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
