AP World Notes

Becoming “The World” 1000–1500 CE - Africa and the Americas

Worlds Coming Together: Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas

After 1000 CE, sub-Saharan Africa became more integrated with Eurasia by commercial and migratory impulses.

Islam’s spread and the growing trade in gold, slaves, and other commodities brought sub-Saharan Africa more fully into the exchange networks of the Eastern Hemisphere, but the Americas remained isolated from Afro-Eurasian networks for several centuries.

West Africa and the Mande-speaking peoples

Mande-speaking peoples were the primary agents for integration within and beyond West Africa because of their expertise in commerce and political organization.

By the eleventh century, the Mande spread their cultural, commercial, and political hegemony from the high grasslands of the savanna to the woodlands and tropical rainforests.

Local councils and sacred kingships

Trading networks were already established with trading hubs before European explorers and traders arrived.

Leaders in the trans-Sahara trade, trafficking in salt, gold, and slaves

From 1000 CE, sub-Saharan Africa became increasingly integrated by commerce and migration into this Eurasian world to the north and east.

In West Africa, the main agents for integration were the Mande-speaking peoples, who due to their commercial expertise and political organization marginalized rivals and maintained control over a massive territory in the savanna region. From this base of power, they expanded southward to the woodlands and tropical rain forests; meanwhile, their political organization ranged from sacred kingships on the savanna to local councils in the forests. Within sub-Saharan Africa, they engaged in trade between the Atlantic coast and the continent’s interior. Meanwhile, they were the leaders in the trans-Sahara trade, trafficking in salt, gold, and slaves. By the end of these three centuries, and prior to the arrival of European traders on coastal Africa, the Mande-speaking merchants had developed a network of trade hubs stretching from the coast to the hinterlands.

The Mali Empire

Becomes thirteenth-century Mande successor state to the kingdom of Ghana

Epic of Sundiata

Triumph of cavalry forces over foot soldiers

Horses became prestige objects of the savanna peoples

Mali king Mansa Musa (r. 1312–1332)

Made an impressive journey to Mecca (hajj), traveling through Cairo

Dazzled people in the city of Cairo with his country’s wealth

Made it clear that Islam had spread far below the Sahara

Mali Empire had two of the largest West African cities:

Jenne, an ancient northern commercial entrepôt

Timbuktu

Founded around 1100 CE as a seasonal camp for nomads. By the fourteenth century, it was a thriving commercial, intellectual, and religious center.

Three large mosques still standing

In this sprawling and vibrant commercial context, the empire of Mali emerged as the preeminent political power. In the first half of the thirteenth century, it became the Mande successor state to the kingdom of Ghana, a story enshrined in the Epic of Sundiata. In practice, Sundiata’s victory depended on a familiar military innovation: the superiority of cavalry over foot soldiers. Subsequently, the horse turned into a prestige object for people on the savanna.

In his 1325–1326 hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, Mali’s king Mansa Musa traveled extravagantly through Cairo and onward, where he dazzled large crowds with gold items and his extraordinary entourage, which included soldiers, wives, consorts, and thousands of slaves. In doing so, he sought to represent that his kingdom was not just a periphery of Islam, but a center of power and wealth in its own right.

Within the Mali Empire, two of Africa’s largest cities thrived on the Niger River. Jenne was a major commercial entrepôt, a stopover for caravans moving between the Atlantic coast and the voyage north through the Sahara. And Timbuktu to its northwest, which began in 1100 CE as a seasonal camp for nomads, but burgeoned under Malian sponsorship into a commercial, intellectual, and religious hub, soon known far and wide.

Map 3.8 | Sub-Saharan Africa, 1300

Increased commercial contacts influenced the religious and political dimensions of sub-Saharan Africa at this time. Compare this map to Map 2.3.

• Where had strong Islamic communities emerged by 1300? By what routes might Islam have spread to those areas?

• According to this map, what types of activity were taking place in sub-Saharan West Africa?

• What goods were traded in sub-Saharan Africa, and along what routes did those exchanges take place?

Trade between East Africa and the Indian Ocean (1 of 2)

Eastern and southern African regions were also integrated into long-distance trading systems.

Wind patterns made East Africa a logical end point for Indian Ocean trade.

Swahili peoples living along the coast of East Africa became brokers for trade from the Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf territories, and India’s west coast.

Most valued trade commodity was gold

Mined between Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers

Mined by Shona-speaking peoples

Great Zimbabwe was built using fortunes from gold

While this western African power was integrated across the Sahara, eastern and southern Africa were linked into long-distance trading systems in the Indian Ocean. The monsoon winds, blowing from southeast Asia across the Indian Ocean, made East Africa a logical end point for trade in this oceanic region. The main African brokers on this end were Swahili peoples, who trafficked precious metal, ivory, and slaves from Africa’s interior to the coast, where they were shipped off.

As gold was one of the the most profitable commodities in these trade routes, the Shona-speaking peoples who mined it on the highlands between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers benefited greatly. Among the communities that emerged around this industry, Great Zimbabwe developed as the most powerful.

As valuable as gold, slaves also were trafficked from the African interior and shipped throughout the Indian Ocean and into the Mediterranean. The Quran, while not prohibiting slavery, sought to lessen its severity, but slave-trading and slavery flourished under Islam in these centuries. Slaves were forced into a variety of work, as soldiers, mariners, plantation workers, and domestic servants. Though uncommon, one of the major slave revolts in world history took place in lower Iraq in the ninth-century Zanj rebellion, revealing the harsh conditions that slaves labored under.

Trade between East Africa and the Indian Ocean (2 of 2)

African slaves were valued as much as gold in shipments to the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean.

Quran attempted to mitigate the severity of slavery by requiring slave owners to treat their slaves with kindness and generosity.

Slave trade flourished under Islam

Zanj slave rebellion in ninth century CE (Revealed harsh conditions)

THE AMERICAS ON THE EVE OF INVASION

The Americas (1 of 2)

Apart from limited Viking contacts, navigators still hadn’t connected the Americas to the rest of the world.

Commercial and expansionist impulses nonetheless fostered closer contact within the Americas.

Beside the brief Viking contact and settlement in North America, the Americas as a whole were untouched by these Afro-Eurasian developments during this period. Within the Americas, however, commercial exchange and political expansionism created closer contact and integration.

The Chimú Empire was the first to emerge in South America, centered in the Moche Valley on the Pacific Ocean. Around the turn of the second millennium, they expanded their influence across numerous ecological zones, from highlands to valley floodplains to the Pacific coastal grounds. They depended on agriculture, which used complex irrigation to form numerous oases capable of supporting populations and could be exported through the larger region. This agricultural production was embedded in a highly commercialized system, in which cotton was an especially important export that llamas and their porters would carry up mountains to buyers along the Andes.

To manage this complex agricultural and commercial system, the Chimú Empire depended on a well-trained centralized bureaucracy, as well as a hierarchy of provincial administrators.

Though controlling a dispersed population, the empire’s largest city reached 30,000 inhabitants. Chan Chan, on the Andean coast, was a large walled city with many roads throughout, as well as ten major palaces at its center, where the rulers’ power was enshrined. Also at the city’s fortified center were the emperors’ burial complexes, which stored their accumulated wealth and luxury products. The Chimú regime based here persisted to the 1460s, when the Inca conquered it and assimilated it into their expanding empire.

The Americas (2 of 2)

Andean states of South America

Chimú Empire: first empire in South America

The Moche people expanded their influence across numerous valleys and ecological zones.

Highly commercialized, with agriculture as its base

Complex irrigation systems

Cotton exports

Well-trained bureaucracy oversaw construction of canals

Chan Chan : empire’s biggest city

30,000 inhabitants

Walls, roads, palaces

Burial complexes for emperors

The Chimú regime lasted until the Incas invaded and incorporated it into their empire in the 1460s.

To manage this complex agricultural and commercial system, the Chimú Empire depended on a well-trained centralized bureaucracy, as well as a hierarchy of provincial administrators.

Map 3.9 | Andean States, c. 700–1400 CE

Although the Andes region of South America was isolated from Afro-Eurasian developments before 1500, it was not stagnant. Indeed, political and cultural integration brought the peoples of this region closer together.

• Where are the areas of Chimú Empire and Tiahuanaco influence on the map?

• What was the ecology and geography of each region, and how might that have shaped each region’s development?

• What crops and animals did the Chimú and Tiahuanaco benefit from?

The Incas

Chimor Kingdom (900-1465)

Control of north coast of Peru

Incas conquer Chimors by taking over irrigation system

Inca Empire (Twantinsuyu)

Quechua-speaking clans (ayllus) in southern Andes

By 1350, they live in and around Cuzco (capital)

Control regions by 1438, under Pachacuti (ruler, or inca)

Centered around Lake Titicaca

Aggressive expansion for 60 years by Pachacuti, his son, and grandson

Inca Expansion

Techniques of Inca Imperial Rule

Highly centralized

Inca ruler; governors of four provinces; bureaucracy

Local rulers maintain their positions

Integrated various ethnic groups into an tribute empire (supply labor on government land)

Quechua is spread as language to unite empire

Military: System of roads, way stations (tambos), storehouses

Extensive irrigated agriculture; large building and irrigation projects

“Split inheritance” necessitates conquest

Power goes to eldest male; wealth and land to other sons

Inca Culture

Viracocha (creator/sun god) is highest

Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, center of state religion

Local gods survive

Cult of ancestors, deceased rulers mummified

Animism (mountains, stones, rivers, caves); considered holy shrines (huacas)

Cultural Achievements

Metallurgy (copper, bronze)

No writing system but knotted strings (quipu) for accounting

Monumental architecture (steep slopes)

Farming: potato; maize

Toltecs: Precursors to the Aztecs

Pre-Columbian: before the voyages of Columbus and the conquests of the Spanish

Groups are developing in isolation

Toltec Empire in central Mexico

Capital at Tula, 968

Created a large empire whose influence extends beyond central Mexico

Long-distance trade to American SW

Belief in Quetzalcóatl

Heavily militaristic (sacrifice, war)

1150: Collapse, probably caused by northern nomads

Toltec Warrior Statues

The Aztec Rise to Power

After Toltecs, political power and people move to shores along lakes in Mexico valley

Lakes provide: fishing; farming; transportation

Early 13th c: Aztecs migrate to shores

Many vie for control of lakes: winners are Aztecs

Speak Nahuatl (Toltec language); lends legitimacy to rule

1325: Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan, on island in center of Lake Texcoco

1434: Aztecs dominate central valley and begin to conquer other city-states

Central valley inhabited by mixture of people dominated by powerful tribes organized into city-states

Establish a tribute empire: prisoners used for human sacrifices

Aztec Society

Transformation from loose clans to hierarchical society

Ruler (Moctezuma II)

Head of state/religion

Representative of gods

Nobles

Peasants

Slaves (war captives)

Clans (calpulli) dictate social status

Social gaps widen (nobility vs. commoners)

Organized for war and motivated by religious zeal

Dedicated to service of gods

Aztec Religion

Spiritual and natural world seamless

Hundreds of deities (3 Groups: fertility, agriculture, water/rain)

Pay tribute to gods through festivals, ceremonies, feasting, dancing, warfare, and sacrifice

Sacrifices increased

Huitzilopochtli (deity of war, sun, and human sacrifice) needs strength

Patron of Tenochtitlan

Motivated by religious conviction? Or terror and political control?

Includes ritual cannibalism

War captives supply Aztecs with sacrificial victims

Aztec Economy

Agrarian community

Chinampas: man-made floating islands that yielded large amount of crops, constructed to provide additional farming land

Farming organized by clans; maize and beans

No use of wheel or laboring animals

Vibrant daily markets highly regulated by state

Gender and Technology

Women’s primary domain: household, cooking, weaving

Overcoming technological constraints

Grind corn by hand on stone boards; time-consuming

No wheels or suitable animals for power like Europe

Can own/inherit property and will it to heirs

Arranged marriages

Elite use polygamy, commoners are monogamous

Aztecs vs. Incas

Similarities

Built on earlier empires that preceded them

Aztecs = Toltecs

Inca = Chimor

Excellent organizers (imperial, military)

Intensive agriculture under state control

Clans transformed to hierarchy

Ethnic groups allowed to survive

However, Inca incorporate them into empire, while Aztecs rule them harshly

Animistic religion

Differences

Aztecs have sophisticated trade, markets; Inca have no separate merchant class

Aztecs developed a system of writing, while the Inca did not

Peoples of the Americas

Great variety; adapt to their region

Some use irrigation

No states formed

Long distance/regional trade

Caribbean islands: hierarchical societies, divided into chiefdoms

Strongly resembled Polynesian societies

North America

1500: 200 languages

Agriculturalists; nomads

Two great imperial systems by 1500, but Mesoamerica and the Andes weakened by European contact

Communities are technologically behind Europeans, Chinese, Arabs

Major Linguistic Groups in North America

Cahokians in North America

Cahokia was the largest city in North America.

15,000 inhabitants (about the size of London at that time)

Farmers and hunters settled there due to resources and access to trade.

Became commercial center for regional and long-distance trade

Landscape dominated by mounds; “mound people”

City outgrew its environment

Cahokia represented the growing networks of trade and migration across North America.

Two forces contributed to greater integration in sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas from 1000 to 1300:

Commercial exchange

Urbanization

Though smaller in population and with less monumental architecture, Cahokia emerged as the largest city in North America during this period. Based on the Mississippi River, early settlers had been attracted to the rich agricultural potential there. As it reached a population of 15,000, it became the commercial center of a much larger network of regional and long-distance trade. Its hinterland produced agricultural products, which went to the city, and the city’s artisans produced crafts, which radiated outward. Cahokians constructed large-scale mounds of sand, dirt, and clay for religious and civic events, which led to them being known as the “mound people.”

Though Cahokia represented North Americans’ ability to organize complex commercial societies, by the fourteenth century its development had outgrown the environment’s capacity to sustain it, and the city declined.

Shared between these societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas between 1000 and 1300 were two key features: greater commercial exchange of diverse products and the concentration of power in larger urban centers made unprecedented integration possible.

Map 3.10 | Commercial Hubs in Mesoamerica and North America, 1000 CE

Both Cahokia and Tula were commercial hubs of vibrant regional trade networks.

• What routes linked Tula and the Toltecs with other regions?

• What goods circulated in the regions of Pueblo and Cahokia?

• Based on the map, what appear to be some of the differences between Canyon culture, Mississippian culture, and the Toltecs?