This lecture is number 26; it’s called the world of 1450.
This is the half-century from 1450 to 1500.
It really represents a significant break in world history.
A couple of big contexts here to keep in mind – Arab domination has passed – the era
of the caliphate, the Arab/Muslim caliphate has passed, and of course, by caliphate we’re
talking about the Islamic state.
Even today we hear about Isis and their attempt to re-establish the caliphate in Northern
Syria and Iraq – even as we speak.
But this era has passed in our time period.
Second, the era of Mongol domination is also over.
So we’re moving into a new period of world history.
Let’s start here by talking about China and its dominance.
The Ming dynasty will toss out the Mongols and re-establish Chinese rule over China.
We talked about the Ming treasure fleets a bit in our last lecture.
These treasure fleets are quite remarkable.
We’ll show you an illustration here to compare Zheng He’s flagship with Christopher Columbus’
flagship; this illustration points out quite nicely the relative technological advancement
in wealth of the Chinese compared to the rather pitiful Europeans.
So the Ming treasure fleets are moving throughout Southeast Asia, through the Strait of Malacca,
to India, through the Strait of Hormuz, into the Persian Gul, and then down the Swahili
coast of East Africa, in the early 15th century.
This is seventy-five years before Columbus.
These treasure fleets are not designed for trade, oddly enough.
China is self-sufficient.
If you’ve ever wondered why China doesn’t appear to be an aggressive empire, it’s
because China has basically everything it needs, and it has an abundance of population
– obviously, and it has natural resources – probably as plentiful as any other empire
in history, including the United States.
The Ming treasure fleets are seeking tribute.
That is, they skirt around the coast of Asia and Africa, and they take back exotic animals
– giraffes, for instance, exotic plants, anything unusual or attractive or something
they think the emperor may be pleased with.
They take this tribute back to him.
So the Ming treasure fleets are not designed for trade; they’re designed to sort of awe
other people, to intimidate other people, to demonstrate the superiority of the Chinese,
and to collect tribute.
I should add that the admiral, Zheng He, is a Muslim Chinese.
The Chinese, of course, have been quite skillful at using foreigners.
You may remember the Mongols used Marco Polo, a Western Venetian Christian, in the court
of Kublai Kahn.
The treasure fleets – like said before – they make contact with East Africa, with the Persia
Gulf, with Indonesia, and just a vast area of exploration.
Did the treasure fleets reach the southern tip of Africa?
We don’t know.
One author, he’s a retired English naval commander, I believe, he wrote a book called
1492, and in this book he made the argument that the Ming treasure fleets skirted the
Cape of Good Hope, went up the northern coast or up the Atlantic coast of Africa, caught
the Westerlies, and zoomed across the Atlantic and discovered the New World seventy-five
years before Columbus.
I’ve read this book.
It’s not terribly convincing.
The evidence is a little shaky.
Nevertheless, the argument is out there.
The Ming treasure fleets are destroyed in 1433.
Why?
A number of explanations have been put forward by historians.
Some say the Confucian bureaucrats were suspicious of naval and commercial activity, and urged
the emperor to ‘86’ the treasure fleets.
I’ve read elsewhere that China was obviously self-sufficient and doesn’t need the treasure
fleets.
China doesn’t need trade, so the fleets are superfluous.
I’ve also read that Chinese – the capital and the labor, which was intensive, that went
into the treasure fleets are now being transferred to another great project, and that of course,
is strengthening and extending the Great Wall of China to keep the Steppe, or nomadic, horsemen
out of China.
Of course, the Great Wall designed to keep the Mongols out, we know that sometimes this
is successful and sometimes obviously it is not successful.
Remember that China faces no enemies from the sea; only horsemen from the Steppes of
Central Asia threaten Chinese security.
The capital of China has now moved northward to Beijing, where it remains today, and I
should at least remind you that the Great Wall does not isolate China, it doesn’t
end its productive capacities or limit it in any way, it’s simply an attempt to try
to keep the nomadic horsemen out.
The Chinese merchant colonies remain throughout Southeast Asia.
Now there’s a second center of development, and that’s in the Middle East and Southeastern
Europe, and that’s with the rise of the Turkish horsemen, which will culminate in
the establishment of the Ottoman Empire.
These Turkish horsemen come out of the Steppe lands, in what probably today we would call
Ukraine, and the areas north of the Caspian Sea.
They move into the areas once dominated by the Arab/Muslim caliphate.
Turkish expansion depended upon a mastery of cavalry warfare; they became expert riders
and developed shock tactics that were quite effective.
These Muslim Turks, they press against Byzantium.
Remember the Byzantine Empire is that eastern portion of the old Roman Empire that is survived
for another thousand years, and of course, the capital of Byzantium is as Constantinople
– Constantine’s city.
Byzantium has been in a long decline and it appears to be a very ripe target for these
dynamic Turkish horsemen.
Indeed the Turks capture camp Constantinople in 1453 and they rename it Istanbul, which
it remains today.
This is a step toward establishment of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottomans will bring a long-standing source of unity to this entire area of the eastern
Mediterranean, and North Africa.
The Ottomans will also attempt to move northwestward into what we call the Balkans of Southeastern
Europe.
This is of course, Turkey – I’m sorry; this is Greece and Macedonia, and to Serbia,
and Hungary.
This is an area that the Ottomans will expand into.
Indeed they will reach the walls of Vienna before they’re finally repelled.
Now except for the Nile, rivers in Muslim lands were of little use for navigation.
We talked about this in the last lecture – because of the rapids, the great falls, and cataracts
these rivers tend to be of limited use, and of course, Muslim trade is also restricted
in places because of the limits of overland caravans across the Sahara desert, for instance.
The Muslim lands simply do not enjoy the internal river travel enjoyed by the Chinese and the
Europeans, whose rivers link people from the interior to the seacoast.
Other developments – well, in Russia – Russia is pressured by the Turks, just as the Byzantines
are pressured by the Turks.
Russia sees itself as the inheritor of the Christian mission from the fallen Byzantine
Empire.
In fact, the Russians often refer to themselves as a third Rome – Rome being the first center
of Christianity, Constantinople its second capital has fallen to the Turks.
Now the Christian mission is now transferred to Moscow and the Russians.
Russia, of course, will drive the Mongols from its territories in the 15th century.
The Russian ruler will marry a Byzantine bride, a dynastic marriage; again, linking Christian
Russia with Christian Byzantium.
Other developments in West Africa – There is general continuity here.
We have those successive empires based on the Savannah grasslands and the Niger River.
First the Mali, then the Songhai, and then these empires acquire literacy, Arabic learning,
Muslim traditions, and commerce, as they welcome Islam into West Africa.
Other developments in the Americas – Well the Aztecs, in what today we would call Mexico,
and the Incas of the Andes are going to be challenged by the Europeans.
These American states are going to begin to break up after 1492.
Remember the Scandinavians crossed the North Atlantic to Iceland, Greenland, and all the
way to Newfoundland.
The Norsemen, of course, do not get credit for finding North America because they could
not sustain those colonies.
Columbus is given credit for this because Spain was wealthy enough to sustain Columbus’
colonies, the Vikings were not.
Other developments – European expansion, we talked about this in our last lecture;
I’ll talk about a few things here.
Remember Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, a key sponsor of European voyages, as the
Portuguese extend their voyages down the Atlantic coast of Africa.
Grenada will fall by 1492.
Europeans have long held out hopes for gold to be discovered in Africa, and indeed there
is a lot of gold in Africa.
So here myth and reality come together.
And of course, European elites are developing a taste for Asian luxuries, and it’s believed
one way to access Asia is perhaps through or around Africa.
Again, I’m going to reiterate, the European capacity to pay for luxury goods from the
East has not yet been established; this is a problem, we call it the Muslim middleman.
If you’ll look at the map here, you can see the three Islamic kingdoms of the Middle
Ages – the so-called Muslim middlemen that block trade between Europe and China, or that
broker deals between Europe and China raising the price with each exchange of commodities
so that black pepper from India, by the time it reaches say, Italy, the price has gone
up a thousand percent because of these Muslim middlemen taking their cut.
So as we look at the map, you can see the Ottoman Empire is closest to Europe, centered
around the eastern portion of the Mediterranean, and then as you move east from the Ottomans
you’ll see the Safavid Empire.
This is located today where we would locate Iran, or in antiquity we called it the Persian
Empire.
And then if you move further east along the Indus River, in what today we would think
of as Pakistan and India, you see the Mughal Empire.
This of course, is a transliteration of the word Mongol; all these areas having been dominated
by the Mongols in earlier centuries.
Back to Europe a little bit here.
I mentioned that Christianity is given a boost by the Reconquista, the reconquering of Spain
by the Christian armies of Isabella and Ferdinand in 1492.
Also in Europe we see a shift in focus, from God and the heavens to man and the Earth,
the beginning of the Renaissance.
Europeans are also going to occupy those islands close by, the Azores in the Atlantic just
west of Portugal and the Canaries just off the northwest coast of Africa.
These populations are vulnerable to European diseases just as the Indians, or Native Americans,
are going to be vulnerable to these diseases.
Europeans are going to sort of try out commodity crops and slavery on these islands as sort
of a dress rehearsal for what’s going to happen on a mass scale very shortly in the
New World.
Sugar is the first of these commodity crops and sugar is a labor-intensive crop – as
we’ll talk about later.
So slaves are brought to these islands and the models that are practiced here will be
reproduced in the New World.
So let’s draw some conclusions.
Things are in flux.
There’s a shifting sense of power and influence now as we near 1500.
China’s dominance is still there but it’s going to begin to wane.
Porcelain; silk; lacquer works; a variety of other products are still extremely popular
on the world market, these things of course, all made in China.
But China ends the era of the Ming treasure fleets just as Portugal is beginning its explorations
of Africa and the Indian Ocean.
So you can just see on the world map, China begins to contract as Europe begins to expand.
Of course, the Turks conquer much of what we call Christian Byzantium.
This will now become the Ottoman Empire.
The Turks will overrun the Middle East and North Africa.
Russia will push the Mongols out of their territory.
Europeans are going to now venture out into the world looking for a way to bypass the
Muslim middleman.
So when we get to the Columbian Exchange and we talk about Columbus a bit, you will see
that one of his prime motivations, the reason he wants to sail from Spain westward across
the Atlantic to get to China is to avoid paying the markup demanded by these Muslim middlemen.
So we’ll stop there and thank you.