Social Structures, 600-1450 Flashcards
Urbanization
● Existing cities grew larger and more cities came into being
● People moved into the cities
Little Ice Age
● Making it harder for certain urban centers to sustain themselves than it had been during the medieval climatic optimum
Specialization of labor
● Created a need for artisans, manual laborers, and a growing number of others who belonged neither to the elite nor to the rural,agricultural population
● City life fosters this
Diasporic communities
● Formed in ports and cities along far-reaching trad routes
● Includd travelers and traders of all sorts, but centered on merchant families who took up long-term residence far from home
- Chinese merchants throughout SOutheast Asia, especially in malaysia and Indones
- Sogdians along the extent of the Silk Road
- Jews throughout the Meds, the indian ocean basin and Silk Road
- Muslim traders throughtout the Indian Ocean trade network, as far as China
● Introduced its traditions and practices into the host culture
Elite classes
● In a typical society comprised 10-15% of the population
● Include the royal family if there was one, as well as aristocrats with noble status
● High-level clergy tended to fall into this category, and the same was sometimes true of civil servants occupying top spot in the state bureaucracy
● Their wealth derived from their ownership of land and often looked down on trade
Commoners
● A small but gorwing number worked at occupations including scribes, lawyers, physicians, mid- or low- level bureaucrats, and mid- or low-level clergy
● Generally required literacy
● Sometimes contribute to the creation of middle class
Merchants and bankers
● Formed part of hte emerging middle class
● Grew in ize, wealth, and clout
● Spot in social hierarchy depend on the society
- In many places, they sat higher than most commoners
- In much of Asia, where Confucian doctrines influenced social thinking, peasant were condiered superior to even the richest merchant
Artisans and craftspeople
● Exapnded due to urbanization
Farmers and peasants
● Vast majority of any settled society’s population lived in the countryside and worked in agricultreu
● Place in most hierarchies tended ot be near the bottom
Slaves, coerced/unfree laborers/untouchable/pariah classes
● Very bottom of any society’s hierarchy
Guilds
● In urban settings, artisans and skilled workers often bandd together
● These associations maintained a monopoly on their respective trades
● They restricted membership, set prices and standards of quality, and provided pensions
Slavery/coerced labor
● Mesoamerican and Andean societies sometimes ensalved their neighbors
● THe same was true in Africa, and foreigners added to the burdn here by arriving from outside to enslave Africans
● The Arab slave trade grew espeically when teh Portuguese moved into West Africa
● Mongols compelled soldiers and skilled workers to serve them where they conquered
● Slavery was comon in teh M.E. for military purposes as well as civilian ones
Mamluks
● Military slaves in Middle Easte
● Muslim armies recruited neighboring people from Asia Minor and the Caucasus Mountians
● Meant less ot oppress than to ensure loyalty
● Received many privileges and could attain positiosn of power
● Taught the code of furusiyya
Furusiyya
● Equitation
● Involved not just military training, but cultured and honorable behavior
Devshirme
● Took yound men from non-Muslim (typically Christian) families and groomed them to serve as privileged slaves in the civil service and in the army
● In the Ottoman empire
Janissaries
● The most famous of the Ottoman troops
● Gunpowder infantry whose status as privileged slave-soldier was similar to that of the mamluks
Serfs
● Not slaves (not seen as actual property)
● boudn to the land
● Not legally free and could not chagne residence or profession without permission from their landowner
● COmmon in feudal societies
● Had to give a portion of their own crops and livestock to the lord, and they had to spend a certain number of days per month fulfilling labor obligations
- Agricultural work and corvee labor projects
● Conscripted as soldiers
Mit’a system
● Common practice in the Andes by the moche period
● Ayllu cooperated to fulfill the labor obligations they owed the warrior-priest elites who controlled landownership
Ayllu
Commoner clans
Wool Carders’ Revolt
● In Florence 1378
● Sparked by the rage of unskilled workers who had no guild to protect them from being paid too little
● Many consider this the first urban labor dispute in Europe
Peasant uprisings
● Tended to take place either in times of famine or disaster or when taxes, rents, or military obligations suddenly increased
Basil the Copper Hand
● Led one of the peasant uprisings in Byzantium in the early 900s
● New agrarian laws accidnetally caused terrible food shortages
An Shi Rebellion
● Led by general An LuShan in the mid-700s
● Supported by peasants in northern China who resented the contrast between their miserable poverty and the sumptuous luxuries enjoyed by the elite classes
● China’s Tang rulers quashed the revult
Red Turban revolt
● Duing the mid-1300s under the Yuan dynasty
● Provoked by two main causes
- The regime’s unwillingness to rpovide peasants with relief from disastrous floods
- Sharp rise in the taxes peasants had to pay to support the regime’s military spending
Hundred Years’ War
● 1337-1453 between England and France
● Caused large peasant revolts on both sides
● French peasants staged the Jacquerie in 1358 while Wat Tyler led teh English Peasants’ Revolt in 1381
Wu Zhao
● Politically powerful women
● Empress of China during the 700s
● THe only woman to rule the country in her own right
Eleanor of Aquitaine
● Married the king of France during the 1200s and then the king of England
● Influenced politics and culture in both countries
Lady Murasaki
● Prominent female writer in Japan
Hildegard von Binger
● Prominent female nun-composer in Germany
Joan of Arc
● In teh early 1400s, she rallied French forces during the hundred Years’ War and defeated their English foes in several key battles
Hua Mulan
● Chinese saga of hte warrior girl arose in the 500s C.E.
Mongolian women
● Mongol armies of Genghis Khan allowed women to fight during the 1200s
● One of Ghenghis’s own daughters commanded troops in Central Asia
What did the citeis serve as in earlier times?
● Seats of power (political, administrative, and military)
● Centers of cultural and economic activity
What were some common reasons for the decline of major cities?
● Disease
● Military pressure from external enemies
● Depletion of nearby resources
● Agricultural shortages
What were the conditions that encourage the emergence of cities?
● Lack of a major military threat
● Proximity to or involvement with a major trade route
● Favorable agricultural and climatic conditions
● Solid population base
● Reliable transportation infrastructure
What happened as a result of urbanization?
● The importance of cities for trade, banking, and commerce make merchant classes larger and sometimes more influential
- Even if elite classes in many areas viewed trade and those involved in it with disdain
How does nomadic and settled societies differ in their social organization/
● Hunting and foraging, herding and nomadic pastoralism tended to be relatively egalitarian and non-hierarchical ● Settled societies, whether urban or agricultural, had more complex class hierarchies and were more rigidly stratified
What was the social hierarchy in Europe?
● Royalty ● Aristocracy/nobility+knights ● merchants ●Artisans and laborers ● Free peasants ● Enserfed peasants
What was the social hierarchy in Ottoman Empire?
● Royal/noble elites
● Men of the pen (scholars, civil servants)
● Men of hte sword (warriors)
● Men of negotiation (merchants, artisans)
● Men of husbandry (peasans, herders)
● Slaves
What was the social hierarchy in East Asia (Confucian)?
● Royal/noble elites
● Scholars + warrior elite (samurai in Japan)
● Farmers
● Artisans
● Merchants
● Slaves (+ untouchables in Japanese caste system)
What was the social hierarchy in South Asia (Hindu Caste System)?
● Royal/noble elites ● Brahmins (priests) ● Kshatriyas (warriors) ● Vaishyas (merchants, skllled workers, peasants) ● Sudras (unskilled workers, servants) ● Slaves; pariahs and untouchables
Why did cities have a larger social mobility in medieval Europe?
● Served as pockets of relative freedom, where peasants could escape the bonds of serfdom
● Trade and commerce allowed for a certain degree of self-advancement, regardless of birth
What were the conditions of elite women?
● Occasionally govern states
- Generally indirectly, by informally influencing royal or noble sons and husbands
● Assisted witht eh supervision of households and estates
● Had access to education and sometimes distinguished themselves in the arts
● Religous careers as nuns or priestesses were open to women of the upper classes
● Mainly occupy with childbearing and homemaking
What were the conditions of middle class women?
● Might or might not be able to inherit or own property, depending on time or place
● Wives in merchant or shopkeeper families might help with the running of businesses, or own their own businesses (rarely)
What were the conditions of lower class women?
● Confined to low-status jobs such as weaving, pottery, food gathering, farm chores, tending herds, and domestic servitude
What were hte rights and freedoms of women?
● Generally could inheirt and own property
● Receive dowry or bird price that provided them with some economic security
● Divorce was possible (harder for wives than husbands)
● Upper classes were alloed to some education
● Before the law and courts, women enjoyed some legal safeguards, but never full equality
● The medieval Europe, the cult of chivalry encouraged proper conduct toward women
Where tendd to allow women more freedoms and flexibility?
● sub-Sharan Africa, espeically int eh west
- Descent was often traced matrilineally
- Women’s labor as farmers, working alongside their cattle-hdering husbands, was highly valued
- Old women in Afrian societies were also consulted for advice more frequently than elsewhere
● Mongols
● Japan during the heian era
- afforded women (upper class) a high degree of respect for their cultural and intellectual attainments
- Lost after the rise of japanese feudalism
What were the restictions on women’s lives?
● Secondary status they were forced into ● Arranged marriages ● Veiling and seclusion (Muslims, Orthodox, Hindus) ● Concubinage and polygamy ● Witch hunts in Europe ● Sati ritual in India ● Foot binding in Song China
How did religions view women?
● The majority of Christian theologians viewed women as subordinate to men, if not inherently more sinful and refused them positions of spritual authority
- The Catholic church issued
● Islam assigned women a secondary status relative to men
● Neo-Confucianism encouraged similar thinking
● Hindu women were highly restricted by the dictates of the caste system
