Social Structures, 600-1450

Question 1

Urbanization

Answer 1

● Existing cities grew larger and more cities came into being
● People moved into the cities

Question 2

Little Ice Age

Answer 2

● Making it harder for certain urban centers to sustain themselves than it had been during the medieval climatic optimum

Question 3

Specialization of labor

Answer 3

● 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

Question 4

Diasporic communities

Answer 4

● 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

Question 5

Elite classes

Answer 5

● 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

Question 6

Commoners

Answer 6

● 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

Question 7

Merchants and bankers

Answer 7

● 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

Question 8

Artisans and craftspeople

Answer 8

● Exapnded due to urbanization

Question 9

Farmers and peasants

Answer 9

● 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

Question 10

Slaves, coerced/unfree laborers/untouchable/pariah classes

Answer 10

● Very bottom of any society’s hierarchy

Question 11

Guilds

Answer 11

● 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

Question 12

Slavery/coerced labor

Answer 12

● 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

Question 13

Mamluks

Answer 13

● 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

Question 14

Furusiyya

Answer 14

● Equitation

● Involved not just military training, but cultured and honorable behavior

Question 15

Devshirme

Answer 15

● 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

Question 16

Janissaries

Answer 16

● The most famous of the Ottoman troops

● Gunpowder infantry whose status as privileged slave-soldier was similar to that of the mamluks

Question 17

Serfs

Answer 17

● 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

Question 18

Mit’a system

Answer 18

● 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

Question 19

Ayllu

Answer 19

Commoner clans

Question 20

Wool Carders’ Revolt

Answer 20

● 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

Question 21

Peasant uprisings

Answer 21

● Tended to take place either in times of famine or disaster or when taxes, rents, or military obligations suddenly increased

Question 22

Basil the Copper Hand

Answer 22

● Led one of the peasant uprisings in Byzantium in the early 900s
● New agrarian laws accidnetally caused terrible food shortages

Question 23

An Shi Rebellion

Answer 23

● 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

Question 24

Red Turban revolt

Answer 24

● 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

Question 25

Hundred Years’ War

Answer 25

● 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

Question 26

Wu Zhao

Answer 26

● Politically powerful women
● Empress of China during the 700s
● THe only woman to rule the country in her own right

Question 27

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Answer 27

● Married the king of France during the 1200s and then the king of England
● Influenced politics and culture in both countries

Question 28

Lady Murasaki

Answer 28

● Prominent female writer in Japan

Question 29

Hildegard von Binger

Answer 29

● Prominent female nun-composer in Germany

Question 30

Joan of Arc

Answer 30

● In teh early 1400s, she rallied French forces during the hundred Years’ War and defeated their English foes in several key battles

Question 31

Hua Mulan

Answer 31

● Chinese saga of hte warrior girl arose in the 500s C.E.

Question 32

Mongolian women

Answer 32

● Mongol armies of Genghis Khan allowed women to fight during the 1200s
● One of Ghenghis’s own daughters commanded troops in Central Asia

Question 33

What did the citeis serve as in earlier times?

Answer 33

● Seats of power (political, administrative, and military)

● Centers of cultural and economic activity

Question 34

What were some common reasons for the decline of major cities?

Answer 34

● Disease
● Military pressure from external enemies
● Depletion of nearby resources
● Agricultural shortages

Question 35

What were the conditions that encourage the emergence of cities?

Answer 35

● 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

Question 36

What happened as a result of urbanization?

Answer 36

● 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

Question 37

How does nomadic and settled societies differ in their social organization/

Answer 37

● 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

Question 38

What was the social hierarchy in Europe?

Answer 38

● Royalty
● Aristocracy/nobility+knights
● merchants
●Artisans and laborers
● Free peasants
● Enserfed peasants

Question 39

What was the social hierarchy in Ottoman Empire?

Answer 39

● 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

Question 40

What was the social hierarchy in East Asia (Confucian)?

Answer 40

● Royal/noble elites
● Scholars + warrior elite (samurai in Japan)
● Farmers
● Artisans
● Merchants
● Slaves (+ untouchables in Japanese caste system)

Question 41

What was the social hierarchy in South Asia (Hindu Caste System)?

Answer 41

● Royal/noble elites
● Brahmins (priests)
● Kshatriyas (warriors)
● Vaishyas (merchants, skllled workers, peasants)
● Sudras (unskilled workers, servants)
● Slaves; pariahs and untouchables

Question 42

Why did cities have a larger social mobility in medieval Europe?

Answer 42

● 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

Question 43

What were the conditions of elite women?

Answer 43

● 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

Question 44

What were the conditions of middle class women?

Answer 44

● 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)

Question 45

What were the conditions of lower class women?

Answer 45

● Confined to low-status jobs such as weaving, pottery, food gathering, farm chores, tending herds, and domestic servitude

Question 46

What were hte rights and freedoms of women?

Answer 46

● 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

Question 47

Where tendd to allow women more freedoms and flexibility?

Answer 47

● 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

Question 48

What were the restictions on women’s lives?

Answer 48

● 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

Question 49

How did religions view women?

Answer 49

● 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