Mr. Garris' class
Gunpowder Empires
Empires that used high quality gunpowder weapons to defeat their rivals and establish large-scale land-based empires: Ottoman Empire, Safavid Empire, and the Mughal Empire.
Imperial Expansion
The means by which empires expanded their borders and gained new territories.
Imperial Administration
A complex system to extract wealth from the subjugated lands to enrich the imperial government and fund the wars of imperial expansion.
Imperial Belief System
A system by which to keep diverse populations of different people groups and religious traditions all unitedunder the same state
Ottoman Empire
Muslim Empire which conquered Constantinople in 1453 and came to control parts of Eastern Europe and the entirety of the Middle East.
Timars
Not the gunpowder warriors, they were the heavy cavalry. Were not given gunpowder so that they cannot rebel against the Ottomans.
Janissaries
Elite gunpowder soldiers that were the slaves of the Ottoman Sultan, had access to the sultan, had the Sultan's ear, you are given the best education, pay, housing, and food as well.
Devshirme
In the Ottoman Empire, the policy of taking boys from conquered Christian peoples to be trained as Janissaries.
Divan
The bureaucracy of the Ottomans.
Iltizam System
System of tax farming which sees private citizens appointed as tax farmers, who pay the right to collect taxes, which then keep the taxes for themselves.
Millet System
A system used by the Ottomans whereby subjects were divided into religious communities, with each millet (nation) enjoying autonomous self-government under its religious leaders.
Safavid Empire
Established in Iran in the Eastern Middle East, was a Shiite Muslim state that contrasted with the Sunni Muslim states of the Ottoman and Mughal Empires. It expanded into Central Asia and Iraq, using slave soldiers called "ghulams" trained in gunpowder warfare. Ultimately, the Safavids were defeated by the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Chaldiran, underlining the significance of a strong gunpowder army and highlighting their traditional Islamic monarchy with absolute rule.
Ghulams
Arabic word for "servants" used to describe slave-soldiers of the Abbasid, Ottoman, and Safavid empires; loyal to the Sultans.
Mughal Empire
An Islamic imperial power that ruled a large portion of Indian subcontinent which began in 1526, invaded and ruled most of South Asia by the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and ended in the mid-19th century.
Mansabdar system
Mughals granted tax revenues to nobles in exchange for those nobles recruiting and maintaining armed forces. Though similar to a feudal system, the system primarily differed in rewarding military service with tax revenues rather than land for the noble warriors.
Sati
The ritual suicide of Hindu widows on their husbands' funeral pyres.
Din-i-Ilahi
Mughal rulers attempted to force religious unity through a movement known as Din-i-Ilahi, a synthesis of Hinduism and Islam, which failed to gain substantial traction.
Sikhs
Emerged from former Hindus and Muslims, espousing a monotheistic creator revealed to humans through a series of spiritual leaders known as gurus.
Interstate Rivalries
Entire empires base their policies around competition with their most powerful neighbors for control over their wider regions.
Safavid-Mughal conflict
Over territory between the MIDDLE EAST and SOUTH ASIA.
Sunni-Shia Rivalry
Between the Safavids and the Ottomans, who fought numerous wars over the control of Iraq, a country sacred to both branches of Islam.
Maratha Wars
The Hindus of the Deccan Plateau rose against the Mughals in extended wars of liberation.
Ming Dynasty
Dynasty established after the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in late post-classical East Asia. Returned the Han Chinese to power.
Cefeng System
A loose framework by which neighboring states submitted to China by paying tribute, becoming tributary states. Tributary states were still mainly autonomous,.
Senior Grand Secretary
An appointed bureaucrat who was the head of the Ming bureaucracy, and acted on behalf of the Emperor.
Six Ministries
A system in which separate departments handled matters relating to state employees, taxation, religion, war, law, and infrastructure.
The Forbidden City
The walled city where the Ming Emperor lived in an isolated great palace.
Court Eunuchs
Castrated men who tended to the emperor and his wives. Bureaucrats had to rely on the Court Eunuchs for access to the emperor.
Silk Industry
Grew under Ming China. Provided employment for peasant silk farmers as well as artisan-crafters who produced the fabric.
Sycees
Large irregular bars of silver used by the Ming dynasty which were unsuitable for small-scale transactions and required vendors to weigh the silver to determine its value
Single Whip Law
Policy instituted by the Ming in which the Chinese had to pay taxes in hard silver. Caused Ming China to become heavily reliant on imported silver, and also required low tax rates lest the amount of silver required for tax payments exceed the capacity of the economy to operate.
Silver Standard
A monetary system in which a weight of silver is the fundamental basis of value
Haijin
Isolationist policy in which the Ming government banned most Chinese merchants from trading abroad by sea and restricted foreign traders to trade in a small number of specific port cities.
Qing Dynasty
A dynasty of Manchu origin that was founded after the collapse of the Ming dynasty, and ruled Han China from 1644-1912.
Manchus
A settled people group on the borders of the steppes, had spent the past century combining Chinese administrative techniques and organization with their own native practices.
Banner System
Manchu military organization system which divided the army into elite units based on ethnic backgrounds.
Great Clearance
Qing response to a military crisis involving organized piracy and lingering Ming loyalists in Taiwan. Large areas of the Chinese coastline were evacuated in an effort to turn the coast into a wasteland that could not harbor pro-Ming rebels.
Canton
Southern Chinese city that became the sole city where foreign trade was permitted by the Qing.
Tifayifu Law
Required all adult Han men to adopt Manchu hairstyles and clothing, which meant shaving the front of the head and wearing a braid called a queue.
Qing Imperial Portraits
Portraits of Qing Emperors meant to depict them as noble Confucian rulers surrounded by books and ritual objects.
the Shogun
A powerful military figure who ruled Japan on behalf of a ceremonial emperor.
Shinto
Japanese religion which was a combination of worship of Kami and Buddhist traditions.
Kami
Spirits connected with nature.
Sengoku Period
Japanese period where no single ruler maintained real control, with the vassal daimyos acting as independent rulers.
Samurai
Powerful warriors who followed a special code. They constituted of a lower nobility class and fought on behalf of the daimyos.
Tokugawa Shogunate
Established by daimyos armed with imported gunpowder weapons. It was the centralized state of Early Modern Japan in which the hereditary emperor again acted as a secluded, ceremonial figure in the symbolic capital of Kyoto.
Edo (Tokyo)
The coastal city from where the Shogun exercised real political power.
Edo Society
Class system which sharply divided the Japanese into a hierarchy based on Chinese Confucian principles.
Alternate Attendance System
To keep the nobility from being too powerful, every noble had to spend a year at court in Edo so the shogun could keep an eye on them.
Sakoku
Prevented non-Japanese nobles from emigrating and prevented immigrants from arriving. Trade was only allowed with specific countries at specific ports.
Mongol Yoke
The Eastern Slavic name for the period of Mongol rule over the Eastern Slavs.
Muscovy
Independent state which was an Orthdox Christian feudal monarchy. Eventually established rule over all East Slavic lands.
Strelsty
A class of soldiers trained to use gunpowder weapons, and recruited from the rural poor.
Russia
The Muscovite name for the united Eastern Slavic monarchy.
Siberia
A bitter, cold, forested land in North Asia. Sparsely populated but rich in resources.
Boyars
Class of powerful nobles who attempted to resist the growth of Russian monarchical power.
Serfdom
A state of hereditary legal unfreedom in which the serfs remained bound to their land and could take almost no important decisions (such as marriage) without the approval of their owner
Cossacks
A group of semi-nomadic warriors (some of whom were runaway serfs) who enjoyed substantial autonomy in exchange for military service as powerful cavalry.
Cossack Uprisings
Rebellions stemming from Russian attempts to assert control over the Cossacks which resulted in the Cossacks being crushed.
Tsar
Former Grand Prince of Moscow, later known as the Emperor.
Autocrat
Ruler with absolute political power, with no other body possessing independent political power.
Raskol
Religious schism in which large numbers of Russians—including some boyars and priests—refused to accept the new innovations, worshiping separately from the state-sponsored Church.
The Third Rome
Russian claim that they were the successor state to Rome, the first Rome, Byzantine, the second Rome, making Moscow the Third Rome.
Peter the Great
Powerful Tsar who made a series of changes to the Russian state at the end of the Early Modern Period.
Westernization
Peter the Great's attempts to make Russia resemble a Western European state in matters of culture, governance, society, and economy.
Saint Petersburg
New capital which Peter the Great proclaimed as the "window to the West".
Failures of Peter the Great
Russia remained autocratic and unreceptive to later ideals of the enlightenment.