Topic 4.7: Changing Social Hierarchies

Vocabulary flashcards covering social structures, class hierarchies, religious minorities, and elite groups across the Ottoman Empire, Mughal Empire, Qing China, Europe, Russia, and colonial Latin America from 1450 to 1750.

Gunpowder Empires

Three Islamic empires—the Ottoman (Turkey), the Safavids (Iran), and the Mughals (India)—that succeeded militarily by using guns and cannons when they first became widely available.

Ulama

Scholars and experts in Islamic law who competed for positions in the Ottoman bureaucracy against the warrior aristocracy.

Janissaries

An elite military group in the Ottoman Empire that gained power and prestige and ultimately attempted to mount coups against the sultans.

Viziers

Strong government advisors in the Ottoman Empire who spoke for the sultan as sultans became increasingly ineffective and incapable.

Timar

An Ottoman system in which the sultan granted land or tax revenues to favored individuals and used these grants to reward soldiers and keep them loyal.

Mehmed II

The Ottoman sultan who invited Jews exiled from Spain in 1492 to settle in Istanbul.

Jizya

A required tax levied on all non-Muslim residents in the Ottoman Empire.

Akbar the Great

Mughal emperor (ruled 1556–1605) remembered for his military and administrative achievements, as well as his religious toleration, which included ending the jizya tax.

Harem

A residence where a powerful man's wives and concubines lived.

Roxelana

An Eastern European woman stolen by Crimean raiders and enslaved who entered the harem of Suleiman the Magnificent, married him, commissioned ambitious public works, and demonstrated the potential for upward social mobility.

Barbary Pirates

Pirates who plied the seas near North Africa along the Barbary Coast and captured European slaves in the Mediterranean to sell to the sultan or other high-ranking officials.

Impressed

The act of being forced into service, such as the estimated one million people forced to serve as galley slaves in the Ottoman navy between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Qing Dynasty

Chinese dynasty lasting from 1644 until 1912, established when the Manchu people from Manchuria ruled over the majority Han Chinese and other ethnic groups.

Manchu

An ethnic group from Manchuria who established the Qing Dynasty, maintained cultural distinction from the Han Chinese majority, and resolved to make their culture dominant.

Queues

The braided pigtail hairstyle of the Manchu that all men in Qing China were required to wear as a test of loyalty on pain of execution.

Li Chengdong

A Han Chinese defector general who orchestrated three separate massacres in the city of Jaiding within one month during the Qing conquest.

Liu Liangzuo

A Han Chinese defector who massacred the entire population of Jiangyin, killing between 74,000 and 100,000 people for the Qing Dynasty.

Nobility

The European aristocratic class of wealthy landowners who held special legal privileges and maintained power through the inheritance of lands and titles.

Louis XIV

French absolutist king famous for declaring 'I am the state,' who moved to keep power away from the common people and nobility following a failed mid-1600s uprising.

Sephardic Jews

Jews who trace their heritage back to Spain, taking their name from Sepharad, the Hebrew word for Spain.

Ashkenazi Jews

Jews with origins in central and eastern Europe, named after a term Jewish scholars once used to refer to Germany.

Boyars

The noble landowning class that stood at the top of the social pyramid in Moscow and Russia.

Serfs

Russian peasants who received a plot of land and protection from a noble in exchange for being bound to that land with little personal freedom.

Ivan IV

Russian ruler known as 'Ivan the Terrible' who defeated his boyar opponents in Novgorod, confiscated their lands, and forced them to move to Moscow under surveillance.

Peninsulares

Individuals born on the Iberian peninsula who occupied the highest rank in colonial Latin America's casta system.

Criollos

People of European ancestry born in the Americas who stood directly below peninsulares in Latin America's social hierarchy.

Castas

The sector of colonial Latin America's social hierarchy composed of people of mixed-race ancestry.

Mestizos

People of mixed European and indigenous ancestry who occupied the top group within the castas in colonial Latin America.

Mulattoes

People of mixed European and African ancestry within the colonial Latin American social hierarchy.

Zambos

People of mixed indigenous and African ancestry in colonial Latin America.