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Key Concept 4.1 Globalizing Networks of Communication and Exchange From AP Worldipedia

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One of most important features of this time period (1450-1750) is the integration of both hemispheres into the world's first truly global network of trade. New technologies and methods of financing enabled trans-Atlantic trade and altered previous patterns of exchange. The ensuring new encounters spread culture, religion, new foods, and disease across the globe. Demographic changes were volatile, with some areas experiencing drastic changes because of the introduction of new foods while other areas, such as the Americas, were devastated with the introduction of new diseases.

I. In the context of the new global circulation of goods, there was in intensification of all existing regional trade networks that brought prosperity and economic disruption to the merchants and governments in the trading regions of the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, Sahara, and overland Eurasia. The voyage of Columbus

inaugurated a network of global trade that connected both hemispheres. Silver from the New World was minted into the peso de ocho, a widely accepted currency that connected major trade systems. In the Pacific, the Spanish colony of Manila connected the New World with Asia markets; much of the New World's silver ended up in China. Despite this new level of global connectivity, this era saw major disruptions and changes in trade networks. Attempts by Portugal and Spain to monopolize trade in the Indian Ocean led to the down fall of the Swahili cities and the fall of Malacca. In Africa, the incorporation of West Africa into the Atlantic system drew the focus of trade from Trans-Saharan to the west. The fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Ottomans and Vasco DaGama’s maritime route to the Indian Ocean lessened Europe’s dependence upon Silk Road trade. The Atlantic System would emerge as the premier trade system in this era.

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innovations in ship designs, and an improved understanding of global wind and current patterns--all of which made transoceanic travel and trade possible.

The most significant change in global trade between 1450 and 1750 was the rise and involvement of the Europeans. Beginning with Portugal and Spain, European countries would commission the exploration, charting, and colonization of a huge portion of the world. The advancements that enabled them to do this, however, did not originate in a vacuum. Europeans adapted, improved, and synthesized the use of technologies and knowledge deriving from many cultures.

Navigation Technologies

A mariner's astrolabe.

Islamic civilization had long possessed the need for astronomical and geographic knowledge. Muslims schools were expected to pronounce daily prayer times, calculate the exact time of the holy month of Ramadan, and provide the faithful with the direction of Mecca for the purpose of prayer. To address these religious matters they developed the astrolabe which enabled them to solve "300 types of problems in astronomy, geography, and trigonometry." [1] Through Muslim Spain, the astrolabe entered Christian Europe. Borrowing the basic principles of the Islamic astrolabe, the Portuguese created the mariner's astrolabe, an instrument whose functions were limited to and designed specifically for the purpose of navigation. At sea, the mariner's astrolabe helped ships determine their latitude by aligning the instrument with the sun or a known star.

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A typical T-O Map dividing the world into the provinces of the sons of Noah from the Bible.

Hence they were qualitative maps intended to make a religious statement about the world from a Christian point of view. They declared what was religiously important but were useless in bringing sailors back to port. [2]

This changed with European contacts with Byzantine and Islamic influences that had been increasing over the previous few centuries. Although writings of the Greek cartographer Ptolemy (90-168 C.E.) had been making their way into Europe in the previous period, few Europeans read Greek. With the increase of available classical authors and their translation into Latin, a new interest in Ptolemy's work emerged. [3] Combined with the growing desire for trade, navigation and cartography attracted some of the best academic minds of the 15th century who began to view the world, like Ptolemy, in a quantitative way.[4] They believed mathematics corresponded with the actual way the world was.[5] A change in

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The Spanish Galleon.

mentality meant that the world was now conceived in a mathematical and rational way. Cartography was concerned with making maps that resemble the features of geography as they actually existed rather than making a theological statement about the world. Merchants could now use maps to plot new routes to and from desired locations and their experiences and information was in turn applied to the latest maps. The craft of this new quantitative method of map-making and the training required for the new instruments of navigation were taught in the city of Lisbon, Portugal.

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Note the indirect route (in red) of the return to Portugal from the western coast of Africa. The westerlies made this the more efficient route.

the Spanish galleon, a large multi-deck ship with at least three or four masts. The forward sails were large rectangular power sails with the last mast usually carrying a lateen sail. These ships were the primary vessels of the Spanish Treasure Fleet and were capable of carrying an enormous volume of cargo. They carried most of the slaves across the Atlantic via the dreaded Middle Passage. Europeans were the first to mount firearms on their ships, outfitting their caravels and galleons with broadside canon. Thus armed, these ships gave Europeans the capacity to project unprecedented power.

Knowledge of Wind and Sea Currents Europeans were also aided by their growing familiarity with the global environment and their adaptation to it. The Portuguese learned that the most efficient maritime route between two points is not always a strait line. This could involve fighting the wind and sea currents. Consequently, they developed a strategy known as the volta do mar, or turn of the sea. Often going far out of their way, the Portuguese and other European sailors learned instead to work with the currents. For example, when Vasco da Gama sought a route to the Indian Ocean around Africa, he sailed nearly to the coast of Brazil before he caught the westerlies that took him around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.[8] Knowledge of such trade winds allowed sailors to be more efficient by using, rather than going against, the grain of nature.

III. Remarkable new transoceanic maritime reconnaissance occurred in this period.

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western coast of Africa to Portuguese exploration, and by the year of Henry's death in 1460 his country had arrived in

The location of Ceuta. Its fall to Prince Henry encouraged the Portuguese exploration of Africa's west coast.

Guinea on Africa's western coast. Soon African gold was flowing by sea from west Africa directly to Iberia rather than across the trans-Saharan caravan routes. Algiers and Tunis in north Africa were economically devastated by this rerouting of trade. Portugal got rich. [9] As contacts with west African societies continued the Portuguese began trading in ivory and slaves as well.

After a dispute with his father, Prince Henry returned home to Portugal but avoided the capital of Lisbon where he could have easily gained a comfortable royal job. Instead, he settled in the remove coastal town of Sagres which he turned into a center of navigational studies and cartography. Now called Prince Henry the Navigator, he collected fresh information from newly arrived sailors to produce the most current maps possible. The compass, thought by many Europeans to be driven my occult powers, was disenchanted of superstition and its use expanded and refined. Since initial Portuguese voyages traveled north and south exploring Africa, more precise means of measuring latitude were researched. Borrowing elements of Arabic shipbuilding, Prince Henry and his engineers designed the famous caravel,

mentioned above. All the elements needed for global exploration were brought together by Prince Henry at Sagres. Portugal was poised to take the lead, albeit brief, in the exploration and exploitation of the globe. [10]

Equipped with new maritime instruments and knowledge, the Portuguese accomplished many "firsts" in global exploration. In 1487 Bartholomew Diaz sailed his caravel around the southern tip of Africa, the first European to do so (his crew refused to press on to India). Then Vasco da Gama became the first to sail all the way to India in 1498; Europeans had found the illusive water route to the lucrative Indian Ocean trade network. The Portuguese strategy in the Indian Ocean was to dominate trade through the use of firepower, intimidation, and brutality. In the long run they were never able to completely monopolize this network but did succeed in building a trading-post empire which gave them a

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by the Portuguese to work their fleet took the knowledge of the seas back to their respective countries who were organizing their own expeditions to Asia. [11] The Portuguese began the explorations but were soon to be strong-armed out of the way by their European neighbors.

The Portuguese Empire, including the New World (Brazil), West Africa (Angola), and the trading-posts of the Indian Ocean.

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Christopher Columbus

year old Christopher Columbus washed onto the Portuguese shore with a broken oar he had used as a float. The cargo ship he worked on had been sunk by a French fleet near Gibraltar. As fortune would have it, the place where he reached the shore was only a few miles from Sagres, the location of Prince Henry's research center of navigation and cartography. Having grown up in Genoa on the Italian coast, Columbus had long possessed a fascination with sailing. But his time in Portugal, particularly Lisbon, would prove to be the most formative for what he would unwittingly accomplish.

The

The routes of Columbus in the Caribbean.

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set out enthusiastically to convince the monarchs of Europe he was right in order to obtain funding for his journey. After a series of rejections, Ferdinand and Isabella of newly united Spain decided to pay for Columbus' voyage. In October of 1492 he sighted land in what he believed to be Asia. Columbus would make four voyages across the Atlantic and seems to have died not knowing that he had failed.

Columbus did not actually discover anything, nor was he the first European to make this crossing. Nonetheless, his journey is very important historically because he initiated a world-transforming encounter between two hemispheres of this planet. There would be profound cultural, demographic, political and social consequences.

C. When it was realized that Columbus had not succeeded in finding a route to Asia, the quest did not end. North Atlantic crossings increased as European explorers sought to exploit the wealth of the New World and continue to find a way across it. The waters off the eastern coast of North America were teeming with fish and some men made fortunes shipping salt-cured cod to Europe and the Caribbean. [12] Explorers such as Champlain from France earned huge profits by sending beaver pelts back to Europe. But like many others, Champlain's motivation was not merely conquest or profit for their own sake. The furs were used to fund his ongoing obsession--the discovery of a western route to China. [13]

E. Despite the drastic expansion of global networks of communication and exchange during this time period, the networks of the Polynesians and Ocean remained unchanged, making this network an important continuity with the previous era.

IV. The new global circulation of goods was facilitated by royal chartered European monopoly companies that took silver from Spanish colonies in the Americas to purchase Asian goods for the Atlantic markets, but regional markets continued to flourish in Afro-Eurasia by using established commercial practices and new transoceanic shipping services developed by European merchants. A. According

The Sultan of Kilwa on the Swahili coast of Africa was expelled by the Portuguese.

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They did not really bring any items of their own to trade, or add value to the sum of trade in this region. Instead, they attempted, in a parasitic way, to extract benefits from the host network into which they forced themselves.

From the start, superior firepower allowed them to accomplish much. The Portuguese stormed the Swahili city of Kilwa and threw out its Muslim leaders. Commander Alfonso Alboquerque seized Malacca in 1511 (the Dutch would take it from Portugal in 1641). The Portuguese attempted to close the Red Sea to trade to stop this "leak" of trade through their fingers into the Mediterranean via Egypt. Breaking traditional customs of tolerance, the King of Portugal asked the leader of Calicut to expel all Muslims from his kingdom. But Portugal's ambitions were grander than its ability to enforce its demands. Rather than an all-out conquest of the region, they established a trading-post empire (mentioned above) in order to profit from goods as they moved from one area to another. Indeed, by the end of the 1500s they had integrated with the normal political and economic climate of the region. [15] Other European countries would implement the same strategy. The Dutch, for example, found that working within the existing system could produce for them the highest profits. They made a fortune charging fees to transport items from one Asian area to another. [16] The European powers were never able to establish genuine and lasting monopolies in the Indian Ocean. This is in stark contrast with their experiences in the New World.

B. We

A peso de ocho, or piece of eight.

saw in the previous period (600-1450) that the creation of a common currency in China facilitated trade in that region. Widely accepted currencies speed up transactions and provide standardized way for merchants to measure the value of products. In this period the use of a common currency expanded from regional to global use. The Spanish peso de ocho, or "piece of eight," was the first currency in history to be used globally.

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The Taj Mahal is a testimony to the wealth of silver.

Spanish introduced the amalgamation method of using mercury to extract silver from ore. Production soared. In two centuries the silver mines of the Spanish New World produced 40,000 tons of silver. [17] The industrial centers that grew around these mines minted 2.5 million silver coins per year. The peso de ocho, worth about 80 US dollars today, gained acceptance around the world and lubricated global trade on an unprecedented level. Mughal India wanted Spanish silver for payment for its pepper sales, and this surge of silver funded Shah Jahan's construction of the Taj Mahal. Much of the Spanish silver ended up the hands of the Chinese, who had no desire for European products but readily accepted silver as payment for its coveted exports. The peso do ocho was even accepted currency in the United States until the Coinage Act of 1857. [18]

C. In the early 1600s European countries found new methods of financing exploration and business. Since trading ventures were too expensive for most individuals to fund, investors began to pool their resources together into organizations called joint-stock companies. The most famous of these, the British East India Company (EIC), began in 1600 when the British government gave 218 London

investors a royal monopoly of all trade east of the Cape of Good Hope. Established about one year later was the Dutch East India Company, known

The flag of the East India Company.

as the VOC. They were initially a much larger and wealthier rival of the EIC, with 10 times the capital resources of its British counterpart. Joint-stock companies proliferated. The Dutch West Indies Company traded in the New World and founded New Amsterdam, today New York City. And the Virginia Company of London was given a monopoly on the mid-Atlantic coast of North America.

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The sign of the Dutch East India Company.

an improvement over traditional partnerships because of something called limited liability. In a partnership, investors pool their resources together and share the profits or losses collectively. In the case of a shipwreck or some other calamity, however, investors would owe more than they put in and could be driven to bankruptcy. But the limited liability of a joint-stock company meant that an investor could never lose more than what he paid in. With risks thus limited but the potential for profit still high, joint-stock companies attracted thousands of investors willing to put up money, called stock, in these ventures.

Voyages funded by joint-stock companies were more efficient and profitable than those funded by monarchs. Unconcerned with religious conversion, their voyages were streamlined to produce as much profit as possible in order to please investors and attract more capital. Thus countries such as Spain and Portugal, in which the king financed business, could not compete with the more efficient business practices of companies. Spain endured only as long as it could drain the New World of its silver reserves.

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the classical age several major trade routes dominated trans-regional trade. Political, environmental and demographic changes altered the ebb of flow in the volume of trade and gave each a turn at being the dominant trade route. These major routes coexisted for most of this time and no major new networks were added. Between 1450 and 1750, however, an entirely new trade route emerged and became the world's dominant network of exchange. The Atlantic System connected the old and new worlds in a triangular pattern across the ocean. A truly global system of trade was established.

In an effort to make trade as efficient as possible, ships in this triangular pattern never sailed empty. From Africa, they sailed across the Atlantic to the New World with slaves. After selling the slaves, they sailed to Europe with sugar, tobacco, and rum. After loading their ships with alcohol, metal items, and guns, they said to Africa's west coast to trade these things for slaves and begin the circuit all over again.

V. The new connections between the Eastern and Western hemispheres resulted in the Columbian Exchange.

After the voyage of Columbus, the two halves of the planet learned that each other existed. As networks of trade and communication expanded to include both hemispheres, items from one side made their way over to the other side in a process of exchanges that lasted several centuries. In the 20th century a historian named this process of intentional and unintentional sharing the Columbian Exchange. [19] This sharing of items took place most predominately in the following categories:

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A snapshot of the Columbian Exchange.

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B. The Columbian Exchange also diffused new crops from the Americas to locations throughout the world. Potatoes were transplanted to places like Europe, Russia, and China. Because they produce heavier yields than cereal grains and can be cultivated in higher altitudes, potatoes led to increased surpluses of food. About 25% of the population growth in Afro-Eurasia between 1700 and 1900 can be attributed to the cultivation of potatoes. [23] China, for example, experienced a rapid population growth after potatoes were widely cultivated there. Tomatoes and hot chili peppers were also transplanted from their place of origin in South America to Afro-Eurasia. Today, the cuisines we characteristically associate with Italy and Asia are unthinkable without tomatoes and hot peppers, respectively.

A ripe tobacco leaf ready for harvest.

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discarded, could be distilled into alcohol. [25] This new product, Rum, meant that sugarcane could produce two highly profitable products and had virtually no waste. Entire forests were cleared to grow sugarcane and the plantation system proliferated across the Caribbean. This in turn created a

tremendous demand for slaves. The cash crop of sugar--and to a lesser extent tobacco--increased the slave trade of the Atlantic system.

C. Another aspect of the Columbian Exchange was the introduction of Old World domesticated animals to the New. Europeans brought pigs, cows, sheep and cattle to the Americas as well as rodents like rabbits and rats. With wide open spaces and virtually no natural predators, these animals quickly multiplied across the Americas; by 1700, herds of wild cattle and horses in South America reached 50 million. [26] In North America, tribes like the Navajo became sheepherders and began to produce woolen textiles. The abundance of cattle increased the amount of meat in New World diets and provided them with hides. The introduction of horses had an even greater effect. They dramatically increased the efficiency of hunters and warriors, and tribes like the Comanche, Apache, Blackfoot and Sioux grained greater success in hunting the buffalo herds on the plains of North America. [27] Along side these animals brought by Europeans, slaves brought new plants to the New World such as yams, okra, and black-eyed peas. Soon they became common foods that took the place of most indigenous crops, except maize (corn).

D. New World crops that were transplanted to Afro-Eurasia improved the variety and nutritional content of the population. The coming of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and maize to the Old World "resulted in caloric and nutritional improvements over previously existing staples." [28] Tomatoes and peppers not only added vitamins and improved the taste of Old World diets; they contributed to the development of regional cuisines.

New World food crops made different demands on the soil than crops that had been cultivated for centuries in the Old World. Fields whose fertility had declined with tireless planting of traditional crops were given new life when New World crops arrived. The new crops also had different growing and harvest times. Thus New World crops complimented crops already grown in the Old World creating more varied, nutritional, and abundant food production. [29]

E. The presence of the Europeans had negative effects on the environment of the New World. Now that trade was global, there was an urgent need for a larger number of ships. Easily accessible forests in Europe had long since disappeared, so Europeans looked to the seemingly unlimited timber of the New World for their shipbuilding needs. Further contributing to this deforestation was the single cash-crop nature of the plantation system. Tremendous profits could be made by converting huge tracks of land to sugar or tobacco production. This required clear cutting forests which led to increased erosion and flooding.

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VI. The increase in interactions between newly connected hemispheres and intensification of connections within hemispheres expanded the spread and reform of existing religions and created syncretic belief systems and practices.

The Faith Mosque (bottom picture) borrowed from and improved upon Byzantine architecture, as seen in the Hagia Sophia (top).

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Islam blended with local cultures in Southeast Asia as well. The prophet Mohammed showed up as a character in Hindu epics and local folklore. [31] In Indonesia, the selamatan, a local feast of reconciliation, was used by Muslim leaders to convert people to the new faith. Conversion stories took on traditional characteristics, such as accompanying miracles and signs. In Javanese culture, these miracles were necessary to establish the leader as a channel of communication between God and people. [32] As the Islamic Mughal Dynasty formed in South Asia, an enormous amount of religious syncretism formed. A new world religion, Sikhism, combined Islam's notion of the oneness of God with the Hindu concept of inclusiveness. Although it did not endure, Akbar attempted to create a new faith by combining elements of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. In the arts, Persian, Hindu and Muslim styles

blended to form a distinctively Mughal form of painting.

The Sunni-Shia divide in Islam that emerged in the previous time period grew more intense in this era. The epitome of this conflict was the struggle between the Ottoman Empire, which was Sunni, and its Shia neighbor, the Safavid Empire. The territorial struggle between these two Muslim empires culminated with the Battle of Chaldiran i

n 1514. At this battle in present day Iran, the outnumbered and poorly equipped Shia Safavids were defeated by the Sunni Ottomans. Firearms were a prominent reason for the Ottoman victory and they experienced a period of expansion after the Battle. The Safavids learned the importance of firearms and became a "gunpowder empire." More importantly, the spread of Shia Islam was stopped and this sect continued as a minority sect of the Muslim religion.

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Sufi Orders became important institution in African society, Sufism became an essential element of Islam's spread and integration. In these Orders, Sunni and Shia Muslims, heretics, and traditional spiritualists all came together. Sufi mystics were often well versed in Islam as well as in the spiritual ways of traditional

Jesuits advocating their religion in the Mughal courts of Akbar.

African religions. [35] Consequently, it is not surprising that Islam in West Africa tended to remain highly syncretic. Sunni Ali, the founder of the Songhai Empire, claimed to be a Muslim but continued to practice traditional religious rituals and sacrifices and sought legitimacy through them. [36]

Christianity In this era Christianity became more diversified and spread across the globe. The impetus for these changes began in Western Europe where the unity of Christian civilization was shattered by the Protestant Reformation. The printing press made the Bible available to countless Christians, and many of them took it to be a higher authority in their lives than the Pope and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Believers who "protested" the church and broke from Catholicism became known as

Protestants. Owing to their belief that Christians can read and interpret the Bible for themselves, Protestants quickly splintered into many subgroups based on varying interpretations and practices. The Protestant Reformation quickly became political as some European monarchs left the Catholic Church only to free themselves from the Pope's authority and become more autonomous.

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even executions. Despite their zeal, they had little success in Asia except for the northern Philippines which remains predominately Catholic to this day. The Jesuits had much

The Virgin of Guadalupe, symbol of a mestizo faith.

more success in Latin America. In Brazil, they organized people into villages, built schools for children, and created a writing system for the local languages. [37] The seventeenth century saw an increase of Jesuit missionary activity across Latin America. They set up missions in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia. As early as 1603 there were 345 Jesuit priests in Mexico alone. [38]

Syncretism in the Americas The spread of religion in this era led to rich syncretic blends of religious symbolism and beliefs. We have already mentioned the development of Sikhism above. In the Americas, the Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries were often disappointed with their attempts to spread their faith to the Amerindians who imbued Christian symbols with their own traditional beliefs. The best example of this blending is the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico today. In 1531 a peasant reported seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary to his local priest. The site of this apparition was a hill used to worship the Aztec fertility god Tonantzin in pre-Columbian times. The Spanish had previously destroyed the temple to Tonantzin on this very hill and replaced it with a Catholic church, a common practice in the conquest of Mexico. According to reports, when an image of this vision was first unveiled at this church peasants did not recognize it as the Virgin Mary but instead shouted "Tonantzin! Tonantzin!" [39] One of the Aztec titles for Tonantzin was "Seven Flowers," [40] an interesting fact when we see that the Virgin of Guadalupe is frequently depicted amidst an abundance of flowers. Thus in Latin America is it less accurate to speak of "conversion" than of the rise of a genuinely mestizo religion in which indigenous people projected ancient forms of worship onto the symbols of the new Catholic faith. [41]

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Ironically, Catholic authorities in Haiti accelerated the process of syncretism by forbidding slaves from worshipping their former African deities. Slaves adapted by using Catholic saints as representatives of their closest African counterparts. In worshiping the Virgin Mary, Africans were actually worshiping Oshun, the beautiful Nigerian water goddess of love. They continued their worship of Legba, the god who holds to keys to the underworld and decides people's eternal destiny, by paying their respects to Saint Peter. [42] By appropriating Catholic saints and images to their own beliefs, slaves in Haiti could use them as "a veil behind which they could practice their African religions." [43] The resulting syncretic religion that came out of this practice is known as Vodun. Although often misunderstood in popular culture (sometimes called Voodoo), it is a rich and varied belief system containing a system of justice, folk medical practices, oral and artistic traditions, and creeds. The religion of Santeria in Cuba developed similarly by blending the beliefs of Yoruba slaves with Spanish Catholicism.

VII. As merchants’ pro ts increased and governments collected more taxes, funding for the visual and performing arts, even for popular audiences, increased along with an expansion of literacy..

Key Concept 4.2 New Forms of Social Organization and Modes of Production From AP Worldipedia

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"Although the world’s productive systems continued to be heavily centered on agricultural production throughout this period, major changes occurred in agricultural labor, the systems and locations of manufacturing, gender and social structures, and environmental processes. A surge in agricultural productivity resulted from new methods in crop and field rotation and the introduction of new crops. Economic growth also depended on new forms of manufacturing and new commercial patterns, especially in long-distance trade. Political and economic centers within regions shifted, and merchants’ social status tended to rise in various states. Demographic growth — even in areas such as the Americas, where disease had ravaged the population — was restored by the eighteenth century and surged in many regions, especially with the introduction of American food crops throughout the Eastern

Hemisphere. The Columbian Exchange led to new ways of humans interacting with their environments. New forms of coerced and semi-coerced labor emerged in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and affected ethnic and racial classifications and gender roles." [1]

I. Beginning in the 14th century, there was a decrease in mean temperatures, often referred to as the Little Ice Age, around the world that lasted until the 19th century, contributing to changes in

agricultural practices and the contraction of settlement in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. II. Traditional peasant agriculture increased and changed, plantations expanded, and demand for labor increased. These changes both fed and responded to growing global demand for raw materials and finished products.

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such as grain, seeds, and farming tools. Many peasants sought to create a better and more independent life for themselves by moving east.

Indian peasant carding (combing) raw cotton.

Fur trappers pushed to the east as well to take advantage in the profitable trade in furs. For the most part, however, the eastern frontier was settled by peasants who were encouraged to migrate by the Russian government.

During the Mughal empire, the price of spices declined. To maintain their profits, joint-stock companies such as the British East India Company and the Dutch VOC encouraged Mughal leaders to supplement pepper exports with cotton textiles. Cotton, which was softer than many fabrics and could be dyed and printed with elaborate patterns, became an extremely popular fad in Europe. To meet this demand, the Mughal government forced a vast number of peasants to work cotton fields and textile operations. As in Russia, state mandates and incentives led to the mass mobilization of peasants to aid state objectives.

The Qing (Manchu) Empire likewise utilized peasants for their economic gain. Even though they focused China’s economic strength more on the practice of agriculture than commerce, silk exports became important to their economy. The city of Canton in the south of China was the only location where Europeans were allowed to conduct business and the Chinese accepted only gold and silver as payment for their exports. To meet the demand of foreigners for silk, the government forced peasants to work in the growing of mulberry plants (necessary for silk worms to produce quality silk) and in the general production of silk. In some areas, silk production exceeded rice production and consumed all surplus labor of peasant families. [2]

B. Despite all the dramatic changes in labor during this period, Africa continued to supply slaves to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean as it did in previous periods. Records of the slave trade in Africa date back to 2900 B.C.E. when slaves were transported from Sub-Saharan Africa to Nubia. [3] As the slave trade grew tremendously in the Atlantic system to supply plantation labor in the Americas, the

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C.

Sugarcane growing in Brazil today.

The Portuguese colony of Brazil was the first to implement the plantation system in the New World. A plantation is a large commercial farm used to grow a single cash crop for export. First tobacco, and then sugar became the most lucrative crops in this system. But indigenous labor did not work well as many native Americans succumbed to diseases carried by the European plantation managers. Europeans looked to Africa. With the growth of the plantation system the demand for African slaves increased. Over 10 million were transported across the Middle Passage of the Atlantic System.

D. Many Europeans came to the new world to make a fortune. Without labor, the land they gained had no value in accomplishing this goal. Economic success depended on the ability to mobilize a large labor force in the service of the European colonizers. Consequently, they established a wide range of coerced labor systems in the Americas:

The encomienda This

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system was modeled after the reconquest of Iberia. In Spain, the conquistadors were granted access to Muslim labor in the areas they reconquered for the monarch (recall that much of Spain was under Muslim control for centuries). After its success in Europe, the Spanish attempted the same practice in the Americas. Land grants, called encomiendas, were given to Spanish conquistadors and soldiers and they were free to exploit the labor of the people inhabiting the land entrusted to them. Under Philip II of Spain, the encomienda system was instituted in the Spanish Philippines as well. In the Americas, the system went into decline as many natives died of diseases in close contact with Europeans.

The mita system As disease rendered the encomienda system unworkable, the Spanish and Portuguese adopted a labor system from the indigenous people themselves. The mita system developed in the Inca Empire as a method of rotating groups of workers in the service of the state. When they were not working on their family farms, men between the age of 15 and 50 would provide their labor to the empire as a form of tax payment, or a corvée system. The Spanish adopted this system of labor and applied it to several contexts, especially their silver mining projects. Villages controlled by Spain had to provide a set number of people to the Spanish for labor in the mines.

The hacienda Like the encomienda and the mita system, the haciendas generally exploited local indigenous labor. However, the hacienda was a private estate, often the result of a land grant given to an individual by the monarch. Another difference is that the hacienda produced food and good primarily for local consumption. They tended to be self-sufficient estates although many of them were economically connected to nearby encomienda with which they traded food items and hand produced goods.

Chattel slavery Chattel slavery is what most people think of when they hear the word slavery. It is the form of labor in which the laborer is most dehumanized as he or she is considered solely as private property of the owner. Chattel slaves can be bought and sold at the owners

discretion, are uncompensated, and have little chance of gaining freedom. As mentioned above, Africa provided the chattel slaves to the Americas predominately after sugar plantations, began by the Portuguese, spread across South America and the Caribbean.

III. As new social and political elites changed, they also restructured new ethnic, racial, and gender hierarchies.

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The Manchus forced the conquered Han to adopt their hair style called the queue. It became a symbol of Manchu domination over the Han and an easy way to identify those Chinese who refused to submit to the Manchu.

the movement of wealth, and new connections that societies experienced significant restructuring. In some cases new ethnic groups rose to the top of society thus replacing traditional elites.

Examples of the rise of new elites:

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separate from the ethnic Chinese (the Han). Chinese were forbidden to learn the Manchu language and prohibited from traveling to the Manchu homeland where they might learn it. Marriage between Manchu and Han was illegal. [5] With ethnic lines clearly drawn, Manchus got preferential treatment. There was a separate court system for Manchus and prosecuting them was very difficult. If convicted, Manchus got reduced punishments and had prison cells separate from those used for all other prisoners. Although the Manchus allowed Chinese, Mongols, and minority ethnic groups in their bureaucracy, Manchus got the most prestigious appointments and higher salaries paid in silver, not copper coins like other ethnic groups were paid. [6]

Creoles in Spanish America Having just driven the Moors and Jews out of Iberia, the Spanish

Conquistadors who came to the Americas were very conscious of race. The class system they established there combined the racial prejudices of Europeans with the unique circumstances of the New World. The Spanish exercised power in their American empire primarily though large landed estates (see encomienda above) though which they controlled indigenous labor and collected tribute. The owners of these estates were creoles, people of pure Spanish descent for whom the New World was their

permanent home. Although peninsulares, viceroys and other bureaucrats on assignment from Spain, continued to be the colonial connection to the crown back in Europe, creoles better understood the day-to-day management of the colonies and developed their own colonial culture. The new creole elites worked in close relationship with the Roman Catholic Church which served to reinforce the hierarchical and patriarchal social order of the colonies. [7] Needless to say, the creoles grew to resent the

peninsulares. They would be the driving force for independence in the revolutionary period.

B. In addition to the rise of new elites, some empires experienced a fluctuation in power of existing elites. These traditional political and economic elites were used to being able to influence the political leaders of their empires but found it increasingly difficult to do so.

Examples of fluctuating power of existing elites: Russian Boyars The territorial

Ivan IV's oprichnina, a brotherhood of terror who killed over 40,000 in Novgorad alone.

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the Byzantine Empire fell because of the "feuding, and disloyalty of it aristocrats, which had made it impossible to present a united front against Ottoman aggression." [8] Both Ivans sought to weaken the boyars and create a more centralized state. Ivan III deported and executed thousands of boyars

Russian Boyars

in the city of Novgorad and replaced them with individuals who held their power on condition of service to him. [9] His grandson, Ivan IV applied this policy to a much larger portion of the empire. Boyars were exiled from their estates, thus cut off from their source of wealth and their ability to marshal local military power. Inspired in part by the Ottoman janissaries, Ivan IV created a policing army directly under his authority and not subject to local aristocratic oversight. But unlike the janissaries, the oprichnina, as they were called, could kill with impunity and terrorized much of the empire. When Ivan IV died, the empire was unstable, demoralized, and the boyars were eager to reassert their provincial powers.

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Zamindars collecting tribute from peasants. Akbar's new tax system bypassed this decentralizing class of aristocrats.

whose power fluctuated in this time was the zamindars of the Mughal Empire. Like the boyars in Russia, zamindars were intermediaries between rulers and the ruled. They performed the function of

aristocrats. The Mughal state had the zamindars collect tribute from peasants and allowed them to keep 10 percent of it themselves before sending it to the government. Tribute was paid in kind, in the form of crops, rice, pepper, or some other agricultural product. As with all aristocrats with local authority, zamindars constituted a potentially decentralizing force. Revenues to the state began to drop because the zamindars were keeping much of this tribute for themselves; peasants resented them for growing rich at their expense. Emperor Akbar reformed this system of taxation in a way that both ensured higher revenues for the state as well as centralizing the power of the government. With an abundance of Spanish silver now available in Asia, Akbar monetized the tax system, requiring peasants to pay taxes in currency rather than in agricultural produce. To do this they were required to take their harvest to special state monitored markets to sell for cash which was then used to pay taxes directly to the government. No longer tribute collecting lords, the zamindars had been circumvented and the state more centralized. Many of them became servants of the state. [10]

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French aristocrats.

monarchies of western Europe, the nobles (or, aristocrats) were the intermediary elites linking the ruler with the ruled. Aristocratic families possessed official titles of nobility and drew their wealth from large estates inherited through the family line of descent for centuries. They had control over the land, the peasants who worked it, and over the retainers (knights) who they could mobilize for defense. This group was at once both necessary and problematic for kings: necessary because they pulled together men and resources to fend off external rivals; problematic because they could act together to challenge the power of the king. [11] In the 1500s every European monarch, from England to Russia, attempted to reorganize this arrangement of elites in order to increase the power and security of the state. [12] Silver mines in the Americas, where there were no entrenched aristocratic families, meant the king did not have to depend as strongly on the aristocrats in Spain to fund his military campaigns. [13] In France, kings sold titles of nobility to non-aristocratic families in order to generate income. Needless to say, the traditional aristocratic families who possessed their wealth and titles for centuries looked down upon the new nobles who bought their way into privilege. Both groups despised the "vulgar" wealth of the middle class which had been obtained through craftwork, trade, and investments. Yet this former group was growing increasingly wealthy and more relevant to the economic realities of the world. Many aristocrats declined in influence and fell into enormous debt. An Englishman noted in 1628 that "the House of Commons could buy the House of Lords three times over." [14] Economic changes had set in motion a gradual process of social transformation in which the aristocracy, with its inherited wealth and titles, was becoming less relevant than those whose wealth was made through joint stock companies, craft work and trade.

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the rise of new elites and the fluctuating power of intermediaries, this era saw demographic, gender, and family changes as well. In Africa, the slave trade caused a significant demographic change. Between 1500 and 1900 approximately 10 million slaves were taken from Africa's west coast to labor in the Americas. During that same time, 6 million left the east coast as slaves in Asia and 8 million were enslaved within the African continent. [15] The result was that just as European and Asian populations were increasing due to the transferring of new crops (The Columbian Exchange), Africa saw a significant decline in population. Moreover, since there was an emphasis placed on having male slaves for sugar plantations in the Americas, the drain of slaves on the west African coast had a strong gender

dimension. Places hit hardest by the slave trade, such as Angola, experienced a catastrophic gender imbalance with females comprising up to 65 percent of the population. [16]

In Southeast Asia,

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which had long been a crossroad of trans-regional trade, a very different change in gender relations was occurring. For a long time, merchants arriving to this area discovered that local women were the

essential key to doing business. Through a traditional practice called temporary marriage, merchants entered into relationships with local women that were mutually benefiting to both parties: merchants gained access to local markets and products, learned of indigenous practices and conditions, and gained sexual relations; the women gained gifts, support for their children, and connections to outside trading networks. When the merchant moved on, these marriages could be terminated and the women were free to pursue another such connection with no negative stigma or loss of social status. [17] These reciprocating relationships allowed some women to create impressive networks of trade and weld considerable power on local politics. In this era, however, the increasing involvement of European and Islam merchants reduced the instances of temporary marriages and, along with them, the economic influence of women.

In the 17th century, foreign merchants brought with them different cultural views of marriage.

Europeans and Chinese concepts of marriage were more restrictive and the expectation was, especially from Christian and Muslim merchants, that reputable women remain chase. However, these merchants still sought sexual relations with women. As a result, temporary marriages declined along with the opportunities they gave women for economic and political influence. The sexual relations once provided through temporary marriages now came from impoverished girls selling sexual favors to foreign

merchants for cash. Foreign businessmen began to purchase these girls as sex slaves to profit from their clients. Scholars who research prostitution in modern Southeast Asia today increasingly link it

historically to this transformation. [18]

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In Spanish America, new racial classifications emerged.

in this era began a transformation of family patterns which would become much more prominent in the industrial age. European families decreased in size, particularly in urban centers. An agricultural based society thrives on large and extended families, as each member contributes to the family's production of food. In middle class urban families, children tend to be an expense for a longer period of time. As a consequence, the fertility rate was smaller in urban societies. Men and women also tended to marry latter in life, usually into their twenties, a sharp contrast to agricultural marriages which took place at an earlier age. As people began to earn money through crafts, trade and investments, a single set of parents and their children grew to be economically independent from the larger extended family. The nuclear family, as this was called, was less tied to property ownership and more emotionally centered. [19]

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consequently, more likely to produce children of mixed ethnicities. Thus in Latin America peninsulares, aristocrats from Europe, were at the top of the social system. Next were creoles, people of pure European blood who were permanent residents in the American colonies. They often resented the peninsulares who were their superiors but whom the creoles thought knew less about the day to day management of the colonies than they did. The racial mixing between these groups of Europeans on one hand and indigenous people and slaves on the other, created the classifications of mestizo and mulatto as can be seen in the table to the right.

Key Concept 4.3 State Consolidation and Imperial Expansion From AP Worldipedia

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Empires expanded and conquered new peoples around the world, but they often had difficulties

incorporating culturally, ethnically, and religiously diverse subjects, and administrating widely dispersed territories. Agents of the European powers moved into existing trade networks around the world. In Africa and the greater Indian Ocean, nascent European empires consisted mainly of interconnected trading posts and enclaves. In the Americas, European empires moved more quickly to settlement and territorial control, responding to local demographic and commercial conditions. Moreover, the creation of European empires in the Americas quickly fostered a new Atlantic trade system that included the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Around the world, empires and states of varying sizes pursued strategies of centralization, including more efficient taxation systems that placed strains on peasant producers, sometimes prompting local rebellions. Rulers used public displays of art and architecture to legitimize state power. African states shared certain characteristics with larger Eurasian empires. Changes in African and global trading patterns strengthened some West and Central African states — especially on the coast; this led to the rise of new states and contributed to the decline of states on both the coast and in the interior. [1]

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authority over other people is not something we humans take for granted. We need a reason to obey. Coercion and force have long been a part of political power, but we yield to them out of fear or for pragmatic reasons rather than our belief that they constitute legitimate reasons for our consent. A state has political legitimacy when subjects choose to recognize its authority because it has some intrinsic validating quality. Notions used by states to legitimize their rule in this period (1450-1750) are examples of important continuities of state-building we have seen since the River Valley Civilizations in Period I. Religion and art continued to be closely connected with the political power of states.

Some examples of religious ideas legitimizing states are:

European notions of divine right. The divine right of kings is an important political ideology in Western Europe. It maintains that the king’s authority comes from God and, as such, the king is accountable only to God for his actions. Thus it supports the idea of absolute monarchy in which the monarch’s power is not checked by any earthly agent. In Roman Catholic countries it means that the king’s power must be endorsed by the pope, a tradition that goes back to

Charlemagne’s coronation in the year 800 C.E. Here, for example, is an account of the coronation of Charlemagne:

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The ideology of the divine right of kings reached its highest expression during the reign of Louis XIV of France. As Louis was consolidating his control of France, his chief theologian, Jacque Bousset, wrote a work called Politics Drawn from the Words of Holy Scripture which justified the absolute monarchy King Louis was creating. "Monarchical authority comes from God," he wrote. "Royal authority is sacred; religion and conscious demand that we obey the prince. Royal authority is absolute; the prince need render account to no one for what he orders. Even if kings fail in their duty, their charge and their ministry must be respected. . . . Prices are gods." [3] Thus monarchs of Europe--particularly Catholic Europe--justified absolute monarchy with religion.

The Safavid's use of Shiism. The Safavids rose out of the dissolution of the Timurid Empire, the state formed by the conquests of Timur, also known as Tamerlane. After his death, Timur’s empire fell to warring family members. (One of his descendants, Babur, conquered northern India and began the Mughal Empire.) In Persia, Mesopotamia, and Eastern Anatolia, the disintegrating Timurid Empire opened the way for Shi’ite sects and Sufi brotherhoods to proliferate. Taking advantage of the absence of any centralized state, Ismail—a leader from a prominent Sufi family—conquered most of these areas in the late 15th century and began the Safavid Empire. However, despite unifying Iran (Persia), much of the population did not accept their authority. After converting to Shia Islam, Safavid leaders “sought to install Shiism as the state religion so as to command the loyalty of the population.” The result was a syncretic blend of Shiism and traditional Persian beliefs. Ismail “adopted many of the forms of Persian, pre-Islamic government, including the title of Shah.” [4] He claimed to have descended not only from the Seventh Imam, [5] but also to be the reincarnation of pre-Islamic kings and prophets.[6] Ismail's religious charisma can be seen in his poetry:

Prostrate thyself! (Bow down)

Pander not to Satan

Adam has put on new clothes,

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Subsequent Safavid leaders continued to fuse Shiism with their political power. They built mosques and appointed prayer leaders in each village to secure Shia beliefs. [8] The Safavids made their empire a safe haven for Shi’a scholars and invited many of them to migrate to their empire. These religious sages depended on the state for support and in turn recognized the legitimacy of Safavid rule. However, they did not grant them absolute rule over scholarly religious affairs[9] which meant that political and religious leadership would form a dual system of authority, as exists in Iran today.

The Shiism of the Safavids would put them at odds with the greater Sunni community. Arab Muslim scholars were not at ease with the Safavid belief that prophecies did not end with Mohammad or that "the souls of old prophets could transmigrate into different human beings at any given time." [10] These developments also shored up the belief of the Ottomans that they were the protectors of the true form of Islam.

Mexica or Aztec practice of human sacrifice The sacrificial system

Obsidian blades used to remove the hearts of victims in Aztec sacrifices.

of the Aztecs was notoriously violent. Many sacrifices were aimed at maintaining the empire’s economic and social stability and the calendar year was full of systematic sacrifices performed by groups of different tradesmen at specified times. For example, during the month of Etzalcualiztli, fishermen would sacrifice a slave to guarantee heavy yields. [11] Each month priests perform sacrifices tuned to the seasonal cycles of agriculture and rain. But the most elaborate sacrifices were performed on the top of large pyramids where thousands of captives could be killed in a single day. Warriors led their captives from battle to the temple where priests could cut open their chest and remove the heart in as little as twenty seconds. In some cases, a priest would wear the skin of a sacrificed victim for days, and on other occasions limbs from victims were cooked with dried maize and consumed at elaborate banquets.

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among men from varied backgrounds that minimized ethnic and kinship identities. In doing so, the sacrifices brought greater unity and loyalty to the state.

Chinese emperor's performance of Confucian rituals Confucianism was always deeply concerned with rituals, and during the Tang dynasty leaders adapted Confucian rituals to legitimize their rule. Later, when the foreign Manchus established the Qing dynasty, they appropriated these rituals in an effort to claim the Mandate of Heaven and to elevate the importance of the emperor. Many Confucian rituals involved the imperial family. In fact, it is only a slight exaggeration to say that established rituals proscribed most everything the emperor did. For example, in the beginning of the spring the Emperor participated in an elaborate ceremony in which he plowed the first furrow of earth and planted the first seed in front of the Temple of Agriculture. [13] No farm work could begin until the emperor completed this ritual. This ceremonial act procured the good will of the gods, ensured a plentiful harvest, and linked the vigor of Chinese civilization to the actions of the emperor.

A Qing ceremony in which the emperor offers sacrifices at the Xiannong Altar, Temple of Agriculture, in Beijing.

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An Ottoman miniature painting showing the fall of Limassol Castle on the island of Cypress in 1538. used Confucian ritual to legitimize their rule. The sacrifices to Heaven, performed in the northern suburbs of the capital during the summer solstice and in the southern during the summer solstice, grew to be the most important ritual. Many rituals of ancestor worship were absorbed into the sacrifices made to Heaven thus creating a close link between the spirits of the ancestors and Heaven. In fact, the Emperor's ancestors became a link between Heaven and the imperial family. By publicly performing these rituals twice a year, the Emperor was reaffirming the Mandate of Heaven. [14]

Some examples of art legitimizing states are:

Ottoman miniature painting Influenced by Persian traditions, Ottoman artists continued and developed a rich tradition of courtly art known as miniature paining. As one of the "arts of the book" (along with calligraphy), miniature painting was used to illustrate and embellish

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built an imperial scriptorium and solicited Renaissance artists from Italy to come and share their expertise. Ottoman miniature painting reached its peak in the 16th century when

Emperor Kangxi with a book representing a hallmark of Confucian legitimacy: scholarship.

the empire created an official post of court historian. Presiding over a team of writers, calligraphers, illustrators and miniaturists, the court historian produced elegant works of Ottoman imperial history. By the 18th century, when Ottoman conquests came to an end, miniature painting focused on portraits of sultans and illustrations of imperial genealogies. A few of them trace the sultans genealogy back through many of the most significant prophets to Adam in the Garden of Eden. Regardless of their topical changes, miniature painting was used by the Ottoman government to reinforce their authority and legitimacy. [15]

Qing imperial portraits We saw above how important rituals were to the Chinese imperial court. During the Qing dynasty these ceremonies included the use of art. Imperial portraits of

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Rulers Using Art: An Important Continuity in State Building

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The Qianlong Emperor as the Bodhisattva Mafijusrt. During the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1796) the Qing dynasty expanded the borders of China father than they had ever been before. China also became much more multi-cultural than it had ever been. The Qianlong Emperor used imperial portraits to represent himself to each region in the culture and dress of that region. To the ethnic Chinese (the Han) he had himself painted as a great scholar and promoter of Chinese values;[18] to the Mongols of Central Asia, he was depicted as a traditional warrior of the steppes. [19] The portrait above shows him pictured as the best known bodhisattva of Tibetan Buddhism, surrounded by Buddhist symbols. For example, he "raises his right hand in the gesture of argument while supporting the wheel of the law in his left. He also holds two stems of lotus blossoms, which serve as platforms for a sutra and a sword, the attributes of Manjusri. He is pictured among 108 deities . . . who represent his Buddhist lineage." [20]

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pillars of Islam. As Muslim rulers of a predominately Hindu empire, Akbar and Jahangir were dedicated to forging strategic alliances with local Hindu rulers. This painting shows Muslim and Hindu leaders participating together in the ritual. It also demonstrates the wealth, power, and benevolence of the Mughals. [21]

Napoleon in his Study. After a little more than a decade after the French Revolution began, Napoleon Bonaparte had worked his way through the military ranks and proved himself to be a brilliant general. In 1804, taking advantage of the uncertainties and political vacuum of the revolutionary era, Napoleon made himself emperor of France. This portrait depicts Napoleon Bonaparte in that year. The artists emphasizes his role as a tireless and productive statesman. His sword is close by, but at rest on the gilded chair. The candle behind him has burned down to a stump and the clock on the wall reads 4:13 a.m. The object of his tireless labor is on the table, the Code of Napoleon, and the book on the floor is Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Its presence suggests Napoleon be included with the great leaders of antiquity.

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State-Building and Monumental Architecture

As a member of the Hanseatic League, the northern Russian city of Novgorod was vital in connecting European merchants with their Arab and Byzantine counterparts. Its surrounding marshes and thick forests protected it from the Mongol conquests allowing its importance for the coveted trade in fine furs to be uninterrupted.

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The location of Timbuktu on the southern rim of the Sahara Desert raised its importance for trans-Saharan caravan trade. It became an exchange point for west African gold and north African salt. Because of the trade in books, the city also became an important city for Islamic scholarship and education.

Hangzhou was located near China's southern coast and on the Grand Canal which connected it across 1000 kilometers to Beijing. It was a departure point for Chinese goods to Korea, Japan, southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean trade network. It became the capital of China during the Southern Song Dynasty.

B. As we have seen since the earliest empires, the territorial growth of states invites the problems of ruling a large multi-ethnic empire. The most successful states found ways to incorporate ethnic and cultural minorities in a way that permitted the state to benefit from their presence while at the same time limiting their political influence. Between 1450 and 1750 there were several examples of states attempting this balancing act.

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the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the Ottoman empire absorbed the former Byzantine lands and the number of Christians under Ottoman rule greatly increased. By the middle of the 1500s the non-Muslim population of the empire reached about 40%. [23] To deal with the increasing diversity of the Empire, Mehmet II introduced what would later be called the millet system. Each millet, from the Arabic word for nation, was an autonomous zone made up of a particular religious group. [24] Each millet was

permitted to chose its own leader, practice its own religion, and live by its own religious orders or rules; Sharia law did not have effect within a non-Muslim millet. For example, Orthodox Christians and Jews each had their own respective millets and lived according to their own customs. An influence on the development of non-Muslim millets was that members were not allowed to hold military or political posts. Thus their impact on the Islamic character of the Empire was limited. Consequently, Christian and Jewish millets turned to the development of craft skills, finance and brokerage. [25] They became

important intermediaries in trade negotiations with merchants outside the empire benefitting the Ottoman economy.

Manchus and their Chinese subjects As mentioned above, the Qing dynasty expanded Chinese territory larger than it ever had been before and ruled a population of 450 million people. [26] Unlike previous Chinese dynasties, the Qing did not impose Chinese language or culture over their subjects and thought of China as just one part of a larger Manchu empire. [27] They adopted a policy of "ruling different people differently," allowing local languages, customs, and in some cases, permitting local leaders to maintain leadership positions. Some groups had more privileges than others. Manchus, of course, were the most favored group but Chinese were allowed to take governing posts in the Confucian bureaucracy along with Manchus. The highest point to which a Chinese civil servant could rise was an executive position known as a "grand secretary." These administrators had no policy making power; however, they served as channels of communication "by ratifying, and forwarding 'memorials,' reports sent to the emperor from other central and field offices." [28] The highest central administrative positions in Beijing, of course, were reserved for Manchus. Allowing Chinese to earn positions in the bureaucracy through civil service examinations rendered Manchu rule more acceptable for Chinese. And to prevent Chinese from

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Spanish America and the República de Indios In colonial America, Spanish administrators sought to adapt and impose the social structure of Iberia. Back home, society was organized into large corporate groups with different levels of rights and privileges adhering to each group rather than to individuals. In the New World the Spanish likewise divided the population into two primary groups. The first group was the república de espanoles comprised of all Iberian born people, Spanish creoles, and anyone else of mixed Spanish race. The other group was the república de indios made up of the non mestizo indigenous population. This separation was initially made to protect indigenous people from the harness of the Spaniards; [29] they were divided into independent communities ruled by their own elites, and they enjoyed their own separate system of courts and laws. The system failed because of Spanish demand for indigenous labor. República de Indios were required to supply labor through the mita system to

American silver mines. The became the target of the labor draft in Mexico known as the repartimiento which supplied labor to commercial farms, mines, and select private enterprises. Their required tribute payments became an important source of revenue for the Spanish colonial governments. The continued flow of people between the república de espanoles and the república de indios eventually blurred their distinctive identities. [30]

C.

D.

II. Imperial expansion relied on the increased use of gunpowder, cannons, and armed trade to establish large empires in both hemispheres.

A.

B. Land empires grew dramatically in this era.

Required Examples of Land Based Empires

Manchu Empire

Near the end of the previous period (600-1450) the Ming overthrew Mongol rule and set up a new Chinese dynasty. They established the previous bureaucratic/Confucian political system and sought commercial and tributary contacts with the states in Asia and the Indian Ocean. The Ming sponsored voyages, such as those led by Admiral Zheng He, to restore former Chinese preeminence in the world. In the 1430s these voyages were stopped. The Chinese government decided to devote their resources to purifying their empire and protecting them from further nomadic invasions.

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dynasty had grown weak and corrupt. As they declined, the Manchu people across the Great Wall were expanding, unifying a strong state and borrowing Chinese bureaucratic institutions. In 1644 the

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monks and monasteries from state labor service and taxes. They respected Mongol traditions by not allowing Chinese to migrate into Mongol territory and dilute Mongol culture. Indeed, the Qing respected Tibetan, Mongol and Buddhist culture, a practice that eased the expansion of the Qing Empire into new areas.

The Manchus outlined what is today the general boarders of China, and by respecting the cultures of minorities they preserved a sense of identity for many of these groups and endowed them with an enduring sense of autonomy (consider Tibet, for example). Despite the fact that ethnic Chinese were allowed to rise in the bureaucracy, the Manchus preserved the highest positions in the government for themselves. They maintained their cultural integrity by banning marriage between Manchus and Chinese. Han Chinese were forbidden to move into the Manchu homeland. They forced the Chinese to forgo the Ming style robs in favor of Manchu garments and ordered the Chinese to adopt the Manchu hair style of shaving the front of the head and braiding the long hair in the back into a queue.

Much of what the Manchu accomplished resembled previous Chinese dynasties. They centralized rule through a bureaucracy. They expanded militarily far into central Asia and established tributary relations with Vietnam, Burma. Korea and Nepal. They focused China’s economic strength more on the practice of agriculture than they did commerce; the city of Canton in the south of China was the only location where trade with Europe was allowed. As new crops were transplanted from the New World, the Qing experienced a large population growth commensurate with their territorial growth. In some areas, silk production exceeded rice production and consumed all surplus labor of peasant families.

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in the empire. All this drew the anger of conservative Muslim teachers. Subsequent Mughal leaders fell under the sway of these conservatives and Akbar’s policy of toleration was later abandoned. Hindu temples were destroyed. Religious tension reemerged as a central problem of the Empire.

During hisreign Akbar significantly reformed the Mughal bureaucracy. Previously, the Mughal emperors collected taxes by relying upon a decentralized network of local administrators called zamindars. Acting as local aristocratic landlords, they collected taxes from peasants and sent a set quota to the state. But much of this revenue never made it to the emperor. As profits from the Indian Ocean pepper trade increased, Akbar monetized the tax system (required taxes paid in currency rather than in kind) and required the peasants to sell their grain in market towns and ports for cash where oversight of taxation could be more controlled. Having been bypassed in the taxation process, the role of the zamindars as tax-collecting landlords decreased; political control was also centralized. State profits poured directly into the government’s purse. This windfall of revenue was used to fund military expeditions and to embellish the imperial courts. With the decrease role of the zamindars, Akbar began the process of political centralization.

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During the Mughal empire, the price of spices declined. To maintain their profits, joint-stock companies such as the British East India Company and the Dutch VOC encouraged Mughal leaders to supplement pepper exports with cotton textiles. Cotton, which was softer than many fabrics and could be dyed and printed with elaborate patterns, became an extremely po

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