they
hoped to control. But Manco Capac turned against the Spaniards. He, and
later his son Tupac Amaru, led resistance against the Spaniards until 1567.
Each time the Inca forces besieged a Spanish-controlled city or town,
however, their proximity to the Spaniards exposed them to European
diseases. They were more successful in smaller-scale attacks, which delayed
and limited Spanish colonization, but did not undo it.
Chapter Summary
The civilizations of the Andes and Mesoamerica from which the Incas and
Aztecs emerged had remarkable similarities with, and differences from,
other ancient and premodern civilizations in other regions of the world.
Indigenous societies of the Americas developed extensive networks of
trade. In Mesoamerica and the Andes, the domestication of crops led to the
kind of bountiful production that allowed for diversification of labor among
farmers, priests, nobles, merchants, and artisans. In these environments,
cycles of centralization occurred in which powerful city-states emerged and
embarked on campaigns of conquest, bringing vast regions under their
political, religious, and cultural influence.
But civilizations of the Americas developed in unique ways as well.
This was particularly true in the Andes, where peoples developed
specialized patterns of farming in vertical archipelagos in their inhospitable
mountain environment. Similarly, though Andean peoples did not develop
writing, they instead developed the khipu into a sophisticated system of
recording and communicating information.
Ultimately, the history of the peoples of the Americas was defined by
their diverse experiences as they coped with varied climates, ecology, and
geography. And peoples’ experiences of adapting to their environments, and
of transforming those environments to meet their needs, shaped the ways
they understood their world. These experiences led them to produce precise
calendars, highly detailed readings of the stars, and an elaborate
architecture of religious beliefs through which they interpreted their
relationships to their world and their place in the cosmos.

CONNECTIONS

The early sixteenth century marked the end of independent empires of the
Americas and the gradual integration of American peoples into global
empires seated in Europe. Spaniards were the most motivated and had their
greatest success when they encountered dense, organized urban areas. Here
they displaced existing overlords as the recipients of tribute in goods and
labor. The Spanish were less interested in sparsely settled areas that did not
have well-established systems of trade and tribute and were harder to
subdue. As a result, European conquest was a surprisingly drawn-out
process. Peoples of the Americas resisted conquest until well into the
nineteenth century.
The incidental companion of conquest — disease — was also uneven in
its effects. Over the course of the sixteenth century, epidemics shrank the
population of the Americas from 50 million to just 5 million. But epidemic
diseases spread through human contact, such as measles and smallpox, are
primarily urban phenomena: these diseases emerged as ancient cities grew
large enough that the diseases could spread quickly among dense
populations. As a result, the impact of the diseases brought by Europeans
was the most severe and the most destructive in the cities of the Americas.
Since cities faced the brunt of both disease and wars of conquest, the
disruptions caused by the encounter were disproportionally felt there.
Whole systems of knowledge, sets of artisanal skills, political cultures, and
religious thought resided in cities. Thus, as epidemics erupted, many of the
most remarkable aspects of American civilizations were lost. Rural peoples
and cultures were much more resilient. It was in rural areas that languages,
foodways, farming practices, and approaches to healing — indeed whole
worldviews — endured and evolved. By contrast, Spanish colonial towns
and cities were protected from indigenous attacks because they bore
diseases that could afflict their attackers. The Americas were rapidly
integrated with the rest of the world in the sixteenth century, but the
combination of conquest, colonization, and disease ensured the unevenness
of this exchange.
Chapter 11 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

Mesoamerica (p. 252)

khipu (p. 252)
nixtamalization (p. 253)
Olmec (p. 255)
Moche (p. 258)
Inca (p. 259)
Quechua (p. 261)
Maya (p. 263)
Teotihuacan (p. 263)
Nahuatl (p. 267)
Mexica (p. 267)
Tenochtitlan (p. 269)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. How did ancient peoples of the Americas adapt to, and adapt, their environment?
(p. 251)
2. What patterns established by early societies shaped civilization in Mesoamerica
and the Andes? (p. 254)
3. What were the sources of strength and prosperity, and of problems, for the Incas?
(p. 259)
4. How did the Maya and Teotihuacan develop prosperous and stable societies in the
classical era? (p. 263)
5. How did the Mexica build on the achievements of earlier Mesoamerican cultures
and develop new traditions to create their large empire? (p. 267)
6. What did the European encounter mean for peoples of the major American
empires? (p. 272)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. What are some examples of unique ways in which peoples of the Americas
adapted to their environment?
2. How did the connection between religion and imperial expansion among the
Aztecs and Incas resemble the role of religion in the expansion of the Roman
Empire (Chapter 6) or of Islamic states (Chapter 9)?
3. Much of what we know about ancient societies of the Americas is based on
archaeological data rather than written sources. How does the reliance on
archaeological data shape our understanding of history? What does it help us
understand? What is hard for us to interpret from it?
4. What aspects of life in the Americas were most vulnerable to change after the
arrival of Europeans?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 20,000–30,000 years • Initial human migration to the Americas

ago
ca. 10,000 B.C.E. • Farming begins with the cultivation of squash in the
Andes and Mesoamerica
ca. 5500 B.C.E. • Earliest mound building in North America
ca. 1500–300 B.C.E. • Olmec culture
ca. 1200 B.C.E. • Emergence of Chavín culture in the Andes
509 B.C.E.–476 C.E. • Roman Republic and Empire (Ch. 6)
ca. 100–800 C.E. • Moche culture
200–538 C.E. • Spread of Buddhism in China, Korea, and Japan (Ch. 7)
ca. 300–650 C.E. • Peak of Teotihuacan’s influence
ca. 600–900 C.E. • Peak of Maya civilization
632–1100 C.E. • Early spread of Islam in Asia, Africa, and Europe (Chs.
9, 10, 12)
ca. 1050–1250 C.E. • Construction of mounds at Cahokia
ca. 1100–1450 C.E. • Great Zimbabwe built, flourishes (Ch. 10)
ca. 1325 C.E. • Construction of Mexica city of Tenochtitlan begins
ca. 1428–1521 C.E. • Aztec Empire dominates Mesoamerica
ca. 1438–1532 C.E. • Inca Empire dominates the Andes
12
Cultural Exchange in Central and Southern
Asia

300–1400
Chapter Preview

Central Asian Nomads

• What aspects of nomadic life gave the nomads of Central Asia military
advantages over nearby settled civilizations?

Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Empire

• How did Chinggis Khan and his successors conquer much of Eurasia, and
how did the Mongol conquests change the regions affected?

East-West Communication During the Mongol Era

• How did the Mongol conquests facilitate the spread of ideas, religions,
inventions, and diseases?

India, Islam, and the Development of Regional Cultures, 300–1400

• What was the result of India’s encounters with Turks, Mongols, and Islam?

Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Growth of Maritime Trade
• How did states develop along the maritime trade routes of Southeast Asia and
beyond?

THE LARGE EXPANSE OF ASIA TREATED IN THIS CHAPTER UNDERWENT profound

changes during the centuries examined here. The north saw the rise of nomadic pastoral
societies, first the Turks, then more spectacularly the Mongols. The nomads’ mastery of the
horse and mounted warfare gave them a military advantage that agricultural societies could
rarely match. From the fifth century on, groups of Turks appeared along the fringes of the
settled societies of Eurasia, from China and Korea to India and Persia. Often Turks were
recruited as auxiliary soldiers; sometimes they gained the upper hand. By the tenth century
many were converting to Islam (see “The Ascendancy of the Turks” in Chapter 9).
Much more dramatic was the rise of the Mongols under the charismatic leadership of
Chinggis Khan in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. A military genius with a
relatively small army, Chinggis subdued one society after another from Byzantium to the
Pacific. For a century Mongol hegemony fostered unprecedented East-West trade and
contact. More Europeans made their way east than ever before, and Chinese inventions
such as printing and the compass made their way west.
Over the course of several centuries, Arab and Turkish armies brought Islam to India,
but the Mongols never gained power there. In the Indian subcontinent during these
centuries, regional cultures flourished. Although Buddhism declined, Hinduism continued to
flourish. India continued to be the center of a very active seaborne trade, and this trade
helped carry Indian ideas and practices to Southeast Asia. Buddhism was adopted in much
of Southeast Asia, along with other ideas and techniques from India. The maritime trade in
spices and other goods brought increased contact with the outside world to all but the most
isolated of islands in the Pacific.
Central Asian Nomads
What aspects of nomadic life gave the nomads of Central Asia military advantages
over nearby settled civilizations?

One experience Rome, Persia, India, and China all shared was conflict with
nomads who came from the very broad region referred to as Central Asia.
This region was dominated by the steppe, arid grasslands that stretched
from modern Hungary to Mongolia and parts of present northeast China.
Initially small in number, the nomadic peoples of this region used their
military superiority to conquer first other nomads, then the nearby settled
societies. In the process they created settled empires of their own that drew
on the cultures they absorbed.

Nomadic Society
Easily crossed by horses but too dry for crop agriculture, the grasslands
could support only a thin population of nomadic herders who lived off their
sheep, goats, camels, horses, or other animals. Following the seasons, they
would break camp at least twice a year and move their animals to new
pastures, going north in the spring and south in the fall.
In their search for water and good pastures, nomadic groups often came
into conflict with other nomadic groups pursuing the same resources, which
the two would then fight over. Groups on the losing end, especially if they
were small, faced the threat of extermination or slavery, which prompted
them to make alliances with other groups or move far away. Groups on the
winning end of intertribal conflicts could exact tribute from those they
defeated.
To get the products of nearby agricultural societies, especially grain,
woven textiles, iron, tea, and wood, nomadic herders would trade their own
products, such as horses and furs. When trade was difficult, they would turn
to raiding to seize what they needed. Much of the time nomadic herders
raided other nomads, but nearby agricultural settlements were common
targets as well. The nomads’ skill as horsemen and archers made it difficult
for farmers and townsmen to defend against them.
 Political organization among nomadic herders was generally very
simple. Clans — members of an extended family — had chiefs, as did tribes
(coalitions of clans). Leadership within a group was based on military
prowess and was often settled by fighting. Occasionally a charismatic
leader would emerge who was able to extend alliances to form
confederations of tribes. From the point of view of the settled societies,
which have left most of the records about these nomadic groups, large
confederations were much more of a threat, since they could plan
coordinated attacks on cities and towns. Large confederations rarely lasted
more than a century or so, however, and when they broke up, tribes again
spent much of their time fighting with each other.
The three most wide-ranging and successful confederations were those
of the Xiongnu — Huns, as they were known in the West — who emerged
in the third century B.C.E. in the area near China; the Turks, who had their
origins in the same area in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E.; and the
Mongols, who did not become important until the late twelfth century. In all
three cases, the entire steppe region was eventually swept up in the
movement of peoples and armies.

The Turks
The Turks were the first of the Inner Asian peoples to have left a written
record in their own language; the earliest Turkish documents date from the
eighth century. Turkic languages today are spoken by the Uighurs in
western China; the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrghiz (KIHR-guhz), and Turkmens
of Central Asia; and the Turks of modern Turkey.
In 552 a group called Turks who specialized in metalworking rebelled
against their overlords, the Rouruan, whose empire dominated the region
from the eastern Silk Road cities of Central Asia through Mongolia. The
Turks quickly supplanted the Rouruan as overlords of the Silk Road in the
east. When the first Turkish khagan (ruler) died a few years later, the
Turkish empire was divided between his younger brother, who took the
western part (modern Central Asia), and his son, who took the eastern part
(modern Mongolia). In 576 the Western Turks captured the Byzantine city
of Bosporus in the Crimea.
The Eastern Turks frequently raided China and just as often fought
among themselves. A seventh-century Chinese history records that “the
Turks prefer to destroy each other rather than to live side-by-side. They
have a thousand, nay ten thousand clans who are hostile to and kill one
another. They mourn their dead with much grief and swear vengeance.”1 In
the early seventh century the empire of the Eastern Turks ran up against the
growing military might of the Tang Dynasty in China and soon broke apart.
In the eighth century a Turkic people called the Uighurs (WEE-gurs)
formed a new empire based in Mongolia that survived about a century.
During this period many Uighurs adopted religions then current along the
Silk Road, notably Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, and Manichaeism. In
the ninth century this Uighur empire collapsed, but some Uighurs fled west,
setting up their capital city in Kucha, where they created a remarkably
stable and prosperous kingdom that lasted four centuries (ca. 850–1250).
Farther west in Central Asia other groups of Turks rose to prominence.
Often local Muslim forces would try to capture them, employ them as slave
soldiers, and convert them. By the mid- to late tenth century many were
serving in the armies of the Abbasid caliphate. Also in the tenth century
Central Asian Turks began converting to Islam (which protected them from
being abducted as slaves). Then they took to raiding unconverted Turks.
In the mid-eleventh century Turks had gained the upper hand in the
caliphate, and the caliphs became little more than figureheads. From there
Turkish power was extended into Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor. In 1071
Seljuk (SEHL-jook) Turks inflicted a devastating defeat on the Byzantine
army in eastern Anatolia.
In India, Persia, and Anatolia the formidable military skills of nomadic
Turkish warriors made it possible for them to become overlords of settled
societies. Often Persian was used as the administrative language of the
states they formed. Nevertheless, despite the presence of Turkish overlords
all along the southern fringe of the steppe, no one group of Turks was able
to unite them all into a single political unit. That feat had to wait for the
next major power on the steppe, the Mongols.

The Mongols
In the twelfth century ambitious Mongols did not aspire to match the Turks
or other groups that had migrated west, but rather wanted to be successors
to the Khitans and Jurchens, nomadic groups that had stayed in the east and
mastered ways to extract resources from China. The Khitans and Jurchens
had formed hybrid nomadic-urban states, with northern sections where
tribesmen continued to live in the traditional way and southern sections
politically controlled by the non-Chinese rulers but settled largely by
taxpaying Chinese. The Khitans and Jurchens had scripts created to record
their languages and adopted many Chinese governing practices. They built
cities in pastoral areas that served as trading centers and places to enjoy
their newly acquired wealth. In both the Khitan and Jurchen cases, their
elite became culturally dual, adept in Chinese ways as well as in their own
traditions.
The Mongols lived north of these hybrid nomadic-settled societies and
maintained their traditional ways. They lived in tents called yurts rather
than in houses. The yurts, about twelve to fifteen feet in diameter, were
constructed of light wooden frames covered by layers of wool felt, greased
to make them waterproof. The floor of a yurt was covered first with dried
grass or straw, then with felt, skins, or rugs. In the center, directly under the
smoke hole, was the hearth. Goat horns attached to the frame of the yurt
were used as hooks to hang joints of meat, cooking utensils, bows, quivers
of arrows, and the like. A group of families traveling together would set up
their yurts in a circle open to the south and draw up their wagons in a circle
around the yurts for protection.
The Mongol diet consisted mostly of animal products. The most
common meat was mutton, supplemented with wild game. When grain or
vegetables could be obtained through trade, they were added to the diet. The
Mongols milked sheep, goats, cows, and horses and made cheese and
fermented alcoholic drinks from the milk.
Because of the intense cold of the winter, the Mongols made much use
of furs and skins for clothing. Hats were of felt or fur, boots of felt or
leather. Men wore leather belts to which their bows and quivers could be
attached. Women of high rank wore elaborate headdresses decorated with
feathers.
Mongol women had to work very hard and had to be able to care for the
animals when the men were away hunting or fighting. They normally drove
the carts and set up and dismantled the yurts. They also milked the sheep,
goats, and cows and made the butter and cheese. Because water was scarce,
clothes were not washed with water, nor were dishes. Women, like men, had
to be expert riders, and many also learned to shoot. They participated
actively in family decisions, especially as wives and mothers. In The Secret
History of the Mongols, the mother and wife of the Mongol leader Chinggis
Khan frequently make impassioned speeches on the importance of family
loyalty.
Mongol men kept as busy as the women. They made the carts and
wagons and the frames for the yurts. They also made harnesses for the
horses and oxen, leather saddles, and the equipment needed for hunting and
war, such as bows and arrows. Men also had charge of the horses, and they
milked the mares. One specialist among the nomads was the blacksmith,
who made stirrups, knives, and other metal tools.
Kinship underlay most social relationships among the Mongols.
Normally each family occupied a yurt, and groups of families camping
together were usually related along the male line. More distant patrilineal
relatives were recognized as members of the same clan and could call on
each other for aid. People from the same clan could not marry each other, so
men had to get wives from other clans. When a woman’s husband died, she
would be inherited by another male in the family, such as her husband’s
brother. Tribes were groups of clans, often distantly related. Both clans and
tribes had chiefs who would make decisions on where to graze and when to
retaliate against another tribe that had stolen animals or people. Women
were sometimes abducted for brides. When tribes stole men from each
other, they normally made them into slaves, and slaves were forced to do
much of the heavy work.
Even though population was sparse in the regions where the Mongols
lived, conflict over resources was endemic, and each camp had to be on the
alert for attacks. Defending against attacks and retaliating against raids was
as much a part of the Mongols’ daily life as caring for their herds and
trading with nearby settlements.
Mongol children learned to ride at a young age. The Mongols’ horses
were small but nimble and able to endure long journeys and bitter cold. The
prime weapon boys had to learn to use was the compound bow, which had a
pull of about 160 pounds and a range of more than 200 yards; it was well
suited for using on horseback, giving Mongol soldiers an advantage in
battle. Other commonly used weapons were small battle-axes and lances
fitted with hooks to pull enemies off their saddles.
As with the Turks and other steppe nomads, religious practices centered
around the shaman, a religious expert believed to be able to communicate
with the gods. The high god of the Mongols was Heaven/Sky, but they
recognized many other gods as well. Some groups of Mongols, especially
those closer to settled communities, converted to Buddhism, Nestorian
Christianity, or Manichaeism (man-uh-KEY-an-ism).
Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Empire
How did Chinggis Khan and his successors conquer much of Eurasia, and how did
the Mongol conquests change the regions affected?

In the mid-twelfth century the Mongols were just one of many peoples in
the eastern grasslands, neither particularly numerous nor especially
advanced. Why then did the Mongols suddenly emerge as an overpowering
force on the historical stage? One explanation is ecological. A drop in the
mean annual temperature created a subsistence crisis. As pastures shrank,
the Mongols and other nomads had to look beyond the steppe to get more of
their food from the agricultural world. A second reason for their sudden rise
was the appearance of a single individual, the brilliant but utterly ruthless
Temujin (ca. 1162–1227), later and more commonly called Chinggis Khan
(sometimes spelled Genghis or Ghengis).

Chinggis Khan
In Temujin’s youth, his father had built a modest tribal following. When
Temujin’s father was poisoned by a rival, his followers, not ready to follow
a boy of twelve, drifted away, leaving Temujin and his mother and brothers
in a vulnerable position. Temujin slowly collected followers. In 1182
Temujin was captured and carried in a cage to a rival’s camp. After a daring
midnight escape, he led his followers to join a stronger chieftain whom his
father had once aided. With the chieftain’s help, Temujin began avenging
the insults he had received.
Temujin proved to be a natural leader, and as he subdued the Tartars,
Kereyids, Naimans, Merkids, and other Mongol and Turkish tribes, he built
up an army of loyal followers. He mastered the art of winning allies through
displays of personal courage in battle and generosity to his followers. To
those who opposed him, he could be merciless. He once asserted that
nothing gave more pleasure than massacring one’s enemies, seizing their
horses and cattle, and ravishing their women. Sometimes Temujin would
kill all the men in a defeated tribe to prevent later vendettas. At other times
he would take them on as soldiers in his own armies.
 In 1206, at a great gathering of tribal leaders, Temujin was proclaimed
Chinggis Khan (JING-gus kahn), or Great Ruler. Chinggis decreed that
Mongol, until then an unwritten language, be written down in the script
used by the Uighur Turks. With this script a record was made of the Mongol
laws and customs, ranging from the rules for the annual hunt to
punishments of death for robbery and adultery. Another measure adopted at
this assembly was a postal relay system to send messages rapidly by
mounted courier, suggesting that Chinggis already had ambitions to rule a
vast empire.
With the tribes of Mongolia united, the energies previously devoted to
infighting and vendettas were redirected to exacting tribute from the settled
populations nearby, starting with the Jurchen (Jin) state that extended into
north China (see Map 13.1). Because of his early experiences with
intertribal feuding, Chinggis mistrusted traditional tribal loyalties, and as he
fashioned a new army, he gave it a new, nontribal decimal structure (based
on units of ten). He conscripted soldiers from all the tribes and assigned
them to units that were composed of members from different tribes. He
selected commanders for each unit whom he could remove at will, although
he allowed commanders to pass their posts on to their sons.
 The Tent of Chinggis Khan In this fourteenth-century Persian illustration from Rashid al-
Din’s History of the World, two guards stand outside while Chinggis is in his tent.

After Chinggis subjugated a city, he would send envoys to cities farther

out to demand submission and threaten destruction. Those who opened their
city gates and submitted without fighting could join the Mongols, but those
who resisted faced the prospect of mass slaughter. He despised city dwellers
and would sometimes use them as living shields in the next battle. After the
Mongol armies swept across north China in 1212–1213, ninety-odd cities
lay in rubble. Not surprisingly many governors of cities and rulers of small
states hastened to offer submission.
Chinggis preferred conquest to administration and did not stay in north
China to set up an administrative structure. He left that to subordinates and
turned his attention westward, to Central Asia and Persia, then dominated
by different groups of Turks. In 1218 Chinggis proposed to the Khwarizm
(QUAHR-uh-zim) shah of Persia that he accept Mongol overlordship and
establish trade relations. The shah, to show his determination to resist,
ordered the envoy and the merchants who had accompanied him killed. The
next year Chinggis led an army of one hundred thousand soldiers west to
retaliate. Mongol forces destroyed the shah’s army and sacked one Persian
city after another.
After returning from Central Asia, Chinggis died in 1227 during the
siege of a city in northwest China. Before he died, he instructed his sons not
to fall out among themselves but instead to divide the spoils.

Chinggis’s Successors
Although Mongol leaders traditionally had had to win their positions, after
Chinggis died the empire was divided into four states called khanates, with
one of the lines of his descendants taking charge of each (Map 12.1).
Chinggis’s third son, Ögödei, assumed the title of khan, and he directed the
next round of invasions.
 MAP 12.1 The Mongol Empire The creation of the vast Mongol Empire facilitated
communication across Eurasia and led to both the spread of deadly plagues and the
transfer of technical and scientific knowledge. After the death of Chinggis Khan in 1227,
the empire was divided into four khanates ruled by different lines of his successors. In the
1270s the Mongols conquered southern China, but most of their subsequent campaigns
did not lead to further territorial gains.

In 1237 representatives of all four lines led 150,000 Mongol, Turkish,

and Persian troops into Europe. During the next five years, they gained
control of Moscow and Kievan Rus and looted cities in Poland and
Hungary. They were poised to attack deeper into Europe when they learned
of the death of Ögödei in 1241. To participate in the election of a new khan,
the army returned to the Mongols’ new capital city, Karakorum.
Once Ögödei’s son was certified as his successor, the Mongols turned
their attention to Persia and the Middle East. In 1256 a Mongol army took
northwest Iran, then pushed on to the Abbasid capital of Baghdad. When it
fell in 1258, the last Abbasid caliph was murdered, and the population was
put to the sword. The Mongol onslaught was successfully resisted, however,
by both the Delhi sultanate (see “The Delhi Sultanate”) and the Mamluk
rulers in Egypt (see “The Mongol Invasions” in Chapter 9).
Under Chinggis’s grandson Khubilai Khan (r. 1260–1294), the Mongols
completed their conquest of China. Proceeding deliberately, the Mongols
first surrounded the Song empire in central and south China (see Chapter
13) by taking its westernmost province in 1252, as well as Korea to its east
in 1258; destroying the Nanzhao kingdom in modern Yunnan in 1254; and
then continuing south and taking Annam (northern Vietnam) in 1257. As
their invasion moved forward, the Mongols used a variety of forms of
battle, employing experts in naval and siege warfare from all over their
empire. During their advance toward the Chinese capital of Hangzhou, the
Mongols ordered the total slaughter of the people of the major city of
Changzhou, and in 1276 the Chinese empress dowager surrendered in hopes
of sparing the people of the capital a similar fate.
Having overrun China and Korea, Khubilai turned his eyes toward
Japan, launching invasions in 1274 and 1281. On both occasions the
Mongols managed to land but were beaten back by Japanese samurai
armies. Each time fierce storms destroyed the Mongol fleets. The Japanese
claimed that they had been saved by the kamikaze, the “divine wind”
(which later lent its name to the thousands of Japanese aviators who crashed
their airplanes into American warships during World War II). Twelve years
later, in 1293, Khubilai tried sending a fleet to the islands of Southeast Asia,
including Java, but it met with no more success than the fleets sent to Japan.
Why were the Mongols so successful against so many different types of
enemies? Even though their population was tiny compared to the
populations of the large agricultural societies they conquered, their tactics,
their weapons, and their organization all gave them advantages. Like other
nomads before them, they were superb horsemen and excellent archers.
Their horses were extremely nimble, able to change direction quickly, thus
allowing the Mongols to maneuver easily and ride through infantry forces
armed with swords, lances, and javelins.
The Mongols were also open to trying new military technologies. To
attack walled cities, they learned how to use catapults and other engines of
war. At first they employed Chinese catapults, but when they learned that
those used by the Turks in Afghanistan were more powerful, they adopted
the better model. The Mongols also used exploding arrows and gunpowder
projectiles developed by the Chinese.
The Mongols made good use of intelligence and tried to exploit internal
divisions in the countries they attacked. Thus in north China they appealed
to the Khitans, who had been defeated by the Jurchens a century earlier, to
join them in attacking the Jurchens. In Syria they exploited the resentment
of Christians against their Muslim rulers.

The Mongols as Rulers

The success of the Mongols in ruling vast territories was due in large part to
their willingness to incorporate other ethnic groups into their armies and
governments. Whatever their original country or religion, those who served
the Mongols loyally were rewarded. Uighurs, Tibetans, Persians, Chinese,
and Russians came to hold powerful positions in the Mongol governments.
Since, in Mongol eyes, the purpose of fighting was to gain riches, the
Mongols would regularly loot the settlements they conquered, taking
whatever they wanted, including the residents. Land would be granted to
military commanders, nobles, and army units to be governed and exploited
as the recipients wished. Those working the land would be given to them as
serfs. The Mongols built a capital city called Karakorum in modern
Mongolia, and to bring it up to the level of the cities they conquered, they
transported skilled workers from those cities. For instance, after Bukhara
and Samarkand were captured in 1219–1220, some thirty thousand artisans
were enslaved and transported to Mongolia.
The traditional nomad disdain for farmers led some commanders to
suggest turning north China into a gigantic pasture after it was conquered.
In time, though, the Mongols came to realize that simply appropriating the
wealth and human resources of the settled lands was not as good as
extracting regular revenue from them. The Mongols gave Chinese methods
of taxation a try, but soon political rivals convinced the khan that he would
gain even more by letting Central Asian Muslim merchants bid against each
other for licenses to collect taxes any way they could, a system called tax-
farming. Ordinary Chinese found this method of tax collecting much more
oppressive than traditional Chinese methods, since there was little to keep
the tax collectors from seizing everything they could.
By the second half of the thirteenth century there was no longer a
genuine pan-Asian Mongol Empire. Much of Asia was in the hands of
Mongol successor states, but these were generally hostile to each other.
Khubilai was often at war with the khanate of Central Asia, then held by his
cousin Khaidu, and he had little contact with the khanate of the Golden
Horde in south Russia. The Mongols adapted their methods of government
to the existing traditions of each place they ruled, and the regions went their
separate ways.
In China the Mongols resisted assimilation and purposely avoided many
Chinese practices. The rulers conducted their business in the Mongol
language and spent their summers in Mongolia. Khubilai discouraged
Mongols from marrying Chinese and took only Mongol women into the
palace. Chinese were treated as legally inferior not only to the Mongols but
also to all other non-Chinese.
In Central Asia, Persia, and Russia the Mongols tended to merge with
the Turkish groups already there and, like them, converted to Islam. Russia
in the thirteenth century was not a strongly centralized state, and the
Mongols allowed Russian princes and lords to continue to rule their
territories as long as they turned over adequate tribute. The city of Moscow
became the center of Mongol tribute collection and grew in importance. In
the Middle East the Mongol Il-khans (as they were known in Persia) were
more active as rulers, again continuing the traditions of the caliphate. In
Mongolia itself, however, Mongol traditions were maintained.
Mongol control in each of the khanates lasted about a century. In the
mid-fourteenth century the Mongol dynasty in China deteriorated into civil
war, and in the 1360s the Mongols withdrew back to Mongolia. There was a
similar loss of Mongol power in Persia and Central Asia. Only on the south
Russian steppe did the Golden Horde maintain its hold for another century.
As Mongol rule in Central Asia declined, a new conqueror emerged,
Timur, also known as Tamerlane (Timur the Lame). Not a nomad but a
highly civilized Turkish noble, Timur in the 1360s struck out from his base
in Samarkand into Persia, north India (see “The Delhi Sultanate”), southern
Russia, and beyond. His armies used the terror tactics that the Mongols had
perfected, massacring the citizens of cities that resisted. In the decades after
his death in 1405, however, Timur’s empire went into decline.
East-West Communication During the
Mongol Era
How did the Mongol conquests facilitate the spread of ideas, religions, inventions,
and diseases?

The Mongol governments did more than any earlier political entities to
encourage the movement of people and goods across Eurasia. With these
vast movements came cultural accommodation as the Mongols, their
conquered subjects, and their trading partners learned from one another.
This cultural exchange involved both physical goods and the sharing of
ideas, including the introduction of new religious beliefs and the adoption
of new ways to organize and rule the Mongol Empire. It also facilitated the
spread of the plague and the unwilling movement of enslaved captives.

The Movement of Peoples

The Mongols had never looked down on merchants the way the elites of
many traditional states did, and they welcomed the arrival of merchants
from distant lands. Even when different groups of Mongols were fighting
among themselves, they usually allowed caravans to pass without harassing
them.
The Mongol practice of transporting skilled people from the lands they
conquered also brought people into contact with each other in new ways.
Besides those forced to move, the Mongols recruited administrators from all
over. Especially prominent were the Uighur Turks of Chinese Central Asia,
whose familiarity with Chinese civilization and fluency in Turkish were
extremely valuable in facilitating communication.
One of those who served the Mongols was Rashid al-Din (ca. 1247–
1318). A Jew from Persia and the son of an apothecary, Rashid al-Din
converted to Islam at the age of thirty and entered the service of the Mongol
Il-khan of Persia as a physician. He rose in government service, traveled
widely, and eventually became prime minister. Rashid al-Din became
friends with the ambassador from China, and together they arranged for
translations of Chinese works on medicine, agronomy, and statecraft. Aware
of the great differences between cultures, he believed that the Mongols
should try to rule in accord with the moral principles of the majority in each
land. On that basis he convinced the Mongol khan of Persia to convert to
Islam. Rashid al-Din undertook to explain the great variety of cultures by
writing a world history more comprehensive than any previously written.
The Mongols were remarkably open to religious experts from all the
lands they encountered. More Europeans made their way as far as Mongolia
and China in the Mongol period than ever before. Popes and kings sent
envoys to the Mongol court in the hope of enlisting the Mongols on their
side in their long-standing conflict with Muslim forces over the Holy Land.
European visitors were also interested in finding Christians who had been
cut off from the West by the spread of Islam, and in fact there were
considerable numbers of Nestorian Christians in Central Asia.

Planting Trees The illustrations in early copies of Marco Polo’s

book show the elements that Europeans found most interesting.
This page illustrates Khubilai’s order that trees be planted along the
main roads.

The most famous European visitor to the Mongol lands was the
Venetian Marco Polo (ca. 1254–1324). In his famous Description of the
World, Marco Polo described all the places he visited or learned about
during his seventeen years away from home. He reported being warmly
received by Khubilai, who impressed him enormously. He was also awed
by the wealth and splendor of Chinese cities and spread the notion of Asia
as a land of riches.

The Spread of Disease, Goods, and Ideas

The rapid transfer of people and goods across Central Asia spread more
than ideas and inventions. It also spread diseases, the most deadly of which
was the plague known in Europe as the Black Death, which scholars
identify today as the bubonic plague. In the early fourteenth century,
transmitted by rats and fleas, the plague began to spread from Central Asia
into West Asia, the Mediterranean, and western Europe. The confusion of
the mid-fourteenth century that led to the loss of Mongol power in China,
Iran, and Central Asia undoubtedly owes something to the effect of the
spread of the plague and other diseases. (For more on the Black Death, see
Chapter 14.)
Traditionally, the historians of each of the countries conquered by the
Mongols portrayed them as a scourge. Among contemporary Western
historians, it is now more common to celebrate the genius of the Mongol
military machine and treat the spread of ideas and inventions as an obvious
good. There is no reason to assume, however, that people benefited equally
from the improved communications and the new political institutions of the
Mongol era. Merchants involved in long-distance trade prospered, but those
enslaved and transported hundreds or thousands of miles from home would
have seen themselves not as the beneficiaries of opportunities to encounter
cultures different from their own but rather as the most pitiable of victims.
Moreover, the places that were ruled by Mongol governments for a century
or more — China, Central Asia, Persia, and Russia — do not seem to have
advanced at a more rapid rate during that century than they did in earlier
centuries, either economically or culturally.
In terms of the spread of technological and scientific ideas, Europe
seems to have been by far the main beneficiary of increased
communication, largely because in 1200 it lagged farther behind than the
other areas. Chinese inventions such as printing, gunpowder, and the
compass spread westward. Persian and Indian expertise in astronomy and
mathematics also spread. In terms of the spread of religions, Islam probably
gained the most. It came to dominate in Chinese Central Asia, which had
previously been Buddhist.
India, Islam, and the Development of
Regional Cultures, 300–1400
What was the result of India’s encounters with Turks, Mongols, and Islam?

After the Mauryan Empire broke apart in 185 B.C.E. (see “The Reign of
Ashoka” in Chapter 3), India was politically divided into small kingdoms
for several centuries. Only the Guptas in the fourth century would emerge
to unite much of north India, though their rule was cut short by the invasion
of the Huns in about 450. A few centuries later, India was profoundly
shaped by Turkish nomads from Central Asia who brought their culture and,
most important, Islam to India. Despite these events, the lives of most
Indians remained unchanged, with the majority of the people living in
villages in a society defined by caste.

The Gupta Empire, ca. 320–480

In the early fourth century a state emerged in the Ganges plain that was able
to bring large parts of north India under its control. The rulers of this Indian
empire, the Guptas, consciously modeled their rule after that of the
Mauryan Empire, and the founder took the name of the founder of that
dynasty, Chandragupta. The Guptas united north India and received tribute
from states in Nepal and the Indus Valley, thus giving large parts of India a
period of peace and political unity.
The Guptas’ administrative system was not as centralized as that of the
Mauryans. In the central regions they drew their revenue from a tax on
agriculture of one-quarter of the harvest and maintained monopolies on key
products such as metals and salt (reminiscent of Chinese practice). They
also exacted labor service for the construction and upkeep of roads, wells,
and irrigation systems. More distant areas were assigned to governors who
were allowed considerable leeway, and governorships often became
hereditary. Areas still farther away were encouraged to become vassal
states.
The Gupta kings were patrons of the arts. Poets composed epics for the
courts of the Gupta kings, and other writers experimented with prose
romances and popular tales. India’s greatest poet, Kalidasa (ca. 380–450),
like Shakespeare, wrote poems as well as plays in verse.
In mathematics, too, the Gupta period could boast of impressive
intellectual achievements. The so-called Arabic numerals are actually of
Indian origin. Indian mathematicians developed the place-value notation
system, with separate columns for ones, tens, and hundreds, as well as a
zero sign to indicate the absence of units in a given column. This system
greatly facilitated calculation and had spread as far as Europe by the
seventh century.
The Gupta rulers were Hindus, but they tolerated all faiths. Buddhist
pilgrims from other areas of Asia reported that Buddhist monasteries with
hundreds or even thousands of monks and nuns flourished in the cities. The
success of Buddhism did not hinder Hinduism with its many gods, which
remained popular among ordinary people.
The great crisis of the Gupta Empire was the invasion of the Huns in
about 450. Mustering his full might, the Gupta ruler Skandagupta (r. ca.
455–467) threw back the invaders, but they had dealt the dynasty a fatal
blow.

India’s Medieval Age and the First Encounter with Islam

After the decline of the Gupta Empire, India once again broke into separate
kingdoms that were frequently at war with each other. Most of the dynasties
of India’s medieval age (ca. 500–1400) were short-lived, but a balance of
power was maintained between the major regions of India, with none
gaining enough of an advantage to conquer the others. Particularly notable
are the Cholas, who dominated the southern tip of the peninsula, Sri Lanka,
and much of the eastern Indian Ocean to the twelfth century (see Map 12.2).
Political division fostered the development of regional cultures.
Literature came to be written in India’s regional languages, among them
Marathi, Bengali, and Assamese. Commerce continued as before, and the
coasts of India remained important in the sea trade of the Indian Ocean.
The first encounters with Islam occurred in this period. In 711 the
Umayyad governor of Iraq seized the Sind area in western India (modern
Pakistan). The western part of India remained part of the caliphate for
centuries, but Islam did not spread much beyond this foothold. During the
ninth and tenth centuries Turks from Central Asia moved into the region of
today’s northeastern Iran and western Afghanistan, then known as
Khurasan. Converts to Islam, they first served as military forces for the
caliphate in Baghdad, but as its authority weakened, they made themselves
rulers of an effectively independent Khurasan and frequently sent raiding
parties into north India. Beginning in 997 Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 997–1030)
led seventeen annual forays into India from his base in modern Afghanistan.
He systematically looted Indian palaces and temples, viewing religious
statues as infidels’ idols. Eventually the Arab conquerors of the Sind fell to
the Turks. By 1030 the Indus Valley, the Punjab, and the rest of northwest
India were in the grip of the Turks.
The new rulers encouraged the spread of Islam, but the Indian caste
system (see “Life in Early India” in Chapter 3) made it difficult to convert
higher-caste Indians. Notions of purity were fundamental, as a Persian
scholar explained:
They totally differ from us in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe, and
vice versa. On the whole, there is very little disputing about theological topics among them;
at the utmost they fight with words, but they will never stake their soul or body or property
on religious controversy…. They call foreigners impure and forbid having any connection
with them, be it by intermarriage or any kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and
drinking with them, because thereby, they think, they would be polluted.2

After the initial period of raids and destruction of temples, the Muslim
Turks came to an accommodation with the Hindus, who were classed as a
protected people, like the Christians and Jews, and allowed to follow their
religion. They had to pay a special tax but did not have to perform military
service. Local chiefs and rajas were often allowed to remain in control of
their domains as long as they paid tribute. Most Indians looked on the
Muslim conquerors as a new ruling caste, capable of governing and taxing
them but otherwise peripheral to their lives. The myriad castes largely
governed themselves, isolating the newcomers.
Nevertheless, over the course of several centuries Islam gained a
stronghold on north India, especially in the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan)
and in Bengal at the mouth of the Ganges River (modern Bangladesh).
Moreover, the sultanate seems to have had a positive effect on the economy.
Much of the wealth confiscated from temples was put to more productive
use, and India’s first truly large cities emerged. The Turks also were eager
to employ skilled workers, giving new opportunities to low-caste manual
and artisan labor.
 The Muslim rulers were much more hostile to Buddhism than to
Hinduism, seeing Buddhism as a competitive proselytizing religion. In 1193
a Turkish raiding party destroyed the great Buddhist university at Nalanda
in Bihar. Buddhist monks were killed or forced to flee to Buddhist centers
in Southeast Asia, Nepal, and Tibet. Buddhism, which had thrived for so
long in peaceful and friendly competition with Hinduism, subsequently
went into decline in its native land.

Kandariyâ Mahâdeva Hindu Temple Built around 1050 by a local king in central India,
this is one of the best-preserved Hindu temples from the medieval period. The main spire
rises 100 feet, and the sides are decorated with more than six hundred stone statues.

Hinduism, however, remained as strong as ever. South India was largely

unaffected by these invasions, and traditional Hindu culture flourished there
under native kings ruling small kingdoms. Devotional cults and mystical
movements flourished. This was a great age of religious art and architecture
in India. Extraordinary temples covered with elaborate bas-relief were built
in many areas.
The Delhi Sultanate
In the twelfth century a new line of Turkish rulers arose in Afghanistan, led
by Muhammad of Ghur (d. 1206). Muhammad captured Delhi and extended
his control nearly throughout north India. When he fell to an assassin in
1206, one of his generals, the former slave Qutb-ud-din, seized the reins of
power and established a government at Delhi, separate from the government
in Afghanistan. This sultanate of Delhi lasted for three centuries, even
though dynasties changed several times.
A major accomplishment of the Delhi sultanate was holding off the
Mongols. Chinggis Khan and his troops entered the Indus Valley in 1221 in
pursuit of the shah of Khurasan. The sultan wisely kept out of the way, and
when Chinggis Khan left some troops in the area, the sultan made no
attempt to challenge them. Two generations later, in 1299, a Mongol khan
launched a campaign into India with two hundred thousand men, but the
sultan of the time was able to defeat them. Two years later the Mongols
returned and camped at Delhi for two months, but they eventually left
without taking the sultan’s fort. Another Mongol raid in 1306–1307 also
was successfully repulsed.
During the fourteenth century, however, the Delhi sultanate was in
decline and proved unable to ward off the armies of Timur, who took Delhi
in 1398. Timur’s invasion left a weakened sultanate. The Delhi sultanate
endured under different rulers until 1526, when it was conquered by the
Mughals, a Muslim dynasty that would rule over most of northern India
from the sixteenth into the nineteenth century.

Life in Medieval India

Local institutions played a much larger role in the lives of people in
medieval India than did the state. Craft guilds oversaw conditions of work
and trade, local councils handled law and order at the town or village level,
and local castes gave members a sense of belonging and identity.
Like peasant societies elsewhere, including in China, Japan, and
Southeast Asia, agricultural life in India ordinarily meant village life. The
average farmer worked a small plot of land outside the village. All the
family members pooled their resources — human, animal, and material —
under the direction of the head of the family. These joint efforts
strengthened family solidarity.
 The agricultural year began with spring plowing. The traditional plow,
drawn by two oxen wearing yokes and collars, had an iron-tipped share and
a handle with which the farmer guided it. Rice, the most important grain,
was sown at the beginning of the long rainy season. Beans, lentils, and peas
were the farmer’s friends, for they grew during the cold season and were
harvested in the spring, when fresh food was scarce. Cereal crops such as
wheat, barley, and millet provided carbohydrates and other nutrients. Some
families cultivated vegetables, spices, fruit trees, and flowers in their
gardens. Sugarcane was another important crop.
Farmers also raised livestock. Most highly valued were cattle, which
were raised for plowing and milk, hides, and horns, but Hindus did not
slaughter them for meat. Like the Islamic and Jewish prohibition on the
consumption of pork, the eating of beef was forbidden among Hindus.
Local craftsmen and tradesmen were frequently organized into guilds,
with guild heads and guild rules. The textile industries were particularly
well developed. Textiles were produced in large quantities and traded
throughout India and beyond. The cutting and polishing of precious stones
was another industry associated closely with foreign trade.
In the cities shops were open to the street; families lived on the floors
above. The busiest tradesmen dealt in milk and cheese, oil, spices, and
perfumes. In addition to these tradesmen and merchants, a host of peddlers
shuffled through towns and villages selling everything from needles to
freshly cut flowers.
During the first millennium C.E., the caste system reached its mature
form. Within the broad division into the four varnas (strata) of Brahmin,
Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra (see “Life in Early India” in Chapter 3), the
population was subdivided into numerous castes, or jati. Each caste had a
proper occupation. In addition, its members married only within the caste
and ate only with other members. Members of high-status castes feared
pollution from contact with lower-caste individuals and had to undertake
rituals of purification to remove the taint.
Eventually Indian society comprised perhaps as many as three thousand
castes. Each caste had its own governing body, which enforced the rules of
the caste. Those incapable of living up to the rules were expelled, becoming
outcastes. These unfortunates lived hard lives, performing tasks that others
considered unclean or lowly.
 Villages were often walled, as in north China and the Middle East.
Cattle and sheep roamed as freely as people. Some families kept pets, such
as cats or parrots. Half-wild mongooses served as effective protection
against snakes. The pond outside the village was its main source of water
and also a spawning ground for fish, birds, and mosquitoes. After the
farmers returned from the fields in the evening, the village gates were
closed until morning.
For all members of Indian society regardless of caste, marriage and
family were the focus of life. As in China, the family was under the
authority of the eldest male, who might take several wives, and ideally sons
stayed home with their parents after they married. The family affirmed its
solidarity by the religious ritual of honoring its dead ancestors — a ritual
that linked the living and the dead, much like ancestor worship in China
(see “Shang Society” in Chapter 4). People commonly lived in extended
families: grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins, and nieces and nephews
all lived together in the same house or compound.
Children in poor households worked as soon as they were able. Children
in wealthier households faced the age-old irritations of learning reading,
writing, and arithmetic. Less attention was paid to daughters than to sons,
though in more prosperous families they were often literate. Because girls
who had lost their virginity could seldom hope to find good husbands,
daughters were customarily married as children, with consummation
delayed until they reached puberty.
A wife was expected to have no life apart from her husband. A widow
was expected to lead the hard life of the ascetic: sleeping on the ground;
eating only one simple meal a day, without meat, wine, salt, or honey;
wearing plain, undyed clothes without jewelry; and shaving her head. She
was viewed as inauspicious to everyone but her children, and she did not
attend family festivals. Among high-caste Hindus, a widow would be
praised for throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. Buddhist sects
objected to this practice, called sati, but some Hindu religious authorities
declared that by self-immolation a widow could expunge both her own and
her husband’s sins, so that both would enjoy eternal bliss in Heaven.
Within the home the position of a wife depended on her own
intelligence and strength of character. Wives were supposed to be humble,
cheerful, and diligent, even toward worthless husbands. As in other
patriarchal societies, however, occasionally a woman ruled the household.
For women who did not want to accept the strictures of married life, the
main way out was to join a Buddhist or Jain religious community.
Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the
Growth of Maritime Trade
How did states develop along the maritime trade routes of Southeast Asia and
beyond?

Much as Roman culture spread to northern Europe and Chinese culture

spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, in the first millennium C.E. Indian
learning, technology, and material culture spread to the mainland and
islands of Southeast Asia. The spread of Indian culture was facilitated by
the growth of maritime trade, but this interchange did not occur uniformly,
and by 1400 there were still isolated societies in this region, most notably in
the Pacific Islands east of Indonesia.
Southeast Asia is a tropical region that is more like India than China.
The topography of mainland Southeast Asia is marked by north-south
mountain ranges separated by river valleys (Map 12.2). It was easy for
people to migrate south along these rivers but harder for them to cross the
heavily forested mountains that divided the region into areas that had
limited contact with each other. The indigenous population was originally
mostly Malay, but migrations over the centuries brought many other
peoples, including speakers of Austro-Asiatic (such as Vietnamese and
Cambodian), Austronesian (such as Malay and Polynesian), and Sino-
Tibetan-Burmese (such as Burmese and possibly Thai) languages, some of
whom moved to the islands offshore and farther into the Pacific Ocean.
 MAP 12.2 South and Southeast Asia in the Thirteenth Century The extensive
coastlines of South and Southeast Asia and the predictable monsoon winds aided
seafaring in this region. Note the Strait of Malacca, through which most East-West sea
trade passed.

State Formation and Indian Influences

Southeast Asia was long a crossroads. Traders from China, India, Africa,
and Europe either passed through the region when traveling from the Indian
to the Pacific Ocean or came for its resources, notably spices (Map 12.3).

MAP 12.3 The Spice Trade, ca. 100 B.C.E.–1500 C.E. From ancient times on, the high
demand for spices was a major reason for both Europeans and Chinese to trade with
South and Southeast Asia. Spices were used not only for flavor in food but also for
medicinal purposes. The spice trade was largely a maritime one, conducted through a
series of middlemen who shipped between ports.
 The northern part of modern Vietnam was under Chinese political
control off and on from the second century B.C.E. to the tenth century C.E.
(see “Vietnam” in Chapter 7), but Indian influence was of much greater
significance for the rest of Southeast Asia. The first state to appear in
historical records, called Funan by Chinese visitors, had its capital in
southern Vietnam. In the first to sixth centuries C.E. Funan extended its
control over much of Indochina and the Malay Peninsula. Merchants from
northwest India would offload their goods and carry them across the
narrowest part of the Malay Peninsula. The ports of Funan offered food and
lodging to the merchants as they waited for the winds to shift to continue
their voyages. Brahmin priests and Buddhist monks from India settled along
with the traders, serving the Indian population and attracting local converts.
Rulers often invited Indian priests and monks to serve under them.
Sixth-century Chinese sources report that the Funan king lived in a
multistory palace and the common people lived in houses built on piles with
roofs of bamboo leaves. The king rode around on an elephant, but narrow
boats measuring up to ninety feet long were a more important means of
transportation. The people enjoyed both cockfighting and pig fighting.
Instead of drawing water from wells, as the Chinese did, they made pools,
from which dozens of nearby families would draw water.
After the decline of Funan, maritime trade continued to grow, and petty
kingdoms appeared in many places. Indian traders frequently established
small settlements, generally located on the coast. Contact with the local
populations led to intermarriage and the creation of hybrid cultures. Local
rulers often adopted Indian customs and values, embraced Hinduism and
Buddhism, and learned Sanskrit, India’s classical literary language.
Sanskrit gave different peoples a common mode of written expression,
much as Chinese did in East Asia and Latin did in Europe.
When Indian traders, migrants, and adventurers entered mainland
Southeast Asia, they encountered both long-settled peoples and migrants
moving southward from the frontiers of China. As in other extensive
migrations, the newcomers fought one another as often as they fought the
native populations. In 939 the north Vietnamese became independent of
China and extended their power southward along the coast of present-day
Vietnam. The Thais had long lived in what is today southwest China and
north Myanmar. In the eighth century the Thai tribes united in a
confederacy and expanded northward against Tang China. Like China,
however, the Thai confederacy fell to the Mongols in 1253. Still farther
west another tribal people, the Burmese, migrated to the area of modern
Myanmar in the eighth century. They also established a state, which they
ruled from their capital, Pagan, and came into contact with India and Sri
Lanka.
The most important mainland state was the Khmer (kuh-MAIR) Empire
of Cambodia (802–1432), which controlled the heart of the region. The
Khmers were indigenous to the area. Their empire eventually extended
south to the sea and the northeast Malay Peninsula. Indian influence was
pervasive; the impressive temple complex at Angkor Wat built in the early
twelfth century was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. Social organization,
however, was modeled not on the Indian caste system but on indigenous
traditions of social hierarchy. A large part of the population was of slave
status, many descended from non-Khmer mountain tribes defeated by the
Khmers. Generally successful in a long series of wars with the Vietnamese,
the Khmers reached the peak of their power in 1219 and then gradually
declined.

The Srivijayan Maritime Trade Empire

Far different from these land-based states was the maritime empire of
Srivijaya (SCHREE-vuh-jie-uh), based on the island of Sumatra in modern
Indonesia. From about 500 on, it held the important Strait of Malacca,
through which most of the sea traffic between China and India passed. This
state, held together as much by alliances as by direct rule, was in many
ways like the Gupta state of the same period in India, securing its
prominence and binding its vassals and allies through its splendor and the
promise of riches through trade.
Much as the Korean and Japanese rulers adopted Chinese models (see
“The East Asian Cultural Sphere” in Chapter 7), the Srivijayan rulers drew
on Indian traditions to justify their rule and organize their state. The
Sanskrit writing system was used for government documents, and Indians
were often employed as priests, scribes, and administrators. Indian
mythology took hold, as did Indian architecture and sculpture. Kings and
their courts, the first to embrace Indian culture, consciously spread it to
their subjects.
After several centuries of prosperity, Srivijaya suffered a stunning blow
in 1025. The Chola state in south India launched a large naval raid and
captured the Srivijayan king and capital. Unable to hold their gains, the
Indians retreated, but the Srivijayan Empire never regained its vigor.
During the era of the Srivijayan kingdom, other kingdoms flourished as
well in island Southeast Asia. Borobudur, the magnificent Buddhist temple
complex, was begun under patronage of Javan rulers around 780. This stone
monument depicts the ten tiers of Buddhist cosmology. When pilgrims
made the three-mile-long winding ascent, they passed numerous sculpted
reliefs depicting the journey from ignorance to enlightenment.
Buddhism became progressively more dominant in Southeast Asia after
800. Mahayana Buddhism became important in Srivijaya and Vietnam, but
Theravada Buddhism, closer to the original Buddhism of early India,
became the dominant form in the rest of mainland Southeast Asia. Buddhist
missionaries from India and Sri Lanka played a prominent role in these
developments. Local converts continued the process by making pilgrimages
to India and Sri Lanka to worship and to observe Indian life for themselves.

The Spread of Indian Culture in Comparative Perspective

The social, cultural, and political systems developed in India, China, and
Rome all had enormous impact on neighboring peoples whose cultures
were originally not as technologically advanced. Some of the mechanisms
for cultural spread were similar in all three cases, but differences were
important as well.
In the case of Rome and both Han and Tang China, strong states directly
ruled outlying regions, bringing their civilizations with them. India’s states,
even its largest empires, such as the Mauryan and Gupta, did not have
comparable bureaucratic reach. The expansion of Indian culture into
Southeast Asia thus came not from conquest and the extension of direct
political control but from the extension of trading networks, with
missionaries following along. This made it closer to the way Japan adopted
features of Chinese culture, often through the intermediary of Korea. In
both cases, the cultural exchange was largely voluntary.

The Settlement of the Pacific Islands

Through most of Eurasia, societies became progressively less isolated over
time. But in 1400 there still remained many isolated societies, especially in
the islands east of modern Indonesia. As discussed in Chapter 1, Homo
sapiens began settling the western Pacific Islands very early, reaching
Australia by 50,000 years ago and New Guinea by 35,000 years ago. The
process did not stop there, however. The ancient Austronesians (speakers of
Austronesian languages) were skilled mariners who settled numerous
islands of the Pacific in subsequent centuries, generally following the
coasts. Their descendants, the Polynesians, learned how to sail into the open
ocean with only the stars, currents, wind patterns, paths of birds, and
perhaps paths of whales and dolphins to help them navigate. They reached
Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in the central Pacific by about 200 C.E.
After reaching the central Pacific, Polynesians continued to fan out, in
some cases traveling a thousand or more miles away. They reached the
Hawaiian Islands in about 300 C.E., Easter Island in perhaps 1000, and New
Zealand not until about 1000–1300. There even were groups who sailed
west, eventually settling in Madagascar between 200 and 500.
In the more remote islands, such as Hawai‘i, Easter Island, and New
Zealand, the societies that developed were limited by the small range of
domesticated plants and animals that the settlers brought with them and
those that were indigenous to the place. Easter Island is perhaps the most
extreme case. Only 15 miles wide at its widest point (only 63 square miles
in total area), it is 1,300 miles from the nearest inhabited island (Pitcairn)
and 2,240 miles from the coast of South America. At some point there was
communication with South America, as sweet potatoes originally from there
made their way to Easter Island. The community that developed on the
island raised chickens and cultivated sweet potatoes, taro, and sugarcane.
The population is thought to have reached about fifteen thousand at Easter
Island’s most prosperous period, which began about 1200 C.E. and lasted a
couple of centuries. It was then that its people devoted remarkable efforts to
fashioning and erecting the large stone statues that still dot the island.
 Easter Island Statues Archaeologists have excavated and restored
many of Easter Island’s huge statues, which display remarkable
stylistic consistency, with the heads disproportionately large and the
legs not visible.

What led the residents of such a small island to erect more than eight
hundred statues, most weighing around ten tons and standing twenty to
seventy feet tall? One common theory is that they were central to the
islanders’ religion and that rival clans competed with each other to erect the
most impressive statues. The effort they had to expend to carve them with
stone tools, move them to the chosen site, and erect them would have been
formidable.
After its heyday, Easter Island suffered severe environmental stress with
the decline of its forests. The islanders could not make boats to fish in the
ocean, and bird colonies shrank as nesting areas decreased, also reducing
the food supply. Scholars still disagree on how much weight to give the
many different elements that contributed to the decline in the prosperity of
Easter Island from the age when the statues were erected.
Certainly, early settlers of an island could have a drastic impact on its
ecology. When Polynesians first reached New Zealand, they found large
birds up to ten feet tall. They hunted them so eagerly that within a century
the birds had all but disappeared. Hunting seals and sea lions also led to
their rapid depletion. But the islands of New Zealand were much larger than
Easter Island, and in time the Maori (the indigenous people of New
Zealand) found more sustainable ways to feed themselves, depending more
and more on agriculture.
Chapter Summary
The pastoral societies that stretched across Eurasia had the great military
advantage of being able to raise horses in large numbers and support
themselves from their flocks of sheep, goats, and other animals. Nomadic
pastoralists generally were organized on the basis of clans and tribes that
selected chiefs for their military talent. Much of the time these tribes fought
with each other, but several times in history leaders formed larger
confederations capable of coordinated attacks on cities and towns.
From the fifth to the twelfth centuries the most successful nomadic
groups on the Eurasian steppes were Turks who gained ascendancy in many
of the societies from the Middle East to northern India. In the early
thirteenth century, through his charismatic leadership and military genius,
the Mongol leader Chinggis Khan conquered much of Eurasia.
After Chinggis’s death, the empire was divided into four khanates ruled
by four of Chinggis’s descendants. For a century the Mongol Empire
fostered unprecedented East-West contact. The Mongols encouraged trade
and often moved craftsmen and other specialists from one place to another.
The Mongols were tolerant of other religions. As more Europeans made
their way east, Chinese inventions such as printing and the compass made
their way west. Europe especially benefited from the spread of technical
and scientific ideas. Diseases also spread, including the Black Death.
India was invaded by the Mongols but not conquered. After the fall of
the Gupta Empire in about 480, India was for the next millennium ruled by
small kingdoms, which allowed regional cultures to flourish. For several
centuries Muslim Turks ruled north India from Delhi. Over time Islam
gained adherents throughout South Asia. Hinduism continued to flourish,
but Buddhism declined.
Throughout the medieval period India continued to be the center of
active seaborne trade, and this trade helped carry Indian ideas and practices
to Southeast Asia. Local rulers used experts from India to establish strong
states, such as the Khmer kingdom and the Srivijayan kingdom. Buddhism
became the dominant religion throughout the region. The Pacific Islands
east of Indonesia remained isolated culturally for centuries.
 CONNECTIONS

The societies of Eurasia became progressively more connected to each

other during the centuries discussed in this chapter. One element promoting
connection was the military superiority of the nomadic warriors of the
steppe: first the Turks, then the Mongols, who conquered many of the
settled civilizations near them. Invading Turks brought Islam to India.
Connection between societies also came from maritime trade across the
Indian Ocean and East Asia. Maritime trade was a key element in the spread
of Indian culture to both the mainland and insular Southeast Asia. Other
elements connecting these societies included Sanskrit as a language of
administration and missionaries who brought both Hinduism and Buddhism
far beyond their homelands. Some societies did remain isolated, probably
none more than the remote islands of the Pacific, such as Hawai‘i, Easter
Island, and New Zealand.
East Asia was a key element in both the empires created by nomadic
horsemen and the South Asian maritime trading networks. As discussed in
Chapter 13, before East Asia had to cope with the rise of the Mongols, it
experienced one of its most prosperous periods, during which China, Korea,
and Japan became more distinct culturally. China’s economy boomed
during the Song Dynasty, and the scholar-official class, defined through the
civil service examination system, came more and more to dominate culture.
In Korea and Japan, by contrast, aristocrats and military men gained
ascendancy. Although China, Korea, and Japan all drew on both Confucian
and Buddhist teachings, they ended up with elites as distinct as the Chinese
scholar-official, the Korean aristocrat, and the Japanese samurai.
Chapter 12 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

nomads (p. 279)

steppe (p. 279)
yurts (p. 281)
Chinggis Khan (p. 283)
khanates (p. 285)
tax-farming (p. 287)
protected people (p. 292)
jati (p. 294)
sati (p. 295)
Sanskrit (p. 297)
Srivijaya (p. 299)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. What aspects of nomadic life gave the nomads of Central Asia military advantages
over nearby settled civilizations? (p. 279)
2. How did Chinggis Khan and his successors conquer much of Eurasia, and how did
the Mongol conquests change the regions affected? (p. 283)
3. How did the Mongol conquests facilitate the spread of ideas, religions, inventions,
and diseases? (p. 288)
4. What was the result of India’s encounters with Turks, Mongols, and Islam? (p. 290)
5. How did states develop along the maritime trade routes of Southeast Asia and
beyond? (p. 295)
MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS
Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. How do the states established by Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries
(Chapter 9) compare to those established by Turks in the tenth and eleventh
centuries?
2. What similarities and differences are there in the military feats of Alexander the
Great (Chapter 5) and Chinggis Khan?
3. How does the slow spread of Buddhism and Indian culture to Southeast Asia
compare to the slow spread of Christianity and Roman culture in Europe (Chapters
6 and 8)?

CHRONOLOGY

320–480 • Gupta Empire in India

ca. 450 • Huns invade northern India
ca. 500 • Srivijaya gains control of Strait of Malacca
552 • Turks rebel against Rouruan and rise to power in
Central Asia
750–1258 • Abbasid caliphate (Ch. 9)
802–1432 • Khmer Empire in Cambodia
960–1279 • Song Dynasty in China (Ch. 13)
ca. 1000–1100 • Islam penetrates sub-Saharan Africa (Ch. 10)
ca. 1100–1200 • Buddhism declines in India
1200–1400 • Easter Island society’s most prosperous period
1206 • Temujin proclaimed Chinggis Khan
1206–1526 • Turkish sultanate at Delhi
1215 • Magna Carta (Ch. 14)
1258 • Mongols conquer Baghdad (Ch. 9)
1276 • Mongol conquest of Song China
1398 • Timur takes control of the Delhi sultanate
13
States and Cultures in East Asia

800–1400
Chapter Preview

The Medieval Chinese Economic Revolution, 800–1100

• What made possible the expansion of the Chinese economy, and what were
the outcomes of this economic growth?

China During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, 960–1368

• How did the civil service examinations and the scholar-official class shape
Chinese society and culture, and what impact did the Mongol conquest have
on them?

Korea Under the Koryŏ Dynasty, 935–1392

• How did Korean society and culture develop in an age when its northern
neighbors were Khitans, Jurchens, and Mongols?

Japan’s Heian Period, 794–1185

• How did the Heian form of government contribute to the cultural flowering of
Japan in this period?

The Samurai and the Kamakura Shogunate, 1185–1333

• What were the causes and consequences of military rule in Japan?

DURING THE SIX CENTURIES BETWEEN 800 AND 1400, EAST ASIA WAS the most
advanced region of the world. For several centuries the Chinese economy had grown
spectacularly, and China’s methods of production were highly advanced in fields as diverse
as rice cultivation, the production of iron and steel, and the printing of books. Philosophy
and the arts all flourished. China’s system of government was also advanced for its time. In
the Song period, the principle that the government should be in the hands of highly
educated scholar-officials, selected through competitive written civil service examinations,
became well established. Song China’s great wealth and sophisticated government did not
give it military advantage, however, and in this period China had to pay tribute to militarily
more powerful northern neighbors, the Khitans (key-tuns), the Jurchens, and finally the
Mongols, who conquered all of China in 1279.
During the previous millennium, basic elements of Chinese culture had spread beyond
China’s borders, creating the East Asian cultural sphere based on the use of Chinese as the
language of civilization. Beginning around 800, however, the pendulum shifted toward
cultural differentiation as Japan, Korea, and China developed in distinctive ways. In both
Korea and Japan, for several centuries court aristocrats were dominant both politically and
culturally, and then aristocrats lost out to military men with power in the countryside. By
1200 Japan was dominated by warriors — known as samurai — whose ethos was quite
unlike that of China’s educated elite. In both Korea and Japan, Buddhism retained a very
strong hold, one of the ties that continued to link the countries of East Asia. In addition,
China and Korea both had to deal with the same menacing neighbors to the north. Even
Japan had to mobilize its resources to fend off two seaborne Mongol attacks.
The Medieval Chinese Economic Revolution,
800–1100
What made possible the expansion of the Chinese economy, and what were the
outcomes of this economic growth?

Chinese historians traditionally viewed dynasties as following a standard

cyclical pattern. Founders were vigorous men able to recruit capable
followers to serve as officials and generals. Externally they would extend
China’s borders; internally they would bring peace. Over time, however,
emperors born in the palace would get used to luxury and lack the founders’
strength and wisdom. Families with wealth or political power would find
ways to avoid taxes, forcing the government to impose heavier taxes on the
poor. As a result, impoverished peasants would flee, the morale of those in
the government and armies would decline, and the dynasty would find itself
able neither to maintain internal peace nor to defend its borders.
Viewed in terms of this theory of the dynastic cycle, by 800 the Tang
Dynasty was in decline (see “The Chinese Empire Re-created: Sui [581–
618] and Tang [618–907]” in Chapter 7). It had ruled China for nearly two
centuries, and its high point was in the past. A massive rebellion had
wracked it in the mid-eighth century, and the Uighur Turks and Tibetans
were menacing its borders. Many of the centralizing features of the
government had been abandoned, with power falling more and more to
regional military governors.
Historically, Chinese political theorists always assumed that a strong,
centralized government was better than a weak one or than political
division, but, if anything, the Tang toward the end of its dynastic cycle
seems to have been both intellectually and economically more vibrant than
the early Tang had been. Less control from the central government seems to
have stimulated trade and economic growth.
A government census conducted in 742 shows that China’s population
was still approximately 50 million, very close to what it had been in 2 C.E.
Over the next three centuries, with the expansion of wet-field rice
cultivation in central and south China, the country’s food supply steadily
increased, and so did its population, which had reached 100 million by
1100. China’s population probably already exceeded that of all the Islamic
countries of the time or that of all the countries of Europe put together.
Urbanization increased, and both literature and the arts thrived.
Agricultural prosperity and denser settlement patterns aided
commercialization of the economy. Farmers in Song China no longer
merely aimed at self-sufficiency. Instead, farmers sold their surpluses and
used their profits to buy charcoal, tea, oil, and wine. In many places farmers
specialized in commercial crops, such as sugar, oranges, cotton, silk, and
tea. The need to transport the products of interregional trade stimulated the
inland and coastal shipping industries.
As marketing increased, demand for money grew enormously, leading
eventually to the creation of the world’s first paper money. To avoid the
weight and bulk of coins for large transactions, local merchants in late Tang
times started trading receipts from deposit shops where they had left money
or goods. The early Song authorities awarded a small set of these shops a
monopoly on the issuing of these certificates of deposit, and in the 1120s
the government took over the system, producing the world’s first
government-issued paper money.
With the intensification of trade, merchants became progressively more
specialized and organized. They set up partnerships and joint stock
companies, with a separation of owners (shareholders) and managers. In the
large cities merchants were organized into guilds according to the type of
product sold, and they arranged sales from wholesalers to shop owners and
periodically set prices.
Foreign trade also flourished in the Song period. Chinese ships began to
displace Indian and Arab merchants in the South Seas, and ship design was
improved in several ways. Watertight bulkheads improved buoyancy and
protected cargo. Stern-mounted rudders improved steering. Some of the
ships were powered by both oars and sails and were large enough to hold
several hundred men.
Also important to oceangoing travel was the perfection of the compass.
The ability of a magnetic needle to point north had been known for some
time, but in Song times the needle was reduced in size and attached to a
fixed stem (rather than floated in water). In some instances it was put in a
small protective case with a glass top, making it suitable for sea travel. The
first reports of a compass used in this way date to 1119.
 The Song also witnessed many advances in industrial techniques. Heavy
industry, especially iron, grew astoundingly. With advances in metallurgy,
iron production reached around 125,000 tons per year in 1078, a sixfold
increase over the output in 800. Much of the iron was used for military
purposes. Mass-production methods were used to make iron armor in small,
medium, and large sizes. High-quality steel for swords was made through
high-temperature metallurgy. The needs of the army also brought Chinese
engineers to experiment with the use of gunpowder. In the twelfth-century
wars against the Jurchens, those defending a besieged city used gunpowder
to propel projectiles at the enemy.
Economic expansion fueled the growth of cities. Dozens of cities had
50,000 or more residents, and quite a few had more than 100,000, very
large populations compared to other places in the world at the time. China’s
two successive capitals, Kaifeng (kigh-fuhng) and Hangzhou (hahng-joh),
each had an estimated 1 million residents. Marco Polo described Hangzhou
as the finest and most splendid city in the world. He reported that it had ten
marketplaces, each half a mile long, where 40,000 to 50,000 people would
shop on any given day. There were also bathhouses; permanent shops
selling items such as spices, drugs, and pearls; and innumerable courtesans,
whom Marco Polo described as “adorned in much finery, highly perfumed,
occupying well-furnished houses, and attended by many female
domestics.”1
The medieval economic revolution shifted the economic center of China
south to the Yangzi River drainage area. This area had many advantages
over the north China plain. Rice, which grew in the south, provides more
calories per unit of land and therefore allows denser settlement. The milder
temperatures often allowed two crops to be grown on the same plot of land,
first a summer crop of rice and then a winter crop of wheat or vegetables.
The abundance of rivers and streams facilitated shipping, which reduced the
cost of transportation and thus made regional specialization economically
more feasible.
Ordinary people benefited from the Song economic revolution in many
ways. There were more opportunities for the sons of farmers to leave
agriculture and find work in cities. Those who stayed in agriculture had a
better chance of improving their situations by taking up sideline production
of wine, charcoal, paper, or textiles. Energetic farmers who grew cash crops
such as sugar, tea, mulberry leaves (for silk), and cotton (recently
introduced from India) could grow rich. Greater interregional trade led to
the availability of more goods at the rural markets held every five or ten
days.
Of course, not everyone grew rich. Poor farmers who fell into debt had
to sell their land, and if they still owed money they could be forced to sell
their daughters as maids, concubines, or prostitutes. The prosperity of the
cities created a huge demand for women to serve the rich in these ways, and
Song sources mention that criminals would kidnap girls and women to sell
in distant cities at huge profits.
China During the Song and Yuan Dynasties,
960–1368
How did the civil service examinations and the scholar-official class shape Chinese
society and culture, and what impact did the Mongol conquest have on them?

In the tenth century Tang China broke up into separate contending states,
some of which had non-Chinese rulers. The two states that proved to be
long lasting were the Song, which came to control almost all of China
proper south of the Great Wall, and the Liao (leeow), whose ruling house
was Khitan and which held the territory of modern Beijing and areas north
(Map 13.1). Although the Song Dynasty had a much larger population, the
Liao was militarily the stronger of the two. In the early twelfth century the
Liao state was defeated by the Jurchens, another non-Chinese people, who
founded the Jin Dynasty and went on to conquer most of north China in
1127, leaving Song to control only the south. After a century the Jurchens’
Jin Dynasty was defeated by the Mongols, who extended their Yuan
Dynasty to control all of China by 1276.
 MAP 13.1 East Asia in 1000 and 1200 The Song empire did not extend as far as its
predecessor, the Tang, and faced powerful rivals to the north — the Liao Dynasty of the
Khitans and the Xia Dynasty of the Tanguts. Koryŏ Korea maintained regular contact with
Song China, but Japan, by the late Heian period, was no longer deeply involved with the
mainland. By 1200 military families dominated both Korea and Japan, but the borders
were little changed. On the mainland the Liao Dynasty had been overthrown by the
Jurchens’ Jin Dynasty, which also seized the northern third of the Song empire. Because
the Song relocated its capital to Hangzhou in the south, this period is called the Southern
Song period.

The Song Dynasty

The founder of the Song Dynasty, Taizu (r. 960–976), was a general whose
troops elevated him to emperor (in an act somewhat reminiscent of Roman
practice). To make sure that such an act could not happen in the future,
Taizu retired or rotated his generals and assigned civil officials to supervise
them. In time these civil bureaucrats came to dominate every aspect of Song
government and society. The civil service examination system established
during the Sui Dynasty (see “The Chinese Empire Re-created: Sui [581–
618] and Tang [618–907]” in Chapter 7) was greatly expanded to provide
the dynasty with a constant flow of men trained in the Confucian classics.
 Curbing the generals’ power ended warlordism but did not solve the
military problem of defending against the nomadic Khitans’ Liao Dynasty
to the north. After several attempts to push the Liao back beyond the Great
Wall, the Song concluded a peace treaty with them. The Song agreed to
make huge annual payments of gold and silk to the Khitans, in a sense
paying them not to invade. Even so, the Song rulers had to maintain a
standing army of more than a million men. By the middle of the eleventh
century military expenses consumed half the government’s revenues. Song
had the industrial base to produce swords, armor, and arrowheads in huge
quantities, but had difficulty maintaining enough horses and well-trained
horsemen. Even though China was the economic powerhouse of the region,
with by far the largest population, the horse was a major weapon of war in
this period, and it was not easy to convert wealth to military advantage.
In the early twelfth century the military situation rapidly worsened
when the Khitan state was destroyed by another tribal confederation led by
the Jurchens, who quickly realized how easy it would be to defeat the Song.
After setting siege to the Song capital in 1126, they captured the emperor
and former emperor and took them and the entire court into captivity. Song
forces rallied around one of the emperor’s sons who had escaped capture,
and this prince re-established a Song court in the south at Hangzhou (see
Map 13.1). This Southern Song Dynasty controlled only about two-thirds of
the former Song territories, but the social, cultural, and intellectual life there
remained vibrant until the Song fell to the Mongols in 1279.

The Scholar-Officials and Neo-Confucianism

The Song period saw the full flowering of one of the most distinctive
features of Chinese civilization, the scholar-official class certified through
highly competitive civil service examinations. This elite was both broader
and better educated than the elites of earlier periods in Chinese history.
Once the examination system was fully developed, aristocratic habits and
prejudices largely disappeared.
To prepare for the examinations, men had to memorize the classics in
order to be able to recognize even the most obscure passages. They also had
to master specific forms of composition, including poetry, and be ready to
discuss policy issues, citing appropriate historical examples. Those who
became officials this way had usually tried the exams several times and
were on average a little over thirty years of age when they succeeded.
 The invention of printing should be given some credit for the trend
toward a better-educated elite. Tang craftsmen developed the art of carving
words and pictures into wooden blocks, inking the blocks, and pressing
paper onto them. Each block held an entire page of text. Such whole-page
blocks were used for printing as early as the middle of the ninth century,
and in the eleventh century movable type (one piece of type for each
character) was invented, but it was rarely used because whole-block
printing was cheaper. In China, as in Europe a couple of centuries later, the
introduction of printing dramatically lowered the price of books, thus aiding
the spread of literacy.
Among the upper class the availability of cheaper books enabled
scholars to amass their own libraries. Song publishers printed the classics of
Chinese literature in huge editions. Works on philosophy, science, and
medicine were also avidly consumed, as were Buddhist texts. Han and Tang
poetry and historical works became the models for Song writers. One
popular literary innovation was the encyclopedia, which first appeared in
the Song period.
The life of the educated man involved more than study for the civil
service examinations and service in office. Many took to refined pursuits
such as collecting antiques or old books and practicing the arts —
especially poetry writing, calligraphy, and painting.
The new scholar-official elite produced some extraordinary men able to
hold high court offices while pursuing diverse intellectual interests. Ouyang
Xiu spared time in his busy official career to write love songs, histories, and
the first analytical catalogue of rubbings of ancient stone and bronze
inscriptions. Sima Guang, besides serving as chancellor, wrote a narrative
history of China from the Warring States Period (403–221 B.C.E.) to the
founding of the Song Dynasty. Su Shi wrote more than twenty-seven
hundred poems and eight hundred letters while active in opposition politics.
He was also an esteemed painter, calligrapher, and theorist of the arts. Su
Song, another high official, constructed an eighty-foot-tall mechanical clock
that told not only the time of day but also the day of the month, the phase of
the moon, and the position of certain stars and planets in the sky. As in
Renaissance Europe a couple of centuries later (see Chapter 15), gifted men
made advances in a wide range of fields.
Besides politics, scholars also debated issues in ethics and metaphysics.
For several centuries Buddhism had been more vital than Confucianism.
Beginning in the late Tang period, Confucian teachers began claiming that
the teachings of the Confucian sages contained all the wisdom one needed
and that a true Confucian would reject Buddhist teachings. During the
eleventh century many Confucian teachers urged students to set their sights
not on exam success but on the higher goals of attaining the wisdom of the
sages. Metaphysical theories about the workings of the cosmos in terms of
li (principle) and qi (vital energy) were developed in response to the
challenge of the sophisticated metaphysics of Buddhism.
Neo-Confucianism, as this movement is generally termed, was more
fully developed in the twelfth century by the immensely learned Zhu Xi
(joo shee) (1130–1200). Besides serving in office, he wrote, compiled, or
edited almost a hundred books; corresponded with dozens of other scholars;
and still regularly taught groups of disciples, many of whom stayed with
him for years at a time. Although he was treated as a political threat during
his lifetime, within decades of his death his writings came to be considered
orthodox, and in subsequent centuries candidates for the examinations had
to be familiar with his commentaries on the classics.

Women’s Lives in Song Times

Thanks to the spread of printing, more books survive from the Song period
than from earlier periods, giving us more glimpses of women’s lives.
Stories, documents, and legal cases show us widows who ran inns,
midwives who delivered babies, pious women who spent their days
chanting Buddhist sutras, girls who learned to read with their brothers,
farmers’ daughters who made money by weaving mats, childless widows
who accused their nephews of stealing their property, and wives who were
jealous of the concubines their husbands brought home.
Families who could afford it usually tried to keep their wives and
daughters within the walls of the house, rather than let them work in the
fields or in shops or inns. At home there was plenty for them to do. Not
only was there the work of tending children and preparing meals, but
spinning, weaving, and sewing were considered women’s work as well and
took a great deal of time. Families that raised silkworms also needed
women to do much of the work of coddling the worms and getting them to
spin their cocoons. Within the home women generally had considerable say
and took an active interest in issues such as the selection of marriage
partners for their children.
 Picking Mulberry Leaves and Feeding Silkworms This is one scene in a long scroll
depicting the work required for the creation of silk textiles. Here we see men climbing
ladders to pick mulberry leaves and women feeding the leaves to the silkworms, so that
they will spin cocoons from which strands can be separated and twisted into threads.

Women tended to marry between the ages of sixteen and twenty. Their
husbands were, on average, a couple of years older than they were.
Marriages were arranged by their parents, who would have either called on
a professional matchmaker or turned to a friend or relative for suggestions.
Before a wedding took place, written agreements were exchanged, listing
the prospective bride’s and groom’s birth dates, parents, and grandparents;
the gifts that would be exchanged; and the dowry the bride would bring.
The young bride’s first priority was to try to win over her mother-in-
law. One way to do this was to quickly bear a son for the family. Within the
patrilineal system, a woman fully secured her position in the family by
becoming the mother of one of the men. Every community had older
women skilled in midwifery who were called to help when a woman went
into labor. If the family was well-to-do, arrangements might be made for a
wet nurse to help her take care of the newborn.
 Women frequently had four, five, or six children, but likely one or more
would die in infancy. If a son reached adulthood and married before the
woman herself was widowed, she would be considered fortunate, for she
would have always had an adult man who could take care of business for
her — first her husband, then her grown son.
A woman with a healthy and prosperous husband faced another
challenge in middle age: her husband could bring home a concubine. Wives
outranked concubines and could give them orders in the house, but a
concubine had her own ways of getting back through her hold on the
husband. The children born to a concubine were considered just as much
children of the family as the wife’s children, and if the wife had had only
daughters and the concubine had a son, the wife would find herself
dependent on the concubine’s son in her old age. Moralists insisted that it
was wrong for a wife to be jealous of her husband’s concubines, but
contemporary documents suggest that jealousy was very common.
Neo-Confucianism is sometimes blamed for a decline in the status of
women in Song times, largely because one of the best known of the Neo-
Confucian teachers, Cheng Yi, once told a follower that it would be better
for a widow to die of starvation than to lose her virtue by remarrying. In
later centuries this saying was often quoted to justify pressuring widows,
even very young ones, to stay with their husbands’ families and not remarry.
In Song times, however, widows frequently remarried.
It is true that foot binding began during the Song Dynasty, but it was
not recommended by Neo-Confucian teachers; rather it was associated with
the pleasure quarters and with women’s efforts to beautify themselves. In
this practice, the feet of girls were bound with long strips of cloth to keep
them from growing large and to make the feet narrow and arched.

China Under Mongol Rule

As discussed in Chapter 12, the Mongols conquered China in stages,
gaining much of north China by 1215 and all of it by 1234, but not taking
the south till the 1270s. The north suffered the most devastation. The non-
Chinese rulers in the north, the Jin Dynasty of the Jurchen, thought they had
the strongest army known to history. Yet Mongol tactics frustrated them.
The Mongols would take a city, plunder it, and then withdraw, letting the
Jin take it back and deal with the resulting food shortages and destruction.
Under these circumstances, Jurchen power rapidly collapsed.
 Not until Khubilai was Great Khan was the Song Dynasty defeated and
south China brought under the control of the Mongols’ Yuan Dynasty. Non-
Chinese rulers had gained control of north China several times in Chinese
history, but none of them had been able to secure control of the region south
of the Yangzi River, which required a navy. By the 1260s Khubilai had put
Chinese shipbuilders to work building a fleet, crucial to his victory over the
Song (see “Chinggis’s Successors” in Chapter 12).
Life in China under the Mongols was much like life in China under
earlier alien rulers. Once order was restored, people did their best to get on
with their lives. Some were deprived of their land, business, or freedom and
suffered real hardship. Yet people still spoke Chinese, followed Chinese
customary practices in dividing their family property, made offerings at
local temples, and celebrated the new year and other customary festivals.
Teachers still taught students the classics, scholars continued to write books,
and books continued to be printed.
The Mongols, like other foreign rulers before them, did not see anything
particularly desirable in the social mobility of Chinese society. Preferring
stability, they assigned people hereditary occupations such as farmer,
Confucian scholar, physician, astrologer, soldier, artisan, salt producer,
miner, and Buddhist monk; the occupations came with obligations to the
state. Besides these occupational categories, the Mongols classified the
population into four grades, with the Mongols occupying the top grade.
Next came various non-Chinese, such as the Uighurs and Persians. Below
them were Chinese former subjects of the Jurchen, called the Han. At the
bottom were the former subjects of the Song, called southerners.
The reason for codifying ethnic differences this way was to preserve the
Mongols’ privileges as conquerors. Chinese were not allowed to take
Mongol names, and great efforts were made to keep them from passing as
Mongols or marrying Mongols. To keep Chinese from rebelling, they were
forbidden to own weapons or congregate in public.
As the Mongols captured Chinese territory, they recruited Chinese into
their armies and government. Although some refused to serve the Mongols,
others argued that the Chinese would fare better if Chinese were the
administrators and could shield Chinese society from the most brutal effects
of Mongol rule.
Nevertheless, government service, which had long been central to the
identity and income of the educated elite in China, was not as widely
available under the Mongols. The Mongols reinstituted the civil service
examinations in 1315, but filled only about 2 percent of the positions in the
bureaucracy through them and reserved half of those places for Mongols.
The scholar-official elite without government employment turned to
alternative ways to support themselves. Those who did not have land to live
off of found work as physicians, fortune-tellers, children’s teachers, Daoist
priests, publishers, booksellers, or playwrights. Many took leadership roles
at the local level, such as founding academies for Confucian learning or
promoting local charitable ventures. Through such activities, scholars
without government offices could assert the importance of civil over
military values and see themselves as trustees of the Confucian tradition.
Since the Mongols wanted to extract wealth from China, they had every
incentive to develop the economy. They encouraged trade both within
China and beyond its borders and tried to keep paper money in circulation.
They repaired the Grand Canal, which had been ruined during their initial
conquest of north China. Chinese industries with strong foreign markets,
such as porcelain, thrived. Nevertheless, the economic expansion of late
Tang and Song times did not continue under the alien rule of the Jurchens
and Mongols.
 Horse and Groom This painting by the Chinese artist Zhao Yong
(1291–1361) would likely have appealed to the Mongol rulers,
whose way of life was tied closely to their horses.

The Mongols’ Yuan Dynasty began a rapid decline in the 1330s as

disease, rebellions, and poor leadership led to disorder throughout the
country. When a Chinese strongman succeeded in consolidating the south,
the Mongol rulers retreated to Mongolia before he could take Beijing. By
1368 the Yuan Dynasty had given way to a new Chinese-led dynasty: the
Ming.
Korea Under the Koryŏ Dynasty, 935–1392
How did Korean society and culture develop in an age when its northern neighbors
were Khitans, Jurchens, and Mongols?

During the Silla period, Korea was strongly tied to Tang China and avidly
copied China’s model (see “Korea” in Chapter 7). This changed along with
much else in North Asia between 800 and 1400. In this period Korea lived
more in the shadows of the powerful states of the Khitans, Jurchens, and
Mongols than in those of the Chinese.
The Silla Dynasty began to decline after the king was killed in a revolt
in 780. For the next 155 years, rebellions and coups d’état followed one
after the other, as different groups of nobles placed their candidates on the
throne and killed as many of their opponents as they could.
The dynasty that emerged from this confusion was called Koryŏ (935–
1392). (The English word Korea derives from the name of this dynasty.)
During this time Korea developed more independently of the China model
than it had in Silla times. This was not because the Chinese model was
rejected; the Koryŏ (KAWR-yoh) capital was laid out on the Chinese
model, and the government was closely patterned on the Tang system. But
despite Chinese influence, Korean society remained deeply aristocratic.
The founder of the dynasty, Wang Kon (877–943), was a man of
relatively obscure maritime background, and he needed the support of the
old aristocracy to maintain control. His successors introduced civil service
examinations on the Chinese model, as well as examinations for Buddhist
clergy, but because the aristocrats were the best educated and the
government schools admitted only the sons of aristocrats, this system
served primarily to solidify their control.
At the other end of the social scale, the number of people in the serf-
slave stratum seems to have increased. This lowborn stratum included not
only privately held slaves but also large numbers of government slaves as
well as government workers in mines, porcelain factories, and other
government industries. Sometimes entire villages or groups of villages were
considered lowborn. There were occasional slave revolts, and some freed
slaves did rise in status, but prejudice against anyone with slave ancestors
was so strong that the law provided that “only if there is no evidence of
lowborn status for eight generations in one’s official household registration
may one receive a position in the government.”2 In China and Japan, by
contrast, slavery was a much more minor element in the social landscape.
The commercial economy declined in Korea during this period. Except
for the capital, there were no cities of commercial importance, and in the
countryside the use of money declined. One industry that did flourish was
ceramics.
Buddhism remained strong throughout Korea, and monasteries became
major centers of art and learning. As in Song China and Kamakura Japan,
Chan (Zen) and Tiantai (Tendai) were the leading Buddhist teachings. The
founder of the Koryŏ Dynasty attributed the dynasty’s success to the
Buddha’s protection, and he and his successors were ardent patrons of the
church. The entire Buddhist canon was printed in the eleventh century and
again in the thirteenth. As in medieval Europe, aristocrats who entered the
church occupied the major abbacies. As in Japan (but not China), some
monasteries accumulated military power.
The Koryŏ Dynasty was preserved in name long after the ruling family
had lost most of its power. In 1170 the palace guards massacred the civil
officials at court and placed a new king on the throne. After incessant
infighting among the generals and a series of coups, in 1196 the general
Ch’oe Ch’ung-hon took control. The domination of Korea by the Ch’oe
family was much like the contemporaneous situation in Japan, where
warrior bands were seizing power. Moreover, because the Ch’oes were
content to dominate the government while leaving the Koryŏ king on the
throne, they had much in common with the Japanese shoguns, who
followed a similar strategy.
Korea, from early times, recognized China as being in many ways
senior to it, but when strong non-Chinese states emerged to its north in
Manchuria, Korea was ready to accommodate them as well. Koryŏ’s first
neighbor to the north was the Khitan state of Liao, which in 1010 invaded
and sacked the capital. To avoid destruction, Koryŏ acceded to vassal status,
but Liao invaded again in 1018. This time Koryŏ was able to repel the
nomadic Khitans. Afterward a defensive wall was built across the Korean
peninsula south of the Yalu River. When the Jurchens and their Jin Dynasty
supplanted the Khitans’ Liao Dynasty, Koryŏ agreed to send them tribute as
well.
 As mentioned in Chapter 12, Korea was conquered by the Mongols, and
the figurehead Koryŏ kings were moved to Beijing, where they married
Mongol princesses, their descendants becoming more Mongol than Korean.
This was a time of hardship for the Korean people. In the year 1254 alone,
the Mongols enslaved two hundred thousand Koreans and took them away.
Ordinary people in Korea suffered grievously when their land was used as a
launching pad for the huge Mongol invasions of Japan. In this period Korea
also suffered from frequent attacks by Japanese pirates, somewhat like the
depredations of the Vikings in Europe a little earlier (see “Invasions and
Migrations” in Chapter 14).
When Mongol rule in China fell apart in the mid-fourteenth century, it
declined in Korea as well. Chinese rebels opposing the Mongols entered
Korea and even briefly captured the capital in 1361. When the Ming
Dynasty was established in China in 1368, the Koryŏ court was unsure how
to respond. In 1388 a general, Yi Song-gye, was sent to oppose a Ming
army at the northwest frontier. When he saw the strength of the Ming, he
concluded that making an alliance was more sensible than fighting, and he
led his troops back to the capital, where in 1392 he usurped the throne,
founding the Chosŏn Dynasty.
Japan’s Heian Period, 794–1185
How did the Heian form of government contribute to the cultural flowering of Japan
in this period?

As described in Chapter 7, during the seventh and eighth centuries the

Japanese ruling house pursued a vigorous policy of adopting useful ideas,
techniques, and policies from the more advanced civilization of China. The
rulers built a splendid capital along Chinese lines in Nara and fostered the
growth of Buddhism. Monasteries grew so powerful in Nara, however, that
in less than a century the court decided to move away from them and
encourage other sects of Buddhism.
The new capital was built about twenty-five miles away at Heian (HAY-
ahn) (modern Kyoto). Like Nara, Heian was modeled on the Tang capital of
Chang’an. For the first century at Heian the government continued to
follow Chinese models, but it turned away from them with the decline of
the Tang Dynasty in the late ninth century. During the Heian period (794–
1185), Japan witnessed a literary and cultural flowering under the rule of
the Fujiwara family.

Fujiwara Rule
Only the first two Heian emperors were much involved in governing. By
860 political management had been taken over by a series of regents from
the Fujiwara family, who supplied most of the empresses in this period. The
emperors continued to be honored, but the Fujiwaras ruled. Fujiwara
dominance represented the privatization of political power and a return to
clan politics. Political history thus took a very different course in Japan than
in China, where, when a dynasty weakened, military strongmen would
compete to depose the emperor and found their own dynasties. In Japan for
the next thousand years, political contenders sought to manipulate the
emperors rather than supplant them.
The Fujiwaras reached the apogee of their glory under Fujiwara
Michinaga (r. 995–1027). Like many aristocrats of the period, he was
learned in Buddhism, music, poetry, and Chinese literature and history. He
dominated the court for more than thirty years as the father of four
empresses, the uncle of two emperors, and the grandfather of three
emperors. He acquired great landholdings and built fine palaces for himself
and his family. After ensuring that his sons could continue to rule, he retired
to a Buddhist monastery, all the while continuing to maintain control.
By the end of the eleventh century several emperors who did not have
Fujiwara mothers had found a device to counter Fujiwara control: they
abdicated but continued to exercise power by controlling their young sons
on the throne. This system of rule has been called cloistered government
because the retired emperors took Buddhist orders, while maintaining
control of the government from behind the scenes.

Aristocratic Culture
A brilliant aristocratic culture developed in the Heian period. In the capital
at Heian, nobles, palace ladies, and imperial family members lived a highly
refined and leisured life. In their society, niceties of birth, rank, and
breeding counted for everything. The elegance of one’s calligraphy and the
allusions in one’s poems were matters of intense concern to both men and
women at court, as was their dress. Courtiers did not like to leave the
capital, and some like the court lady Sei Shonagon shuddered at the sight of
ordinary working people. In her Pillow Book, she wrote of encountering a
group of commoners on a pilgrimage: “They looked like so many basket-
worms as they crowded together in their hideous clothes, leaving hardly an
inch of space between themselves and me. I really felt like pushing them all
over sideways.”3
In this period a new script was developed for writing Japanese
phonetically. Each symbol was based on a simplified Chinese character and
represented one of the syllables used in Japanese (such as ka, ki, ku, ke, ko).
Although “serious” essays, histories, and government documents continued
to be written in Chinese, less formal works such as poetry and memoirs
were written in Japanese. Mastering the new writing system took much less
time than mastering writing in Chinese and this aided the spread of literacy,
especially among women in court society.
In the Heian period, women played important roles at all levels of
society. Women educated in the arts and letters could advance at court as
attendants to the ruler’s empress and other consorts. Women could inherit
property from their parents, and they would compete with their brothers for
shares of the family property. In political life, marrying a daughter to an
emperor or shogun was one of the best ways to gain power, and women
often became major players in power struggles.
The literary masterpiece of this period is The Tale of Genji, written in
Japanese by Lady Murasaki over several years (ca. 1000–1010). This long
narrative depicts a cast of characters enmeshed in court life, with close
attention to dialogue and personality. Murasaki also wrote a diary that is
similarly revealing of aristocratic culture.

The Tale of Genji In this scene from a twelfth-century painting illustrating The Tale of
Genji, Genji has his inkstone and brushes ready to respond to the letter he is reading.

Murasaki was one of many women writers in this period. The wife of a
high-ranking court official wrote a poetic memoir of her unhappy twenty-
year marriage to him and his rare visits. A woman wrote both an
autobiography that related her father’s efforts to find favor at court and a
love story of a hero who travels to China. Another woman even wrote a
history that concludes with a triumphal biography of Fujiwara Michinaga.
Buddhism remained very strong throughout the Heian period. A mission
sent to China in 804 included two monks in search of new texts. One of the
monks, Saichō, spent time at the monasteries on Mount Tiantai and brought
back the Buddhist teachings associated with that mountain (called Tendai in
Japanese). Tendai’s basic message is that all living beings share the Buddha
nature and can be brought to salvation. Once back in Japan, Saichō
established a monastery on Mount Hiei outside Kyoto, which grew to be
one of the most important monasteries in Japan. By the twelfth century this
monastery and its many branch temples had vast lands and a powerful army
of monk-soldiers to protect its interests.
Kūkai, the other monk on the 804 mission to China, came back with
texts from another school of Buddhism — Shingon, or “True Word,” a form
of Esoteric Buddhism. Esoteric Buddhism is based on the idea that
teachings containing the secrets of enlightenment had been secretly
transmitted from the Buddha. People can gain access to these mysteries
through initiation into the mandalas (cosmic diagrams), mudras (gestures),
and mantras (verbal formulas). On his return to Japan, Kūkai attracted many
followers and was allowed to establish a monastery at Mount Kōya, south
of Osaka. The popularity of Esoteric Buddhism was a great stimulus to
Buddhist art.
The Samurai and the Kamakura Shogunate,
1185–1333
What were the causes and consequences of military rule in Japan?

The gradual rise of a warrior elite over the course of the Heian period
finally brought an end to the domination of the Fujiwaras and other Heian
aristocratic families. In 1156 civil war broke out between the Taira and
Minamoto warrior clans based in western and eastern Japan, respectively.
Both clans relied on skilled warriors, later called samurai, who were rapidly
becoming a new social class. A samurai and his lord had a double bond: in
return for the samurai’s loyalty and service, the lord granted him land or
income. From 1159 to 1181 a Taira named Kiyomori dominated the court,
taking the position of prime minister and marrying his daughter to the
emperor. His relatives became governors of more than thirty provinces.
Still, the Minamoto clan managed to defeat the Taira, and the Minamoto
leader, Yoritomo, became shogun, or general-in-chief. With him began the
Kamakura Shogunate (1185–1333). This period is often referred to as
Japan’s feudal period because it was dominated by a military class whose
members were tied to their superiors by bonds of loyalty and supported by
landed estates rather than salaries.

Military Rule
The similarities between military rule in Japan and feudalism in medieval
Europe during roughly the same period have fascinated scholars, as have
the very significant differences. In Europe feudalism emerged out of the
fusion of Germanic and Roman social institutions and flowered under the
impact of Muslim and Viking invasions. In Japan military rule evolved from
a combination of the native warrior tradition and Confucian ethical
principles of duty to superiors.
The emergence of the samurai was made possible by the development
of private landholding. The government land allotment system, copied from
Tang China, began breaking down in the eighth century (much as it did in
China). By the ninth century local lords had begun escaping imperial taxes
and control by commending (formally giving) their land to tax-exempt
entities such as monasteries, the imperial family, and high-ranking officials.
The local lord then received his land back as a tenant and paid his protector
a small rent. The monastery or privileged individual received a steady
income from the land, and the local lord escaped imperial taxes and control.
By the end of the thirteenth century most land seems to have been taken off
the tax rolls this way. Unlike peasants in medieval Europe, where similar
practices of commendation occurred, those working the land in Japan never
became serfs. Moreover, Japanese lords rarely lived on the lands they had
rights in, unlike English or French lords who lived on their manors.
Samurai (SAM-moo-righ) resembled European knights in several ways.
Both were armed with expensive weapons, and both fought on horseback.
Just as the knight was supposed to live according to the chivalric code, so
Japanese samurai were expected to live according to Bushido (boo-she-
doh), or “way of the warrior.” Physical hardship was accepted as routine,
and soft living was despised as weak and unworthy. Disloyalty brought
social disgrace, which the samurai could avoid only through seppuku, ritual
suicide by slashing his belly.
 The Shogun Minamoto Yoritomo in Court Dress
This wooden sculpture, 27.8 inches tall, was made
about a half century after Yoritomo’s death for use in
a shrine dedicated to his memory. The bold shapes
convey Yoritomo’s dignity and power.

The Kamakura Shogunate derives its name from Kamakura, a city near
modern Tokyo that was the seat of the Minamoto clan. The founder,
Yoritomo, ruled the country much the way he ran his own estates,
appointing his retainers to newly created offices. To cope with the
emergence of hard-to-tax estates, he put military land stewards in charge of
seeing to the estates’ proper operation. To bring order to the lawless
countryside, he appointed military governors to oversee the military and
enforce the law in the provinces. They supervised the conduct of the land
stewards in peacetime and commanded the provincial samurai in war.
Yoritomo’s wife, Masako, protected the interests of her own family, the
Hōjōs, especially after Yoritomo died. She went so far as to force her first
son to abdicate when he showed signs of preferring the family of his wife to
the family of his mother. She later helped her brother take power away from
her father. Thus the process of reducing power holders to figureheads went
one step further in 1219 when the Hōjō family reduced the shogun to a
figurehead. The Hōjō family held the reins of power for more than a century
until 1333.
 The Mongols’ two massive seaborne invasions in 1274 and 1281 were a
huge shock to the shogunate. Although the Hōjō regents, with the help of a
“divine wind” (kamikaze), repelled the Mongols, they were unable to
reward their vassals in the traditional way because little booty was found
among the wreckage of the Mongol fleets. Discontent grew among the
samurai, and by the fourteenth century the entire political system was
breaking down. Both the imperial and the shogunate families were fighting
among themselves. As land grants were divided, samurai became
impoverished.
The factional disputes among Japan’s leading families remained
explosive until 1331, when the emperor Go-Daigo tried to recapture real
power. Go-Daigo destroyed the Kamakura Shogunate in 1333 but soon lost
the loyalty of his followers. By 1336 one of his most important military
supporters, Ashikaga Takauji, had turned on him and established the
Ashikaga Shogunate, which lasted until 1573. Takauji’s victory was also a
victory for the samurai, who took over civil authority throughout Japan.

Cultural Trends
The cultural distance between the elites and the commoners narrowed a
little during the Kamakura period. Buddhism was spread to ordinary
Japanese by energetic preachers. Honen (1133–1212) propagated the Pure
Land teaching, preaching that paradise could be reached through simple
faith in the Buddha and repeating the name of the Buddha Amitabha (ah-
mee-tah-bah). His follower Shinran (1173–1263) taught that monks should
not shut themselves off in monasteries but should marry and have children.
A different path was promoted by Nichiren (1222–1282), a fiery and
intolerant preacher who proclaimed that to be saved, people had only to
invoke sincerely the Lotus Sutra, one of the most important of the Buddhist
sutras. These lay versions of Buddhism found a receptive audience among
ordinary people in the countryside.
It was also during the Kamakura period that Zen came to flourish in
Japan. Zen teachings originated in Tang China, where they were known as
Chan (see “Tang Culture” in Chapter 7). Rejecting the authority of the
sutras, Zen teachers claimed the superiority of mind-to-mind transmission
of Buddhist truth. This teaching found eager patrons among the samurai,
who were attracted to its discipline and strong master-disciple bonds.
 During the Kamakura period, war tales continued the tradition of long
narrative prose works. The Tale of the Heike tells the story of the fall of the
Taira family and the rise of the Minamoto clan. The tale reached a large and
mostly illiterate audience because blind minstrels would chant sections to
the accompaniment of a lute. The story is suffused with the Buddhist idea of
the transience of life and the illusory nature of glory. Yet it also celebrates
strength, courage, loyalty, and pride.
After stagnating in the Heian period, agricultural productivity began to
improve in the Kamakura period, and the population grew, reaching perhaps
8.2 million by 1333. Much like farmers in contemporary Song China,
Japanese farmers adopted new strains of rice, often double-cropped in
warmer regions, made increased use of fertilizers, and improved irrigation
for paddy rice. Besides farming, ordinary people made their livings as
artisans, traders, fishermen, and entertainers. A vague category of outcasts
occupied the fringes of society, in a manner reminiscent of India. Buddhist
strictures against killing and Shinto ideas of pollution probably account for
the exclusion of butchers, leatherworkers, morticians, and lepers, but other
groups, such as bamboo whisk makers, were also traditionally excluded for
no obvious reason.
Chapter Summary
The countries of East Asia — China, Japan, and Korea — all underwent
major changes in the six centuries from 800 to 1400. In China the loosening
of the central government’s control of the economy stimulated trade and
economic growth. Between 800 and 1100 China’s population doubled to
100 million. The economic center of China shifted from the north China
plain to the south, the milder region drained by the Yangzi River.
In the Song period, the booming economy and the invention of printing
allowed for expansion of the scholar-official class, which came to dominate
government and society. Repeatedly, the Song government chose to pay
tribute to its militarily powerful neighbors — first the Khitans, then the
Jurchens, then the Mongols — to keep the peace. Eventually, however,
Song fell to the Mongols.
During the Koryŏ Dynasty, Korea evolved more independently of China
than it had previously, in part because it had to placate powerful non-
Chinese neighbors. The commercial economy declined, and an increasing
portion of the population was unfree, working as slaves for aristocrats or the
government. Military strongmen dominated the government, but their
armies were no match for the much larger empires to their north. The period
of Mongol domination was particularly difficult.
In Heian Japan, a tiny aristocracy dominated government and society. A
series of regents, most of them from the Fujiwara family and fathers-in-law
of the emperors, controlled political life. The aristocratic court society put
great emphasis on taste and refinement. Women were influential at the court
and wrote much of the best literature of the period. The Heian aristocrats
had little interest in life in the provinces, which gradually came under the
control of military clans.
After a civil war between the two leading military clans, a military
government, called the shogunate, was established. Two invasions by the
Mongols caused major crises in military control. Although both times the
invaders were repelled, defense costs were high. During this period culture
was less centered on the capital, and Buddhism spread to ordinary people.
 CONNECTIONS

East Asia faced many internal and external challenges between 800 and
1400, and the ways societies responded to them shaped their subsequent
histories. In China the first four centuries of this period saw economic
growth, urbanization, the spread of printing, and the expansion of the
educated class. In Korea and Japan aristocratic dominance and military rule
were more typical of the era. All three areas, but especially China and
Korea, faced an unprecedented challenge from the Mongols, with Japan less
vulnerable because it did not share a land border. The challenges of the
period did not hinder creativity in the literary and visual arts; among the
greatest achievements of this era are the women’s writings of Heian Japan,
such as The Tale of Genji, and landscape painting of both Song and Yuan
China.
Europe during these six centuries, the subject of the next chapter, also
faced invasions from outside; in its case, the pagan Vikings were especially
dreaded. Europe had a social structure more like that of Korea and Japan
than of China, with less centralization and a more dominant place in society
for military men. The centralized church in Europe, however, was unlike
anything known in East Asian history. These centuries in Europe saw a
major expansion of Christendom, especially to Scandinavia and eastern
Europe, through both conversion and migration. Although there were scares
that the Mongols would penetrate deeper into Europe, the greatest challenge
in Europe was the Black Death and the huge loss of life that it caused.
Chapter 13 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

dynastic cycle (p. 306)

compass (p. 307)
scholar-official class (p. 309)
examination system (p. 309)
movable type (p. 311)
Neo-Confucianism (p. 312)
concubine (p. 313)
foot binding (p. 313)
cloistered government (p. 318)
The Tale of Genji (p. 318)
Esoteric Buddhism (p. 319)
shogun (p. 320)
Bushido (p. 321)
Zen (p. 322)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. What made possible the expansion of the Chinese economy, and what were the
outcomes of this economic growth? (p. 306)
2. How did the civil service examinations and the scholar-official class shape Chinese
society and culture, and what impact did the Mongol conquest have on them? (p.
308)
3. How did Korean society and culture develop in an age when its northern neighbors
were Khitans, Jurchens, and Mongols? (p. 315)
4. How did the Heian form of government contribute to the cultural flowering of Japan
in this period? (p. 317)
5. What were the causes and consequences of military rule in Japan? (p. 320)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. What elements in women’s lives in Song China were similar to those in other parts
of the world? What elements were more distinctive?
2. How did the impact of Mongol rule on China compare to its impact on Muslim lands
(Chapter 9)?
3. How did being an island country affect Japan’s history? What other island
countries make good comparisons?
4. Did the countries of East Asia have more in common at the end of the Mongol
period than they did in the seventh or eighth century (Chapter 7)?

CHRONOLOGY

750–1258 • Abbasid caliphate (Ch. 9)

794–1185 • Heian period in Japan
804 • Two Japanese Buddhist monks, Saichō and Kū kai,
travel to China
935–1392 • Koryŏ Dynasty in Korea
960–1279 • Song Dynasty in China; great age of scholar-official
class
ca. 1000–1010 • The Tale of Genji
1119 • First reported use of compass
1120s • First government-issued paper money in Song China
1130–1200 • Zhu Xi, Neo-Confucian philosopher
1185–1333 • Kamakura Shogunate in Japan; Zen Buddhism
flourishes
1206 • Temujin proclaimed Chinggis Khan (Ch. 12)
1215 • Magna Carta (Ch. 14)
1234–1368 • Mongols’ Yuan Dynasty in China
ca. 1275–1292 • Marco Polo travels in China
1347 • Black Death arrives in Europe (Ch. 14)
14
Europe and Western Asia in the Middle
Ages

800–1450
Chapter Preview

Political Developments
• How did medieval rulers restore order and centralize political power?

The Christian Church

• How did the Christian Church enhance its power and create new institutions
and religious practices?

The Crusades
• What were the causes, course, and consequences of the Crusades?

The Life of the People

• How did the lives of common people, nobles, and townspeople differ, and
what new commercial developments increased wealth?

Learning and Culture

• What were the primary educational and cultural developments in medieval
Europe?

Crises of the Later Middle Ages

• Why have the later Middle Ages been seen as a time of calamity and crisis?

BY THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY SCHOLARS IN THE GROWING CITIES OF northern Italy

had begun to think that they were living in a new era, one in which the glories of ancient
Greece and Rome were being reborn. What separated their time from classical antiquity, in
their opinion, was a long period of darkness and barbarism, to which a seventeenth-century
professor gave the name “Middle Ages.” In this conceptualization, the history of Europe was
divided into three periods — ancient, medieval, and modern — an organization that is still in
use today. Later, the history of other parts of the world was sometimes fit into this three-
period schema as well, with discussions of the “classical” period in Maya history, of
“medieval” India and China, and of “modern” everywhere.
Today historians often question whether labels of past time periods for one culture work
on a global scale, and some scholars are uncertain about whether “Middle Ages” is a just
term even for European history. They assert that the Middle Ages was not simply a period of
stagnation between two high points but rather a time of enormous intellectual energy and
creative vitality. While agrarian life continued to dominate Europe, political structures that
would influence later European history began to form, and Christianity continued to spread.
People at the time did not know that they were living in an era that would later be labeled
“middle” or sometimes even “dark,” and we can wonder whether they would have shared
this negative view of their own times.
Political Developments
How did medieval rulers restore order and centralize political power?

In 800 Charlemagne, the most powerful of the Carolingians, was crowned

Holy Roman emperor. After his death his empire was divided among his
grandsons, and their kingdoms were weakened by nobles vying for power.
In addition, beginning around 800 western Europe was invaded by several
different groups. Local nobles were the strongest power, and common
people turned to them for protection. By the eleventh century, however,
rulers in some parts of Europe had reasserted authority and were slowly
building centralized states.

Invasions and Migrations

The Vikings were pagan Germanic peoples from Norway, Sweden, and
Denmark. They began to make overseas expeditions, which they themselves
called vikings, and the word came to be used for people who went on such
voyages as well. Viking voyages and attacks began around 800, and by the
mid-tenth century the Vikings had brought large sections of continental
Europe and Britain under their sway. In the east they sailed the rivers of
Russia as far as the Black Sea. In the west they established permanent
settlements in Iceland and short-lived ones in Greenland and Newfoundland
in Canada (Map 14.1).
 MAP 14.1 Invasions and Migrations of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries
This map shows the Viking, Magyar, and Muslim invasions and migrations in the ninth and
tenth centuries. Compare it with Map 8.2 on the barbarian migrations of late antiquity.

Against Viking ships navigated by experienced and fearless sailors, the

Carolingian Empire, with no navy, was helpless. At first the Vikings
attacked and sailed off laden with booty. Later, on returning, they settled
down and colonized the areas they had conquered, often marrying local
women and adopting the local languages and some of the customs.
 Along with the Vikings, groups of central European steppe peoples
known as Magyars (MAG-yahrz) also raided villages in the late ninth
century. Moving westward, small bands of Magyars on horseback reached
far into Europe. They subdued northern Italy, compelled Bavaria and
Saxony to pay tribute, and penetrated into the Rhineland and Burgundy.
Western Europeans thought of them as returning Huns, so the Magyars
came to be known as Hungarians.
From North Africa, the Muslims also began new encroachments in the
ninth century. They already ruled most of Spain and now conquered Sicily,
driving northward into central Italy and the south coast of France.
From the perspective of those living in what had been Charlemagne’s
empire, Viking, Magyar, and Muslim attacks contributed to increasing
disorder and violence. Italian, French, and English sources often describe
this period as one of terror and chaos. People in other parts of Europe might
have had a different opinion. In Muslim Spain and Sicily scholars worked
in thriving cities, and new crops such as cotton and sugar enhanced ordinary
people’s lives. In eastern Europe the Magyars settled in an area that is now
Hungary, becoming a strong kingdom. A Viking point of view might be the
most positive, for by 1100 descendants of the Vikings not only ruled their
homelands in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark but also ruled northern
France (a province known as Normandy, or land of the Northmen),
England, Sicily, Iceland, and Russia, with an outpost in Greenland and
occasional voyages to North America.

“Feudalism” and Manorialism

The large-scale division of Charlemagne’s empire into three parts in the
ninth century led to a decentralization of power at the local level in western
and central Europe. Civil wars weakened the power and prestige of kings,
who could do little about regional violence. Likewise, the invasions of the
ninth century, especially those of the Vikings, weakened royal authority.
The Frankish kings were unable to halt the invaders, and the local
aristocracy had to assume responsibility for defense. Thus, in the ninth and
tenth centuries, aristocratic families increased their authority in their local
territories, and distant and weak kings could not interfere. Common people
turned for protection to the strongest power, the local nobles.
The most powerful nobles were those who gained warriors’ allegiance,
often symbolized in an oath-swearing ceremony of homage and fealty that
grew out of earlier Germanic oaths of loyalty. In this ceremony a warrior
(knight) swore his loyalty as a vassal to the more powerful individual, who
became his lord. In return for the vassal’s loyalty, aid, and military
assistance, the lord promised him protection and material support. This
support might be a place in the lord’s household but was more likely land of
the vassal’s own, called a fief (feudum in Latin). The fief, which might
contain forests, churches, and towns, technically still belonged to the lord,
and the vassal had only the use of it. Earlier legal scholars and historians
identified these personal ties of loyalty cemented by grants of land as a
political and social system they termed feudalism. More recently,
increasing numbers of medieval historians have found the idea of
“feudalism” problematic, because the word was a later invention and the
system was so varied and changed over time. They still point to the personal
relationship between lords and vassals as the key way that political
authority was organized and note that the church also received and granted
land. In the Byzantine Empire as well, nobles, monasteries, and church
officials held the most land.
Peasants living on a fief produced the food and other goods necessary to
maintain the nobles and churchmen, under a system of manorialism, in
which they exchanged their work for the lord’s protection. They received
land to farm, but were tied to the land by various payments and services.
Most significantly, a peasant lost his or her freedom and became a serf, part
of the lord’s permanent labor force. Unlike slaves, serfs were personally
free, but they were bound to the land and unable to leave it without the
lord’s permission.
By around 1000 the majority of western Europeans were serfs. In
eastern Europe the transition was slower but longer lasting. Western
European peasants began to escape from serfdom in the later Middle Ages,
at the very point that serfs were more firmly tied to the land in eastern
Europe, especially in eastern Germany, Poland, and Russia.

The Restoration of Order

The eleventh century witnessed the beginnings of political stability in much
of Europe. Foreign invasions gradually declined, and in some parts of
Europe lords in control of large territories built up their power even further,
becoming kings over growing and slowly centralizing states. In a process
similar to that occurring at the same time in the West African kingdom of
Ghana (see “African Kingdoms and Empires” in Chapter 10), rulers
expanded their territories and extended their authority by developing larger
bureaucracies, armies, judicial systems, and other institutions to maintain
control, as well as taxation systems to pay for them. These new institutions
and practices laid the foundations for modern national states. Political
developments in England, France, Germany, and Hungary provide good
examples of the beginnings of the national state in the central Middle Ages.
The Viking Canute (kah-NOOT) (r. 1016–1035) made England the
center of his empire, while promoting a policy of assimilation and
reconciliation between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. At the same time,
England was divided into local shires, or counties, each under the
jurisdiction of a sheriff appointed by the king. When Canute’s heir Edward
died childless, there were three claimants to the throne. One of these, Duke
William of Normandy, crossed the channel and won the English throne by
defeating and killing his Anglo-Saxon rival, Harold II, at the Battle of
Hastings in 1066. Later dubbed “the Conqueror,” William (r. 1066–1087)
limited the power of the nobles and church officials and built a unified
monarchy. He retained the Anglo-Saxon institution of sheriff, but named
Normans to the posts.
In 1128 William’s granddaughter Matilda married a powerful French
noble, Geoffrey of Anjou. Their son, who became Henry II of England,
inherited provinces in northwestern France from his father. When Henry
married the great heiress Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, he claimed lordship
over Aquitaine and other provinces in southwestern France as well. The
histories of England and France were thus closely intertwined in the Middle
Ages.
In the early twelfth century France consisted of a number of nearly
independent provinces, each governed by its local ruler. The work of
unifying and enlarging France began under Philip II (r. 1180–1223), also
known as Philip Augustus. By the end of his reign Philip was effectively
master of northern France, and by 1300 most of the provinces of modern
France had been added to the royal domain.
In central Europe the German king Otto I (r. 936–973) defeated many
other lords to build up his power, based on an alliance with and control of
the church. Under Otto I and his successors, a loose confederation
stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean developed. In this
confederation, later called the Holy Roman Empire, the emperor shared
power with princes, dukes, counts, city officials, archbishops, and bishops.
Frederick Barbarossa (r. 1152–1190) of the house of Hohenstaufen (HOH-
en-shtow-fen) tried valiantly to make the Holy Roman Empire a united
state. When he tried to enforce his authority over the cities of northern Italy,
however, they formed a league against him in alliance with the pope and
defeated him. Germany did not become a unified state.
In eastern Europe, the Hungarians formed a tribal federation and then
under Stephen I (r. 1000–1038) created a more centralized kingdom.
Stephen became a devout Christian, defeated pagan rivals militarily, and
received his crown from the pope as a symbol of their alliance. He further
consolidated his power through war, diplomacy, and strategic marriages,
and set up an administrative system based on counties. In the middle of the
thirteenth century Hungary was invaded by the Mongols (see “Chinggis
Khan and the Mongol Empire” in Chapter 12), which led the kings to
construct stone castles to defend against further attacks and develop new
military tactics.

Law and Justice

Throughout Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the law was a
hodgepodge of customs, feudal rights, and provincial practices. Rulers
wanted to blend these elements into a uniform system of rules acceptable
and applicable to all their peoples, though their success in doing so varied.
The French king Louis IX (r. 1226–1270) was famous for his concern
for justice. Each French province, even after being made part of the
kingdom of France, retained its unique laws and procedures. But Louis IX
created a royal judicial system, establishing the Parlement of Paris, a kind
of supreme court that heard appeals from lower courts.
Under Henry II (r. 1154–1189), England developed and extended a
common law — a law common to and accepted by the entire country —
which was unique in medieval Europe. Henry’s son John (r. 1199–1216),
however, met with serious disappointment after taking the throne. A
combination of royal debt, increased taxation, and military failures fed
popular discontent. A rebellion begun by northern barons grew, and in 1215
the barons forced him to attach his seal to the Magna Carta — the “Great
Charter,” which became the cornerstone of English justice and law. The
Magna Carta was simply meant to assert traditional rights enjoyed by
nobles, but in time it came to signify the broader principle that everyone,
including the king and the government, must obey the law. In 1222 King
Andrew II of Hungary was similarly forced by his nobles to agree to the
“Golden Bull,” affirming their freedom from taxation and right to disobey
him if they thought he was acting against the law.
Statements of legal principles such as the Magna Carta or the Golden
Bull were not how most people experienced the law in medieval Europe.
Instead they were involved in actual cases. Judges determined guilt or
innocence in a number of ways. In some cases, they ordered a trial by
ordeal, in which the accused might be tied hand and foot and dropped in a
lake or river. People believed that water was a pure substance and would
reject anything foul or unclean. Thus a person who sank was considered
innocent, while a person who floated was found guilty. Trials by ordeal
were relatively rare, and courts increasingly favored more rational
procedures, in which judges heard testimony, sought witnesses, and read
written evidence if it was available. Violent crimes were often punished by
public execution. Executioners were feared figures, but they were also well-
paid public officials and were a necessary part of the legal structure.
The Christian Church
How did the Christian Church enhance its power and create new institutions and
religious practices?

Kings and emperors were not the only rulers consolidating their power in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries; the papacy did as well, although the
popes’ efforts were sometimes challenged by medieval kings and emperors.
Despite such challenges, monasteries continued to be important places for
learning and devotion, and new religious orders were founded. Christianity
expanded into Europe’s northern and eastern regions, and Christian rulers
expanded their holdings in Muslim Spain.

Papal Reforms
During the ninth and tenth centuries the Western Christian (Roman) Church
came under the control of kings and feudal lords, who chose church
officials in their territories, granting them fiefs that provided an income and
expecting loyalty and service in return. Church offices were sometimes sold
outright — a practice called simony (SIGH-moh-nee). Although the Western
Church encouraged clerical celibacy, many priests were married or living
with women. Wealthy families from the city of Rome often chose popes
from among their members; thus popes paid more attention to their
families’ political fortunes or their own pleasures than to the church’s
institutional or spiritual health. Not surprisingly, clergy at all levels who had
bought their positions or had been granted them for political reasons
provided little spiritual guidance and were rarely models of high moral
standards.
Beginning in the eleventh century a series of popes began to assert their
power and also reformed the church. In 1054 the pope sent a delegation to
the patriarch of Constantinople demanding that he recognize the pope as the
head of the entire Christian Church. The patriarch refused, each side
declared the other heretics, and the outcome was a schism between the
Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches that deepened over the
centuries and continues today.
 Córdoba Mosque and Cathedral The huge arches of the Great Mosque at Córdoba
dwarf the cathedral built in its center after the city was conquered by Christian armies in
1236. During the reconquista (see “The Expansion of Western and Eastern Christianity”),
Christian kings often transformed mosques into churches, often by simply adding
Christian elements such as crosses and altars to existing structures.

Many popes believed that secular or lay control over the church was
largely responsible for the lack of moral leadership, so they proclaimed the
church independent from secular rulers. The Lateran Council of 1059
decreed that the authority and power to elect the pope rested solely in the
college of cardinals, a special group of priests from the major churches in
and around Rome.
Pope Gregory VII (pontificate 1073–1085) vigorously championed
reform and the expansion of papal power. He ordered all priests to give up
their wives and children or face dismissal, invalidated the ordination of
church officials who had purchased their offices, and placed nuns under
firmer control of male authorities. He believed that the pope was the vicar
of God on earth and that papal orders were the orders of God. He
emphasized the political authority of the papacy, ordering that any church
official selected or appointed by a layperson should be deposed, and any
layperson who appointed a church official should be excommunicated —
cut off from the sacraments and the Christian community. European rulers
protested this restriction of their power, and the strongest reaction came
from Henry IV, the ruler of Germany who later became the Holy Roman
emperor. The pope and the emperor used threats and diplomacy against
each other, and neither was the clear victor.

Monastic Life
Although they were in theory cut off from the world (see “Christian
Monasticism” in Chapter 8), monasteries and convents were deeply affected
by issues of money, rank, and power. During the ninth and tenth centuries
many monasteries fell under the control and domination of local feudal
lords. Powerful laymen appointed themselves or their relatives as abbots,
took the lands and goods of monasteries, and spent monastic revenues.
Medieval monasteries also provided noble boys with education and
opportunities for ecclesiastical careers. Although a few men who rose in the
ranks of church officials were of humble origins, most were from high-
status families. Social class also defined the kinds of religious life open to
women. Kings and nobles usually established convents for their female
relatives and other elite women, and the position of abbess, or head of a
convent, became the most powerful position a woman could hold in
medieval society.
Routines within individual monasteries varied widely from house to
house and from region to region. In every monastery, however, daily life
centered on the liturgy or Divine Office, psalms, and other prayers, which
monks and nuns said seven times a day and once during the night. Praying
was looked on as a vital service. Prayers were said for peace, rain, good
harvests, the civil authorities, the monks’ and nuns’ families, and their
benefactors. Monastic patrons in turn lavished gifts on the monasteries,
which often became very wealthy, controlling large tracts of land and the
peasants who farmed them. The combination of lay control and wealth
created problems for monasteries as monks and nuns concentrated on
worldly issues and spiritual observance and intellectual activity declined.
In the thirteenth century the growth of cities provided a new challenge
for the church. Many urban people thought that the church did not meet
their spiritual needs. They turned instead to heresy — that is, to an idea,
belief, or action that ran counter to doctrines that church leaders defined as
correct. Various beliefs judged to be heresies had emerged in Christianity
since its earliest centuries, and heretics were subject to punishment. In this
period, heresies often called on the church to give up its wealth and power.
Combating heresy became a principal task of new religious orders, most
prominently the Dominicans and Franciscans, who preached and ministered
to city dwellers; the Dominicans also staffed the papal Inquisition, a special
court designed to root out heresy.

Popular Religion
Religious practices varied widely from country to country and even from
province to province. But everywhere, religion permeated everyday life.
For Christians, the village church was the center of community life,
with the parish priest in charge of a host of activities. People gathered at the
church for services on Sundays and holy days, breaking the painful routine
of work. The feasts that accompanied celebrations were commonly held in
the churchyard. In everyday life people engaged in rituals and used
language heavy with religious symbolism. Everyone participated in village
processions to honor the saints and ask their protection. The entire calendar
was designed with reference to Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, events in
the life of Jesus and his disciples.
The Christian calendar was also filled with saints’ days. Veneration of
the saints had been an important tool of Christian conversion since late
antiquity (see “Christian Missionaries and Conversion” in Chapter 8), and
the cult of the saints was a central feature of popular culture in the Middle
Ages. People believed that the saints possessed supernatural powers that
enabled them to perform miracles, and each saint became the special
property of the locality in which his or her relics — remains or possessions
— rested. In return for the saint’s healing powers and support, peasants
would offer prayers, loyalty, and gifts. The Virgin Mary, Christ’s mother,
became the most important saint, with churches built and special hymns,
prayers, and ceremonies created in her honor.
Most people in medieval Europe were Christian, but there were small
Jewish communities scattered through many parts of Europe, as well as
Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, other Mediterranean islands, and
southeastern Europe. Increasing suspicion and hostility marked relations
among believers in different religions throughout the Middle Ages, but
there were also important similarities in the ways that each group
understood and experienced their faiths. In all three traditions, every major
life transition was marked by a ceremony that involved religious officials or
spiritual elements. In all three faiths, death was marked by religious rituals,
and the living had obligations to the dead, including prayers and special
mourning periods.

The Expansion of Western and Eastern Christianity

The eleventh and twelfth centuries saw an expansion of Christianity into
Scandinavia, the Baltic lands, eastern Europe, and Spain through wars, the
establishment of new bishoprics, and the migration of Christian colonists.
More and more Europeans began to think of themselves as belonging to a
realm of Christianity that was political as well as religious, a realm they
called Christendom.
Christian influences entered Scandinavia and the Baltic lands primarily
through the creation of dioceses (church districts headed by bishops). This
took place in Denmark and Norway in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and
then in Sweden and Finland. In all of these areas, Christian missionaries
preached, baptized, and built churches. Royal power advanced institutional
Christianity, and traditional Norse religions practiced by the Vikings were
outlawed. In central and eastern Europe the German emperor Otto I (see
“The Restoration of Order”) planted a string of dioceses along his northern
and eastern frontiers, hoping to pacify the newly conquered Slavs. German
nobles built castles, ruthlessly crushed revolts by Slavic peoples, and
encouraged German-speaking settlers to move east.
The expansion of Christianity in much of eastern Europe was organized
by the Eastern Orthodox Church. King Rastislav of Moravia (r. 846–870)
— now part of the Czech Republic — first sent envoys to Rome, but when
the pope refused to send missionaries, he turned to the Byzantine emperor
Michael III (r. 842–867), who sent the brothers Cyril (826–869) and
Methodius (815–885). They invented a Slavic alphabet using Greek
characters, later called the Cyrillic alphabet, and translated the Bible into
Old Church Slavonic, the first Slavic literary language. Slightly later the
rulers of Bulgaria weighed the benefits of Roman and Eastern Christianity,
and decided for Eastern Christianity when the Byzantine patriarch agreed
the Bulgarian Church could be independent and use Bulgarian as its official
language.
In the tenth century other missionaries spread Christianity, the Cyrillic
alphabet, and Byzantine art and architecture to what is now Russia.
Vladimir I (r. 980–1015), the ruler of the largest state in the area, Kievan
Rus, converted to Orthodox Christianity, in part to marry the daughter of
the Byzantine emperor. He ordered a mass baptism for the residents of Kiev
in a local river, just as western European kings had for their subjects several
centuries earlier (see “Christian Missionaries and Conversion” in Chapter
8).
The Iberian Peninsula was another area of Christian expansion. In about
950 Caliph Abd al-Rahman III (912–961) of the Umayyad Dynasty of
Córdoba ruled most of the peninsula. Christian Spain consisted of a number
of small kingdoms. In the eleventh century divisions and civil wars in the
caliphate of Córdoba allowed Christian armies to conquer an increasingly
large part of the Iberian Peninsula. By 1248 Christians held all of the
peninsula save for the small state of Granada in the south.
Fourteenth-century clerical writers would call the movement to expel
the Muslims the reconquista (ray-kon-KEES-tah) (reconquest) — a sacred
and patriotic crusade to wrest the country from “alien” Muslim hands. This
religious idea became part of Spanish political culture and of the national
psychology. Rulers of the Christian kingdoms of Spain increasingly passed
legislation discriminating against Muslims and Jews living under Christian
rule, and they attempted to exclude anyone from the nobility who could not
prove “purity of blood” — that is, that they had no Muslim or Jewish
ancestors.
Spain was not the only place in Europe where “blood” became a way of
understanding differences among people and a basis for discriminatory
laws. When Germans moved into eastern Europe and English forces took
over much of Ireland, they increasingly barred local people from access to
legal courts and denied them positions in monasteries or craft guilds. They
banned intermarriage between ethnic groups in an attempt to maintain
ethnic purity, even though everyone was Christian.
The Crusades
What were the causes, course, and consequences of the Crusades?

The expansion of Christianity in the Middle Ages was not limited to Europe
but extended to the eastern Mediterranean in what were later termed the
Crusades. Occurring from the late eleventh to the late thirteenth century,
the Crusades were wars sponsored by the papacy to recover the holy city of
Jerusalem from the Muslims.

Background and Motives

In the eleventh century the papacy had strong reasons for wanting to launch
an expedition against Muslims in the East. Such an expedition would
strengthen the pope’s claim to be the leader of Christian society in the West
and would bolster his claims to superiority over the patriarch of the Eastern
Orthodox Church (see “The Western Church and the Eastern Church” in
Chapter 8).
Popes and other church officials gained support for war in defense of
Christianity by promising spiritual benefits to those who joined a campaign
or died fighting. Preachers communicated these ideas widely and told
stories about warrior-saints who slew hundreds of enemies.
Religious zeal led increasing numbers of people to go on pilgrimages to
holy places, including Jerusalem. The Arab Muslims who had ruled
Jerusalem and the surrounding territory for centuries generally allowed
Christian pilgrims to travel freely, but in the late eleventh century the Seljuk
Turks took over Palestine, defeating both Arabic and Byzantine armies and
pillaging in Christian and Muslim parts of Asia Minor. They harassed
pilgrims and looted churches, and the emperor at Constantinople appealed
to the West for support. The emperor’s appeal fit well with papal aims, and
in 1095 Pope Urban II called for a great Christian holy war. Urban urged
Christian knights who had been fighting one another to direct their energies
against those he claimed were the true enemies of God, the Muslims.

The Course of the Crusades

Thousands of people of all classes responded to Urban’s call, joining what
became known as the First Crusade. The First Crusade was successful,
mostly because of the dynamic enthusiasm of the participants, who had
little more than religious zeal. They knew little of the geography or climate
of the Middle East and could never agree on a leader. Adding to these
disadvantages, supply lines were never set up, starvation and disease
wracked the army, and the Turks slaughtered hundreds of noncombatants.
Nevertheless, the army pressed on, besieging and taking several cities,
including Antioch. After three years on the road, and a monthlong siege, the
Crusaders took Jerusalem in July 1099 (Map 14.2).
 MAP 14.2 The Crusades, 1096–1270
The Crusaders took many different sea and land routes on their way to Jerusalem, often
crossing the lands of the Byzantine Empire, which led to conflict with Eastern Christians.
The Crusader kingdoms in the East lasted only briefly.

With Jerusalem taken, some Crusaders regarded their mission as

accomplished and set off for home. Others stayed, setting up institutions to
rule local territories and the Muslim population. Four small “Crusader
states” — Jerusalem, Edessa, Tripoli, and Antioch — were established, and
castles and fortified towns were built in these states to defend against
Muslim reconquest. Reinforcements arrived in the form of pilgrims and
fighters from Europe, so that there was constant coming and going by land
and more often by sea after the Crusaders conquered port cities. Most
Crusaders were men, but some women came along as well, assisting in the
besieging of towns and castles by providing water to fighting men or
foraging for food, working as washerwomen, and providing sexual services.
Between 1096 and 1270 the crusading ideal was expressed in eight
papally approved expeditions, though none after the First Crusade
accomplished very much. The Muslim states in the Middle East were
politically fragmented when the Crusaders first came, and it took them
about a century to reorganize. They did so dramatically under Saladin
(Salah al-Din), who unified Egypt and Syria. In 1187 the Muslims retook
Jerusalem, but the Christians held onto port towns, and Saladin allowed
pilgrims safe passage to Jerusalem. From that point on, the Crusader states
were more important economically than politically or religiously, giving
Italian and French merchants direct access to Eastern products.
After the Muslims retook Jerusalem, the crusading movement faced
other setbacks. During the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204), Crusaders stopped
in Constantinople, and when they were not welcomed, they sacked the city.
The Byzantine Empire splintered into three parts and soon consisted of little
more than the city of Constantinople. Moreover, the assault of one Christian
people on another made the split between the churches permanent and
discredited the entire crusading movement in the eyes of many Christians.
In the late thirteenth century Turkish armies, after gradually conquering
all other Muslim rulers, turned against the Crusader states. In 1291 the
Christians’ last stronghold, the port of Acre, fell. Knights then needed a new
battlefield for military actions, which some found in Spain, where the rulers
of Aragon and Castile continued fighting Muslims until 1492.

Consequences of the Crusades

The Crusades testified to the religious enthusiasm of the High Middle Ages
and the influence of the papacy, gave kings and the pope opportunities to
expand their bureaucracies, and provided an outlet for nobles’ dreams of
glory. The Crusades also introduced some Europeans to Eastern luxury
goods. They were also a boon to Italian merchants, who profited from
outfitting military expeditions as well as from the opening of new trade
routes and the establishment of trading communities in the Crusader states.
Despite these advantages, the Crusades had some seriously negative
sociopolitical consequences. For one thing, they proved to be a disaster for
Jewish-Christian relations. Inspired by the ideology of holy war, Christian
armies on their way to Jerusalem on the First Crusade joined with local
mobs to attack Jewish families and communities. Later Crusades brought
similar violence, enhanced by accusations that Jews engaged in the ritual
murder of Christians to use their blood in religious rites.
Legal restrictions on Jews gradually increased throughout Europe. Jews
were forbidden to have Christian servants or employees, to hold public
office, to appear in public on Christian holy days, or to enter Christian parts
of town without a badge marking them as Jews. They were prohibited from
engaging in any trade with Christians except money-lending and were
banished from England and France.
The long-term cultural legacy of the Crusades may have been more
powerful than their short-term impact. The ideal of a sacred mission to
conquer or convert Muslim peoples entered some Europeans’ consciousness
and was later used in other situations. When in 1492 Christopher Columbus
sailed west, he used the language of the Crusades in his diaries, and he
hoped to establish a Christian base in India from which a new crusade
against Islam could be launched (see “Causes of European Expansion” in
Chapter 16). Muslims later looked back on the Crusades as expansionist
and imperialist, the beginning of a long trajectory of Western attempts to
limit or destroy Islam.
The Life of the People
How did the lives of common people, nobles, and townspeople differ, and what new
commercial developments increased wealth?

In the late ninth century medieval intellectuals described Christian society

as composed of those who pray (the monks), those who fight (the nobles),
and those who work (the peasants). This three-category model does not
fully describe medieval society — there were degrees of wealth and status
within each group. Also, the model does not take townspeople and the
emerging commercial classes into consideration, and it completely excludes
those who were not Christian, such as Jews, Muslims, and pagans.
Furthermore, those who used the model, generally bishops and other church
officials, ignored the fact that each of these groups was made up of both
women and men. Despite — or perhaps because of — these limitations, the
model of the three categories was a powerful mental construct. Therefore,
we can use it to organize our investigation of life in the Middle Ages,
broadening it to include groups and issues that medieval authors did not.
(See “Christian Monasticism” in Chapter 8 for a discussion of the life of
monks and nuns — “those who pray.”)

The Life and Work of Peasants

The men and women who worked the land in medieval Europe made up
probably more than 90 percent of the population, as they did in China,
India, and other parts of the world where agriculture predominated. The
evolution of localized systems of authority into more centralized states had
relatively little impact on the daily lives of these peasants except when it
involved warfare.
Medieval theologians lumped everyone who worked the land into the
category of “those who work,” but in fact there were many levels of
peasants, ranging from slaves to free and sometimes very rich farmers. In
western Europe most peasants were serfs, required to stay in the village and
perform labor on the lord’s land. Serfs were also often obliged to pay fees
on common occurrences, such as marriage or inheritance of property.
 Serfdom was a hereditary condition. A person born a serf was likely to
die a serf, though many serfs did secure their freedom, and the economic
revival that began in the eleventh century (see “Towns, Cities, and the
Growth of Commercial Interests”) allowed some to buy their freedom.
Further opportunities for increased personal freedom came when lords
organized groups of villagers to migrate to sparsely settled frontier areas or
to cut down forests or fill in swamps so that there was more land available
for farming. Those who took on this extra work often gained a reduction in
traditional manorial obligations and an improvement of their social and
legal conditions.

Agricultural Work In this scene from a German manuscript written about 1190, men and
women of different ages are sowing seeds and harvesting grain. All residents of a village,
including children, engaged in agricultural tasks.

In the Middle Ages most European peasants, free and unfree, lived in
family groups in small villages that were part of a manor, the estate of a
lord (see “ ‘Feudalism’ and Manorialism”). The manor was the basic unit of
medieval rural organization and the center of rural life. Within the manors
of western and central Europe, villages were made up of small houses for
individual families, a church, and perhaps the large house of the lord,
surrounded by land farmed by the villagers. Peasant households consisted
of one married couple, their children, and perhaps one or two other
relatives, such as a grandparent or unmarried aunt. In southern and eastern
Europe, extended families were more likely to live in the same household or
very near one another. Between one-third and one-half of children died
before age five, though many people lived into their sixties.
The peasants’ work was typically divided according to gender. Men and
boys were responsible for clearing new land, plowing, and caring for large
animals; women and girls were responsible for the care of small animals,
spinning, and food preparation. Both sexes harvested and planted crops
used for food, worked in the vineyards, and harvested and prepared crops
needed by the textile industry — flax and plants used for dyeing cloth.
Beginning in the eleventh century water mills and windmills aided in some
tasks, especially grinding grain, and an increasing use of horses rather than
oxen speeded up plowing.
The mainstay of the diet for peasants everywhere — and for all other
classes — was bread. Peasants also ate vegetables; animals were too
valuable to be used for food on a regular basis, but weaker animals were
often slaughtered in the fall, and their meat was preserved with salt and
eaten on great feast days such as Christmas and Easter. Ale was the
universal drink of common people, and it provided needed calories and
some relief from the difficult and monotonous labor that filled people’s
lives.

The Life and Work of Nobles

The nobility, though a small fraction of the total population, influenced all
aspects of medieval culture. Nobles generally paid few taxes, and they had
power over the people living on their lands. They maintained order,
resolved disputes, and protected their dependents from attacks. They
appointed officials who oversaw agricultural production. The liberty and
privileges of the noble were inheritable, perpetuated by blood and not by
wealth alone.
The nobles’ primary obligation was warfare, just as it was for nobles
among the Mexica (see “The Aztec Empire” in Chapter 11) and samurai in
Japan (see “The Samurai and the Kamakura Shogunate” in Chapter 13).
Nobles were also obliged to attend the lord’s court on important occasions.
Originally, most knights focused solely on military skills, but around
1200 a different ideal of knighthood emerged, usually termed chivalry.
Chivalry was a code of conduct in which fighting to defend the Christian
faith and protecting one’s countrymen was declared to have a sacred
purpose. Other qualities gradually became part of chivalry: bravery,
generosity, honor, graciousness, mercy, and eventually gallantry toward
women, which came to be called “courtly love.” The chivalric ideal — and
it was an ideal, not a standard pattern of behavior — created a new standard
of masculinity for nobles, in which loyalty and honor remained the most
important qualities, but graceful dancing and intelligent conversation were
not considered unmanly.
Noblewomen played a large and important role in the functioning of the
estate. They were responsible for managing the household’s “inner
economy” — cooking, brewing, spinning, weaving, and caring for yard
animals. When the lord was away for long periods, his wife became the sole
manager of the family properties. Often the responsibilities of the estate fell
permanently to her if she became a widow.

Towns, Cities, and the Growth of Commercial Interests

Most people continued to live in villages in the Middle Ages, but the rise of
towns and the growth of a new business and commercial class were central
to Europe’s recovery after the disorders of the tenth century. Several factors
contributed to this growth: a rise in population; increased agricultural
output, which provided an adequate food supply for new town dwellers; and
enough peace and political stability to allow merchants to transport and sell
goods. In 1100 the largest cities in Europe were most likely Constantinople
and Córdoba, each with several hundred thousand residents; only Kaifeng
in China was larger. London and Paris were much smaller: Paris had
perhaps 50,000 residents and London 20,000.
Towns in western and eastern Europe were generally enclosed by walls,
as were towns in China and India. Most towns were first established as
trading centers, with a marketplace in the middle, and they were likely to
have a mint for coining money and a court for settling disputes. Residents
bargained with lords to make the town politically independent, which gave
them the right to hold legal courts, select leaders, and set taxes.
Townspeople also tried to acquire liberties, above all personal freedom,
for themselves. It gradually developed that an individual who lived in a
town for a year and a day, and was accepted by the townspeople, was free
of servile obligations and status. Thus serfs who fled their manors for towns
and were able to find work and avoid recapture became free of personal
labor obligations. In this way the growth of towns contributed to a slow
decline of serfdom in western Europe.
Merchants constituted the most powerful group in most towns, and they
were often organized into merchant guilds, which prohibited nonmembers
from trading, pooled members’ risks, monopolized city offices, and
controlled the economy of the town. Towns became centers of production as
well, and artisans in particular trades formed their own craft guilds.
Members of the craft guilds determined the quality, quantity, and price of
the goods produced and the number of apprentices and journeymen
affiliated with the guild. Formal membership in guilds was generally
limited to men, but women often worked in guild shops without official
membership.
Artisans generally made and sold products in their own homes, with
production taking place on the ground floor. The family lived above the
business on the second or third floor. As the business and the family
expanded, additional stories were added.
Most medieval towns and cities developed with little planning or
attention to sanitation. Horses and oxen, the chief means of transportation
and power, dropped tons of dung on the streets every year. It was universal
practice in the early towns to dump household waste, both animal and
human, into the road in front of one’s house. Despite such unpleasant
aspects of urban life, people wanted to get into medieval towns because
they represented opportunities for economic advancement, social mobility,
and improvement in legal status.

The Expansion of Trade and the Commercial Revolution

The growth of towns went hand in hand with a revival of trade as artisans
and craftsmen manufactured goods for local and foreign consumption. As in
the city-states of East Africa (see “The East African City-States” in Chapter
10), most trade centered in towns and was controlled by merchants. They
began to pool their money to finance trading expeditions, sharing the profits
and also sharing the risks.
Italian cities, especially Venice, led the West in trade in general and
completely dominated trade with Asia and North Africa, becoming much
larger urban communities in the process. Merchants from Florence and
Milan were also important traders, and they developed new methods of
accounting and record keeping that facilitated the movement of goods and
money. The towns of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres in Flanders were leaders in
long-distance trade and built up a vast industry in the manufacture of cloth,
aided by ready access to wool from England. The availability of raw wool
also encouraged the development of cloth manufacture within England
itself.
In much of northern Europe, the Hanseatic League (known as the Hansa
for short), a mercantile association of towns formed to achieve mutual
security and exclusive trading rights, controlled trade. During the thirteenth
century perhaps two hundred cities from Holland to Poland joined the
league. In cities such as Bruges and London, Hanseatic merchants secured
special concessions exempting them from all tolls and allowing them to
trade at local fairs. Hanseatic merchants also established foreign trading
centers.
These developments, which began in the eleventh century, added up to
what historians of Europe have called the commercial revolution, a direct
parallel to the economic revolution going on in Song Dynasty China at the
same time (see “The Medieval Chinese Economic Revolution” in Chapter
13). In giving the transformation this name, historians point not only to an
increase in the sheer volume of trade and in the complexity and
sophistication of business procedures but also to the new attitude toward
business and making money. Some even detect a “capitalist spirit” in which
making a profit was regarded as a good thing in itself.
The commercial revolution created a great deal of new wealth, which
did not escape the attention of kings and other rulers. Wealth could be
taxed, and through taxation kings could create strong and centralized states.
Through the activities of merchants, Europeans again saw products from
Africa and Asia in city marketplaces, as they had in Roman times. The
commercial revolution also provided the opportunity for thousands of serfs
in western Europe to improve their social position.
Learning and Culture
What were the primary educational and cultural developments in medieval Europe?

The towns that became centers of trade and production in the High Middle
Ages also developed into cultural and intellectual centers. Trade brought in
new ideas as well as merchandise, and in many cities a new type of
educational institution — the university — emerged. As universities
appeared, so did other cultural advancements, such as new forms of
architecture and literature.

Universities and Scholasticism

Since the time of the Carolingian Empire, monasteries and cathedral
schools had offered the only formal instruction available. In the eleventh
century in Bologna and other Italian cities, wealthy businessmen
established municipal schools; in the twelfth century municipal schools in
Italy and cathedral schools in France and Spain developed into much larger
universities, a transformation parallel to the opening of madrasas in Muslim
cities (see “Education and Intellectual Life” in Chapter 9).
The growth of the University of Bologna coincided with a revival of
interest in Roman law. The study of Roman law as embodied in Justinian’s
Code (see “Justinian’s Code of Law” in Chapter 8) had never completely
died out in the West, but in the eleventh century the discovery of a complete
manuscript of the code in a library in northern Italy led scholars to study
and teach Roman law intently.
At the Italian city of Salerno, interest in medicine had persisted for
centuries. Greek and Muslim physicians there had studied the use of herbs
as cures and had experimented with surgery. The twelfth century ushered in
a new interest in Greek medical texts and in the work of Arab and Greek
doctors. Ideas from this medical literature spread throughout Europe from
Salerno and became the basis of training for physicians at other medieval
universities. University training gave physicians high social status and
allowed them to charge high fees, although their diagnoses and treatments
were based on classical theories, not on interactions with patients.
 Although medicine and law were important academic disciplines in the
Middle Ages, theology was “the queen of sciences.” Paris became the place
to study theology, and in the first decades of the twelfth century students
from all over Europe crowded into the cathedral school of Notre Dame in
that city.
University professors were known as “schoolmen” or Scholastics. They
developed a method of thinking, reasoning, and writing in which questions
were raised and authorities cited on both sides of a question. The goal of the
Scholastic method was to arrive at definitive answers and to provide a
rational explanation for what was believed on faith.
One of the most famous Scholastics was Peter Abelard (1079–1142).
Fascinated by logic, Abelard used a method of systematic doubting in his
writing and teaching. Abelard was censured by a church council, but he was
highly popular with students.
Thirteenth-century Scholastics devoted an enormous amount of time to
collecting and organizing knowledge on all topics. These collections were
published as summae (SOO-may), or reference books. Thomas Aquinas
(1225–1274), a professor at the University of Paris, produced the most
famous collection, the Summa Theologica, which deals with a vast number
of theological questions.
Students lived in privately endowed residential colleges and were
considered to be lower-level members of the clergy, so that any student
accused of a crime was tried in church, rather than in city, courts. This
clerical status, along with widely held ideas about women’s lesser
intellectual capabilities, meant that university education was restricted to
men.
At all universities the standard method of teaching was the lecture. With
this method the professor read a passage from the Bible, Justinian’s Code,
or one of Aristotle’s treatises. He then explained and interpreted the
passage. Examinations were given after three, four, or five years of study,
when the student applied for a degree. If the candidate passed, he was
awarded the first, or bachelor’s, degree. Further study enabled the graduate
to try for the master’s and doctor’s degrees. Degrees were technically
licenses to teach. Most students, however, did not become teachers. They
staffed the expanding royal and papal administrations.

Cathedrals and a New Architectural Style

Religious devotion was expressed through rituals and institutions, but
people also wanted permanent visible representations of their piety, and
both church and city leaders wanted physical symbols of their wealth and
power. These aims found their outlet in the building of tens of thousands of
churches, chapels, abbeys, and, most spectacularly, cathedrals.

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, Begun 1163 This view offers a fine example of the twin
towers (left), the spire, the great rose window over the south portal (center), and the flying
buttresses that support the walls and the vaults. Like hundreds of other churches in
medieval Europe, it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. With a spire rising more than 300
feet, Notre Dame was the tallest building in Europe at the time of its construction.

In the tenth and eleventh centuries cathedrals were built in a style that
resembled ancient Roman architecture, with massive walls, rounded stone
arches, and small windows — features later labeled Romanesque. In the
twelfth century a new artistic and architectural style spread out from central
France. It was dubbed Gothic by later Renaissance architects. The basic
features of Gothic architecture — pointed arches, high ceilings, and exterior
supports called flying buttresses that carried much of the weight of the roof
— allowed unprecedented interior light. Stained-glass windows were cut
into the stone. Between 1180 and 1270 in France alone, eighty cathedrals,
about five hundred abbey churches, and tens of thousands of parish
churches were constructed in this new style. They are testimony to the deep
religious faith and piety of medieval people and also to the civic pride of
urban residents, for towns competed with one another to build the largest
and most splendid cathedral. Through its statuary, paintings, and stained-
glass windows, the cathedral was designed to teach the people the doctrines
of Christian faith through visual images, though these also often showed
scenes from the lives of the artisans and merchants who paid for them.

Vernacular Literature and Drama

Latin was the language used in university education, scholarly writing, and
works of literature. By the High Middle Ages, however, no one spoke Latin
as his or her first language. The barbarian invasions, the mixture of peoples,
and the usual changes in language that occurred over time resulted in a
variety of local dialects that blended words and linguistic forms in various
ways.
In the High Middle Ages, some authors departed from tradition and
began to write in their local dialect, that is, in the everyday language of
their region, which linguistic historians call the vernacular. This new
vernacular literature gradually transformed some local dialects into
literary languages, such as French, German, Italian, and English, while
other local dialects, such as Breton and Bavarian, remained means of oral
communication.
Stories and songs in the vernacular were composed and performed at the
courts of nobles and rulers. In southern Europe, especially in Provence in
southern France, poets who called themselves troubadours wrote and sang
lyric verses celebrating love, desire, beauty, and gallantry. Troubadours
included a few women, with their poetry often chiding knights who did not
live up to the ideal. The songs of the troubadours were widely imitated in
Italy, England, and Germany, so they spurred the development of vernacular
literature there as well. Drama, derived from the church’s liturgy, also
emerged as a distinct art form. Actors performed plays based on biblical
themes and on the lives of the saints; these dramas were presented in the
towns, first in churches and then at the marketplace. By combining comical
farce based on ordinary life with serious religious scenes, plays gave
ordinary people an opportunity to identify with religious figures and think
about their faith.
Beginning in the fourteenth century a variety of evidence attests to the
increasing literacy of laypeople. Wills and inventories reveal that many
people, not just nobles, possessed books — mainly devotional texts, but
also romances, manuals on manners and etiquette, histories, and sometimes
legal and philosophical texts. The spread of literacy represents a response to
the needs of an increasingly complex society.
Crises of the Later Middle Ages
Why have the later Middle Ages been seen as a time of calamity and crisis?

Between 1300 and 1450 Europeans experienced a series of shocks: climate

change, economic decline, plague, war, social upheaval, and increased
crime and violence. Death and preoccupation with death made the
fourteenth century one of the most wrenching periods of history in Europe
and western Asia.

The Great Famine and the Black Death

In the first half of the fourteenth century the Northern Hemisphere
experienced a series of climate changes, especially the beginning of a
period of colder and wetter weather that historical geographers label the
“little ice age.” Its effects were dramatic and disastrous. Population had
steadily increased in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but with colder
weather, poor harvests led to scarcity and starvation. The costs of grain,
livestock, and dairy products rose sharply. Almost all of northern Europe
suffered a terrible famine between 1315 and 1322, with dire social
consequences: peasants were forced to sell or mortgage their lands for
money to buy food, and the number of homeless people greatly increased,
as did petty crime. An undernourished population was dealt a further blow
in 1347 in the form of a virulent new disease, later called the Black Death
(Map 14.3). The symptoms of this disease were first described in 1331 in
southwestern China, then part of the Mongol Empire (see “The Spread of
Disease, Goods, and Ideas” in Chapter 12). From there it spread across
Central Asia by way of Mongol armies and merchant caravans, arriving in
the ports of the Black Sea by the 1340s. It then spread to Constantinople
and Alexandria, and within a year it was in Mecca, Damascus, Tunis,
Genoa, and Venice. From Italy it traveled farther in all directions, in several
waves.
 MAP 14.3 The Course of the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Europe
The plague followed trade routes as it spread into and across Europe. A few cities that
took strict quarantine measures were spared.

DNA evidence taken from the tooth sockets of skeletons in mass graves
in England, France, and the Netherlands indicates that the disease that
spread in the fourteenth century was the bubonic plague, caused by a
variant of the bacillus Yersinia pestis, the same bacillus that had caused the
Justinian Plague in the sixth century (see “The Byzantine Empire” in
Chapter 8). The disease normally afflicts rats. Fleas living on the infected
rats drink their blood and pass the bacteria that cause the plague on to the
next rat they bite. Usually the disease is limited to rats and other rodents,
but at certain points in history the fleas have jumped from their rodent hosts
to humans and other animals. The disease had dreadful effects on the body,
including growths in the armpit, groin, or neck; black spots or blotches
caused by bleeding under the skin; and violent coughing and spitting blood,
which were followed by death in two or three days.
At the time, most people believed that the Black Death was caused by
poisons or by “corrupted air” that carried the disease from place to place.
They sought to keep poisons from entering the body by smelling or
ingesting strong-smelling herbs, and they tried to remove the poisons
through bloodletting. They also prayed and did penance. Anxiety and fears
about the plague caused people to look for scapegoats, and they found them
in the Jews, who they believed had poisoned the wells of Christian
communities and thereby infected the drinking water. This charge led to the
murder of thousands of Jews across Europe.

Procession of Flagellants In this manuscript illumination from 1349, shirtless flagellants,

men and women who whipped and scourged themselves as penance for their and
society’s sins, walk through the Flemish city of Tournai, which had just been struck by the
plague. Many people believed that the Black Death was God’s punishment for humanity’s
wickedness.
 Historians estimate that across Europe the plague killed about one-third
of the population, with some places suffering even higher losses. Of a total
English population of perhaps 4.2 million, probably 1.4 million died of the
Black Death in its several visits. In Italy densely populated cities endured
incredible losses. Florence lost between one-half and two-thirds of its
population when the plague visited in 1348. The disease recurred
intermittently in the 1360s and 1370s and reappeared many times, as late as
the early 1700s in Europe.
In the short term the economic effects of the plague were severe because
the death of many peasants disrupted food production. But in the long term
the dramatic decline in population eased pressure on the land, and wages
and per capita wealth rose for those who survived. The psychological
consequences of the plague were profound. Some people sought release in
wild living, while others turned to the severest forms of asceticism and
frenzied religious fervor.

The Hundred Years’ War

While the plague ravaged populations in Asia, North Africa, and Europe, a
long international war in western Europe added further death and
destruction. England and France had engaged in sporadic military hostilities
from the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 (see “The Restoration of
Order”), and in the middle of the fourteenth century these became more
intense. From 1337 to 1453 the two countries intermittently fought one
another in what was the longest war in European history, ultimately dubbed
the Hundred Years’ War, though it actually lasted 116 years.
The Hundred Years’ War had a number of causes. Both England and
France claimed the duchy of Aquitaine in southwestern France, and the
English king Edward III argued that, as the grandson of an earlier French
king, he should have rightfully inherited the French throne. Nobles in
provinces on the borders of France who were worried about the growing
power of the French king supported Edward, as did wealthy wool
merchants and clothmakers in Flanders who depended on English wool.
The governments of both England and France promised wealth and glory to
those who fought, and each country portrayed the other as evil.
The war, fought almost entirely in France, consisted mainly of a series
of random sieges and raids. During the war’s early stages, England was
successful, primarily through the use of longbows fired by well-trained foot
soldiers against mounted knights and, after 1375, by early cannon. By 1419
the English had advanced to the walls of Paris. But the French cause was
not lost. Though England scored the initial victories, France won the war.
The ultimate French success rests heavily on the actions of Joan, an
obscure French peasant girl whose vision and military leadership revived
French fortunes and led to victory. Born in 1412 to well-to-do peasants,
Joan grew up in a pious household. During adolescence she began to hear
voices, which she later said belonged to Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and
Saint Margaret. In 1428 these voices told her that the dauphin of France —
Charles VII, who was uncrowned as king because of the English occupation
— had to be crowned and the English expelled from France. Joan went to
the French court and secured the support of the dauphin to travel, dressed as
a knight, with the French army to the besieged city of Orléans.
At Orléans, Joan inspired and led French attacks, and the English
retreated. As a result of her successes, Charles made Joan co-commander of
the entire army, and she led it to a string of military victories in the summer
of 1429. Two months after the victory at Orléans, Charles VII was crowned
king at Reims.
Joan and the French army continued their fight against the English. In
1430 England’s allies, the Burgundians, captured Joan and sold her to the
English, and the French did not intervene. The English wanted Joan
eliminated for obvious political reasons, but the primary charge against her
was heresy, and the trial was conducted by church authorities. She was
interrogated about the angelic voices and about why she wore men’s
clothing. She apparently answered skillfully, but in 1431 she was
condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in the marketplace at
Rouen. The French army continued its victories without her, and demands
for an end to the war increased among the English, who were growing tired
of the mounting loss of life and the flow of money into a seemingly
bottomless pit. Slowly the French reconquered Normandy and finally
ejected the English from Aquitaine. At the war’s end in 1453, only the town
of Calais remained in English hands.
The long war had a profound impact on the two countries. In England
and France the war promoted nationalism. It led to technological
experimentation, especially with gunpowder weaponry, whose firepower
made the protective walls of stone castles obsolete. The war also stimulated
the development of the English Parliament. Edward III’s constant need for
money to pay for the war compelled him to summon it many times, and its
representatives slowly built up their powers.

Challenges to the Christian Church

In times of crisis or disaster people of all faiths have sought the consolation
of religion, but in the fourteenth century the official Western Christian
Church offered little solace. While local clergy eased the suffering of many,
a dispute over who was the legitimate pope weakened the church as an
institution. In 1309 pressure by the French monarchy led the pope to move
his permanent residence to Avignon in southern France. This marked the
start of seven successive papacies in Avignon. Not surprising, all these
popes were French — a matter of controversy among church followers
outside France. Also, the popes largely concentrated on bureaucratic and
financial matters to the exclusion of spiritual objectives.
In 1376 one of the French popes returned to Rome, and when he died
there several years later Roman citizens demanded an Italian pope who
would remain in Rome. The cardinals elected Urban VI, but soon regretted
their decision. The cardinals slipped away from Rome and declared Urban’s
election invalid because it had come about under threats from the Roman
mob. They elected a French cardinal who took the name Clement VII
(pontificate 1378–1394) and set himself up at Avignon in opposition to
Urban. There were thus two popes, a situation that was later termed the
Great Schism.
The powers of Europe aligned themselves with Urban or Clement along
strictly political lines. France recognized the Frenchman, Clement; England
recognized Urban. The rest of Europe lined up behind one or the other. In
all European countries the common people were thoroughly confused about
which pope was legitimate. In the end the schism weakened the religious
faith of many Christians and brought church leadership into serious
disrepute.
A first attempt to heal the schism led to the installation of a third pope
and a threefold split, but finally a church council meeting at Constance
(1414–1418) successfully deposed the three schismatic popes and elected a
new leader, who took the name Martin V (pontificate 1417–1431). In the
later fifteenth century the papacy concentrated on building up its wealth and
political power in Italy rather than on the concerns of the whole church. As
a result, many people decided that they would need to rely on their own
prayers and pious actions rather than on the institutional church for their
salvation.
The primary challenge facing the Orthodox Church was the expansion
of the Turks. In the fourteenth century the Ottoman Turks, who were Sunni
Muslim, expanded their rule beyond Anatolia to conquer most of the
Balkans, defeating Christian armies (see Map 9.2). They besieged
Constantinople many times, and in 1453 were successful, ending the
Byzantine Empire. Christianity was no longer the state religion, but the
patriarchate of Constantinople actually became more powerful, as the
patriarchs were given civil and religious authority over all Christians in the
expanding Ottoman Empire. The official religion was Islam, but Christians
and Jews were largely free to practice their own religion; they paid higher
taxes, however, so there were advantages to converting. The Ottoman
Empire was mixed in terms of religion, language, and ethnicity and became
a haven for Muslims and Jews fleeing discrimination that resulted from the
reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula (see “The Expansion of Western and
Eastern Christianity”).

Peasant and Urban Revolts

The difficult conditions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries spurred a
wave of peasant and urban revolts across Europe. In 1358, when French
taxation for the Hundred Years’ War fell heavily on the poor, the frustrations
of the French peasantry exploded in a massive uprising called the Jacquerie
(zhah-kuh-REE). Adding to the anger over taxes was the toll taken by the
plague and by the famine that had struck some areas. Artisans, small
merchants, and parish priests joined the peasants, and residents of both
urban and rural areas committed terrible destruction. For several weeks the
nobles were on the defensive, until the upper class united to repress the
revolt with merciless ferocity.
Taxes and other grievances also led to the 1381 English Peasants’
Revolt, involving tens of thousands of people. The Black Death had
dramatically reduced the supply of labor, and peasants had demanded
higher wages and fewer manorial obligations. Parliament countered with a
law freezing wages and binding workers to their manors. The atmosphere of
discontent was further enhanced by popular preachers who proclaimed that
great disparities between rich and poor went against Christ’s teachings.
Moreover, decades of aristocratic violence, much of it perpetrated against
the weak peasantry, had bred hostility and bitterness.
In 1380 Parliament imposed a poll tax on all citizens to fund the
Hundred Years’ War. This tax imposed a greater burden on the poor than on
wealthier citizens, and it sparked revolt. The boy-king Richard II (r. 1377–
1399) met the leaders of the revolt, agreed to charters ensuring the peasants’
freedom, tricked them with false promises, and then proceeded to crush the
uprising with terrible ferocity. The nobility tried to use this defeat to restore
the labor obligations of serfdom, but they were not successful, and the
conversion to money rents continued. In Flanders, France, and England
peasant revolts often blended with conflicts involving workers in cities.
Unrest also occurred in Italian, Spanish, and German cities. In Florence in
1378 the ciompi, or poor propertyless wool workers, revolted and briefly
shared government of the city with wealthier artisans and merchants.
Rebellions and uprisings everywhere revealed deep peasant and worker
frustration with the socioeconomic conditions of the time.
Chapter Summary
Invasions by Vikings, Magyars, and Muslims, along with civil wars, created
instability in the ninth and tenth centuries. Local nobles became the
strongest powers against external threats, establishing a form of
decentralized government later known as feudalism. By the twelfth century
rulers in some parts of Europe had reasserted authority and were beginning
to develop new institutions of government and legal codes that enabled
them to assert power over lesser lords and the general population. The
papacy also consolidated its power, though these moves were sometimes
challenged by kings and emperors. Monasteries continued to be important
places for learning and devotion, and new religious orders were founded. A
papal call to retake the holy city of Jerusalem led to the Crusades.
The vast majority of medieval Europeans were peasants who lived in
small villages and worked their own and their lord’s land. Nobles were a
tiny fraction of the total population, but they exerted great power over all
aspects of life. Medieval towns and cities grew initially as trading centers
and then became centers of production.
Towns also developed into cultural and intellectual centers, as trade
brought in new ideas as well as merchandise. Universities offered courses
of study based on classical models, and townspeople built churches and
cathedrals as symbols of their Christian faith and their civic pride. New
types of vernacular literature arose in which poems, songs, and stories were
written down in local dialects.
In the fourteenth century a worsening climate brought poor harvests,
which contributed to an international economic depression and fostered
disease. The Black Death caused enormous population losses and social,
psychological, and economic consequences. Additional difficulties included
the Hundred Years’ War, a schism among rival popes that weakened the
Western Christian Church, and peasant and worker frustrations that
exploded into uprisings.
 CONNECTIONS

The Middle Ages continues to fascinate us today. We go to medieval fairs;

visit castle-themed hotels; watch movies about knights and their conquests;
play video games in which we become warriors, trolls, or sorcerers; and
read stories with themes of great quests set in the Middle Ages. Characters
from other parts of the world often heighten the exoticism: a Muslim soldier
joins the fight against a common enemy, a Persian princess rescues the hero
and his sidekick, a Buddhist monk teaches martial arts techniques. These
characters from outside Europe are fictional, but they also represent aspects
of reality because medieval Europe was not isolated, and political and
social structures similar to those in western and eastern Europe developed
elsewhere.
In reality few of us would probably want to live in the real Middle Ages,
when most people worked in the fields all day and even wealthy lords lived
in damp and drafty castles. We do not really want to return to a time when
one-third to one-half of all children died before age five and alcohol was the
only real pain reliever. But the contemporary appeal of the Middle Ages is
an interesting phenomenon, particularly because it stands in such sharp
contrast to the attitude of educated Europeans who lived in the centuries
immediately afterward. They were the ones who dubbed the period
“middle.” They saw their own era as the one to be celebrated, and the
Middle Ages as best forgotten.
Chapter 14 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

vassal (p. 329)

fief (p. 329)
feudalism (p. 329)
manorialism (p. 329)
serf (p. 329)
heresy (p. 334)
reconquista (p. 335)
Crusades (p. 336)
chivalry (p. 341)
craft guilds (p. 342)
commercial revolution (p. 342)
Scholastics (p. 343)
Gothic (p. 344)
vernacular literature (p. 345)
Black Death (p. 347)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. How did medieval rulers restore order and centralize political power? (p. 327)
2. How did the Christian Church enhance its power and create new institutions and
religious practices? (p. 332)
3. What were the causes, course, and consequences of the Crusades? (p. 336)
4. How did the lives of common people, nobles, and townspeople differ, and what
new commercial developments increased wealth? (p. 339)
5. What were the primary educational and cultural developments in medieval
Europe? (p. 343)
6. Why have the later Middle Ages been seen as a time of calamity and crisis? (p.
347)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. What similarities and differences do you see between the institutions and laws
established by medieval European rulers discussed in this chapter and those of
the Roman (Chapter 6), Byzantine (Chapter 8), and Chinese (Chapter 13)
emperors?
2. What factors over the centuries enabled the Christian Church (Chapters 6, 8, 14)
to become the most powerful and wealthy institution in Europe, and what problems
did this create?
3. How would you compare the role of trade in economic development in the Islamic
world (Chapter 9), Africa (Chapter 10), Southeast Asia (Chapter 12), China
(Chapter 13), and Europe in the period from 800 to 1400?

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 600–900 • Peak of Maya civilization (Ch. 11)

618–907 • Tang Dynasty in China (Ch. 7)
622–900 • Expansion of Islam in Southwest Asia, North Africa, and
Spain (Ch. 9)
794–1185 • Heian era in Japan (Ch. 13)
ca. 800–950 • Viking, Magyar, and Muslim attacks on Europe
ca. 900–1100 • Kingdom of Ghana (Ch. 10)
960–1279 • Song Dynasty in China (Ch. 13)
1054 • Western and Eastern Christian Churches split
1095–1270 • Crusades
1180–1270 • Height of construction of cathedrals in France
ca. 1200–1350 • Mongol Empire at the height of its power (Ch. 12)
1215 • Magna Carta
1309–1376 • Papacy in Avignon
ca. 1337–1453 • Hundred Years’ War
1347 • Black Death arrives in Europe
1358 • Jacquerie peasant uprising in France
1378–1417 • Great Schism, 1378–1417
1381 • English Peasants’ Revolt
1453 • Ottomans conquer Constantinople; end of the
Byzantine Empire
15
Europe in the Renaissance and
Reformation

1350–1600
Chapter Preview

Renaissance Culture
• What were the major cultural developments of the Renaissance?

Social Hierarchies
• What were the key social hierarchies in Renaissance Europe, and how did
these hierarchies shape people’s lives?

Politics and the State in the Renaissance

• How did the nation-states of western Europe evolve in this period?

The Protestant Reformation

• What were the central ideas of Protestant reformers, and why were they
appealing to various groups across Europe?

The Catholic Reformation

• How did the Catholic Church respond to the new religious situation?

Religious Violence
• What were the causes and consequences of religious violence, including
riots, wars, and witch-hunts?

WHILE DISEASE, FAMINE, AND WAR MARKED THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY in much
of Europe, the era also witnessed the beginnings of remarkable changes in many aspects of
intellectual and cultural life. First in Italy and then elsewhere, artists and writers thought that
they were living in a new golden age, later termed the Renaissance, French for “rebirth.”
The word Renaissance was used initially to describe art that seemed to recapture, or
perhaps even surpass, the glories of the classical past and then came to be used for many
aspects of life of the period. The new attitude diffused slowly out of Italy, with the result that
the Renaissance “happened” at different times in different parts of Europe. It shaped the
lives of Europe’s educated elites, although families, kin networks, religious beliefs, and the
rhythms of the agricultural year still remained important.
Religious reformers carried out even more dramatic changes. Calls for reform of the
Christian Church began very early in its history and continued throughout the Middle Ages.
In the sixteenth century these calls gained wide acceptance, due not only to religious issues
and problems within the church but also to political and social factors. In a movement
termed the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity broke into many divisions, a
situation that continues today. The Renaissance and the Reformation were very different
types of movements, but both looked back to a time people regarded as purer and better
than their own, and both offered opportunities for strong individuals to shape their world in
unexpected ways. Both have also been seen as key elements in the creation of the
“modern” world.
Renaissance Culture
What were the major cultural developments of the Renaissance?

The Renaissance (ca. 1350–1520) was characterized by self-conscious

awareness among fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italians, particularly
scholars and writers known as humanists, that they were living in a new era.
Their ideas influenced education and were spread through the new
technology of the printing press. Interest in the classical past and in the
individual also shaped Renaissance art in terms of style and subject matter.

Wealth and Power in Renaissance Italy

Economic growth laid the material basis for the Italian Renaissance and its
cultural achievements. Ambitious merchants gained political power to
match their economic power and then used their money to buy luxuries and
hire talent in a patronage system. Through this system, cities, groups, and
individuals commissioned writers and artists to produce specific works or
works in specific styles. Thus economics, politics, and culture were
interconnected.
The Renaissance began in the northern Italian city of Florence, which
possessed enormous wealth as a consequence of its domination of European
banking. Banking profits allowed elite families to control the city’s politics
and culture. Although Florence was officially a republic, starting in 1434
the great Medici (MEH-duh-chee) banking family held power almost
continually until 1737. They supported an academy for scholars and a host
of painters, sculptors, poets, and architects.
In other Italian cities as well, wealthy merchants and bankers built
magnificent palaces and became patrons of the arts, hiring not only
architects to design and build these palaces but also artists to fill them with
paintings and sculptures, and musicians and composers to fill them with
music. Attractions like these appealed to the rich, social-climbing residents
of Venice, Florence, Genoa, and Rome, who came to see life more as an
opportunity for enjoyment than as a painful pilgrimage to Heaven.
This cultural flowering took place amid political turmoil. In the fifteenth
century five powers dominated the Italian peninsula: Venice, Milan,
Florence, the Papal States, and the kingdom of Naples. These powers
competed furiously for territory and tried to extend their authority over
smaller city-states. Whenever one Italian state appeared to gain a
predominant position within the peninsula, other states combined to
establish a balance of power against the threat, thereby preventing long-
term political consolidation.
This division facilitated outside invasions of Italy. These began in 1494
as Italy became the focus of international ambitions and the battleground of
foreign armies, and Italian cities suffered severely from continual warfare
for decades. Thus the failure of the city-states to form some type of federal
system — or at least to establish a common foreign policy — led to
centuries of subjugation by outside invaders. Italy was not to achieve
unification until 1870.

The Rise of Humanism

The Renaissance was a self-conscious intellectual movement. The
realization that something new and unique was happening first came to
writers in the fourteenth century, especially to the Italian poet and humanist
Francesco Petrarch (frahn-CHEH-skoh PEH-trahrk) (1304–1374). Along
with many of his contemporaries, Petrarch sought to reconnect with the
classical past, and he believed that such efforts were bringing on a new
golden age of intellectual achievement.
Petrarch and other poets, writers, and artists showed a deep interest both
in the physical remains of the Roman Empire and in classical Latin texts.
The study of Latin classics became known as the studia humanitates,
usually translated as “liberal studies” or the “liberal arts.” People who
advocated it were known as humanists, and their program as humanism.
Like all programs of study, humanism contained an implicit philosophy:
that human nature and achievements were worthy of contemplation.
Humanists did not reject religion; instead they sought to synthesize
Christian and classical teachings, pointing out the harmony between them.
Humanists and other Renaissance thinkers emphasized individual
achievement. They were especially interested in individuals who had risen
above their background to become brilliant, powerful, or unique. Such
individuals had the admirable quality of virtù (vir-TOO), which is not virtue
in the sense of moral goodness, but the ability to shape the world around
them according to their will. Humanists thought that their recommended
course of study in the classics would provide essential skills for all those
who would take on this challenge. Just as Confucian officials did in Song
China, they also taught that taking an active role in the world and working
for the common good should be the aim of all educated individuals.
Humanists put their educational ideas into practice. They opened
schools and academies in which pupils began with Latin grammar and
rhetoric, went on to study Roman history and political philosophy, and then
learned Greek in order to study Greek literature and philosophy. These
classics, humanists taught, would provide models of how to write clearly,
argue effectively, and speak persuasively. Gradually humanist education
became the basis for intermediate and advanced education for well-to-do
urban boys and men.
Humanists disagreed about education for women. Many saw the value
of exposing women to classical models of moral behavior and reasoning,
but they also wondered whether a program of study that emphasized
eloquence and action was proper for women, whose sphere was generally
understood to be private and domestic. Through tutors or programs of self-
study a few women did become educated in the classics.
Humanists looked to the classical past for political as well as literary
models. The best-known political theorist of this era was Niccolò
Machiavelli (nih-KOH-loh mah-kee-ah-VEH-lee) (1469–1527), who
worked as an official for the city of Florence until he was ousted in a power
struggle. He spent the rest of his life writing, and his most famous work is
the political treatise The Prince (1513). Using the examples of classical and
contemporary rulers, The Prince argues that the function of a ruler (or a
government) is to preserve order and security. To preserve the state, a ruler
should use whatever means necessary — brutality, lying, manipulation —
but he should not do anything that would make the populace turn against
him. The Prince is often seen as the first modern guide to politics in the
West, though Machiavelli was denounced for writing it, and people later
came to use the word Machiavellian to mean cunning and ruthless.
Machiavelli put a new spin on the Renaissance search for perfection,
arguing that ideals needed to be measured in the cold light of the real world.

Christian Humanism
In the last quarter of the fifteenth century students from the Low Countries,
France, Germany, and England flocked to Italy, absorbed the “new
learning” of humanism, and carried it back to their own countries. Northern
humanists shared the Italians’ ideas about the wisdom of ancient texts and
felt even more strongly that the best elements of classical and Christian
cultures should be combined. These Christian humanists, as they were
later called, saw humanist learning as a way to bring about reform of the
church and to deepen people’s spiritual lives.
The Englishman Thomas More (1478–1535) began life as a lawyer,
studied the classics, and entered government service. He became best
known for his controversial dialogue Utopia (1516). Utopia describes a
community on an island somewhere beyond Europe where all children
receive a good humanist education and adults divide their days between
manual labor or business pursuits and intellectual activities. The problems
that plagued More’s fellow citizens, such as poverty and hunger, are solved
by a beneficent government. Inequality and greed are prevented because
profits from business and property are held in common, not privately.
Furthermore, there is religious tolerance, and order and reason prevail.
Better known by contemporaries than Thomas More was the Dutch
humanist Desiderius Erasmus (deh-she-DEHR-ee-uhs eh-RAHS-muhs)
(1466?–1536) of Rotterdam. His fame rested largely on his exceptional
knowledge of Greek and the Bible, as well as his many publications. For
Erasmus, education was the key to moral and intellectual improvement, and
true Christianity was an inner attitude of the spirit, not a set of outward
actions.

Printing and Its Social Impact

The impact of new ideas during this period was magnified by the invention
of the printing press with movable metal type. While printing with movable
type was invented in China (see “The Scholar-Officials and Neo-
Confucianism” in Chapter 13), movable metal type was actually developed
in the thirteenth century in Korea, though it was tightly controlled by the
monarchy and did not have the broad impact there that printing did in
Europe. Printing with movable metal type developed in Germany around
1450. Several metal-smiths, most prominently Johann Gutenberg (ca. 1400–
1468), transformed the metal stamps used to mark signs on jewelry into
type that could be covered with ink and used to mark symbols onto a page.
This type could be rearranged for every page and thus could be used over
and over. The printing revolution was also enabled by the ready availability
of paper, which was made using techniques that had originated in China and
spread from Muslim Spain to the rest of Europe.
The effects of the invention of movable-type printing were not felt
overnight. Nevertheless, within a half century of the publication of
Gutenberg’s Bible of 1456, movable type had brought about radical
changes. Historians estimate that somewhere between 8 million and 20
million books were printed in Europe between 1456 and 1500, many more
than the total number of books that had been produced in the West during
the many millennia between the invention of writing and 1456.
Printing transformed both the private and the public lives of Europeans.
In the public realm, government and church leaders both used and worried
about printing. They printed laws, declarations of war, battle accounts, and
propaganda, but they also attempted to censor or ban books and authors
whose ideas they thought were wrong. These efforts were rarely effective.
In the private realm, printing enabled people to read identical books so
that they could more easily discuss the ideas that the books contained.
Although most of the earliest books and pamphlets dealt with religious
subjects, printers produced anything that would sell. Illustrations increased
a book’s sales, so printers published books full of woodcuts and engravings.
Additionally, single-page broadsides and fly sheets allowed public events
and “wonders” such as comets and two-headed calves to be experienced
vicariously. Since books and other printed materials were read aloud to
illiterate listeners, print bridged the gap between the written and oral
cultures.
Because many laypeople could not read Latin, printers put out works in
vernacular languages, fostering standardization in these languages. Works
in these languages were also performed on stage. Traveling companies of
actors performed before royal courts and in town squares, and in larger
cities public theaters offered bawdy comedies and bloody tragedies. In
London the works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) were especially
popular.

Art and the Artist

No feature of the Renaissance evokes greater admiration than its artistic
masterpieces. In Renaissance Italy wealthy merchants, bankers, popes, and
princes spent vast sums to commission art as a means of glorifying
themselves and their families. Patrons varied in their level of involvement
as a work progressed; some simply ordered a specific subject or scene,
while others oversaw the work of the artist or architect very closely.
As a result of patronage, certain artists gained great public acclaim and
adulation, leading many historians to view the Renaissance as the beginning
of the concept of the artist as genius. In the Middle Ages, people believed
that only God created, albeit through individuals, and artistic originality
was not particularly valued. By contrast, Renaissance artists and humanists
came to think that a work of art was the deliberate creation of a unique
personality, of an individual who transcended traditions, rules, and theories.
Michelangelo’s David (1501–
1504) and the Last Judgment
(detail, 1537–1541) Like all
Renaissance artists, Michelangelo
worked largely on commissions
from patrons. Officials of the city of
Florence contracted the young
sculptor to produce a statue of the
Old Testament hero David to be
displayed in the city’s main
 square. Michelangelo portrayed
David anticipating his fight against
the giant Goliath, and the statue
came to symbolize the republic of
Florence standing up to its larger
and more powerful enemies. More
than thirty years later,
Michelangelo was commissioned
by the pope to paint a scene of the
Last Judgment on the altar wall of
the Sistine Chapel, where he had
earlier spent four years covering
the ceiling with magnificent
frescoes. The massive work
shows a powerful Christ standing
in judgment, with souls ascending
into Heaven while others are
dragged by demons into Hell
(above). The David captures
ideals of human perfection and
has come to be an iconic symbol
of Renaissance artistic brilliance,
while the dramatic and violent Last
Judgment conveys both terror and
divine power.

In terms of artistic themes, religious topics remained popular among

both patrons and artists, but frequently the patron had himself and his
family portrayed in the scene. As the fifteenth century advanced and
humanist ideas spread more widely, classical themes and motifs figured
increasingly in painting and sculpture. Classical styles also influenced
architecture, as architects designed buildings that featured arches and
domes modeled on the structures of ancient Rome.
The individual portrait emerged as a distinct genre in Renaissance art.
Rather than reflecting a spiritual ideal, as medieval painting and sculpture
tended to do, Renaissance portraits showed human ideals, often portrayed in
a more realistic style. The Florentine sculptor Donatello (doh-nah-TELL-
oh) (1386–1466) revived the classical figure. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–
1519) was particularly adept at portraying female grace and beauty. Another
Florentine artist, Raphael Sanzio (RAH-feh-ell SAN-zee-oh) (1483–1520),
painted hundreds of portraits, becoming the most sought-after artist in
Europe.
 In the late fifteenth century the center of Renaissance art shifted from
Florence to Rome, where wealthy cardinals and popes became active
patrons of the arts. To meet this demand, Michelangelo Buonarroti (mee-
kell-AN-geh-loh bwa-nah-RAH-tee) (1475–1564) went to Rome from
Florence in about 1500 and began the series of statues, paintings, and
architectural projects from which he gained an international reputation.
Most famously, between 1508 and 1512 he painted religiously themed
frescoes on the ceiling and altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
In both Italy and northern Europe most aspiring artists were educated in
the workshops of older artists. By the later sixteenth century formal
academies were also established to train artists. Like universities, artistic
workshops and academies were male-only settings. Several women did
become well known as painters during the Renaissance, but they were
trained by their artist fathers and often quit painting when they married.
Women were not alone in being excluded from the institutions of
Renaissance culture. Though a few talented artists such as Leonardo and
Michelangelo emerged from artisanal backgrounds, most scholars and
artists came from families with at least some money. The audience for
artists’ work was also exclusive, limited mostly to educated and prosperous
citizens. Although common people in large cities might have occasionally
seen plays such as those of Shakespeare, most people lived in villages with
no access to formal schooling or to the work of prominent artists. In general
a small, highly educated minority of literary humanists and artists created
the culture of and for a social elite. In this way the Renaissance maintained,
and even enhanced, a gulf between the learned minority and the uneducated
multitude.
Social Hierarchies
What were the key social hierarchies in Renaissance Europe, and how did these
hierarchies shape people’s lives?

The division between the educated and uneducated was one of many social
hierarchies evident in the Renaissance. Other hierarchies built on those of
the Middle Ages, but also developed new features that contributed to
modern social hierarchies, such as those of race, class, and gender.

Race and Slavery

Renaissance people did not use the word race the way we do, but often used
race, people, and nation interchangeably for ethnic, national, and religious
groups. They did make distinctions based on skin color that were in keeping
with later conceptualizations of race, but these distinctions were interwoven
with other characteristics when people thought about human differences.
Ever since the time of the Roman Republic, a few black Africans had
lived in western Europe. They had come, along with white slaves, as the
spoils of war. After the collapse of the Roman Empire and throughout the
Middle Ages, Muslim and Christian merchants continued to import black
slaves. The black population was especially concentrated in the cities of the
Iberian Peninsula. By the mid-sixteenth century blacks, slave and free,
constituted roughly 3 percent of the Portuguese population. Slaves and a
few free black people could be found in courts and cities in other parts of
Europe as well, especially in Italy.
In Renaissance Portugal, Spain, and Italy, African slaves supplemented
the labor force in virtually all occupations. Slaves also formed the primary
workforce on the sugar plantations set up by Europeans on the Atlantic
islands in the late fifteenth century (see “Sugar and Early Transatlantic
Slavery” in Chapter 16).
Until their voyages down the African coast in the late fifteenth century,
Europeans had little concrete knowledge of Africans and their cultures.
They perceived Africa as a remote place, the home of strange people
isolated by heresy and Islam from superior European civilization. Africans’
contact, even as slaves, with Christian Europeans would only “improve” the
blacks, they believed. The expanding slave trade reinforced negative
preconceptions about the inferiority of black Africans.

Wealth and the Nobility

By the thirteenth century, and even more so by the fifteenth, the idea of a
hierarchy based on wealth was emerging. This was particularly true in
cities, where wealthy merchants oversaw vast trading empires, held
positions of political power, and lived in splendor rivaling that enjoyed by
the richest nobles.
The development of a hierarchy of wealth did not mean an end to the
prominence of nobles, however, and even poorer nobles still had higher
status than wealthy commoners did. Thus wealthy Italian merchants
enthusiastically bought noble titles in the fifteenth century, and wealthy
English and Spanish merchants married their daughters and sons into often-
impoverished noble families. The nobility maintained its status in most
parts of Europe not by maintaining rigid boundaries, but by taking in and
integrating the new social elite created by the hierarchy of wealth.

Gender Roles
Renaissance people would not have understood the word gender to refer to
categories of people, but they would have easily grasped the concept.
Toward the end of the fourteenth century learned men (and a few women)
began what was termed the debate about women, an argument about
women’s character, nature, and proper role in society that would last for
centuries. Misogynist critiques of women from both clerical and secular
authors denounced females as devious, domineering, and demanding. In
response, several authors compiled long lists of famous and praiseworthy
women. Some writers, including a few women who had gained a humanist
education, were interested not only in defending women but also in
exploring the reasons behind women’s secondary status.
 Italian City Scene In this detail from a fresco, the
Italian painter Lorenzo Lotto captures the mixing of
social groups in a Renaissance Italian city. The
crowd of men in the left foreground includes wealthy
merchants in elaborate hats and colorful coats. Two
mercenary soldiers (carrying a sword and a pike)
wear short doublets and tight hose stylishly slit to
reveal colored undergarments, while boys play with
toy weapons at their feet. Clothing like that of the
soldiers, which emphasized the masculine form, was
frequently criticized for its expense and its
“indecency.” At the right, women sell vegetables and
bread, which would have been a common sight at
any city marketplace.

Beginning in the sixteenth century the debate about women also became
a debate about female rulers, because in Spain, England, France, and
Scotland women served as advisers to child-kings or ruled in their own
right. There were no successful rebellions against female rulers simply
because they were women; in part this was because female rulers,
especially Queen Elizabeth I of England, emphasized qualities regarded as
masculine — physical bravery, stamina, wisdom, duty — whenever they
appeared in public.
The dominant notion of the “true” man was that of the married head of
household, so men whose class and age would have normally conferred
political power but who remained unmarried were sometimes excluded
from ruling positions. Actual marriage patterns in Europe left many women
unmarried until late in life, but this did not lead to greater equality. Women
who worked for wages, as was typical, earned about half to two-thirds of
what men did even for the same work. Of all the ways in which
Renaissance society was hierarchically arranged — by class, age, level of
education, rank, race, occupation — gender was regarded as the most
“natural” distinction and therefore the most important one to defend.
Politics and the State in the Renaissance
How did the nation-states of western Europe evolve in this period?

Beginning in the fifteenth century monarchs used aggressive methods to

build up their governments. As they built and maintained power, they
emphasized royal majesty and royal sovereignty and insisted on the respect
and loyalty of all subjects.

France
The Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War left France drastically
depopulated, commercially ruined, and agriculturally weak (see “The
Hundred Years’ War” in Chapter 14). Nonetheless, Charles VII (r. 1422–
1461) revived the monarchy and France. He reorganized the royal council,
giving increased influence to middle-class men, and strengthened royal
finances through taxes on certain products and on land. Moreover, Charles
created the first permanent royal army anywhere in Europe.
Two further developments strengthened the French monarchy. The
marriage of Louis XII (r. 1498–1515) and Anne of Brittany added Brittany
to the state. Louis XII’s successor, Francis I (r. 1515–1547), and Pope Leo
X reached a mutually satisfactory agreement about church and state powers
in 1516 that gave French kings the power to control the appointment and
thus the policies of church officials in the kingdom.

England
English society suffered severely in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Between 1455 and 1471 adherents of the ducal houses of York and
Lancaster waged civil wars over control of the English throne, commonly
called the Wars of the Roses. The chronic disorder hurt trade, agriculture,
and domestic industry, and the authority of the monarchy sank lower than it
had been in centuries.
The Yorkist Edward IV (r. 1461–1483) succeeded in defeating the
Lancastrian forces and after 1471 began to reconstruct the monarchy and
consolidate royal power. Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) of the Welsh house of
Tudor worked to restore royal prestige, to crush the power of the nobility,
and to establish order and law at the local level. Because the government
halted the long period of anarchy, it won the key support of the merchant
and agricultural upper middle class. Under Henry VII the center of royal
authority was the royal council. There Henry VII revealed his distrust of the
nobility: very few great lords were among the king’s closest advisers, who
instead were lesser landowners and lawyers. The royal council handled any
business the king put before it — executive, legislative, and judicial.
Secretive, cautious, and thrifty, Henry VII rebuilt the monarchy. He
encouraged the cloth industry and built up the English merchant marine. He
crushed an invasion from Ireland, secured peace with Scotland, and
enhanced English prestige through the marriage of his eldest son, Arthur, to
Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
(Several years after Arthur’s death, Catherine would become the wife of his
younger brother and the next king of England, Henry VIII; see “England’s
Shift Toward Protestantism.”) When Henry VII died in 1509, he left a
country at peace both domestically and internationally, a substantially
augmented treasury, and the dignity and role of the Crown much enhanced.

Spain
While England and France laid the foundations of unified nation-states
during the Renaissance, Spain remained a conglomerate of independent
kingdoms. Even the wedding in 1469 of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand
of Aragon did not bring about administrative unity. Isabella and Ferdinand
were, however, able to exert their authority in ways similar to those of the
rulers of France and England. They curbed aristocratic power by excluding
aristocrats and great territorial magnates from the royal council. They also
secured from the Spanish pope Alexander VI the right to appoint bishops in
Spain and in the Hispanic territories in America, enabling them to establish
the equivalent of a national church. In 1492 their armies conquered
Granada, the last territory held by Arabs in southern Spain.
Ferdinand and Isabella’s rule also marked the start of greater
persecution of the Jews. In the Middle Ages, the kings of France and
England had expelled the Jews from their kingdoms, and many had sought
refuge in Spain. During the long centuries of the reconquista (see “The
Expansion of Western and Eastern Christianity” in Chapter 14), Christian
kings in Spain had renewed Jewish rights and privileges; in fact, Jewish
industry, intelligence, and money had supported royal power.
In the fourteenth century anti-Semitism in Spain was aggravated by
fiery anti-Jewish preaching, by economic dislocation, and by the search for
a scapegoat during the Black Death. Anti-Semitic pogroms (violent
massacres and riots directed against Jews) swept the towns of Spain, and
perhaps 40 percent of the Jewish population was killed or forced to convert.
Those who converted were called conversos (kuhn-VEHR-sohz) or New
Christians. Conversos were often well educated and held prominent
positions in government and business.
Such successes bred resentment. Aristocrats resented their financial
dependence on conversos, the poor hated the converso tax collectors, and
churchmen doubted the sincerity of their conversions. Queen Isabella
shared these suspicions, and she and Ferdinand received permission from
Pope Sixtus IV to establish an Inquisition to look for conversos who
showed any sign of incomplete conversion.
Most conversos identified themselves as sincere Christians; many came
from families that had received baptism generations before. In response,
officials of the Inquisition developed a new type of anti-Semitism. A
person’s status as a Jew, they argued, could not be changed by religious
conversion, but was in the person’s blood and was heritable, so Jews could
never be true Christians. Under what were known as “purity of blood” laws,
having “pure Christian blood” became a requirement for noble status. Ideas
about Jews developed in Spain became important components in European
concepts of race, and discussions of “Jewish blood” later expanded into
discriminatory definitions of the “Jewish race.”
In 1492, shortly after the conquest of Granada, Isabella and Ferdinand
issued an edict expelling all practicing Jews from Spain. Of the community
of perhaps 200,000 Jews, 150,000 fled. Absolute religious orthodoxy and
“purity of blood” served as the theoretical foundation of the Spanish
national state.

The Habsburgs
War and diplomacy were important ways that states increased their power
in sixteenth-century Europe, but so was marriage. Because almost all of
Europe was ruled by hereditary dynasties, claiming and holding resources
involved shrewd marital strategies, for it was far cheaper to gain land by
inheritance than by war. The benefits of an advantageous marriage stretched
across generations, as can be seen most dramatically with the Habsburgs.
The Holy Roman emperor Frederick III, a Habsburg who was the ruler of
most of Austria, acquired only a small amount of territory — but a great
deal of money — with his marriage to Princess Eleanore of Portugal in
1452. He arranged for his son Maximilian to marry Europe’s most
prominent heiress, Mary of Burgundy. Through this union with the rich and
powerful duchy of Burgundy, the Austrian house of Habsburg, already the
strongest ruling family in the empire, became an international power. The
marriage of Maximilian and Mary angered the French, and it inaugurated
centuries of conflict between the Habsburgs and the kings of France. Within
the empire, German principalities that resented Austria’s pre-eminence
began to see that they shared interests with France.
Maximilian learned the lesson of marital politics well, marrying his son
and daughter to the children of Ferdinand and Isabella, the rulers of Spain,
much of southern Italy, and eventually the Spanish New World empire. His
grandson Charles V (1500–1558) fell heir to a vast and incredibly diverse
collection of states and peoples (Map 15.1). Charles was convinced that it
was his duty to maintain the political and religious unity of Western
Christendom. This conviction would be challenged far more than Charles
ever anticipated.
MAP 15.1 The Global Empire of Charles V, ca. 1556
Charles V exercised theoretical jurisdiction over more European territory than anyone
since Charlemagne. He also claimed authority over large parts of North and South
America, although actual Spanish control was weak in much of this area.
The Protestant Reformation
What were the central ideas of Protestant reformers, and why were they appealing to
various groups across Europe?

Calls for reform in the church came from many quarters in early-sixteenth-
century Europe — from educated laypeople and urban residents, from
villagers and artisans, and from church officials themselves. This
dissatisfaction helps explain why the ideas of Martin Luther, an obscure
professor from a new and not very prestigious German university, found a
ready audience. Within a decade of his first publishing his ideas (using the
new technology of the printing press), much of central Europe and
Scandinavia had broken with the Catholic Church in a movement that came
to be known as the Protestant Reformation. In addition, even more radical
concepts of the Christian message were being developed and linked to calls
for social change.

Criticism of the Church

Sixteenth-century Europeans were deeply pious, but many people were also
highly critical of the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy. Papal conflicts
with rulers and the Great Schism (see “Challenges to the Christian Church”
in Chapter 14) badly damaged the prestige of church leaders. Papal tax
collection methods were also attacked, and some criticized the papacy itself
as an institution.
In the early sixteenth century critics of the church concentrated their
attacks on clerical immorality, ignorance, and absenteeism. Charges of
immorality were aimed at a number of priests who were drunkards,
neglected the rule of celibacy, gambled, or indulged in fancy dress. Charges
of ignorance applied to barely literate priests who delivered poor-quality
sermons.
In regard to absenteeism, many clerics, especially higher ecclesiastics,
held several benefices (offices) simultaneously. However, they seldom
visited the communities served by the benefices. Instead they collected
revenues from all the benefices assigned to them and hired a poor priest to
fulfill their spiritual duties, paying him just a fraction of the income.
 There was also local resentment of clerical privileges and immunities.
Priests, monks, and nuns were exempt from civic responsibilities, such as
defending the city and paying taxes. Yet religious orders frequently held
large amounts of urban property. City governments were increasingly
determined to integrate the clergy into civic life. This brought city leaders
into opposition with bishops and the papacy, which for centuries had
stressed the independence of the church from lay control.

Martin Luther
By itself, widespread criticism of the church did not lead to the dramatic
changes of the sixteenth century. Those resulted from the personal religious
struggle of a German Augustinian friar and professor at the University of
Wittenberg, Martin Luther (1483–1546).
Martin Luther was a very conscientious friar, but his scrupulous
observance of the religious routine, frequent confessions, and fasting gave
him only temporary relief from anxieties about sin and his ability to meet
God’s demands. Through his study of Saint Paul’s letters in the New
Testament, he gradually arrived at a new understanding of Christian
doctrine. His understanding is often summarized as “faith alone, grace
alone, scripture alone.” He believed that salvation and justification
(righteousness in God’s eyes) come through faith, and that faith is a free gift
of God, not the result of human effort. God’s word is revealed only in
biblical scripture, not in the traditions of the church.
At the same time that Luther was engaged in scholarly reflections and
professorial lecturing, Pope Leo X authorized a special Saint Peter’s
indulgence to finance his building plans in Rome. An indulgence was a
document issued by the pope that substituted for earthly penance or time in
purgatory. The archbishop who controlled the area in which Wittenberg was
located, Albert of Mainz, also promoted the sale of indulgences, in his case
to pay off a debt he had incurred to be named bishop of several additional
territories. Albert’s sales campaign promised that the purchase of
indulgences would bring full forgiveness for one’s own sins or buy release
from purgatory for a loved one. One of the slogans — “As soon as coin in
coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs” — brought phenomenal
success.
Luther was severely troubled that many people believed that they had
no further need for repentance once they had purchased indulgences. In
October 1517 he wrote a letter to Archbishop Albert on the subject and
enclosed in Latin his “Ninety-five Theses on the Power of Indulgences.”
His argument was that indulgences undermined the seriousness of the
sacrament of penance and competed with the preaching of the Gospel.
Luther intended his theses for academic debate, but by December of that
year they had been translated into German and were being read throughout
central Europe. Luther was ordered to go to Rome, but he was able to avoid
this because the ruler of the territory in which he lived protected him. The
pope nonetheless ordered him to recant many of his ideas, and Luther
publicly burned the letter containing the papal order. In this highly charged
atmosphere, the twenty-one-year-old emperor Charles V summoned Luther
to appear before the Diet of Worms, an assembly of representatives from
the territories of the Holy Roman Empire meeting in the city of Worms in
1521. Luther, however, refused to give in to demands that he take back his
ideas.

Protestant Thought and Its Appeal

As he developed his ideas, Luther gathered followers, who came to be
called Protestants. At first Protestant meant “a follower of Luther,” but
with the appearance of many other reformers, it became a general term
applied to all non-Catholic western European Christians.
Catholics and Protestants disagreed on many issues. Catholic teaching
held that salvation is achieved by both faith and good works, while
Protestants held that salvation comes by faith alone, irrespective of good
works or the sacraments. God, not people, initiates salvation. Christian
doctrine had long maintained that authority rests both in the Bible and in the
traditional teaching of the church, but Protestants asserted that authority
rested in the Bible alone. For a doctrine or issue to be valid, they thought, it
had to have a scriptural basis. Roman Catholics saw the church as a clerical,
hierarchical institution headed by the pope in Rome, while Protestants
rejected the authority of the pope and developed various forms of church
governance and organization. They also rejected the Catholic idea that
monastic religious life was superior, so they closed monasteries and
convents and championed marriage as the best Christian life.
Pulpits and printing presses spread the Protestant message all over
Germany, and by the middle of the sixteenth century people of all social
classes had rejected Catholic teachings and become Protestant. What was
the immense appeal of Luther’s religious ideas and those of other
Protestants?
Educated people and humanists were attracted by Luther’s ideas. He
advocated a simpler personal religion based on faith, a return to the spirit of
the early church, the centrality of the Scriptures in the liturgy and in
Christian life, and the abolition of elaborate ceremonies — precisely the
reforms the Christian humanists had been calling for. His insistence that
everyone should read and reflect on the Scriptures attracted the literate
middle classes. Luther’s ideas also appealed to townspeople who envied the
church’s wealth and resented paying for it. After cities became Protestant,
the city council taxed the clergy and placed them under the jurisdiction of
civil courts.
The printing press also contributed to Luther’s fame and success. Many
printed works included woodcuts and other illustrations, so that even those
who could not read could grasp the main ideas. Hymns were also important
means of conveying central points of doctrine, as was Luther’s translation
of the New Testament into German in 1523.
Luther worked closely with political authorities, viewing them as fully
justified in reforming the church in their territories. He instructed all
Christians to obey their secular rulers, whom he saw as divinely ordained to
maintain order. Individuals may have been convinced of the truth of
Protestant teachings on their own, but a territory became Protestant when its
ruler brought in reformers to re-educate the territory’s clergy, sponsored
public sermons, and confiscated church property. This happened in many of
the states of the empire during the 1520s and then moved beyond the
empire to Denmark-Norway and Sweden.

The Radical Reformation and the German Peasants’ War

In the sixteenth century the practice of religion remained a public matter.
The ruler determined the official form of religious practice in his (or
occasionally her) jurisdiction. Almost everyone believed that the presence
of a faith different from that of the majority represented a political threat to
the security of the state.
Some individuals and groups rejected the idea that church and state
needed to be united, however, and they sought to create a voluntary
community of believers as they understood it to have existed in New
Testament times. In terms of theology and spiritual practices, these
individuals and groups varied widely, though they are generally termed
“radicals” for their insistence on a more extensive break with prevailing
ideas. Some adopted the custom of baptizing adult believers — for which
they were given the title of “Anabaptists” by their enemies — while others
saw all outward sacraments or rituals as misguided. Some groups attempted
communal ownership of property. Some reacted harshly to members who
deviated from the group’s accepted practices, but others argued for
complete religious tolerance and individualism.
Religious radicals were met with fanatical hatred and bitter persecution,
including banishment and execution. Both Protestant and Catholic
authorities felt threatened by the social, political, and economic
implications of radicals’ religious ideas and by their rejection of a state
church. Their community spirit and heroism in the face of martyrdom,
however, contributed to the survival of radical ideas. In 1787 the authors of
the U.S. Constitution, with their opposition to the “establishment of
religion” (state churches), would trace the origins of their beliefs, in part, to
the radicals of the sixteenth century.
Another group to challenge state authorities was the peasantry. In the
early sixteenth century the economic condition of peasants varied from
place to place but was generally worse than it had been in the fifteenth
century and was deteriorating. Peasants demanded limitations on the new
taxes and labor obligations their noble landlords were imposing. They
believed that their demands conformed to the Scriptures and cited Luther as
a theologian who could prove that they did.
Wanting to prevent rebellion, Luther initially sided with the peasants.
But when rebellion broke out, the peasants who expected Luther’s support
were soon disillusioned. Freedom for Luther meant independence from the
authority of the Roman Church, not opposition to legally established secular
powers. Firmly convinced that rebellion would hasten the end of civilized
society, he wrote the tract Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of the
Peasants. The nobility ferociously crushed the revolt, which became known
as the German Peasants’ War of 1525.
The Peasants’ War greatly strengthened the authority of lay rulers.
Because Luther turned against the peasants who revolted, the Reformation
lost much of its popular appeal after 1525, though peasants and urban rebels
sometimes found a place for their social and religious ideas in radical
groups. Peasants’ economic conditions did moderately improve, however.
Marriage and Women’s Roles
Luther and other Protestants believed that a priest’s or nun’s vows of
celibacy went against human nature and God’s commandments. Luther
married a former nun, Katharina von Bora (1499–1532), who quickly had
several children. Most other Protestant reformers also married, and their
wives had to create a new and respectable role for themselves, pastor’s
wife. They were living demonstrations of their husband’s convictions about
the superiority of marriage to celibacy, and they were expected to be models
of wifely obedience and Christian charity.
Catholics viewed marriage as a sacramental union that, if validly
entered into, could not be dissolved. Protestants saw marriage as a contract
in which each partner promised the other support, companionship, and the
sharing of mutual goods. They believed that spouses who did not comfort or
support one another endangered their own souls and the surrounding
community; therefore, most Protestants came to allow divorce. Divorce
remained rare, however, because marriage was such an important social and
economic institution.
Protestants did not break with medieval scholastic theologians in their
view that, within marriage, women were to be subject to men. Men were
urged to treat their wives kindly and considerately, but also to enforce their
authority, through physical coercion if necessary. A few women took the
Protestant idea about the priesthood of all believers to heart and wrote
religious pamphlets and hymns, but no sixteenth-century Protestants
officially allowed women to hold positions of religious authority.
 Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora Lucas
Cranach the Elder painted this double marriage
portrait to celebrate Luther’s wedding in 1525 to
Katharina von Bora, a former nun. The artist was one
of the witnesses at the wedding and, in fact, had
presented Luther’s marriage proposal to Katharina.
The couple quickly became a model of the ideal
marriage, and many churches wanted their portraits.
More than sixty similar paintings, with slight
variations, were produced by Cranach’s workshop
and hung in churches and wealthy homes.

Because the Reformation generally brought the closing of monasteries

and convents, marriage became virtually the only occupation for upper-
class Protestant women. Recognizing this, women in some convents fought
the Reformation or argued that they could still be pious Protestants within
convent walls. Most nuns left, however, and we do not know what
happened to them. The Protestant emphasis on marriage made unmarried
women (and men) suspect, for they did not belong to the type of household
regarded as the cornerstone of a proper, godly society.

The Reformation and German Politics

Criticism of the church was widespread in Europe in the early sixteenth
century. Yet such movements could be more easily squelched by the strong
central governments of Spain, France, and England. The Holy Roman
Empire, in contrast, included hundreds of largely independent states in
which the emperor had far less authority than did the monarchs of western
Europe. Thus local rulers of the many states in the empire continued to
exercise great power.
Luther’s ideas appealed to local rulers within the empire for a variety of
reasons. Though Germany was not a nation, people did have an
understanding of being German because of their language and traditions.
Luther frequently used the phrase “we Germans” in his attacks on the
papacy, and his appeal to national feeling influenced many rulers. Also,
while some German rulers were sincerely attracted to Lutheran ideas,
material considerations swayed many others to embrace the new faith. The
rejection of Roman Catholicism and the adoption of Protestantism would
mean the legal confiscation of valuable church property. Thus many
political authorities in the empire used the religious issue to extend their
financial and political power and to enhance their independence from the
emperor.
The Habsburg Charles V, elected as emperor in 1521, was a vigorous
defender of Catholicism, so it is not surprising that the Reformation led to
religious wars. Protestant territories in the empire formed military alliances,
and the emperor could not oppose them effectively given other military
engagements. In southeastern Europe Habsburg troops were already
fighting the Ottoman Turks. Habsburg soldiers were also engaged in a series
of wars with the Valois (VAL-wah) kings of France that stretched from
1494 to 1559. The cornerstone of French foreign policy in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries was the desire to keep the German states divided.
Thus Europe witnessed the paradox of the Catholic king of France
supporting Lutheran princes in their challenge to his fellow Catholic,
Charles V.
Finally, in 1555, Charles agreed to the Peace of Augsburg, which
officially recognized Lutheranism and ended religious war in Germany for
many decades. Under this treaty, the political authority in each territory of
the Holy Roman Empire was permitted to decide whether the territory
would be Catholic or Lutheran. His hope of uniting his empire under a
single church dashed, Charles V abdicated in 1556, transferring power over
his Spanish and Netherlandish holdings to his son Philip II and his imperial
power to his brother Ferdinand.

England’s Shift Toward Protestantism

As on the continent, the Reformation in England had economic and political
as well as religious causes. The impetus for England’s break with Rome
was the desire of King Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) for a new wife. When the
personal matter of his need to divorce his first wife became enmeshed with
political issues, a complete break with Rome resulted.
In 1527, after eighteen years of marriage, Henry’s wife Catherine of
Aragon had failed to produce a male child, and Henry had also fallen in
love with a court lady in waiting, Anne Boleyn. So Henry petitioned Pope
Clement VII for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine. When the pope
procrastinated in granting the annulment, Henry decided to remove the
English Church from papal authority.
Henry used Parliament to legalize the Reformation in England and to
make himself the supreme head of the Church of England. Anne had a
daughter, Elizabeth, but failed to produce a son, so Henry VIII charged her
with adulterous incest and in 1536 had her beheaded. His third wife, Jane
Seymour, gave Henry the desired son, Edward, but she died a few days after
childbirth. Henry went on to three more wives.
Between 1535 and 1539 Henry decided to dissolve the English
monasteries primarily because he wanted their wealth. Hundreds of former
church properties were sold to the middle and upper classes, strengthening
the upper classes and tying them to the Tudor dynasty, to which Henry
belonged. How did everyday people react to Henry’s break from the
Catholic Church? Recent scholarship points out that people rarely
“converted” from Catholicism to Protestantism overnight. Instead they
responded to the local consequences of the shift from Catholicism with a
combination of resistance, acceptance, and collaboration.
Loyalty to the Catholic Church remained particularly strong in Ireland.
Ireland had been claimed by English kings since the twelfth century, but in
reality the English had firm control of only the area around Dublin known
as the Pale. In 1536, on orders from London, the Irish Parliament, which
represented only the English landlords and the people of the Pale, approved
the English laws severing the church from Rome. The (English) ruling class
adopted the new reformed faith, but most of the Irish people remained
Roman Catholic. Irish armed opposition to the Reformation led to harsh
repression by the English.
In the short reign of Henry’s sickly son Edward VI (r. 1547–1553),
strongly Protestant ideas exerted a significant influence on the religious life
of the country. The equally brief reign of Mary Tudor (r. 1553–1558), the
devoutly Catholic daughter of Catherine of Aragon, witnessed a sharp move
back to Catholicism, and many Protestants fled to the continent. Mary’s
death raised to the throne her half sister Elizabeth (r. 1558–1603) and
inaugurated the beginning of religious stability.
Elizabeth had been raised a Protestant, but at the start of her reign sharp
differences existed in England. On the one hand, Catholics wanted a Roman
Catholic ruler. On the other hand, a vocal number of returning exiles
wanted all Catholic elements in the Church of England eliminated.
Members of the latter group were called Puritans. Shrewdly, Elizabeth
chose a middle course between Catholic and Puritan extremes. The
Anglican Church, as the Church of England was called, moved in a
moderately Protestant direction.

Calvinism and Its Moral Standards

John Calvin (1509–1564) was born in Noyon in northwestern France. As a
young man he studied law, but in 1533 he experienced a religious crisis, as
a result of which he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism. Calvin
believed that God had specifically selected him to reform the church.
Accordingly, he accepted an invitation to assist in the reformation of the
city of Geneva. There, beginning in 1541, Calvin worked to establish a
Christian society ruled by God through civil magistrates and reformed
ministers.
Calvin’s ideas are embodied in The Institutes of the Christian Religion,
first published in 1536 and modified several times afterward. The
cornerstone of Calvin’s theology was his belief in the absolute sovereignty
and omnipotence of God and the total weakness of humanity.
Calvin did not ascribe free will to human beings because that would
detract from the sovereignty of God. According to his beliefs, men and
women could not actively work to achieve salvation; rather, God decided at
the beginning of time who would be saved and who damned. This
viewpoint constitutes the theological principle called predestination. “This
terrible decree,” as even Calvin called it, did not lead to pessimism or
fatalism. Instead, although Calvinists believed that one’s own actions could
do nothing to change one’s fate, many came to believe that hard work,
thrift, and moral conduct could serve as signs that one was among the
“elect” chosen for salvation. Any occupation or profession could be a God-
given “calling” and should be carried out with diligence and dedication.
Calvin transformed Geneva into a community based on his religious
principles. The most powerful organization in the city became the
Consistory, a group of laymen and pastors charged with investigating and
disciplining deviations from proper doctrine and conduct.
Religious refugees from France, England, Spain, Scotland, and Italy
visited Calvin’s Geneva, which became the model of a Christian community
for many. Subsequently, the Reformed Church of Calvin served as the
model for the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, the Huguenot (HYOO-guh-
naht) Church in France, and the Puritan Churches in England and New
England. Calvinism became the compelling force in international
Protestantism, first in Europe and then in many Dutch and English colonies
around the world.
The Catholic Reformation
How did the Catholic Church respond to the new religious situation?

Between 1517 and 1547 Protestantism made remarkable advances.

Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church made a significant comeback
(Map 15.2). Many historians see the developments within the Catholic
Church after the Protestant Reformation as two interrelated movements, one
a drive for internal reform, and the other a Counter-Reformation that
actively opposed Protestantism. In both movements, papal reforms and new
religious orders were important agents.
 MAP 15.2 Religious Divisions in Europe, ca. 1555
The Reformation shattered the religious unity of Western Christendom. The situation was
even more complicated than a map of this scale can show. Many cities within the Holy
Roman Empire, for example, accepted a different faith than did the surrounding
countryside; Augsburg, Basel, and Strasbourg were all Protestant, though surrounded by
territory ruled by Catholic nobles.

Papal Reforms and the Council of Trent

Under Pope Paul III (pontificate 1534–1549) the papal court became the
center of a reform movement within the Catholic Church. In 1542 he
established the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal
Inquisition, often called the Holy Office, with jurisdiction over the Roman
Inquisition, a powerful instrument of the Catholic Reformation. The
Inquisition had judicial authority over all Catholics and the power to arrest,
imprison, and execute.
Pope Paul III also called a general council, which met intermittently
from 1545 to 1563 at Trent, an imperial city close to Italy. The decrees of
the Council of Trent laid a solid basis for the spiritual renewal of the
Catholic Church. It gave equal validity to the Scriptures and to tradition as
sources of religious truth and authority. It reaffirmed the seven sacraments
and the traditional Catholic teaching on transubstantiation (the
transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ in the
Eucharist). It tackled the disciplinary matters that had disillusioned the
faithful. The council also required every diocese to establish a seminary for
educating and training clergy. Finally, great emphasis was placed on
preaching to and instructing the laity, especially the uneducated. For four
centuries the doctrinal and disciplinary legislation of Trent served as the
basis for Roman Catholic faith, organization, and practice.

New Religious Orders

Just as seminaries provided education, so did new religious orders, which
aimed to raise the moral and intellectual level of the clergy and people. The
Ursuline (UHR-suh-luhn) order of nuns, founded in 1535 by Angela Merici
(1474–1540), attained enormous prestige for its education of women. The
Ursulines were the first women’s religious order concentrating exclusively
on teaching young girls, with the goal of re-Christianizing society by
training future wives and mothers. After receiving papal approval in 1565,
the Ursulines rapidly spread to France and the New World.
Another important new order was the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits.
Founded by Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), and approved by the pope in
1540, this order played a powerful international role in strengthening
Catholicism in Europe and spreading the faith around the world. Under
Loyola’s leadership, the Society of Jesus developed into a highly
centralized, tightly knit organization whose professed members vowed to go
anywhere the pope said they were needed. They established schools that
adopted the modern humanist curricula and methods and that educated the
sons of the nobility as well as the poor. The Jesuits attracted many recruits
and achieved phenomenal success for the papacy and the reformed Catholic
Church, carrying Christianity to much of South and Central America, India,
and Japan before 1550 and to Brazil, North America, and the Congo in the
seventeenth century. Within Europe the Jesuits brought almost all of
southern Germany and much of eastern Europe back to Catholicism. Also,
as confessors and spiritual directors to kings, Jesuits exerted great political
influence.
Religious Violence
What were the causes and consequences of religious violence, including riots, wars,
and witch-hunts?

In 1559 France and Spain signed the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (KAH-toh

cahm-BREH-sis), which ended the long conflict known as the Habsburg-
Valois wars. However, over the next century religious differences led to
riots, civil wars, and international conflicts. Especially in France and the
Netherlands, Protestants and Catholics opposed one another through
preaching, teaching, and violence. Catholics and Protestants alike feared
people of other faiths, whom they often saw as agents of Satan. Even more,
they feared those explicitly identified with Satan: people believed to be
witches. This era also saw the most virulent witch persecutions in European
history, as both Protestants and Catholics tried to make their cities and
states more godly.

French Religious Wars

The costs of the Habsburg-Valois wars, waged intermittently through the
first half of the sixteenth century, forced the French to increase taxes and
borrow heavily. King Francis I’s treaty with the pope (see “Politics and the
State in the Renaissance”) gave the French crown a rich supplement of
money and offices and also a vested financial interest in Catholicism.
Significant numbers of French people, however, were attracted to
Calvinism. Calvinism drew converts from among reform-minded members
of the Catholic clergy, the industrious middle classes, and artisan groups.
Additionally, some French nobles became Calvinist. By the middle of the
sixteenth century perhaps one-tenth of the French population had become
Huguenots, the name given to French Calvinists.
Both Calvinists and Catholics believed that the others’ books, services,
and ministers polluted the community. Preachers communicated these ideas
in sermons, triggering religious violence. Armed clashes between Catholic
royalist nobles and Calvinist antimonarchical nobles occurred in many parts
of France.
 Calvinist teachings called the power of sacred images into question, and
mobs in many cities destroyed statues, stained-glass windows, and
paintings. Catholic mobs responded by defending the sacred images, and
crowds on both sides killed their opponents, often in gruesome ways.
A particularly savage Catholic attack on Calvinists took place in Paris
on August 24, 1572, Saint Bartholomew’s Day. The occasion was the
marriage of the king’s sister Margaret of Valois to the Protestant Henry of
Navarre, which was intended to help reconcile Catholics and Huguenots.
Instead Huguenot wedding guests in Paris were massacred, and other
Protestants were slaughtered by mobs. Violence spread to the provinces,
where thousands were killed. The Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre led to
a civil war that dragged on for fifteen years.
What ultimately saved France was a small group of moderates of both
faiths called politiques (POH-lee-teeks), who believed that only the
restoration of a strong monarchy could reverse the trend toward collapse.
The politiques also favored officially recognizing the Huguenots. The death
of the French queen Catherine de’ Medici, followed by the assassination of
her son King Henry III, paved the way for the accession of Henry of
Navarre (the unfortunate bridegroom of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day
massacre), a politique who became Henry IV (r. 1589–1610).
Henry’s willingness to sacrifice religious principles to political
necessity saved France. He converted to Catholicism but also, in 1598,
issued the Edict of Nantes (NAHNT), which granted liberty of conscience
(freedom of thought) and liberty of public worship to Huguenots in 150
fortified towns. By helping restore internal peace in France, the reign of
Henry IV and the Edict of Nantes paved the way for French kings to claim
absolute power in the seventeenth century.

Civil Wars in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands a movement for church reform developed into a struggle
for Dutch independence. The Catholic emperor Charles V had inherited the
seventeen provinces that compose present-day Belgium and the Netherlands
(see “The Habsburgs”). In the Netherlands, as in many other places,
Lutheran ideas took root. Charles V had grown up in the Netherlands,
however, and he was able to limit the impact of the new ideas. As discussed
earlier, Charles V abdicated in 1556 and transferred power over the
Netherlands to his son Philip II, who had grown up in Spain. Although
Philip, like his father, opposed Protestantism, Protestant ideas spread in the
Netherlands.
By the 1560s Protestants in the Netherlands were primarily Calvinists.
When Spanish authorities attempted to suppress Calvinist worship and
raised taxes, their actions sparked riots and a wave of iconoclasm. In
response, Philip II sent twenty thousand Spanish troops, and from 1568 to
1578 civil war raged in the Netherlands between Catholics and Protestants
and between the seventeen provinces and Spain. Eventually the ten southern
provinces came under the control of the Spanish Habsburg forces. The
seven northern provinces, led by Holland, formed the Union of Utrecht (the
United Provinces), and in 1581 they declared their independence from
Spain. The north was Protestant, and the south remained Catholic. Philip
did not accept the independence of the north, and war continued. England
was even drawn into the conflict, supplying money and troops to the United
Provinces. (Spain launched the Spanish Armada, an unsuccessful invasion
of England, in response.) Hostilities ended in 1609 when Spain agreed to a
truce that recognized the independence of the United Provinces.
 Spanish Soldiers Killing Protestants in Haarlem In this 1573
engraving by the Calvinist artist Franz Hogenberg, Spanish soldiers
accompanied by priests kill residents of the Dutch city of Haarlem
by hanging or beheading, and then dump their bodies in the river.
Haarlem had withstood a seven-month siege by Spanish troops in
1572–1573, and after the starving city surrendered, the garrison of
troops and forty citizens judged guilty of sedition were executed.
Images such as this were part of the propaganda battle that
accompanied the wars of religion, but in many cases there were
actual atrocities, on both sides.

The Great European Witch-Hunt

Insecurity created by the religious wars contributed to persecution for
witchcraft, which actually began before the Reformation in the 1480s but
became especially common about 1560. Both Protestants and Catholics
tried and executed those accused of being witches.
The heightened sense of God’s power and divine wrath in the
Reformation era was an important factor in the witch-hunts, but other
factors were also significant. In the later Middle Ages, scholars and officials
added a demonological component to existing ideas about witches. For
them, the essence of witchcraft was making a pact with the Devil that
required the witch to do the Devil’s bidding. Witches were no longer simply
people who used magical power to do harm and get what they wanted, but
rather people used by the Devil to do what he wanted.
Trials involving this new notion of witchcraft as diabolical heresy began
in Switzerland and southern Germany in the late fifteenth century; became
less numerous in the early decades of the Reformation, when Protestants
and Catholics were busy fighting each other; and then picked up again
about 1560, spreading to much of western Europe and to European colonies
in the Americas. Scholars estimate that during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people were officially
tried for witchcraft, and between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed.
Though the gender balance of the accused varied widely in different
parts of Europe, between 75 and 85 percent of those tried and executed
were women, whom some demonologists viewed as weaker and so more
likely to give in to the Devil. Tensions within families, households, and
neighborhoods also played a role in witchcraft accusations, as grievances
and jealousies led to accusations. Suspects were questioned and tortured by
legal authorities, and they often implicated others.
Even in the sixteenth century a few individuals questioned whether
witches could ever do harm, make a pact with the Devil, or engage in the
wild activities attributed to them. Furthermore, doubts about trial
procedures and the use of torture to extract confessions gradually spread
among the same type of religious and legal authorities who had so
vigorously persecuted witches. By about 1660 prosecutions for witchcraft
had become less common.
European ideas about witchcraft traveled across the Atlantic. There were
a few trials of European colonists for witchcraft — the most famous of
which was at Salem in Massachusetts — but more often indigenous people
were accused of being witches.
Chapter Summary
The Renaissance was characterized by self-conscious awareness among
educated Europeans, particularly scholars and writers known as humanists,
that they were living in a new era. Central to humanists were interest in the
Latin classics, belief in individual potential, education for a career of public
service, and, in northern Europe, the reform of church and society. Their
ideas spread as a result of the development of the printing press with
movable metal type, which revolutionized communication. Interest in the
classical past and in the individual shaped the style and subject matter of
Renaissance art, and patrons provided the money needed for an outpouring
of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Social hierarchies in the
Renaissance developed new features that contributed to the modern social
hierarchies of race, class, and gender. In politics, feudal monarchies
gradually evolved into nation-states, as rulers used war, diplomacy, new
forms of taxation, centralized institutions, and strategic marital alliances to
build up their power.
Many individuals and groups had long called for reforms in the Catholic
Church, providing a ready audience in the early sixteenth century for the
ideas of Martin Luther. Luther and other reformers, called Protestants,
developed a new understanding of Christian doctrine that emphasized faith
and grace; Protestant ideas spread rapidly through preaching, hymns, and
the printing press; and soon western Europe was split religiously. Local
situations influenced religious patterns. In England the king’s need for a
church-approved divorce triggered the break with Rome, while in France
and eastern Europe the ideas of John Calvin gained wide acceptance. By the
middle of the sixteenth century the Roman Catholic Church had begun a
process of internal reform along with opposing Protestants intellectually,
politically, militarily, and institutionally. This reinvigorated Catholic Church
would carry Christian ideas around the world, while in Europe religious
differences led to riots, witch persecutions, civil wars, and international
conflicts.
 CONNECTIONS

The Renaissance and the Reformation are often seen as key to the creation
of the modern world. The radical changes of these times contained many
elements of continuity, however. Artists, humanists, and religious reformers
looked back to the classical era and early Christianity for inspiration.
Political leaders played important roles in cultural and religious
developments, just as they had for centuries in Europe and other parts of the
world. Social hierarchies of race, status, and gender built on those of earlier
periods. Thinkers highlighted individual achievement, but families,
religious brotherhoods, and other groups remained important. The events of
the Renaissance and Reformation were thus linked with earlier
developments, and they were also closely connected with another important
element in the modern world: European exploration and colonization
(discussed in Chapter 16). Renaissance monarchs paid for maritime
expeditions, expecting a large share of any profits gained and increasingly
viewing overseas territory as essential to their own reputations and to a
strong state. Moreover, for many, European expansion had a religious
dimension and was explicitly linked to the spread of Christianity around the
world. The desire for fame, wealth, and power that was central to the
Renaissance, and the religious zeal central to the Reformation, were thus
key to the European voyages and to colonial ventures as well.
Chapter 15 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

Renaissance (p. 356)

patronage (p. 356)
humanism (p. 357)
Christian humanists (p. 358)
debate about women (p. 362)
Protestant Reformation (p. 368)
indulgence (p. 369)
Diet of Worms (p. 369)
Protestant (p. 369)
predestination (p. 374)
Jesuits (p. 377)
Huguenots (p. 378)
politiques (p. 378)
witch-hunts (p. 380)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. What were the major cultural developments of the Renaissance? (p. 356)
2. What were the key social hierarchies in Renaissance Europe, and how did these
hierarchies shape people’s lives? (p. 361)
3. How did the nation-states of western Europe evolve in this period? (p. 364)
4. What were the central ideas of Protestant reformers, and why were they appealing
to various groups across Europe? (p. 368)
5. How did the Catholic Church respond to the new religious situation? (p. 375)
6. What were the causes and consequences of religious violence, including riots,
wars, and witch-hunts? (p. 377)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. The word Renaissance, invented to describe the cultural flowering in Italy that
began in the fourteenth century, has often been used for other periods of advance
in learning and the arts, such as the “Carolingian Renaissance” that you read
about in Chapter 8. Can you think of other, more recent “Renaissances” or ways
the term is used today?
2. The “debate about women” that you read about in this chapter was not simply a
European phenomenon, as educated men (and occasionally a few educated
women) in many cultures discussed women’s nature and character. How would
you compare ideas about women in classical Islamic society (Chapter 9), Song
China (Chapter 13), Heian Japan (Chapter 13), Renaissance Italy, and Protestant
Germany? How were these ideas reflected (or not reflected) in women’s actual
lives?
3. Martin Luther is always on every list of the one hundred most influential individuals
of all time. Should he be? Why or why not? Who else from this chapter (or other
chapters) should be on such a list, and why?

CHRONOLOGY

1368–1644 • Ming dynasty in China (Ch. 21)

ca. 1428–1521 • Aztec Empire dominates Mesoamerica (Ch. 11)
1434–1737 • Medici family in power in Florence
ca. 1438–1532 • Inca Empire dominates the Andes (Ch. 11)
1450s • Development of movable metal type in Germany
1450–1600 • European voyages of discovery and establishment of
colonial empires (Ch. 16)
ca. 1464–1591 • Songhai Empire in West Africa (Ch. 20)
1469 • Marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon
1492 • Spain conquers Granada; practicing Jews expelled from
Spain
1494–1559 • Habsburg-Valois Wars
ca. 1500–1700 • Height of Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires (Ch.
17)
1508–1512 • Michelangelo paints ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
1513 • Niccolò Machiavelli writes The Prince
1521 • Diet of Worms
1525 • Peasant revolts in Germany
1527 • Henry VIII of England asks Pope Clement VII to annul
his marriage to Catherine of Aragon
1536 • John Calvin publishes The Institutes of the Christian
Religion
1540 • Papal approval of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits)
1545–1563 • Council of Trent
1555 • Peace of Augsburg
1558–1603 • Reign of Elizabeth I in England
1560–1660 • Height of European witch-hunt
1568–1578 • Civil war in the Netherlands
1572 • Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre
1598 • Edict of Nantes
16
The Acceleration of Global Contact

1450–1600
Chapter Preview

The Afroeurasian Trade World

• What was the Afroeurasian trade world prior to the era of European
exploration?

The European Voyages of Discovery

• How and why did Europeans undertake ambitious voyages of expansion?

Conquest and Settlement

• What was the impact of Iberian conquest and settlement on the peoples and
ecologies of the Americas?

The Era of Global Contact

• How was the era of global contact shaped by new commodities, commercial
empires, and forced migrations?

Changing Attitudes and Beliefs

• How did new encounters shape cultural attitudes and beliefs in Europe and
the rest of the world?

BEFORE 1500 EUROPEANS WERE RELATIVELY MARGINAL PLAYERS IN a centuries-

old trading system that linked Africa, Asia, and Europe. The Indian Ocean was the locus of a
vibrant cosmopolitan Afroeurasian trade world in which Arab, Persian, Turkish, Indian,
African, Chinese, and European merchants and adventurers competed for trade in spices,
silks, and other goods. Elites everywhere prized Chinese porcelains and silks, while wealthy
members of the Celestial Kingdom, as China called itself, wanted gold, ivory, and
rhinoceros horn from Africa and exotic goods and peacocks from India. African people
wanted textiles from India and cowrie shells from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
Europeans craved Asian silks and spices, but they had few desirable goods to offer their
trading partners.
By 1550 the European search for better access to Asian trade goods had led to a new
overseas empire in the Indian Ocean and the accidental discovery of the Western
Hemisphere. With this discovery South and North America were drawn into an international
network of trade centers and political empires, which Europeans came to dominate. The era
of globalization had begun, creating new political systems and forms of economic exchange
as well as cultural assimilation, conversion, and resistance.
The Afroeurasian Trade World
What was the Afroeurasian trade world prior to the era of European exploration?

The Afroeurasian trade world linked the products and people of Europe,
Asia, and Africa in the fifteenth century. The West was a marginal player in
this trading system. Nevertheless, wealthy Europeans were eager consumers
of luxury goods from the East, which they received through Italian
middlemen.

The Trade World of the Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean was the center of the Afroeurasian trade world, serving as
a crossroads for commercial and cultural exchanges between China, India,
the Middle East, Africa, and Europe (Map 16.1). From the seventh through
the fourteenth centuries, the volume of this trade steadily increased,
declining only during the years of the Black Death.
 MAP 16.1 The Fifteenth-Century Afroeurasian Trading World After a period of decline
following the Black Death and the Mongol invasions, trade revived in the fifteenth century.
Muslim merchants dominated trade, linking ports in East Africa and the Red Sea with
those in India and the Malay Archipelago. The Chinese admiral Zheng He followed the
most important Indian Ocean trade routes on his voyages (1405–1433), hoping to impose
Ming dominance of trade and tribute.

Merchants congregated in a series of multicultural, cosmopolitan port

cities strung around the Indian Ocean. Most of these cities had some form
of autonomous self-government, and mutual self-interest largely limited
violence and prevented attempts to monopolize trade. The most developed
area of this commercial web was made up of the ports surrounding the
South China Sea. In the fifteenth century the port of Malacca became a
great commercial entrepôt (AHN-truh-poh), a trading center to which goods
were shipped for storage while awaiting redistribution. To Malacca came
porcelains, silks, and camphor (used in the manufacture of many
medications) from China; pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and raw materials such as
sandalwood from the Moluccas; sugar from the Philippines; and textiles,
copper weapons, incense, dyes, and opium from India.
The Mongol emperors opened the doors of China to the West,
encouraging Europeans like the Venetian trader and explorer Marco Polo to
do business there. Marco Polo’s tales of his travels from 1271 to 1295 and
his encounter with the Great Khan fueled Western fantasies about the
Orient. After the Mongols fell to the Ming Dynasty in 1368, China entered a
period of agricultural and commercial expansion, population growth, and
urbanization (see “Ming China” in Chapter 21). Historians agree that China
had the most advanced economy in the world until at least the beginning of
the eighteenth century.
China also took the lead in exploration, sending Admiral Zheng He’s
fleet as far west as Egypt. Each of his seven expeditions from 1405 to 1433
involved hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men. The purpose of
the voyages was primarily diplomatic, to enhance China’s prestige and seek
tribute-paying alliances. The high expense of the voyages in a period of
renewed Mongol encroachment led to the abandonment of the maritime
expeditions after the deaths of Zheng He and the emperor. China’s turning
away from external trade opened new opportunities for European states to
expand their role in Asian trade.
Another center of Indian Ocean trade was India, the crucial link
between the Persian Gulf and the Southeast Asian and East Asian trade
networks. The subcontinent had ancient links with its neighbors to the
northwest. Trade among ports bordering the Indian Ocean was revived in
the Middle Ages by Arab merchants who circumnavigated India on their
way to trade in the South China Sea. The inhabitants of India’s Coromandel
coast traditionally looked to Southeast Asia, where they had ancient trading
and cultural ties. Hinduism and Buddhism arrived in Southeast Asia from
India during late antiquity, and a brisk trade between Southeast Asian and
Coromandel port cities persisted from that time until the arrival of the
Portuguese in the sixteenth century. India itself was an important
contributor of goods to the world trading system. Most of the world’s
pepper was grown in India, and Indian cotton and silk textiles were also
highly prized.

Peoples and Cultures of the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean trade connected peoples from the Malay Peninsula (the
southern extremity of the Asian continent), India, China, and East Africa,
among whom there was an enormous variety of languages, cultures, and
religions. In spite of this diversity, certain sociocultural similarities linked
these peoples, especially in Southeast Asia.
In comparison to India, China, or even Europe after the Black Death,
Southeast Asia was sparsely populated. People were concentrated in port
cities and in areas of intense rice cultivation. Another difference between
Southeast Asia and India, China, and Europe was the higher status of
women — their primary role in planting and harvesting rice gave them
authority and economic power. At marriage, which typically occurred
around age twenty, the groom paid the bride (or sometimes her family) a
sum of money called bride wealth, which remained under her control. This
practice was in sharp contrast to the Chinese, Indian, and European dowry,
which came under the husband’s control. Property was administered jointly,
in contrast to the Chinese principle and Indian practice that wives had no
say in the disposal of family property. All children, regardless of gender,
inherited equally.
Respect for women carried over to the commercial sphere. Women
participated in business as partners and independent entrepreneurs. When
Portuguese and Dutch men settled in the region and married local women,
their wives continued to play important roles in trade and commerce.
In contrast to most parts of the world other than Africa, Southeast Asian
peoples had an accepting attitude toward premarital sexual activity and
placed no premium on virginity at marriage. Divorce carried no social
stigma and was easily attainable if a pair proved incompatible. Either the
woman or the man could initiate a divorce.

Trade with Africa and the Middle East

On the east coast of Africa, Swahili-speaking city-states engaged in the
Indian Ocean trade, exchanging ivory, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shells,
copra (dried coconut), and slaves for textiles, spices, cowrie shells,
porcelain, and other goods. The most important cities were Mogadishu,
Mombasa, and Kilwa, which had converted to Islam by the eleventh
century.
West Africa also played an important role in world trade. In the fifteenth
century most of the gold that reached Europe came from the Sudan region
in West Africa. Transported across the Sahara by Arab and African traders
on camels, the gold was sold in the ports of North Africa. Other trading
routes led to the Egyptian cities of Alexandria and Cairo.
Inland nations that sat astride the north-south caravan routes grew
wealthy from this trade. In the mid-thirteenth century the kingdom of Mali
emerged as an important player on the overland trade route. In later
centuries, however, the diversion of gold away from the trans-Sahara routes
would weaken the inland states of Africa politically and economically.
 Mansa Musa This detail from the Catalan Atlas of
1375, a world map created for the Catalan king,
depicts a king of Mali, Mansa Musa, who was
legendary for his wealth in gold. European desires for
direct access to the trade in sub-Saharan gold
helped inspire Portuguese exploration of the west
coast of Africa in the fifteenth century.

Gold was one important object of trade; slaves were another. Long
before the arrival of Europeans, Arab and African merchants took West
African slaves to the Mediterranean to be sold in European, Egyptian, and
Middle Eastern markets and also brought eastern Europeans to West Africa
as slaves. In addition, Indian and Arab merchants traded slaves in the
coastal regions of East Africa.
 The Middle East served as an intermediary for trade between Europe,
Africa, and Asia and was also an important supplier of goods for foreign
exchange. Two great rival empires, the Persian Safavids and the Turkish
Ottomans, dominated the region, competing for control over western trade
routes to the East. By the mid-sixteenth century the Ottomans had
established control over eastern Mediterranean sea routes to trading centers
in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the rest of North Africa (see “The Expansion
of the Ottoman Empire” in Chapter 17). Their power extended into Europe
as far west as Vienna.

Genoese and Venetian Middlemen

Europe constituted a minor outpost in the world trading system, for
European craftsmen produced few products to rival those of Asia. However,
Europeans desired luxury goods from the East, and in the late Middle Ages
such trade was controlled by the Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa.
Venice had opened the gateway to Asian trade in 1304, when it established
formal relations with the sultan of Mamluk Egypt and started operations in
Cairo. Because demand for European goods was low, Venetians funded
their purchases through shipping and trade in firearms and slaves.
Venice’s ancient trading rival was Genoa. By 1270 Genoa dominated
the northern route to Asia through the Black Sea. From then until the
fourteenth century the Genoese expanded their trade routes as far as Persia
and the Far East.
In the fifteenth century, with Venice claiming victory in the spice trade,
the Genoese shifted focus from trade to finance and from the Black Sea to
the western Mediterranean. When Spanish and Portuguese voyages began to
explore the western Atlantic (see “The European Voyages of Discovery”),
Genoese merchants, navigators, and financiers provided their skills and
capital to the Iberian monarchs.
A major element of Italian trade was slavery. Merchants purchased
slaves in the Balkans of southeastern Europe. After the loss of the Black
Sea trade routes — and thus the source of slaves — to the Ottomans, the
Genoese sought new supplies of slaves in the West, eventually seizing or
buying and selling the Guanches (indigenous peoples from the Canary
Islands), Muslim prisoners and Jewish refugees from Spain, and, by the
early 1500s, both black and Berber Africans. With the growth of Spanish
colonies in the New World, Genoese and Venetian merchants became
important players in the Atlantic slave trade.
The European Voyages of Discovery
How and why did Europeans undertake ambitious voyages of expansion?

As Europe recovered after the Black Death, new European players entered
the scene with novel technology, eager to spread Christianity and to undo
Italian and Ottoman domination of trade with the East. A century after the
plague, Iberian explorers began overseas voyages that helped create the
modern world, with immense consequences for their own continent and the
rest of the planet.

Causes of European Expansion

European expansion had multiple causes. The first was economic. By the
middle of the fifteenth century Europe was experiencing a revival of
population and economic activity after the lows of the Black Death. This
revival created renewed demand for luxuries, especially spices, from the
East. Introduced into western Europe by the Crusaders in the twelfth
century, spices such as pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves added flavor
and variety to the monotonous European diet. They were also used in
anointing oil and as incense for religious rituals, and as perfumes,
medicines, and dyes in daily life. The fall of Constantinople and the
subsequent Ottoman control of trade routes created obstacles to fulfilling
demands for these precious and prestigious goods. Europeans eager for the
profits of trade thus needed to find new sources of precious metal to
exchange with the Ottomans or trade routes that bypassed the Ottomans.
Religious fervor and the crusading spirit were the second important
catalyst for expansion. Just seven months separated Isabella and
Ferdinand’s conquest of the emirate of Granada, the last remaining Muslim
state on the Iberian Peninsula, and Columbus’s departure across the
Atlantic. Overseas exploration thus transferred the militaristic religious
fervor of the reconquista (reconquest) to new non-Christian territories. As
they conquered indigenous empires, Iberians brought the attitudes and
administrative practices developed during the reconquista to the Americas.
A third motivation was the dynamic spirit of the Renaissance. Like
other men of the Renaissance era, explorers sought to win glory for their
exploits and demonstrated a genuine interest in learning more about
unknown waters. The detailed journals kept by European voyagers attest to
their fascination with the new peoples and places they visited.
The people who stayed at home had a powerful impact on the voyages
of discovery. Merchants provided the capital for many early voyages and
had a strong say in their course. To gain authorization and financial support
for their expeditions, they sought official sponsorship from the Crown.
Competition among European monarchs for the prestige and profit of
overseas exploration thus constituted another crucial factor in encouraging
the steady stream of expeditions that began in the late fifteenth century.
The small number of Europeans who could read provided a rapt
audience for tales of fantastic places and unknown peoples. Cosmography,
natural history, and geography aroused enormous interest among educated
people in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One of the most popular
books of the time was the fourteenth-century text The Travels of Sir John
Mandeville, which purported to be a firsthand account of the author’s
travels in the Middle East, India, and China.

Technology and the Rise of Exploration

The Iberian powers sought technological improvements in shipbuilding,
weaponry, and navigation in order to undertake ambitious voyages of
exploration and trade. Medieval European seagoing vessels consisted of
open galleys propelled by oars, common in Mediterranean trade, or single-
masted sailing ships. Though adequate for short journeys that hugged the
shoreline, such vessels were incapable of long-distance journeys or high-
volume trade. In the fifteenth century the Portuguese developed the
caravel, a three-masted sailing ship. Its multiple sails and sternpost rudder
made the caravel a more maneuverable vessel that required fewer crewmen
to operate. It could carry more cargo than a galley, which meant it could sail
farther without stopping for supplies and return with a larger cache of
profitable goods. When fitted with cannon, it could dominate larger vessels
and bombard port cities.
This period also saw great strides in cartography and navigational aids.
Around 1410 a Latin translation reintroduced western Europeans to
Ptolemy’s Geography. Written in the second century, the work synthesized
the geographical knowledge of the classical world. It represented a major
improvement over medieval cartography by depicting the world as round
and introducing latitude and longitude markings, but it also contained
significant errors. Unaware of the Americas, Ptolemy showed the world as
much smaller than it is, so that Asia appeared not very far to the west of
Europe.
Originating in China, the magnetic compass was brought to the West in
the late Middle Ages. By using the compass to determine their direction and
estimating their speed of travel over a set length of time, mariners could
determine the course of a ship’s voyage. The astrolabe, an instrument
invented by the ancient Greeks and perfected by Muslim navigators, was
used to determine the altitude of the sun and other celestial bodies. It
allowed mariners to plot their latitude, that is, their precise position north or
south of the equator.
Much of the new technology that Europeans used on their voyages was
borrowed from the East. Gunpowder, the compass, and the sternpost rudder
were Chinese inventions. The triangular lateen sail, which allowed caravels
to tack against the wind, was a product of the Indian Ocean trade world.
Advances in cartography and navigation also drew on the rich tradition of
Judeo-Arabic mathematical and astronomical learning in Iberia. In
exploring new territories, European sailors thus called on techniques and
knowledge developed over centuries in China, the Muslim world, and
trading centers along the Indian Ocean.

The Portuguese in Africa and Asia

For centuries Portugal was a small and poor nation on the margins of
European life whose principal activities were fishing and subsistence
farming. Yet Portugal had a long history of seafaring and navigation. Nature
favored the Portuguese: winds blowing along their coast offered passage to
Africa, its Atlantic islands, and, ultimately, Brazil. Once they had mastered
the secret to sailing against the wind to return to Europe (by sailing farther
west to catch winds from the southwest), they were poised to lead Atlantic
exploration. The objectives of Portuguese exploration included achieving
military glory; converting Muslims; and finding gold, slaves, and an
overseas route to Asian spice markets.
In the early phases of Portuguese exploration, Prince Henry (1394–
1460), a younger son of the king, played a leading role. A nineteenth-
century scholar dubbed Henry “the Navigator” because of his support for
Portuguese voyages of discovery. Henry participated in Portugal’s conquest
of Ceuta (sa-OO-tah), an Arab city in northern Morocco, in 1415, an event
that marked the beginning of European overseas expansion. In the 1420s,
under Henry’s direction, the Portuguese began to settle the Atlantic islands
of Madeira (ca. 1420) and the Azores (1427). In 1443 they founded their
first African commercial settlement at Arguin in North Africa. By the time
of Henry’s death in 1460, his support for exploration had resulted in
thriving sugar plantations on the Atlantic islands, the first arrival of
enslaved Africans in Portugal, and new access to African gold.
The Portuguese next established fortified trading posts, called factories,
on the gold-rich Guinea coast and penetrated into the African continent all
the way to Timbuktu (Map 16.2). By 1500 Portugal controlled the flow of
African gold to Europe. In contrast to the Spanish who conquered the
Americas (see “Spanish Conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires”), the
Portuguese did not establish large settlements in West Africa or seek to
control the political or cultural lives of those with whom they traded.
Instead they sought to profit by inserting themselves into existing trading
systems. For the first century of their relations, African rulers were equal
partners with the Portuguese, benefiting from their experienced armies and
European vulnerability to tropical diseases.
 MAP 16.2 Overseas Exploration and Conquest in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries
The voyages of discovery marked a dramatic new phase in the centuries-old migrations of
European peoples. This map depicts the voyages of the most significant European
explorers of the period.

In 1487 Bartholomew Diaz (ca. 1451–1500) rounded the Cape of Good

Hope at the southern tip of Africa (see Map 16.2), but poor conditions
forced him to turn back. A decade later Vasco da Gama (ca. 1469–1524)
succeeded in rounding the Cape while commanding a fleet in search of a
sea route to India. With the help of an Indian guide, da Gama reached the
port of Calicut in India. He returned to Lisbon with spices and samples of
Indian cloth, having proved the possibility of lucrative trade with the East
via the Cape route. Thereafter, a Portuguese convoy set out for passage
around the Cape every March.
Lisbon became the entrance port for Asian goods into Europe, but this
was not accomplished without a fight. Muslim-controlled port city-states
had long controlled the rich trade of the Indian Ocean, and they did not
surrender it willingly. From 1500 to 1515 the Portuguese used a
combination of bombardment and diplomatic treaties to establish trading
factories at Goa, Malacca, Calicut, and Hormuz, thereby laying the
foundation for a Portuguese trading empire. The acquisition of port cities
and their trade routes brought riches to Portugal, but, as in Africa, the
Portuguese had limited impact on the lives and religious faith of peoples
beyond Portuguese coastal holdings.
Inspired by the Portuguese, the Spanish had also begun the quest for
empire. Theirs was to be a second, entirely different mode of colonization,
leading to the conquest of existing empires, large-scale settlement, and the
forced assimilation of huge indigenous populations.

Spain’s Voyages to the Americas

Christopher Columbus was not the first to cross the Atlantic. Ninth-century
Vikings established short-lived settlements in Newfoundland, and it is
probable that others made the voyage, either on purpose or accidentally,
carried by westward currents off the coast of Africa. In the late fifteenth
century the achievements of Portugal’s decades of exploration made the
moment right for Christopher Columbus’s attempt to find a westward route
across the Atlantic to Asia.
Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa, was an experienced seaman
and navigator. He had worked as a mapmaker in Lisbon and had spent time
on Madeira. He was familiar with such fifteenth-century Portuguese
navigational aids as portolans — written descriptions of the courses along
which ships sailed — and the use of the compass as a navigational
instrument.
Columbus was also a deeply religious man. He had witnessed the
Spanish conquest of Granada and shared fully in the religious fervor
surrounding that event. Like the Spanish rulers and most Europeans of his
age, Columbus understood Christianity as a missionary religion that should
be carried to all places of the earth.
Rejected for funding by the Portuguese in 1483 and by Ferdinand and
Isabella in 1486, Columbus finally won the support of the Spanish
monarchy in 1492. Buoyed by the success of the reconquista and eager to
earn profits from trade, the Spanish crown agreed to make him viceroy over
any territory he might discover and to give him one-tenth of the material
rewards of the journey.
Columbus and his small fleet left Spain on August 3, 1492. Columbus
dreamed of reaching the court of the Mongol emperor, the Great Khan, not
realizing that the Ming Dynasty had overthrown the Mongols in 1368.
Based on Ptolemy’s Geography and other texts, he expected to pass the
islands of Japan and then land on the east coast of China.
On October 12 Columbus landed in the Bahamas, which he christened
San Salvador and claimed for the Spanish crown. In a letter he wrote to
Ferdinand and Isabella on his return to Spain, Columbus described the
natives as handsome, peaceful, and primitive. Believing he was somewhere
off the east coast of Japan, in what he considered the Indies, he called them
“Indians,” a name that was later applied to all inhabitants of the Americas.
Columbus concluded that they would make good slaves and could quickly
be converted to Christianity.
Scholars have identified the inhabitants of the islands as the Taino
(TIGH-noh) people. From San Salvador, Columbus sailed southwest,
landing on Cuba on October 28. Deciding that he must be on the mainland
of China near the coastal city of Quinsay (now Hangzhou), he sent a small
embassy inland with letters from Ferdinand and Isabella and instructions to
locate the city. Although they found no large settlement, the sight of Taino
people wearing gold ornaments on Hispaniola suggested that gold was
available in the region. In January, confident that its source would soon be
found, he headed back to Spain to report on his discovery.
On his second voyage, Columbus took control of the island of
Hispaniola and enslaved its indigenous peoples. On this and subsequent
voyages, he brought with him settlers for the new Spanish territories, along
with agricultural seed and livestock. Columbus himself, however, had
limited skills in governing. Revolt soon broke out against him and his
brother on Hispaniola. A royal expedition sent to investigate returned the
brothers to Spain in chains, and a royal governor assumed control of the
colony.

Spain “Discovers” the Pacific

Columbus never realized the scope of his achievement: that he had found a
vast continent unknown to Europeans, except for the fleeting Viking
presence centuries earlier. The Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci (veh-
SPOO-chee) (1454–1512) realized what Columbus had not. Writing about
his discoveries on the coast of modern-day Venezuela, Vespucci stated:
“Those new regions which we found and explored with the fleet … we may
rightly call a New World.” This letter was the first document to describe
America as a continent separate from Asia. In recognition of Amerigo’s
bold claim, the continent was named for him.
To settle competing claims to the Atlantic discoveries, Spain and
Portugal turned to Pope Alexander VI. The resulting Treaty of Tordesillas
(tawr-duh-SEE-yuhs) in 1494 gave Spain everything to the west of an
imaginary line drawn down the Atlantic and Portugal everything to the east.
The search for profits determined the direction of Spanish exploration.
Because its profits from Hispaniola and other Caribbean islands were
insignificant compared to Portugal’s enormous riches from the Asian spice
trade, Spain renewed the search for a western passage to Asia. In 1519
Charles I of Spain (who was also Holy Roman emperor Charles V)
commissioned Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521) to find a direct sea route to
Asia. Magellan sailed southwest across the Atlantic to Brazil, and after a
long search along the coast he located the strait off the southern tip of South
America that now bears his name (see Map 16.2). After passing through the
strait into the Pacific Ocean in 1520, his fleet sailed north up the west coast
of South America and then headed west into the Pacific.
Terrible storms, disease, starvation, and violence devastated the
expedition. Magellan himself was killed in a skirmish in the Malay
Archipelago, and only one of the five ships that began the expedition made
it back to Spain. This ship returned home in 1522 with only eighteen men
aboard, having traveled from the east by way of the Indian Ocean, the Cape
of Good Hope, and the Atlantic. The voyage — the first to circumnavigate
the globe — had taken close to three years.
Despite the losses, this voyage revolutionized Europeans’ understanding
of the world by demonstrating the vastness of the Pacific. The earth was
clearly much larger than Ptolemy’s map had shown. Magellan’s expedition
also forced Spain’s rulers to rethink their plans for overseas commerce and
territorial expansion. The westward passage to the Indies was too long and
dangerous for commercial purposes. Thus Spain soon abandoned the
attempt to oust Portugal from the Eastern spice trade and concentrated on
exploiting its New World territories.

Early Exploration by Northern European Powers

Spain’s northern European rivals also set sail across the Atlantic during the
early days of exploration, searching for a northwest passage to the Indies. In
1497 John Cabot (ca. 1450–1499), a Genoese merchant living in London,
landed on Newfoundland. The next year he returned and explored the New
England coast. These forays proved futile, and at that time the English
established no permanent colonies in the territories they explored.
News of the riches of Mexico and Peru later inspired the English to
renew their efforts, this time in the extreme north. Between 1576 and 1578
Martin Frobisher (ca. 1535–1594) made three voyages in and around the
Canadian bay that now bears his name. Frobisher brought a quantity of ore
back to England, but it proved to be worthless.
Early French exploration of the Atlantic was equally frustrating.
Between 1534 and 1541 Frenchman Jacques Cartier (1491–1557) made
several voyages and explored the St. Lawrence River of Canada, searching
for a passage to the wealth of Asia. When this hope proved vain, the French
turned to a new source of profit within Canada itself: trade in beavers and
other furs. As had the Portuguese in Asia, French traders bartered with local
peoples whom they largely treated as autonomous and equal partners.
French fishermen also competed with the Spanish and English for the
schools of cod they found in the Atlantic waters around Newfoundland.
Conquest and Settlement
What was the impact of Iberian conquest and settlement on the peoples and
ecologies of the Americas?

Before Columbus’s arrival, the Americas were inhabited by thousands of

groups of indigenous peoples with distinct languages and cultures. These
groups ranged from hunter-gatherer tribes organized into tribal
confederations to settled agriculturalists to large-scale empires containing
bustling cities and towns. The best estimate is that the peoples of the
Americas numbered between 50 and 60 million in 1492. These numbers
were decimated, and the lives of survivors radically altered, by the arrival
of Europeans.

Spanish Conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires

The first two decades after Columbus’s arrival in the New World saw
Spanish settlement of Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean
islands. Based on rumors of a wealthy mainland civilization, the Spanish
governor in Cuba sponsored expeditions to the Yucatán coast of the Gulf of
Mexico, including one in 1519 under the command of the conquistador
(kahn-KEES-tuh-dawr) Hernán Cortés (1485–1547). Conquistador was
Spanish for “conqueror,” a Spanish soldier-explorer who sought to conquer
the New World for the Spanish crown. Alarmed by Cortés’s ambition, the
governor withdrew his support, but Cortés quickly set sail before being
removed from command. Cortés and his party landed on the Mexican coast
on April 21, 1519. His camp soon received visits by delegations of Aztec
leaders bearing gifts and news of their great emperor.
The Aztec Empire, an alliance between the Mexica people and their
conquered allies, had risen rapidly in size and power over the fifteenth
century. At the time of the Spanish arrival, the empire was ruled by
Moctezuma II (r. 1502–1520), from his capital at Tenochtitlan (tay-nawch-
TEET-lahn), now Mexico City. The Aztecs were a sophisticated society and
culture, with advanced mathematics, astronomy, and engineering. As in
European nations at the time, a hereditary nobility dominated the army, the
priesthood, and the state bureaucracy and reaped the gains from the
agricultural labor of the common people.

The Aztec Capital of Tenochtitlan This woodcut map was

published in 1524 along with Cortés’s letters describing the
conquest of the Mexica. As it shows, Tenochtitlan occupied an
island and was laid out in concentric circles. The administrative and
religious buildings were at the heart of the city, which was
surrounded by residential quarters. Cortés himself marveled at the
city in his letters: “The city is as large as Seville or Cordoba….
There are bridges, very large, strong, and well constructed, so that,
over many, ten horsemen can ride abreast…. The city has many
squares where markets are held…. There is one square … where
there are daily more than sixty thousand souls, buying and selling.
In the service and manners of its people, their fashion of living was
almost the same as in Spain, with just as much harmony and order.”

Within weeks of his arrival, Cortés acquired translators who provided

vital information on the empire and its weaknesses. Through his
interpreters, Cortés learned of strong local resentment against the Aztec
Empire. The Aztec state practiced brutal warfare against neighboring
peoples to secure captives for religious sacrifices and laborers for
agricultural and building projects. Once conquered, subject tribes paid
continual tribute to the empire through their local chiefs. Realizing that he
could exploit dissensions within the empire to his own advantage, Cortés
forged an alliance with Tlaxcala (tlah-SKAH-lah), a subject kingdom of the
Aztecs. In October a combined Spanish-Tlaxcalan force occupied the Aztec
city of Cholula, the second largest in the empire, and massacred thousands
of inhabitants. Strengthened by this victory, Cortés formed alliances with
other native kingdoms. In November 1519, with a few hundred Spanish
men and some six thousand indigenous warriors, he marched on
Tenochtitlan.
Unlike other native leaders, Moctezuma refrained from attacking the
Spaniards and instead welcomed Cortés and his men into Tenochtitlan.
Moctezuma was apparently deeply impressed by Spanish victories and
believed the Spanish were invincible. When Cortés took Moctezuma
hostage, the emperor’s influence crumbled. During the ensuing attacks and
counterattacks, Moctezuma was killed. The Spaniards and their allies
escaped from the city suffering heavy losses. Cortés quickly began
gathering forces and making new alliances against the Aztecs. In May 1521
he led a second assault on Tenochtitlan, leading an army of approximately
one thousand Spanish and seventy-five thousand native warriors.1
The Spanish victory in late summer 1521 was hard-won and was greatly
aided by the effects of smallpox, which had devastated the besieged
population of the city. After establishing a new capital in the ruins of
Tenochtitlan, Cortés and other conquistadors began the systematic conquest
of Mexico, a decades-long and brutal process.
More remarkable than the defeat of the Aztecs was the fall of the remote
Inca Empire in Peru. Living in a settlement perched more than 9,800 feet
above sea level, the Incas were isolated from the Mesoamerican civilization
of the Aztecs. Like the Mexica, the Incas had created a polity that rivaled
that of the Europeans in population and complexity and that had reached its
height in the fifteenth century. The Incas’ strength lay largely in their
bureaucratic efficiency. Ruled from the capital city of Cuzco, the empire
was divided into four major regions, each region into provinces, and each
province into districts. Officials at each level used the extensive network of
roads to transmit information and orders. While the Aztecs used a system of
glyphs for writing, the Incas had devised a complex system of colored and
knotted cords, called khipus, for administrative bookkeeping.
By the time of the Spanish invasion, however, the Inca Empire had been
weakened by a civil war over succession and an epidemic of disease,
probably smallpox, spread through trade with groups in contact with
Europeans. The Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro (ca. 1475–1541)
landed on the northern coast of Peru on May 13, 1532, the very day the Inca
leader Atahualpa (ah-tuh-WAHL-puh) won control of the empire. As
Pizarro advanced across the Andes toward Cuzco (KOOS-ko), the capital of
the Inca Empire, Atahualpa was also heading there for his coronation.
Like Moctezuma in Mexico, Atahualpa sent envoys to greet the
Spanish. Motivated by curiosity about the Spanish, he intended to meet with
them to learn more about them and their intentions. Instead the Spaniards
ambushed and captured him, extorted an enormous ransom in gold, and
then executed him on trumped-up charges in 1533. The Spanish then
marched on to Cuzco, profiting, as with the Aztecs, from internal conflicts
and forming alliances with local peoples. When Cuzco fell in 1533, the
Spanish plundered immense riches in gold and silver.
How was it possible for several hundred Spanish conquistadors to
defeat powerful empires commanding large armies, vast wealth, and
millions of inhabitants? Historians seeking answers to this question have
emphasized a combination of factors: the military superiority provided by
Spanish gunpowder, steel swords, and horses; divisions within the Aztec
and Inca Empires, which produced many native allies and interpreters for
the Spanish; and, most important, the devastating impact of contagious
diseases among the indigenous population. Ironically, the well-organized,
urban-based Aztec and Inca Empires were more vulnerable to wholesale
takeover than were more decentralized and fragmented groups like the
Maya in the Yucatán peninsula, whose independence was not wholly
crushed until the end of the seventeenth century.

Portuguese Brazil
Unlike Mesoamerica or the Andes, the territory of Brazil contained no
urban empires but instead had roughly 2.5 million nomadic and settled
people divided into small tribes and many different language groups. In
1500 the Portuguese crown named Pedro Álvares Cabral commander of a
fleet headed for the spice trade of the Indies. En route, the fleet sailed far to
the west, claiming the coast where they accidentally landed for Portugal
under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas. The Portuguese soon undertook
a profitable trade with local people in brazilwood, a valued source of red
dye, which inspired the name of the new colony.
 In the 1520s Portuguese settlers brought sugarcane production to Brazil.
They initially used enslaved indigenous laborers on sugar plantations, but
the rapid decline in the indigenous population soon led to the use of forcibly
transported Africans. In Brazil the Portuguese thus created a new form of
colonization in the Americas: large plantations worked by enslaved people.
This model of slave-worked sugar plantations would spread throughout the
Caribbean in the seventeenth century.

Colonial Administration
By the end of the sixteenth century the Spanish and Portuguese had
successfully overcome most indigenous groups and expanded their territory
throughout modern-day Mexico, the southwestern United States, and
Central and South America. In Mesoamerica and the Andes, the Spanish
had taken over the cities and tribute systems of the Aztecs and the Incas,
basing their control on the prior existence of well-established polities with
organized tribute systems.
While early conquest and settlement were conducted largely by private
initiatives, the Spanish and Portuguese governments soon assumed more
direct control. In 1503 the Spanish granted the port of Seville a monopoly
over all traffic to the New World and established the House of Trade to
oversee economic matters. In 1523 Spain created the Royal and Supreme
Council of the Indies, with authority over all colonial affairs subject to
approval by the king. Spanish territories themselves were divided initially
into two viceroyalties, or administrative divisions: New Spain, created in
1535; and Peru, created in 1542. In the eighteenth century two new
viceroyalties, New Granada and La Plata, were created (see Map 16.2).
Within each territory, the viceroy, or imperial governor, exercised broad
military and civil authority. The viceroy presided over the audiencia (ow-
dee-EHN-see-ah), a board of judges that served as his advisory council and
the highest judicial body. As in Spain, settlement in the Americas was
centered on cities and towns. In each city, the municipal council, or cabildo,
exercised local authority. Women were denied participation in public life, a
familiar pattern from both Spain and precolonial indigenous society.
Portugal adopted similar patterns of rule, with India House in Lisbon
functioning much like the Spanish House of Trade and royal representatives
overseeing Portuguese possessions in West Africa and Asia. To secure the
vast expanse of Brazil, in the 1530s the Portuguese implemented a
distinctive system of rule, called captaincies, hereditary grants of land
given to nobles and loyal officials who bore the costs of settling and
administering their territories. Over time, the Crown secured greater power
over the captaincies, appointing royal governors to act as administrators.
The captaincy of Bahia was the site of the capital, Salvador, home to the
governor general and other royal officials.
The Catholic Church played an integral role in Iberian rule. The papacy
allowed Portuguese and Spanish officials greater control over the church
than was the case at home, allowing them to appoint clerics and collect
tithes. This control allowed colonial powers to use the church as an
instrument to indoctrinate indigenous people (see “Religious Conversion”).

Indigenous Population Loss and Economic Exploitation

From the time of Christopher Columbus in Hispaniola, the Spanish made
use of the encomienda system to profit from the peoples and territories
they encountered in the Americas. This system was a legacy of the methods
used to reward military leaders in the time of the reconquista. First in the
Caribbean and then on the mainland, conquistadors granted their followers
the right to forcibly employ groups of indigenous people as laborers and to
demand tribute payments from them in exchange for providing food,
shelter, and instruction in the Christian faith. This system was first used in
Hispaniola to work gold fields and then in Mexico for agricultural labor
and, when silver was discovered in the 1540s, for silver mining.
A 1512 Spanish law authorizing the use of the encomienda (en-ko-me-
EN-duh) called for indigenous people to be treated fairly, but in practice the
system led to terrible abuses. Spanish missionaries publicized these abuses,
leading to debates in Spain about the nature and proper treatment of
indigenous people (see “European Debates About Indigenous Peoples”).
King Charles I responded to such complaints in 1542 with the New Laws,
which set limits on the authority of encomienda holders.
 Spanish Exploitation of Indigenous Labor This image depicts Spanish conquistadors
supervising indigenous laborers as they carry arms along the steep road from Veracruz to
Tlaxcala in 1520. It was part of a larger painting, produced in the postconquest era and
known as the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, that tells the story of the alliance between the Tlaxcala
kingdom and the Spanish and their defeat of the Aztec Empire.

The New Laws provoked a revolt among elites in Peru and were little
enforced throughout Spanish territories. Nonetheless, the Crown gradually
gained control over encomiendas in central areas of the empire and required
indigenous people to pay tributes in cash, rather than in labor. To respond to
a shortage of indigenous workers, royal officials established a new
government-run system of forced labor, called repartimiento in New Spain
and mita in Peru. Administrators assigned a certain percentage of the
inhabitants of native communities to labor for a set period each year in
public works, mining, agriculture, and other tasks.
Spanish systems for exploiting the labor of indigenous peoples were
both a cause of and a response to the disastrous decline in their numbers
that began soon after the arrival of Europeans. Some indigenous people
died as a direct result of the violence of conquest and the disruption of
agriculture and trade caused by warfare. The most important cause of death,
however, was infectious disease. Having little or no resistance to diseases
brought from the Old World, the inhabitants of the New World fell victim to
smallpox, typhus, influenza, and other illnesses.
 The pattern of devastating disease and population loss established in the
Spanish colonies was repeated everywhere Europeans settled. Overall,
population declined by as much as 90 percent or more but with important
regional variations. In general, densely populated urban centers were worse
hit than rural areas, and tropical, low-lying regions suffered more than
cooler, higher-altitude ones.
Colonial administrators responded to native population decline by
forcibly combining dwindling indigenous communities into new settlements
and imposing the rigors of the encomienda and the repartimiento. By the
end of the sixteenth century the search for fresh sources of labor had given
birth to the new tragedy of the Atlantic slave trade (see “Sugar and Early
Transatlantic Slavery”).

Patterns of Settlement
The century after the discovery of silver in 1545 marked the high point of
Iberian immigration to the Americas. Although the first migrants were men,
soon whole families began to cross the Atlantic, and the European
population began to increase through natural reproduction. By 1600
American-born Europeans, called Creoles, outnumbered immigrants.
Iberian settlement was predominantly urban in nature. Spaniards settled
into the cities and towns of the former Aztec and Inca Empires as the native
population dwindled through death and flight. They also established new
cities in which settlers were quick to develop urban institutions familiar to
them from home: city squares, churches, schools, and universities.
Despite the growing number of Europeans and the rapid decline of the
native population, Europeans remained a small minority of the total
inhabitants of the Americas. Iberians had sexual relationships with native
women, leading to the growth of a substantial population of mixed Iberian
and Indian descent known as mestizos (meh-STEE-zohz). The large-scale
arrival of enslaved Africans, starting in Brazil in the mid-sixteenth century,
added new ethnic and racial dimensions to the population.
The Era of Global Contact
How was the era of global contact shaped by new commodities, commercial empires,
and forced migrations?

The centuries-old Afroeurasian trade world was forever changed by the

European voyages of discovery and their aftermath. For the first time, a
truly global economy emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and it forged new links among far-flung peoples, cultures, and societies.
The ancient civilizations of Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia
confronted each other in new and rapidly evolving ways. Those
confrontations often led to conquest, forced migration, and brutal
exploitation, but they also contributed to cultural exchange and new
patterns of life.

The Columbian Exchange

The travel of people and goods between the Old and New Worlds led to an
exchange of animals, plants, and diseases, a complex process known as the
Columbian exchange. As we have seen, the introduction of new diseases to
the Americas had devastating consequences. But other results of the
exchange brought benefits not only to the Europeans but also to native
peoples.
Everywhere they settled, the Spanish and Portuguese brought and raised
wheat. Grapes and olives brought over from Spain did well in parts of Peru
and Chile. Perhaps the most significant introduction to the diet of Native
Americans came via the meat and milk of the livestock that the early
conquistadors brought with them, including cattle, sheep, and goats. The
horse enabled both the Spanish conquerors and native populations to travel
faster and farther and to transport heavy loads more easily.
In turn, Europeans returned home with many food crops that became
central elements of their diet. Crops originating in the Americas included
tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, peppers, and many varieties of beans, as well
as tobacco. One of the most important of such crops was maize (corn). By
the late seventeenth century maize had become a staple in Spain, Portugal,
southern France, and Italy, and in the eighteenth century it became one of
the chief foods of southeastern Europe and southern China. Even more
valuable was the nutritious white potato, which slowly spread from west to
east, contributing everywhere to a rise in population.
While the exchange of foods was a great benefit to cultures across the
world, the introduction of European pathogens to the New World had a
disastrous impact on the native population. In Europe infectious diseases
like smallpox, measles, and influenza — originally spread through contact
with domestic animals — killed many people each year. Over centuries of
dealing with these diseases, the European population had had time to adapt.
Prior to contact with Europeans, indigenous peoples of the New World
suffered from insect-borne diseases and some infectious ones, but their lack
of domestic livestock spared them the host of highly infectious diseases
known in the Old World. The arrival of Europeans spread these microbes
among a totally unprepared population, and they fell victim in vast numbers
(see “Indigenous Population Loss and Economic Exploitation”). The world
after Columbus was thus unified by disease as well as by trade and
colonization.

Sugar and Early Transatlantic Slavery

Two crucial and interrelated elements of the Columbian exchange were the
transatlantic trade in sugar and slaves. Throughout the Middle Ages, slavery
was deeply entrenched in the Mediterranean, but it was not based on race.
How, then, did black African slavery enter the European picture and take
root in South and then North America? In 1453 the Ottoman capture of
Constantinople halted the flow of European slaves from the eastern
Mediterranean. Additionally, the successes of the Christian reconquest of
the Iberian Peninsula drastically diminished the supply of Muslim captives.
Cut off from its traditional sources of slaves, Mediterranean Europe turned
to sub-Saharan Africa, which had a long history of slave trading.
As Portuguese explorers began their voyages along the western coast of
Africa in the 1440s, one of the first commodities they sought was slaves.
While the first slaves were simply seized by small raiding parties,
Portuguese merchants soon found that it was easier and more profitable to
trade with African leaders, who were accustomed to dealing in enslaved
people captured through warfare with neighboring powers. In 1483 the
Portuguese established an alliance with the kingdom of Kongo. The royal
family eventually converted to Christianity, and Portuguese merchants
intermarried with Kongolese women, creating a permanent Afro-Portuguese
community. From 1490 to 1530 Portuguese traders brought between three
hundred and two thousand enslaved Africans to Lisbon each year.
In this stage of European expansion, the history of slavery became
intertwined with the history of sugar. In the Middle Ages, sugarcane —
native to the South Pacific — was brought to Mediterranean islands.
Population increases and greater prosperity in the fifteenth century led to
increasing demand for sugar. The establishment of sugar plantations on the
Canary and Madeira Islands in the fifteenth century after Iberian
colonization testifies to this demand.
Sugar was a particularly difficult crop to produce for profit, requiring
constant, backbreaking labor. The invention of roller mills to crush the cane
more efficiently meant that yields could be significantly augmented, but
only if a sufficient labor force was found to supply the mills. Plantation
owners solved the labor problem by forcing first native islanders and then
transported Africans to perform the backbreaking work.
 Indians Working in a Spanish Sugar Mill Belgian engraver Theodore de Bry published
many images of the European exploration and settlement of the New World. De Bry never
crossed the Atlantic himself, instead basing his images on travel accounts and other
firsthand sources. This image depicts the exploitation of indigenous people in a Spanish
sugar mill.

The transatlantic slave trade that would ultimately result in the forced
transport of over 12 million individuals began in 1518, when Spanish king
Charles I authorized traders to bring enslaved Africans to New World
colonies. The Portuguese brought the first slaves to Brazil around 1550.
After its founding in 1621, the Dutch West India Company transported
thousands of Africans to Brazil and the Caribbean, mostly to work on sugar
plantations. In the late seventeenth century, with the chartering of the Royal
African Company, the English began to bring slaves to Barbados and other
English colonies in the Caribbean and mainland North America.
Before 1700, when slavers decided it was better business to improve
conditions, some 20 percent of slaves died on the voyage from Africa to the
Americas.2 The most common cause of death was dysentery induced by
poor-quality food and water, lack of sanitation, and intense crowding. On
sugar plantations, death rates among enslaved people from illness and
exhaustion were extremely high. Driven by rising demands for plantation
crops, the tragic transatlantic slave trade reached its height in the eighteenth
century.

Spanish Silver and Its Economic Effects

The sixteenth century has often been called Spain’s golden century, but
silver mined in the Americas was the true source of Spain’s wealth. In 1545,
at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, the Spanish discovered an
extraordinary source of silver at Potosí (poh-toh-SEE) (in present-day
Bolivia) in unsettled territory captured from the Inca Empire. By 1550
Potosí yielded perhaps 60 percent of all the silver mined in the world. From
Potosí and the mines at Zacatecas (za-kuh-TAY-kuhs) and Guanajuato
(gwah-nah-HWAH-toh) in Mexico, huge quantities of precious metals
poured forth.
Mining became the most important industry in the colonies. Millions of
indigenous laborers suffered brutal conditions and death in the silver mines.
Demand for new sources of labor for the mines also contributed to the
intensification of the African slave trade. Profits for the Spanish crown were
immense. The Crown claimed the quinto, one-fifth of all precious metals
mined in South America, which represented 25 percent of its total income.
Between 1503 and 1650, 35 million pounds of silver and over 600,000
pounds of gold entered Seville’s port.
Spain’s immense profits from silver paid for the tremendous expansion
of its empire and for the large armies that defended it. However, the easy
flow of money also dampened economic innovation. It exacerbated the
rising inflation Spain was already experiencing in the mid-sixteenth
century, a period of growing population and stagnant production. Several
times between 1557 and 1647, King Philip II and his successors wrote off
the state debt, thereby undermining confidence in the government and
destroying the economy. When the profitability of the silver mines
diminished in the 1640s, Spain’s power was fundamentally undercut.
As Philip II paid his armies and foreign debts with silver bullion,
Spanish inflation was transmitted to the rest of Europe. Between 1560 and
1600 prices in most parts of Europe doubled and in some cases quadrupled.
Because money bought less, people who lived on fixed incomes, such as
nobles, were badly hurt. Those who owed fixed sums of money, such as the
middle class, prospered because in a time of rising prices, debts lessened in
value each year. Food costs rose most sharply, and the poor fared worst of
all.
In many ways, though, it was not Spain but China that controlled the
world trade in silver. The Chinese demanded silver for their products and
for the payment of imperial taxes. China was thus the main buyer of world
silver, absorbing half the world’s production. The silver market drove world
trade, with New Spain and Japan acting as major sources of the supply of
silver and China dominating demand. The world trade in silver is one of the
best examples of the new global economy that emerged in this period.

The Birth of the Global Economy

With Europeans’ discovery of the Americas and their exploration of the
Pacific, the entire world was linked for the first time in history by seaborne
trade. The opening of that trade brought into being three successive
commercial empires: the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Dutch.
In the sixteenth century the Portuguese controlled the sea route to India
(Map 16.3). From their bases at Goa on the Arabian Sea and at Malacca on
the Malay Peninsula, ships carried goods to the Portuguese settlement at
Macao. From Macao Portuguese ships loaded with Chinese silks and
porcelains sailed to Japan and the Philippines, where Chinese goods were
exchanged for Spanish silver from New Spain. Throughout Asia the
Portuguese traded in slaves, some of whom were brought all the way across
the Pacific to Mexico. They also exported horses from Mesopotamia and
copper from Arabia to India; from India they exported hawks and peacocks
for the Chinese and Japanese markets. Back to Portugal they brought Asian
spices that had been purchased with textiles produced in India and with
gold and ivory from East Africa. From their colony in Brazil they also
shipped back sugar, produced by African slaves whom they had transported
across the Atlantic.
 MAP 16.3 Seaborne Trading Empires in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
By the mid-seventeenth century trade linked all parts of the world except for Australia.
Notice that trade in slaves was not confined to the Atlantic but involved almost all parts of
the world.

Becoming an imperial power a few decades later than the Portuguese,

the Spanish were determined to claim their place in world trade. The
Spanish Empire in the New World was basically land based, but across the
Pacific the Spaniards built a seaborne empire centered at Manila in the
Philippines. Established in 1571, the city of Manila served as the
transpacific bridge between Spanish America and China. In Manila Spanish
traders used silver from American mines to purchase Chinese silk for
European markets. The European demand for silk was so huge that in 1597,
for example, 12 million pesos of silver, almost the total value of the
transatlantic trade, moved from Acapulco in New Spain to Manila.
In the seventeenth century the Dutch challenged the Spanish and
Portuguese Empires. The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602
with the stated intention of capturing the spice trade from the Portuguese.
Drawing on their commercial wealth and long experience in European
trade, the Dutch emerged by the end of the century as the most powerful
worldwide seaborne trading power (see “The Dutch Trading Empire” in
Chapter 18).
Changing Attitudes and Beliefs
How did new encounters shape cultural attitudes and beliefs in Europe and the rest
of the world?

The age of overseas expansion heightened Europeans’ contacts with the rest
of the world. These contacts gave birth to new ideas about the inherent
superiority or inferiority of different races. Religion became another means
of cultural contact, as European missionaries aimed to spread Christianity in
both the New World and East Asia. The East-West contacts also led to
exchanges of influential cultural and scientific ideas.

Religious Conversion
Converting indigenous people to Christianity was one of the most important
justifications for European expansion. The first missionaries to the New
World accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, and more than 2,500
Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and other friars crossed the Atlantic in the
following century. Jesuit missionaries were also active in Japan and China
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, until authorities banned their
teachings.
Catholic friars were among the first Europeans to seek an understanding
of native cultures and languages as part of their effort to render Christianity
comprehensible to indigenous people. They were also the most vociferous
opponents of abuses committed by Spanish settlers.
Religion had been a central element of pre-Columbian societies, and
many, if not all, indigenous people were receptive to the new religion that
accompanied the victorious Iberians. In addition to spreading Christianity,
missionaries taught indigenous peoples European methods of agriculture
and instilled obedience to colonial masters. Despite the success of initial
conversion efforts, authorities could not prevent the melding together of
Catholic teachings with elements of pagan beliefs and practices.

European Debates About Indigenous Peoples

Iberian exploitation of the native population of the Americas began from the
moment of Columbus’s arrival in 1492. Denunciations of this abuse by
Catholic missionaries, however, quickly followed, inspiring vociferous
debates in both Europe and the colonies about the nature of indigenous
peoples and how they should be treated. Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–
1566), a Dominican friar and former encomienda holder, was one of the
earliest and most outspoken critics of the brutal treatment inflicted on
indigenous peoples.
Mounting criticism in Spain led King Charles I to assemble a group of
churchmen and lawyers to debate the issue in 1550 in the city of Valladolid.
One side of the Valladolid debate, led by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, argued
that conquest and forcible conversion were both necessary and justified to
save indigenous people from the horrors of human sacrifice, cannibalism,
and idolatry. To counter these arguments, Las Casas and his supporters
depicted indigenous people as rational and innocent children, who deserved
protection and tutelage from more advanced civilizations.
Elsewhere in Europe, audiences also debated these questions. Eagerly
reading denunciations of Spanish abuses by critics like Las Casas, they
derived the Black Legend of Spanish colonialism, the notion that the
Spanish were uniquely brutal and cruel in their conquest and settlement of
the Americas. This legend helped other European powers overlook their
own record of colonial violence and exploitation.

New Ideas About Race

At the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, most Europeans grouped
Africans into the despised categories of pagan heathens or Muslim infidels.
As Europeans turned to Africa for new sources of slaves, they drew on
myths about Africans’ primitiveness and barbarity to defend slavery.
Over time, the institution of slavery fostered a new level of racial
inequality. Africans gradually became seen as utterly distinct from and
wholly inferior to Europeans. In a transition from rather vague assumptions
about Africans’ non-Christian religious beliefs and general lack of
civilization, Europeans developed increasingly rigid ideas of racial
superiority and inferiority to safeguard the growing profits gained from
plantation slavery. Black skin became equated with slavery itself as
Europeans at home and in the colonies convinced themselves that blacks
were destined by God to serve them as slaves in perpetuity.
Support for this belief went back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s
argument that some people are naturally destined for slavery and to biblical
associations between darkness and sin, derived from the biblical story of
Noah’s curse upon the descendants of his disobedient son Ham to be the
“servant[s] of servants.” Biblical genealogies listing Ham’s sons as those
who peopled North Africa and Cush (which includes parts of modern Egypt
and Sudan) were read to mean that all inhabitants of those regions bore
Noah’s curse.
Chapter Summary
Prior to Columbus’s voyages, well-developed trade routes linked the
peoples and products of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Overall, Europe played a
minor role in the Afroeurasian trade world. As the economy and population
recovered from the Black Death, Europeans began to seek more direct and
profitable access to the Afroeurasian trade world. Technological
innovations, many borrowed from the East, enabled explorers to undertake
ever more ambitious voyages.
In the aftermath of their conquests of Caribbean islands and the Aztec
and Inca Empires, the Spanish established new forms of governance to
dominate indigenous peoples and exploit their labor. The arrival of
Europeans brought enormous population losses to native communities,
primarily through the spread of infectious diseases. Disease was one
element of the Columbian exchange, a complex transfer of germs, plants,
and animals between the Old and New Worlds. These exchanges
contributed to the creation of the first truly global economy. Tragically, a
major component of global trade was the transatlantic slave trade, in which
Europeans transported Africans to labor in the sugar plantations and silver
mines of the New World. European nations vied for supremacy in global
trade, with early Portuguese success in India and Asia being challenged first
by the Spanish and then by the Dutch.
Increased contact with the outside world led Europeans to develop new
ideas about cultural and racial differences. Debates occurred in Spain and
its colonies over the nature of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and
how they should be treated. Europeans had long held negative attitudes
about Africans; as the slave trade grew, they began to express more rigid
notions of racial inequality and to claim that Africans were inherently suited
for slavery. Religion became another means of cultural contact, as European
missionaries aimed to spread Christianity in the New World.

CONNECTIONS
Just two years separated Martin Luther’s attack on the Catholic Church in
1517 and Ferdinand Magellan’s discovery of the Pacific Ocean in 1520.
Within a few short years western Europeans’ religious unity and notions of
terrestrial geography were shattered. In the ensuing decades Europeans
struggled to come to terms with religious differences among Protestants and
Catholics at home and with the multitudes of new peoples and places they
encountered abroad. Like Muslim forces in the first centuries of Islam,
Christian Europeans brought their religion with them and sought to convert
conquered peoples to their faith. While some Europeans were fascinated
and inspired by this new diversity, too often the result was suffering and
violence. Europeans endured decades of religious civil war, and indigenous
peoples overseas underwent massive population losses as a result of
European warfare, disease, and exploitation. Both Catholic and Protestant
religious leaders condoned the trade in slaves that ultimately brought
suffering and death to millions of Africans.
Even as the voyages of discovery contributed to the fragmentation of
European culture, they also played a role in state centralization and
consolidation in the longer term. Henceforth, competition to gain overseas
colonies became an integral part of European politics. While Spain’s
enormous profits from conquest ultimately led to a weakening of its power,
over time the Netherlands, England, and France used profits from colonial
trade to help build modernized, centralized states.
Two crucial consequences emerged from this era of expansion. The first
was the creation of enduring contacts among five of the seven continents of
the globe — Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and South America.
From the sixteenth century onward, the peoples of the world were
increasingly entwined in divergent forms of economic, social, and cultural
exchange. The second was the growth of European power. Europeans
controlled the Americas and gradually assumed control over existing trade
networks in Asia and Africa. Although China remained the world’s most
powerful economy until at least 1800, the era of European dominance was
born.
Chapter 16 Review

IDENTIFY KEY TERMS

Identify and explain the significance of each item below.

bride wealth (p. 387)

caravel (p. 390)
Ptolemy’s Geography (p. 390)
Treaty of Tordesillas (p. 394)
conquistador (p. 395)
Aztec Empire (p. 395)
Inca Empire (p. 397)
viceroyalties (p. 398)
captaincies (p. 398)
encomienda system (p. 399)
Columbian exchange (p. 401)
Valladolid debate (p. 407)
Black Legend (p. 407)

REVIEW THE MAIN IDEAS

Answer the focus questions from each section of the chapter.
1. What was the Afroeurasian trade world prior to the era of European exploration?
(p. 385)
2. How and why did Europeans undertake ambitious voyages of expansion? (p. 389)
3. What was the impact of Iberian conquest and settlement on the peoples and
ecologies of the Americas? (p. 395)
4. How was the era of global contact shaped by new commodities, commercial
empires, and forced migrations? (p. 401)
5. How did new encounters shape cultural attitudes and beliefs in Europe and the
rest of the world? (p. 406)

MAKE COMPARISONS AND CONNECTIONS

Analyze the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters.
1. If Europe was at the periphery of the global trading system prior to 1492, where
was it situated by the middle of the sixteenth century? What had changed? What
had not?
2. How does the spread of Christianity in the aftermath of European conquest in the
New World compare with the earlier spread of Christianity under the Roman
Empire (Chapter 6) and the spread of Buddhism (Chapter 7) and Islam (Chapters
9, 10, 12)?
3. How did European expansion in the period covered in this chapter draw on earlier
patterns of trade and migration in Africa (Chapter 10) and Asia (Chapters 12, 13)?
4. To what extent did the European voyages of expansion and conquest inaugurate
an era of global history? Did this era represent the birth of “globalization”? Why or
why not?

CHRONOLOGY

1368–1644 • Ming Dynasty in China (Ch. 21)

1405–1433 • Zheng He’s naval expeditions
1443 • Portuguese establish first African trading post at Arguin
1453 • Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (Ch. 17)
ca. 1464–1591 • Songhai kingdom dominates the western Sudan (Ch.
20)
1467–1600 • Period of civil war in Japan (Ch. 21)
1492 • Columbus lands on San Salvador
1494 • Treaty of Tordesillas ratified
1518 • Atlantic slave trade begins
1519–1522 • Magellan’s expedition circumnavigates the world
1521 • Cortés conquers Aztec Empire
1533 • Pizarro conquers Inca Empire
1556–1605 • Reign of Akbar in Mughal Empire (Ch. 17)
1571 • Spanish establish port of Manila in the Philippines
1602 • Dutch East India Company founded
 Glossary
Age of Division: The period after the fall of the Han Dynasty, when China was politically divided.
(Ch. 7)
Agricultural Revolution: Dramatic transformation in human history resulting from the change from
foraging to raising crops and animals. (Ch. 1)
Aksum: A kingdom in northwestern Ethiopia that was a sizable trading state and the center of
Christian culture. (Ch. 10)
animism: Idea that people, animals, plants, natural occurrences, and other parts of the physical
world have spirits. (Ch. 1)
Anyang: One of the Shang Dynasty capitals from which the Shang kings ruled for more than two
centuries. (Ch. 4)
Aryans: The dominant people in north India after the decline of the Indus Valley civilization; they
spoke an early form of Sanskrit. (Ch. 3)
Aztec Empire: An alliance between the Mexica people and their conquered allies, with its capital in
Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), that rose in size and power in the fifteenth century and
possessed a sophisticated society and culture, with advanced mathematics, astronomy, and
engineering. (Ch. 16)
Bantu: Speakers of a Bantu language living south and east of the Congo River. (Ch. 10)
Berbers: North African peoples who controlled the caravan trade between the Mediterranean and
the Sudan. (Ch. 10)
bishop: A Christian Church official with jurisdiction over a certain area and the power to determine
the correct interpretation of Christian teachings. (Ch. 6)
Black Death: The plague that first struck Europe in 1347, killing perhaps one-third of the
population. (Ch. 14)
Black Legend: The notion that the Spanish were uniquely brutal and cruel in their conquest and
settlement of the Americas, an idea propagated by rival European powers. (Ch. 16)
bodhisattvas: Buddhas-to-be who stayed in the world after enlightenment to help others on the path
to salvation. (Ch. 3)
Book of Documents: One of the earliest Chinese books, containing documents, speeches, and
historical accounts about early Zhou rule. (Ch. 4)
Book of Songs: The earliest collection of Chinese poetry; it provides glimpses of what life was like
in the early Zhou Dynasty. (Ch. 4)
brahman: The unchanging ultimate reality, according to the Upanishads. (Ch. 3)
Brahmins: Priests of the Aryans; they supported the growth of royal power in return for royal
confirmation of their own religious rights, power, and status. (Ch. 3)
bride wealth: In early modern Southeast Asia, a sum of money the groom paid the bride or her
family at the time of marriage. This practice contrasted with the dowry in China, India, and
Europe, which the husband controlled. (Ch. 16)
Bushido: Literally, “the way of the warrior”; the code of conduct by which samurai were expected
to live. (Ch. 13)
captaincies: A system established by the Portuguese in Brazil in the 1530s, whereby hereditary
grants of land were given to nobles and loyal officials who bore the costs of settling and
administering their territories. (Ch. 16)
caravel: A small, maneuverable, three-masted sailing ship that gave the Portuguese a distinct
advantage in exploration and trade. (Ch. 16)
Carolingian: A dynasty of rulers that took over the Frankish kingdom from the Merovingians in the
seventh century; Carolingian derives from the Latin word for “Charles,” the name of several
members of this dynasty. (Ch. 8)
caste system: The Indian system of dividing society into hereditary groups whose members
interacted primarily within the group, and especially married within the group. (Ch. 3)
Chan: A school of Buddhism (known in Japan as Zen) that rejected the authority of the sutras and
claimed the superiority of mind-to-mind transmission of Buddhist truths. (Ch. 7)
Chinggis Khan: The title given to the Mongol ruler Temujin in 1206; it means Great Ruler. (Ch. 12)
chivalry: A code of conduct that was supposed to govern the behavior of a knight. (Ch. 14)
Christian humanists: Humanists from northern Europe who thought that the best elements of
classical and Christian cultures should be combined and saw humanist learning as a way to
bring about reform of the church and deepen people’s spiritual lives. (Ch. 15)
cloistered government: A system in which an emperor retired to a Buddhist monastery but
continued to exercise power by controlling his young son on the throne. (Ch. 13)
Code of Manu: The codification of early Indian law that lays down family, caste, and commercial
law. (Ch. 3)
Columbian exchange: The exchange of animals, plants, and diseases between the Old and the New
Worlds. (Ch. 16)
commercial revolution: The transformation of the economic structure of Europe, beginning in the
eleventh century, from a rural, manorial society to a more complex mercantile society. (Ch. 14)
compass: A tool for identifying north using a magnetic needle; it was made useful for sea navigation
in Song times when placed in a protective case. (Ch. 13)
concubine: A woman who is a recognized spouse but of lower status than a wife. (Chs. 13, 17)
Confucian classics: The ancient texts recovered during the Han Dynasty that Confucian scholars
treated as sacred scriptures. (Ch. 7)
conquistador: Spanish for “conqueror”; a Spanish soldier-explorer, such as Hernán Cortés or
Francisco Pizarro, who sought to conquer the New World for the Spanish crown. (Ch. 16)
consuls: Primary executives in the Roman Republic, elected for one-year terms, who commanded
the army in battle, administered state business, and supervised financial affairs. (Ch. 6)
craft guilds: Associations of artisans organized to regulate the quality, quantity, and price of the
goods produced as well as the number of affiliated apprentices and journeymen. (Ch. 14)
crossbow: A powerful mechanical bow developed during the Warring States Period. (Ch. 4)
Crusades: Holy wars sponsored by the papacy for the recovery of the holy city of Jerusalem from
the Muslims. (Ch. 14)
cuneiform: Sumerian form of writing; the term describes the wedge-shaped marks made by a stylus.
(Ch. 2)
Dao: The Way, a term used by Daoists to refer to the natural order. (Ch. 4)
debate about women: An argument about women’s character, nature, and proper role in society that
began in the later years of the fourteenth century and lasted for centuries. (Ch. 15)
democracy: A type of Greek government in which all citizens administered the workings of
government. (Ch. 5)
dharma: The Sanskrit word for moral law, central to both Buddhist and Hindu teachings. (Ch. 3)
dhimmis: A term meaning “protected peoples”; they included Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.
(Ch. 9)
Diet of Worms: An assembly of representatives from the territories of the Holy Roman Empire
convened by Charles V in the city of Worms in 1521. It was here that Martin Luther refused to
recant his writings. (Ch. 15)
dioceses: Geographic administrative districts of the church, each under the authority of a bishop and
centered on a cathedral. (Ch. 8)
division of labor: Differentiation of tasks by gender, age, training, status, or other social distinction.
(Ch. 1)
diwān: An administrative unit of government through which Arab soldiers were registered during
the early years of the spread of Islam. (Ch. 9)
domesticated: Plants and animals modified by selective breeding so as to serve human needs;
domesticated animals will behave in specific ways and breed in captivity. (Ch. 1)
dynastic cycle: The theory that Chinese dynasties go through a predictable cycle from early vigor
and growth to subsequent decline as administrators become lax and the well-off find ways to
avoid paying taxes, cutting state revenues. (Ch. 13)
Eightfold Path: The eight-step code of conduct set forth by the Buddha in his first sermon. (Ch. 3)
emirs: Arab governors who were given overall responsibility for public order, maintenance of the
armed forces, and tax collection. (Ch. 9)
encomienda system: A system whereby the Spanish crown granted the conquerors the right to
forcibly employ groups of indigenous people as laborers and to demand tribute payments from
them in exchange for providing food, shelter, and instruction in the Christian faith. (Ch. 16)
endogamy: The practice of marrying within a certain ethnic or social group. (Ch. 1)
epic poem: An oral or written narration of the achievements and sometimes the failures of heroes
that embodies peoples’ ideas about themselves. (Ch. 2)
Epicureanism: A system of philosophy based on the teachings of Epicurus, who viewed a life of
contentment, free from fear and suffering, as the greatest good. (Ch. 5)
Esoteric Buddhism: A sect of Buddhism that maintains that the secrets of enlightenment have been
secretly transmitted from the Buddha and can be accessed through initiation into the mandalas,
mudras, and mantras. (Ch. 13)
eunuchs: Castrated males who played an important role as palace servants. (Ch. 7)
examination system: A system of selecting officials in imperial China based on competitive written
examinations. (Ch. 13)
feudalism: A medieval European political system that defines the military obligations and relations
between a lord and his vassals and involves the granting of fiefs. (Ch. 14)
fief: A portion of land, the use of which was given by a lord to a vassal in exchange for the latter’s
oath of loyalty. (Ch. 14)
filial piety: Reverent attitude of children to their parents extolled by Confucius. (Ch. 4)
Five Pillars of Islam: The basic tenets of the Islamic faith; they include reciting a profession of faith
in God and in Muhammad as God’s prophet, praying five times daily, fasting and praying during
the month of Ramadan, making a pilgrimage to Mecca once in one’s lifetime, and contributing
alms to the poor. (Ch. 9)
foot binding: The practice of binding the feet of girls with long strips of cloth to keep them from
growing large. (Ch. 13)
foraging: A style of life in which people gain food by gathering plant products, trapping or catching
small animals and birds, and hunting larger prey. (Ch. 1)
Four Noble Truths: The Buddha’s message that pain and suffering are inescapable parts of life;
suffering and anxiety are caused by human desires and attachments; people can understand and
triumph over these weaknesses; and this triumph is made possible by following a simple code of
conduct. (Ch. 3)
Ghana: From the word for “war chief,” the name of a large and influential African kingdom
inhabited by the Soninke people. (Ch. 10)
Gothic: The term for the architectural and artistic style that began in Europe in the twelfth century
and featured pointed arches, high ceilings, and flying buttressess. (Ch. 14)
Grand Canal: A canal, built during the Sui Dynasty, that connected the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers.
It was notable for strengthening China’s internal cohesion and economic development. (Ch. 7)
Great Wall: A rammed-earth fortification built along the northern border of China during the reign
of the First Emperor. (Ch. 7)
Great Zimbabwe: A ruined southern African city five-hundred to a thousand years old; it is
considered the most impressive monument south of the Nile Valley and Ethiopian highlands.
(Ch. 10)
hadith: Collections of the sayings of and anecdotes about Muhammad. (Ch. 9)
Hammurabi’s law code: A proclamation issued by Babylonian king Hammurabi to establish laws
regulating many aspects of life. (Ch. 2)
Harappan: The first Indian civilization; also known as the Indus Valley civilization. (Ch. 3)
Hellenistic: Literally means “like the Greek”; describes the period from the death of Alexander the
Great in 323 B.C.E. to the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 B.C.E., when Greek culture spread.
(Ch. 5)
Hellenization: The spread of Greek ideas, culture, and traditions to non-Greek groups across a wide
area. (Ch. 5)
heresy: A religious practice or belief judged unacceptable by church officials. (Chs. 8, 14)
hominids: Members of the family Hominidae that contains humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and
orangutans. (Ch. 1)
hoplites: Heavily armed citizens who served as infantrymen and fought to defend the polis. (Ch. 5)
horticulture: Crop raising done with hand tools and human power. (Ch. 1)
Huguenots: French Calvinists. (Ch. 15)
humanism: A program of study designed by Italians that emphasized the critical study of Latin and
Greek literature with the goal of understanding human nature. (Ch. 15)
iconoclastic controversy: The conflict over the veneration of religious images in the Byzantine
Empire. (Ch. 8)
imam: The leader in community prayer in Islam. (Ch. 9)
Inca: The name of the dynasty of rulers who built the largest and last indigenous empire across the
Andes. (Ch. 11)
Inca Empire: The vast and sophisticated Peruvian empire centered at the capital city of Cuzco that
was at its peak in the fifteenth century but weakened by civil war at the time of the Spanish
arrival. (Ch. 16)
Indo-European languages: A large family of languages that includes English, most of the
languages of modern Europe, ancient Greek, Latin, Persian, Hindi, Bengali, and Sanskrit. (Ch.
2)
indulgence: A document issued by the pope that substituted for earthly penance or time in
purgatory. (Ch. 15)
Iron Age: Period beginning about 1100 B.C.E. when iron became the most important material for
weapons and tools in some parts of the world. (Ch. 2)
Jainism: Indian religion whose followers consider all life sacred and avoid destroying other life.
(Ch. 3)
jati: The thousands of Indian castes. (Ch. 12)
Jesuits: Members of the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, whose goal was the
spread of the Roman Catholic faith through schools and missionary activity. (Ch. 15)
Justinian’s Code: Multipart collection of laws and legal commentary issued in the sixth century by
the emperor Justinian. (Ch. 8)
karma: The tally of good and bad deeds that determines the status of an individual’s next life. (Ch.
3)
khanates: The states ruled by a khan; the four units into which Chinggis divided the Mongol
Empire. (Ch. 12)
khipu: An intricate system of knotted and colored strings used by early Andean cultures to store
information such as census and tax records. (Ch. 11)
Kilwa: The most powerful city on the east coast of Africa by the late thirteenth century. (Ch. 10)
Koumbi Saleh: The city in which the king of Ghana held his court. (Ch. 10)
Legalists: Political theorists who emphasized the need for rigorous laws and laid the basis for
China’s later bureaucratic government. (Ch. 4)
loess: Soil deposited by wind; it is fertile and easy to work. (Ch. 4)
logographic: A system of writing in which each word is represented by a single symbol, such as the
Chinese script. (Ch. 4)
madrasa: A school for the study of Muslim law and religion. (Ch. 9)
Mahayana: The “Great Vehicle,” a tradition of Buddhism that aspires to be more inclusive. (Ch. 3)
Mandate of Heaven: The theory that Heaven gives the king a mandate to rule only as long as he
rules in the interests of the people. (Ch. 4)
manorialism: The economic system that governed rural life in medieval Europe, in which the
landed estates of a lord were worked by the peasants under the lord’s jursidiction in exchange
for his protection. (Ch. 14)
Mauryan Empire: The first Indian empire, founded by Chandragupta. (Ch. 3)
Maya: A highly developed Mesoamerican culture centered in the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico. The
Maya created the most intricate writing system in the Western Hemisphere. (Ch. 11)
megafaunal extinction: Die-off of large animals in many parts of the world, 45,000–10,000 B.C.E.,
caused by climate change and most likely human hunting. (Ch. 1)
Merovingian: A dynasty of rulers that decisively unified the Franks under the reign of Clovis (ca.
481–511) and ruled the Frankish kingdom until the seventh century. (Ch. 8)
Mesoamerica: The term used to designate the area spanning present-day central Mexico to
Nicaragua. (Ch. 11)
Messiah: In Jewish belief, a savior who would bring a period of peace and happiness for Jews;
many Christians came to believe that Jesus was that Messiah. (Ch. 6)
Mexica: The dominant ethnic group of what is now Mexico, who created an empire based on war
and religion that reached its height in the fifteenth century. (Ch. 11)
Moche: A Native American culture that thrived along Peru’s northern coast between 100 and 800
C.E. (Ch. 11)
Mogadishu: A Muslim port city in East Africa founded between the eighth and tenth centuries;
today it is the capital of Somalia. (Ch. 10)
movable type: A system of printing in which one piece of type is used for each unique character.
(Ch. 13)
Mozarabs: Christians who adopted some Arab customs but did not convert. (Ch. 9)
mystery religions: Belief systems that were characterized by secret doctrines, rituals of initiation,
and sometimes the promise of rebirth or an afterlife. (Ch. 5)
Nahuatl: The language of the Aztecs, which they inherited from the Toltecs. (Ch. 11)
Nara: Japan’s capital and first true city; it was established in 710 and modeled on the Tang capital of
Chang’an. (Ch. 7)
Neanderthals: Group of Homo erectus with brains as large as those of modern humans that lived in
Europe and western Asia between 200,000 and 30,000 years ago. (Ch. 1)
Neo-Confucianism: The revival of Confucian thinking that began in the eleventh century,
characterized by the goal of attaining the wisdom of the sages, not exam success. (Ch. 13)
Neolithic era: Period beginning in 9000 B.C.E. during which humans obtained food by raising
crops and animals and continued to use tools primarily of stone, bone, and wood. (Ch. 1)
nixtamalization: Boiling maize in a solution of water and mineral lime to break down compounds
in the kernels, increasing their nutritional value. (Ch. 11)
nomads: Groups of people who move from place to place in search of food, water, and pasture for
their animals, usually following the seasons. (Ch. 12)
oligarchy: A type of Greek government in which citizens who owned a certain amount of property
ruled. (Ch. 5)
Olmec: The earliest advanced Mesoamerican civilization. (Ch. 11)
Orthodox Church: Another name for the Eastern Christian Church, over which emperors continued
to have power. (Ch. 8)
pagan: Originally referring to those who lived in the countryside, the term came to mean those who
practiced religions other than Judaism or Christianity. (Ch. 6)
Paleolithic era: Period before 9000 B.C.E. during which humans used tools of stone, bone, and
wood and obtained food by gathering and hunting. (Ch. 1)
pastoralism: An economic system based on herding flocks of goats, sheep, cattle, or other animals.
(Ch. 1)
paterfamilias: The oldest dominant male of the family, who held great power over the lives of
family members. (Ch. 6)
patriarchy: Social system in which men have more power and access to resources than women, and
some men are dominant over other men. (Ch. 1)
patricians: The Roman hereditary aristocracy, who held most of the political power in the republic.
(Ch. 6)
patronage: Financial support of writers and artists by cities, groups, and individuals, often to
produce specific works or works in specific styles. (Ch. 15)
pax Romana: The “Roman peace,” a period during the first and second centuries C.E. of political
stability and relative peace. (Ch. 6)
penance: Ritual in which Christians asked a priest for forgiveness for sins and the priest set certain
actions to atone for the sins. (Ch. 8)
pharaoh: The title given to the king of Egypt in the New Kingdom, from a word that meant “great
house.” (Ch. 2)
Phoenicians: People of the prosperous city-states in what is now Lebanon who traded and founded
colonies throughout the Mediterranean and spread the phonetic alphabet. (Ch. 2)
Platonic ideals: In Plato’s thought, the eternal unchanging ideal forms that are the essence of true
reality. (Ch. 5)
plebeians: The common people of Rome, who were free but had few of the patricians’ advantages.
(Ch. 6)
polis: Generally translated as “city-state,” it was the basic political and institutional unit of ancient
Greece. (Ch. 5)
politiques: Catholic and Protestant moderates who sought to end the religious violence in France by
restoring a strong monarchy and granting official recognition to the Huguenots. (Ch. 15)
polytheism: The worship of many gods and goddesses. (Ch. 2)
popes: Heads of the Roman Catholic Church, who became political as well as religious authorities.
The period of a pope’s term in office is called a pontificate. (Ch. 8)
predestination: Calvin’s teaching that God decided at the beginning of time who would be saved
and who damned, so people could not actively work to achieve salvation. (Ch. 15)
protected people: The Muslim classification used for Hindus, Christians, and Jews; they were
allowed to follow their religions but had to pay a special tax. (Ch. 12)
Protestant: Originally meaning “a follower of Luther,” this term came to be generally applied to all
non-Catholic western European Christians. (Ch. 15)
Protestant Reformation: A religious reform movement that began in the early sixteenth century
and split the Western Christian Church. (Ch. 15)
Ptolemy’s Geography: A second-century work translated into Latin around 1410 that synthesized
the classical knowledge of geography and introduced latitude and longitude markings. (Ch. 16)
Punic Wars: A series of three wars between Rome and Carthage in which Rome emerged the victor.
(Ch. 6)
Pure Land: A school of Buddhism that taught that by calling on the Buddha Amitabha, one could
achieve rebirth in Amitabha’s Pure Land paradise. (Ch. 7)
Quechua: The official language of the Incas, it is still spoken by most Peruvians today. (Ch. 11)
Qur’an: The sacred book of Islam. (Ch. 9)
reconquista: A fourteenth-century term used to describe the long Christian crusade to wrest Spain
back from the Muslims; clerics believed it was a sacred and patriotic mission. (Ch. 14)
Records of the Grand Historian: A comprehensive history of China written by Sima Qian. (Ch. 7)
ren: Humanity, the ultimate Confucian virtue. (Ch. 4)
Renaissance: A French word meaning “rebirth,” used to describe a cultural movement that began in
fourteenth-century Italy and looked back to the classical past. (Ch. 15)
Rig Veda: The earliest collection of Indian hymns, ritual texts, and philosophical treatises, it is the
central source of information on early Aryans. (Ch. 3)
sacraments: Certain rituals of the church believed to act as a conduit of God’s grace, such as
baptism. (Ch. 8)
saints: People who were venerated for having lived or died in a way that was spiritually heroic or
noteworthy. (Ch. 8)
samsara: The transmigration of souls by a continual process of rebirth. (Ch. 3)
Sanskrit: India’s classical literary language. (Ch. 12)
sati: A practice whereby a high-caste Hindu woman would throw herself on her husband’s funeral
pyre. (Ch. 12)
scholar-official class: Chinese educated elite that included both scholars and officials. The officials
had usually gained office by passing the highly competitive civil service examination. (Ch. 13)
Scholastics: Medieval professors who developed a method of thinking, reasoning, and writing in
which questions were raised and authorities cited on both sides of a question. (Ch. 14)
Senate: The assembly that was the main institution of power in the Roman Republic, originally
composed only of aristocrats. (Ch. 6)
serf: A peasant who lost his or her freedom and became permanently bound to the landed estate of a
lord. (Ch. 14)
shamans: Spiritually adept men and women who communicated with the unseen world. (Ch. 1)
shari’a: Muslim law, which covers social, criminal, political, commercial, and religious matters.
(Ch. 9)
shi: The lower ranks of Chinese aristocracy; these men could serve in either military or civil
capacities. (Ch. 4)
Shi’a: Arabic term meaning “supporters of Ali”; they make up one of the two main divisions of
Islam. (Ch. 9)
Shinto: The Way of the Gods, Japan’s native religion. (Ch. 7)
shogun: The Japanese general-in-chief. (Ch. 13)
Silk Road: The trade routes across Central Asia linking China to western Eurasia. (Ch. 7)
social hierarchies: Divisions between rich and poor, elites and common people that have been a
central feature of human society since the Neolithic era. (Ch. 1)
Srivijaya: A maritime empire that held the Strait of Malacca and the waters around Sumatra and
adjacent islands. (Ch. 12)
stateless societies: African societies bound together by ethnic or blood ties rather than by being
political states. (Ch. 10)
steppe: Grasslands that are too dry for crops but support pasturing animals; they are common across
much of the center of Eurasia. (Ch. 12)
Stoicism: A philosophy, based on the ideas of Zeno, that held that people could only be happy when
living in accordance with nature and accepting whatever happened. (Ch. 5)
Sudan: The African region surrounded by the Sahara, the Gulf of Guinea, the Atlantic Ocean, and
the mountains of Ethiopia. (Ch. 10)
Sunna: An Arabic term meaning “trodden path.” The term refers to the deeds and sayings of
Muhammad, which constitute the obligatory example for Muslim life. (Ch. 9)
Sunnis: Members of the larger of the two main divisions of Islam; the division between Sunnis and
Shi’a began in a dispute about succession to Muhammad, but over time many differences in
theology developed. (Ch. 9)
Swahili: Meaning “People of the Coast,” the term used for the people living along the East African
coast and on nearby islands. (Chs. 10, 20)
Tale of Genji, The: A Japanese literary masterpiece about court life written by Lady Murasaki. (Ch.
13)
taotie: A stylized animal face commonly seen in Chinese bronzes. (Ch. 4)
tax-farming: Assigning the collection of taxes to whoever bids the most for the privilege. (Ch. 12)
Tenochtitlan: The largest Aztec city, built starting in 1325. The Spanish admired it when they
entered in 1519. (Ch. 11)
Teotihuacan: The monumental city-state that dominated trade in classical era Mesoamerica. (Ch.
11)
Timbuktu: Originally a campsite for desert nomads, it grew into a thriving city under Mansa Musa,
king of Mali and Africa’s most famous ruler. (Ch. 10)
Treaty of Tordesillas: The 1494 agreement giving Spain everything west of an imaginary line
drawn down the Atlantic and giving Portugal everything to the east. (Ch. 16)
Treaty of Verdun: A treaty ratified in 843 that divided Charlemagne’s territories among his three
surviving grandsons; their kingdoms set the pattern for the modern states of Germany, France,
and Italy. (Ch. 8)
tributary system: A system first established during the Han Dynasty to regulate contact with
foreign powers. States and tribes beyond China’s borders sent envoys bearing gifts and received
gifts in return. (Ch. 7)
ulama: Religious scholars who interpret the Qur’an and the Sunna, the deeds and sayings of
Muhammad. (Chs. 9, 17)
umma: A community of people who share a religious faith and commitment rather than a tribal tie.
(Ch. 9)
Valladolid debate: A debate organized by Spanish king Charles I in 1550 in the city of Valladolid
that pitted defenders of Spanish conquest and forcible conversion against critics of these
practices. (Ch. 16)
vassal: A knight who has sworn loyalty to a particular lord. (Ch. 14)
vernacular literature: Literature written in the everyday language of a region rather than Latin; this
included French, German, Italian, and English. (Ch. 14)
viceroyalties: The name for the four administrative units of Spanish possessions in the Americas:
New Spain, Peru, New Granada, and La Plata. (Ch. 16)
Warring States Period: The period of Chinese history between 403 B.C.E. and 221 B.C.E., when
states fought each other and one state after another was destroyed. (Ch. 4)
wergeld: Compensatory payment for death or injury set in many barbarian law codes. (Ch. 8)
witch-hunts: Campaign against witchcraft in Europe and European colonies during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries in which hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, were tried,
and many of them executed. (Ch. 15)
Yahweh: All-powerful god of the Hebrew people and the basis for the enduring religious traditions
of Judaism. (Ch. 2)
yin and yang: A concept of complementary poles, one of which represents the feminine, dark, and
receptive, and the other the masculine, bright, and assertive. (Ch. 4)
yurts: Tents in which the pastoral nomads lived; they could be quickly dismantled and loaded onto
animals or carts. (Ch. 12)
Zen: A school of Buddhism that emphasized meditation and truths that could not be conveyed in
words. (Ch. 13)
Zoroastrianism: Religion based on the teachings of Zoroaster that emphasized the individual’s
responsibility to choose between good and evil. (Ch. 2)
NOTES
Chapter 3
1. Rig Veda 10.90, in Sources of Indian Tradition by Ainslie Thomas
Embree, Stephen N. Hay, and William Theodore De Bary. Reproduced
with permission of COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS in the format
Book via Copyright Clearance Center.
2. Strabo 15.1.55, trans. John Buckler.
3. Quoted in H. Kulke and D. Rothermund, A History of India, 3d ed.
(London: Routledge, 1998), p. 62.
4. Embree et al., Sources of Indian Tradition, p. 148. Reproduced with
permission of COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS in the format Book
via Copyright Clearance Center.
Chapter 4
1. James Legge, trans. and ed., The Chinese Classics (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1865–1895), p. 126, slightly modified.
2. Ibid., p. 531.
3. Victor H. Mair, Nancy S. Steinhardt, and Paul R. Goldin, eds., Hawai‘i
Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 2005), p. 117.
4. Wing-tsit Chan, trans. and ed., A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 39. Reproduced
with permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS in the format
Book via Copyright Clearance Center.
5. Ibid., p. 129.
6. Ibid., pp. 140–141.
7. Ibid., p. 209.
Chapter 7
1. Li Yuning, ed., The First Emperor of China (White Plains, N.Y.:
International Arts and Sciences Press, 1975), pp. 275–276, slightly
modified.
2. Burton Watson, trans., Records of the Grand Historian of China, vol. 2
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), p. 499.
3. Arthur Waley, trans., More Translations from the Chinese (New York:
Knopf, 1919), p. 27.
4. Sources of Japanese Tradition, by William Theodore de Bary, Donald
Keene, George Tanabe, and Paul Varley, eds. Reproduced with
permission of COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS in the format Book
via Copyright Clearance Center.
Chapter 9
1. Quoted in B. F. Stowasser, “The Status of Women in Early Islam,” in
Muslim Women, ed. F. Hussain (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), p.
25.
2. F. E. Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1994), p. 250.
3. Quoted in B. Lewis, ed. and trans., Islam from the Prophet Muhammad
to the Capture of Constantinople. Vol. 2: Religion and Society, 35w
from p. 126. © 1974 by Bernard Lewis. Used by permission of Oxford
University Press, USA.
4. Ibid., pp. 154–157.
5. R. Hillenbrand, “Cordoba,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 3, ed.
J. R. Strayer (New York: Scribner’s, 1983), pp. 597–601.
6. Margaret Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam (London: Luzac
and Co., 1950), p. 11.
Chapter 10
1. T. Spear, “Bantu Migrations,” in Problems in African History: The
Precolonial Centuries, ed. R. O. Collins et al. (New York: Markus
Weiner Publishing, 1994), p. 98.
2. J. S. Trimingham, Islam in West Africa (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1959), pp. 6–9.
3. R. A. Austen, “The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade: A Tentative Census,” in
The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic
Slave Trade, ed. H. A. Gemery and J. S. Hogendorn (New York:
Academic Press, 1979), pp. 1–71, esp. p. 66.
4. Quoted in J. O. Hunwick, “Islam in West Africa, A.D. 1000–1800,” in A
Thousand Years of West African History, ed. J. F. Ade Ajayi and I.
Espie (New York: Humanities Press, 1972), pp. 244–245.
5. Quoted in A. A. Boahen, “Kingdoms of West Africa, c. A.D. 500–1600,”
in The Horizon History of Africa (New York: American Heritage,
1971), p. 183.
6. Al-Bakri, Kitab al-mughrib fdhikr bilad Ifriqiya wa’l-Maghrib
(Description de l’Afrique Septentrionale), trans. De Shane (Paris:
Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1965), pp. 328–329.
7. Quoted in R. Oliver and C. Oliver, eds., Africa in the Days of
Exploration (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 10.
8. Quoted in Boahen, “Kingdoms of West Africa,” p. 184.
9. This quotation and the next appear in E. J. Murphy, History of African
Civilization (New York: Delta, 1972), pp. 109, 111.
10. Pekka Masonen and Humphrey J. Fisher, “Not Quite Venus from the
Waves: The Almoravid Conquest of Ghana in the Modern
Historiography of Western Africa,” History in Africa 23 (1996): 197–
232.
11. Quoted in Murphy, History of African Civilization, p. 120.
12. Quoted in Oliver and Oliver, Africa in the Days of Exploration, p. 18.
13. See H. G. Marcus, A History of Ethiopia, updated ed. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), pp. 17–20.
14. Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325–1354, vol. 1, ed. H.
A. R. Gibb (London: University Press, 1972), pp. 379–380.
15. Austen, “The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade,” p. 65; J. H. Harris, The
African Presence in Asia (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
Press, 1971), pp. 3–6, 27–30; P. Wheatley, “Analecta Sino-Africana
Recensa,” in Neville Chittick and Robert Rotberg, East Africa and the
Orient (New York: Africana Publishing, 1975), p. 109.
16. I. Hrbek, ed., General History of Africa. Vol. 3: Africa from the
Seventh to the Eleventh Century (Berkeley: University of California
Press; New York: UNESCO, 1991), pp. 294–295, 346–347.
Chapter 11
1. Narrative of the Incas by Juan de Betanzos, trans. and ed. Roland
Hamilton and Dana Buchanan from the Palma de Mallorca manuscript,
p. 138.
2. Michael Coe, Mexico from the Olmecs to the Aztecs, 5th ed. (New York:
Thames and Hudson, 2002), p. 107.
3. Ross Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), p. 56.
4. Ibid., p. 49.
5. Ibid., pp. 81, 85.
Chapter 12
1. Trans. in Denis Sinor, “The Establishment and Dissolution of the Türk
Empire,” in The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Denis
Sinor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 307.
2. Edward C. Sachau, Alberuni’s India, vol. 1 (London: Kegan Paul,
1910), pp. 19–20, slightly modified.
Chapter 13
1. The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian, ed. Manuel Komroff (New
York: Boni and Liveright, 1926), p. 235.
2. Peter H. Lee, ed., Sourcebook of Korean Civilization (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 327.
3. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, edited and translated by Ivan Morris,
p. 258. Reproduced by permission of COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
PRESS in the format Republish in a book via Copyright Clearance
Center.
Chapter 16
1. Thomas Benjamin, The Atlantic World: Europeans, Africans, Indians
and Their Shared History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), p. 141.
2. Herbert S. Klein, “Profits and the Causes of Mortality,” in The Atlantic
Slave Trade, ed. David Northrup (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath,
1994), p. 116.
 Index
A Note About the Index: Names of individuals appear in boldface. Letters
in parentheses following pages refer to the following:
(i) illustrations, including photographs and artifacts
(m) maps
(f) figures, including charts and graphs

Aachen, Germany, 191

Abbasid caliphate (Islam), 202–204, 205, 206; Charlemagne and,
191; Mongols and, 205, 206, 285; Turks and, 281; women under,
208
Abbess, 333. See also Monks and monasteries; Nuns
Abd al-Jabbar (theologian), 218
Abd al-Rahman III (Umayyads), 335
Abelard, Peter, 344
Abraham (prophet), 198
Abrahamic religions, 44
Absenteeism: of clergy, 368
Abu’ al-Abbas, 202
Abu Bakr (Islam), 201
Acamapichtli (Mexica), 269
Acre: fall of, 338
Acropolis, 100; of Athens, 104
Actium, Battle of, 129
Adaptation: human, 27–28
Administration: of American colonies, 398–399; Carolingian, 190; of
Christian Church, 176; of Ghana, 236, 237; of Gupta India, 291; of
Islam, 203–204, 234; of Mali, 239; Mongol, 284, 289. See also
Government; Politics and political thought
Admonitions for Women (Ban Zhao), 154
Adoption: of boys, 22
Adulis, Aksum, 241, 243
Aegean Sea region, 96, 99, 109. See also Greece (ancient); specific
locations
Aeneas (Trojans), 121, 131
Aeneid (Virgil), 131
Aeschylus, 105
Afghanistan: Indo-Greek states and, 69; Kushans in, 70; Muslims in,
199; Parthians in, 136; Turks in, 287, 292, 293. See also Khurasan
Africa: agriculture in, 16, 224, 227, 228, 229, 235, 238, 245; Arabic
sources about, 221; Bantu language and people in, 228–229;
climate in, 224, 225(m); colonialism in, 223; cross-cultural
connections in, 387; diversity in, 224, 225–226; economy in, 224;
empires in, 224; geography of, 224, 225(m); gold in, 232, 232(i),
237, 238, 244, 245, 246; humans in, 2, 4, 5; Islam in, 224, 225,
230, 233–234; kings and kingdoms in, 224, 229–230, 231(m), 234–
246; land in, 224, 225(m); merchants in, 226, 231–232, 233, 241;
minerals in, 245; Portugal and, 391; racism and, 223; religions in,
229–230; salt trade in, 231–232, 237; slavery and, 232–233, 402;
slave trade and, 232–233, 245, 402; societies in, 226–230;
southern, 245– 246; trade in, 136, 224, 225–226, 230–234, 231(m),
387–388; urban areas in, 233; women in, 229. See also Slaves and
slavery; Slave trade; Sub-Saharan Africa; Trans-Saharan trade;
specific locations
Africans: in Brazil, 398, 400; in Europe, 362; for sugar plantations,
403. See also Slaves and slavery
Afroeurasia: human evolution in, 5; trade in, 384–385, 385–389,
386(m)
Afro-Portuguese community: in Kongo, 402
Afterlife: in China, 79; in Egypt, 37, 114(i); in mystery religions, 107,
113; in Zoroastrianism, 49
Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of the Peasants (Luther),
371
Age of Division (China), 155
Aggression. See Expansion; Intervention; Invasions; War(s) and
warfare; specific battles and wars
Agora, 100
Agricultural Revolution: Neolithic, 13
Agriculture: in Africa, 224, 227, 228, 229, 235, 238, 245; in
Americas, 251, 253–254, 256–257, 257(m), 263; of Bantu-
speakers, 228; barbarian, 183; in China, 16, 77, 84, 308; chinampa,
268–269, 268(i); culture and, 16; in Egypt, 36; in Ethiopia, 227,
241; gender-based labor and, 21, 340(i); Hebrew, 43–44, 45;
horticulture and, 13–17; in India, 54, 55, 59, 294; in Japan, 322; in
Mali, 238; Maya, 263; in Mesopotamia, 31; Neolithic, 3, 13–19;
plow and, 19–21, 241, 294; spread of, 14(m). See also Farms and
farming; Horticulture; Plantations
Ahuitzotl (Aztec Empire), 271
Ahuramazda (god), 49
Akhenaton (Egypt), 40
Akkad and Akkadians, 34
Aksum, 240, 241
Albert of Mainz, 369
Alcohol: in ancient diet, 19; in Islam, 198
Alexander VI (Pope), 365, 394
Alexander the Great: conquests by, 109, 110(m); Greece and, 66,
96, 109; India and, 66; Persia and, 48, 66; trade and, 112
Alexandria, Egypt, 109; Muslims in, 234; trade and, 226, 387
Algebra, 215
Algiers, 232
Alhambra, 205(i)
Ali (Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law), 201, 202
Allah, 198
Alliance(s): Aztec, 269, 273; of Cortés, 273, 396, 397; Delian League
as, 104; marriage for, 32; Sumerian, 32
Allies (Roman), 123
Almoravids (North Africa), 233–234, 237
Alpacas, 252, 254
Alphabet: Greek, 42(f), 43; origins of, 42(f); Phoenician-based, 42(f),
43; Roman, 42(f), 43; Slavic, 335
Altiplano, 254, 258
Amazon forest: Inca and, 262
Ambrose of Milan (Bishop), 176
Amenhotep III (Egypt), 40
America(s): cities in, 251–252, 255; Columbian exchange in, 401;
Columbus and, 393–394; crops in, 16–17, 251, 253–254, 256–257;
diseases in, 250–251, 273, 397, 400, 401; environment of, 254;
European encounter and, 250–251; Jesuits in, 377, 406; naming of,
394; populations of, 253, 256, 263, 395, 400; religion in, 255, 256,
258, 259, 406; settlement of, 253–254, 395–400; slavery and, 208,
403; societies of, 251–259; Spain and, 264, 265, 267, 273, 395–
398; technologies in, 252; trade in, 251–252, 254–255, 256, 264.
See also Latin America; specific locations and peoples
American Indians. See Native Americans
Amon (god), 40
Analects (Confucius), 85, 86
Anasazi culture, 256, 257(m)
Anatolia: Byzantine defeat in, 281; Greece and, 99; Hittites in, 40;
iron in, 41; Ottoman Empire in, 351; Turks in, 206, 281, 351. See
also Turkey
Ancestors: in Africa, 229–230; in Andes region, 258, 259–260; in
India, 295; Maya, 264; in Rome, 128
Ancient world. See Humans;
Andalusia: Alhambra and, 205(i); Islam and, 218
Andes Mountains region: ancestors in, 258, 259–260; civilizations of,
251, 252, 255; kinship in, 258; settlement of, 254, 260(m); Spanish
in, 258; transportation in, 252. See also Inca Empire
Andrew II (Hungary), 331
Angkor Wat, 298
Angles, 186
Anglican Church (Church of England), 373, 374
Anglo-Russian Agreement (1907), 73
Anglo-Saxon peoples: Vikings and, 330
Animals: in Africa, 227; in China, 91(i); in Chinese art, 80; diseases
from, 18; domestication of, 3, 227, 251; extinction of, 10; hunting
of, 10; llamas and alpacas, 252, 254; pastoralism and, 14(m). See
also Cattle
Animism, 12–13, 229, 230, 234, 243
An Lushan (China), 159–160
Annam (northern Vietnam), 285
Anne of Brittany, 364
Antigone (Sophocles), 105
Antigonus and Antigonids, 110, 126
Antioch: as Crusader state, 337
Anti-Semitism: in Spain, 365, 367. See also Jews and Judaism
Antonine dynasty (Rome), 133
Antony, Marc (Rome), 129
Anyang, China, 78
Apollo (god), 107
Aqueducts: Roman, 134
Aquinas, Thomas (Saint), 344
Aquitaine, 330, 349, 350
Arabia: Mecca and, 195; spread of Islam from, 195–196, 199–201.
See also Arabs and Arab world
Arabian Nights, The. See Thousand and One Nights, The
Arabic language, 34, 43; education in, 215; scholarship in, 203
Arabic numerals, 291
Arabs and Arab world: Africa and, 225; East Africa and, 243; Islam
and, 195, 196–197, 198–201, 200(m), 225; Muslim society and,
207; Persia and, 173; slave trade and, 245; Spain and, 365; Swahili
culture and, 226; trade and, 70, 226, 244; tribes and, 196–197;
women and, 208, 209, 209(i). See also Islam; Israel; Jews and
Judaism; Middle East; Moors; Muslims; Palestine
Aragon: Christian-Muslim fighting in, 338
Aramaeans: conversion to Islam by, 207
Aramaic: in India, 65
Archimedes, 115
Architecture: of cathedrals, 344, 345(i); Gothic, 344; Islamic, 234,
238(i), 239; Maya, 264; in Renaissance, 361; Romanesque, 344
Archons (magistrates), 103
Ardashir I (Sassanid), 173
Argentina: language in, 261
Arguin, North Africa: Portugal and, 391
Arianism. See Arius and Arianism
Aristarchus of Samos, 114–115
Aristocracy: in China, 82, 83, 155; in Ghana, 237; in Japan, 165, 306,
318–320; in Korea, 306, 316; in Rome, 121, 124. See also Elites;
 Nobility; Patricians (Rome)
Aristophanes, 105
Aristotle, 108; Islam and, 216; on slaves, 407
Arius (Alexandria) and Arianism, 176, 187
Arjuna, 65
Ark of the Covenant, 242
Armada (Spain), 379
Armed forces: in China, 84; in France, 364; in Ghana, 237; in Greek
poleis, 100. See also Military; Navy; Soldiers; Warriors
Armor, 307; Mycenaean, 98
Arms and armaments. See Weapons
Arranged marriages: in China, 312
Art(s): Athenian, 104–105; Buddhism and, 158; in China, 79–80,
150, 158, 305; Chinese influence on, 161; in India, 70, 291; in
Japan, 318–319, 319(i); Paleolithic, 9, 12, 13; in Renaissance, 355,
359–361, 360(i)
Arthashastra, 67
Arthur (England), 365
Artillery: of Archimedes, 115
Artisans: Byzantine, 175; medieval, 342
Art of War, The (Sun Wu), 84
Aryan peoples: in India, 54, 56–60, 57(i)
Asante kingdom: women in, 229
Ascetics and asceticism: Christian, 178; in India, 60, 61, 62; Sufis
and, 216
Ashikaga Shogunate (Japan): Takauji, 322
Ashoka (India), 54, 65, 67–69; Buddhism and, 67, 111, 156
Asia: agriculture in, 16; Alexander the Great in, 109; alphabets in, 43;
animal power in, 19; Buddhism in, 63–64; Cro-Magnon peoples in,
8; humans in, 5; Inner, 280; migration and, 8, 252–253; plague in,
290, 347; Portugal and, 392, 398, 405; search for westward route
to, 394. See also East Asia; Middle East
Asia Minor: Turks and, 281, 336. See also Turkey
Assamese language, 292
Assemblies: in Greece, 103; in Rome, 124, 125
Assimilation: of Celtic peoples, 185–186; of Christians by Ottomans,
351; of Mongols in China, 288; into Muslim society, 207, 208, 243
Assyria and Assyrians, 45–47, 46(i); Egypt and, 40; empire of, 46–
47, 47(m); Hebrews and, 44; Hittites and, 40; Kush and, 41
Astrolabe, 390
Astronomy: Arab, 215; Aristarchus on, 114–115; in India, 70;
Islamic, 203; Maya, 264; Mesoamerican, 264; navigation and, 391;
spread of ideas, 290
Atahualpa (Inca), 274, 397
Athens, 98, 102–103; arts in, 104–105; empire of, 104; Ionians and,
104; Peloponnesian War and, 104; Persia and, 104. See also Greece
(ancient)
Atlantic Ocean region: exploration of, 391, 394–395; slave trade in,
223. See also Exploration; Transatlantic trade
Atlatls, 7–8
Aton (god), 40
Attila (Huns), 186
Audiencia (judges), 398
Augsburg, Peace of, 373
Augustine of Hippo (Saint), 181
Augustus (Octavian, Rome), 119–120, 129, 130(i), 133
Australia: humans in, 8, 300
Australopithecus, 4
Austria: Habsburgs in, 367; Rome and, 131. See also Habsburg
dynasty; Holy Roman Empire
Austronesian languages, 296
Authority. See Power (political)
Authors. See Literature; Writing
Avars, 171
Averroës, 216
Avesta, 49
Avicenna, 216
Avignon: pope in, 350
Awdaghost (town), 235
Axes, Paleolithic, 11(i)
Axial Age, 109
Ayllu (Inca clan), 258, 262
Aymara language, 261
Azores, 391
Aztec (Mexica) Empire, 266(m), 267–272; Cortés in, 267, 273, 395–
397, 396(i); end of, 272–273; Europeans and, 395–397; geography
of, 253; government of, 269; Huitzilopochtli in, 269; human
sacrifice in, 271; lifestyle in, 269–270; limits of, 270–272; Maya
and, 264; Spain and, 265, 267, 273, 395–397; tortillas in, 254

Babylon and Babylonia, 35; Assyria and, 46, 47; Hebrews and, 44, 48
Babylonian Captivity: of Hebrews, 44
Bactria, 109, 111, 151
Baghdad, 196; Abbasid caliphate in, 191, 202, 203; culture in, 213;
Mongols in, 206, 285. See also Iraq
Bahamas, 393
Bahia, 399
al-Bakri (Islam): on Ghana, 235–236
Balance of power: in Italian Renaissance, 357
Balkan region: Islam in, 210(m); Ottomans and, 351; slaves from,
389
Baltic region: Christianity in, 335. See also Scandinavia
Bamiyan, 156
Bananas: in Africa, 227, 228
Bands. See Families; Kinship
Bangladesh, 54
Banking: in Florence, 356; Islamic trade and, 212; Medici family and,
356
Bantu language and people: kingdoms established by, 224; migration
of, 228–229; in southern Africa, 228, 245; Swahili and, 243; use of
term, 228
Ban Zhao, 154
Barbados, 403
Barbarians: Franks and, 189–192; migrations by, 171, 182–186,
183(m); Roman Empire and, 171; society of, 183–184; use of term,
182. See also Franks; Germanic peoples
Barbarossa. See Frederick I Barbarossa (Hohenstaufen)
Bards: barbarian, 184
Bar-Hebraeus, Gregory: Laughable Stories by, 215
Bath, England, 127(i)
Bathing: in Rome, 127–128, 127(i)
Battles. See War(s) and warfare; specific battles and wars
Bavaria: Magyars in, 328; Rome and, 131
B.C.E., 3
Bedouins, 196, 198–199, 201
Behavior: Confucius on, 85; in Ten Commandments, 44–45;
Zoroaster on, 49
Belize, 263
Benedict of Nursia (Saint), 178
Benefices: clerical, 368
Bengal: Islam in, 292
Bengali language, 40, 292
Benue region, Africa, 228
Berbers: caravan trade and, 230–232; Ghana and, 234, 235, 237;
Islam and, 207, 233–234; trans-Saharan trade and, 225–226, 230–
232, 232(i). See also Moors; Tuareg people
Bering land bridge, 8
Bezels [Edges] of Wisdom, The (Ibn Al’Arabi), 217
Bhagavad Gita, 64–65
Bible (Christian), 43, 137; translation of, 180, 187. See also New
Testament; Old Testament (Hebrew Bible)
Bible (Hebrew), 43, 137; translations of, 111, 180. See also Old
Testament (Hebrew Bible)
Bihar, India, 292
Biographies of Exemplary Women (China), 154
Biosphere, 3
Bipedalism, 7
Bishops (Christian), 139, 176, 177, 241, 365. See also Pope(s)
Black Death (plague): in Central Asia, 290, 347; French state after,
364; in Later Middle Ages, 347–349, 347(m). See also Plague
Black Legend: of Spanish colonialism, 407
Black people: in Europe, 362. See also Africa; Africans; Slaves and
slavery; Slave trade
Black Sea region: Huns in, 186
Blinding: in Muslim caliphates, 205
Blood sacrifice: Aztec, 271–272, 271(i); Maya, 264, 265. See also
Human sacrifice
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 9
Boats. See Ships and shipping
Bodh Gaya, 62
Bodhisattvas, 63, 157
Boleyn, Anne, 373
Bolivia: language in, 261
Bologna: university in, 343
Book(s): Chinese, 147, 311; Maya, 264; printing and, 359; as
summae, 344. See also Literature
Book of Changes (China), 91
Book of Documents (China), 81
Book of Songs (China), 82
Book of the Dead (Egypt), 37
Borders. See Boundaries; Frontiers
Borobudur (Buddhist temple complex), 299
Bosporus, 140
Boule (Greek council), 103
Boundaries: in Europe, 191–192. See also Frontiers
Boys: adoption in elite families, 22. See also Men; Warriors
B.P., 3n
Brahman (ultimate reality), 64
Brahmans and Brahmanism (India), 54, 57, 60
Brahmins (priests), 58, 59, 60, 64, 294
Brain: human evolution and, 5–7
Brazil: Africans in, 398, 400; indigenous people in, 398; Jesuits in,
377; Portugal and, 391, 398; slavery and, 208, 398, 403
Bread: in European diet, 340
Bride wealth: in Southeast Asia, 387
Britain: Vikings in, 327, 329. See also England (Britain)
British North America. See America(s); Colonies and colonization;
England (Britain); North America
Brittany, 364
Bronze: in China, 78, 79, 153; in Egypt, 38; in Japan, 165; in Korea,
163
Bronze Age, 3, 22; Egypt in, 38; Greece in, 96–99; in Vietnam, 162
Bronze Age Collapse, 40, 41, 96, 98, 99
Bruges, 342
Bubonic plague: in Central Asia, 290, 347; Justinian Plague and, 175,
348. See also Black Death; Plague
Buddha, 62–63, 157(i); Maitreya, 159; stupa at Sanchi and, 68(i).
See also Buddhism
Buddha Amitabha, 322
Buddhism: Ashoka and, 67, 111; in Bactria and Parthia, 111;
Borobudur temple complex of, 299; in Central Asia, 290; Chan
(Zen), 161, 316, 322; in China, 146, 157–158, 161, 311; in East
Asia, 306; Esoteric, 319–320; in India, 54, 62–64, 146, 279, 291,
292–293; in Japan, 165, 166, 317, 319–320, 322; in Korea, 164,
316; Mahayana, 63, 156–157, 299; Mongols and, 282; monks and
nuns in, 157–158, 292; Pure Land, 161, 322; in Southeast Asia,
279, 292, 299, 387; spread of, 155–158, 156(m); Theravada,
156(m); Tiantai (Tendai), 316, 319; in Tibet, 292; Uighurs and,
281; women in, 63
Buildings: in Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, 56; in Rome, 131. See also
Architecture
Bukhara: Mongols in, 287
Bulgaria: Eastern Christianity in, 335; Rome and, 131
Bulgars: Byzantine Empire and, 171; conversion to Christianity, 187
Bullion. See Gold; Silver
Bureaucracy: in China, 150, 309; in India, 67; in Japan, 165; in
Rome, 133; Sassanid Persian, 173. See also Government
Burgundians, 182, 349
Burgundy: Habsburgs and, 367
Burials: Inca, 260
Burma (Myanmar): Burmese people in, 297; Thais in, 297
Bushido: in Japan, 321
Business: in China, 148; Muslims and, 198, 212. See also Commerce;
Trade
Byzantine: use of term, 175
Byzantine Church. See Orthodox Church
Byzantine Empire, 140, 171–175, 172(m); Charlemagne and, 191;
Christianity in, 176, 335; Crusades and, 337(m), 338; end of, 351;
Huns in, 186; icons and, 182; intellectual thought in, 174–175;
military in, 171, 174; Ottomans and, 351; Sassanids and, 171, 173,
199; Turks and, 280, 281; women in, 175. See also Constantinople;
Eastern Roman Empire
Byzantium (city), 140. See also Byzantine Empire; Constantinople
Cabildos (councils), 398
Cabot, John, 394–395
Cabral, Pedro Álvares, 398
Cacao, 255
Caesar (title), 140
Caesar, Julius, 129; Celts and, 185–186; Cleopatra and, 129
Cahokia, 256–258
Cai Lun (China), 150
Cairo: Fatimids in, 205; trade in, 212, 232, 387
Cajamarca, Peru, 274
Calais, 350
Calendar(s), 23; Christian, 334; Maya, 264; Mesoamerican, 252, 256;
at Nabta Playa, Egypt, 23(i); Olmec, 256
Calendar Round, 252, 256
Calicut, India, 391, 392
Caligula (Rome), 133
Caliphs and caliphates, 201–202; Abbasid, 202–204, 205, 281, 285;
Islamic government under, 204; Turks and, 205, 281. See also
Umayyad Dynasty
Calligraphy, 311, 318
Calvin, John, and Calvinism: in France, 375, 378; Netherlands and,
379; in Scotland, 375. See also Puritans
Cambodia (Kampuchea): Khmer Empire in, 298
Camels: in trans-Saharan trade, 230, 232(i)
Canaan, 44
Canada: exploration of, 395; French in, 395
Canals: in China, 158; Persian, 48
Canary Islands: Guanche people from, 389; sugar industry and, 403
Cannae, battle at, 126
Canon law, 141
Canton, China. See Guangzhou
Canute (Viking), 330
Cape Guardafui, 243
Cape of Good Hope, 224, 391
Captaincies, 398–399
Caravan trade: Berbers and, 230–232; in China, 151; Ghana and, 235;
Islamic, 198–199, 211–212, 233; routes of, 230; Sassanids and,
 173
Caravel, 390
Cardinals (Catholic Church), 333
Caribbean region: Olmecs in, 255(m); slavery in, 208, 403; Spain
and, 394, 395. See also specific locations
Carolingian Empire, 190; division of, 327; education in, 343
Carolingian Renaissance, 191
Cart(s): wheels for, 19
Carthage, 126; Punic Wars and, 126–127
Cartier, Jacques, 395
Cartography, 390
Caste system: Buddhism and, 63; Hinduism and, 64, 65; in India, 54,
57, 59, 291, 292, 294–295; Islam and, 292
Castile: Christian-Muslim fighting in, 338
Catalan Atlas (1375): Mansa Musa in, 388(i)
Çatal Hüyük, Turkey, 22
Catapult, 115, 285, 287
Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of, 377
Cathedrals, 176; medieval, 344, 345(i)
Catherine de’ Medici, 378
Catherine of Aragon, 365, 373
Catholic Church. See Roman Catholic Church
Catholic Reformation, 375, 377
Cattle, 19; in Africa, 227; in India, 294. See also Animals
Caucasians: enslavement of, 233; use of term, 9
Caucasus region: Islam in, 210(m)
Cavalry: in China, 84
Cave art: in India and Central Asia, 158; Paleolithic, 12, 13
Celibacy: Buddhist monastic, 158; Christian, 181, 332, 371; Hebrew,
45
Celtic languages, 182
Celts (Gauls), 123, 182, 184–185, 186
Cenotes (wells), 263
Census: in China, 147, 148, 307
Central Asia: Buddhism in, 155, 156–157, 290; camels and, 230;
China and, 151, 159, 289; Darius I and, 48; diseases in, 290, 347;
Islam in, 196, 210(m), 290; Mongols in, 206, 281–282, 284, 287,
 288; Nestorian Christians in, 289; nomads of, 279–282, 291;
steppes in, 279; Turks in, 280, 291, 292. See also Asia; Xiongnu
people; specific locations
Central Europe: Otto I in, 330, 335; Rome and, 131. See also specific
locations
Centralization: in Andes society, 255, 258; in China, 146, 148
Central States region (China), 83–84
Ceramics: in India, 55; in Korea, 316. See also Pottery
Cereals: in Africa, 227, 228; in India, 294. See also Crops
Ceremonies: Sassanid, 173
Certificates of deposit: in China, 307
Ceuta, Morocco, 391
Ceylon. See Sri Lanka
Chad, Lake, 229
Chan (Zen) Buddhism, 161, 316, 322
Chandragupta I (India), 65, 66–67, 291
Chang’an, China, 159, 160, 165, 317
Chariots: in China, 78; Hyksos, 38; Roman races and, 135
Charlemagne, 189, 190–192, 191(i); death of, 327; as emperor, 190–
191, 327
Charles I (Spain). See Charles V (Holy Roman Empire
Charles V (Holy Roman Empire; Charles I of Spain): abdication of,
373, 379; global empire of (1556), 366(m); Luther and, 369;
Netherlands under, 378–379; New Laws in American colonies and,
400; Reformation and, 373; Valladolid debate and, 407; on Western
Christendom, 367
Charles VII (France), 349, 364
Charles Martel, 190
Charles the Bald, 191
Charles the Great. See Charlemagne
Chavín culture, 255, 258
Check: origins of term, 212
Cheng Yi (China), 313
Chess (game), 213, 217(i)
Chichén Itzá, 263
Chickens: domestication of, 17
Chiefs: African female, 229; in barbarian society, 184; Indian rajas as,
58
Childbearing and childbirth: in China, 312; Hebrew, 45
Child labor: agricultural, 340(i)
Children: Aztec, 269–270; in barbarian society, 184; of concubines,
22; human evolution and, 7; in India, 295; in Islam, 211; Mongol,
282; in Rome, 128; in Sumerian royalty, 32. See also Child labor;
Infant mortality
Chile: Inca Empire and, 261; language in, 261
Chimalpopoca (Mexica), 269
Chimu culture and people, 259–260
China: Age of Division in, 155; agriculture in, 16, 77, 79, 84, 308;
arts in, 79–80, 305; Black Death in, 290, 347; bronze in, 78, 79,
153; Buddhism and, 146, 157–158, 161, 311; bureaucracy in, 309;
business in, 148; census in, 147, 148; Central Asia and, 289; cities
in, 307–308; civilization in, 75–78; classical age in, 74–75; class
in, 79; Confucianism in, 86–88, 311–312; crops in, 16, 308; culture
in, 75, 77–78, 148–150, 306; Daoism in, 88–89; diseases in, 290,
347; dynasties in, 75; economy in, 305, 307, 308, 315, 385; elites
in, 153, 309, 311; emperors in, 306; ethnic groups in, 314–315;
examination system in, 158, 309, 311, 315; families in, 88, 153–
154; farming in, 79, 150–151, 307, 308; feudal system in, 81; First
Emperor of, 146–148; foot binding in, 313; geography of, 75–77,
76(m); government of, 75, 90, 146–147, 148, 150, 158, 305, 306;
Great Wall in, 147, 151, 155; Han Dynasty in, 148–150, 299, 311;
Hellenistic trade with, 112; hereditary occupations in, 314; humans
in, 5; industry and, 307; Inner Asia and, 150–151; intellectual
thought in, 90, 148–150; iron in, 83, 153, 305, 307; Islamic higher
education and, 214–215; isolation of, 75; Japan and, 161, 164–166,
299; Jesuits in, 406; Jin Dynasty in, 308, 310(m), 314, 317;
Jurchen people in, 281, 283, 287, 306, 307, 308, 309; Khitans and,
281, 287, 306, 309; Korea and, 151, 158, 163–164, 299, 315, 316;
labor and, 147; Legalists in, 88, 90–91, 146, 148; lifestyle in, 82–
84, 153–154; literature in, 311; magnetic compass from, 279, 290,
307, 390–391; medieval period in, 306–308; metallurgy in, 307;
military in, 78, 84, 151, 309; military technology in, 84–85;
millenarian religious sect in, 155; Ming Dynasty in, 315, 317;
 missionaries in, 319; Mongols and, 284, 285, 286(m), 287, 288,
306, 308, 314–315; monopolies in, 148; music in, 83(i); Nam Viet
and, 151; navigation instruments from, 279, 290, 307, 390–391;
Neolithic era in, 77–78, 77(i); nomads in, 281; Northern and
Southern Dynasties in, 155; paper in, 359; paper money in, 307,
315; peasants in, 339; philosophy in, 305; poetry in, 160, 311;
politics in, 81; Polo in, 290, 308, 385; population of, 84, 90, 307–
308; porcelain in, 315; Portuguese and, 405; printing in, 279, 290,
305, 309, 311, 359; Qin Dynasty in, 146–148; religions in, 83–84,
160; reunification of, 155, 158; rice in, 305, 307, 308; roads in,
147; Rome and, 136, 154–155; Sassanids and, 173; scholar-
officials in, 309, 311–312, 315; schools in, 159; Shang Dynasty in,
78–81; silk in, 145, 313(i); Silk Road and, 150–151, 152(m); silver
and, 405; slavery in, 245, 316; society in, 79, 82–84, 90, 153–154,
155; Song Dynasty in, 285, 305–306, 307, 309, 311–313; Sui
Dynasty in, 158–159; Tang Dynasty in, 158, 159–161, 297, 306,
307, 308, 309, 311, 315, 317; taxation in, 148, 306; textiles in,
313(i); Thais in, 297; tombs in, 78, 79, 90, 147(i); trade and, 83,
147, 151, 307, 308; travels to, 146; tributary system in, 151; Turks
and, 280, 306; Vietnam and, 158, 162–163, 297; warlords in, 155,
309; Warring States Period in, 81, 84–85, 311; weapons in, 307;
women in, 159, 308, 312–313; writing in, 29, 80–81; Xiongnu and,
145, 147, 151; yin and yang in, 91; Yuan Dynasty in, 308, 314–
315; Zhou Dynasty in, 81–84. See also Central Asia; Manchuria;
Mongols; Xiongnu people
Chinampa agriculture, 268–269, 268(i)
Chinese language: in Korea, 164; in Vietnam, 81, 162
Chinggis Khan (Mongols), 206; Delhi sultanate and, 293; Mongol
Empire and, 279, 283–284, 286(m); Secret History of the Mongols
and, 282; successors to, 285; tent of, 284(i); wife of, 282
Chivalry, 341
Ch’oe Ch’ung-hon (Korea), 316
Chola state (India), 299
Cholula, 396
Choson Dynasty (Korea), 163
Christ. See Jesus Christ
Christendom. See Christianity and Christians
Christian Church: clerical celibacy in, 332, 371; continuity through,
171; in Europe, 332–336; growth of, 139, 176–179; hierarchy in,
139; medieval challenges to, 332, 350–351; in Middle Ages, 332–
336; misogyny in, 181; Paul of Tarsus and, 138; schism in, 333,
350, 368; Western and Eastern, 177–178. See also Christianity and
Christians; Orthodox Church; Protestant Reformation; Roman
Catholic Church
Christian humanists, 358
Christianity and Christians: in 14th century, 350–351; Arian, 176–
177; Byzantine Empire and, 173; classical culture and, 179–181;
Constantine and, 141; conversion and, 138, 186–189, 240, 282,
406; Crusades and, 336–339; in Ethiopia, 235, 240, 241, 242;
expansion of, 332, 335–336; gender, sexuality, and, 180–181;
humanism and, 358; in Iberian Peninsula, 335, 402; ideas and
practices of, 179–182; in Ireland, 187; Islam and, 207, 217–219,
332; monasticism of, 178–179; Mongols and, 282; Nestorian, 177,
281, 282, 289; in Nubia, 240; Ottomans and, 351; Qur’an on, 198;
as religion, 138; rise of, 137; Rome and, 136–139, 141, 179; in
Russia, 335; sin in, 181, 188; spread of, 138–139, 167, 171, 186–
189, 188(m); women and, 138. See also Jesuits; Missions and
missionaries; Monks and monasteries; Orthodox Church;
Protestants and Protestantism; Roman Catholic Church
Christmas, 188
Chu (Chinese state), 83–84
Church and state: in Ethiopia, 242
Church councils. See Councils (Christian)
Churchill, Winston: on history, 50
Church of England. See Anglican Church
Ciompi revolt (Florence), 351–352
Circumference of earth, 115
Circumnavigation of globe, 394
Cities and towns: in Africa, 233; Alexander the Great and, 111; in
Americas, 251–252, 255; in China, 78, 82–83, 160, 307–308;
civilization and, 29; Constantinople as, 175; Cretan, 96; Etruscan,
120; Hellenistic, 109, 110, 110(m), 111; in India, 55–56, 66, 292;
Iran and, 47; in Italy, 363(i); in medieval Europe, 341–342;
Mycenaean, 98; of Nile River region, 38; population in, 341;
 Roman, 135; in Spanish America, 398; in Sumer, 31. See also
Urban areas
Citizens and citizenship: in Athens, 103; in China and Rome, 154; in
Greece, 101, 105; in Rome, 123, 124, 129, 133; in Sparta, 101–102
City-states: Babylon as, 35; in East Africa, 235, 242–245; Greek, 99–
103, 109; in Italy, 357; in Maya region, 263, 263(m); in
Mesoamerica, 251, 258; in Sumer, 31–32; Swahili, 224, 243, 387;
in Valley of Mexico, 263
Civilization(s): of Americas, 251–259; of China, 75–78; concept of,
29; on Greece, 96–99; of India, 55–56. See also Culture(s); specific
locations
Civil law: in Rome, 124
Civil service: in Korea, 316. See also Bureaucracy; Civil service
examination system
Civil service examination system: in China, 160, 309, 311, 315; in
Korea, 316
Civil war(s): in England, 364; in France, 377; in Japan, 320; in
Netherlands, 378–379; in Rome, 126, 129, 140; in Spain, 335
Civitas: Merovingians and, 190
Clans: in Africa, 229, 234; in Japan, 165; Mongol, 282; nomad, 280
Class: in Aztec Empire, 269; in barbarian villages, 183; in Byzantine
Empire, 175; in China, 79, 82; in Ethiopia, 241–242; in Ghana,
237; in India, 58; in Islam, 234; in Korea, 316; nobles as, 340–341;
peasants as, 339–340; in Rome, 124; women and, 333. See also
Caste system; Elites; Hierarchy
Classical culture: Christianity and, 179–181; in Renaissance, 357,
358, 361. See also Classical period
Classical period: in China, 74–75; in Greece, 97(m), 103–109; of
Tamil culture, 70
Classic of Filial Piety (China), 87(i), 153
Classification systems: for living things, 2–3
Claudius (Rome), 133
Clement VII (Pope), 350, 373
Cleopatra VII (Egypt), 110, 129
Clergy: in Catholic Reformation, 375; celibacy of, 181, 332, 371;
immorality of, 368; in Middle Ages, 332, 350; Protestant
 Reformation and, 368; regular, 179; secular, 179. See also Monks
and monasteries; Nuns; Priests and priestesses
Climate: in 14th century, 347; in Africa, 224, 225(m); in Andean
region, 254, 258, 259; in China, 75; in Ghana, 235; humans and, 3,
5; Ice Age and, 8; of India, 54; in Japan, 163(m); in Korea, 163(m);
Neolithic warming of, 13–15; Paleolithic warming of, 10; of
southern Africa, 224, 245; volcanic explosion and, 40. See also
Little ice age
Clocks: in China, 311
Cloistered government: in Japan, 318
Cloth and clothing: in Middle Ages, 342; Mongol, 282; spinning,
weaving, and, 21. See also Cotton and cotton industry; Silk;
Textiles and textile industry
Clotild (Franks), 189
Clovis (Franks), 189
Coca, 254
Code of Manu, 70
Codes: of behavior, 44–45
Codes of law. See Law codes
Coins: in China, 148; in India, 65, 70; Roman, 124(i), 131
College of cardinals, 333
Colleges. See Universities and colleges
Cologne, 135
Colombia: Inca Empire and, 261
Colonialism: in Africa, 223. See also Colonies and colonization;
Nationalism
Colonies and colonization: administration of American, 398–399;
Alexander the Great and, 111; in Brazil, 398; Chinese, 163; Greek,
101, 102(m), 120; Phoenician, 42–43; Portuguese, 391; Roman,
129; Spain and, 393–394
Columbian exchange, 401
Columbus, Christopher: Crusades and, 338–339; voyages to
Americas, 393–394
Comedy: Greek, 105
Comitatus (war band): in barbarian society, 184
Commerce: in East Africa, 244–245; Hellenistic, 112; in India, 292;
Islamic, 211–212, 218; in South China Sea, 385, 386. See also
 Business; Trade
Commercial revolution, 342–343
Common law: in England, 331
Common people: Aztec, 270; in India, 58; in Japan, 318; literacy of,
347. See also Peasants; Serfs and serfdom
Communal monasticism, 178
Communication(s): in Americas, 252; Inca, 262; Islamic relay
network and, 204; Mongols and, 283, 288–290; Persian, 48;
Roman, 123; in Vietnam, 162
Compass: from China, 212, 279, 290, 307, 390–391
Concilium plebis (Rome), 125
Concubines: Aztec, 270; children of, 22; in China, 308, 313; slaves
as, 208; women as, 21
Confederations: Mongol, Tartar, Turkish, 206; nomad, 280. See also
Tribes
Confessions, The (Augustine), 181
Conflicts. See War(s) and warfare; specific conflicts
Confucius and Confucianism, 85–88, 147; in China, 311–312;
Confucian classics, 149–150, 159; Daoism and, 89; in Han China,
148–150; Neo-Confucianism, 312, 313; scholar-officials and, 148–
149; spread of, 86–88; trade and, 153
Congo: Jesuits in, 377. See also Kongo kingdom
Congo River region, 228
Conquest. See Colonies and colonization; Exploration
Conquistadors: in Americas, 395, 397; indigenous workers and, 399,
399(i)
Consistory (Geneva), 375
Constance, council of, 350
Constantine (Rome), 140, 141, 176
Constantine V (Byzantine Empire), 182
Constantinople (Istanbul), 140, 171–173; Crusades and, 338;
invasions of, 171; lifestyle in, 175; Ottomans in, 351, 389, 402;
patriarch of, 333; size of, 341; trade in, 175
Constitution(s): Roman, 130
Consuls (Rome), 124, 129, 130
Convents: in Ethiopia, 241; Reformation and, 372; women in, 333.
See also Monks and monasteries; Nuns
Conversion: of Ashoka to Buddhism, 68; to Christianity, 138, 177,
186–189, 240, 282, 406; of Clovis, 189; of England, 187; of
Ireland, 187; to Islam, 196, 207, 208, 215, 234, 239, 241, 243, 289,
292; of Mongols, 282; to mystery religions, 113; in New Spain,
406; of Turks, 205. See also Missions and missionaries
Conversos (Spanish Jewish converts, New Christians), 365
Copán, 263
Copper: in southern Africa, 245; trade in, 22
Copts: as Christians, 178, 241; conversion to Islam by, 207
Córdoba, Spain, 196; culture in, 213; medicine in, 215–216; mosque
and cathedral in, 332(i); size of, 175, 341; Umayyads in, 204, 335
Corn (maize): in Columbian exchange, 401; domestication of, 16–17;
in Mesoamerica, 253–254, 253(i), 256–257, 263
Coromandel coast, India, 386–387
Coronation: in Aztec Empire, 271; of Charlemagne, 190–191
Corpus Juris Civilis (Justinian), 174
Cortés, Hernán: Aztecs and, 267, 273, 395–397, 396(i); as
conquistador, 395
Cosmology: Chinese, 149–150, 312
Cotton and cotton industry: in Americas, 254, 256; in China, 308; in
India, 55, 387; Kushites and, 42
Councils (Christian): of Constance, 350; Lateran, 333; of Nicaea,
176; of Trent, 375
Councils (civil). See Assemblies
Counties: Carolingian, 190
Countryside. See Rural areas
Court (law): in medieval Europe, 331; Parlement of Paris as, 331
Court (royal): in Ethiopia, 241; in Ghana, 236
Courtiers: in Japan, 318
Courtly love, 341
Covenant: between Jews and Yahweh, 44
Cradles of civilization, 29
Craft guilds, 294, 342. See also Guilds
Crafts and craft workers: in European Middle Ages, 342; in Greece,
105; in India, 55, 294
Cranach, Lucas, the Elder, on Luther’s wedding, 372(i)
Crassus (Rome), 129
Credit. See Wealth
Creoles: use of term, 400
Crete, 96; Mycenaeans and, 98
Crime(s): barbarian punishment of, 184; in Rome, 134. See also
Law(s); Law codes
Crisis: of the 3rd century (Rome), 130–140
Cro-Magnon peoples, 8
Crops: in Africa, 16, 227, 228, 229, 235; in Americas, 16–17, 251,
253–254, 256–257; in Asia, 16; in China, 16, 77, 79, 308; in
Columbian exchange, 401; in India, 54, 55, 294; of Maya, 263; in
Mesopotamia, 31; Neolithic, 15–17, 77; spread through trade, 212;
sugar as, 403; in West Africa, 229
Crossbow: in China, 84
Cross-cultural connections: with Africa, 384–385, 387; in East Africa,
387; East-West communication and, 406; in India, 70, 299;
Mongols and, 288–290; Neolithic, 22–23; trade and, 151, 384–385,
387. See also Silk Road; Trade
Crucifixion, 138
Crusader states, 337, 338
Crusades, 336–339, 337(m); background and motives for, 336;
consequences of, 338–339; in Constantinople, 175, 338; course of,
336–338; Islam and, 206, 336–339; Jews in Islam during, 207;
spice introductions and, 389; Turks and, 206, 336, 338
Cuauhtemoc (Aztec Empire), 273
Cuba: Columbus in, 393; Spain and, 395
Cults: in China, 83; Inca, 260; of Isis, 113–114; of Roma et Augustus,
130–131; Roman, 137; ruler, 110–111; of saints, 334. See also
Mystery religions
Cultural exchange. See Cross-cultural connections
Culture(s): Abbasid, 203; agriculture and, 16; in Andes region, 251;
Arabic language and, 215; Athenian, 104–105; Bantu, 228–229; in
China, 75, 77–78, 148–150, 160–161, 306; Crusades and, 338–
339; diversity of, 9; in East Asia, 161–166, 306; Egyptian, 41;
Greek, 99; Hellenistic, 109, 111–112, 240; in Inca Empire, 259–
260, 262; of India, 69, 70; Islamic, 213–217, 234, 243; in Japan,
318–320, 322; in medieval Europe, 343–345, 347; Muslim, 234,
243; in Nile River region, 34(m); Paleolithic, 12–13; Phoenician
 writing and, 43; regional, 292–293, 294–295; Renaissance
(European), 356–361; Roman, 127–128, 131, 240; in southwest
Asia, 34(m); Srivijayan, 299; in stateless societies, 234–235;
Swahili, 226; in Teotihuacan, 265. See also Art(s); Bronze Age;
Civilization(s); Classical culture; Classical period; Cross-cultural
connections; Enlightenment; Neolithic era; Writing
Cuneiform writing, 29, 33
Currency. See Coins; Money; Paper money
Cuzco and Cuzco region: in Inca Empire, 259, 274, 397
Cylinder sheath: Nubian, 41(i)
Cyril: Slavic alphabet of, 335
Cyrus the Great (Persia), 44, 48
Da Gama, Vasco, 391
Dahlak Archipelago, 241
Daily life. See Lifestyle
Damascus: Islam and, 201; Umayyads and, 202
Da Nang, 162
Dante: on Muslim philosophers, 219
Danube River region, 131, 171
Dao and Daoism, 88–89
Darfur: Islam in, 234
Darius I (Persia), 48, 49, 65
Dark Ages: in Greece, 99; use of term, 192
Dating systems, 3n
David (Michelangelo), 360(i)
David of Bethlehem (Hebrews), 44
Death and death rates: in religious traditions, 334–335. See also
Burials; Infant mortality
Debate about women, 362–364
De Bry, Theodore, 402(i)
Deccan region, 54
Deities. See Gods and goddesses
Delhi sultanate, 285, 293–294
Delian League, 104
Delphi, 107
Democracy(ies): in Athens, 103; in Greece, 101
Democritus (philosopher), 107
Demography. See Diseases; Education; Population
Denmark: Christianity and, 335; Vikings from, 327, 329. See also
Scandinavia
Dervishes, 206, 216; Sufi, 206
Description of the World (Polo), 290
Dharma (moral law), 64, 65, 68
Dhimmis (non-Muslims), 207
Di (god), 78
Dialects: vernacular, 345. See also Vernacular languages
Diamonds: in southern Africa, 245
Diaz, Bartholomew, 391
Dictators and dictatorships: in Rome, 129
Dido, 131
Diet (food): in Americas, 253–254, 255; in China, 77; in Greece, 105;
in India, 294; Mongol, 281–282; Paleolithic, 10; peasant, 340;
potato in, 254; in West Africa, 229. See also Food(s)
Diet of Worms, 369
Differentiation: cultural, 306; in Paleolithic society, 11–12; racial, 9
Dioceses: Christian, 176, 187, 335; Roman, 176, 375
Diocletian (Rome), 140–141, 176
Diplomacy: in Mali, 239; Roman, 123
Discovery. See Voyages of exploration
Discrimination: against Jews, 336, 365; racial, 336
Diseases: in Americas, 250–251, 273, 397, 400, 401; from animals,
18; in Central Asia, 290, 347; in China, 290, 347; in Columbian
exchange, 401; European, 397; Hellenistic medicine and, 115; in
Japan, 165–166; spread of, 216. See also Black Death (plague);
Epidemics; Medicine
Distribution: of food, 19
Diversity: in Africa, 224, 225–226; cultural, 9
Divine right: of Abbasid caliphs, 203
Divinity. See Gods and goddesses; Religion(s)
Division of labor: by gender, 10, 246
Divorce: in Islam, 211; in Protestantism, 371; in Southeast Asia, 387
Diwān, 201, 204
DNA: human evolution and, 2; mitochondrial, 5
Doctors. See Medicine
Dogs: domestication of, 17
Dome of the Rock mosque (Jerusalem), 197(i)
Domestication: of animals, 3, 17–18, 227, 251; crops and, 16–17,
251; of plants, 3, 15, 227, 251, 253
Dominican order, 334, 406
Donatello, 361
Dongola, Nubia, 240
Dowry: Sumerian, 32
Draco (Athens) and draconian, 102–103
Drama. See Theater
Druids, 184
Dublin, 374. See also Ireland
Dunhuang, 156
Dutch: independence for, 379; slave trade and, 403; trade and, 406.
See also Holland; Indonesia; Netherlands
Dutch East India Company: spice trade and, 406
Dutch East Indies. See Indonesia
Dutch Empire: trade in, 405
Dutch West India Company: slave trade and, 403
Dynastic cycle, 306
Dynasties. See Empire(s); specific dynasties and locations

Early Horizon period: in Andes region, 258

East Africa: agriculture in, 16, 227; city-states of, 235, 242–245;
cross-cultural connections in, 387; economy in, 224; gold in, 244;
hominids in, 4; ironworking in, 227; Islam in, 210(m), 234, 243;
Portugal and, 244, 246, 405; slave trade and, 245, 388; Swahili
civilization in, 226, 243; trade in, 226, 242–243, 244–245. See also
Africa
East Asia: 800–1400, 305–306; in 1000 and 1200, 310(m); Buddhism
in, 146, 155, 306; Chinese language in, 162; cultures in, 161–166,
306; state formation in, 145; trade in, 226; transformation of, 145–
146. See also specific locations
Easter (holiday), 188
Easter Island, 300–301, 300(i)
Eastern Christian Church. See Orthodox Church
Eastern Europe: Christianity in, 335; Hungarian kingdom in, 331;
Orthodox Christianity in, 335; serfs in, 329, 330. See also specific
locations
Eastern Orthodox Church. See Orthodox Church
Eastern Roman Empire, 140, 171, 186. See also Byzantine Empire;
Orthodox Church; Rome (ancient)
Eastern Turks, 280. See also Turks
Eastern world: East-West communication and, 406
East India Company: Dutch, 406
East Indies. See Indonesia
Ecclesia (Greek assembly of citizens), 103
Economy: under Abbasic caliphate, 204; Africa and, 224; in Athens,
102; in China, 305, 307, 308, 315, 385; in Europe, 389; global,
401–403, 405–406; in Hebrew society, 45; in Hellenistic cities,
111; in Korea, 316; Maya, 264; plague’s impact on, 349; in Roman
provinces, 135; in Rome, 135, 140–141; in Spanish Empire, 403,
405; Swahili, 226. See also Global economy; Labor; Slaves and
slavery; Trade; specific issues and locations
Ecosystems. See Environment
Ecuador: Inca and, 261; language in, 261
Edessa, 337
Edicts: of Nantes, 378
Education: of Catholic clergy, 375; in China, 215, 309; in Europe,
215, 343–344; in France, 343; in Hebrew family, 45; humanist,
357–358; Islam and, 213–216, 240; Jesuits and, 377; in Rome,
128; for women, 214, 358. See also Intellectual thought; Learning
Edward (heir to Canute, England), 330
Edward III (England), 349, 350
Edward IV (England), 365
Edward VI (England), 374
Edward, Lake, 228
Egypt: Fatimids in, 205; Islam in, 199, 234; Mali and, 239; Mamluks
in, 285, 388; Mongols and, 285; Muslims and, 234; Saladin and,
338; Sassanids in, 173; slave trade and, 388; trade in, 387. See also
Egypt (ancient)
Egypt (ancient), 36–43; agriculture in, 36; Alexander the Great and,
109; Assyrians and, 40; in Bronze Age, 38; culture of, 41; empire
of, 39; Ethiopia and, 240; in Hellenistic world, 111; historical
periods in, 36–37; Hittites and, 40; mythology in, 113; Nabta Playa
stone circle in, 23(i); New Kingdom in, 36–37, 39–40, 41; Nile
and, 36, 38; Old Kingdom in, 37; pharaohs in, 36–37; Ptolemy in,
110; pyramids in, 37; religion in, 36–37, 40; Rome and, 126, 129;
society in, 37–38; trade and, 226; writing in, 37–38. See also
Alexandria; Egypt; Gods and goddesses; Ptolemies
Eightfold Path (Buddhism), 62–63
Eleanore of Portugal, 367
Eleanor of Aquitaine, 330
Elements of Geometry, The (Euclid), 115
Elites, 19; in China, 309, 311; social hierarchies and, 21–22, 362;
Sumerian, 32; in Vietnam, 162, 163; of wealth, 362; women and,
21. See also Class; Nobility
Elizabeth I (England): masculine qualities of, 364; Protestantism
and, 374
El Niños: Moche and, 258, 259
Emigration: Islamic hijra as, 198. See also Immigrants and
immigration
Emirs: in Islam, 204
Emperor(s): Aztec, 269; Byzantine, 177; Charlemagne as, 190–191,
327; in China, 146, 159, 306; cult of (Rome), 137; of Japan, 317–
318; origins of term, 130. See also Empire(s); specific individuals
Empire(s): African kingdoms and, 224, 229–230, 231(m), 234–246;
Akkadian, 34; of Alexander the Great, 109; in Americas, 251, 253;
Assyrian, 46–47; Athenian, 104; Carolingian, 190–192, 327, 343;
Carthaginian, 126; in China, 146–150; Egyptian, 39; European,
405; of Franks, 183; Inca, 253, 259–262, 397–398; Islamic, 203–
204; in Mediterranean region, 39(m); in Mesopotamia, 34–35; in
Middle East, 199; Portuguese, 392; of Timur, 288; Toltec, 263;
West African, 224, 234. See also Colonies and colonization; Islam;
specific locations
Encomienda system, 399–400
Endogamy, 9; social, 21
Engineers and engineering: Inca, 262; Roman, 134
England (Britain): agriculture in, 16; Black Death in, 348;
Christianity in, 187; civil war in, 364; common law in, 331;
exploration by, 394–395; France and, 330; Gold Coast and, 235;
Hundred Years’ War and, 349–350; Ireland and, 365, 374; Jews
and, 365; nationalism in, 350; Norman Conquest of, 330; peasant
revolts in, 351; poll tax in, 351; Protestantism in, 373–374;
Puritans in, 374; religion in, 373–374; in Renaissance, 364–365;
slavery and, 403; slave trade and, 403; Vikings in, 327, 329, 330;
wool in, 342. See also Britain; Colonies and colonization; India
English Peasants’ Revolt: taxation and, 351
Enlightenment (Buddhist), 62, 319
Entertainment: in Rome, 134–135
Entrepôts: Cairo as, 212; in Malacca, 385; Timbuktu as, 239
Environment: African settlement and, 228; of Americas, 254; crop
adaptation to, 16; of Easter Island, 301; Mesopotamian, 31–32;
Paleolithic, 11
Ephors: in Sparta, 101
Epic literature: in Ethiopia, 242; in Greece, 99; in India, 54, 57, 58,
291; Sumerian, 33. See also Poets and poetry
Epic of Gilgamesh, 33
Epicurus and Epicureanism, 114
Epidemics: in Americas, 251; in Japan, 166; of Justinian Plague, 175,
348. See also Diseases
Equality: Muslim, 207. See also Religious toleration; Rights
Erasmus, Desiderius, 358
Eratosthenes, 115
Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 219
Esoteric Buddhism, 319–320
Estates (land): Roman latifundia and, 128
Ethical monotheism: of Jews, 45
Ethics: in China, 311; Confucian, 85, 87–88
Ethiopia and Ethiopians: agriculture in, 16, 227, 241; Aksum in, 240,
241; art in, 242; Christianity in, 235, 240, 241, 242; farming in,
241; Muslims in, 240, 241; Solomonic dynasty in, 242; trade and,
241; use of term, 226
Ethnic groups and ethnicity: in barbarian society, 182; in China, 153,
155, 314–315; in Mongol society, 287, 314–315; reconquista and,
336
Ethnocentrism: Africa and, 223
Etruria, 123
Etruscans, 120
Eucharist (Lord’s Supper), 138, 375
Euclid, 115
Eunuchs: in China, 155; in Islam, 208
Euphrates River region, 28, 30
Eurasia: Arabic language in, 215; Christianity in, 167; religious
contacts in, 217; Turks in, 205, 278
Euripides, 105
Europe: Americas and, 250–251; Christianity in, 187; expansion by,
389–390; feudalism in, 320, 329–330; geography and, 390;
globalization and, 401–403, 405–406; Great Famine in, 347;
Hundred Years’ War in, 349–350; Indian Ocean trade and, 384;
indigenous peoples and, 399–400, 399(i), 406–407; Islamic higher
education and, 214–215; marriage in, 364; in Middle Ages, 326–
327; Mongols and, 285; peasant revolts in, 351; political
developments in, 327–331; religious division in (ca. 1555),
376(m); schools in, 343–344; serfdom in, 329–330, 339; state-
building in, 330; trade and, 389; urban revolts in, 351–352;
voyages of discovery by, 389–395, 392(m); witch-hunts in, 380.
See also Society; Western world; specific locations
Evolution: of ancient humans, 2–8; animal domestication and, 17–18
Examination system: in China, 158, 160, 309; in Korea, 316
Exchange: social hierarchies and, 20. See also Trade
Excommunication: in Catholic Church, 333
Expansion: of Bantu-speakers, 228–229; of Christian Church, 332,
335–336; Egyptian, 39; European, 389–390; by France, 330;
Greek, 101; of Hittites, 40; Inca, 259, 261–262; of Islam, 198–204,
200(m), 233–234; of Mali, 238–239; Mongol, 283–284, 285; by
Persia, 173; of Rome, 125–127, 131, 132(m). See also
Colonialism; Colonies and colonization; Immigrants and
immigration; Migration
Exploration: in 15th and 16th centuries, 392(m); by China, 386;
European, 389–395, 392(m); by France, 395; by Northern
Europeans, 394–395; by Portugal, 391–392; by Spain, 393–394,
395–398; technology and, 390–391. See also Colonies and
colonization; Voyages of exploration
Exports: African, 244. See also Slaves and slavery
Extended families: in Africa, 227, 229; in India, 295
Extinction: megafaunal, 10; of species, 2
Ezana (Aksum), 241
Faith: Luther on, 369. See also Religion(s)
Families: in Africa, 227, 229, 246; in Athens, 103; in Byzantine
Empire, 175; in China, 88, 153–154; gender rules and, 21; in
Greece, 105–106; Hammurabi’s code on, 36; Hebrew, 45; in India,
295; in Islam, 209–210; Mongol, 282; Neolithic society and, 20;
Paleolithic, 11–12; peasant, 339–340; in Rome, 128, 131; Spartan,
102. See also Clans; Kinship
Family names: in China, 84
Famine: Great Famine, 347
Farms and farming: in Africa, 227, 235, 245; in Americas, 251, 253–
254, 256–257, 257(m), 263; in China, 79, 150–151, 307, 308; in
Ethiopia, 241; in India, 59, 294; in Japan, 322; of Maya, 263; in
Mesopotamia, 31; Mexica, 268–269, 268(i); Neolithic, 16;
patriarchy and, 20; plow agriculture and, 19–20; in Rome, 141;
women in, 340(i). See also Agriculture
Fathers: of Christian Church, 176. See also Families; Men; Patriarchy
Fatima (Muhammad’s daughter), 205
Fatimid caliphate, 205
Ferdinand (Aragon, Spain), 365, 367, 389
Ferdinand I (Holy Roman Empire), 373
Ferghana, 151
Fertile Crescent: agriculture in, 16, 17; horticulture in, 15, 16;
Mesopotamia in, 31
Fertilizers, 254
Feudalism: in China, 81; in Europe, 320, 329–330; in Japan, 320. See
also Middle Ages
Fiefs: in Europe, 329
Filial piety: in China, 87(i), 88, 153–154
Finance(s): in Genoa, 389. See also Economy
Finland: Christianity and, 335. See also Scandinavia
Fire: as environmental control, 11; human use of, 5
Firearms: Mongol, 287. See also Weapons
First Crusade, 336–337, 338
First Emperor (Qin China), 146–148; ceramic army of, 147(i); tomb
of, 147(i), 148
First Intermediate Period (Egypt), 37
First Punic War, 126
First Triumvirate (Rome), 129
Fishing: in Africa, 224, 227, 229; in Americas, 254; in Atlantic near
Newfoundland, 395
Five Pillars of Islam, 198
Flanders: peasant revolts in, 351; trade in, 342
Flavian dynasty (Rome), 133
Flooding: in Cahokia, 257
Florence, Italy: Black Death in, 348; Medici in, 356; Renaissance in,
356; trade in, 342
Flying buttresses, 344, 345(i)
Food(s): in Africa, 227; in Columbian exchange, 401; crop raising
and, 15–17; domesticated plants and, 15; foraging for, 10–11;
Great Famine and, 347; horticulture and, 13–17; hunting and
gathering of, 5; population growth and, 229; in Rome, 134; storage
of, 19, 254; in West Africa, 229. See also Agriculture; Crops;
Domestication
Foot binding: in China, 313
Foraging, 3; crop-raising and, 16; Neolithic, 13, 15; Paleolithic, 10–
11; women and, 21
Forced migration: transatlantic slave trade as, 403. See also
Migration; Slaves and slavery
Foreign trade. See Trade
Fossil(s): from Laetoli, Tanzania, 4(i)
Foundation myths: Roman, 121
Four Noble Truths (Buddhism), 62
Fourth Crusade, 338
France, 191; Calvinism in, 375, 378; Catholic Church in, 378;
England and, 330; expansion within Europe, 330; exploration by,
395; Huguenots in, 375, 378; Hundred Years’ War and, 349–350;
Jews and, 365; justice in, 331; military in, 364; monarchy in, 364;
Muslims in, 199, 328; nationalism in, 350; peasant revolts in, 351;
religious wars in, 378; in Renaissance, 364; Rome and, 129; Spain
and, 377; taxation in, 364, 378; Valois kings in, 373; women in,
364. See also Gaul
Francis I (France), 364, 378
Franciscans: in Americas, 406; heresy and, 334
Frankish kings, 189–192
Franks, 182, 183
Frederick I Barbarossa (Hohenstaufen), 330–331
Frederick III (Holy Roman Empire), 367
Freedom(s): for serfs, 329, 339
Free will: Calvin and, 374; in Zoroastrianism, 49
Frobisher, Martin, 395
Frontiers: of China, 148; of Rome, 131, 133, 140. See also
Boundaries
Frumentius (Saint), 241
Fujiwara family (Japan): cultural growth under, 317; Michinaga, 318,
319
Funan, 297
Fundamentalism: Almoravid, 233–234; Islamic, 233–234
Funerals. See Burials
Fur trade, 395

Gaius Gracchus (Rome), 128

Galen (physician), 203
Gama, Vasco da. See Da Gama, Vasco
Gandhi, Mohandas (Mahatma): Jainism and, 62
Ganges River region, 54, 58, 66(m), 292
Gan Ying (China), 136
Gao: trade in, 233, 239
Gaozong (China), 159
Gaozu (Liu Bang, Han China), 148
Gaozu (Li Yuan, Tang China), 159
Garrison towns: Roman, 135
Gathering and hunting, 5, 10, 227, 245
Gaul (France): Caesar in, 186; Clovis and, 189; Rome and, 129, 135.
See also Celts (Gauls); France; Franks
Gautama. See Buddha; Buddhism; Siddhartha Gautama
Ge’ez language, 241
Gender and gender issues: Christian attitudes toward, 180; division of
labor by, 10, 246, 340; hierarchies by, 20–22, 362–364; in Islam,
208; in Minoan society, 97; in Paleolithic society, 10, 12; peasant
 labor by, 340; plow agriculture and, 20; Renaissance debate about,
362–364; in Southeast Asia, 387; witchcraft trials and, 380. See
also Men; Sex and sexuality; Women
Geneva: Calvin in, 374, 375
Genoa: in Renaissance, 357; trade and, 388–389
Gentleman (junzi): Confucius on, 86
Geoffrey of Anjou, 330
Geography: of Africa, 224, 225(m); of China, 75–77, 76(m);
Eratosthenes and, 115; of Ethiopia, 240; European exploration and,
390; of India, 54; of Iran, 47; of Korea, 163; of Mali, 238; of
Southeast Asia, 296; of southern Africa, 245
Geography (Ptolemy), 390, 393
Geology: classification by, 3
Germanic languages, 182
Germanic (German) peoples: as barbarians, 182; barbarians as, 182;
Celts and, 186; Christianity and, 187, 335; Rome and, 140; Vikings
as, 327. See also Barbarians; Franks
German language: New Testament in, 370
German Peasants’ War (1525), 371
Germany, 191; Christianity in, 187; Holy Roman Empire and, 331;
urban revolts in, 351. See also Holy Roman Empire
Ghana: Almoravids in, 234, 237; decline of, 237; gold in, 232, 237;
Islam in, 234; kingdom of, 229, 235–237; military in, 237;
Muslims in, 234, 236; trade in, 237. See also Gold Coast; Mali
Ghazan (Mongols), 206
Ghazi (frontier raiders), 205, 206
Ghent, 342
Gibraltar: Strait of, 199
Gilgamesh (Uruk): Epic of Gilgamesh and, 33
Girls. See Women
Glaciers, 2, 3, 9, 10
Gladiators (Rome), 134–135, 134(i)
Glassmaking industry, 135
Global economy: in 16th century, 401–403, 405–406. See also
Economy
Globalization: Columbian exchange and, 401; era of, 401–403, 405–
406; Europe and, 401–403, 405–406; from expansion, 385. See
 also Economy; Global economy
Goa, 392, 405
Goats: domestication of, 17
Göbekli Tepe, Turkey, 16
Go-Daigo (Japan), 322
Gods and goddesses: of Aryans, 60; Aztec, 267, 269; barbarian, 184;
in China, 150; division of labor and social hierarchy of, 23;
Egyptian, 36–37; Greek, 99, 107; Hammurabi and, 35; in
Hellenistic world, 111, 113; Hindu, 64–65; Inca, 261; Maya, 264;
Minoan, 97; Mongol, 282; in Neolithic society, 20; Quetzalcoatl
mythology and, 267; Roman, 123, 135; Sumerian, 31–32;
Zoroastrian, 49. See also Cults; Religion(s); Sin
Gold: in Africa, 232, 232(i), 237, 238, 244, 245, 246; in East Africa,
244; in Ghana, 232, 237; Inca, 261; Kushites and, 42; in Mali, 238;
Portugal and, 391; in southern Africa, 245; trade and, 232, 237,
238, 244, 246, 387, 388
Gold Coast: independence for, 235. See also Ghana
Golden age: of Latin literature, 131
Golden Bull (Hungary), 331
Golden Horde, 287, 288. See also Mongols and Mongol Empire
Gospels, 137, 179
Gothic architecture, 344
Gothic language: Bible in, 187
Government: of Aztec Empire, 269; of China, 75, 90, 146–147, 148,
150, 158, 161, 305, 306; of Ghana, 236; in Greece, 101, 103; Inca,
262; of India, 54, 69, 291; Islamic, 203–204, 234; of Japan, 165,
317, 318; of Korea, 316; of Mauryan Empire, 67; Merovingian,
190; by Mongols, 287, 288, 315; of nomadic herders, 282; Persian,
48; of Rome, 121–123, 124–125, 130–131, 133; social hierarchies
and, 20; of Spanish America, 398–399. See also Administration;
Empire(s); specific types and locations
Governors: in Mali, 239; in Spanish territories, 398
Gracchus brothers, 128
Grain. See Crops; specific grains
Granada, 335, 365, 389
Grand Canal (China), 159, 315
Grasslands: savannas as, 224. See also Steppes
Great Britain. See England (Britain)
Great Famine: in European Later Middle Ages, 347
Great Friday Mosque, Jenne, 238(i)
Great Khan: Taizong as, 159
Great Mosque: at Córdoba, 332(i); at Kilwa, 244(i)
Great Rift Valley, 227, 240
Great Schism: in Catholic Church, 350, 368
Great Silk Road. See Silk Road
Great Vehicle (Mahayana) Buddhism, 63, 156–157
Great Wall (China), 147, 151, 155
Great Zimbabwe, 224, 235, 246. See also Zimbabwe
Greco-Arab medicine, 216
Greco-Roman culture: Byzantine Empire and, 171; in Rome, 127,
127(i)
Greece (ancient), 95–96; Alexander the Great and, 66, 109; arts in,
104–105; astrolabe and, 390; athletic events in, 107; barbarians
and, 182; in Bronze Age, 96–99; citizenship in, 101, 105; classical
period in, 97(m), 103–109; colonies of, 101, 102(m); contact with
North African civilizations, 225; culture of, 99; Dark Age in, 99;
epic literature in, 99; expansion by, 101; families in, 105–106; gods
and goddesses of, 99, 123; government in, 101; Helladic period in,
96–99; Hellenic period in, 96; Hellenistic world and, 96; India and,
70; influence of, 116–117; medicine in, 108; peoples of, 95–96;
Persia and, 48, 103–104; philosophy in, 107–109; polis (city-state)
in, 99–103; religion in, 107; Rome and, 119, 126; same-sex
relations in, 102, 106; Sassanid Persians and, 171; slavery in, 105;
violence in, 103–104; women in, 106. See also Athens; Byzantine
Empire; Greece; Hellenistic world; Indo-Greek states; Minoan
civilization; Mycenae and Mycenaeans; Society; Sparta
Greek-Byzantine empire, 199. See also Byzantine empire
Greek fire (liquid fire), 174, 174(i)
Greek language, 40; Linear B as, 98; Phoenicians and, 42(f), 43; in
Renaissance, 357. See also Alphabet
Greek Orthodox Church. See Orthodox Church
Greenland: Vikings in, 327
Gregory I (Pope), 187
Gregory VII (Pope), 333
Gregory of Tours, 189
Guadalete River, battle at, 199
Guanajuato, 403
Guanche people, 389
Guangzhou (Canton), China, 245
Guatemala: Maya in, 263, 264
Guilds: in China, 307; medieval, 294, 341–342
Guinea: origins of term, 226; Portugal and, 391
Gulf of Aden, 234, 243
Gulf of Mexico, 395
Gunpowder: in China, 290, 307, 390–391; in Hundred Years’ War,
350
Guns. See Weapons
Gupta Empire (India), 290, 291
Gutenberg, Johann, 359
Gynaeceum: in Constantinople, 175

Haarlem: Protestants in, 379(i)

Habsburg dynasty: in Austria, 367; France and, 367; Ottomans and,
373; Reformation and, 373; in Renaissance, 367; in Spain, 367;
Spanish Netherlands and, 379
Habsburg-Valois Wars, 373, 377, 378
Hadith, 197
Hagiograph: in Ethiopia, 242
Haiti. See Hispaniola
Hajj (pilgrimage), 198
Hammurabi (Babylon), 35; law code of, 35–36
Han Dynasty (China), 136, 148–150, 149(m), 151; Confucianism in,
148–150; end of, 155; Japan and, 164; Korea and, 161; lifestyle
under, 153–154; literature in, 149–150, 311; Rome and, 154; state
rule in, 299; trade in, 150–151, 152(m); tributary system in, 151;
Vietnam and, 161, 162
Han Feizi (China), 90
Hangzhou, China: Mongols and, 285; population of, 308; in Song
Dynasty, 309, 310(m)
Hannibal (Carthage), 126
Hanseatic League (Hansa), 342
Hao, Lady (China), 79
Harappan civilization, 53, 55–56, 55(m), 57
Harem, 208, 209
Harold II (Anglo-Saxon), 330
Harun al-Rashid (Abbasid), 191, 203, 213
Hastings, Battle of, 330
Hatshepsut (Egypt), 40
Hattusili III (Hittites), 40
Hawaii: human habitation of, 9, 300
Health and health care. See Diseases; Medicine
Hebrew Bible. See Bible (Hebrew)
Hebrew language, 34, 43
Hebrew people, 43–45; Babylonian Captivity of, 44; Cyrus and, 48;
Jewish religion and, 44–45; Persian Empire and, 44; society of, 45.
See also Israel; Jews and Judaism
Heian (Kyoto), Japan, 317, 318
Heian period (Japan), 310(m), 317–320
Heliocentric (sun-centered) solar system, 115
Helladic period (Greece), 96–99
Hellenic period (Greece), 96
Hellenistic world, 96, 109–115; Alexander the Great and, 109; cities
and towns in, 109, 110, 111; culture in, 111–112, 240; philosophy
in, 114; religion in, 113–114; ruler cults in, 110–111; science and
medicine in, 114–115; society in, 109–112; trade in, 112
Hellenization, 111
Helots (serfs), 101
Henry II (England), 330, 331
Henry IV (France), 378
Henry IV (Germany, Holy Roman Empire), 333
Henry VII (England), 365
Henry VIII (England), 373–374
Henry “the Navigator” (Portugal), 391
Heraclius I (Byzantine Empire), 175
Herat, 206
Herbal medicine, 343
Herding, 224; in China, 150
Heredity. See Inheritance
Heresy: Arianism as, 177; Joan of Arc and, 350; in Middle Ages, 334.
See also Inquisition
Hermits, 178
Herodotus (historian), 50
Hesiod, 99
Hetaerae (courtesans): in Greece, 106(i)
Hiei, Mount: monastery on, 319
Hierarchy: in Abbasid caliphate, 204; in China, 82; in Christian
Church, 139; gender-based, 20–22, 362–364; in India, 59; in
Muslim society, 207; social, 12, 19–20, 29–30; of wealth and
nobility, 362. See also Caste system; Class; Social hierarchies
Hieratic writing, 38
Hieroglyphics, 38, 42(f)
Higher education: Islamic, 214–216. See also Universities and
colleges
High Middle Ages: learning and culture in, 343–345, 347; religious
enthusiasm in, 338. See also Middle Ages
Highways. See Roads
Hijra (emigration): Islamic, 198
Himalaya Mountains, 54
Hindi language, 40
Hindus and Hinduism, 64–65; caste system and, 64, 65; in India, 54,
64–65, 279, 291, 293; as protected peoples, 292; in Southeast Asia,
387
Hippocrates, 108
Hippodrome: in Constantinople, 140
Hispaniola: Columbus in, 393; Spanish settlement of, 395
History and historiography: Andes cycles of, 258; beginnings of, 1–2;
in Byzantine Empire, 174; in China, 150; Churchill on, 50;
Herodotus on, 50; origins of the term, 49; Sima Guang and, 311;
writing and, 1, 28–29
History of the World (Rashid al-Din): Chinggis Khan’s tent in, 284(i)
Hittites, 40
Hogenberg, Franz: engraving of Haarlem killings, 379(i)
Hohenstaufen, house of, 330–331
Hohokam society, 256, 257(m)
Hōjō family (Japan), 321
Holland: in Union of Utrecht, 379. See also Dutch; Dutch East India
Company; Dutch Empire; Netherlands
Holocene epoch, 3
Holy Office. See Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and
Universal Inquisition
Holy Roman emperor: Charlemagne as, 327; Charles V as, 373
Holy Roman Empire: as confederation, 330–331; under Habsburgs,
367; Protestantism in, 373; Roman Catholic Church and, 333. See
also Austria
Homer (Greece), 99
Hominids (hominidae), 3; evolution of, 4–5. See also Homo
Homo (genus), 3; Homo erectus, 4–5, 8; Homo habilis, 4, 7; Homo
sapiens, 5–8, 300; Homo sapiens sapiens, 8, 9
Homosexuals. See Same-sex relations
Honen (preacher), 322
Hongwu emperor. See Taizu
Honshu, Japan, 164
Hopewell society, 256
Hopi people, 256
Hoplites, 100, 100(i)
Hormuz: Portugal and, 392
Horn of Africa. See Africa; East Africa
Horses: in Americas, 401; in China, 84, 309; in India, 57(i); Mongols
and, 282, 285, 314(i); nomads and, 278; Turks and, 205. See also
Cavalry
Horticulture, 13–17; women and, 21. See also Agriculture
Horus (god), 114(i)
Hōryūji Temple (Japan), 165
Household(s): Byzantine, 175; Merovingian, 190; women in, 21. See
also Families
House of Trade (Spain), 398
Housing: Anasazi, 256; ancient, 256; in China, 78; in Greece, 105;
Mongol yurts as, 281; for peasants, 340; in Rome, 134
Hrosthwita of Gandersheim: on Córdoba, 213
Huaca (sacred spaces or things), 258
Huangdi (emperor), 146
Huascar (Inca), 274
Huayna Capac Inca, 273–274
Huguenots: in France, 375, 378. See also Protestants and
Protestantism
Huitzilihuitl (Mexica), 269
Human body. See Medicine
Humanism: Christian, 358; learning and, 357–358; rise of, 357–358;
women’s roles and, 358
Humans: evolution of, 2–8; in Greece, 95; migration by, 2, 5, 6(m),
8–9; origins of, 2
Human sacrifice: Aztec, 271; in China, 79. See also Blood sacrifice;
Sacrifices
Humoral theory of medicine, 108
Hunayn ib Ishaq, 203
Hundred Schools of Thought (China), 85
Hundred Years’ War, 349–350
Hungary: Mongols in, 285, 331; Rome and, 131. See also Magyars
Huns, 151; Byzantine Empire and, 171; emergence of, 280; Germanic
peoples and, 186; in India, 290, 291; Magyars and, 328. See also
Xiongnu people
Hunting: gathering and, 5, 10, 227, 245; by men, 15; Paleolithic, 10
Husbands. See Families
Hydrostatics, 115
Hyksos people, 38–39
Hyphasis River: Alexander the Great at, 109

Iberian Peninsula: Christianity in, 335, 402; European exploration

and, 389; Muslims in, 334, 389. See also Portugal; Spain
Ibn al-’Arabi (Sufi): writings of, 216–217
Ibn Battuta, Abu ‘Abdallah: on East African societies, 243–244;
exploration by, 223; in Kilwa, 234; on people of Mali, 240; on
trans-Saharan trade, 231
Ibn Rushid. See Averroës
Ibn Sina of Bukhara. See Avicenna
Ice Age, 8. See also Little ice age
Iceland: climate and, 40; Vikings in, 327, 329
Icons and iconoclastic controversy, 181–182
Ideas: Christian, 179–182; spread of, 22–23, 296
Ideograms, 33(f)
Igbo people, 229, 230
Ignatius. See Loyola, Ignatius
Ikhwan al-Safa (Islamic brotherhood), 218
Iliad, 99
Il-khanate (Mongols), 206, 288
Illness. See Diseases; Epidemics; Medicine
Illumination: of manuscripts, 242
Imam (leader), 202, 238(i)
Immigrants and immigration: to Americas, 400; to Japan, 164. See
also Emigration; Migration
Imperator (Rome), 130, 130(i)
Imports. See Trade
Inca Empire, 259–262; expansion of, 259, 261–262; fall of, 273–274,
397; geography of, 253, 259, 260(m); khipu and, 262, 397; labor
in, 262; religion, authority, and tribute in, 259–261; silver from,
261; size of, 261, 262; Spain and, 258, 274, 397–398
Inca Yupanque. See Pachacuti Inca
Independence: Dutch, 379
India: Afghanistan and, 292; agriculture in, 294; Alexander the Great
in, 66, 109; ancestors in, 295; arts in, 70, 291; Aryans in, 54, 56–
60; Ashoka in, 67–69; Buddhism and, 54, 62–64, 146, 155–156,
279, 291, 292–293; castes in, 54, 57, 59, 291, 292, 294–295; class
in, 58; cotton in, 55; crafts in, 55; culture in, 69, 70; East African
trade and, 243; families in, 295; farming in, 59; government of,
291; Greece and, 96, 111; Gupta Empire in, 290, 291; Hinduism in,
279, 291, 293; Indian Ocean trade and, 386–387; iron in, 41; Islam
and, 210(m), 279, 291, 292; Jesuits in, 377; Khmer Empire and,
298; kingdoms in, 290, 299; labor in, 295; land in, 54–56;
languages in, 292; mathematics in, 291; Mauryan Empire and, 66–
69, 290; medieval lifestyle in, 294–295; military in, 58; Mongols
in, 293; Mughal, 294; Muslims in, 199, 279, 291, 292; nomads in,
291; peasants in, 294, 339; Persian Empire and, 65–66; Portugal
 and, 391, 405; religions in, 54, 279, 291; sanitation in, 56; sciences
in, 70; slavery in, 59; society in, 53–54, 59; Southeast Asian states
and, 297–298; Srivijaya kingdom and, 299; states in, 297–298;
textiles and, 294; Tibet and, 161; Timur in, 288; trade in, 55, 59,
70, 151, 226, 279, 294; Turks and, 281, 291, 292; untouchables in,
59; villages in, 295; western world and, 65–66; women in, 59–60,
295; writing in, 65. See also Asia; Gandhi, Mohandas; Mughal
Empire (India)
India House (Portugal), 398
Indian Ocean region, 55; East African trade and, 242–243; Islam in,
234; navigation in, 391; peoples and cultures of, 387; Swahili and,
224; trade and, 136, 234, 241, 292, 384, 385–387, 386(m). See also
Southeast Asia
Indians: origins of term, 393. See also India; Native Americans
Indies: Columbus and, 393. See also Indonesia
Indigenous peoples: in Americas, 250–251, 399–400; European
debate about, 406–407; population loss and economic exploitation
of, 399–400, 399(i)
Individual: in Renaissance, 357
Indochina: Funan and, 297. See also Cambodia; Vietnam
Indo-European languages, 40, 57; Medes and, 46–47, 48; Sanskrit
and, 56
Indo-Greek states, 69, 111
Indonesia (Dutch East Indies): East Africa and, 243; Srivijaya
kingdom in, 299
Indulgences, 369
Indus River region, 53, 54, 55; Alexander the Great in, 66; Darius
and, 65; foreign dominance of, 69; India and, 53, 54, 55, 58;
Muslims in, 199, 292; Turks in, 292. See also Harappan
civilization; India
Industry: in China, 307; in Roman provinces, 135
Indus Valley (Harappan) culture. See Harappan civilization
Inequality: racial, 407
Infant mortality: in Paleolithic era, 10. See also Death and death rates
Infantry: in China, 84
Inferno (Dante), Muslims in, 219
Inflation: in Rome, 140; in Spain, 403, 405
Influenza, 400, 401
Infrastructure: Inca, 262
Inheritance: flexibility of, 22; gender and, 20–21; Inca, 259–260; in
Rome, 128; social hierarchies and, 20; in Southeast Asia, 387;
Sumerian, 32
Inland Sea: Japan and, 164
Inner Asia: China and, 150–151; Turks from, 280
Innovation: human migration and, 9
Inquisition: Holy Office and, 375; papal, 334; Roman, 375; in Spain,
367
Inscriptions: as permanent records, 29
Institutes of the Christian Religion, The (Calvin), 374
Intellectual thought: Byzantine, 174–175; in Carolingian
Renaissance, 191; in China, 90, 148–150; Christian, 179–182; in
Greece, 107–109; in India, 291; Islamic, 203; in medieval Europe,
343–344; in Timbuktu, 240. See also Education; Enlightenment;
Humanism; Ideas; Learning; Philosophy; Religion(s); Renaissance;
Scholarship; Science(s); Writing
Interglacial periods, 3
Intermarriage: between ethnic groups, 186, 297
International trade. See Trade
Interpreter of Desires, The (Ibn al-’Arabi), 217
Invasions: of 9th and 10th centuries, 328(m); by Magyars, 328,
328(m); Mongol, 206, 283–284, 285, 321–322; Muslim, 328,
328(m); Viking, 327, 328(m), 329. See also Vikings; War(s) and
warfare; specific invasions and locations
Inventions: by Archimedes, 115
Ionia, 104, 107, 109. See also Turkey
Iran: geography and topography of, 47; Iraq and, 204–205; Medes in,
48; Mongols in, 285; Parthians in, 136; Turks in, 292. See also
Persia; Persian Empire
Iraq: Iran and, 204–205; Turks in, 205; Umayyads in, 292. See also
Abbasid caliphate; Mesopotamia
Ireland: Christianity in, 187; England and, 365, 374; Roman
Catholicism in, 374
Iron Age, 41; Roman settlement during, 121
Iron and iron industry, 22; in Africa, 227; after Bronze Age, 41–43; in
China, 83, 153, 305, 307; Etruscans and, 120; Greece and, 99; in
Japan, 165; in Korea, 163; in Meroë, 42; weapons and, 99
Irrigation: in Ghana, 235; in Mesopotamia, 30; in Sumer, 31, 32
Isabella of Castile (Spain), 365, 367, 389
Isaiah (prophet), 45
Isfahan: Mongols in, 206
Isis (god): cult of, 113–114, 114(i)
Islam, 193, 195–196; administration of, 203–204, 234; Africa and,
224, 225, 230, 233–234; in Asia, 290; Christians and, 207; class in,
234; commodities transported through, 212; conversion to, 196,
207, 208, 215, 234, 239, 241, 243, 289, 292; Crusades and, 336–
339; culture of, 213–217, 234, 243; in East Africa, 234, 243;
education and, 213–216, 240; in Egypt, 234; in Ethiopia, 240, 241;
expansion of, 198–204, 200(m), 210(m), 233–234; families in,
209–210; fragmentation of, 204–206; fundamentalist, 233–234;
India and, 279, 291, 292; Jesus and, 217–219; Jews and, 207; in
Kanem-Bornu, 234; in Mali, 234, 238(i), 239; marriage in, 208,
209–210; meaning of term, 198; merchants and, 233, 234;
Mongols and, 206, 287, 289; non-Muslims in, 207; origins of, 196–
198; Ottomans and, 351; regional dynasties in, 204; slaves in, 207–
208; in Songhai, 234; spread of, 195–196, 199–201, 233–234, 290;
states of, 198–204; in Sudan, 230, 235; Sufism and, 216; tenets of,
198; trade and, 210(m), 234, 243; trans-Saharan trade and, 224,
230, 233–234; Turks and, 206, 279, 281, 292; umma in, 199;
women and, 208–209; Zoroastrians and, 207. See also Arabs and
Arab world; Mongols; Muslims; Ottoman Empire
Islamic empires. See Mughal Empire; Ottoman Empire; Safavid
Empire
Israel: ancient state of, 44; in Levant, 227. See also Hebrew people;
Jews and Judaism; Palestine
Israelites. See Hebrew people
Istanbul. See Constantinople
Italy, 191; Black Death in, 348; Byzantine Empire and, 171; cities in,
363(i); city-states in, 357; Magyars in, 328; Muslims in, 328; pope
from, 350; Renaissance in, 355–356, 356–357, 359; Romans in,
120–125, 122(m); slavery and, 362, 389; trade and, 342, 388–389;
 unification of, 357; universities in, 343; urban revolts in, 351–352.
See also Rome (ancient); Rome (city)
Ius civile (Rome), 124
Ius gentium (Rome), 125
Ius naturale (Rome), 125
Ivory, 232, 243, 244
Iyalode (female chiefs), 229
Jacquerie uprising, 351
Jade: in China, 77(i)
Jains and Jainism, 54, 61–62, 61(i)
Japan: in ca. 600 C.E., 163(m); agriculture in, 322; arts in, 318–319,
319(i); Buddhism in, 165, 166, 317, 319–320, 322; China and, 161,
164–166, 299; Chinese script in, 81; civil war in, 320; culture in,
318–320, 322; diseases in, 165–166; female rulers in, 164–165;
feudal period in, 320; Fujiwara family in, 317–318; government of,
317, 318; Heian period in, 310(m), 317–320; immigration and,
164; Jesuits in, 377, 406; Jōmon culture in, 164; Korea and, 299,
317; land in, 320; military in, 320–322; Mongols and, 285, 306,
321–322; monks and monasteries in, 317, 319; piracy and, 317;
population of, 322; religions in, 317, 319–320, 322; samurai in,
285, 306, 320, 321; Shinto in, 165, 322; silk in, 165; silver from,
405; society in, 165; temples in, 165, 166; women in, 318–319. See
also Pacific Ocean region; Peasants
Jati. See Caste system
Java: Borobudur temple complex and, 299; humans in, 5; Mongols
and, 285
Jehovah. See Yahweh
Jenne (city): Great Friday Mosque in, 238(i); trade in, 233, 239
Jerome (Saint), 180
Jerusalem: Crusades and, 336, 337, 337(m), 338; Dome of the Rock
mosque in, 197(i); Hebrew capital at, 44; Muslims and, 206, 338;
Temple of, 44. See also Israel
Jesuits: in China, 406; in India, 377; schools established by, 377
Jesus Christ, 136; Islam and, 217–219; life and teachings of, 137–
138; meaning of Christ, 137; nature of, 176–177; Nicene Creed
and, 176–177
Jews and Judaism, 43; in Alexandria, 111; Byzantine Empire and,
173; Crusades and, 338; Ethiopia and, 240, 242; European
restrictions against, 338; in France, 365; Hebrews and, 43–45;
Islam and, 207; in medieval Europe, 334, 365; Messiah and, 137;
 in North Africa, 225; in Ottoman Empire, 351; persecution of, 365;
as plague scapegoats, 348; reconquista and, 336, 365; religion of,
44–45; in Spain, 218, 365. See also Anti-Semitism; Christianity;
Hebrew people; Israel; Jesus Christ
Jin Dynasty (China), 308, 310(m), 314, 317. See also Jurchen (Jin)
people
Joan of Arc (Saint), 349–350
John (England), 331
Jōmon culture (Japan), 164
Judaea, 136, 137
Judah (state), 43, 44
Judaism. See Jews and Judaism
Judeo-Arabic learning, 391
Judeo-Christian tradition: Muslims and, 217
Judgment Day: Christian and Islamic, 198
Judicial systems, 331
Judiciary. See Court (law)
Julio-Claudians (Rome), 133
Jurchen (Jin) people: China and, 281, 283, 287, 306, 307, 308, 309;
Korea and, 317; Mongols and, 281, 283, 287, 314
Justice: in Ghana, 236–237; in medieval Europe, 331. See also Law
codes
Justinian I (Byzantine Empire): Byzantine Empire under, 171; Code
of, 173–174, 343
Justinian Plague, 175, 348

Ka’ba, 196, 198

Kabul, Afghanistan, 156, 199
Kaifeng, China, 175, 308, 341
Kalahari Desert, 224, 245
Kalidasa (Indian poet), 291
Kamakura Shogunate (Japan), 320, 321, 322
Kamikaze (divine wind), 285, 322
Kampuchea. See Cambodia
Kandariyâ Mahâdeva temple, 293(i)
Kanem-Bornu: Almoravids in, 234; Islam in, 234
Kangaba (empire of Mali), 237–238
Karakorum (Mongol capital), 285, 287
Karma: in China, 161; in India, 60, 62
Kashmir, 65
Kautilya (Mauryan minister), 67
Kazakhs, 280
Kazakhstan: Muslims in, 199
Kebra Nagast (Ethiopia), 242
Kenya: agriculture in, 227
Khans and khanates: in Mongol Empire, 279, 282, 283–285, 286(m),
287–288
Khipu, 252, 262, 397
Khitan people: China and, 159, 281, 287, 306, 309; Korea and, 317;
Mongols and, 281, 287
Khoisan people and language, 226, 246
Khotan, 156
Khubilai Khan (Mongols): conquests of, 285, 287, 314; Polo and,
290; tree planting and, 289(i)
Khurasan, 199, 204, 292. See also Afghanistan
Khwarizm, kingdom of: Mongol empire and, 206, 284
al-Khwarizmi (Persia), 215
Khyber Pass, Alexander in, 66
Kiev (city), 335
Kievan Rus, 285, 335
Kilimanjaro, Mount, 228
Kilwa (city-state): geography of, 243; Great Mosque at, 244(i); Ibn-
Battuta on, 243–244; Islam in, 234, 387; migration to, 243;
prosperity in, 244; trade in, 244, 387
al-Kindi, 216
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 62
Kings and kingdoms: African, 224, 229–230, 231(m), 234–246;
barbarians and, 186; Carolingian, 190; conversion to Christianity
and, 187; Frankish, 189–192; in Greece, 96, 98; in India, 58; in
Korea, 163–164; in Rome, 121; in Sumer, 32. See also Emperor(s);
specific rulers and locations
Kinship: in Africa, 224, 229; in Andes region, 258; in Byzantine
Empire, 175; Mongol, 282; Neolithic society and, 20; Paleolithic,
11–12; in stateless societies, 234. See also Families
Kiyomori (Japan). See Taira family
Knights: in Crusades, 336, 338; as nobles, 329, 341; samurai
compared with, 321
Knossos, 98
Koguryo kingdom (Korea), 163, 164
Kongo kingdom, 402
Korea: in ca. 600 C.E., 163(m); Buddhism in, 164, 316; China and,
151, 158, 161, 163–164, 299, 315, 316; Chinese script in, 81; civil
service examination system in, 316; class in, 316; economy in,
316; Japan and, 299, 317; Koryo Dynasty in, 310(m), 315–317;
language in, 163; Mongols and, 285, 317; printing in, 359; religion
in, 316; Silla period in, 315–316; slavery in, 316; Three Kingdoms
Period in, 164
Korea Strait, 164
Koryo Dynasty (Korea), 310(m), 315–317
Koumbi Saleh (city), 233, 236, 237
Krishna (god), 65
Kshatriya (Indian caste), 59, 294
Kucha, 156, 281
Kūkai (Japan), 319–320
Kurakas (clan leaders): in Andean region, 258
Kush: as Nubian kingdom, 41
Kushan empire, 70
Kyrghiz people, 280
Kyushu, Japan, 163, 164

Labor: of animals, 19; children as, 295; Chinese, 147, 148; control
over, 20; division of, 246, 340; in Greece, 105, 106; in Hellenistic
world, 112; Inca, 262; India and, 295; indigenous American, 399–
400, 399(i); of peasants, 329, 340; in Rome, 141; of serfs, 270,
339; specialization of, 22, 251; of women, 21, 312. See also
Peasants; Slaves and slavery; Strikes; Workers
Labor tribute: Inca, 262
Lancaster, house of (England), 364
Land: in Africa, 224, 225(m); in Brazil, 399; of India, 54–56;
inheritance by gender, 21; in Japan, 320; manorial, 329, 339;
Mongols and, 287; in Rome, 128–129, 130, 141; in Sumer, 32
Land bridges, 8, 9
Landlords: in Rome, 141
Landowners: in Athens, 103
Langland, William, 219
Language(s): Arabic, 34, 43, 215; Bantu, 228, 243; brain
development and, 5; Chinese, 80–81, 162, 306; Etruscan, 120;
Gothic, 187; Hebrew, 34; in Hellenistic world, 111; human
evolution and, 5–7, 8, 9; in India, 54, 56, 292; Indo-European, 40,
46–47, 48, 56–57; in Korea, 163; Magadhi, 62; in Mali, 238; in
Mesoamerica, 252; Mongol, 283; Nahuatl, 267; Old Church
Slavonic, 335; Quechua, 261; in Rome, 135; sacred, 215; Sanskrit,
40, 56–57, 62, 297, 299; Semitic, 34; Turkic, 280; vernacular, 345,
347, 359. See also Writing; specific languages
Laozi (book and author), 88, 89
La Plata, 398
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 407
Last judgment: Zoroaster on, 49
Last Judgment (Michelangelo), 360(i)
Late antiquity: use of term, 171
Lateen sail, 391
Late Horizon period: in Andes region, 258
Late Intermediate Periods: in Andes region, 259
Lateran Council (1059), 333
Later Middle Ages: crises of, 347–352. See also Middle Ages
Latifundia, 128
Latin America. See America(s); Spanish America; specific locations
Latin Christianity. See Roman Catholic Church
Latin language, 40, 131; Bible in, 180; Celts and, 186; “golden age”
of literature in, 131; in Renaissance, 357. See also Alphabet
Latins: Rome and, 123
Latitude, 390
Latium, 123
Laughable Stories (Bar-Hebraeus), 215
Law(s): in barbarian society, 184; Byzantine, 173–174; canon, 141;
civilization and, 29; in England, 331; Hebrew, 45; in India, 70;
Islamic, 203–204; in medieval Europe, 331; rise of, 29–30; in
Rome, 124–125; shari’a, 203–204. See also Law codes
Law codes: barbarian, 184; of Hammurabi, 35–36; in India, 70; of
Justinian, 173–174, 343; in Neolithic society, 20, 21; Roman, 343
Laws of the Twelve Tables, 125
Learning: humanist, 357–358; Islamic, 213–216. See also Education;
Intellectual thought
Lebanon: in Levant, 227
Legalists (China), 88, 90–91, 146, 148
Legal system. See Court (law); Law(s)
Legions: Roman, 123, 131
Legislation. See Law(s); Reform(s)
Legislatures. See Assemblies
Leisure. See Entertainment
Leo III (Byzantine Empire), 182
Leo III (Pope), 190
Leo X (Pope), 364, 369
Leonardo da Vinci, 361
Lepidus (Rome), 129
Letters: of Paul, 138
Levant, 227. See also Middle East
Lex Hortensia (Rome), 125
Li (principle), 312
Liao Dynasty (China), 309, 310(m), 317
Li Bo (Chinese poet), 160
Libraries: in Carolingian Renaissance, 191; in Córdoba, 213; in Saint-
Gall abbey, 213
Libya: Alexander the Great and, 109
Licinian-Sextian laws (Rome), 125
Lienzo de Tlaxcala, 399(i)
Life expectancy: Paleolithic, 10
Lifestyle: animal domestication and, 17; in Aztec Empire, 269–270;
of barbarians, 183–184; in Çatal Hüyük, Turkey, 22; in China, 82–
84, 153–154; in Constantinople, 175; in Funan, 297; Hammurabi’s
 Code on, 35–36; in Hellenistic world, 112; horticulture and, 17; in
medieval Europe, 339–343; of Moche people, 258; monastic, 333–
334; of Mongols, 281–282; of nobility, 340–341; of peasants, 339–
340; printing and, 359; in Rome, 127– 128, 133–135; written
sources about, 28. See also Society
Lima, Peru, 258
Lineage: in Andes region, 258
Linear A writing, 96
Linear B script, 98
Lisbon: trade and, 391
Li Si (China), 146, 147
Literacy: in China, 311; in Ghana, 236; in India, 55, 58; in Japan,
318; of laypeople, 347; of monastics, 179
Literature: Chinese, 149–150, 311; in Ethiopia, 242; in Greece, 99; in
India, 60, 65, 291, 292; in Japan, 318–319; in Rome, 131; Tamil,
70; vernacular, 345, 347; women writers and, 318–319. See also
Epic literature; Poets and poetry; Theater; specific authors and
works
Little ice age: in 14th century, 347
Liu Bang (Gaozu, Han China), 148
Livestock, 18; Bantu and, 228, 246; in Columbian exchange, 401; in
India, 294. See also Cattle
Li Yuan (Gaozu, Tang China), 159
Llamas, 252, 254
Loess, 75
Logographic writing: in China, 80
London: population of, 341; size of, 341; trade in, 342
Lords: in China, 84; in Japan, 320; peasants and, 329, 339. See also
Nobility
Lord’s Supper (Eucharist), 138
Lothair, 191
Lothal (port), 55
Lotto, Lorenzo, 363(i)
Lotus Sutra, 322
Louis IX (France), 331
Louis XII (France), 364
Louis the German, 191
Louis the Pious (Carolingian), 191
Loulan, 156
Love: courtly, 341
Lower Egypt, 36
Loyola, Ignatius, 377. See also Jesuits
Lucretia (Rome), 121
Luoyang, China: capital in, 81, 160
Luther, Martin: Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of the
Peasants, 371; German politics and, 373; on indulgences, 369;
marriage of, 372(i); Protestant Reformation and, 368–369, 370
Luxury goods: trade in, 112, 175
Lycurgus (Sparta), 101, 102
Lyons, 135

Macau (Macao), 405

Macedonia (ancient): Alexander the Great and, 66, 110; Antigonids
and, 110; Persia and, 48; Philip II of, 109; Rome and, 126
Macehualtin (Aztec commoners), 270
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 358
Machu Picchu, 261(i)
Madagascar (Malagasy), 243, 300
Madeira, 391, 403
Madrasas (Islamic schools), 214, 343
Magadhi (language), 62
Magellan, Ferdinand, 394
Magellan, Strait of, 394
Maghrib. See North Africa
Magistrates: in Athens, 103
Magna Carta (England), 331
Magna Graecia (Greater Greece), 120, 123
Magnetic compass. See Compass
Magyars (Hungarians), 328–329, 328(m)
Mahabharata, 64–65
Mahavira, Vardhamana, 61–62
Mahayana (Great Vehicle) Buddhism, 63, 156–157, 299
Mahmud of Ghazni, 292
Maize. See Corn
Makeda (Sheba, Ethiopian queen), 242
Malacca: port of, 385; Strait of, 296(m), 299; trade and, 392, 405
Malagasy. See Madagascar
Malay Peninsula, 297, 298
Mali: administration of, 239; Almoravids in, 234; expansion of, 238–
239; gold in, 238; Islam in, 234, 238(i), 239; kingdom of, 237–240;
Mansa Musa in, 238, 239; trade in, 238, 239, 387–388
Mamluks (Egypt), 285, 388
Manchuria: China and, 161; Korea and, 163, 316
Manco Capac (Inca), 274
Mandate of Heaven (China), 81
Mandinka people: kingdom of Mali and, 237–238, 239
Manichaeism: Mongols and, 282; Uighurs and, 281
Manors and manorialism, 329. See also Peasants; Serfs and serfdom
Mansa Musa (Mali), 238, 239, 388(i)
al-Mansur, 202
Manufacturing: of silk, 313(i)
Manuscripts: illumination of, 242
Manzikert, Battle of, 206
Maori people: agriculture and, 301
Marathi language, 292
Marathon, Battle of, 104
Marduk (god), 35
Mare nostrum (“our sea”), 126–127
Margaret of Valois, 378
Maritime trade: in China, 159; Dutch and, 406; empires of, 404(m),
405; Hellenistic, 112; in India, 70, 279, 386–387; in Indian Ocean,
234; Islamic, 211–212; Roman, 136; in Southeast Asia, 296, 297,
299; Spanish, 405–406; Swahili, 226. See also Trade
Marius, Gaius (Rome), 128–129
Market(s): in China, 153; Hellenistic, 112; slave, 232, 245. See also
Slave trade; Trade
Maronite Christians, 178
Marquesas Islands, 300
Marriage: alliances through, 32; arranged, 312; Aztec, 270; in
Byzantine Empire, 175; of Charlemagne, 191(i); in China, 312; in
Europe, 364; Hammurabi’s code on, 36; Hebrew, 45; in India, 295;
in Islam, 208, 209–210; laws regulating, 21; Mongol, 282, 288; in
Protestantism, 371, 372; in Rome, 125, 131; in Southeast Asia,
387. See also Intermarriage
Mars (god), 121
Martin V (Pope), 350
Mary (Burgundy), 367
Mary (Virgin), 334, 345(i)
Mary I (Tudor, England), 374
Mary Magdalene, 180(i)
Marys at Jesus’s Tomb, 180(i)
Masa (paste), 253–254, 253(i)
Masako (wife of Yoritomo), 321
Mass production: in China, 307
Masvingo, Zimbabwe, 246
Mathematics: algebra and, 215; Hellenistic, 115; in India, 70, 291;
Maya, 264; navigation and, 391; spread of ideas, 290; Sumerians,
Mesopotamians, and, 33
Matilda (England), 330
Mauryan Empire (India), 54, 65, 66–69, 66(m); India after, 69, 290
Maximilian I (Holy Roman Empire), 367
Maya, 263–265; agriculture and trade of, 263–264; Aztecs and, 264;
calendar of, 264; city-states of, 263, 263(m); decline of, 264–265;
science and religion of, 264; Spain and, 264–265; Teotihuacan and,
264
Mayor of the palace, 190
Mazoe River region, 246
Measles, 215
Mecca, 196; Islam in, 195
Meccan Revelation, The (Ibn al-’Arabi), 216–217
Medes, 46–47, 48
Medici family (Florence): in banking, 356; Catherine de’, 378
Medicine: in Baghdad, 203; Byzantine, 175; Greek, 108; Hellenistic,
115; herbal, 343; Islamic, 215–216; schools for, 343. See also
Diseases
Medieval period: in China, 306–308; in India, 291–293, 294–295. See
also Middle Ages
Medina, 198–199, 201
Mediterranean region: Christianity’s spread in, 186; empires in,
39(m); Greece and, 96; Islam and, 334; migrations in, 39(m);
Phoenicians and, 42–43; Rome and, 125, 126–127; Sassanids in,
173; Sea Peoples in, 40; slave trade in, 388, 402; trade in, 226, 243,
388. See also specific locations
Megafaunal extinction, 10
Megasthenes (Greek ambassador), on Chandragupta, 67
Men: agriculture and, 20–21; in Crusades, 337; division of labor and,
246; in Greece, 105, 106; in guilds, 342; hunting by, 15;
inheritance and, 21; Mongol, 282; in mosques, 209(i); patriarchy
and, 295; in Renaissance, 358, 362. See also Division of labor;
Gender and gender issues
Mencius, 86
Mende people, 229
Menilek I (Ethiopia), 242
Merchants: African, 226, 231–232, 233, 241; Berber, 231–232; in
China, 153, 307; in East Africa, 242–243; in Egypt, 226; in
Europe, 341–342; in Ghana, 237; Hanseatic, 342; in India, 70, 294;
in Indian Ocean trade, 384, 385; Islam and, 210(m), 211, 233, 234;
Mongol trade and, 288, 290; voyages of discovery and, 390; wealth
of, 362. See also Business; Commerce; Trade
Merici, Angela, 377
Merkid people, 283
Meroë region, 41–42, 227, 240
Merovech and Merovingian dynasty, 189–190
Mesa Verde, 256
Mesoamerica: civilizations in, 251–259; human sacrifice in, 261;
postclassical era in, 263, 265; sciences and, 264; trade in, 251–252;
transportation in, 252
Mesopotamia, 30–36; Assyrians in, 45; empires in, 34–35; potter’s
wheel in, 19; Sargon and, 34, 35; states in, 30–31; storage in, 254
Messenia and Messenians, 101
Messiah, 137
Mestizos (métis), 400
Metals and metallurgy: in China, 307; copper and, 22; Moche, 258.
See also Gold; Iron and iron industry; Mines and mining; Silver
Metaphysics: in Buddhism, 63; in China, 311–312
Methodius: Slavic alphabet of, 335
Mexica (people), 267. See also Aztec (Mexica) Empire
Mexico: exploration and, 395–397; Maya and, 263; Olmecs in, 255;
silver in, 399, 403; slavery in, 405; Spanish conquest of, 395–397;
Teotihuacan and, 263. See also Aztec (Mexica) Empire
Mexico City: Aztecs in, 269, 395
Michael III (Byzantine Empire), 335
Michelangelo Buonarroti, 360(i), 361
Middle Ages (Europe), 326–353; Christianity in, 332–336; cities and
towns in, 341–342; Crusades in, 336–339; as historical division,
327; Later Middle Ages, 347–352; law and justice in, 331; learning
and culture in, 343–345, 347; lifestyle in, 339–343; monastic life
during, 332, 333–334; Muslim-Christian contacts in, 218; political
developments in, 327–331; serfdom in, 329–330, 339, 341; social
classes in, 339–341; trade and commerce in, 342–343; use of term,
326–327; Western Asia in, 347. See also High Middle Ages;
Renaissance
Middle East: empires in, 199; Mongols in, 206, 285, 288; slavery in,
388; trade and, 388. See also Islam
Middle Horizon period: in Andes region, 258, 259
Middle Kingdom (Egypt), 37
Midwives: in China, 312
Migration: of 9th and 10th centuries, 328(m); in Americas, 252–253;
from Asia, 8, 252–253; Bantu, 228–229; barbarian, 171, 182–186,
183(m); in East Africa, 243; by Homo erectus, 5; human, 2, 5,
6(m), 8–9; to Japan, 164, 165; Magyar, 328, 328(m), 329; in
Mediterranean region, 39(m); in Mongol era, 288–290; Muslim,
328, 328(m), 329; of peasants, 339; in Southeast Asia, 296–297.
See also Emigration; Immigrants and immigration
Milan: trade in, 342
Military: Arab, 199–201; Assyrian, 46; Byzantine, 171, 174; in
China, 78, 151, 309; in France, 364; in India, 58, 67; of Islam, 201;
in Japan, 320–322; Mongol, 283–284; in Rome, 123, 125, 128,
130, 133; slave soldiers in Islamic, 203; in Sparta, 102; Turks and,
 203, 206, 281. See also Armed forces; Navy; Soldiers; War(s) and
warfare; specific battles and wars
Military technology, 46, 58, 84–85; Mongol, 285, 287. See also
Weapons
Millenarian religious sect: in China, 155
Millet, 227, 229, 294. See also Crops
Mills. See Cotton and cotton industry; Textiles and textile industry
Milpas (plots), 263, 264
Minamoto clan (Japan): civil war and, 320; rise of, 322; Yoritomo,
320, 321, 321(i)
Mines and mining: in southern Africa, 245. See also Gold; Iron and
iron industry; Silver
Ming (Bright) Dynasty (China): Korea and, 317; Mongols and, 315.
See also Zheng He
Minoan civilization, 97
Misogyny: in Christian Church, 181
Missi dominici (agents), 190
Missions and missionaries (Christian): in Africa, 240; in Americas,
406; in China, 319; conversion by, 138, 186–189, 406; in Ethiopia,
240; in India, 299; Jesuit, 377, 406
Mississippian culture, 256–258, 257(m)
Mita, 400
Mitmaq (colonies), 254, 262
Mitochondrial DNA, 5
Mobility. See Immigrants and immigration; Migration; Social
mobility
Moche civilization, 255, 258, 259
Moctezuma II (Mexica), 272, 273, 395, 397
Modern world: as historical division, 327, 356
Mogadishu (city-state): migration to, 243; trade in, 234, 387
Mohenjo-daro, 55–56
Moksha: in India, 60
Mombasa (city-state): geography of, 243; trade in, 387
Monarchical period: in Rome, 120, 121
Monarchs and monarchies: in Alexander’s empire, 110; in England,
330, 364–365; in France, 364; in Greece, 109; Hebrew, 44; in
 Rome, 121, 133. See also Emperor(s); Empire(s); specific rulers
and locations
Monasticism. See Ascetics and asceticism; Monks and monasteries
Money: in Hellenistic world, 112. See also Coins; Paper money;
Wealth
Mongolia, 206; Turks and, 205, 280. See also Mongols and Mongol
Empire
Mongols and Mongol Empire, 281–290, 286(m); Abbasids and, 205;
abduction of women by, 282; in Baghdad, 285; Black Death in,
290; Byzantine Empire and, 171; China and, 284, 285, 286(m),
287, 288, 306, 308, 314–315; Chinggis Khan and, 206, 279, 282,
283–284; communication under, 283, 288–290; in Europe, 285;
expansion by, 283–284, 285; in Hungary, 285, 331; Il-khanate of,
206; in India, 293; invasions by, 206, 283–284, 285, 321–322;
Islam and, 206, 287, 289; Japan and, 285, 306, 321–322; in Kievan
Rus, 285; Korea and, 285, 317; language of, 283; lifestyle of, 281–
282; military of, 283–284; movement of peoples under, 288–290;
paper money of, 315; religion and, 282, 289; rise of, 279, 280; as
rulers, 287–288; Russia and, 285, 287, 288; Thais and, 297; trade
and, 281, 282, 290, 315, 385; women and, 282
Monks and monasteries: Benedict and, 178; Buddhist, 63, 157–158,
161, 164, 292, 316; Christian, 178–179, 332, 333–334; as class of
society, 333; communal, 178; in England, 373; in Ethiopia, 241;
icons and, 182; Jain, 61; in Japan, 166, 317, 319; in Middle Ages,
332, 333–334; schools of, 178–179, 333. See also Nuns
Monogamy: in Ethiopia, 241; Muslim, 211
Monopolies: in China, 148
Monotheism: of Hebrews, 43, 45; of Islam, 198
Monsoons, 54
Monte Albán, 264
Moors: Alhambra and, 205(i). See also Arabs and Arab world;
Berbers; Islam; Muslims
Morality: of Calvinism, 375; Confucian, 86–87, 88; in Islam, 198
More, Thomas, 358
Morocco: trade in, 232
Mortality. See Death and death rates
Mosaics: Roman, 134(i)
Moscow: Mongols in, 285, 288
Moses, 43, 44, 137, 198
Mosques: in Córdoba, 213, 332(i); Islamic architecture and, 234;
Kilwa, 244(i); in Mali, 238(i), 239; men and women separated in,
209(i)
Mothers. See Families; Women
Mound builders: in North America, 256
Movable type, 311, 359
Movement of peoples: in Bronze Age Collapse, 99; in Mongol era,
288–290. See also Immigrants and immigration; Migration
Mozarabs, 218
Mu’awiya (Islam), 201
Mughal Empire (India): emergence of, 294
Muhammad (Prophet), 195–196; death of, 243; hijra of, 198; rise of,
197; succession to, 199, 201. See also Islam
Muhammad of Ghur (India), 293
Mummies: Egyptian, 37; Inca, 260
Murasaki (Lady): Tale of Genji, The, 318–319
Musa, Mansa. See Mansa Musa (Mali)
Muscovites. See Moscow
Music: China and, 83(i), 160, 160(i); in Japan, 165; Paleolithic, 9
Muslims: administration by, 234; in Alexandria, 234; astrolabe and,
390; Berbers as, 233–234; business and, 198, 212; Byzantine
Empire and, 171; Christianity and, 217–219, 332; Crusades and,
336–339; in East Africa, 234, 243; in Ethiopia, 240, 241; in Ghana,
234, 236; hierarchy in society of, 207; in Iberian Peninsula, 334,
389; in India, 279, 291, 292; in Jerusalem, 338; meaning of term,
198; in North Africa, 171, 224, 225, 328; in Ottoman Empire, 351;
Poitiers, Battle of, and, 190; reconquista and, 335–336; slavery
and, 232, 233; society of, 206–211; in Spain, 225, 329, 335–336,
338; trade and, 211–212, 234, 243; trans-Saharan trade and, 230,
233–234. See also Arabs and Arab world; Fundamentalism; Islam;
Ottoman Empire; Shi’a (Shi’ite) Muslims; Sunni Muslims
al-Mu’taşim (Islam), 203
Mwene Mutapa (rulers), 246
Myanmar. See Burma
Mycenae and Mycenaeans, 98–99, 98(i)
Mystery religions, 107, 113, 137, 138, 139
Mystics: hermits as, 178; Sufis as, 216–217
Myths: Roman foundation, 121, 123

Nabta Playa, Egypt: stone circle at, 23(i)

Nagarjuna (India), 63
Nahuatl language, 267
Nalanda: Buddhist university of, 292
Names: in China, 84
Namib Desert, 224
Nam Viet, 151, 162. See also Vietnam
Nanjing (Nanking), China: capital in, 155
Nantes, Edict of, 378
Nanzhao kingdom (Yunnan), 285
Napata, Sudan, 41
Naples: kingdom of, 357
Nara, Japan, 165, 166, 317
Nationalism: in England, 350; in France, 350
Nation building. See State-building
Nation-states: in Renaissance, 365. See also State (nation)
Native Americans: in sugar industry, 402(i)
Native peoples. See Indigenous peoples; Native Americans
Natural disasters: in China, 150
Natural history, 390
Natural law: in Rome, 125; Stoics on, 114
Natural resources: in southern Africa, 245
Navigation: compass and, 279, 290, 307, 390–391, 393; European
exploration and, 390, 393; improvements in, 212, 390, 393;
sciences and, 390
Navy: Chinese, 314; Roman, 126
Nazareth, Jesus of. See Jesus Christ
Neanderthals, 8
Near East. See Middle East
Nefertiti (Egypt), 40
Neo-Confucianism, 312, 313
Neolithic era, 3; agriculture in, 3, 13–19; in China, 77–78, 77(i);
crop-raising in, 15–16; society in, 19–23; tools in, 19; trade and
cross-cultural connections in, 22–23
Nepal, 54; Buddhism in, 292; Gupta Empire and, 291
Nero (Rome), 133
Nestorian Christianity, 177, 178; in Central Asia, 289; Mongols and,
282; Uighurs and, 281
Netherlands: Calvinism in, 379; civil wars in, 378–379; Protestantism
and, 379, 379(i); religious wars in, 379; Spain and, 379. See also
Dutch; Holland
Netherlands East Indies. See Indonesia
New Christians, 365
New England: Cabot in, 394; Puritans in, 375
Newfoundland: Cabot in, 394; Vikings in, 327, 393
New France. See Canada
New Granada, 398
New Guinea: humans in, 8, 300
New Kingdom (Egypt), 36–37, 39–40, 41
New Laws, 400
New Rome: Constantinople as, 140
New Spain: Christian conversions in, 406; silver from, 399, 403, 405.
See also Spanish America
New Stone Age. See Neolithic era
New Testament (Christian Bible), 43, 179; in German, 370;
translation into Latin, 180. See also Bible (Christian)
New World: European discovery of, 394; missionaries in, 406; silver
from, 399, 403, 405; slave trade and, 403; Spain and, 393–394. See
also America(s); Columbus, Christopher
New Zealand: human habitation of, 9, 300; Polynesians in, 301
Niani, Mali, 238
Nicaea: council of, 176
Nicene Creed, 176–177
Nichiren (preacher), 322
Nigeria: Igbo people in, 229, 230; iron in, 41, 227; Tiv people in,
234; Yoruba people in, 229
Niger River region: population growth in, 229; trade in, 230, 233
Nihawand, battle at, 199
Nile River region: agriculture in, 224, 227; complex societies in, 27–
28, 34(m); crop raising in, 16; Egypt and, 36, 38; Islam in, 234
Ninety-five Theses (Luther), 369
Nineveh, 46; battle at (627), 173
Nixtamalization, 253, 253(i)
Nobatia, kingdom of, 240
Nobility: in Athens, 103; Aztec, 270; in China, 146; as class, 340–
341; in Ethiopia, 242; in Europe, 329, 340–341; feudal, 329; Inca,
261; in India, 58; lifestyle of, 340–341; Maya, 264; in medieval
Europe, 340–341; in Renaissance, 362; Sassanid, 173; in Sparta,
101; women in, 341. See also Aristocracy
Nok culture, 226(i), 227
Nomads: in Americas, 253; Arab tribes as, 196–197; in Asia, 278;
Bedouins as, 196; from Central Asia, 279–282, 291; in China, 150–
151; Hebrews as, 43–44, 45; in India, 69–70, 291; in Iran, 47;
Mongols as, 278; pastoralists as, 18–19, 278; society of, 279–280;
of steppes, 279; Tuareg people as, 231; Turks as, 278, 291. See also
Huns; Mongols; Turks
Nongovernmental organizations: Roman Catholic Church as, 177
Normandy, France: French recapture of, 350
Normans: in England, 330. See also Vikings
North Africa: animal power in, 19; Berbers of, 225–226, 230–232,
233; Byzantine Empire and, 171; Fatimids in, 205; Islam and,
210(m), 224, 233; Jews in, 225; Muslims in, 199, 224, 225, 328;
peoples of, 225–226; salt from, 231–232; trade and, 387
North America: agriculture in, 256, 257(m); human migration to, 8;
slavery and, 403; Vikings in, 327, 329. See also America(s);
Colonies and colonization
North Asia: Korea and, 315
Northern Dynasties (China), 155
Northern Europe: Christianization of, 187; exploration by, 394–395;
Great Famine in, 347; Rome and, 131, 135
Northern Wei Dynasty (China), 157(i)
Northmen. See Vikings
Norway: Christianity and, 335; Vikings from, 327, 329. See also
Scandinavia
Notre Dame Cathedral (Paris), 343, 345(i)
Nubia, 41, 240; cylinder sheath from, 41(i)
Numerical system: Arabic numerals and, 291; Sumerian, 33
Nuns: Buddhist, 63, 158; in Catholic Reformation, 377; Christian,
178; in Ethiopia, 241; monasticism and, 178, 179, 333; in
Protestant Reformation, 372. See also Monks and monasteries
Nursing (medical). See Medicine

Oaxaca region, 264

Obsidian, 22, 255, 264, 265
Occupation (labor): in China, 314. See also Labor; Workers
Octavian. See Augustus (Octavian, Rome)
Odoacer, 140, 186
Odyssey, 99
Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles), 105
Oedipus the King (Sophocles), 105
Ögödei (Mongols), 285
Old Church Slavonic, 335
Old Kingdom (Egypt), 37
Old Stone Age. See Paleolithic era
Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), 43; Pentateuch and, 185(i); Qur’an
and, 198; translation into Latin, 180. See also Bible (Hebrew)
Old World. See Africa; Asia; Europe
Oligarchs and oligarchies: Greek, 101
Olive oil, 135
Olmecs, 252, 254–256, 255(m)
Olympia: Pan-Hellenic festivals in, 107
Olympic games: origins of, 107
Olympus, Mount, 107
al-Omari (Mali), 239
Omu (female chiefs), 229
Oracles: in Africa, 230
Orders (religious). See Religious orders
Orders (social): in Rome, 125
Oresteia, The (Aeschylus), 105
Original sin, 181
Origin myths: Aztec, 269; Toltec, 267
Orléans, battle at, 349
Orthodox Church, 177–178; Crusades and, 336; in eastern Europe,
335; expansion of, 335–336; iconoclastic controversy and, 181–
182; monasticism in, 179; Nicene Creed and, 177; in Russia, 335;
Turks and, 351
Orthodox (correct) doctrine, 176
Osaka, Japan, 165
Osiris (god), 113, 114(i)
Ostrogoths, 182, 187
Otto I (Holy Roman Empire), 330, 335
Ottoman Empire: Balkan region and, 351; Christians in, 351; in
Constantinople, 351, 389, 402; Habsburgs and, 373; Jews in, 351;
Muslims in, 351; religion in, 351; Safavid Empire and, 388; trade
and, 388
Ottoman Turks: in Constantinople, 351, 389, 402; Orthodox Church
and, 351. See also Ottoman Empire; Turkey
Outcastes: in India, 295; in Japan, 322
Ouyang Xiu (China), 311
Overpopulation. See also Population
Oxus River region, 199
Pachacuti Inca, 259, 260, 261
Pacific Ocean region: human settlement of, 9; movement of people
in, 296–297; settlement of islands in, 300–301; Spain and, 394
Paekche kingdom (Korea), 163, 164
Pagan (state), 297
Pagans: Christianity and, 137, 139, 187–188
Painting: in China, 158; Greek, 104; in Japan, 319(i); in Renaissance,
360(i), 361. See also Art(s); Cave art
Pakistan, 54. See also India
Palaces: in China, 78; in Crete, 97; in Greece, 98; Sumerian, 32
Pale (Dublin), 374
Palenque, 263
Paleolithic era, 3, 9–13; arts in, 12; culture in, 12–13; foraging in, 10–
11; gender in, 10, 12; stereotypes of people in, 12; tools from, 11(i)
Palestine: Islam and, 199; trade in, 388; Turks and, 281, 336. See also
Arabs and Arab world; Middle East
Pan-Andean cultures, 258–259
Panaqa (Inca trust), 260
Pan-Hellenic festivals, 107
Papacy: in Avignon, 350; Italy and, 350, 351; reforms and, 332–333,
375; Rome and, 177. See also Christianity and Christians;
Crusades; Pope(s); Roman Catholic Church; specific popes
Papal Inquisition. See Inquisition
Papal States, 357
Paper: in China, 150, 359; for Muslim books, 214
Paper money: in China, 307, 315
Papyrus, 29
Paris: population of, 341; size of, 341; university studies in, 343
Parlement of Paris (court), 331
Parliament: in Ireland, 374. See also Parliament (England)
Parliament (England): development of, 350; Peasants’ Revolt and,
351
Parthenon, 104
Parthia and Parthians: China and, 151; Greek culture and, 111; Rome
and, 129, 136; Sassanids and, 173
Parzival (Eschenbach), 219
Passover: Jesus during, 137
Pastoralism, 17–18; in Asia, 278; in China, 150; Hebrew, 43–44;
nomadic, 18–19; spread of, 14(m)
Pataliputra, 67
Paterfamilias, 128
Pathogens, 18
Patriarch: in Orthodox Church, 177, 333
Patriarchy, 20–21; barbarian society as, 184; Christianity and, 180; in
India, 59, 295; in Islam, 208
Patricians (Rome), 124
Patrick (Saint), 187
Patrilineal society: in China, 79, 88, 312; in India, 59
Patronage: of arts, 356, 359–360, 361
Paul III (Pope), 375
Paul of Tarsus, 138
Pax Romana, 133, 136
Peace of Augsburg, 373
Peasants: Black Death and, 349; in China, 153, 339; as class of
society, 339–340; in Ethiopia, 241; in Europe, 329–330, 339–340;
German Peasants’ War and, 371; in India, 294, 339; levels of, 339;
revolts by, 351–352. See also Farms and farming; Serfs and
serfdom
Peloponnesian War, 104
Peloponnesus, 96, 101
Pemba (city-state), 243
Penance: ritual of, 188
Pentateuch, 185(i)
People, the. See Common people
People of color. See Black people
People’s Republic of China, 75. See also China
Pepper, 387
Pergamum, 126
Pericles (Athens), 104
Periodization, 3
Periplus of the Erythanean Sea, 243, 245
Persecution: of Buddhists in China, 161; of Christians, 139, 141; of
Jews, 365. See also Witch-hunts
Persepolis, 48
Persia: Abbasid culture and, 203; conversion to Islam and, 207; East
Africa and, 243; expansionism of, 173; India and, 58; Islam and,
199, 202; Mongols and, 206, 284, 285, 287, 288; Safavid Dynasty
in, 388; Turks and, 281. See also Iran; Persian Empire; Safavid
Empire; Sassanids (Persia)
Persian Empire, 47–48, 47(m); Alexander the Great and, 66, 109,
110; government of, 48; Greeks and, 96, 103; Hebrews and, 44;
India and, 65–66; Phoenician alphabet in, 43; religions in, 48;
Safavids and, 388; Zoroastrianism after, 49. See also Parthia;
Persia; Sassanids (Persia)
Persian Gulf region: Chinese ambassador in, 136
Persian language, 40
Persian-Sassanid empire, 199. See also Persian Empire; Sassanids
Persian wars, 104
Peru: exploration and, 397–398; language in, 261; Spanish conquest
of, 397–398; as Spanish Viceroyalty, 398. See also Inca Empire
Peter (Saint), 177
Petrarch, Francesco, 357
Petrine Doctrine, 177
Pharaohs (Egypt), 36–37, 39; women as, 40
Philip II (Macedonia), 109
Philip II (Spain): Netherlands and, 373, 379; silver and, 405
Philip II Augustus (France), 330
Philippines: Spain and, 405–406; trade and, 405–406
Philistines, 44
Philosophy: in China, 85, 305; Christianity and, 179; in Greece, 107–
109; Hellenistic, 114; in India, 70. See also Religion
Phoenicia and Phoenicians: Carthage and, 126; ironwork and, 227;
Mediterranean region and, 42–43; North African civilizations and,
225; writing by, 42(f), 43. See also Carthage
Phonetic writing: Chinese writing and, 80, 80(f); Phoenician, 42(f),
43; Sumerian, 33(f)
Physicians. See Medicine
Pictographic writing, 33, 33(f)
Piedras Negras (Mesoamerica), 263
Piers the Plowman (Langland), 219
Pigs: in China, 154(i); domestication of, 17
Pilate, Pontius, 136, 137–138
Pilgrimages: Crusades and, 336; Islam and, 198, 239
Pillow Book (Sei Shonagon), 318
Piracy: Japan and, 317
Piye (Kush), 41
Pizarro, Francisco, 274, 397
Place value: Sumerian concept of, 33
Plague: in Byzantine Empire, 201; of Justinian, 175, 348; in Sassanid
Empire, 201. See also Black Death (plague)
Planets. See Astronomy
Plant(s): in Africa, 227; domestication of, 3, 15–17, 227, 251, 253;
spread through trade, 212. See also Agriculture; Crops
Plantations: sugar, 403. See also Slaves and slavery; Sugar and sugar
industry
Plato and Platonic ideals, 108, 216
Plays. See Theater
Plebeians (Rome), 124, 125
Pleistocene epoch, 3
Plow agriculture, 19–21, 22, 241, 294
Poets and poetry: in China, 160, 311; epic, 33; in India, 70, 291; in
Rome, 131. See also Epic literature; Literature
Poitiers, Battle of (732), 190
Poland: Mongols in, 285
Polis (Greek city-state), 99–103; deities in, 107; monarchy and, 109.
See also Colonies and colonization; Greece (ancient)
Politics (Aristotle), 216
Politics and political thought: barbarian migrations and, 184–186; in
China, 81; in Constantinople, 175; in Egypt, 36–37; in Europe,
327–331; in Japan, 318; Luther and, 370; Machiavelli and, 358; of
Moche people, 258; popes and, 333; Reformation and, 370, 372–
373; in Renaissance, 358, 364–365, 367; in Rome, 123, 128–129,
133, 140; Sumerian, 32. See also Government; specific locations
and ideas
Politiques (France), 378
Poll tax: in England, 351
Polo (game): in China, 160
Polo, Marco: China and, 290, 308, 385; Description of the World,
290; on Hangzhou, 308; on Mongols, 290; on tree planting, 289(i)
Polygamy: in barbarian society, 184
Polygyny: in Ethiopia, 241; in southern Africa, 246
Polynesia and Polynesians: settlements by, 300, 301
Polytheism: in Egypt, 37; Mesopotamian, 31–32; in Sudan, 229
Pompey (Rome), 129
Pontifex maximus (Rome), 130
Pope(s), 177; in Avignon, 350; Crusades and, 336, 338; in Middle
Ages, 332–333. See also Papacy; specific popes
Population: in Africa, 228, 233, 235; of Americas, 253, 256, 263, 395,
400; Black Death and, 348; of China, 84, 90, 307–308; of
European cities, 341; indigenous in Americas, 400; of Japan, 322;
of Maya region, 263; Paleolithic, 10–11; plague in Europe and,
348; of Rome, 133; of Southeast Asia, 387; of West African cities,
233
Porcelain: in China, 315. See also Ceramics; Pottery
Portolans (navigational aids), 393
Portugal: Africa and, 391; Asia and, 392, 398, 405; blacks in, 362;
Brazil and, 391, 398; colonies of, 391; East Africa and, 244, 246,
405; East Asian trade and, 391; exploration by, 391–392; gold
trade and, 391; India and, 391, 405; Kongo and, 402; Phoenicians
in, 43; slavery and, 362, 391, 403, 405; southern Africa and, 245;
spice trade and, 391; sugar industry and, 391; Tordesillas, Treaty
of, and, 394; trade and, 244, 391–392, 405; West Africa and, 391,
398. See also Iberian Peninsula; Portuguese Empire; Spain
Portuguese Empire, 405
Postclassical era: in Mesoamerica, 263, 265
Potatoes: from Americas, 254; domestication of, 254; sweet, 301;
white, 401
Potosí: silver from, 403
Potter’s wheel, 19
Pottery: Roman, 135. See also Ceramics
Power (energy): animal, 19
Power (political): in ancient society, 21; in early states, 29–30; Jesuits
and, 377; in Rome, 128–130. See also Government
Praetors (Rome), 124
Predestination: Calvin on, 374–375
Prehistory, 1
Premarital sex: in Southeast Asia, 387. See also Sex and sexuality
Presbyterian Church: in Scotland, 375
Pre-Socratics, 107–108
Priests and priestesses: in Africa, 229, 230; in China, 78; in India, 58;
in Neolithic society, 20; rituals of, 23. See also Brahmans and
Brahmanism (India)
Primates, 3
Prince, The (Machiavelli), 358
Princeps civitatis, 130
Principate, 130, 133
Printing: in China, 279, 290, 305, 309, 311, 359; Gutenberg and, 359;
Islamic papermaking and, 214; Luther and, 368, 370; Protestantism
spread by, 370; social impact of, 359; woodblocks for, 311. See
also Paper
Procopius (historian), 174
Professions and professionals: in Muslim society, 207
Profit: Islam and, 211
Property: of Christian Church, 176; in Frankish kingdoms, 189–190;
women’s rights to, 318
Prophet(s): Hebrew, 44, 45; Islam and, 198. See also Muhammad
(Prophet)
Prosperity: in East Africa, 244; in Hellenistic world, 112; in Roman
provinces, 135
Prostitution, 308
Protected peoples, 292
Protestant Reformation, 368–375; Calvinism and, 374–375; criticism
of Catholic Church and, 368; division of Christianity in, 356; in
England, 373–374; German Peasants’ War and, 371; German
politics and, 372–373; ideas of, 369–370; Luther and, 368–369,
370; marriage and women’s roles in, 371–372; radicalism in, 370–
371
Protestants and Protestantism: in England, 373–374; in Holy Roman
Empire, 373; marriage and, 371, 372; in Netherlands, 379, 379(i);
Nicene Creed and, 177; women and, 371–372. See also
Christianity and Christians; Luther, Martin; Puritans
Provinces: Islamic, 204; in Mauryan Empire, 67; Roman, 124, 126,
127, 130–131, 133–136
Ptolemies (Egypt), 110, 111; Rome and, 126. See also Cleopatra VII
(Egypt)
Ptolemy, Claudius (astronomer): Geography by, 390, 393
Pueblo people, 256
Puerto Rico: Spain and, 395
Punic Wars, 126–127, 131
Punishment: of Christian heretics, 334; in Hammurabi’s code, 35;
Hebrew, 45; Islamic, 198; in medieval Europe, 331. See also
Justice
Punjab, 65; Turks in, 292
Puranas, 65
Pure Land Buddhism, 161, 322
Puritans: in England, 374; in New England, 375
“Purity of blood” laws, 367
“Purple people”: Phoenicians as, 42
Pygmies, 226
Pyramids: in Egypt, 37; Kushites and, 41–42; Maya, 263; Olmec,
255; in Sumer, 31; at Teotihuacan, 265
Pythian games, 107

Qadis (judges), 203

al-Qanun (Avicenna), 216
Qi (Chinese state), 86
Qi (vital energy), 312
Qin Dynasty (China), 84, 85, 145, 146–148; First Emperor of, 146–
148; Legalism and, 90; Vietnam and, 162
Quechua language, 261
Queens: Merovingian, 190; in Vietnam, 162; in West Africa, 229. See
also Monarchs and monarchies; specific rulers and locations
Quetzalcoatl (god): blood sacrifice by, 271(i); in classical period
civilizations, 265; Topiltzin and, 267
Quinoa, 254
Qur’an, 197; on Christianity, 198; definitive text of, 201; on moral
behavior, 198; on slavery, 207; social equality in, 207; study of,
214, 240; on trade, 211; on women, 208
Qutb-ud-din (India), 293

Ra (god), 40
Rabi’a (Islam), Sufism and, 216
Race and racism: Africa and, 223; differentiation and, 9;
discrimination and, 336; ideas about, 407; Mali tolerance and, 240;
in Renaissance, 362; slavery and, 208, 233, 362, 407; use of term,
9. See also Ethnic groups and ethnicity; Slaves and slavery; Slave
trade
Radical reformation, 370–371
Rain forests: in Africa, 224
Raja (chief), 58
Rajasthan, 54
Ramadan, 198
Ramayana, 60, 65
Raphael Sanzio: in Renaissance, 361
Ras Assir (Cape of Slaves): slave trade and, 245
Rashid al-Din (Persia): History of the World and, 284(i); on Mongol
conversion to Islam, 289
Rastislav (Moravia), 335
al-Razi (Islam): medicine and, 215
Reading. See Literacy
Reasoning: Aristotle on, 108; of humanists, 358; of Scholastics, 317
Rebellions. See Revolts and rebellions
Reconquista, 218; European expansion after, 389; Jews and, 336,
365; mosques as churches during, 332(i); Muslims and, 335–336,
402
Record-keeping systems: in ancient societies, 28–29; in Andes
region, 252; in China, 148; in Ethiopia, 241; in Inca Empire, 262;
 in India, 65; of Maya, 264; Mongol, 283; Phoenician alphabet and,
43; Sumerian, 32–33
Records of the Grand Historian (Sima Qian), 150
Red River region (Vietnam), 162
Red Sea region: trade in, 70
Reform(s): in Aztec Empire, 273; papal, 332–333, 375; in Rome,
128–129. See also Reformation
Reformation: Catholic, 375, 377; Protestant, 368–375
Reformed Church, 375
Regular clergy, 179
Regulation. See also Child labor; Law(s)
Reincarnation: in Buddhism, 161; in India, 60
Relics: Christian, 189, 334
Religion(s): in Africa, 229–230; in Americas, 255, 256, 258, 259,
393, 406, 408; in Aztec Empire, 269, 271–272; in barbarian
Europe, 187; Brahmanic, 54, 57; in China, 160; conversion to
Christianity and, 240, 282; Crusades and, 336–339; division in (ca.
1555), 376(m); in East Asia, 306; in Egypt, 36–37, 40; in England,
373–374; in Ethiopia, 235, 240, 241; in Europe (ca. 1555), 376(m);
European expansion and, 389; in France, 378; in Ghana, 235, 236;
in Greece, 107; of Hebrews, 43; Hellenistic, 113–114; humanists
and, 358; Inca views on, 259–260; in India, 54, 61–65, 68–69, 279,
291; in Japan, 165, 317, 319–320, 322; in Korea, 316; in Mali, 234,
238(i), 239; Maya, 264; Minoan, 97; Mongols and, 282, 289;
Muslim-Christian encounters and, 217–219; mystery, 107; in
Ottoman Empire, 351; Paleolithic, 9, 12–13; in Persian Empire, 48;
popular, 334–335; radicalism in, 370–371; rituals and, 23; in
Rome, 123, 135; in Srivijaya, 299; in Sudan, 229–230; in Sumer,
31–32; in Teotihuacan, 265; in Vietnam, 299; violence over, 377–
380; witch-hunts and, 380; of Zoroaster, 49. See also Catholic
Reformation; Gods and goddesses; Monks and monasteries;
Mystery religions; Philosophy; Protestant Reformation; specific
groups
Religious orders: in Catholic Reformation, 377; in Protestant
Reformation, 368
Religious toleration: of Christianity, 141; in India, 291
Religious wars: in France, 378; in Netherlands, 378–379
Ren (humanity), 86
Renaissance (Carolingian), 191
Renaissance (European), 356–367; arts in, 355, 359–361, 360(i);
culture of, 356–361; England in, 364–365; European expansion
and, 389–390; France in, 364; gender roles in, 362–364; Habsburgs
in, 367; Italian, 355–356, 356–357, 359; politics and state in, 357,
358, 364–365, 367; slaves in, 362; social hierarchies in, 361–364;
Spain in, 365, 367; use of term, 355–356; wealth in, 356–357;
women in, 358, 361, 362–364
Repartimiento system, 400
Republic (Plato), 216
Republic(s): in Rome, 120–128
Resources. See Natural resources
Resurrection: of Jesus, 138
Reunification: of China, 155, 158. See also Unification
Revolts and rebellions: against Assyrians, 46; in Byzantine Empire,
182; in China, 155, 159–160; against Inca, 262; in Korea, 315–
316; by Messenian helots, 101; by peasants, 351–352; in Rome,
128; urban, 351–352; in Vietnam, 162
Revolution(s). See Revolts and rebellions
Rhea Silvia (mythology), 121
Rhine River region: as Roman frontier, 131
Rice: in Africa, 229; in China, 75, 305, 307, 308; in India, 294; in
Japan, 322
Richard II (England), 351
Rights: in Rome, 125
Rig Veda, 58, 59
Riots. See Revolts and rebellions
Rituals: in China, 87; Christian, 188; Greek religious, 107; in India,
58, 60, 295; religious, 23
Roads: in Andes, 252; in China, 147, 158; Inca, 262, 397; Persian, 48;
Roman, 123, 131, 133
Robert of Geneva. See Clement VII (Pope)
Roma et Augustus (cult), 130–131
Roman alphabet, 42(f), 43
Roman-Byzantine Empire. See Byzantine Empire
Roman Catholic Church, 177–178; in ca. 1555, 376(m); in American
colonies, 399; Carolingians and, 190; criticisms of, 368; Crusades
and, 336–339; in England, 373, 374; expansion of, 335–336; in
France, 378; Great Schism in, 350, 368; Inquisition and, 334; in
Ireland, 374; nature of Christ in, 177; in Netherlands, 379; Nicene
Creed and, 177; reforms of, 332–333, 375. See also Christianity
and Christians; Conversion; Councils (Christian); Monks and
monasteries; Orthodox Church; Pope(s); Protestants and
Protestantism; Reformation
Romance languages, 135
Roman Empire, 120, 129–136; Charlemagne and, 191; Christianity
and, 138; end in West, 140, 186. See also Eastern Roman Empire;
Holy Roman Empire; Rome (ancient); Western Roman Empire
Romanesque architecture, 344
Romania and Romanians: Rome and, 131
Roman Inquisition, 375
Rome (ancient), 119–120; alphabet in, 42(f); Antigonids and, 110;
assemblies in, 124; barbarians and, 182; baths in, 127–128, 127(i);
Carthage and, 126–127; Celts in, 123; China and, 136, 154–155;
Christianity and, 136–139, 141, 179; cities in, 135; citizenship in,
123, 133; civil wars in, 126, 129, 140; coins in, 124(i), 131;
colonies of, 129; crisis of the third century in, 139–141; culture of,
127–128, 131, 240; eastern and western halves of, 140; economy
in, 135, 140–141; empire in, 120; expansion of, 125–127, 131,
132(m); family in, 128; foundation myths in, 121; frontiers of, 131,
133, 140; gods and goddesses in, 123; government of, 124–125,
133; Greece and, 96, 126; Hellenistic kingdoms in, 116; Huns and,
186; Italy and, 120–125, 122(m); land in, 128–129, 130, 141; law
in, 124–125, 343; lifestyle in, 133–135; Mediterranean conquests
by, 125, 126–127; Merovingian government and, 190; military in,
123, 125, 128, 130, 133; monarchical period in, 120; navy of, 126;
North African civilizations and, 225; pax Romana and, 133; Persia
and, 173; politics in, 123, 128–129, 133, 140; provinces of, 124,
126, 127, 133–136; Punic Wars and, 126–127; religions in, 123,
135; republic in, 120; revolts in, 128; Sassanids and, 136; Senate
in, 119, 121, 124; Sicily and, 126; slavery in, 128, 134; society in,
124, 127–128; Spain and, 126, 129, 131; state in, 299; Struggle of
 the Orders in, 125; trade of, 136; women in, 128. See also Armed
forces; Byzantine Empire; Eastern Roman Empire; Italy; Western
Roman Empire
Rome (city), 122(m); lifestyle in, 133–135; papacy and, 177, 350; in
Renaissance, 357, 361; sacks of, 123
Romulus and Remus, 121
Romulus Augustus (Rome), 186
Rouruan people, 280
Royal African Company (England), 403
Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies (Spain), 398
Royal courts. See Court (royal)
Royalty. See Emperor(s); Monarchs and monarchies; specific rulers
and locations
Rubber: Olmec trade in, 255
Rule of Saint Benedict, The, 178
Ruler cults, 110–111
Rural areas: in Greece, 100; Hellenism and, 112. See also
Agriculture; Farms and farming
Russia: Mongols and, 285, 287, 288; Orthodox Christianity in, 335;
serfs in, 330; Vikings in, 327, 329

Sacks (military): by Mongols, 206, 284; of Rome, 123

Sacred languages, 215
Sacrifices: in China, 79; in India, 64. See also Blood sacrifice;
Human sacrifice
Safavid Empire (Persia): Ottomans and, 388; trade in, 388
Sahara Desert region: Islam and, 230; salt making in, 231–232; size
of, 224; trade in, 224, 225–226, 230–234, 231(m). See also Trans-
Saharan trade
al-Saheli (architect), 239
Sahel region, 224, 227, 230, 234
Saichō (Japan), 319
Sailing. See Ships and shipping
Saint (Christian), 188–189, 334. See also specific saints
Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, 378
Saint-Gall abbey: library of, 213
St. Lawrence River region, 395
Sakk (money order), 212
Saladin (Salah-al-Din), 338
Salem, Massachusetts: witchcraft trials in, 380
Salerno: medical studies in, 343
Salt: in Sahara region, 231–232, 232(i); trade in, 231–232, 237
Salvador, 399
Salvation: in Buddhism, 63; in Catholicism, 369; Luther on, 369; in
Protestantism, 369; of women, 180
Samaria, 44
Samarkand: Mongols and, 206, 287; Timur from, 288
Same-sex relations: in ancient society, 21; in Greece, 102, 106
Samsara (reincarnation), 60
Samurai (Japan): civil authority of, 322; comparison with knights,
321; ethos of, 306; lords and, 320; Mongols and, 285
Sanchi: stupa at, 68(i)
Sanitation: in cities and towns, 342; in India, 56; in Rome, 134
San Salvador, 393
Sanskrit language, 40, 54, 56–57, 62, 297, 299
Sappho, 106
Sargon (Akkad), 34–35, 55
Sassanids (Persia): Byzantine Empire and, 171, 173, 199; China and,
173; empire of, 172(m); Parthians and, 136; Rome and, 136, 140
Sati (widow immolation, India), 295
Satraps (Persian administrators), 48
Saudi Arabia. See Mecca
Saul (Hebrews), 44
Savanna (Africa), 224, 227, 229
Savior. See Messiah
Saxons, 186
Saxony: Magyars in, 328
Scandinavia: Christianity in, 335
Scheherazade (character), 213
Schism: in Christian Church, 333, 350, 368
Scholar-officials: in China, 88, 148–149, 309, 311–312, 315. See also
Civil service; Civil service examination system
Scholarship: Islamic, 213; in medieval Europe, 343–344; in
Timbuktu, 240. See also Intellectual thought
Scholastica, 178
Scholastics, 343–344
School(s): in China, 159; in Europe, 343–344; in Islam, Europe, and
China, 214–215; Jesuit, 377; monastic, 178–179, 333; in Timbuktu,
240. See also Education; Universities and colleges
Science(s): Byzantine, 174, 175; Hellenistic, 114–115; in India, 70; in
Islamic world, 213, 215–216; of Maya, 264; Mongols and, 290.
See also Astronomy; Mathematics; Medicine; Philosophy;
Technology
Scipio Africanus, 126
Scotland: Calvinism in, 375; England and, 365; Presbyterian Church
in, 375
Scratch plows, 19, 241; barbarian, 183
Scribes: in China, 150; Egyptian, 37, 43; Greek, 98; Sumerian, 33
Script: Chinese, 80–81, 147; Gothic, 187; Linear B, 98. See also
Writing
Scriptures: Christian, 137, 241; Hebrew, 137; translation into Ge’ez,
241
Sculpture: Buddhism and, 158; on Easter Island, 300(i), 301; Greek,
104; in Japan, 321(i); by Nok people, 226(i), 227; in Renaissance,
360(i), 361
Scythia and Scythians: Persian Empire and, 48
Seaborne trade. See Maritime trade; Trade
Sea of Japan, 164
Sea Peoples, 40
Second Intermediate Period (Egypt), 37
Second Punic War, 126
Second Triumvirate (Rome), 129
Secret History, The (Procopius), 174
Secret History of the Mongols, The, 282
Secular authority: of Christian Church, 177
Secular clergy, 179
Sedentary peoples, 227; Turks as, 205
Sei Shonagon (Japan): Pillow Book of, 318
Selective breeding: of crops, 15
Seleucus (Macedonia) and Seleucids, 66, 110, 126
Seljuk Turks, 205, 206; Byzantine Empire and, 281; in Palestine, 336
Semi-sedentary communities, 253
Semitic peoples and languages, 34. See also Jews and Judaism
Senate (Rome), 119, 121, 124, 130
Senegal River region, 229
Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, 407
Serbia: Rome and, 131
Serfs and serfdom, 141; Aztec, 270; in China, 79, 84; in Europe, 329–
330, 339, 343; in Korea, 316; peasant revolts and, 351; in Russia,
330. See also Peasants
Sericulture: in Japan, 165
Servants: barbarian, 184. See also Slaves and slavery
Settlement(s): in Africa, 227, 228–229; in Americas, 253–254, 395–
400; Bantu, 228–229; in Ethiopia, 241; Etruscan, 120; in Funan,
297; Inca, 260(m); in India, 58; Neolithic, 13–15; of Pacific
Islands, 300–301; Portuguese, 391; Roman, 131; Viking, 327. See
also Expansion; Exploration
Sex and sexuality: Christian attitudes toward, 180–181; gender
hierarchies and, 21; in Greece, 105; Islam and, 211; in Southeast
Asia, 387. See also Gender and gender issues; Same-sex relations
Seymour, Jane, 373
Shah (Persia, Iran), 284
Shakas: India and, 69–70
Shakespeare, William, 359
Shamans, 20; Mongol, 282; Paleolithic, 13; rituals of, 23
Shamash (god), 35
Shang Dynasty (China), 75, 78–81, 79(m)
Shapur (Sassanids), 136
Shari’a (law), 203–204, 214
Shaykhs (Sufi leaders), 216
Sheba, Queen of, 242
Sheep, 18(i); domestication of, 17; for wool, 21
Sheik: in Bedouin society, 207
Shelter. See Housing; Lifestyle
Sheriff (England), 330
Shi (Chinese aristocracy), 82, 83
Shi’a (Shi’ite) Muslims, 202, 205; Fatimids as, 205; in Iran, 204–205;
in Iraq, 204–205
Shikoku, Japan, 164
Shinran (Japan), 322
Shinto religion (Japan), 165, 322
Ships and shipping: ancient migration and, 8; Chinese, 75, 307, 308,
314; human migration and, 8, 9; India and, 70; Portuguese, 390;
trade and, 212, 243, 307; Viking, 327; voyages of exploration and,
390, 393, 394. See also Canals; Navy; Trade
Shiraz, Iran, 243
Shires: in England, 330
Shoguns (Japan): Kamakura, 320, 321, 322; Minamoto Yoritomo,
320, 321, 321(i)
Shōtoku (Japan), 165
Shrines: Arab, 197
Shudra (Indian caste), 59, 294
Siberia: human migration from, 8. See also Inner Asia
Sicily: Greeks and, 120; Muslims in, 328, 334; Romans in, 126;
Vikings in, 329
Siddhartha Gautama (Shakyamuni, the Buddha), 62–63. See also
Buddhism
Siege towers, 115
Sierra Leone: Mende people from, 229
Sijilmasa, 233
Silk: in China, 145, 313(i); in India, 387; in Japan, 165; manufacture
of, 313(i); trade in, 112, 145, 151, 232. See also Silk Road
Silk Road: Buddhism spread along, 155–156; China and, 150–151,
152(m); Sassanids and, 173; Turks and, 280
Silla Dynasty (Korea), 163, 164, 315–316
Silver: from Americas, 399, 403, 405; China and, 405; Inca, 261; in
Mexico, 399, 403; Spanish wealth from, 403
Sima Guang (China), 311
Sima Qian (Chinese historian): history of China by, 150
Simony, 332
Sin: in Christianity, 181, 188; in India, 60; skin color and, 407
Sinai Peninsula, 43
Sinchis (Inca kings), 259
Sind area (Pakistan), 292
Sistine Chapel, 360(i), 361
Sixtus IV (Pope), 367
Skandagupta (India), 291
Skin color: slavery and, 233, 407
Slash-and-burn agriculture, 17, 227
Slaves and slavery: in Africa, 232–233, 402; in Americas, 208, 403;
Aztec, 270; barbarian, 183–184; Brazil and, 208, 398, 403; in
Caribbean region, 403; in China, 155, 245, 316; England and, 403;
in Ghana, 237; in Greece, 105; India and, 59; in Islam, 207–208; in
Italy, 362; in Korea, 316; from Mediterranean region, 388, 402;
Mongol, 282; Muslims and, 232, 233; Portugal and, 362, 391, 403,
405; race and, 208, 233, 362, 407; in Renaissance, 362; in Rome,
128, 134, 155; skin color and, 233, 407; slave destinations and,
405; social hierarchies and, 20; as soldiers, 208; sugar industry
and, 362, 403; Sumerian, 32; Turks and, 203, 205, 281; women
and, 208. See also Serfs and serfdom; Slave trade
Slave trade: African, 232–233, 245, 402; Atlantic economy and, 223;
in Caribbean region, 403; Dutch, 403; in East Africa, 245, 388;
England and, 403; ethnocentrism and racism in, 223; Italian, 389;
markets for, 232, 245; in New World, 403; Portugal and, 403, 405;
in Renaissance, 362; transatlantic, 403; trans-Saharan, 232–233; in
West Africa, 232–233, 388
Slavs: alphabet of, 335; conversion to Christianity, 187
Smallpox, 215; in Americas, 273, 397, 400, 401; in Japan, 166
Smelting: Neolithic, 22
Social class. See Class
Social hierarchies: gender and, 362–364; in Greece, 96; in Khmer
society, 298; Neolithic, 19–20; in Renaissance, 361–364; rise of,
29–30; slavery and, 20. See also Class
Social mobility: ancient, 21–22; in China, 83, 314. See also Social
hierarchies
Society: in Africa, 226–230; in Americas, 251–259; in Athens, 102–
103; Aztec, 269–270; in Babylonia, 35; barbarian, 183–184; in
China, 79, 82–84, 90, 153–154, 155; civilizations and, 29;
Confucius on, 85; in Egypt, 37–38; in Ethiopia, 241–242;
European, 339–341; Hebrew, 45; Hellenistic, 109–112; Hinduism
 and, 64; Inca, 259–260, 262; in India, 53–54, 59; in Japan, 165;
Khmer, 298; Maya, 264; of Mexica, 269–270; Muslim, 206–211;
Mycenaean, 98–99; Neolithic, 19–23; in Nile River region, 27–28;
nomadic, 279–280; Paleolithic, 9–13; printing and, 359; in Rome,
124, 127–128; slavery in, 20; in Southwest Asia, 27–28; stateless,
234–235; Sumerian, 32; West Africa and, 227; women in, 21;
writing and, 28–29. See also Civilization(s); Culture(s); Elites;
Social hierarchies
Society of Jesus. See Jesuits
Socrates, 107, 108
Sofala (city-state): trade in, 246
Solar calendar. See Calendar
Solar system. See Astronomy
Soldiers: in China, 84; Greek hoplites as, 100, 100(i); Islamic, 201;
Mongol, 282, 283–284; Roman, 128–129, 141; slaves as, 203, 208.
See also Armed forces; Military; War(s) and warfare; specific
battles and wars
Solomon (Hebrews), 44, 242
Solomonic dynasty (Ethiopia), 242
Solon (Athens), 103
Somalia: Mogadishu in, 234; slave trade in, 245; trade and, 234
Song Dynasty (China): in 1000 and 1200, 310(m); currency in, 307;
defeat of, 314; economy in, 308; government in, 305–306, 309;
industry in, 307; military in, 309; Mongols and, 285; Neo-
Confucianism in, 312, 313; printing and, 311; scholar-officials in,
309, 311–312; Sima Guang in, 311; Southern, 309, 310(m); trade
in, 307; women in, 308, 312–313
Songhai kingdom and people: Almoravids in, 234; Islam in, 234;
territory of, 240
Songs: in vernacular, 345
Songs of Chu (China), 84
Soninke people, 235, 238
Sophists, 108
Sophocles, 105
Sorghum, 227, 229, 246
South Africa: gold in, 245
South America: Pacific Islands and, 301. See also America(s);
specific locations
South Asia: in 13th century, 296(m). See also Asia; Southeast Asia
South China Sea region: commerce in, 385, 386
Southeast Asia: in 13th century, 296(m); bride wealth in, 387;
Buddhism in, 155, 279, 292, 299, 387; Indian culture in, 295–298;
Islam in, 210(m); Mongols and, 285; peoples of, 296–297, 387; sex
and sexuality in, 387; spice trade in, 298(m); trade in, 296, 296(m),
297, 299, 386–387; women in, 387. See also Asia; Emigration;
South Asia; specific locations
Southern Dynasties (China), 155
Southern Song Dynasty (China): Hangzhou as capital in, 309, 310(m)
South Seas: Chinese trade in, 307
Southwest Asia: societies in, 34(m). See also Middle East
Spain: Americas and, 265, 267, 273, 395–398; Aztecs and, 265, 267,
273, 395–397; Caribbean region and, 394, 395; Carthage and, 126;
colonies of, 393–394; Creole Spaniards and, 400; culture in, 213;
exploration by, 393–394, 395–398; France and, 377; Incas and,
258, 274, 397–398; indigenous labor and, 399–400, 399(i);
inflation in, 403; Inquisition in, 367; Islam and, 204–205, 225, 329,
335–336, 338; Jews in, 365; Maya and, 264–265; missionaries
from, 406; mosque in, 332(i); Muslims and, 199, 225, 329, 335–
336, 338; Netherlands and, 379; New World and, 393–394;
Philippines and, 405–406; reconquista in, 218, 335–336, 365, 389;
in Renaissance, 365, 367; Rome and, 126, 129, 131; silver and,
399, 403, 405; slaves in, 362; Tordesillas, Treaty of, and, 394; trade
and, 405–406; urban revolts in, 351; wealth of, 403. See also New
Spain; Reconquista; Spanish America
Spanish America: governments in, 398–399; indigenous people in,
399–400, 399(i). See also New Spain
Spanish Armada, 379
Spanish Empire: economy in, 403, 405; trade in, 405
Spanish Inquisition, 367
Sparta, 101–102; hoplites in, 100(i); military in, 102; Peloponnesian
War and, 104; Persian wars and, 104; Thebes and, 109; women in,
102
Specialization: of labor, 22, 251; power structures and, 19. See also
Division of labor
Species, 2–3. See also Homo (genus)
Speech: by early humans, 5–7
Spice trade: Dutch and, 406; European expansion and, 389; India and,
70; Portugal and, 391; on Silk Road, 151; in Southeast Asia,
298(m)
Spirituality. See Religion(s)
Split inheritance, 259–260
Sri Lanka (Ceylon), 54; Buddhism in, 156, 156(m); Burmese and,
297; Cholas in, 291
Srivijayan kingdom, 299
Standard of living. See Lifestyle
Starvation. See Famine
State (nation): in East Asia, 145; in Europe, 330; in India, 297–298;
Indo-Greek, 69; Islamic, 198–204; in Japan, 165; in Renaissance,
357, 364–365, 367; rise of, 29–30; Roman, 124–125, 299. See also
Church and state
State-building: in Europe, 330
Stateless societies: in Africa, 234–235
Statues. See Sculpture
Status. See Class; Society
Steel: in China, 305, 307
Steles: of Maya, 264
Stephen I (Hungary), 331
Steppes: in Africa, 224; nomads of, 279
Sternpost rudder, 390–391
Stoicism, 114
Stone Age, 3. See also Neolithic era; Paleolithic era
Storage: food, 19, 20, 254
Straits: of Magellan, 394; of Malacca, 296(m), 299
Strikes: in Rome, 125
Struggle of the Orders (Rome), 125
Students: in Islam, Europe, and China, 215
Stupas: at Sanchi, 68(i)
Subcontinent: of India, 54
Sub-Saharan Africa: animals in, 227; Berbers and, 226, 233;
ironworking in, 227; Islam in, 233; slaves from, 402; trade in, 41,
226. See also Africa
Succession: to Charlemagne, 191–192; in China, 146; to Clovis, 189–
190; in Ghana, 235–236; Mongol, 285; to Muhammad, 199, 201
Sudan: Berber caravan trade and, 230–232; Egypt and, 240;
geography of, 229; Ghana and, 235; Islam in, 230, 235; kingdoms
of, 229–230; Nubia and, 41; origins of term, 226; religion in, 229–
230; trade in, 230–232
Sufis and Sufism: dervishes and, 206, 216; mysticism of, 216–217
Sugar and sugar industry: in Brazil, 398; in China, 308; labor for,
402(i); Portugal and, 391; slavery and, 362, 403
Sui Dynasty (China), 158–159, 165, 309
Sulla (Rome), 129
Sultanate: of Delhi, 285, 293–294; in Mogadishu, 234
Sumatra: Srivijaya kingdom in, 299
Sumer and Sumerians, 31–32, 31(i); kings in, 32; writing and, 32–33,
33(f). See also Mesopotamia
Summae (reference books), 344
Sun-centered solar system, 115
Sundiata (Mali), 238–239
Sunna, 197, 202
Sunni Muslims, 202; in Iraq, 205; Ottomans as, 351; Turks as, 205,
351
Sun Wu (China), 84
Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal
Inquisition (Holy Office), 375. See also Inquisition
Su Shi (China), 311
Su Song (China), 311
Sutras (Buddhist), 63, 322
Swahili people and culture: city-states of, 224, 243, 387; in East
Africa, 226, 243; language and culture of, 243; trade and, 244–245,
387
Sweden: Christianity and, 335; Vikings from, 327, 329. See also
Scandinavia
Sweet potatoes, 301
Syria: Islam and, 199; Mongols and, 287; Saladin and, 338; trade and,
388; Turks in, 205, 281; Umayyad Dynasty in, 201
Tahir (Islam), 204
Tahiti, 300
Taino people, 393
Taira family (Japan): civil war and, 320; fall of, 322; Kiyomori, 320
Taiyi (god), 91
Taizong (China), 159
Taizu (China): as founder of Song Dynasty, 309
Takauji (Japan). See Ashikaga Shogunate
Tale of Genji, The (Lady Murasaki), 318, 319(i)
Tale of the Heike, The, 322
Tamerlane. See Timur
Tamil culture, 70
Tang Dynasty (China), 158, 159–161; breakup of, 308; culture in,
160–161; currency in, 307; decline of, 306, 317; Korea and, 164,
315; literature in, 311; printing in, 309, 311; Thais and, 297; Turks
and, 159, 280
Tanguts: China and, 159, 310(m)
Tanzania: agriculture in, 227; human evolution in, 4(i)
Taotie (animal face), 80
Tarquin (Etruscans), 121
Tartars: Mongols and, 206, 283. See also Mongols
Tashkent (Central Asia), 199
Tawantinsuyu: Inca Empire as, 259
Taxation: in China, 148, 306; in France, 364, 378; in Hungary, 331;
Inca, 262; in India, 67, 291; medieval, 330, 331, 343; by Mongols,
287; nobility exempted from, 340; Ottoman, 351; peasant revolts
and, 351; in Rome, 141–142; in Sumer, 32
Tax-farming, 287
Taxila (trade center), 66, 69
Technology: adaptation and, 27; in Americas, 252; bronze, 22;
exploration and, 390–391; in Korea, 163; military, 46, 58, 84–85;
Mongols and, 285, 287, 290; in Teotihuacan, 265; trade and, 212.
See also Industry; Military technology; Science(s); Tools
Tecuhtli (Aztec lords), 269
Temples: Buddhist images in, 158; in Ethiopia, 241; in Greece, 104;
Hindu, 293(i); Inca, 261; in Japan, 165, 166; of Jerusalem, 44; in
Sumer, 31
Temujin. See Chinggis Khan (Mongols)
Tenant farmers: Roman, 135
Ten Commandments, 44–45, 242
Tenochtitlan (Mexico City): as Aztec capital, 266(m), 267, 268, 269;
Cortés in, 267, 273, 396(i), 397; costs of maintaining, 272–273;
features of, 396(i)
Teotihuacan: ceremonial center of, 265; decline of, 265; trade in, 263,
265
Tepanec Alliance, 268, 269, 273
Texcoco: Lake, 253, 266(m), 267, 268, 268(i)
Textiles and textile industry: in China, 313(i); in England, 342; in
India, 294. See also Cloth and clothing
Thai people, 297
Theater: Greek, 104–105; vernacular, 345, 347, 359
Thebes, 98, 109
Theodora (Byazantine Empire), 174
Theodosius I (Rome), 141, 176
Theodosius II (Rome), 171
Theogony (Hesiod), 99
Theology: Christian, 139, 181; iconoclastic controversy and, 181–
182; study of, 344. See also Religion
Theravada Buddhism, 156(m), 299
Thomas Aquinas (Saint), 344
Thousand and One Nights, The, 213
Thrace, 48
Three Kingdoms Period (Korea), 164
Tiantai (Tendai) Buddhism, 316, 319
Tiberius (Rome), 133, 136
Tiberius Gracchus (Rome), 128
Tibet: Buddhism in, 156, 292; China and, 161, 306; culture of, 161–
162; Mongols and, 287
Tigrayan highlands: Ethiopia, 242
Tigris River region, 28, 30, 41
Tikal, 263
Timbuktu: intellectual thought in, 240; Portugal and, 391; trade in,
233, 239
Time. See Clocks
Timur (Tamerlane, Turks): Delhi sultanate and, 294; emergence of,
288; empire of, 288
Timurid Empire: Russia and, 288. See also Timur
Titicaca, Lake, 253, 258–259
Titus (Rome), 133
Tiv people, Nigeria, 234
Tiwanaku (Andean city-state), 258, 259
Tizoc (Aztec Empire), 271
Tlacaelel (Aztec adviser), 269
Tlalmaitl (landless workers, serfs), 270
Tlaloc (Chac, god), 265
Tlatelolco, Mexico: in Aztec Empire, 267, 268
Tlatoani (Aztec ruler), 269, 271, 272, 273
Tlaxcala, 272, 273, 396, 399(i)
Tōdaiji, Japan: temple at, 166
Tolerance: racial, in Mali, 240. See also Religious toleration
Toltecs, 263, 265, 267
Tombs: in China, 78, 79, 90, 147(i), 148; Egyptian, 37
Tools: human use of, 2, 4; iron, 227; materials for, 22; Paleolithic, 7–
8. See also Technology
Topiltzin-Quetzalcoatl (king), 267, 271(i)
Topography: of Iran, 47. See also Geography
Tordesillas, Treaty of, 394
Tortillas, 253(i), 254
Tours, battle at, 199
Towns. See Cities and towns; Villages
Trade: African, 224, 225–226, 230–234, 231(m), 387–388; in
Afroeurasia, 384–385, 385–389, 386(m); in Aksum, 241; in
Americas, 251–252, 254–255, 256, 264; Babylon and, 35; Berbers
and, 225–226, 230–232, 232(i); in Brazil, 398; in Cairo, 212;
Carthaginian, 126; Chinese, 83, 147, 151, 307, 308; commercial
revolution and, 342–343; Confucian elite and, 153; in
Constantinople, 175, 389; Cretan, 96; cross-cultural connections
 and, 384–385, 387; Crusades and, 338; Dutch, 406; in East Africa,
226, 242–243, 244–245; in East Asia, 226; Egyptian, 226;
Ethiopian, 241; fur, 395; in Genoa, 388–389; in Ghana, 237;
globalization of, 405–406; in gold, 232, 237, 238, 244, 246, 387,
388; Hellenistic, 112; ideas spread through, 296; in India, 55, 59,
70, 226, 279, 294; in Indian Ocean, 234, 241, 292, 384, 385–387,
386(m); of iron weapons, 41; Islamic, 210(m), 211–212, 234, 243;
in Mali, 238, 239, 387–388; Maya, 264; medieval, 341;
Mesoamerican, 251–252; Mongols and, 281, 282, 290, 315, 385;
Neolithic, 22–23; in North America, 256; Nubia and, 41; Olmec,
254–255; Ottoman, 388; Persian, 48; Philippines and, 405–406;
Phoenician, 42–43; Portugal and, 244, 391–392, 405; Roman, 131,
135, 136; Sargon and, 34; Sassanid, 173; silk, 112, 145, 232; silver
and, 405; social hierarchies and, 20; Spanish, 405–406; in Srivijaya
kingdom, 296(m), 299; in sub-Saharan Africa, 226; Swahili, 244–
245, 387; technology and, 212; in Teotihuacan, 265; in West
Africa, 232–233, 387. See also Caravan trade; Commerce; Cross-
cultural connections; Maritime trade; Merchants; Silk Road; Silver;
Slave trade; Spice trade; Trans-Saharan trade
Trade routes: in Africa, 224, 225–226, 230–234, 231(m), 235. See
also Silk Road; Trans-Saharan trade
Trading posts: in Africa, 233; Portuguese, 391–392; in West Africa,
233
Tragedy. See Theater
Transatlantic trade: slave trade as, 403. See also Slaves and slavery;
Slave trade; Trade
Translation: of Bible, 180, 187, 335, 370; of Galen’s medical works,
203
Transportation: in Americas, 252. See also Chariots; Roads
Trans-Saharan trade, 230–234; Berbers and, 225–226, 230–232,
232(i); camels in, 230, 232(i); Ghana and, 235; Islam and, 224,
230, 233–234; routes of, 231(m); slave trade and, 232–233; West
Africa and, 224, 232–233. See also Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa;
Trade
Travel(s): to China, 146; literature about, 390. See also Polo, Marco
Travels of Sir John Mandeville, The, 390
Treaties: Song-Liao, 309. See also specific treaties
Tree planting: under Khubilai, 289(i)
Trent, Council of, 375
Trials: by ordeal, 331; for witchcraft, 380
Tribes: Arab, 196–197; barbarian, 184; Hebrew, 44; Islam and, 207;
Mongol, 282; Muslim unity and, 202; nomad, 280. See also
Barbarians
Tribunes: in Rome, 125, 130
Tributary system: in China, 151
Tribute: in Aztec Empire, 269, 270–271, 272, 396; in Ghana, 237;
Inca, 261, 262; in Spanish Empire, 399
Trinity, 139, 177
Triple Alliance: in Aztec Empire, 269
Tripoli, 232, 337
Trojan War, 99
Tropical rain forests: in Africa, 224
Troubadours, 345
Trung sisters (Vietnam), 162
Tsetse fly: cattle and, 227
Tuareg people, 231, 232(i)
Tuberculosis, 216
Tudor dynasty (England), 365, 373–374
Tula, 267
Tupac Amaru (Inca), 274
Turfan, 156
Turkey: agriculture in, 16; Greece and, 99; trade in, 22. See also
Anatolia; Ottoman Empire; Ottoman Turks
Turkic languages, 280
Turkish Empire. See Ottoman Empire
Turkmen people, 280
Turks: Arabs and, 292; China and, 158, 159, 160, 280, 306; Crusades
and, 336, 338; India and, 281, 291, 292; in Iran and Afghanistan,
285, 287, 292; Islam and, 203, 205–206, 279, 281, 292; military of,
203, 206; Mongols and, 206, 283, 285; Ottoman, 351; rise of, 280–
281. See also Ottoman Empire; Seljuk Turks; Uighur Turks
Tyche (god), 113
Tyranny: in Greece, 101
Uaxactún, 263
Ugaritic script, 42(f)
Uighur Turks: China and, 160, 280, 306; empire of, 280–281;
Mongols and, 283, 287, 289
Ulama (scholars), 202
Ulfilas (Arian missionary), 187
Umar (Islam), 199, 201
Umayyad Dynasty, 201, 202, 204; in Córdoba, 335; India and, 292;
women during, 208
Umma: in Islam, 199, 201, 202
Unification: of Italy, 357
Union of Utrecht, 379
United States: Greek architectural influence on, 116–117. See also
Western world
Universalism: of Rome and Christianity, 138
Universe. See Astronomy; Cosmology
Universities and colleges: medieval, 343–344. See also Higher
education
Untouchables: in India, 59
Upanishads (India), 60
Upper classes. See Aristocracy; Elites; Nobility
Upper Egypt, 36, 226
Ur (city), Enhueduana in, 34
Urban II (Pope), 336
Urban VI (Pope), 350
Urban areas: in Americas, 253; in China, 78, 79; Hellenism in, 111–
112; Jewish life in, 45; medieval, 341–342; revolts in, 351–352; in
West Africa, 233. See also Cities and towns
Ursuline order, 377
Uruk (city), 31
Usury: Islam on, 198
Uthman (Islam), 199, 201
Utopia (More), 358
Utrecht: Union of, 379
Uxmal, 263
Uzbeks, 280
Vaishya (Indian caste), 59, 294
Valerian (Rome), 136
Valladolid debate, 407
Valley of Mexico. See Aztec Empire; Mexico
Valois kings (France), 373
Varnas (social strata, India), 59, 294
Vassals: in China, 78, 81; in Europe, 329; Korea as, 164
Vedas, 57, 58, 62, 64
Vedic Age (India), 57, 60
Veiling: in Islam, 209
Veneration: of saints, 188–189, 334
Venice: in Renaissance, 357; trade and, 342, 388–389
Verdun: Treaty of, 191
Vernacular languages: literature in, 345, 347; printing in, 359
Vespasian (Rome), 133
Vespucci, Amerigo, 394
Vesuvius, Mount: eruption of, 133
Veterans: Roman, 128, 135
Viceroyalties (New World), 398
Victoria, Lake, 228
Vienna: Ottomans and, 388
Vietnam: China and, 158, 161, 162–163, 297; Chinese language in,
81, 162; Khmers and, 298; Mongols and, 285; religions in, 299
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 29
Vigesimal system (mathematics), 264
Vikings: in England, 327, 329, 330; exploration by, 327; in France,
329; invasions and migrations of, 327, 328(m), 329; in
Newfoundland, 327, 393
Villages: agriculture and, 19; barbarian, 183; in China, 77, 79; in
India, 56, 295; Neolithic, 19, 22, 77; in stateless societies, 235. See
also Cities and towns
Vindhya Mountains, 54
Violence: in Greek society, 103–104; religious, 377–380. See also
War(s) and warfare
Viracocha Inca, 259
Virgil, 131
Virgin Mary, 334, 345(i)
Virtù, 357
Vishnu (god), 64(i), 298
Visigoths, 182, 185(i); Clovis and, 189; Muslims and, 199
Visual arts. See Art(s)
Vizier: in Islam, 204, 206
Vladimir I (Kiev), 335
Von Bora, Katharina, 371, 372(i)
Voyages of exploration: by Columbus, 393–394; European, 389–395,
392(m); Phoenician, 43; sciences and, 390–391; by Zheng He, 386,
386(m)
Vulgate Bible, 180

Wa (Japan), 164
Wadai: Islam in, 234
Wagadou (Soninke kingdom), 235
Wages: of women, 364
Wang Kon (Korea), 316
War(s) and warfare: Aztec, 270, 271; in China, 78; Hellenistic science
and, 115; Mongol, 283–284, 285; Mycenaean, 98; in Rome, 123,
133. See also Civil war(s); Military; Military technology; Religious
wars; specific battles and wars
Wari (Andean city-state), 258, 259
Warlords: in China, 155, 309
Warring States Period (China), 81, 84–85, 87, 91(i); history of, 311;
Korea and, 163
Warriors: Assyrian, 46(i); Aztec, 269–270; barbarian, 184; in China,
78; in Ethiopia, 241; in India, 58; in Japan, 165, 306, 320. See also
Nobility
Wars of the Roses (England), 364
Water mills, 340
Waterpower: textile industry and, 340
Water screw, 115
Waterways. See Canals; Ships and shipping
Wealth: from commercial revolution, 343; inheritance of, 21; in Mali,
239; in Neolithic society, 20; in Paleolithic society, 11–12; in
 Renaissance, 356–357, 362; in Rome, 133; of Spain, 403. See also
Economy; Wealth gap
Wealth gap: in Neolithic society, 20
Weapons: of Archimedes, 115; Assyrian, 46; Aztec, 270; Byzantine,
174; in China, 78, 84–85, 307; in Egypt, 38; in Hundred Years’
War, 349, 350; iron, 41; in Japan, 165; materials for, 22; Mongol,
282; Mycenaean, 98(i); Paleolithic, 10. See also Military
technology
Weaving: by ancient peoples, 7, 21, 258; Aztec, 270
Weddings. See Marriage
Wergeld, 184
West. See Western world
West Africa: empires in, 224, 234; ironworking in, 227; Portugal and,
391, 398; salt and, 232(i); slave trade and, 232–233, 388; societies
of, 227; trade in, 232–233, 387; trading posts in, 233; urban areas
in, 233; women in, 229. See also Africa; East Africa; specific
locations
Western Asia: in Middle Ages, 347
Western Christian Church. See Orthodox Church; Roman Catholic
Church
Western civilization. See Civilization(s); Western world
Western Crusaders: in Constantinople, 175
Western Europe: black Africans in, 362; historical divisions in, 142;
political developments in, 327–331; Roman cities in, 135; serfs in,
329–330, 339, 341, 343. See also Europe; Western world; specific
locations
Western Hemisphere (New World). See America(s); Columbian
exchange; New World
Western Roman Empire, 140; barbarians in, 184, 186; official end of,
170. See also Roman Catholic Church; Rome (ancient)
Western Turks, 280. See also Turks
Western world: East-West communication and, 406; India and, 65–
66. See also America(s); Europe; Western Europe
West India Company: Dutch, 403
Wheat: in China, 79; domestication of, 15; from Egypt, 135
Wheel: for carts and plows, 19; potter’s, 19
Widows: in barbarian society, 184; in China, 312–313; in India, 60,
295
William the Conqueror (William of Normandy, England), 330
Wiman: Choson state and, 163
Windmills, 340
Wind patterns: trade, exploration, and, 391
Witch-hunts: after Reformation, 380
Wittenberg: Luther in, 368
Wives. See Women
Women: in African societies, 229; in Arab world, 208; Aztec, 270; in
barbarian society, 184; Buddhism and, 63, 158; in Byzantine
Empire, 175; in China, 159, 308, 312–313; Christian, 138, 178,
180, 187; as clergy, 179; crop raising by, 15; in Crusades, 337;
debate about, 362–364; division of labor and, 246, 340; dowry of,
32; education for, 214, 358; elite and non-elite, 21; in France, 364;
gender hierarchies and, 20–21; in Greece, 101, 105, 106, 106(i); in
guilds, 342; in India, 59–60, 295; inheritance by, 21, 22, 128; Islam
and, 208–209, 211; in Japan, 164–165, 318–319; labor and, 21;
Merovingian, 190; monasticism and, 333; Mongols and, 282, 283;
in mosques, 209(i); as mystic, 216; in nobility, 341; as nuns, 158,
178, 241, 333, 372, 377; Protestantism and, 371–372; in Qur’an,
208; in Renaissance, 358, 361, 362–364; in Rome, 128; as rulers,
229, 364; social class and, 333; in Southeast Asia, 387; in Spanish
colonies, 398; in Sparta, 102; in West Africa, 229; witchcraft trials
and, 380; as workers, 312. See also Division of labor; Gender and
gender issues; Widows
Wool and wool industry: in England, 342; sheep for, 21
Work. See Labor
Workers: Aztec, 270. See also Child labor; Labor
Workforce. See Labor; Women
Works and Days (Hesiod), 99
World economy. See Global economy
Worldview: of Andean peoples, 259; of Inca and Spanish, 274; of
Mexica, 271–272; of Vedic Age, 60
Worms, Diet of, 369
Worship. See Religion(s)
Writing: in Americas, 252; Chinese, 80–81, 150, 162; civilization
and, 29; in Crete, 96; cuneiform, 29, 33; Egyptian, 37–38; history
and, 1, 28–29; in India, 65; in Japan, 318; of Maya, 264;
Mycenaean, 98; permanent inscriptions and, 28–29; Phoenician,
42(f), 43; Sumerian, 32–33, 33(f); of Zoroaster, 49. See also
Alphabet; History and historiography; Script
Wu (Chinese emperor), 148, 150, 151
Wu (Chinese empress), 159
Wu Ding (China), 79

Xerxes (Persia), 104

Xia Dynasty (China), 310(m)
Xianbei people (China), 155, 157(i)
Xiongnu people, 145, 147, 151; Byzantine Empire and, 171;
confederations of, 280. See also Huns
Xuanzong (China), 159
Xunzi, 86–87, 90

Yahweh, 43, 44, 45

Yan (Chinese state), 163
Yang Guifei (China), 159, 160
Yangzi River region, 75, 77, 158, 159, 308, 314
al-Ya-qubi: on Ghana, 237
Yayoi culture, 164
Yazid (Islam), 202
Yellow River region (China), 75, 159
Yi Dynasty (Korea). See Choson Dynasty
Yin and yang, 91, 149
Yi Song-gye (Korea), 317
Yoritomo. See Minamoto clan (Japan)
York, house of (England), 364
Yoruba people, 229
Ypres, 342
Yuan Dynasty (China), 308, 314–315
Yuan Grand Canal (China), 315
Yucatán, 263, 264, 265, 395
Yue people, 162
Yuma people, 256
Yungang: rock-cut Buddha at, 157(i)
Yunnan, 161; Mongols and, 285
Yurts, 281

Zacatecas, 403
Zama, battle at, 126
Zambezi-Limpopo region, 246
Zambezi River region, 228, 244, 245, 246
Zanj people and culture, 243
Zanzibar, 245
Zapotecs, Teotihuacan trade with, 264
Zarathustra (Zoroaster). See Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism
Zen (Chan) Buddhism: in China, 161, 316; in Japan, 322
Zeno, 114
Zero: in Mayan mathematics, 264
Zeus (god), 107
Zhao Yong (China), 314(i)
Zheng He (China), 386, 386(m)
Zhou Dynasty (China), 75, 148; early period in, 79(m), 81–84; later
period in, 91; lifestyle under, 82–84. See also Warring States
Period
Zhuangzi (book and author), 88, 89
Zhu Xi (Chinese scholar): Neo-Confucianism and, 312
Ziggurat, 31
Zimbabwe: Bantu migrations and, 229; modern country of, 246. See
also Great Zimbabwe
Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism, 49; Buddhism and, 63; Islam and,
207; in Sassanid Empire, 173
About the Authors
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin–Madison)
taught first at Augustana College in Illinois and since 1985 at the University
of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she is currently UWM Distinguished
Professor in the department of history. She is the Senior Editor of the
Sixteenth Century Journal, one of the editors of the Journal of Global
History, and the author or editor of more than thirty books, including A
Concise History of the World. From 2017 to 2019 she is serving as the
president of the World History Association.

Patricia Buckley Ebrey (Ph.D., Columbia University), professor of history

at the University of Washington in Seattle, specializes in China. She has
published numerous journal articles and The Cambridge Illustrated History
of China, as well as several monographs. In 2010 she won the Shimada
Prize for outstanding work of East Asian Art History for Accumulating
Culture: The Collections of Emperor Huizong.

Roger B. Beck (Ph.D., Indiana University) is Distinguished Professor of

African and twentieth-century world history at Eastern Illinois University.
His publications include The History of South Africa; a translation of P. J.
van der Merwe’s The Migrant Farmer in the History of the Cape Colony,
1657–1842; and more than a hundred articles, book chapters, and reviews.
He is a former treasurer and Executive Council member of the World
History Association.

Jerry Dávila (Ph.D., Brown University) is Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor

of Brazilian History at the University of Illinois. He is the author of
Dictatorship in South America; Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of
African Decolonization, winner of the Latin Studies Association Brazil
Section Book Prize; and Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in
Brazil, 1917–1945. He has served as president of the Conference on Latin
American History.

Clare Haru Crowston (Ph.D., Cornell University) teaches at the

University of Illinois, where she is currently professor of history and
department chair. She is the author of Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of
Regard in Old Regime France and Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses
of Old Regime France, 1675–1791, which won the Berkshire and Hagley
Prizes. She edited two special issues of the Journal of Women’s History, has
published numerous journal articles and reviews, and is a past president of
the Society for French Historical Studies.

John P. McKay (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is professor

emeritus at the University of Illinois. He has written or edited numerous
works, including the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize–winning book Pioneers
for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–
1913.
LaunchPad with LearningCurve
Works simply. Simply works.

learningcurvewor
ks.com
Put “testing to learn” into action. Based on research, LearningCurve
adaptive quizzing really works.

Each chapter-based LearningCurve activity gives students multiple

chances to understand key concepts, return to the narrative textbook
if they need to reread, and answer questions correctly.

“What I like best about

LearningCurve is that it helps me
prepare for the quizzes and
Over 90% exams. I feel like I wouldn't do as
of students report well in the class without
satisfaction with LearningCurve.”
LearningCurve’s fun and
accessible game-like
interface. “I like how LearningCurve will tell
you where in the book to find the
correct answers to questions so
you can go back and read about
what you have missed.”

LearningCurve is available in LaunchPad, our interactive course

space. There you’ll find an interactive e-Book for A History of World
Societies plus many other resources to help you succeed in your
course.
In a survey of almost 6,000 students, 81.3% said LaunchPad helped
them improve their knowledge of the course material.

See what LaunchPad can do for you.

launchpadworks.com

macmillanlearning.com