State Building, Expansion, and Conflict, 600-1450 - Incomplete Flashcards
Feudalism
● Monarchs awarded land to loyal followers or vassals
● In exchange, these vassals guaranteed that their parcels of land (fiefs) would be governed
- Law and justice would be dispensed
- Crops would be grown
- Land would be protected
Noble/Aristocratic class
● Those who received the largest land parcels from the monarchs
● They often subdivide their own land, becoming lords to their own vassals
Charlemagne (768-814)
● Grandson of Charle Martel who fought the Battle of Tours
● Took over France and conquered Germany – convert Germany to Catholicism
● Crowned emperor by the pope in 800
● Centralized Western Europe except for England, Spain, and Southern Italy
● Created the Holy Roman Empire
● Created a network of administrators and local officials to supervise his growing territories
Carolingiens
Family that controled the Frankish kingdom
Code of chivalry
● Expressed fictionally in songs and poems like those about King Arthur
● Supposed to ensure that knights acted as virtuous, Christian warrirs, dealing fairly with the lower classes and treating women with delicacy and respect
● It was often broken
Serfs
Peasants who were not technically slaves but were tied to a feudal lord’s land and had no right to change profession or residence without permission
Magna Carta
● Imposed on the king by his barons in 1215
● Guaranteed the nobility certain rights and privileges
Parliament
● Made laws in conjuction with the king
● Gradually became more representative
Common law
Provide for jury trials and observe certain personal liberties
Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453)
● Resulted from the competing claims over French territory
● Coincided with social unrest on both sides and the black death
● The English enjoyed the upper hand at first but the French ultimately won due to Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc
● A prominent female who claimed that she heard voices from God
● She found the French heri and revitalized the French army
● Help France to win the war
● France, however, turned her over to England after the war and she was burned at a stake
Battle of Talas
● Fought in 751
● The newly arisen Abbasid caliphate decisively halted Tang China’s westward expansion into Central Asia
Crusades
● Holy wars
● Pope has the authority to declare them
The Crusades
● The best-known crusades
● Waged against hte Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa between 1095 and 1291
The First Crusade
● 1096-1099
● Sparked by Byzantine requests for military aid agains thte Seljuk Turks, who had smashed Byzantine forces at Manzikert in 1071
● The Seljuk TUrks had captured Jerusalem and the holy Land
● They kicked Muslims out and formed 4 Latin Kingdoms
Latin Kingdoms
● Europeans cemented their military and economic presence in the middle East for two centuries after the First Crusade
● A seires of Latin Kingdoms were established on the Mediterranean’s eastern shores
● Threw the Middle East into a deepter chaos
● Steadily shrank during the 1200s and the Europeans abandoned their last major outpost in 1291
Saladin
● Kurdish General who rallied the Turks and recaptrued Jerusalem in 1187
● He was also able to hold back the Third Crusade
Third Crusade
● 1189-1212
● Three big monnarch came along
- British king, French king, and Holy Roman emperor
● Frederick died and French king left the crusade force
● Only English forces went to Jerusalem and were defeated
Fourth Crusade
● 1202-1204
● Turned into a Venetian-backed trade war against Christian Constantinople, which was brutally sacked
● Venetian formed the Latin Empire of Byzantine in 1204 and Byzantine was able to retake their empire in 1261
Reconquista
● 1031-1492
● Retake Spain from Moors (Muslims)
● Spain became very religious because it was formed out of religious struggle between Catholicism and Muslims
● Very regionally divided becuase it was conquered separately
What did the Byzantium and the post-Han dynasties keep that were the old states’ traditional sources of legitimacy and power?
● Partriarchal authority
● Religious backing
● Support of landowning elites
WHat was the stae of western Europe after the fal of Rome?
● No single authority emerged to take Rome’s place
● It was politicallly decentralized and had constant military threat from migrating barbarians and Muslim invaders
How were the obligations in the feudal system kept?
● Europe – formal and contractual
● Japan – abstract sense of loyalty
What were vassals required to do for their lords?
● Vassals were required to recruit foot soldiers from the land given them
● Themselves fought as knights, or eliete armored cavalry
How was the life of serfs in feudal system?
Serfs spent a certain number of days per month working directly for their lords and also owed their lord a portion of their own crops and livestock
What were the two key strategies pursued by European rulers during the Middle Ages?
● Legitimate one’s rule by association with the Catholic Church – whose political role in medieval Europe was considerable
● Hearken back to the Roman Empire as a model of effective government to imitate
Why did Charlemagne’s empire split up?
● He didn’t practice primogeniture – give all wealth and belonging to eldest son
● His empire split among all of his sons after his death
What was the struggle between monarchs and nobles?
● Monarchs wanted centralization
● Nobles wished to preserve their feudal powers and privileges
What was the struggle between the Catholic papacy and European monarcchs?
● Catholic papacy claimed and exercised a great deal of worldly power duirng hte Middle Ages
● Struggle of who has more control
What brought French-style feudalism to England?
● Norman Conquest of 1066
● William the Conquerer, a vassal of the French king, became the king of England
WHat route did Capetian kings of Fance take to centralize the nation?
● Increase their own power
● Conquered large and economically important regions
What was the relationship between Tang China and the Abbasid Caliphate?
● With the frontier between them fixed into place after hte battle of Talas, the two states established close relationships
● The caliphate even lent Arab troops to the Tang emperor to assist against hte An Shi rebellion
● Trade flourished between them along the Silk ROad and the Indian Ocean trade network
What did the Tnag-Abbasid commerce enable?
● THe westward movements of the Chinese innovations such as improved printing, paper currency, the compass, and gunpowder weaponry
What are the reasons why a pope would call a crusade?
● To convert nonbelievers to Catholicism
- As in the Teutonic knights’ crusades in Eastern Europe
● To crush Christian sects the pope considered heretical
● Combat non-Christian foreigners
- Spain’s anti-Muslim Reconquista
What are the motivations for The Crusades?
- Genuine religious belief
- Led to religious persecution–targeting Muslims and Jewish - Geopolitical struggle/crisis
- Clash between western Christian civilization and middle eastern Muslim civilization over which civilization is dominant - Economic motivation/expansion of trade
- Italian city states were big traders
- Venice wanted to exapnd the trading routes and fund the money for the crusades - Land
- Younger sons of nobles are motivated for land
What are hte long-term effects of hte Crusades?
● Worsening of the relationship between European Christians and the Muslim Middle East
● Greater awareness of the wider world
- Lands of the east
● Increased knowledge of and desire for the economic wealth to be gained by greater interaction with the Middle and Far East
● THe crusading idal–fighting on behalf of a sacred cause–contributed to the myth of knightly chivalry
● Tehcnology transfer
- Europeans learned about castle architecture and came into contact with some of the innovations from China
● Knowledge of math, sciences
