Topic 2.1: The Silk Roads

• Demand for luxury goods increased in Europe and Africa → Chinese, Persian, and Indian artisans and merchants expanded the production of textiles and porcelain for export → interregional trade

• Causes of the Silk Roads - the Crusades and the Mongol Empire expanded exchange and global trade increased; Arab merchants and Chinese luxury goods from the Abbasid Empire revived Silk Roads and Indian Ocean trade; improvement of transportation

  • The Mongols conquered the Abbasid Caliphate and China and turned the Silk Roads into a unified system under authority that respected merchants and enforced laws, improved roads, and punished bandits → increased safe travel and new trade channels between Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe

  • Caravans, saddles for camels, naval technology such as magnetic compass, rudder, and Chinese junk

• Effects - thriving cities, centers of trade, and commercial innovations

  • Kashgar - western edge of China where northern and southern routes of Silk Roads crossed leading to Central Asia, India, Pakistan, and Persia

  • Samarkand - present-day Uzbekistan in Zeravshan River valley was a stopping point between China and the Mediterranean; a center of cultural exchange and trade with diverse religions, artisans, and centers of Islamic learning

• Caravanserai - trading cities or inns

  • Caravans - safer and practical travel

• Money economy - using money rather than bartering

  • Flying cash - merchants could deposit paper money at banking houses and had to present a bill of exchange stating the holder was legally promised payment

• Hanseatic League - Northern Germany and Scandinavia formed a commercial alliance and drive out pirates with league ships and monopolized trade

  • The first common market and merchant guilds

Topic 2.2: The Mongol Empire and the Modern World

• The Mongols were pastoral nomads north of the Gobi Desert in East Asia who expected everyone to become skilled horse riders and valued courage in hunting and warfare

• Genghis Khan - created tribal alliances and defeated neighboring groups (khan = king), focused on building power

  • Kurultai - gathered Mongol chieftains and was elected khan of the Mongolian Kingdom

• Conquest - Genghis Khan headed east, attacked the Jin Empire, and ruled Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and northern China; strong riders with short bows; communication messenger force; exploited captured engineers to improve siege weapons; miners, craftworkers, etc. were recruited for the empire; pony express

  • Khanate - kingdom

• Pax Mongolica - Mongolian peace with religious tolerance and protected Silk Roads; new trade channels and reinvigoration of trade routes

• Batu and the Golden Horde - Batu led the Mongolian army into Russia and conquered small kingdoms to force them to pay tribute; ruled northern Russia through indirect rule

  • Moscow rulers - additional tributes to resist Mongols (anti-Mongol coalition)

• Hulegu and the Islamic Heartlands - Hulegu took the southwest region and into Abbasid territories, threatening the Middle East; defeated due to an alliance between Muslim Mamluks, Baibars, and Christian Crusaders

  • Il-khanate - Central Asia, converted to Islam

• Kublai Khan and the Yuan Dynasty - China was ruled by the Song Dynasty and was an opponent of the khans; conquered China and adhered closer to Chinese tradition than Mongolian practices, established the Yuan Dynasty; religious tolerance, cultural exchanges, improved trade

  • Losing power - Mongolian leaders eventually alienated the Chinese and hired foreigners, promoted Buddhists and Daoists and dismantled the civil service exam, distressed the Chinese scholar-gentry; tried and failed to conquer Japan, Indochina, Burma, and Java

  • White Lotus Society - putting end to the Yuan Dynasty and Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming Dynasty

• Long-term impacts - conquered more than the Romans; Pax Mongolica revitalized interregional trade, built a system of roads and guarded trade routes, interregional cultural exchange including Greco-Islamic knowledge; transmit bubonic plague; centralizing power

Topic 2.3: Exchange in the Indian Ocean

• Muslim merchants and Dar al-Islam developed sailing technology and environmental knowledge to make the Indian Ocean commercially active

• Causes - ocean travel and knowledge

  • Spread of Islam - connected cities, trading partners in East Africa, East, and Southeast Asia, and South Asia; Muslim Persians and Arabs were seafarers and transported goods to port cities that became centers of trade

  • Calicut - port city for merchants in search of southern India species; Arab and Chinese merchants exchanged goods

  • Demand for specialized products - India had fabrics, cotton, and pepper; Malaysia and Indonesia were the Spice Islands; Swahili coast cities had slaves, ivory, and gold; China exported silks and porcelain; Southwest Asia had horses, figs, and dates

  • Indian Ocean slave trade → African works, musical styles, and customs

  • Environmental knowledge - knowledge of monsoon winds, had to time voyages carefully

  • Maritime technology - Arab sailors used lateen sails that had a triangular shape to catch winds; Chinese stern rudder came ships stability; dhows used by Arab and Indian sailors; Chinese magnetic compass and astrolabe improved by Muslim navigators

  • Growth of states - Malacca became wealthy from the navy and imposed fees on ships that passed through the Strait of Malacca

• Effects

  • Diasporic communities - merchants interacted with surrounding cultures and people; Arab and East African merchants stayed in Indian port cities permanently because they married; Arab and Persian merchants settled in East Africa; settlers introduced their own culture to indigenous cultures

  • Increased demand - producers found ways to be more efficient; grow more crops, make more textiles, manufacture more iron; raise money through taxes and fees for seaports

  • Swahili city-states - along east coast of Africa; traded ivory, gold, slaves, and exotic goods to Arab trading partners

  • Cultural transfers - Zheng He traveled to coastal areas on the Indian Ocean, Arabia, and east coast of Africa and Cape of Good Hope to display might of the Ming Dynasty and receive tribute, opened new markets for Chinese goods and brought new understanding of the world; worried interaction with foreign cultures threatened China’s social order and voyages ended

Topic 2.4: Trans-Saharan Trade Routes

• The Sahara Desert had few societies due to arid climate and were either nomadic communities or settlements in oases

• Camels, saddles, and trade - developed camel saddles after the use of camels spread to carry heavy loads of goods

• trans-Saharan trade - gold, ivory, and slaves were precious commodity; considerable wealth to West Africa, Ghana, and Mali; spread Islam

• Mali - profited from gold trade and taxed trade entering West Africa; Timbuktu had the most wealth and developed into a center of Muslim life

• Expanding roles of states gave rise to need to administer and maintain trade, established currency with understood value and brought people from distant cultures

  • Sundiate from Mali established trade relationships and brought wealth

• Mansa Musa - devout Muslim; pilgrimage to Mecca displayed his wealth and established religous schools, mosques, and sponsored studies → strengthened Islam

  • Songhai Kingdom - took its place as the powerhouse in West Africa

Topic 2.5: Cultural Consequences of Connectivity

• New people, goods, ideas, technological developments, and literary or artistic interactions

• New religion unified people and provided justification for kingdom’s leadership, influenced artistic culture, fused with native religions

  • Buddhism - came to China via Silk Roads, related to Daoist principles to created Chan Buddhism; Japan and Korea adopted Buddhism with Confucianism to create Neo-Confucianism

  • Hinduism and buddhism - came to Southeast Asia; Srivijaya Empire was Hindu, Majapahit Kingdom was Buddhist, Sri Lanka became center of Buddhist study, Khmer Empire had both

  • Islam - Islam spread to Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia through merchants, missionaries, and conquests

• Scientific and Technological Advances - Islamic scholars translated Greek classics into Arabic, math from India, papermaking from China improved literacy; studied medicine from ancient Greeks, Mesopotamia, and Egyptians to improve hospital care; agricultural efficiency (Champa rice) for reliable food supply; seafaring tech. like lateen sails, stern rudder, astrolabe, and magnetic compass; gunpowder and guns for warfare

• Growth of cities - political stability, decline of invasions, reliable transportation, commerce, labor supply, increased agricultural output

• Declining cities - political instability and invasions, disease, decline of agricultural productivity

  • Kashgar declines after conquests; Constantinople weakened by Crusaders and bubonic plague

• Crusades - knowledge of world beyond Western Europe increased with interactions with Byzantine and Islamic cultures; opened up global trade and disease, the Black Death (economic decline bc shortage of people); exposure to Byzantium and Muslim world contributed to the Renaissance and secularism

• Travelers - Marco Polo described China and trade-related matters; Ibn Battutta had accounts of Asia, China, Spain, North Africa, and Muslim lands focused on Islam; Margery Kempe who wrote about he pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Germany, and Spain with the POV of a middle-class medieval woman

Topic 2.6: Environmental Consequences of Connectivity

• Agricultural effects - introduced crops to new places, had impact on land use, population growth and distribution, and led to abundant production

  • Champa Rice - introduced to Champa states and China by Vietnam; was drought-resistant, flood-resistant, and yielded 2 crops a year → population growth

  • Bananas - introduced by Indonesian seafarers across the Indian Ocean; increased land cultivation, enriched diets, and population growth

  • Sugar and citrus crops - introduced by caliphs as they conquered beyond the Arabian Peninsula and along trade trouts

  • Environmental degradation - put pressure on resources; overgrazing, deforestation, and soil erosion

• Epidemics - couldn’t prevent spread of deadly infectious diseases; Mongol conquests helped transmit fleas carrying bubonic plague along with caravanserai; killed most of the population and reduced number of workers so people’s labor became valuable → set groundwork for economic changes

Topic 2.7: Comparison of Economic Exchange

• Silk Roads - through Gobi Disease, China, Asia, and Europe; merchants specialized in luxury goods

• Indian Ocean - linked East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Southwest Asia; monsoon-dependent routes; merchants exchanged goods too heavy to transport by land

• trans-Saharan trade - North Africa and Mediterranean Basic across the desert to West and East Africa; merchants traded salt from north Africa with gold from southern kingdoms

• Origins - interregional trade built on routes of early traders and conquerors as empires expanded; needed stability of established states for safety and technological upgrades

• Purpose - exchange what people were able to grow or produce for what they wanted, needed, or could use to trade; also negotiated alliances and brought converts

• Effects - rise of trading cities to hold the network together; centralization; standardized currency for transactions and measure value of products

• Labor - demand for labor rose with growing demand of products

• Social and gender structures - defined by class or caste and patriarchal societies; women experienced fewer opportunities and freedom than men

• Environment - steep population decline when merchants spread the plague