HIST2321 IDST2372

1
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions (19)

• Why are the travels of Ibn Battuta considered
  among the classic works of travel literature and
  what can they tell about the 14th century?

2
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Patterns of Long-Distance Trade

Travel and trade from the 12th to the14th century
C.E.
3
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Long-Distance Trade Travel
• Patterns of Long-Distance Trade
• Trading Cities
• Marco Polo
• Political Diplomatic Travel
• Mongol-Christian Diplomacy
• Rabban Sauma
• Ibn Battuta

Marco Polo Picking Pepper, 14th Century C.E.
4
Patterns of Long-Distance Trade

• Silk roads
• Sea lanes of Indian Ocean basin
• Trans-Saharan caravan routes
• Development of trading cities, emporia
• Nomadic invasions cause local devastation but
  expand trade network
• E.g. Mongols in China, 13th c.

5
Marco Polo (1253-1324)

• Example of long-distance travel
• Traveled to China with merchant father, uncle
• Enters service of Mongol Kublai Khan
• Returns to Venice after 17-year absence
• Experiences recorded by fellow prisoner in
  Venice-Genoa conflict
• Great influence on European engagement with far
  east

6
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Sources From The Past
• Ibn Batutta on Customs in the Mali Empire
• When it is Friday, if a man does not come early
  to the mosque he will not find a place to pray
  because of the numbers of the crowd
• - Ibn Batutta in Black Africa

7
Political Diplomatic Travel

• Trade requires diplomatic relations after 1000 CE
• Mongols, Christians recognize Muslims as common
  enemy, 13th century
• Pope Innocent IV invites Mongols to convert to
  Christianity
• Mongols counter-offer Christians accept Mongol
  rule or face destruction

8
Diplomatic Travellers

• Rabban Sauma
• Nestorian Christian Priest sent to Pope by
  Mongols in Persia, 1287, regarding proposed
  attack on Jerusalem
• Did not win European support
• 1295 new leader of Persia accepts Islam
• Ibn Battuta (1304-1369)
• Islamic scholar, worked in governments on
  extensive travel
• Strict punishment meted out according to sharia
• Lashes for drinking alcohol

9
Missionary Travelers

• Sufi missionaries travel throughout new Muslim
  territories, 1000-1500 CE
• Christian missionaries accompany, follow
  Crusaders
• Roman Catholic priests travel east to serve
  expatriate communities
• John of Montecorvino

Tombstone of Catherina Vilioni, a Venetian (d.
1342), found in Yangzhou, China.
10
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Sources From The Past John of Montecorvino on
  his Mission in China
• Indeed if I had but two or three comrades to aid
  me, it is possible that the emperor khan himself
  would have been baptized by this time!
• - John of Montecorvino

11
Travel trade, twelfth to the fourteenth century
12
Cultural Exchanges

• Narratives, Stories
• E.g. European troubadours take Muslim love songs
• European scientists learn from early Muslim,
  Jewish scientists

13
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Long-Distance Trade Travel
• Long-Distance Travel Cross-Cultural Exchanges
• Cultural Exchanges
• Spread of Crops
• Sugarcane
• Gunpowder Technologies

14
Spread of Crops New Technologies

• Citrus fruits, Asian rice, cotton
• Sugarcane
• Muslims introduce crystallized sugar to
  Europeans
• Demand increases rapidly
• Europeans use Muslim precedent of having large
  populations of slaves work on sugarcane
  plantations
• Gunpowder Technologies
• Muslims, Mongols spread gunpowder
• Technology reaches Europe by 1258

15
Bubonic Plague

• The Little Ice Age, c. 1300 CE
• Decline of agricultural output leads to
  widespread famine
• Bubonic Plague spreads from south-west China
• Carried by fleas on rodents
• Mongol campaigns spread disease to Chinese
  Interior
• Spread of Plague
• Mongols, merchants, travelers spread
  disease west
• 1346 Black Sea ports
• 1347 Mediterranean ports
• 1348 Western Europe

16
Symptoms of the Black Plague

• Inflamed discolored lymph nodes in neck,
  armpits, groin area
• Buboes, hence Bubonic
• 60-70 mortality rate, within days of onset of
  symptoms
• Extreme northern climates less affected
• Winter hard on flea population
• India, sub-Saharan areas unaffected
• Reasons unknown
• Social Economic effects
• Massive labor shortage
• Demand for higher wages
• Population movements
• Governments attempt to freeze wages, stop serf
  movements
• Riots result

17
Population Decline (millions)
18
Economic Recovery

• Conscripted labor to repair, rebuild irrigation
  systems
• Promoted manufacturing of porcelain, silk
• Cultural revival
• Attempt to eradicate Mongol legacy by promoting
  traditional Chinese culture
• Emperor Yong-le commissions 23,000-roll
  Encyclopedia

19
Recovery in Western Europe State Building

• China centralized Empire
• Europe regional states
• Europe develops new taxes
• Italian states bonds large standing armies
• France salt tax, sales tax
• England hearth tax, head tax, plow tax
• French Louis XI (1461-1483) had 15,000 man army
• Spain - Fernando of Aragon marries Isabel of
  Castile, 1469
• Major political economic alliance
• Completes reconquista, expanded beyond Iberian
  peninsula to Italy
• Funded Columbus quest for China

20
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Crisis Recovery
• Recovery in Western Europe State Building
• Taxies and Armies
• Italian States
• France England
• Spain

21
The Renaissance, 14th-16th centuries

• rebirth of classical culture Italian artists
  use perspective
• Work with real human anatomy musculature
• Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
• Michelangelo (1475-1564)
• Architecture domed cathedrals Roman dome

Michelangelo Pieta, 15th Century Italian
22
The Humanists

• Humanities literature, history, moral philosophy
• Renaissance humanists deeply devoted to
  Christianity
• Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) publishes critical
  Greek-Latin edition of New Testament
• Also devoted to rediscovering classical Latin
  texts, often ignored in monastic libraries

23
Humanist Moral Thought

• Rejection of monastic lifestyle in favor of
  morally virtuous life while engaged in the world
• Marriage, business
• Reconciliation of Christianity with rapidly
  changing European society economy
• Renaissance Europe the larger world
• Artists express interest in Byzantine, Asian
  worlds

24
Exploration Colonization

• Ming dynasty hesitant to have large foreign
  populations
• Mongol experience
• Allowed small populations in port cities
• Yongle engaged Admiral Zheng He to mount seven
  massive naval expeditions, 1405-1433
• Placed trade under imperial control
• Demonstrated strength of Ming dynasty
• Successful, but aborted as Mongols presented new
  threat in the north

25
Chinese European voyages of exploration,
1405-1498
26
European Exploration in the Atlantic Indian
Oceans

• Motives profit, missionary activity
• Portuguese early leaders in Atlantic exploration
• Search for sea route to Indian Ocean basin
• Prince Henrique (Henry the Navigator) seizes
  Strait of Gibraltar, 1415
• Begins encouragement of major Atlantic voyages

27
Colonization of the Atlantic Islands

• Madeiras, Azores Islands, etc.
• Investments in sugarcane plantations
• Exploration of west African coast
• Dramatically increases volume of slave trade
• Ultimately, some 12 million Africans deported to
  Americas for slave labor

28
Indian Ocean Trade

• Attempt to avoid using Muslim middlemen in trade
  with east
• 1488 Bartolomeu Dias sails around Cape of
  Good Hope
• 1497-1499 Vasco de Gama sails route to India
  back
• Portuguese gunships attempt to maintain trade
  monopoly
• Beginnings of European imperialism in Asia

29
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Crisis Recovery
• Recovery in China The Ming Dynasty
• Hongwu
• Ming Centralization
• Mandarins and Eunuchs
• Economic Recovery
• Cultural Revival

Ming Vase, 1368 - 1644
30
Recovery in China The Ming Dynasty

• 1368 Yuan dynasty collapses, Mongols depart
• Ming Dynasty founded
• Emperor Hongwu, orphan raised by Buddhist
  monks,
• works through military ranks
• Proclaims new Ming (Brilliant) dynasty,
  1368-1644

Emperor Hongwu
31
Ming Centralization

• Reestablishment of Confucian educational system
• Execution of minister suspected of treason,
  begins tradition of direct rule by Emperor
• Reliance on emissaries called Mandarins
• Heavy reliance on eunuchs
• Sterile, could not build hereditary power base
• Centralized structure lasts through Qing dynasty
  to 1911

32
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Exploration Colonization
• The Chinese Reconnaissance of the Indian Ocean
  Basin
• Zheng Hes Expeditions
• Chinese Naval Power
• End of the Voyages

Chinese Voyages of Trade Exploration, 1405-1498
33
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Zheng Hes Expeditions treasure ship (four
  hundred feet) Columbuss Santa Marie
  (eighty-five feet) Illustration by Jan Adkins,
  1993

34
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• European Exploration in the Atlantic Indian
  Oceans

35
Reaching Out Cross-Cultural Interactions

• Exploration Colonization
• European Exploration in the Atlantic Indian
  Oceans
• Portugese Exploration
• Colonization of the
• Atlantic Islands
• Slave Trade
• Indian Ocean Trade
• Christopher Columbus

36
Christopher Columbus

• Search for western sea route to Indian Ocean
• Portuguese consider his proposal impractical,
  reject it
• Fernando Isabel of Spain underwrite voyage,
  departs in 1492
• Makes landfall in San Salvador
• Believes he has reached islands off coast of Asia
• Consequences of discovery of Western Hemisphere
• Reconfiguration of global networks of power,
  communication, exchange

37
Key Words Terms (19)

• Ibn Battuta, 1304-1369 14th c. trading cities
  Marco Polo, 1253-1324Mongol-Christian
  diplomacyEnvoy Rabban Saumacrop citrus , rice,
  sugarcanegunpowder technologiesThe Little Ice
  AgeBubonic  Plague, 14th c. Emperor Hongwu
  Ming Dynasty The Yongle EmperorYongle
  EncyclopediaWestern European state-building

• Unification of Spain, Fernando Isabel
  Reconquista The Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci
  The HumanistsMichelangelo Buonarotti
  Desiderius Erasmus Zeng He's Ming
  ExpeditionsPrince Henry the Navigator
  Christopher Columbus, 1492 Vasco da Gama, 1498

38
Unit III Summary

• The Indian sub-continent did not experience
  centralized imperial rule, but participated fully
  in the larger hemispheric zone of cross-cultural
  communication exchange.
• The early medieval era was a crucial period for
  the development of western Europe Christianity
  preserved elements of Roman society established
  a foundation for cultural unity.
• From 1000 to 1500C.E., nomadic peoples overran
  settled societies established vast
  transregional empires from China to eastern
  Europe.
• Increased maritime trade in the Indian Ocean
  promoted intense cross-cultural communications.
• Rapid political development in sub-Saharan Africa
  western Europe was underwritten by demographic
  growth, increased agricultural production
  political development.
• The 14th and 15th c. brought war, plague,
  global climatic changes to the eastern
  hemisphere.
• Recovery, however, brought expansion laid the
  foundations of a new era in world history, as
  European voyages brought the worlds various
  peoples into permanent and sustained
  communication with one another.
• The period from 1000 to 1500 C. E. set the stage
  for the modern era of world history.