AP World History Notes

1.1 Song Dynasty China, Early Modern East Asia, and Eastern Religions

• The Song Dynasty (960-1279) was a golden age for art, literature, and architecture.

  • Examples:

    • Art: Zhang Zeduan's Qingming Scroll.

    • Literature: Su Shi's biography.

    • Architecture: Upturned roofs.

• The Song Dynasty marks the beginning of early modern world history due to the 'Four Great Inventions'.

  • Paper, printing, gunpowder, and compass.

  • Also, money, abacus, porcelain, and restaurants.

• 'Four Arts of Life': tea brewing, flower arranging, incense burning, and painting.

• Agricultural and economic revolution led to the world’s largest population (100 million) and GDP.

  • Shifted from wheat and wine to rice and tea.

  • Iron, steel, and textile production occurred 500 years before Britain’s Industrial Revolution.

• The Emperor governed under the Mandate of Heaven.

• Emperor Taizu, the Song founder, brought peace, unity, meritocracy, and technological advancement.

• The Song capital was Kaifeng then Hangzhou.

• The Grand Canal, created in the 7th century Sui Dynasty, connected the Yellow (Huang He) and Yangtze (Yangzi) Rivers.

• The civil service exam shifted leadership to scholar-bureaucratic.

• Women gained greater control over dowries, but footbinding continued.

• Marco Polo visited Song China in 1275 and discovered the use of coal for fuel.

• The Song allied with the Mongols to defeat rivals but were then taken over by the Mongols, led by Kublai Khan, creating the Yuan/Mongol Dynasty (1279-1368).

• Song China conquered Korea and Vietnam, forcing tribute and kowtow.

• Korea, Vietnam, and Japan adopted elements of Chinese culture but rejected footbinding.

• Champa rice came from Vietnam, and celadon porcelain originated in Korea.

  • Vietnamese women had comparatively more opportunity.

• Lady Murasaki wrote The Tale of Genji (1021) in Japan during the Heian Period.

• By the 12th century, Japan devolved into civil war.

• Shoguns replaced the emperor (until 1868).

• Japan was like feudal Europe, with serfs, landowning lords/daimyo, castles, and feuding families.

• The bushido code for samurai was like chivalry for knights.

• Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are ‘The Three Pillars of Ancient Chinese Society’.

Confucianism:

• Confucius (Kong Fuzi) (6th c. B.C.E.) wrote The Analects, which includes the Four Tenets:

  • Rites and rituals.

  • The five relations (hierarchy and filial piety).

  • Rectification of names (titles).

  • Ren (virtues) and Jen (kindness and “The Golden Rule”).

• Confucianism is more a philosophy than a true religion.

• Song China Confucians brought back the civil service exam.

Taoism:

• Lao Tzu (Laozi) (6th c. B.C.E.) wrote the Tao Te Ching, which focuses on nature and simplicity.

  • Tao means “The Way”.

  • “Wu-wei” means “action without intention”.

  • Yin/dark and yang/light.

• Taoists created holistic medicine, astrology, kung fu, and feng shui.

Buddhism:

• Siddhartha Gautama aka Buddha (Indian, 5th c. B.C.E.) inspired the Tripitaka.

  • Four Noble Truths and Five Precepts to overcome suffering.

  • Eightfold Path to achieve enlightenment.

• Buddhists practice meditation and believe in reincarnation.

• The goal is to reach nirvana.

• Different sects include Theravada, Mahayana, and Zen (Chan).

1.2 Dar al-Islam (‘The House of Islam’)

• Islam is an Abrahamic religion and monotheistic.

• Islam means submission to Allah, and Muslim is one who does.

• Muhammad (570-632 C.E.) had revelations, preached, and was exiled from Mecca to Medina.

• His revelations are in The Quran (Koran), and Muslims still adhere to the Five Pillars:

  • One God (Allah).

  • Prayer (salah/namaz) facing Mecca.

  • Fast during Ramadan.

  • Almsgiving (charity).

  • Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).

• Sharia law developed through the ulama and qadis.

• Abu Bakr was Muhammad’s successor (Caliph).

• Sunnis believe Abu Bakr was the rightful heir.

• Shia/Shiites do not.

• More Muslims are Sunni than Shia, and more Shia in Iran.

• Jihad is the concept of struggle or holy war.

• A fatwah is a sharia legal ruling.

• Sufis are more concerned with faith than doctrine.

• The Abbasid Dynasty moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad.

• Harun al-Rashid (786-809 C.E.) was a great caliph.

  • Donated to artists, writers, and the poor.

  • Baghdad became metropolis of banking and credit.

• Seafaring Tunisians spread Islam and picked up ideas throughout the Mediterranean.

• Camel caravans traversed overland routes, like the Silk Road.
  *The connection of trade posts were called caravanserai.

• Muslim traders sold salt, steel, copper, and glass, and bought silk, spices, and slaves.

• Muslim scholars created a library of foreign knowledge and madrasas.

• Persians took over in Baghdad in 945 C.E.

• Omar Khayyam wrote The Thousand and One and Arabian Nights.

• Saladin enslaved Seljuk Turks called Mamluks.

• The Turks supplanted the Arabs.

• The Mongols ended the Abbasid Dynasty with the Sack of Baghdad in 1258.

• Merchants brought Islam to West Africa.

• Muslim Berbers conquered the Iberian Peninsula, known as Al-Andalus.

• Cordoba, Toledo, and Seville were economic and cultural centers.

• Cordoba had lighted roads, free public school, a library, and a giant mosque.

• When Cordoba was reclaimed by Christians in 1236, the mosque was converted into a cathedral.

• The opposite happened when Constantinople fell to the Muslims in 1453, and the cathedral was converted into the mosque Hagia Sophia.

• Society was patriarchal, but women could inherit property, choose divorce, and start businesses.

• The Quran and Sharia law taught men to respect women but gave men control over women’s social lives.

• Men could have multiple wives, whereas women could only have one husband.

• Women had chaperones and veiled themselves for modesty.

• A hijab is a scarf, whereas a burqa is a head and body cover.

• Hijabs are far more common than burqas.

• Malala Yousefzai says she is a Muslim and a feminist.

1.3 The Silk Road and Spice Islands, South Asia and Southeast Asia

• The Han Chinese opened the Silk Road in the 2nd century.

• The Ottoman Turks closed it in the mid-15th century.

• Silk comes from worms that eat mulberries.

• Cinnamon comes from the bark of small evergreen trees.

• Spices were grown plentifully in the Spice Islands (now Indonesia).

Hinduism:

• One of the oldest religions and polytheistic.

  • The Veda is one of the holy texts.

  • Samsara is the cycle of life and death/ reincarnation).

  • Atma is the soul.

  • Moksha is escape from the material world.

  • Brahman is God.

  • Karma is good luck/fortune.

  • Dharma are ethics/duties.

  • Sattva is enlightenment.

• Bhaktis emphasize devotion to one god among the many.
  *The most important gods and goddesses include Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer and reincarnator).

• Their caste system is a rigid hierarchical class/social structure.

• The Gupta Dynasty created numbers (later known as Arab numerals), pi, and chess.

• Muslim forces conquered the Subcontinent in the early 13th century, establishing the Delhi Sultanate.
  *They also developed a new language, the combination of Arab and Hindi, Urdu.
  *They did not have an efficient bureaucracy and struggled to maintain support when they taxed non-Muslims (jizra).

• Ibn Battuta visited Delhi in 1334.
  *Women often converted from Hinduism to Islam when their husbands converted.

• Harihara and Bukka converted from Hinduism to Islam for upward social mobility, conquered central India, and then converted back to Hinduism to found the Vijayanagara Empire.

• Hindus founded the Rajput kingdoms.
  *That is why the north is predominantly Muslim Pakistan today and the south is predominantly Hindu India.

• By the 16th century, they all lost control to the Mughals, although the Maratha Empire/Confederacy controlled the southern part of the Subcontinent.

• Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims were all vying for control.

• Muslim traders were effective in converting people.

• The Srivijaya Empire and the Majapahit Empire prospered because they controlled the river and sea routes.

• The archipelago was known as ‘The Spice Islands’ and then The Dutch East Indies before it became modern Indonesia.

• The Sinhala Dynasty created a network of reservoirs and canals for irrigation.

• The Khmer/Angkor Empire also had effective drainage.
  *The Khmer converted from Hinduism to Buddhism, and then they were conquered by the Sukothai Kingdom (Thailand).

1.4 The Americas’ Pre-Columbian Civilizations and Pacific Islanders

• Around 1000 C.E., there were three massive civilizations in North America:

  • The Cahokia (aka Mississippi Moundbuilders).

  • The Anasazi (aka Ancestral Puebloans).

  • The Mayans.

• The Aztec/Mexica Empire (1350-1520 C.E.) emerged.

  • Their capital was Tenochitlan.

  • Their staple foods were maize, beans, and cacao.

  • They were polytheistic and practiced human sacrifice.

  • Great engineers created aqueducts, dikes, causeways, and floating gardens.

  • Unique symbol system of mathematics and had their 365-day solar calendar.

  • Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors captured and killed Emperor Montezuma and then conquered the Aztecs in 1520.

• The Inca/Quecha Empire (1438-1533 C.E.) has a similar story.

  • Pachacuti was their founder, and Machu Picchu was built in his honor.

  • Their territory was vast, spanning from modern-day Columbia to the tip of Chile.

  • Their staple food was the potato.

  • The llama were like the bison to the Plains Indians.

  • Used llamas for everything including sacrifice to the rain god.

  • Incredibly organized with a road system, designated laborers (mita), and records on ropes (quipus).

  • Francisco Pizarro and the Spanish conquistadors captured and killed Emperor Atahualpa in 1533.

• Aztec and Inca women were valued for their weaving skills.

• Lineage and inheritance passed through both mother and father.

• The most devastating aspect of the Columbian Exchange (1492 on) was the Spanish provocation of war and slavery and the spread of disease, especially smallpox.

• The Aborigines are the native people of Australia.

• The Maori are the native people of New Zealand.

• The haka is the Maori war chant.

• People from the Marquesas Islands and Tahiti first settled the Hawaiian Islands.

• The hula dance was to honor the chiefs and gods.

• A kapa was a ban on something dangerous.

• For the Pacific Islanders, the staple food was sweet potatoes.
  *The Aztecs and Incas were conquered in the early 16th century and the Pacific Islanders in the late 18th century, due to a lack of technology (ex. no metal) and immunity (especially to smallpox).

• Traditions have endured, including the spirit of aloha, ohana, and shaka.

1.5 Sub-Saharan Africa before 1500

• North Africa is often included in dar al-Islam.

• Ibn Khaldun was a 14th-century Muslim Tunisian scholar known for his early work in Social Science.

• Muslim Arab scholars had preserved the Ancient Greek and Roman ideas.

• In West Africa, the people of Ghana and Mali traded across the Sahara Desert.

  • They sold gold and ivory in exchange for salt, copper, cloth, and tools.

• In the 11th century, Ghana’s capital, Koumbi Saleh, had a centralized government with an army equipped with iron weapons.

• In East Africa, the people of Ethiopia became the one predominantly Christian country on the continent in the 12th century.
  *Coffee was first cultivated in Ethiopia in the 9th century.

• Bananas came to Madagascar and then mainland Africa around 500 C.E. and fueled population growth.

• In South Africa, the people of Zimbabwe traded across the Indian Ocean and developed Swahili.

• ‘Zimbabwe’ is the Bantu word for ‘dwelling’ and ‘Great Zimbabwe’ was an empire.

• The architecture was more stone than wood.

• The capital, Masvingo, was walled.

• It declined and disbanded due to poor sanitation and food shortage.

• Diviners were spiritual advisors.

• Many African cultures were polytheistic.

• Griots were storytellers.
  *While men were valued as blacksmiths, tanners, or woodworkers, women were praised as mothers, but they could also work as merchants or political advisors.

• Kinship networks and age groups were helpful divisions to organize labor, but most did not recognize private ownership of land.

1.6 Medieval Europe and The Renaissance

• Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the three Abrahamic religions, but Judaism is the oldest.

  • The Torah includes the words of Moses.

  • The Talmud is also a holy text including religious law.

  • They have rabbis and cantors in synagogues/temples.

  • Jewish High Holy Days are Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Passover.

• After the 70 C.E. siege of Jerusalem, there was a Jewish diaspora.

• Jesus was Jewish.
  *Christians faced persecution too until Emperor Constantine granted tolerance with the Edict of Milan in 313.

• Christians also read the New Testament in their Bible.

• The Medieval Times/Middle Ages began with the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century and end with the Renaissance.
  *Charlemagne united much of Europe as the First Holy Roman Emperor in 800.

• The hierarchy of feudal Europe was monarchs, lords, knights, and the majority peasants/serfs.

• In the Great Schism of 1054, the Christian Church split into the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox.

• Muslim forces conquered the Iberian Peninsula in 711.
  *In the Crusades (1095-1291), Muslims and Christians fought for control of the Holy Land.

• With the 1215 Magna Carta, the English limited the monarch’s power and then formed The Houses of Parliament.

• The unlucky 1300s included the Hundred Years War, the Bubonic Plague/Black Death, and Little Ice Age.
  *Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and the Muslims sacked Constantinople (and renamed it Istanbul) in 1453.

• Christians seized Granada in 1492.
  *Tomás de Torquemada tortured practicing Jews and Muslims in the Spanish Inquisition.

• Girolamo Savonarola ordered the destruction of ‘immoral’ art in The Bonfire of the Vanities.

*After one-third of Europe died from the Plague, people decided to make the most of life on Earth and not just work toward the afterlife reviving the Greek and Roman classics in art, literature, philosophy, and appreciation of the human form, mind and potential. (Humanism).

• Florence was the heart of the Renaissance.

• Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press contributed to rising literacy rates.
  *Classic Italian Renaissance artwork includes Donatello’s David, and then Michelangelo’s David, Raphael’s School of Athens, and Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Last Supper.

• In literature, Giovanni Boccaccio documented the Bubonic Plague in his epic novel The Decameron (1353).
  *The Northern Renaissance includes Albrecht Durer’s Adam and Eve, Miguel Cervantes’ satire Don Quixote, Michel de Montaigne’s essays, Shakespeare’s plays, and Flemish artists’ paintings of everyday life. (ex. Pieter Brueghel’s Peasant Wedding).

• During the 1400s, the Medici replaced the Hanseatic League as the most important bankers and merchants in Europe.

• They sponsored great talents from Michelangelo(Sistine Chapel) to Brunelleschi(Duomo) to Galileo(Heliocentric Theory).
  *Medici Popes, Leo X and Clement VII, squandered their family fortune and attempted to replenish their coffers by selling indulgences.

• Niccolo Machiavelli was one of the leaders of the revived Florentine Republic.

• The Prince was his anti-republican treatise on government, and to be Machiavellian is to follow his advice.

• Like the Medici in Florence, the Borgias in Rome, Sforzas in Milan, and Gonzagas in Mantua positioned themselves to dominate Italian government and the Catholic Church.

• The army of the Holy Roman Empire sacked the sacred city of Rome in 1527, and this event marked the end of the Medici rule and the Italian Renaissance.

• The German Fuggers became the dominant banking and trading family in Europe.

2.1 Silk, Sand, and Sea/Spice Routes

• Asia and Europe were connected through the Silk Road since the Han and Roman trade network in the 3rd century.

• Luxury goods were prioritized.

• Camel caravans were the main mode of transportation.

• Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta traveled this way.

• Chinese junks could carry more than just luxury goods.

• Muslims did not oppose profit.

• While North Africa manufactured cloth, glass, and books, Southwest Africa grew grain, yams, and kola nuts.

• During the 14th century, Mali became a popular destination in West Africa.

• Mali had a monopoly on horses and metals and also taxes on salt and copper.
  *Sub-Saharan African Swahili city-states like the gold-rich city of Kilwa had mosques and other structures made from coral, and they traded across the Indian Ocean with the Hindu Srivijaya Empire turning it into the Muslim Malacca Sultanate.

2.2 The Mongols

*Temujin became known as Genghis/Chinggis Khan (1162-1227) for his talent and ruthlessness as a general and a political leader of nomadic farmers and warriors.

• Genghis Khan appealed to farmers and soldiers.

• Composite bows, stirrups, leather armor, and gunpowder new technology at the time that appealed soldiers

• A yurt is a traditional Mongolian home.

• Mongol society was much more egalitarian.

• The Mongols accepted Confucianism, patronized the arts, and built more roads and canals.

• Genghis Khan divided and conquered.

• Mongols took power by ‘incorporating’ newly conquered people (About 13 million descendants of Genghis Khan).

• The Mongols ended the Abbasid Dynasty with the sack of Baghdad in 1258.
  *The Mongols defeated the Persians too but assimilated into their culture especially through conversion to Islam accepting the Uighur alphabet

• Genghis Khan’s son, Baku, defeated The Golden Horde and sacked Kiev.
  *Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan, despite his troops being outnumbered 100 to 1, actually conquered China and created the Mongol/ Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368).

• When the four regions and the grandchildren of Genghis Khan fought amongst each other for power. the Mongol Empire fractured and eventually fell.
  *The 13th century Mongols were as terrible as they were terrific, their empire did not last for very long because they did not conquer india or japan
  *After the Mongol decline, the Ming Dynasty in China and Muscovy Empire in Russia were on the rise politically and glorious culturally.

• Mongols, and Mongolians today, appreciates gold brocade, yaks, and their horses.

2.3 Indian Ocean Trade and Early Portuguese Exploration and Imperialism

• With Chinese inventions and Arab/Muslim advancements, navigation improved.

• The Indian Ocean was the ‘monsoon market’.

• Many sultanates had thriving commercial centers.

• Rabban Bar Sauma (1220-1294) was a Uigher Chinese Christian missionary that served as a Mongol ambassador to Europe.

• John of Montecorvino (1247-1328) was an Italian Christian missionary that traveled to China.
  *Ming Chinese Explorer Zheng He (1371-1435), traveled twice as far as Marco Polo throughout Asia, Africa, and perhaps to the California Coast.
  *Portuguese monarch, Prince Henry the Navigator, helped his country take an early lead in the Age of Exploration.

• In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias became the first explorer to sail around the tip of Africa to India.

• In 1498, Vasco da Gama became the first to make it from Europe all the way to East Asia.

• Da Gama had a Malindi (Kenyan) guide with him and spent time on the Swahili/Zanj Coast planning to return and conquer the city-states.

• The Portuguese sacked the Malacca Sultanate in 1511 and then the Kilwa Sultanate in 1513 ushering in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

2.4 Trans-Saharan Trade before 1500

• The Sahara Desert is 3.6 million square miles, and only 800 square miles are oases.

• Africans traded gold, ivory, hides, and slaves for Arab and Berber salt, cloth, paper, and horses.
  *Along with the resources, Islam spread in Africa as well
  *The camel's were better for travel here due to be being able to go longer without water as compared to the horse and ox.

• Mali replaced Ghana by the 13th century when it became a center of trade and higher learning.

• They taxed to strengthen their government and military.
  *Sundiata converted Mali and made them into a strong trade empire
  *Mansa Musa, (grandnephew), continued to strengthen Mali, politically, economically, and intellectually, converted to Islam and made the pilgrimage/hajj to Mecca.
  *So, Songhai replaced Mali as the strongest in West Africa by the late 14th century.

2.5 The Timurid Empire and Cultural Consequences of Trade (1200-1500)

*Timur had an underdeveloped leg as a result of an injury in his childhood , but he still became a great Mongol-Turkic warrior and leader of the Timurid Empire, and established a capital at Samarkand,