Questions Flashcards
In what ways did the gathering and hunting people of Australia differ from those of the northwest coast of North America?
The gathering and hunting people of the northwest coast of North America possessed permanent village settlements with large and sturdy houses, considerable economic specialization, ranked societies that sometimes included slavery, chiefdoms dominated by powerful clan leaders, and extensive storage of food; none of those features were part of Australian gathering and hunting societies
What kinds of changes were transforming west African agricultural village societies and those of the Iroquois as the fifteenth century dawned?
In West Africa, three distinct patterns of political development were taking shape among agricultural village societies, with the Yoruba people creating city-states; the kingdom of Benin taking shape as a small, highly centralized territorial state; and the Igbo peoples relying on other institutions—title societies, women’s associations, hereditary ritual experts serving as mediators, a balance of power among kinship groups—to maintain social cohesion beyond the level of the village.
• In addition, the Yoruba, Bini, and Igbo peoples traded actively among themselves as well as with more distant peoples and changed from a matrilineal to a patrilineal system of tracing their descent.
• In the Americas, in what is now central New York State, an increased level of conflict among Iroquois peoples triggered a remarkable political innovation—a loose alliance or confederation among five Iroquois peoples based on an agreement known as the Great Law of Peace. The Iroquois League of Five Nations kept peace, adjudicated disputes, and operated by consensus. It also gave expression to values of limited government, social equality, and personal freedom.
• The Iroquois developed a system that gave women unusual authority. Descent was matrilineal, married couples lived with the wife’s family, and women controlled agriculture. While men were hunters, warriors, and the primary political officeholders, women selected and could depose those leaders.
What role did central Asian and west African pastoralists play in their respective regions?
- In Central Asia, the Turkic warlord Timur constructed a significant empire that retained control of the area between Persia and Afghanistan during the fifteenth century.
- Timur’s conquests, however, hid a more long-term change for the pastoral peoples of Central Asia, because his was the last great military success of nomadic peoples from Central Asia; in the centuries that followed, their homelands were swallowed up in the expanding Russian and Chinese empires.
- In West Africa, pastoral peoples retained their independence into the late nineteenth century.
- Groups like the Fulbe, West Africa’s largest pastoral society, generally lived in small communities among agricultural peoples;
- as they migrated gradually eastward after 1000 C.E., they maintained their distinctive way of life and a sense of cultural superiority that became more pronounced as they slowly adopted Islam.
- Some Fulbe dropped out of a pastoral life and settled in towns, where they became highly respected religious leaders.
- In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Fulbe were at the center of a wave of religiously based uprisings (jihads) that greatly expanded the practice of Islam and gave rise to a series of new states ruled by the Fulbe.
How would you describe the major achievements of ming dynasty China?
Under the Ming dynasty, China recovered from the disruption caused by Mongol rule and the ravages of the plague to become perhaps the best-governed and most prosperous of the world’s major civilizations;
• it also undertook the largest and most impressive maritime expeditions the world had ever seen.
The repair and completion of the Great Wall and restoration of Grand Canal during the Ming era is marked as one of the biggest achievements in the field of engineering. A wide range of equipment and machinery were manufactured during this era, from which cotton and silk looms were made. Agricultural production was increased due to advancements in technology. Advancement in military technology led to invention of powerful artillery and the Huochong gun, a projection firearm.
From 1405 until 1433, the Chinese imperial eunuch Zheng He led seven ocean expeditions for the Ming emperor that are unmatched in world history.
What political and cultural differences stand out in the histories of the fifteenth-century China and Western Europe? What similarities are apparent?
- Political consolidation occurred in both China and Western Europe, but in China this meant a unitary and centralized government that encompassed almost the whole of its civilization, while in Europe a decidedly fragmented system of many separate, independent, and competitive states made for a sharply divided Christendom.
- While both experienced cultural flowering, Europe’s culture after the Renaissance was rather more different from its own recent past than Ming dynasty China was from its pre-Mongol glory.
- While both sent out ships to explore the wider world, their purposes in doing so were very different.
In what ways did European maritime voyaging in the fifteenth century differ from that of China? What accounts for these differences?
- Chinese exploration was undertaken by an enormous fleet composed of several hundred large ships, while European explorations were undertaken by expeditions made up of a handful of small ships.
- European motivations for exploration included the desire for wealth from trade, the search for converts to Christianity, and the recruitment of possible Christian allies against the Muslim powers. China, by contrast, needed no military allies, required little in the way of trade, and had no desire to convert foreigners to Chinese culture or religion.
- The Europeans sought to monopolize by force the commerce of the Indian Ocean and violently carved out empires in the Americas; the Chinese fleet sought neither conquests nor colonies.
- China ended its voyages abruptly after 1433; the European explorations continued and even escalated.
- In terms of why China’s explorations were so different from their European counterparts, the fragmentation of political authority in Europe, unlike China’s unified empire, ensured that once begun, rivalry alone would drive Europeans to the end of the earth.
- Much of Europe’s elite, including merchants, monarchs, the clergy, and nobles, had an interest in overseas expansion; in China, by contrast, the emperor Yongle was the primary supporter of the Chinese voyages of exploration, and after he passed from the scene, those opposed to the voyages prevailed within the politics of the court.
- The Chinese were very much aware of their own antiquity, believed strongly in the absolute superiority of their culture, and felt that, if they needed something from abroad, others would bring it to them. The Europeans also believed themselves unique; however, in material terms, they were seeking out the greater riches of the East, and they were highly conscious that Muslim power blocked easy access to these treasures and posed a military and religious threat to Europe itself.
What major differences can you identify among the four major empires in the Islamic world of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries?
- The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires had Turkic origins, while the Songhay Empire did not.
- The Ottoman and Safavid empires ruled over the heartland of the Muslim world, where a majority of their subjects followed Islam; the Mughal and Songhay empires ruled over regions where Islam was a minority faith.
- The rulers of the Safavid Empire were the only ones to impose a Shia version of Islam as the official religion of the state.
What distinguished the Aztec and inca empires from each other?
- The Inca Empire was much larger than its Aztec counterpart.
- The Aztec Empire controlled only part of the Mesoamerican cultural region, while at its height the Inca state encompassed practically the whole of the Andean civilization.
- In the Aztec realm, the Mexica rulers largely left their conquered people alone, and no elaborate administrative system arose to integrate the conquered territories or to assimilate their people to Aztec culture. The Incas, on the other hand, erected a more bureaucratic empire.
- The Aztec Empire extracted substantial tribute in the form of goods from its subject populations, while the Incas primarily extracted labor services from their subjects.
- The Aztec Empire had a system of commercial exchange that was based on merchants and free markets, whereas the Inca government played a major role in both the production and distribution of goods.
- The authority of the state penetrated and directed the Incas’ society and economy far more than did that of the Aztecs.
How did Aztec religious thinking support the empire?
- The ideology of state that gave human sacrifice great religious importance shaped the techniques of Aztec warfare, which put a premium on capturing prisoners rather than on killing the enemy.
- Priests and rulers became interdependent, with human sacrifices carried out for political ends.
- Massive sacrificial rituals served to impress enemies, allies, and subjects alike with the immense power of the Aztecs and their gods.
In what ways did inca authorities seek to integrate their vast domains?
- The emperor was an absolute ruler and was regarded as divine.
- In theory, the state owned all land and resources.
- Subjects were organized, at least in the central regions of the empire, into hierarchical units of 10, 50, 100, 500, 1,000, and 10,000 people, each headed by local officials, who were supervised by an Inca governor or by the emperor.
- An imperial office of “inspectors” checked on provincial authorities.
- Births, deaths, marriages, and other population data were carefully recorded.
- A resettlement program moved one-quarter or more of the population to new locations.
- Leaders of conquered peoples were required to learn Quechua, and their sons were removed to the capital of Cuzco for instruction in Inca culture and language.
- Subject peoples were required to acknowledge major Inca deities, although once they did so, they were largely free to carry on their own religious traditions.
- The Inca Empire played a major role in the production and distribution of goods.
In what different ways did the peoples of the fifteenth century interact with one another?
- They interacted through webs of empire, large-scale political systems that brought together a variety of culturally different peoples;
- through webs of religion that linked far-flung peoples;
- and through long-established patterns of trade among peoples occupying different environments and producing different goods.
