Chapter 21 Expanding Horizons of cross cultural interaction

Marco Polo

(1) The best-known long-distance traveler of Mongol times was the Venetian ____. Marco’s father, Niccolo, and uncle Maffeo were amount the first European merchants to visit China. Between 1260 and 1269 they traveled and traded throughout Mongol lands, and they met Khubilai Khan as he was consolidating his hold on China. When they returned to China in 1271, seventeen-year-old Margo Polo accompanied them. The great khan took a special liking to Marco, who was a marvelous conversationalist and storyteller. Khubilai allowed Marco to pursue his mercantile interests in China and also sent him on numerous diplomatic missions, partly because Marco regaled him with stories about the distant parts of him realm. After seventeen years in China, the Polos decided to return to Venice, and Khuilai granted them permission to leave

Ibn Battuta (1304-1369)

(1) Best known of the Muslim travelers was Ibn Battuta. Islamic rulers governed most of the lands Ibn Battuta visited – including India, the Maldive Islands, and Swahili citystates of east Africa, and the Mali Empire – but very few Muslims educated in the law were available in those lands. With his legal credentials Ibn Battuta had little difficulty finding government positions.

John of Montecorvino

(1) The most ambitious missions sought to convert Mongols and Chinese to Roman Catholic Christianity. 7 As more Europeans traveled to China, their expatriate communities created a demand for Roman Catholic services and many of the Roman Catholic priests who traveled to China probably intended to serve the needs of those communities, but some of them also sought to attract converts.

The little ice age

a. About 1300 C.E. a process of global climatic change caused temperatures to decline significantly and abruptly throughout much of the world. For more than five hundred years, the ear experienced a “___,” when temperatures were much cooler than in the era from 1000 to 1300 C.E.

Bubonic plague

a. ____ spread from the Unnan region of southwestern China, where it probably had been endemic for centuries. b. The plague bacillus infects rodents such as rats, squirrels, and prairie dogs, and fleas transmit the pathogen from one rodent to another. If rodent populations decline, fleas seek other hosts and sometimes spread the disease to human victims.

Hongwu

When the Yuan Dynasty fell, the governance of China returned to Chinese hands. The new emperor came from a family so poor that he spent much of his youth as a beggar. Orphaned, he entered a Buddhist monastery to assure himself of food, clothing, and shelter. Because of his size and strength, he came to the notice of military commanders, and he made his way through the ranks to lead the rebellious forces that toppled the Yuan Dynasty.

Ming Dynasty (1338-1644)

In 1368 he became Emperor Hongwu, and he proclaimed the establishment of the (“brilliant”) Dynasty, which lasted until

Yongle

Hongwu’s successor, organized the preparation of a vast encyclopedia that compiled all significant works of Chinses history, philosophy, and literature. The ___ Encyclopedia ran to almost 23 thousand manuscript rolls, each equivalent to a medium-size book. The ___ Encyclopedia was a remarkable anthology, and it signaled the Ming rulers’ interest in supporting native Chinese cultural traditions.

France & England

(1) The kings of France and England sparred constantly over lands claimed by both. (2) Their hostilities eventually resulted in the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), a protracted series of intermittent campaigns in which the warring factions sought control of lands in France. (3) Partly because of the enormous expenses they incurred during the Hundred Years War, the Kingds of France and England began to levy direct taxes and assemble powerful arnies. (4) The French kings taxed sales, hearths, and salt. The English instituted annual taxes on hearths, individuals, and plow teams. (5) Rulers in both lands asserted the authority of the central government over the nobility.

Spain

(1) The process of state building was most dramatic in ____, where the marriage in 1469 of Fernando of Aragon and Isabel of Castile united the two wealthiest and most important Iberian realms. (2) Receipts from the sales tax, the primary source of royal income, supported a powerful standing army. (3) Under Fernando and Isabel, popularly known as the Catholic Kings, Christian forces completed the Reconquista by conquering the Kingdom of Granada and absorbing it into their state.

Russia

(1) As early as the mid-fourteenth century, the princes of Russia began the process of “gathering the Russian 21 land” by acquiring territories surrounding their strategically located commercial town of Moscow on the Volga River. (2) In 1480 Grand Prince Ivan III (reigned 1462- 1505), later known as Ivan the Great, stopped paying tribute to the Mongol khan. By refusing to acknowledge the Khan’s supremacy, Ivan in effect declared Russian independence from Mongol rule. He then made Moscow the center of a large and powerful state. (3) After annexing the prosperous trade city of Novgorod, Ivan was then able to build a strong centralized government modeled on the Byzantine empire. (4) Ivan called himself tsar, a Russianized form the the term “Ceasar”, which Byzantine rulers had borrowed from the classical Roman empire to signify their imperial status.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

relied on the technique of linear perspective to represent the three dimensions of real life on flat, two-dimensional surfaces.

Humanist

(1) Like Renaissance artists and architects, scholars and literary figures known as humanists also drew inspiration from classical models. 23 (2) The term _____ referred to scholars interested in the humanities, literature, history, and moral philosophy. (3) they had nothing to do with the secular and often antireligious interests of movements that go under the name humanism today, on the contrary, Renaissance humanists were deeply committed to Christianity.

Zheng He’s Expeditions (1405-1433)

(1) For almost 30 years, the Ming government sponsored a series of seven ambitious naval expeditions designed to establish a Chinses presence in the Indian Ocean Basin. (2) Emperor Yongle organized the expeditions for two main purposes, to impose imperial control over foreign trade with China and to impress foreign peoples with the power and might that the Ming Dynasty had restored to China. (3) The expeditions took place between 1405 and 1433. Leading them was the eunuch admiral Zheng He, a Muslim from Yunnan in southwestern China who rose through the ranks of eunuch administrators to become a trusted advisor of Yongle.

Christophe Columbus

(1) While Portuguese seafarers sought a sea route around Africa to India, the Genoese mariner Cristoforo Columbo, known in English as Christopher Columbus, conceived the idea of sailing west to reach Asian markets. (2) Because geographers in the eastern hemisphere knew nothing of the Americas, Columbus’ notion made a certain amount of good sense, although many doubted that his plan could lead to profitable trade because of the long distances involved. (3) After the King of Portugal declined to sponsor an expedition to test Columbus’ plan, the Catholic Kings, Fernando and Isabel of Spain, agreed to underwrite a voyage. (4) In 1492 Columbus set sail. After a stop in the Canary Islands to take on supplies and make repairs, his fleet of three ships crossed the Atlantic Ocean, reaching land at San Salvador in the Bahamas. (5) Although he made three more voyages to the Caribbean region, Columbus never acknowledged that his expeditions had not reached Asia. (6) News of his voyages spread rapidly, however, and by the end of the fifteenth century other mariners had explored the Caribbean and the American continents enough to realize that the western hemisphere constituted a world apart from Europe, Asia, and Africa.