Chapter 2 - Starting with China

Cotton

was spun and woven in artisan homes with material advanced to them by merchants, who then collected the thread and cloth for dyeing and printing before being brought to market to sell.

China

The world was polycentric, with three major regions centered around , India, and the Islamic world, and others connected to one or more of those powerhouses.

African people

had constructed large and successful empires, extensive internal trading networks and productive agriculture and industry, especially mining and refining,

Melaka

To , the Chinese brought manufactured goods, in particular silk, porcelain, and iron- and copperwares, and in return took to China spices, other edibles, pearls, cotton goods, and silver.

domestic servants

Slaves were used as in the households of the wealthy and powerful, and slave status had nothing to do with skin color.

Gunpowder

and cannons had been invented by the Chinese in a process beginning around 1000 CE when Chinese sources describe ‘ ‘ fire lances and other weapons including bombs, rocket launchers, flame throwers, land mines, and poison smoke.

India

had three great textile manufacturing centers: Gujarat on the west coast, Madras in the south, and Bengal on the east.

Europe

Slaves were used in , the Islamic empires, China, and India.

fourteenth

In the and fifteenth centuries, access to African gold was crucial for Europeans.

Africa

already was an integral part of the world system, supplying gold and slaves and purchasing in return manufactured goods, many of which originated in Asia, such as brightly colored cotton textiles from India and porcelain from China.

Ottoman Turks

In 1453 the used cannons to capture Constantinople, and by the same year the king of France had used cannons to drive the English out of France by leveling their fortifications and pushing them back across the English Channel,

Prophet Mohammed

Islam had burst upon the world in the early seventh century, and in the century following the death of the (in 632 CE), Muslim (meaning ‘ ‘ believer) armies had unified the Arabian peninsula, captured much of Persia, and took Mesopotamia, Palestine (including Jerusalem), and Egypt and North Africa.

Holy Land

Military force was used for protection against outsiders, against other untrustworthy nobles, against subordinates who wanted power, against serfs if they rebelled, and in the Crusades against the ‘ ‘ Infidel, the Muslims who had taken the .

Bombards

were not particularly effective at hurling projectiles far or with much accuracy; indeed, they were used initially mostly to scare horses.

kingdom of Ghana

The produced some gold itself, but the Muslims demand for it proved sufficiently strong and the goods they brought to trade in sufficient demand in West Africa.

time Henry

By the the Navigator began his voyages in 1415, Admiral Zheng He had already established Chinese dominance throughout the Indian Ocean.

trade circuits

The Ottomans blocked European access to the eastern Mediterranean and hence the to China and the Indian Ocean, forcing Europeans to search for alternative routes to gain access to the riches of Asia.

elite Africans

Because land was not owned privately and hence was not a source of wealth and power, (political heads and merchants mostly) owned labor.

Constantinople

sat astride the Bosporus Strait and controlled trade in the eastern Mediterranean and on the Black Sea.

explosion of Islam

After the across the Mediterranean in the seventh century, all of the African empires that traded north across the Sahara converted to Islam between the tenth and twelfth centuries CE.

Four great centers of civilization and economic power provided the impetus for the Indian Ocean trade

the Islamic Near and Middle East, Hindu India, China, and Indonesia, or the Spice Islands

To Melaka, the Chinese brought manufactured goods, in particular silk, porcelain, and iron

and copperwares, and in return took to China spices, other edibles, pearls, cotton goods, and silver

India had three great textile manufacturing centers

Gujarat on the west coast, Madras in the south, and Bengal on the east

Africas environments presented many obstacles to human population growth

poor soils, debilitating diseases, and dangerous large animals

With swords, knives, lances, pikes, and long

and crossbows being the most lethal weapons available to medieval Europeans,s

From 1000 to 1500, the major activity of European rulers was warfare

preparing for war, paying for war, recovering from war

By the 1400s, only one route to Asia existed for Europeans

the Venetian connection through Egypt