World History Notes

th
Class 11

Team Shashank Sajwan

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 SECTION I – EARLY SOCIETIES
• In this section, we will read about early societies which is often traced to the beginnings
of human existence, from the remote past, millions of years ago.
• The humans first emerged in Africa and how archaeologists have studied these early
phases of history from remains of bones and stone tools.
• Archaeologists have made attempts to reconstruct the lives of early people – to find out
about the shelters in which they lived, the food they ate by gathering plant produce and
hunting animals, and the ways in which they expressed themselves.
• These cities developed around temples, and were centres of long-distance trade.
Archaeological evidence – remains of old settlements and an abundance of written
material are used to reconstruct the lives of the different people who lived there –
craftspeople, scribes, labourers, priests, kings and queens.
• The story is a long one and is related to several developments that took place at least
5,000 years before the establishment of the first cities.
• Prior to the adoption of agriculture, people had gathered plant produce as a source of
food. Slowly, they learnt more about different kinds of plants – where they grew, the
seasons when they bore fruit and so on.
• Around the same time, people learnt how to domesticate animals such as sheep, goat,
cattle, pig and donkey.
• Plant fibres such as cotton and flax, and animal fibres such as wool were now woven into
cloth. Somewhat later, about 5,000 years ago, domesticated animals such as cattle and
donkeys were harnessed to ploughs and carts. These developments led to other changes
as well. When people grew crops, they had to stay in the same place till the crops ripened.
So, settled life became more common. And with that, people built more permanent
structures in which to live.
• These were used to store grain and other produce, and to prepare and cook a variety of
foods made from the new grains that were cultivated. In fact, a great deal of attention
was given to processing foods to make them tasty and digestible.
• New equipment included mortars and pestles for processing and grinding grain, as well as
stone axes and hoes, which were used to clear land for cultivation, as well as for digging
the earth to sow seeds.
• This prepared the way for the more extensive use of metal for jewellery and for tools
subsequently.
• This included wood, stones, including precious and semi-precious stones, metals and
shell, and obsidian (hardened) volcanic lava.
• While these changes took place slowly, over several thousand years, the pace quickened
with the growth of the first cities.
• Look out for continuities and changes as you explore these two contrasting themes in
early history.
• There were other kinds of early societies, including farming communities and pastoral
peoples.

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 TIMELINE I
(6 MYA TO 1 BCE)
• This timeline focuses on the emergence of humans and the domestication of plants and
animals.
• It highlights some major technological developments such as the use of fire, metals,
plough agriculture and the wheel. Other processes that are shown include the emergence
of cities and the use of writing.
• You will also find mention of some of the earliest empires – a theme that will be developed
in Timeline II.

DATES AFRICA EUROPE

6 mya-500,000 BP Australopithecus fossils (5.6 mya)
Evidence of use of fire (1.4 mya)
500,000-150,000 BP Homo sapiens fossils (195,000 BP) Evidence of use of fire
(400,000 BP)
50,000-30,000 Homo sapiens fossils (40,000)
30,000-10,000 Paintings in caves/rock shelters Paintings in caves/rock
(27,500) shelters (especially France and
Spain)
7000-6000 Domestication of cattle and dogs
6000-5000 Cultivation of wheat and
barley (Greece)
4000-3000 Domestication of donkey, Use of copper (Crete)
cultivation of millet, use of copper
3000-2000 Plough agriculture, first kingdoms, Domestication of horse
cities, pyramids, calendar, (eastern Europe)
hieroglyphic script, writing on
papyrus (Egypt)
2000-1900 Cities, palaces, use of bronze,
the potter’s wheel,
development of trade (Crete)
1700-1600 Development of a script
(Crete)
1500-1400 Use of glass bottles (Egypt)
1100-1000 Use of iron
900-800 City of Carthage established in
North Africa by the Phoenicians
from West Asia; growing trade
around the Mediterranean
800-700 Use of iron (Sudan) First Olympic games (Greece,
776 BCE)
700-600 Use of iron (Egypt)
600-500 Use of coins (Greece);
establishment of the Roman
republic (510 BCE)

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500-400 Persians invade Egypt Establishment of a
‘democracy’ in Athens
(Greece)
400-300 Establishment of Alexandria, Alexander of Macedonia
Egypt (332 BCE), which becomes a conquers Egypt and parts of
major centre of learning West Asia (336-323 BCE)

DATES ASIA SOUTH ASIA

6mya-500,000 BP Use of fire (700,000 BP, China) Stone age site in Riwat
(1,900,000 BP, Pakistan)
150,000-50,000 BP Homo sapiens fossils (100,000 BP,
West Asia)
30,000-10,000 BP Domestication of dog (14,000, West Cave paintings at Bhimbetka
Asia) (Madhya Pradesh); Homo
sapiens fossils (25,500 BP, Sri
Lanka)
8000-7000 BCE Domestication of sheep and goat,
cultivation of wheat and barley
(West Asia)
7000-6000 Domestication of pig and cattle Early agricultural
(West and East Asia) settlements (Baluchistan)
6000-5000 Domestication of chicken,
cultivation of millet and yam (East
Asia)
5000-4000 Cultivation of cotton (South Asia);
use of copper (West Asia)
4000-3000 Use of the potter’s wheel, wheel for Use of copper
transport (3600 BCE), writing (3200
BCE, Mesopotamia), use of bronze
3000-2000 Plough agriculture, cities Cities of the Harappan
(Mesopotamia); silk making (China); civilisation, use of script*
domestication of horse (Central (c.2700 BCE)
Asia); cultivation of rice (Southeast
Asia)
2000-1900 Domestication of water-buffalo
(East Asia)
1600-1500 Cities, writing, kingdoms (Shang
dynasty), use of bronze (China)*
1500-1400 Use of iron (West Asia) Composition of the Rig Veda
1200-1100 Use of iron, megaliths
(Deccan and South India)
1100-1000 Domestication of the one-humped
camel (Arabia)

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 600-500 Use of coins (Turkey); Persian Cities and states in several
empire (546 BCE) with capital at areas, first coins, spread of
Persepolis; Chinese philosopher Jainism and Buddhism
Confucius (c. 551 BCE)
400-300 Establishment of the
Mauryan empire (c. 321 BCE)
300-200 Establishment of an empire in China
(221 BCE), beginning of the
construction of the Great Wall

DATES AMERICAS AUSTRALIA/PACIFIC ISLANDS

50,000-30,000 BP Homo sapiens fossils, earliest
indications of sea-faring
(45,000 BP)
30,000-10,000 BP Homo sapiens fossils (12,000 BP) Paintings (20,000 BP)
7000-6000 Cultivation of squash
5000-4000 Cultivation of beans
4000-3000 Cultivation of cotton, bottle gourd
3000-2000 Domestication of guinea pig,
turkey, cultivation of maize
2000-1900 Cultivation of potato, chilli*,
cassava, peanut, domestication of
llama* and alpaca
1200-1100 Olmec settlements around the Gulf Settlements in Polynesia and
of Mexico, early temples and Micronesia
sculpture
1000-900 Development of a hieroglyphic
script

THEME I – FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME

• This chapter traces the beginning of human existence. It was 5.6 million years ago (written
as mya) that the first humanlike creatures appeared on the earth's surface.
• Human beings resembling us (henceforth referred to as 'modern humans') originated
about 160,000 years ago. During this long period of human history, people obtained food
by either scavenging or hunting animals and gathering plant produce.
o Even today there are hunter-gatherer societies in some parts of the world.
• Discoveries of human fossils, stone tools and cave paintings help us to understand early
human history.
• They were also sceptical about the ability of early humans to make stone tools or paint. It
was only over a period of time that the true significance of these finds was realised.
• The evidence for human evolution comes from fossils of species of humans which have
become extinct.
• Once fossils are dated, a sequence of human evolution can be worked out.

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• When such discoveries were first made, about 200 years ago, many scholars were often
reluctant to accept that fossils and other finds including stone tools and paintings were
actually connected with early forms of humans.
• For instance, in August 1856, workmen who were quarrying for limestone in the Neander
valley (see Map 2, p. 18), a gorge near the German city of Dusseldorf, found a skull and
some skeletal fragments.

RECOVERING FOSSILS
• A painstaking process. The precise location of finds is important for dating.

Shows the equipment used to record the location of Shows how a fossil fragment is
finds. The square frame to the left of the archaeologist is recovered from the surrounding
a grid divided into 10 cm squares. Placing it over the find stone, in this case a variety of
spot helps to record the horizontal position of the find. limestone, in which it is
The triangular apparatus to the right is used to record embedded. As you can see, this
the vertical position. requires skill and patience.

• 24 November 1859, when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published, marked
a landmark in the study of evolution. All 1,250 copies of the first print were sold out the
same day. Darwin argued that humans had evolved from animals a long time ago.

The skull of Neanderthal man. Some of those who

dismissed the antiquity of the skull regarded it as
'brutish' or that of a 'pathological idiot'.

The Story of Human Evolution

(a) The Precursors of Modern Human Beings
Look at these four skulls.
A belongs to an ape.

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B belongs to a species known as Australopithecus (see below).
C belongs to a species known as Homo erectus (literally ‘upright
man’).

D belongs to a species known as Homo sapiens (literally

‘thinking/wise man’} to which all present-day human beings belong.

List as many similarities and differences that you notice, looking

carefully at the brain case, jaws and teeth

• The differences that you notice in the skulls shown in the illustration are some of the
changes that came about as a result of human evolution.
• The story of human evolution is enormously long, and somewhat complicated.
• It is possible to trace these developments back to between 36 and 24 mya.
• We sometimes find it difficult to conceptualise such long spans of time. If you consider a
page of your book to represent 10,000 years, in itself a vast span of time, 10 pages would
represent 100,000 years, and 100 pages would equal 1 million years.
• To think of 36 million years, you would have to imagine a book 3,600 pages long! That was
when primates, a category of mammals, emerged in Asia and Africa.
• Subsequently, by about 24 mya, there emerged a subgroup amongst primates, called
hominoids. This included apes. And, much later, about 5.6 mya, we find evidence of the
first hominids.
• While hominids have evolved from hominoids and share certain common features, there
are major differences as well.
• Hominoids have a smaller brain than hominids. They are quadrupeds, walking on all fours,
but with flexible forelimbs.
• There are also marked differences in the hand, which enables the making and use of tools.
We will examine the kinds of tools made and their significance more closely later.
• In contrast, fossils found outside Africa are no older than 1.8 million years.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE HAND

A show the precision grip of the chimpanzee.
B shows the power grip of the human hand.
C shows the precision grip of the hominid.
The development of the power grip probably preceded
the precision grip.
Compare the precision grip of the chimpanzee with that
of the human hand.
Make a list of the things you do using a precision grip.
What are the things you do using a power grip?

• Hominids belong to a family known as Hominidae, which includes all forms of human
beings.
• The distinctive characteristics of hominids include a large brain size, upright posture,
bipedal locomotion and specialisation of the hand.

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• Hominids are further subdivided into branches, known as genus, of which
Australopithecus and Homo are important.
• Each of these in turn includes several species.
• The major differences between Australopithecus and Homo relate to brain size, jaws and
teeth. The former has a smaller brain size, heavier jaws and larger teeth than the latter.
• Virtually all the names given by scientists to species are derived from Latin and Greek
words. For instance, the name Australopithecus comes from a Latin word, ‘austral’,
meaning ‘southern’ and a Greek word, ‘pithekos’, meaning ‘ape.’
• Upright walking was also restricted, as they still spent a lot of time on trees. They retained
characteristics (such as long forelimbs, curved hand and foot bones and mobile ankle
joints) suited to life on trees.
• The remains of early humans have been classified into different species. These are often
distinguished from one another on the basis of differences in bone structure.
• These characteristics may have evolved due to what has been called the positive feedback
mechanism.
• For example, bipedalism enabled hands to be freed for carrying infants or objects. In turn,
as hands were used more and more, upright walking gradually became more efficient.
• However, the advantage in terms of saving energy is reversed while running. There is
indirect evidence of bipedalism as early as 3.6 mya. This comes from the fossilised hominid
footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania (see Section cover).
• Fossil limb bones recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia provide more direct evidence of
bipedalism.
• Around 2.5 mya, with the onset of a phase of glaciation (or an Ice Age), when large parts
of the earth were covered with snow, there were major changes in climate and
vegetation.
• Among these were the earliest representatives of the genus Homo.
• Homo is a Latin word, meaning ‘man’, although there were women as well! Scientists
distinguish amongst several types of Homos.
o The names assigned to these species are derived from what are regarded as their
typical characteristics.
• Fossils of Homo habilis
have been discovered at
Omo in Ethiopia and at
Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
• As the finds in Asia belong
to a later date than those in
Africa, it is likely that
hominids migrated from
East Africa to southern and
northern Africa, to
southern and north-
eastern Asia, and perhaps
to Europe, sometime
between 2 and 1.5 mya.
This species survived for
nearly a million years.

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• So, fossils found in Heidelberg, a city in Germany, were called Homo heidelbergensis,
while those found in the Neander valley were categorised as Homo neanderthalensis.
• The fossils of Homo heidelbergensis (0.8-0.1 mya) have a wide distribution, having been
found in Africa, Asia and Europe.
• They disappeared abruptly in western Europe around 35,000 years ago.
• An increase in brain size is associated with more intelligence and a better memory.
• The changes in the jaws and teeth were probably related to differences in dietary habits.

PEOPLING OF THE WORLD

WHEN WHERE WHO
5-1 mya Sub-Saharan Africa Australopithecus, early Homo,
Homo erectus
1 mya-40,000 years ago Africa, Asia and Europe in Homo erectus, archaic Homo
mid-latitudes sapiens, Neanderthals, Homo
sapiens sapiens/modern
humans
45,000 years ago, Australia Modern humans
40,000 years ago, to present Europe in high-latitudes Late Neanderthals,
and Asia-Pacific islands modern humans
North and South America
in deserts, rain forests

(b) Modern Human Beings

• If you look at this chart, you will
THE EARLIEST FOSSILS OF MODERN HUMANS
notice that some of the earliest
evidence for Homo sapiens has WHERE WHEN (years ago)
been found in different parts of ETHIOPIA 195,000-160,000
Africa. This raises the question of Omo Kibish
the centre of human origin. SOUTH AFRICA 120,000-50,000
• The issue of the place of origin of Border Cave
modern humans has been much Die Kelders
debated. Klasies River Mouth
• Two totally divergent views have MOROCCO 70,000-50,000
been expounded, one advocating Dar es Solton
the regional continuity model (with ISRAEL 100,000-80,000
multiple regions of origin), the Qafzeh Skhul
other the replacement model (with AUSTRALIA 45,000-35,000
a single origin in Africa). Lake Mungo
• According to the regional BORNEO 40,000
continuity model, the archaic Niah Cave
Homo sapiens in different regions FRANCE 35,000
gradually evolved at different rates Cro-Magnon,
into modern humans, and hence near Les Eyzies
the variation in the first appearance of modern humans in different parts of the world.

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The Replacement and Regional Continuity Models
• The replacement model visualises the
complete replacement everywhere of
all older forms of humans with
modern humans. In support of this
view is the evidence of the genetic and
anatomical homogeneity of modern
humans.
• The evidence of the earliest fossils of
modern humans (from Omo in
Ethiopia) also supports the
replacement model.

Early Humans: Ways of Obtaining Food

• So far, we have been considering the evidence of skeletal remains and seeing how these
have been used to reconstruct the histories of the movements of peoples across
continents. But there are other, more routine aspects of human life as well.
• That gathering was practised is generally assumed rather than conclusively established,
as there is very little direct evidence for it. While we get a fair amount of fossil bones,
fossilised plant remains are relatively rare.
• In recent years, the term hunting has been under discussion by scholars. Increasingly, it is
being suggested that the early hominids scavenged or foraged for meat and marrow from
the carcasses of animals that had died naturally or had been killed by other predators.
• Hunting probably began later – about 500,000 years ago.
• The earliest clear
evidence for the
deliberate, planned
hunting and butchery of
large mammals comes
from two sites: Boxgrove
in southern England
(500,000 years ago) and
Schoningen in Germany
(400,000 years ago)
• Fishing was also
important, as is evident
from the discovery of fish
bones at different sites.
• Herds of migratory
animals such as reindeer
and horse probably
crossed the river during
their autumn and spring migrations and were killed on a large scale.
• Today we find societies that live by hunting and gathering, where women and men
undertake a range of different activities, but, as we will see later in the chapter, it is not
always possible to suggest parallels with the past.

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Early Humans
From Trees, to Caves and Open-air Sites
• We are on surer ground when we try to reconstruct the evidence for patterns of
residence.
• One way of doing this is by plotting the distribution of artefacts. For example, thousands
of flake tools and hand axes have been excavated at Kilombe and Olorgesailie (Kenya).
• These finds are dated between 700,000 and 500,000 years ago.
• In such areas, people would tend to leave behind traces of their activities and presence,
including artefacts. The deposited artefacts would appear as patches on the landscape.

Archaeologists suggest that early hominids such as Homo habilis probably consumed most of
the food where they found it, slept in different places, and spent much of their time in trees.
How would bones have reached the site? How would stones have reached the site? Would
bones have survived intact?

• Between 400,000 and 125,000 years ago, caves and open-air sites began to be used.
Evidence for this comes from sites in Europe.
• In the Lazaret cave in southern France, a 12x4 metre shelter was built against the cave
wall. Inside it were two hearths and evidence of different food sources: fruits, vegetables,
seeds, nuts, bird eggs and freshwater fish (trout, perch and carp).
• Were these the result of a natural bushfire or volcanic eruption? Or were they produced
through the deliberate, controlled use of fire? We do not really know.
• Besides, fire was used to harden wood, as for instance the tip of the spear. The use of heat
also facilitated the flaking of tools. As important, fire could be used to scare away
dangerous animals.

Early Humans: Making Tools

• To start with, it is useful to remember that the use of tools and tool making are not
confined to humans. Birds are known to make objects to assist them with feeding, hygiene
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 and social encounters; and while foraging for food some chimpanzees use tools that they
have made.
• Moreover, the ways in which humans use and make tools often require greater memory
and complex organisational skills, both of which are absent in apes.
• It is likely that the earliest stone tool makers were the Australopithecus.
• As in the case of other activities, we do not know whether tool making was done by men
or women or both. It is possible that stone tool makers were both women and men.
• About 35,000 years ago, improvements in the techniques for killing animals are evident
from the appearance of new kinds of tools such as spear throwers and the bow and arrow.
• The earliest evidence of sewn clothing comes from about 21,000 years ago. Besides, with
the introduction of the punch blade technique to make small chisel-like tools, it was now
possible to make engravings on bone, antler, ivory or wood.

Modes of Communication: Language and Art

• Among living beings, it is humans alone that have a language.
• There are several views on language development:
(1) that hominid language involved gestures or hand movements;
(2) that spoken language was preceded by vocal but non-verbal communication such as
singing or humming;
(3) that human speech probably began with calls like the ones that have been observed
among primates.
• Thus, language may have developed as early as 2 mya. The evolution of the vocal tract
was equally important. This occurred around 200,000 years ago. It is more specifically
associated with modern humans.
• A third suggestion is that language developed around the same time as art, that is, around
40,000-35,000 years ago.
Cave Paintings at Altamira
• Altamira is a cave site in Spain. The paintings
on the ceiling of the cave were first brought
to the attention of Marcelino Sanz de
Sautuola, a local landowner and an amateur
archaeologist, by his daughter Maria in
November 1879.
• The little girl was ‘running about in the cavern
and playing about here and there’, while her
father was digging the floor of the cave.
Suddenly she noticed the paintings on the
ceiling: ‘Look, Papa, oxen!’ At first, her father
just laughed, but soon realised that some sort of paste rather than paint had been used
for the paintings and became ‘so enthusiastic that he could hardly speak’. He published a
booklet the following year, but for almost two decades his findings were dismissed by
European archaeologists on the ground that these were too good to be ancient.

• Hundreds of paintings of animals (done between 30,000 and12,000 years ago) have been
discovered in the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet, both in France, and Altamira, in Spain.
These include depictions of bison, horses, ibex, deer, mammoths, rhinos, lions, bears,
panthers, hyenas and owls.
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• More questions have been raised than answered regarding these paintings. For example,
why do some areas of caves have paintings and not others? Why were some animals
painted and not others? Why were men painted both individually and in groups, whereas
women were depicted only in groups? Why were men painted near animals but never
women? Why were groups of animals painted in the sections of caves where sounds
carried well?
• The act of painting could have been a ritual to ensure a successful hunt. Another
explanation offered is that these caves were possibly meeting places for small groups of
people or locations for group activities.
• Clearly, there is much that we still do not know. As mentioned at the beginning of this
chapter, hunter-gatherer societies exist even today. Can one learn anything about past
societies from present-day hunter-gatherers? This is a question we will address in the next
section.

Early Encounters with Hunter-Gatherers in Africa

• The following is an account by a member of an African pastoral group about its initial
contact in 1870 with the !Kung San, a hunter-gatherer society living in the Kalahari desert:
o When we first came into this area, all we saw were strange footprints in the sand. We
wondered what kind of people these were. They were very afraid of us and would hide
whenever we came around.
o We said: ‘Oh, this is good; these people are afraid of us, they are weak and we can
easily rule over them.’ So, we just ruled them. There was no killing or fighting.
• You will read more about encounters with hunter-gatherers in Themes 8 and 10.

The Hadza
• ‘The Hadza are a small group of hunters and gatherers, living in the vicinity of Lake Eyasi,
a salt, rift-valley lake...The country of the eastern Hadza, dry, rocky savanna, dominated
by thorn scrub and acacia trees...is rich in wild foods.
• All of these animals, apart from the elephant, are hunted and eaten by the Hadza. The
amount of meat that could be regularly eaten without endangering the future of the game
is probably greater than anywhere else in the world where hunters and gatherers live or
have lived in the recent past.
• Vegetable food – roots, berries, the fruit of the baobab tree, etc. – though not often
obvious to the casual observer, is always abundant even at the height of the dry season
in a year of drought.
• The honey and grubs of seven species of wild bee are eaten; supplies of these vary from
season to season and from year to year.
• Part of the country consists of open grass plains but the Hadza never build camps there.
Camps are invariably sited among trees or rocks and, by preference, among both.
• In spite of the exceptional numbers of game animals in their area, the Hadza rely mainly
on wild vegetable matter for their food. Probably as much as 80 per cent of their food by
weight is vegetable, while meat and honey together account for the remaining 20 per
cent.
• There is never any shortage of food even in the time of drought.’
– Written in 1960 by James Woodburn, an anthropologist.

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Hunter-Gatherer Societies
From the Present to the Past
• As our knowledge of present-day hunter-gatherers increased through studies by
anthropologists, a question that began to be posed was whether the information about
living hunters and gatherers could be used to understand past societies.
• For example, some archaeologists have suggested that the hominid sites, dated to 2 mya,
along the margins of Lake Turkana could have been dry season camps of early humans,
because such a practice has been observed among the Hadza and the !Kung San.
• For instance, present-day hunter-gatherer societies pursue several other economic
activities along with hunting and gathering
• Moreover, these societies are totally marginalised in all senses – geographically, politically
and socially. The conditions in which they live are very different from those of early
humans.
• There are conflicting data on many issues such as the relative importance of hunting and
gathering, group sizes, or the movement from place to place.
• In any case, the important role of women in contributing to the food supply in such
societies cannot be denied. It is perhaps this factor that ensures a relatively equal role for
both women and men in present-day hunter-gatherer societies, although there are
variations.

Epilogue
• For several million years, humans lived by hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants.
Then, between 10,000 and 4,500 years ago, people in different parts of the world learnt
to domesticate certain plants and animals. This led to the development of farming and
pastoralism as a way of life.
• The last ice age came to an end about 13,000 years ago and with that warmer, wetter
conditions prevailed.
• As a result, conditions were favourable for the growth of grasses such as wild barley and
wheat.
• Now relatively large, permanent communities occupied such areas for most parts of the
year. With some areas being clearly preferred, a pressure may have built up to increase
the food supply.
• One such area where farming and pastoralism began around 10,000 years ago was the
Fertile Crescent, extending from the Mediterranean coast to the Zagros mountains in Iran.
• These are some of the earliest villages known to archaeologists.
• Besides, new kinds of stone tools came into use. Other new tools such as the plough were
used in agriculture. Gradually, people became familiar with metals such as copper and tin.
The wheel, important for both pot making and transportation, came into use.
• About 5,000 years ago, even larger concentrations of people began to live together in
cities. Why did this happen? And what are the differences between cities and other
settlements? Look out for answers to these and other questions in Theme 2.

TIMELINE 1 (mya)
36-24 mya Primates;
Monkeys in Asia and Africa
24 mya (Superfamily) Hominoids;

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 Gibbons, Asian orang-utan and African apes (gorilla,
chimpanzee and bonobo or ‘pygmy’ chimpanzee)
6.4 mya Branching out of hominoids and hominids
5.6 mya Australopithecus
2.6-2.5 Earliest stone tools
2.5-2.0 Cooling and drying of Africa, resulting in decrease in
woodlands and increase in grasslands
2.5-2.0 mya Homo
2.2 mya Homo habilis
1.8 mya Homo erectus
1.3 mya Extinction of Australopithecus
0.8 mya ‘Archaic’ sapiens, Homo heidelbergensis
0.19-0.16 mya Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans)

TIMELINE 2 (years ago)

Earliest evidence of burials 300,000
Extinction of Homo erectus 200,000
Development of voice box 200,000
Archaic Homo sapiens skull in the Narmada valley, India 200,000 – 130,000
Emergence of modern humans 195,000 – 160,000
Emergence of Neanderthals 130,000
Earliest evidence of hearths 125,000
Extinction of Neanderthals 35,000
Earliest evidence of figurines made of fired clay 27,000
Invention of sewing needles 21,000

THEME II – WRITING AND CITY LIFE

• CITY life began in Mesopotamia*, the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers
that is now part of the Republic of Iraq.
• Mesopotamian civilisation is known for its prosperity, city life, its voluminous and rich
literature and its mathematics and astronomy.
• Mesopotamia’s writing system and literature spread to the eastern Mediterranean,
northern Syria, and Turkey after 2000 BCE, so that the kingdoms of that entire region were
writing to one another, and to the Pharaoh of Egypt, in the language and script of
Mesopotamia
• In the beginning of recorded history, the land, mainly the urbanised south (see discussion
below), was called Sumer and Akkad. After 2000 BCE, when Babylon became an important
city, the term Babylonia was used for the southern region.
• This language, similar to Hebrew, became widely spoken after 1000 BCE. It is still spoken
in parts of Iraq.
• NOTE – *The name Mesopotamia is derived from the Greek words mesos, meaning
middle, and potamos, meaning river.
• Mesopotamia was important to Europeans because of references to it in the Old
Testament, the first part of the Bible.

Shashank Sajwan | 15
• For instance, the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament refers to ‘Shimar’, meaning Sumer,
as a land of brick-built cities.
• From the mid-nineteenth century there was no stopping the enthusiasm for exploring the
ancient past of Mesopotamia.
• In 1873, a British newspaper funded an expedition of the British Museum to search for a
tablet narrating the story of the Flood, mentioned in the Bible.
• Establishing the literal truth of Biblical narratives receded into the background. Much of
what we discuss subsequently in the chapter is based on these later studies.

Mesopotamia and its Geography

• Iraq is a land of diverse environments. In the north-east lie green, undulating plains,
gradually rising to tree-
covered mountain ranges
with clear streams and wild
flowers, with enough
rainfall to grow crops.
Here, agriculture began
between 7000 and 6000
BCE.
• To the east, tributaries of
the Tigris provide routes of
communication into the
mountains of Iran.
• After the Euphrates has
entered the desert, its
water flows out into small
channels. These channels
flood their banks and, in the past, functioned as irrigation canals: water could be let into
the fields of wheat, barley, peas or lentils when necessary.
• Not only agriculture, Mesopotamian sheep and goats that grazed on the steppe, the
north-eastern plains and the mountain slopes (that is, on tracts too high for the rivers to
flood and fertilise) produced meat, milk and wool in abundance.
• We shall discuss other factors by and by, but first let us be clear about city life.

The Significance of Urbanism

• Cities and towns are not just places with large populations.
• It is when an economy develops in spheres other than food production that it becomes
an advantage for people to cluster in towns.
• There is continuous interaction among them. For instance, the carver of a stone seal
requires bronze tools that he himself cannot make, and coloured stones for the seals that
he does not know where to get: his ‘specialisation’ is fine carving, not trading.
• Further, there must be a social organisation in place. Fuel, metal, various stones, wood,
etc., come from many different places for city manufacturers.
• Obviously, in such a system some people give commands that others obey, and urban
economies often require the keeping of written records.

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The Warka Head
• This woman’s head was sculpted in white marble at Uruk before 3000
BCE. The eyes and eyebrows would probably have taken lapis lazuli
(blue) and shell (white) and bitumen (black) inlays, respectively.
• There is a groove along the top of the head, perhaps for an ornament.
This is a world-famous piece of sculpture, admired for the delicate
modelling of the woman’s mouth, chin and cheeks.
• And it was modelled in a hard stone that would have been imported
from a distance.
• Beginning with the procurement of stone, list all the specialists who would be involved in
the production of such a piece of sculpture.

Movement of Goods into Cities

• However rich the food resources of Mesopotamia, its mineral resources were few.
• Most parts of the south lacked stones for tools, seals and jewels; the wood of the Iraqi
date-palm and poplar was not good enough for carts, cart wheels or boats; and there was
no metal for tools, vessels or ornaments.
• These latter regions had mineral resources, but much less scope for agriculture.
• Besides crafts, trade and services, efficient transport is also important for urban
development. If it takes too much time, or too much animal feed, to carry grain or charcoal
into cities on pack animals or bullock carts, the city economy will not be viable.
• The canals and natural channels of ancient Mesopotamia were in fact routes of goods
transport between large and small settlements, and in the account on the city of Mari
later in the chapter, the importance of the Euphrates as a ‘world route’ will become clear.

The Development of Writing

• All societies have languages in which certain spoken sounds convey certain meanings. This
is verbal communication. Writing too is verbal communication – but in a different way.
• The first Mesopotamian tablets, written around 3200 BCE, contained picture-like signs
and numbers. These were about 5,000 lists of oxen, fish, bread loaves, etc. – lists of goods
that were brought into or distributed from the temples of Uruk, a city in the south.
• Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay. A scribe would wet clay and pat it into a size he
could hold comfortably in one hand.
• Carefully smoothen its surfaces. With the sharp end of a reed cut obliquely, he would
press wedge-shaped (‘cuneiform*’) signs on to the smoothened surface while it was still
moist.
• Once dried in the sun, the clay would harden and tablets would be almost as indestructible
as pottery.
• This is why tablets occur by the hundreds at Mesopotamian sites. And it is because of this
wealth of sources that we know so much more about Mesopotamia than we do about
contemporary India.
• By 2600 BCE or so, the letters became cuneiform, and the language was Sumerian.
• Sumerian, the earliest known language of Mesopotamia, was gradually replaced after
2400 BCE by the Akkadian language. Cuneiform writing in the Akkadian language
continued in use until the first century CE, that is, for more than 2,000 years.

Shashank Sajwan | 17
The System of Writing
• The sound that a cuneiform sign represented was not a single consonant or vowel (such
as m or a in the English alphabet), but syllables (say, -put-, or -la-, or –in-).
• Thus, the signs that a Mesopotamian scribe had to learn ran into hundreds, and he had to
be able to handle a wet tablet and get it written before it dried.

Literacy
• Very few Mesopotamians could read and write. Not only were there hundreds of signs to
learn, many of these were complex.
• If a king could read, he made sure that this was recorded in one of his boastful inscriptions!
For the most part, however, writing reflected the mode of speaking.
• A letter from an official would have to be read out to the king. So it would begin:
o ‘To my lord A, speak: … Thus says your servant B: … I have carried out the work
assigned to me ...’
• A long mythical poem about creation ends thus:
o ‘Let these verses be held in remembrance and let the elder teach them;
o let the wise one and the scholar discuss them;
o let the father repeat them to his sons;
o let the ears of (even) the herdsman be opened to them

The Uses of Writing

• The connection between city life, trade and writing is brought out in a long Sumerian epic
poem about Enmerkar, one of the earliest rulers of Uruk.
• In Mesopotamian tradition, Uruk was the city par excellence, often known simply as The
City.
• Enmerkar is associated with the organisation of the first trade of Sumer: in the early days,
the epic says, ‘trade was not known’.
• By night he went just by the stars. By day, he would go by heaven’s sun divine. He had to
go up into the mountain ranges, and had to come down out of the mountain ranges.
• The people of Susa (a city) below the mountains saluted him like tiny mice. Five mountain
ranges, six mountain ranges, seven mountain ranges he crossed...’
• The messenger could not get the chief of Aratta to part with lapis lazuli or silver, and he
had to make the long journey back and forth, again and again, carrying threats and
promises from the king of Uruk.
• Then, ‘Enmerkar formed a clay tablet in his hand, and he wrote the words down. In those
days, there had been no writing down of words on clay.’
• Given the written tablet, ‘the ruler of Aratta examined the clay. The spoken words were
nails. His face was frowning. He kept looking at the tablet.’
• This poem also tells us that, besides being a means of storing information and of sending
messages afar, writing was seen as a sign of the superiority of Mesopotamian urban
culture.

Urbanisation in Southern Mesopotamia: Temples and Kings

• From 5000 BCE, settlements had begun to develop in southern Mesopotamia. The earliest
cities emerged from some of these settlements.

Shashank Sajwan | 18
• These were of various kinds: those that gradually developed around temples; those that
developed as centres of trade; and imperial cities.
• The earliest known temple was a small shrine made of unbaked bricks. Temples were the
residences of various gods: of the Moon God of Ur, or of Inanna the Goddess of Love and
War.
• Constructed in brick, temples became larger over time, with several rooms around open
courtyards.
• The god was the focus of worship: to him or her people brought grain, curd and fish (the
floors of some early temples had thick layers of fish bones).
• Organiser of production at a level above the household, employer of merchants and
keeper of written records of distributions and allotments of grain, plough animals, bread,
beer, fish, etc., the temple gradually developed its activities and became the main urban
institution.
• As the archaeological record shows, villages were periodically relocated in Mesopotamian
history. There were man-made problems as well.
• Or they could neglect to clean out the silt from their stretch of the channel, blocking the
flow of water further down.
• So, they could increase their influence and clout. Such war leaders, however, would be
here today and gone tomorrow – until a time came when such leadership came to
increase the well-being of the community with the creation of new institutions or
practices.
• As the poem about Enmerkar shows, this gave the king high status and the authority to
command the community.
• Besides, people would be safe living in close proximity to one another.
• At Uruk, one of the earliest temple towns, we find depictions of armed heroes and their
victims, and careful archaeological surveys have shown that around 3000 BCE, when Uruk
grew to the enormous extent of 250 hectares – twice as large as Mohenjo-daro would be
in later centuries – dozens of small villages were deserted.
• Significantly, Uruk also came to have a defensive wall at a very early date. The site was
continuously occupied from about 4200 BCE to about 400 CE, and by about 2800 BCE it
had expanded to 400 hectares.
• This, rather than agricultural tax, was compulsory. Those who were put to work were paid
rations.
• Hundreds of ration lists have been found, which give, against people’s names, the
quantities of grain, cloth or oil allotted to them. It has been estimated that one of the
temples took 1,500 men working 10 hours a day, five years to build.
• Bronze tools came into use for various crafts. Architects learnt to construct brick columns,
there being no suitable wood to bear the weight of the roof of large halls.
• And then there was a technological landmark that we can say is appropriate to an urban
economy: the potter’s wheel.
• In the long run, the wheel enables a potter’s workshop to ‘mass produce’ dozens of similar
pots at a time.

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The Seal – An Urban Artefact
• In India, early stone seals were stamped. In Mesopotamia until the end of the first
millennium BCE, cylindrical stone seals,
pierced down the centre, were fitted with a
stick and rolled over wet clay so that a
continuous picture was created.
• They were carved by very skilled craftsmen,
and sometimes carry writing: the name of
the owner, his god, his official position, etc.
• A seal could be rolled on clay covering the
string knot of a cloth package or the mouth Five early cylinder seals and their impressions.
of a pot, keeping the contents safe. When
rolled on a letter written on a clay tablet, it became a mark of authenticity. So the seal
was the mark of a city dweller’s role in public life.

Life in the City

• What we have seen is that a ruling elite had emerged: a small section of society had a
major share of the wealth. Nothing makes this fact as clear as the enormous riches
(jewellery, gold vessels, wooden musical instruments inlaid with white shell and lapis
lazuli, ceremonial daggers of gold, etc.) buried with some kings and queens at Ur. But what
of the ordinary people?
• We know from the legal texts (disputes, inheritance matters, etc.) that in Mesopotamian
society the nuclear family was the norm, although a married son and his family often
resided with his parents. The father was the head of the family.
• When her mother-in-law came to fetch her, the bride was given her share of the
inheritance by her father. The father’s house, herds, fields, etc., were inherited by the
sons.
• Let us look at Ur, one of the earliest cities to have been excavated. Ur was a town whose
ordinary houses were systematically excavated in the 1930s. Narrow winding streets
indicate that wheeled carts could not have reached many of the houses.
• There were no street drains of the kind we find in contemporary Mohenjo-daro. Drains
and clay pipes were instead found in the inner courtyards of the Ur houses and it is
thought that house roofs sloped inwards and rainwater was channelled via the drainpipes
into sumps in the inner courtyards.
• Light came into the rooms not from windows but from doorways opening into the
courtyards: this would also have given families their privacy.
• There was a town cemetery at Ur in which the graves of royalty and commoners have
been found, but a few individuals were found buried under the floors of ordinary houses.

A Trading Town in a Pastoral Zone

• After 2000 BCE the royal capital of Mari flourished. You will have noticed (see Map 2) that
Mari stands not on the southern plain with its highly productive agriculture but much
further upstream on the Euphrates.
• Map 3 with its colour coding shows that agriculture and animal rearing were carried out
close to each other in this region.

Shashank Sajwan | 20
• Herders need to exchange young animals, cheese, leather and meat in return for grain,
metal tools, etc., and the manure of a penned flock is also of great use to a farmer.
• Herdsmen being mobile can
raid agricultural villages and
seize their stored goods.
• Through Mesopotamian
history, nomadic communities
of the western desert filtered
into the prosperous agricultural
heartland. Shepherds would
bring their flocks into the sown
area in the summer.
• These included the Akkadians,
Amorites, Assyrians and
Aramaeans. (You will read more
about rulers from pastoral
societies in Theme 5.)
• The kings of Mari were
Amorites whose dress differed
from that of the original
inhabitants and who respected
not only the gods of
Mesopotamia but also raised a
temple at Mari for Dagan, god of the steppe.

Shashank Sajwan | 21
The Palace at Mari of King Zimrilim (1810-1760 BCE)
• The great palace of Mari was the residence of the royal family, the hub of administration,
and a place of production, especially of precious metal ornaments. It was so famous in its
time that a minor king came from north Syria just to see it, carrying with him a letter of
introduction from a royal friend of the king of Mari, Zimrilim. Daily lists reveal that huge
quantities of food were presented each day for the king’s table: flour, bread, meat, fish,
fruit, beer and wine. He probably ate in the company of many others, in or around
courtyard 106, paved white. You will notice from the plan that the palace had only one
entrance, on the north.
• The large, open courtyards such as 131 were beautifully paved. The king would have
received foreign dignitaries and his own people in 132, a room with wall paintings that
would have awed the visitors. The palace was a sprawling structure, with 260 rooms and
covered an area of 2.4 hectares.

• The kings of Mari, however, had to be vigilant; herders of various tribes were allowed to
move in the kingdom, but they were watched. The camps of herders are mentioned
frequently in letters between kings and officials.
• Located on the Euphrates in a prime position for trade – in wood, copper, tin, oil, wine,
and various other goods that were carried in boats along the Euphrates – between the
south and the mineralrich uplands of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, Mari is a good example
of an urban centre prospering on trade.
• Barley came in special grain boats. Most important, tablets refer to copper from ‘Alashiya’,
the island of Cyprus, known for its copper, and tin was also an item of trade. As bronze
was the main industrial material for tools and weapons, this trade was of great
importance.

Excavating Mesopotamian Towns

• Today, Mesopotamian excavators have much higher standards of accuracy and care in
recording than in the old days, so that few digs huge areas the way Ur was excavated.
Moreover, few archaeologists have the funds to employ large teams of excavators. Thus,
the mode of obtaining data has changed.
• Take the small town at Abu Salabikh, about 10 hectares in area in 2500 BCE with a
population less than 10,000. The outlines of walls were at first traced by scraping surfaces.
This involves scraping off the top few millimetres of the mound with the sharp and wide
end of a shovel or other tool.
• While the soil underneath was still slightly moist, the archaeologist could make out
different colours, textures and lines of brick walls or pits or other features. A few houses
that were discovered were excavated.
• The archaeologists also sieved through tons of earth to recover plant and animal remains,
and in the process identified many species of plants and animals and found large
quantities of charred fish bones that had been swept out on to the streets. Plant seeds
and fibre remained after dung cakes had been burned as fuel and thus kitchens were
identified.
• Living rooms were those with fewer traces. Because they found the teeth of very young
pigs on the streets, archaeologists concluded that pigs must have roamed freely here as
in any other Mesopotamian town.

Shashank Sajwan | 22
• In fact, one house burial contained some pig bones – the dead person must have been
given some pork for his nourishment in the afterlife! The archaeologists also made
microscopic studies of room floors to decide which rooms in a house were roofed (with
poplar logs, palm leaves, straw, etc.) and which were open to the sky.

Cities in Mesopotamian Culture

• Mesopotamians valued city life in which people of many communities and cultures lived
side by side. After cities were destroyed in war, they recalled them in poetry.
• The most poignant reminder to us of the pride Mesopotamians took in their cities comes
at the end of the Gilgamesh Epic, which was written on twelve tablets.
• After a heroic attempt, Gilgamesh failed, and returned to Uruk. There, he consoled himself
by walking along the city wall, back and forth.
• Gilgamesh does not say that even though he will die his sons will outlive him, as a tribal
hero would have done. He takes consolation in the city that his people had built.

The Legacy of Writing

• While moving narratives can be transmitted orally, science requires written texts that
generations of scholars can read and build upon. Perhaps the greatest legacy of
Mesopotamia to the world is its scholarly tradition of time reckoning and mathematics.
• Dating around 1800 BCE are tablets with multiplication and division tables, square- and
square-root tables, and tables of compound interest. The square root of 2 was given as:
1 + 24/60 + 51/602 + 10/603
• If you work this out, you will find that the answer is 1.41421296, only slightly different
from the correct answer, 1.41421356. Students had to solve problems such as the
following: a field of area such and such is covered one finger deep in water; find out the
volume of water.
• The division of the year into 12 months according to the revolution of the moon around
the earth, the division of the month into four weeks, the day into 24 hours, and the hour
into 60 minutes – all that we take for granted in our daily lives – has come to us from the
Mesopotamians. These time divisions were adopted by the successors of Alexander and
from there transmitted to the Roman world, then to the world of Islam, and then to
medieval Europe.
• We would be mistaken if we think that the preoccupation with the urban world of
Mesopotamia is a modern phenomenon. Let us look, finally, at two early attempts to
locate and preserve the texts and traditions of the past.

TIMELINE
C. 7000-6000 BCE Beginning of agriculture in the northern Mesopotamian plains
C. 5000 BCE Earliest temples in southern Mesopotamia built
C. 3200 BCE First writing in Mesopotamia
C. 3000 BCE Uruk develops into a huge city, increasing use of bronze tools
C. 2700-2500 BCE Early kings, including, possibly, the legendary ruler Gilgamesh
C. 2600 BCE Development of the cuneiform script
C. 2400 BCE Replacement of Sumerian by Akkadian
2370 BCE Sargon, king of Akkad

Shashank Sajwan | 23
 C. 2000 BCE Spread of cuneiform writing to Syria, Turkey and Egypt; Mari and
Babylon emerge as important urban centres
C. 1800 BCE Mathematical texts composed; Sumerian no longer spoken
C.1100 BCE Establishment of the Assyrian kingdom
C. 1000 BCE Use of iron
720-610 BCE Assyrian empire
668-627 BCE Rule of Assurbanipal
331 BCE Alexander conquers Bablyon
c. 1st century CE Akkadian and cuneiform remain in use
1850s Decipherment of the cuneiform script

Shashank Sajwan | 24
 SECTION II – EMPIRES
• Over the two millennia that followed the establishment of empires in Mesopotamia,
various attempts at empire building took place across the region and in the area to the
west and east of it.
• By the sixth century BCE, Iranians had established control over major parts of the Assyrian
empire. Networks of trade developed overland, as well as along the coasts of the
Mediterranean Sea.
• In Greece, for the most part, city-states such as Athens and Sparta were the focus of civic
life.
• From among the Greek states, in the late fourth century BCE, the ruler of the kingdom of
Macedon, Alexander, undertook a series of military campaigns and conquered parts of
North Africa, West Asia and Iran, reaching up to the Beas. Here, his soldiers refused to
proceed further east. Alexander’s troops retreated, though many Greeks stayed behind.
• The period is often referred to as the ‘Hellenistic period’ in the history of the region, but
this ignores the way in which other cultures (especially Iranian culture associated with the
old empire of Iran) were as important as – if not often more important than Hellenistic
notions and ideas.
• This section deals with important aspects of what happened after this.
• Small but well-organised military forces of the central Italian city state of Rome took
advantage of the political discord that followed the disintegration of Alexander’s empire
and established control over North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean from the second
century BCE.
• At the time, Rome was a republic. Government was based on a complex system of
election, but its political institutions gave some importance to birth and wealth and
society benefited from slavery.
• The forces of Rome established a network for trade between the states that had once
been part of Alexander’s empire. In the middle of the first century BCE, under Julius
Caesar, a high-born military commander, this ‘Roman Empire’ was extended to present-
day Britain and Germany.
• There were changes in the political structure of the empire from the late first century BCE,
and it was substantially Christianised after the emperor Constantine became a Christian
in the fourth century CE.
• Conflicts increased in scale, and coincided with internal dissensions in the empire, leading
to the collapse of the empire in the west by the fifth century CE.
• This claimed some continuity with the Roman Empire.
• Between the seventh century and the fifteenth century, almost all the lands of the eastern
Roman Empire (centred on Constantinople) came to be taken over by the Arab empire –
created by the followers of the Prophet Muhammad (who founded the faith of Islam in
the seventh century) and centred on Damascus – or by its successors (who ruled from
Baghdad initially).
• The last of these peoples to attack the area and attempt to control it were the Mongols,
under Genghis Khan and his successors, who moved into West Asia, Europe, Central Asia
and China in the thirteenth century.

Shashank Sajwan | 25
• All the empires evolved administrative systems to give stability to trade. They also evolved
different types of military organisation. The achievements of one empire were often taken
up by its successor.
• Over time, the area came to be marked by Persian, Greek, Latin and Arabic above many
other languages that were spoken and written.

TIMELINE II
(C. 100 BCE TO 1300 CE)
• This timeline focuses on kingdoms and empires.
• Some of these such as the Roman Empire were very large, spreading across three
continents. This was also the time when some of the major religious and cultural traditions
developed.
• It was a time when institutions of intellectual activity emerged. Books were written and
ideas travelled across continents.
• Some things that are now part of our everyday lives were used for the first time during
this period.
DATES AFRICA EUROPE
100-50 BCE Bananas introduced from Spartacus leads revolt of about
Southeast Asia to East Africa 100,000 slaves (73 BCE)
through sea routes
50-1 Cleopatra, queen of Egypt (51-30 Building of Colosseum in Rome
BCE)
100-150 Hero of Alexandria makes a Roman Empire at is peak
machine that runs on steam
150-200 Ptolemy of Alexandria writes a
work on geography
300-350 Christianity introduced in Axum Constantine becomes emperor,
(330) establishes city of Constantinople
350-400 Roman Empire divided into eastern
and western halves
400-450 Vandals from Europe set up a Roman Empire invaded by tribes from
kingdom in North Africa (429) North and Central Europe
450-500 Conversion of Clovis of Gaul (France)
to Christianity (496)
500-550 St Benedict establishes a monastery in
Italy (526), St Augustine introduces
Christianity in England (596), Gregory
the Great (590) lays the foundations
of the power of the Roman Catholic
Church
600-650 Emigration (hijra) of some
Muslims to Abyssinia (615)
650-700 Muslim Arabs sign treaty with Bede writes the History of the English
Nubia, south of Egypt (652) Church and People

Shashank Sajwan | 26
800-850 Rise of kingdom in Ghana Charlemagne, king of the Franks,
crowned Holy Roman Emperor (800)
850-900 First Russian states founded at Kiev
and Novgorod
900-950 Viking raids across western Europe
1000-50 Medical school set up in Salerno, Italy
(1030)
1050-1100 Almoravid kingdom (1056-1147) William of Normandy invades England
extends from Ghana to southern and becomes king (1066);
Spain proclamation of the first crusade
(1095
1100-50 Zimbabwe (1120-1450) emerges
as a centre for production of gold
and copper artefacts, and of long-
distance trade
1150-1200 Christian churches established in Construction of the cathedral of Notre
Ethiopia Dame begins (1163)
1200-1250 (1200), kingdom of Mali in West St Francis of Assisi sets up a monastic
Africa, with Timbuktu as a centre order, emphasising austerity and
of learning compassion (1209); lords in England
rebel against the king who signs the
Magna Carta, accepting to rule
according to law
1250-1300 Establishment of the Hapsburg
dynasty that continued to rule Austria
till 1918

DATES ASIA SOUTH ASIA

100-50 BCE Han empire in China, Bactrian Greeks and Shakas establish
development of the Silk Route kingdoms in the north-west; rise of
from Asia to Europe the Satavahanas in the Deccan
50-1 Growing trade between South Asia,
Southeast and East Asia, and Europe
1-50 CE Jesus Christ in Judaea, a province
of the Roman Empire; Roman
invasion of Arabia (24)
50-100 Establishment of the Kushana state in
the northwest and Central Asia
100-150 Paper invented in China (118);
development of the first
seismograph (132)
200-250 End of Han empire (221); Sasanid
rule in Persia (226)

Shashank Sajwan | 27
250-300 Tea at the royal court, China (262),
use of the magnetic compass,
China (270)
300-350 Chinese start using stirrups while Establishment of the Gupta dynasty
riding horses (320)
350-400 Fa Xian travels from China to India
(399)
450-500 Aryabhata, astronomer and
mathematician
550-600 Buddhism introduced in Japan Chalukya temples in Badami and
(594); Grand Canal to transport Aihole
grain built in China (584-618), by
5,000,000 workers over 34 years
600-650 Tang dynasty in China (618); Xuan Zang travels from China to India;
Prophet Muhammad goes to Nalanda emerges as an important
Medina; the beginning of the Hijri educational centre
era (622); collapse of the Sasanian
empire (642)
650-700 Umayyad caliphate (661-750)
700-750 A branch of the Umayyads Arabs conquer Sind (712)
conquers Spain; Tang dynasty
established in China
750-800 Abbasid caliphate established and
Baghdad becomes a major cultural
and commercial centre
800-850 Khmer state founded in Cambodia
(802)
850-900 First printed book, China (868)
950-1000 Use of paper money in China
1000-50 Ibn Sina, a Persian doctor, writes a Mahmud of Ghazni raids the north-
medical text that is followed for west; Alberuni travels to India;
centuries Rajarajesvara temple built at
Thanjavur
1050-1100 Establishment of the Turkish
empire by Alp Arsalan (1075)
1100-50 First recorded display of fireworks Kalhana writes the Rajatarangini
in China
1150-1200 Angkor empire, Cambodia, at its
height (1180), temple complex at
Angkor Wat
1200-50 Genghis Khan consolidates power Establishment of Delhi sultanate
(1206) (1206)
1250-1300 Qubilai Khan, grandson of Genghis Amir Khusrau (1253-1325) introduces
Khan, becomes emperor of China new forms of poetry and music; Sun
Temple at Konark

Shashank Sajwan | 28
 DATES AMERICAS AUSTRALIA/PACIFIC ISLANDS
300-350 CE City-state of Teotihuacan established
in Mexico, with pyramid temples,
Mayan ceremonial centres,
development of astronomy, pictorial
script
950-1000 First city is built in North America Maori navigator from Polynesia
(c.990) ‘discovers’ New Zealand
1050-1100 Sweet potato (originally from
South America) grown in the
Polynesian islands

THEME III – AN EMPIRE ACROSS THREE CONTINENTS

• The Roman Empire covered a vast stretch of territory that included most of Europe as we
know it today and a large part of the Fertile Crescent and North Africa.
• The empire embraced a wealth of local cultures and languages; that women had a
stronger legal position then than they do in many countries today; but also, that much of
the economy was run on slave labour, denying freedom to substantial numbers of
persons.
• From the fifth century on, the empire fell apart in the west but remained intact and
exceptionally prosperous in its eastern half.

• Roman historians have a rich collection of sources to go on, which we can broadly divide
into three groups:
(a) texts,
(b) documents and
(c) material remains.
• Textual sources include histories of the period written by contemporaries (these were
usually called ‘Annals’, because the narrative was constructed on a year-by-year basis),
letters, speeches, sermons, laws, and so on.
• Documentary sources include mainly inscriptions and papyri. Inscriptions were usually cut
on stone, so a large number survive, in both Greek and Latin. The ‘papyrus’ was a reed-
like plant that grew along the banks of the Nile in Egypt and was processed to produce a
writing material that was very widely used in everyday life. Thousands of contracts,
accounts, letters and official documents survive ‘on papyrus’ and have been published by
scholars who are called ‘papyrologists’.
• Material remains include a very wide assortment of items that mainly archaeologists
discover (for example, through excavation and field survey), for example, buildings,
monuments and other kinds of structures, pottery, coins, mosaics, even entire landscapes
(for example, through the use of aerial photography).

• Two powerful empires ruled over most of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East in the
period between the birth of Christ and the early part of the seventh century, say, down to
the 630s. The two empires were those of Rome and Iran.

Shashank Sajwan | 29
• The Romans and Iranians
were rivals and fought
against each other for
much of their history.
Their empires lay next to
each other, separated
only by a narrow strip of
land that ran along the
river Euphrates.
• This sea is called the
Mediterranean, and it
was the heart of Rome’s
empire. Rome dominated
the Mediterranean and all
the regions around that
sea in both directions,
north as well as south.
• This vast stretch of territory was the Roman Empire. Iran controlled the whole area south
of the Caspian Sea down to eastern Arabia, and sometimes large parts of Afghanistan as
well.

The Early Empire

• The Roman Empire can broadly be divided into two phases, ‘early’ and ‘late’, divided by
the third century as a sort of historical watershed between them.
• The Roman Empire, by contrast, was a mosaic of territories and cultures that were chiefly
bound together by a common system of government.
• Many languages were spoken in the empire, but for the purposes of administration Latin
and Greek were the most widely used.
• The upper classes of the east spoke and wrote in Greek, those of the west in Latin, and
the boundary between these broad language areas ran somewhere across the middle of
the Mediterranean, between the African provinces of Tripolitania (which was Latin
speaking) and Cyrenaica (Greek-speaking).
• The regime established by Augustus, the first emperor, in 27 BCE was called the
‘Principate’.
• Augustus was the sole ruler and the only real source of authority.
• The fiction was kept alive that he was actually only the ‘leading citizen’ (Princeps in Latin),
not the absolute ruler. This was done out of respect for the Senate, the body which had
controlled Rome earlier, in the days when it was a Republic.
• From these it is clear that emperors were judged by how they behaved towards the
Senate. The worst emperors were those who were hostile to the senatorial class, behaving
with suspicion or brutality and violence.
• Many senators yearned to go back to the days of the Republic, but most must have
realised that this was impossible.
• Next to the emperor and the Senate, the other key institution of imperial rule was the
army.

Shashank Sajwan | 30
• The army was the largest single organised body in the empire (600,000 by the fourth
century) and it certainly had the power to determine the fate of emperors. The soldiers
would constantly agitate for better wages and service conditions.
• The Senate hated and feared the army, because it was a source of often unpredictable
violence, especially in the tense conditions of the third century when government was
forced to tax more heavily to pay for its mounting military expenditures.
• Except for one notorious year (69 CE), when four emperors mounted the throne in quick
succession, the first two centuries were on the whole free from civil war and in this sense
relatively stable.
• For example, Tiberius (14-37 CE), the second in the long line of Roman emperors, was not
the natural son of Augustus, the ruler who founded the Principate, but Augustus adopted
him to ensure a smooth transition.
• The only major campaign of expansion in the early empire was Trajan’s fruitless
occupation of territory across the Euphrates, in the years 113-17 CE abandoned by his
successors.

The Emperor Trajan’s Dream – A Conquest of India?

• ‘Then, after a winter (115/16) in Antioch marked by a great earthquake, in 116 Trajan
marched down the Euphrates to Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital, and then to the head of
the Persian Gulf. There [the historian] Cassius Dio describes him looking longingly at a
merchant-ship setting off for India, and wishing that he were as young as Alexander.’
– Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East.

• Much more characteristic was the gradual extension of Roman direct rule. This was
accomplished by absorbing a whole series of ‘dependent’ kingdoms into Roman provincial
territory.
• The Near East was full of such kingdoms, but by the early second century those which lay
west of the Euphrates (towards Roman territory) had disappeared, swallowed up by
Rome.
• At its peak in the second century, the Roman Empire stretched from Scotland to the
borders of Armenia, and from the Sahara to the Euphrates and sometimes beyond.
• Given that there was no government in the modern sense to help them to run things, you
may well ask, how was it possible for the emperor to cope with the control and
administration of such a vast and diverse set of territories, with a population of some 60
million in the mid-second century? The answer lies in the urbanisation of the empire.
• What this means is that the local upper classes actively collaborated with the Roman state
in administering their own territories and raising taxes from them.
• They came to form a new elite of administrators and military commanders who became
much more powerful than the senatorial class because they had the backing of the
emperors.
• We are told that Gallienus forbade senators from serving in the army or having access to
it, in order to prevent control of the empire from falling into their hands.
• To sum up, in the late first, second and early third centuries the army and administration
were increasingly drawn from the provinces, as citizenship spread to these regions and
was no longer confined to Italy.

Shashank Sajwan | 31
• But individuals of Italian origin continued to dominate the senate at least till the third
century, when senators of provincial origin became a majority.
• Villages could be upgraded to the status of cities, and vice versa, usually as a mark of
imperial favour (or the opposite). One crucial advantage of living in a city was simply that
it might be better provided for during food shortages and even famines than the
countryside.

Doctor Galen on how Roman Cities Treated the Countryside

• ‘The famine prevalent for many successive years in many provinces has clearly displayed
for men of any understanding the effect of malnutrition in generating illness.
• The city-dwellers, as it was their custom to collect and store enough grain for the whole
of the next year immediately after the harvest, carried off all the wheat, barley, beans and
lentils, and left to the peasants various kinds of pulse after taking quite a large proportion
of these to the city.
• After consuming what was left in the course of the winter, the country people had to
resort to unhealthy foods in the spring; they ate twigs and shoots of trees and bushes and
bulbs and roots of inedible plants…’
– Galen, On Good and Bad Diet

• Public baths were a striking feature of Roman urban life (when one Iranian ruler tried to
introduce them into Iran, he encountered the wrath of the clergy there! Water was a
sacred element and to use it for public bathing may have seemed a desecration to them),
and urban populations also enjoyed a much higher level of entertainment.
• For example, one calendar tells us that spectacula (shows) filled no less than 176 days of
the year!

The Third-Century Crisis

• If the first and second centuries were by and large a period of peace, prosperity and
economic expansion, the third century brought the first major signs of internal strain.
From the 230s, the empire found itself fighting on several fronts simultaneously.
• In Iran a new and more aggressive dynasty emerged in 225 (they called themselves the
‘Sasanians’) and within just 15 years were expanding rapidly in the direction of the
Euphrates.
• In a famous rock inscription cut in three languages, Shapur I, the Iranian ruler, claimed he
had annihilated a Roman army of 60,000 and even captured the eastern capital of Antioch.
• The Romans were forced to abandon much of the territory beyond the Danube, while the
emperors of this period were constantly in the field against what the Romans called
‘barbarians’.
• The rapid succession of emperors in the third century (25 emperors in 47 years!) is an
obvious symptom of the strains faced by the empire in this period.

Gender, Literacy, Culture

• One of the more modern features of Roman society was the widespread prevalence of
the nuclear family.

Shashank Sajwan | 32
• Adult sons did not live with their families, and it was exceptional for adult brothers to
share a common household. On the other hand, slaves were included in the family as the
Romans understood this.
• By the late Republic (the first century BCE), the typical form of marriage was one where
the wife did not transfer to her husband’s authority but retained full rights in the property
of her natal family.
• While the woman’s dowry went to the husband for the duration of the marriage, the
woman remained a primary heir of her father and became an independent property
owner on her father’s death.
• Thus, Roman women enjoyed considerable legal rights in owning and managing property.
• Divorce was relatively easy and needed no more than a notice of intent to dissolve the
marriage by either husband or wife.
• Marriages were generally arranged, and there is no doubt that women were often subject
to domination by their husbands.
• Augustine, the great Catholic bishop who spent most of his life in North Africa, tells us
that his mother was regularly beaten by his father and that most other wives in the small
town where he grew up had similar bruises to show! Finally, fathers had substantial legal
control over their children sometimes to a shocking degree, for example, a legal power of
life and death in exposing unwanted children, by leaving them out in the cold to die.
• Rates of casual literacy varied greatly between different parts of the empire.
• In Pompeii, which was buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 CE, there is strong evidence of
widespread casual literacy. Walls on the main streets of Pompeii often carried
advertisements, and graffiti were found all over the city.
• Literacy was certainly more widespread among certain categories such as soldiers, army
officers and estate managers.
• The cultural diversity of the empire was reflected in many ways and at many levels: in the
vast diversity of religious cults and local deities; the plurality of languages that were
spoken; the styles of dress and costume, the food people ate, their forms of social
organisation (tribal/non-tribal), even their patterns of settlement.
• Armenian, for example, only began to be written as late as the fifth century, whereas
there was already a Coptic translation of the Bible by the middle of the third century.
Elsewhere, the spread of Latin displaced the written form of languages that were
otherwise widespread; this happened notably with Celtic, which ceased to be written
after the first century.

Economic Expansion
• The empire had a substantial economic infrastructure of harbours, mines, quarries,
brickyards, olive oil factories, etc.
• Wheat, wine and olive-oil were traded and consumed in huge quantities, and they came
mainly from Spain, the Gallic provinces, North Africa, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Italy,
where conditions were best for these crops.
• Liquids like wine and olive oil were transported in containers called ‘amphorae’.
• The Spanish olive oil of this period was mainly carried in a container called ‘Dressel 20’
(after the archaeologist who first established its form).

Shashank Sajwan | 33
• By using such evidence (the remains of amphorae of different kinds and their ‘distribution
maps’), archaeologists are able to show that Spanish producers succeeded in capturing
markets for olive oil from their Italian counterparts.
• The big landowners from different regions competed with each other for control of the
main markets for the goods they produced.
• Behind these broad movements the prosperity of individual regions rose and fell
depending on how effectively they could organise the production and transport of
particular goods, and on the quality of those goods.
• The empire included many regions that had a reputation for exceptional fertility.
Campania in Italy, Sicily, the Fayum in Egypt, Galilee, Byzacium (Tunisia), southern Gaul
(called Gallia Narbonensis), and Baetica (southern Spain) were all among the most densely
settled or wealthiest parts of the empire, according to writers like Strabo and Pliny. The
best kinds of wine came from Campania.
• These pastoral and semi-nomadic communities were often on the move, carrying their
oven-shaped huts (called mapalia) with them.
• Even in Spain the north was much less developed, and inhabited largely by a Celtic-
speaking peasantry that lived in hilltop villages called castella. When we think of the
Roman Empire, we should never forget these differences.
• On the contrary, diversified applications of water power around the Mediterranean as
well as advances in water-powered milling technology, the use of hydraulic mining
techniques in the Spanish gold and silver mines and the gigantic industrial scale on which
those mines were worked in the first and second centuries (with levels of output that
would not be reached again till the nineteenth century, some 1,700 years later!), the
existence of well-organised commercial and banking networks, and the widespread use
of money are all indications of how much we tend to under-estimate the sophistication of
the Roman economy. This raises the issue of labour and of the use of slavery.

Controlling Workers
• Slavery was an institution deeply rooted in the ancient world, both in the Mediterranean
and in the Near East, and not even Christianity when it emerged and triumphed as the
state religion (in the fourth century) seriously challenged this institution.
• It does not follow that the bulk of the labour in the Roman economy was performed by
slaves.
• Slaves were an investment, and at least one Roman agricultural writer advised landowners
against using them in contexts where too many might be required (for example, for
harvests) or where their health could be damaged (for example, by malaria).
• In fact, free labour was extensively used on public works at Rome precisely because an
extensive use of slave labour would have been too expensive.
• Unlike hired workers, slaves had to be fed and maintained throughout the year, which
increased the cost of holding this kind of labour. This is probably why slaves are not widely
found in the agriculture of the later period, at least not in the eastern provinces.
• The Roman agricultural writers paid a great deal of attention to the management of
labour.
• Columella, a first-century writer who came from the south of Spain, recommended that
landowners should keep a reserve stock of implements and tools, twice as many as they

Shashank Sajwan | 34
 needed, so that production could be continuous, ‘for the loss in slave labour time exceeds
the cost of such items’.
• Columella recommended squads of ten, claiming it was easier to tell who was putting in
effort and who was not in work groups of this size.
• A seal is put upon the workmen’s aprons, they have to wear a mask or a net with a close
mesh on their heads, and before they are allowed to leave the premises, they have to take
off all their clothes.’
• Agricultural labour must have been fatiguing and disliked, for a famous edict of the early
third century refers to Egyptian peasants deserting their villages ‘in order not to engage
in agricultural work’.
• A law of 398 referred to workers being branded so they could be recognised if and when
they run away and try to hide.
• Many private employers cast their agreements with workers in the form of debt contracts
to be able to claim that their employees were in debt to them and thus ensure tighter
control over them.
• An early, second-century writer tells us, ‘Thousands surrender themselves to work in
servitude, although they are free.’
• From one of the recently discovered letters of Augustine we learn that parents sometimes
sold their children into servitude for periods of 25 years.

Social Hierarchies
• Let us stand back from the details now and try and get a sense of the social structures of
the empire.
• Tacitus described the leading social groups of the early empire as follows: senators
(patres, lit. ‘fathers’); leading members of the equestrian class; the respectable section of
the people, those attached to the great houses; the unkempt lower class (plebs sordida)
who, he tells us, were addicted to the circus and theatrical displays; and finally, the slaves.
• In the early third century when the Senate numbered roughly 1,000, approximately half
of all senators still came from Italian families.
• The ‘middle’ class now consisted of the considerable mass of persons connected with
imperial service in the bureaucracy and army but also the more prosperous merchants
and farmers of whom there were many in the eastern provinces.
• One writer of the early fifth century, the historian Olympiodorus who was also an
ambassador, tells us that the aristocracy based in the City of Rome drew annual incomes
of up to 4,000 lbs of gold from their estates, not counting the produce they consumed
directly!
• Constantine founded the new monetary system on gold and there were vast amounts of
this in circulation throughout late antiquity.
• But government intervened repeatedly to curb these forms of corruption – we only know
about them in the first place because of the laws that tried to put an end to them, and
because historians and other members of the intelligentsia denounced such practices.
This element of ‘criticism’ is a remarkable feature of the classical world.
• That is why in the later fourth century it was possible for powerful bishops like Ambrose
to confront equally powerful emperors when they were excessively harsh or repressive in
their handling of the civilian population.

Shashank Sajwan | 35
Late Antiquity
• We shall conclude this chapter by looking at the cultural transformation of the Roman
world in its final centuries.
• ‘Late antiquity’ is the term now used to describe the final, fascinating period in the
evolution and break-up of the Roman Empire and refers broadly to the fourth to seventh
centuries.
• Overexpansion had led Diocletian to ‘cut back’ by abandoning territories with little
strategic or economic value.
• Diocletian also fortified the frontiers, reorganised provincial boundaries, and separated
civilian from military functions, granting greater autonomy to the military commanders
(duces), who now became a more powerful group.
• The other area of innovation was the creation of a second capital at Constantinople (at
the site of modern Istanbul in Turkey, and previously called Byzantium), surrounded on
three sides by the sea.
• As the new capital required a new senate, the fourth century was a period of rapid
expansion of the governing classes.
• All of this carried over into strong urban prosperity that was marked by new forms of
architecture and an exaggerated sense of luxury.
• For example, Egypt contributed taxes of over 2½ million solidi a year (roughly 35,000 lbs
of gold) in the reign of Justinian in the sixth century.
• That is, it involved a multiplicity of cults that included both Roman/Italian gods like Jupiter,
Juno, Minerva and Mars, as well as numerous Greek and eastern deities worshipped in
thousands of temples, shrines and sanctuaries throughout the empire. Polytheists had no
common name or label to describe themselves.
• The boundaries between religious communities were much more fluid in the fourth
century than they would become thanks to the repeated efforts of religious leaders, the
powerful bishops who now led the Church, to rein in their followers and enforce a more
rigid set of beliefs and practices.
• The most important of these were that of the Visigoths in Spain, destroyed by the Arabs
between 711 and 720, that of the Franks in Gaul (c.511-687) and that of the Lombards in
Italy (568-774).
• These kingdoms
foreshadowed the
beginnings of a different
kind of world that is usually
called ‘medieval’. In the
East, where the empire
remained united, the reign
of Justinian is the
highwater mark of
prosperity and imperial
ambition.
• When Byzantium, as the
Roman Empire was now
increasingly known,
recovered these provinces

Shashank Sajwan | 36
 in the 620s, it was just a few years away, literally, from the final major blow which came,
this time, from the south-east.
• By 642, barely ten years after the Prophet Muhammad’s death, large parts of both the
eastern Roman and Sasanian empires had fallen to the Arabs in a series of stunning
confrontations.
• As we will see in Theme 4, the unification of the Arabian peninsula and its numerous tribes
was the key factor behind the territorial expansion of Islam.

RULERS EVENTS

27 BCE-14
Augustus, first 27 BCE ‘Principate’ founded by Octavian, now calls himself Augustus
Roman emperor c. 24-79 Life of the Elder Pliny; dies in the volcanic eruption of
14-37 Vesuvius, which also buries the Roman town of Pompeii
Tiberius
98-117 66-70 The great Jewish revolt and capture of Jerusalem by Roman
forces
Trajan c. 115 Greatest extent of the Roman Empire, following Trajan’s
117-38 conquests in the East
Hadrian
212 All free inhabitants of the empire transformed into Roman
citizens
193-211
Septimius Severus 224 New dynasty founded in Iran, called ‘Sasanians’ after ancestor
Sasan
241-72 250s Persians invade Roman territories west of the Euphrates
reign of Shapur I in
Iran 258 Cyprian bishop of Carthage executed
260s Gallienus reorganises the army
253-68
273 Caravan city of Palmyra destroyed by Romans
Gallienus
297 Diocletian reorganises empire into 100 provinces
284-305 c. 310 Constantine issues new gold coinage (the ‘solidus’)
the 'Tetrarchy"
Diocletian main 312 Constantine converts to Christianity
ruler 324 Constantine now sole ruler of empire; founds city of
Constantinople
312-37
354-430 Life of Augustine, bishop of Hippo
Constantine
309-79 reign of 378 Goths inflict crushing defeat on Roman armies at Adrianople
Shapur II in Iran 391 Destruction of the Serapeum (temple of Serapis) at Alexandria
408-50 Theodosius 410 Sack of Rome by the Visigoths
II (compiler of the 428 Vandals capture Africa
famous
‘Theodosian Code’) 434-53 Empire of Attila the Hun
493 Ostrogoths establish kingdom in Italy

Shashank Sajwan | 37
 490-518 533-50 Recovery of Africa and Italy by Justinian
Anastasius 541-70 Outbreaks of bubonic plague
527-65 568 Lombards invade Italy
Justinian c. 570 Birth of Muhammad
531-79 reign of
Khusro I in Iran 614-19 Persian ruler Khusro II invades and occupies eastern Roman
territories
610-41 622 Muhammad and companions leave Mecca for Medina
Heraclius
633-42 First and crucial phase of the Arab conquests; Muslim armies
take Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq and parts of Iran
661-750Umayyad dynasty in Syria
698 Arabs capture Carthage
711 Arab invasion of Spain

THEME IV – THE CENTRAL ISLAMIC LANDS

• AS we enter the twenty-first century, there are over 1 billion Muslims living in all parts of
the world. They are citizens of different nations, speak different languages, and dress
differently. The processes by which they became Muslims were varied, and so were the
circumstances in which they went their separate ways.
• The Islamic community has its roots in a more unified past which unfolded roughly 1,400
years ago in the Arabian Peninsula.
• The term Islamic is used here not only in its purely religious sense but also for the overall
society and culture historically associated with Islam.
• In this society not everything that was happening originated directly from religion, but it
took place in a society where Muslims and their faith were recognised as socially
dominant. Non-Muslims always formed an integral, subordinate, part of this society as did
Jews in Christendom.
• Our understanding of the history of the central Islamic lands between 600 and 1200 is
based on chronicles or tawarikh (which narrate events in order of time) and semi-
historical works, such as biographies (Sira), records of the sayings and doings of the
Prophet (hadith) and commentaries on the Quran (tqfsir).
• The material from which these works were produced was a large collection of eyewitness
reports (akhbar) transmitted over a period of time either orally or on paper.
• The authenticity of each report (khabar) was tested by a critical method which traced the
chain of transmission (isnad) and established the reliability of the narrator.
• Most of the chronicles and semi-historical works are in Arabic, the best being the Tarikh
of Tabari (d. 923) which has been translated into English in 38 volumes.
• Persian chronicles are few but they are quite detailed in their treatment of Iran and
Central Asia.
• Christian chronicles, written in Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic), are fewer but they throw
interesting light on the history of early Islam.

Shashank Sajwan | 38
• Besides chronicles, we have legal texts, geographies, travelogues and literary works, such
as stories and poems.
• Documentary evidence (fragmentary pieces of writing, such as official orders or private
correspondence) is the most valuable for writing histories because it does not consciously
refer to events and persons. It comes almost entirely from Greek and Arabic papyri (good
for administrative history) and the Geniza records.
• Some evidence has emerged from archaeological (excavations done at desert palaces),
numismatic (study of coins) and epigraphic (study of inscriptions) sources which is of great
value for economic history, art history, and for establishing names and dates.
• Proper histories of Islam began to be written in the nineteenth century by university
professors in Germany and the Netherlands.
• Colonial interests in the Middle East and North Africa encouraged French and British
researchers to study Islam as well.
• Christian priests too paid close attention to the history of Islam and produced some good
work, although their interest was mainly to compare Islam with Christianity. These
scholars, called Orientalists, are known for their knowledge of Arabic and Persian and
critical analysis of original texts.
• Ignaz Goldziher was a Hungarian Jew who studied at the Islamic college (al-Azhar) in Cairo
and produced path-breaking studies in German of Islamic law and theology.

The Rise of Islam in Arabia: Faith, Community and Politics

• During 612-32, the Prophet Muhammad preached the worship of a single God, Allah, and
the membership of a single community of believers (umma). This was the origin of Islam.
• Muhammad was an Arab by language and culture and a merchant by profession.
• Sixth-century Arab culture was largely confined to the Arabian Peninsula and areas of
southern Syria and Mesopotamia.
• The Arabs were divided into tribes (qabila), each led by achier who was chosen partly on
the basis of his family connections but more for his personal courage, wisdom and
generosity (murawwa).
• Each tribe had its own god or goddess, who was worshipped as an idol (sanam) in a shrine
(masjid).
• Many Arab tribes were nomadic (Bedouins), moving from dry to green areas (oases) of
the desert in search of food (mainly dates) and fodder for their camels.
• Muhammad's own tribe, Quraysh, lived in Mecca and controlled the main shrine there, a
cube-like structure called Kaba, in which idols were placed.
• Even tribes outside Mecca considered the Kaba holy and installed their own idols at this
shrine, making annual pilgrimages (hajj) to the shrine.
• Mecca was located on the crossroads of a trade route between Yemen and Syria which
further enhanced the city's importance. The Meccan shrine was a sanctuary (haram)
where violence was forbidden and protection given to all visitors.
• Around 6 12, Muhammad declared himself to be the messenger (rasul) of God who had
been commanded to preach that Allah alone should be worshipped.
• The worship involved simple rituals, such as daily prayers (salat), and moral principles,
such as distributing alms and abstaining from theft.

Shashank Sajwan | 39
• Muhammad was to found a community of believers (umma) bound by a common set of
religious beliefs. The community would bear witness (shahada) to the existence of the
religion before God as well as before members of other religious communities.
• Muhammad's message particularly appealed to those Meccans who felt deprived of the
gains from trade and religion and were looking for a new community identity.
• Those who accepted the doctrine were called Muslims. They were promised salvation on
the Day of Judgement (qiyama) and a share of the resources of the community while on
earth.
• In 622, Muhammad was forced to migrate with his followers to Medina. Muhammad's
journey from Mecca (hijra) was a turning point in the history of Islam, with the year of his
arrival in Medina marking the beginning of the Muslim calendar.

Islamic Calendar
• The Hijri era was established during the caliphate of Umar, with the first year falling in 622
CE. A date in the Hijri calendar is followed by the letters AH.
• The Hijri year is a lunar year of 354 days, 12 months (Muharram to Dhul Hijja) of 29 or 30
days. Each day begins at sunset and each month with the sighting of the crescent moon.
The Hijri year is about 11 days shorter than the solar year.
• Therefore, none of the Islamic religious festivals, including the Ramazan fast, ld and hajj,
corresponds in any way to seasons. There is no easy way to match the dates in the Hijri
calendar with the dates in the Gregorian calendar (established by Pope Gregory XIII in
1582 CE). One can calculate the rough equivalents between the Islamic (H) and Gregorian
Christian (C) years with the following formulae:
(H x 32 / 33) + 622 = c
(C-622) x 33 / 32

• In Medina, Muhammad created a political order from all three sources which gave his
followers the protection they needed as well as resolved the city’s ongoing civil strife.
• The umma was converted into a wider community to include polytheists and the Jews of
Medina under the political leadership of Muhammad.
• Muhammad consolidated the faith for his followers by adding and refining rituals (such as
fasting) and ethical principles.
• The community survived on agriculture and trade, as well as an alms tax (zakat).
• After a series of battles, Mecca was conquered and Muhammad’s reputation as a religious
preacher and political leader spread far and wide. Muhammad now insisted on conversion
as the sole criterion for membership of the community.
• Impressed by Muhammad’s achievements, many tribes, mostly Bedouins, joined the
community by converting to Islam.
• Muhammad’s alliances began to spread until they embraced the whole of Arabia.
• Medina became the administrative capital of the emerging Islamic state with Mecca as its
religious centre. The Kaba was cleansed of idols as Muslims were required to face the
shrine when offering prayers.

The Caliphate: Expansion, Civil Wars and Sect Formation

• After Muhammad’s death in 632, no one could legitimately claim to be the next prophet
of Islam.

Shashank Sajwan | 40
• As a result, his political authority was transferred to the umma with no established
principle of succession. This created opportunities for innovations but also caused deep
divisions among the Muslims.
• The biggest innovation was the creation of the institution of caliphate, in which the leader
of the community (amir al-muminin) became the deputy (khalifa) of the Prophet.
• The first four caliphs (632-61) justified their powers on the basis of their close association
with the Prophet and continued his work under the general guidelines he had provided.
• The twin objectives of the caliphate were to retain control over the tribes constituting the
umma and to raise resources for the state.
• Following Muhammad’s death, many tribes broke away from the Islamic state. Some even
raised their own prophets to establish communities modelled on the umma.
• The first caliph, Abu Bakr, suppressed the revolts by a series of campaigns.
• The second caliph, Umar, shaped the umma’s policy of expansion of power.
• The caliph knew that the umma could not be maintained out of the modest income
derived from trade and taxes. Realising that rich booty (ghanima) could be obtained from
expeditionary raids, the caliph and his military commanders mustered their tribal strength
to conquer lands belonging to the Byzantine Empire in the west and the Sasanian empire
in the east.
• At the height of their power, the Byzantine and Sasanian empires ruled vast territories
and commanded huge resources to pursue their political and commercial interests in
Arabia.
• The Byzantine Empire promoted Christianity and the Sasanian empire patronised
Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of Iran.
• On the eve of the Arab invasions, these two empires had declined in strength due to
religious conflicts and revolts by the aristocracy. This made it easier for the Arabs to annex
territories through wars and treaties.
• In three successful campaigns (637-642), the Arabs brought Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt
under the control of Medina.
• Within a decade of the death of Muhammad, the ArabIslamic state controlled the vast
territory between the Nile and the Oxus. These lands remain under Muslim rule to this
day.
• In all the conquered provinces, the caliphs imposed a new administrative structure
headed by governors (amirs) and tribal chieftains (ashraf). The central treasury (bait al-
mal) obtained its revenue from taxes paid by Muslims as well as its share of the booty
from raids. The caliph’s soldiers, mostly Bedouins, settled in camp cities at the edge of the
desert, such as Kufa and Basra, to remain within reach of their natural habitat as well as
the caliph’s command.
• The ruling class and soldiers received shares of the booty and monthly payments (ata).
• The non-Muslim population retained their rights to property and religious practices on
payment of taxes (kharaj and jiziya).
• Jews and Christians were declared protected subjects of the state (dhimmis) and given a
large measure of autonomy in the conduct of their communal affairs.
• The third caliph, Uthman (644-56), also a Quraysh, packed his administration with his own
men to secure greater control.
• Opposition in Iraq and Egypt, combined with opposition in Medina, led to the
assassination of Uthman. With Uthman’s death, Ali became the fourth caliph.

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• Ali established himself at
Kufa and defeated an army
led by Muhammad’s
wife, Aisha, in the Battle of
the Camel (657).
• Ali’s second battle, at Siffin
(northern Mesopotamia),
ended in a truce which
split his followers into two
groups: some remained
loyal to him, while others
left the camp and came to
be known as Kharjis.
• Soon after, Ali was
assassinated by a Kharji in
a mosque at Kufa. After his
death, his followers paid
allegiance to his son,
Hussain, and his
descendants. Muawiya
made himself the next caliph in 661, founding the Umayyad dynasty which lasted till 750.

The Umayyads and the Centralisation of Polity

• The conquest of large territories destroyed the caliphate based in Medina and replaced it
with an increasingly authoritarian polity.
• The Umayyads implemented a series of political measures which consolidated their
leadership within the umma.
• The first Umayyad caliph, Muawiya, moved his capital to Damascus and adopted the court
ceremonies and administrative institutions of the Byzantine Empire. He also introduced
hereditary succession and persuaded the leading Muslims to accept his son as his heir.
These innovations were adopted by the caliphs who followed him, and allowed the
Umayyads to retain power for 90 years and the Abbasids, for two centuries.
• The Umayyad state was now an imperial power, no longer based directly on Islam but on
statecraft and the loyalty of Syrian troops. There were Christian advisers in the
administration, as well as Zoroastrian scribes and bureaucrats.
• The gold dinar and silver dirham that had been circulating in the caliphate were copies of
Byzantine and Iranian coins (denarius and drachm), with symbols of crosses and fire altars
and Greek and Pahlavi (the language of Iran) inscriptions.
• These symbols were removed and the coins now carried Arabic inscriptions.
• Abd al-Malik also made a highly visible contribution to the development of an ArabIslamic
identity, by building the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Shashank Sajwan | 42
 Abd al-Malik’s Coinage Reform
The three-coin specimens show the
transition from Byzantine to Arab- Byzantine gold solidus
Islamic coinage. On the second coin, (denarius aureus) showing
the bearded and longhaired caliph is the emperor Heraclius and
dressed in traditional Arab robes and is his two sons.
holding a sword. It is the first extant
portrait of a Muslim. It is also unique Portrait gold dinar struck
because later there developed an by Abd al-Malik with his
antipathy towards the representation name and image.
of living beings in art and craft. Abd al-
Malik’s reform of coinage was linked
with his reorganisation of state The reformed dinar was
finances. It proved so successful that purely epigraphic. It carries
for hundreds of years, coins were the kalima: ‘There is no
struck according to the pattern and God but Allah and He has
weight of the third specimen. no partner (sharik)’

The Abbasid Revolution

• A well-organised movement, called dawa, brought down the Umayyads and replaced
them with another family of Meccan origin, the Abbasids, in 750.
• The Abbasids portrayed the Umayyad regime as evil and promised a restoration of the
original Islam of the Prophet.
• The revolution led not only to a change of dynasty but changes in the political structure
and culture of Islam.
• The Abbasid uprising broke out in the distant region of Khurasan (eastern Iran), a 20-day
journey from Damascus on a fast horse.
• The Arab soldiers here were mostly from Iraq and resented the dominance of the Syrians.
• The civilian Arabs of Khurasan disliked the Umayyad regime for having made promises of
tax concessions and privileges which were never fulfilled.
• As for the Iranian Muslims (mawali), they were exposed to the scorn of the race-conscious
Arabs and were eager to join any campaign to oust the Umayyads.
• The Abbasids, descendants of Abbas, the Prophet’s uncle, mustered the support of the
various dissident groups and legitimised their bid for power by promising that a messiah
(mahdi) from the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt) would liberate them from the
oppressive Umayyad regime. Their army was led by an Iranian slave, Abu Muslim, who
defeated the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan, in a battle at the river Zab.
• Under Abbasid rule, Arab influence declined, while the importance of Iranian culture
increased.
• The Abbasids established their capital at Baghdad, near the ruins of the ancient Iranian
metropolis, Ctesiphon.
• The regime which took pride in having brought down the monarchy found itself compelled
to establish it again.

Shashank Sajwan | 43
Break-up of the Caliphate and the Rise of Sultanates
• The Abbasid state became weaker from the ninth century because Baghdad’s control over
the distant provinces declined, and because of conflict between pro-Arab and pro-Iranian
factions in the army and bureaucracy.
• In 810, a civil war broke out between supporters of Amin and Mamun, sons of the caliph
Harun al-Rashid, which deepened the factionalism and created a new power bloc of
Turkish slave officers (mamluk).
• Abbasid power was soon limited to central Iraq and western Iran. That too was lost in 945
when the Buyids, a Shiite clan from the Caspian region of Iran (Daylam), captured
Baghdad.
• The Buyid rulers assumed various titles, including the ancient Iranian title shahanshah
(king of kings), but not that of caliph. They kept the Abbasid caliph as the symbolic head
of their Sunni subjects.
• The decision not to abolish the caliphate was a shrewd one, because another Shiite
dynasty, the Fatimids, had ambitions to rule the Islamic world.
• The Fatimids belonged to the Ismaili subsect of Shiism and claimed to be descended from
the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima, and hence, the sole rightful rulers of Islam.
• From their base in North Africa, they conquered Egypt in 969 and established the Fatimid
caliphate.
• Between 950 and 1200, Islamic society was held together not by a single political order or
a single language of culture (Arabic) but by common economic and cultural patterns.
• Unity in the face of political divisions was maintained by the separation between state
and society, the development of Persian as a language of Islamic high culture, and the
maturity of the dialogue between intellectual traditions.
• The Turks were nomadic tribes from the Central Asian steppes (grasslands) of Turkistan
(north-east of the Aral Sea up to the borders of China) who gradually converted to Islam.
• The Ghaznavid sultanate was established by Alptegin (961) and consolidated by Mahmud
of Ghazni (998-1030). Like the Buyids, the Ghaznavids were a military dynasty with a
professional army of Turks and Indians (one of the generals of Mahmud was an Indian
named Tilak).
• The Saljuq Turks entered Turan as soldiers in the armies of the Samanids and Qarakhanids
(non-Muslim Turks from further east).
• They later established themselves as a powerful group under the leadership of two
brothers, Tughril and Chaghri Beg. Taking advantage of the chaos following the death of
Mahmud of Ghazni, the Saljuqs conquered Khurasan in 1037 and made Nishapur* their
first capital.
• The Saljuqs next turned their attention to western Persia and Iraq (ruled by the Buyids)
and in 1055, restored Baghdad to Sunni rule.
• The caliph, al-Qaim, conferred on Tughril Beg the title of Sultan in a move that marked the
separation of religious and political authority. The two Saljuq brothers ruled together in
accordance with the tribal notion of rule by the family as a whole.
• Tughril (d. 1064) was succeeded by his nephew, Alp Arsalan. During Alp Arsalan’s reign,
the Saljuq empire expanded to Anatolia (modern Turkey).
• From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, there was a series of conflicts between
European Christians and the Arab states. This is discussed below.

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• Then, at the start of the thirteenth century, the Muslim world found itself on the verge of
a great disaster. This was the threat from the Mongols, the last but most decisive of all
nomadic assaults on settled civilisations.

The Crusades
• In medieval Islamic societies, Christians were regarded as the People of the Book (ahl al-
kitab) since they had their own scripture (the New Testament or Injil).
• Christians were granted safe conduct (aman) while venturing into Muslim states as
merchants, pilgrims, ambassadors and travellers.
• These territories also included those which were once held by the Byzantine Empire,
notably the Holy Land of Palestine.
• Jerusalem was conquered by the Arabs in 638 but it was ever-present in the Christian
imagination as the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. This was an important
factor in the formation of the image of Muslims in Christian Europe.
• Normans, Hungarians and some Slavs had been converted to Christianity, and the Muslims
alone remained as the main enemy.
• There was also a change in the social and economic organisation of western Europe in the
eleventh century which contributed to the hostility between Christendom and the Islamic
world.
• All military violence was forbidden inside certain areas, near places of worship, during
certain periods considered sacred in the Church’s calendar, and against certain vulnerable
social groups, such as churchmen and the common people.
• The death in 1092 of Malik Shah, the Saljuq sultan of Baghdad, was followed by the
disintegration of his empire.
• This offered the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, a chance to regain Asia Minor and northern
Syria. For Pope Urban II, this was an opportunity to revive the spirit of Christianity.
• In 1095, the Pope joined the Byzantine emperor in calling for a war in the name of God to
liberate the Holy Land.
• Between 1095 and 1291, western European Christians planned and fought wars against
Muslim cities on the coastal plains of the eastern Mediterranean (Levant). These wars
were later designated as Crusades.
• In the first crusade (1098-99), soldiers from France and Italy captured Antioch in Syria,
and claimed Jerusalem.
• Their victory was accompanied by the slaughter of Muslims and Jews in the city,
chronicled by both Christians and Muslims.
• Muslim writers referred to the arrival of the Christians (called ifrinji or firangi) as a Frankish
invasion.
• The Franks quickly established four crusader states in the region of Syria-Palestine.
• The Outremer survived well for some time, but when the Turks captured Edessa in 1144,
an appeal was made by the Pope for a second crusade (1145-49).
• Salah al-Din (Saladin) created an Egypto-Syrian empire and gave the call for jihad or holy
war against the Christians, and defeated them in 1187. He regained Jerusalem, nearly a
century after the first crusade.
• The Mamluks, the rulers of Egypt, finally drove the crusading Christians from all of
Palestine in 1291.

Shashank Sajwan | 45
• Europe gradually lost military interest in Islam and focused on its internal political and
cultural development.

Franks in Syria
• The treatment of the subjugated Muslim population differed among the various Frankish
lords. The earliest of the crusaders, who settled down in Syria and Palestine, were
generally more tolerant of the Muslim population than those who came later. In his
memoirs, Usama ibn Munqidh, a twelfth-century Syrian Muslim, has something
interesting to say about his new neighbours:
• ‘Among the Franks there are some who
have settled down in this country and
associated with Muslims. These are better
than the newcomers, but they are
exceptions to the rule, and no inference can
be drawn from them.
• Here is an example. Once I sent a man to
Antioch on business. At that time, Chief
Theodore Sophianos [an eastern Christian]
was there, and he and I were friends. He
was then all powerful in Antioch. One day he said to my man, ‘‘One of my Frankish friends
has invited me. Come with me and see how they live.’’ My man told me: “So I went with
him, and we came to the house of one of the old knights, those who had come with the
first Frankish expedition. He had already retired from state and military service, and had
a property in Antioch from which he lived. He produced a fine table, with food both tasty
and cleanly served. He saw that I was reluctant to eat, and said: “Eat to your heart’s
content, for I do not eat Frankish food. I have Egyptian women cooks and eat nothing but
what they prepare, nor does swine flesh ever enter my house.” So I ate, but with some
caution, and we took our leave.
• Later I was walking through the market, when suddenly a Frankish woman caught hold of
me and began jabbering in their language, and I could not understand what she was
saying. A crowd of Franks collected against me, and I was sure that my end had come.
Then, suddenly, that same knight appeared and saw me, and came up to that woman, and
asked her: “What do you want of this Muslim?” She replied: “He killed my brother Hurso.”
This Hurso was a knight of Afamiya who had been killed by someone from the army of
Hama. Then the knight shouted at her and said, “This man is a burjasi [bourgeois, that is,
a merchant]. He does not fight or go to war.” And he shouted at the crowd and they
dispersed; then he took my hand and went away. So the effect of that meal that I had was
to save me from death.”
– Kitab al-Itibar.

Economy: Agriculture, Urbanisation and Commerce

• Agriculture was the principal occupation of the settled populations in the newly
conquered territories.
• In Iraq and Iran, land existed in fairly large units cultivated by peasants.
• The estate owners collected taxes on behalf of the state during the Sasanian as well as
Islamic periods.

Shashank Sajwan | 46
• The state had overall control of agricultural lands, deriving the bulk of its income from
land revenue once the conquests were over.
• The lands conquered by the Arabs that remained in the hands of the owners were subject
to a tax (kharaj), which varied from half to a fifth of the produce, according to the
conditions of cultivation.
• On land held or cultivated by Muslims, the tax levied was one-tenth (ushr) of the produce.
When non-Muslims started to convert to Islam to pay lower taxes, this reduced the
income of the state.
• From the tenth century onwards, the state authorised its officials to claim their salaries
from agricultural revenues from territories, called iqtas (revenue assignments).
• Agricultural prosperity went hand in hand with political stability.
• In many areas, especially in the Nile valley, the state supported irrigation systems, the
construction of dams and canals, and the digging of wells (often equipped with
waterwheels or noria), all of which were crucial for good harvests.
• Islamic law gave tax concessions to people who brought land under cultivation.
• Many new crops such as cotton, oranges, bananas, watermelons, spinach and brinjals
(badinjan) were grown and even exported to Europe.
• Islamic civilisation flourished as the number of cities grew phenomenally. Many new cities
were founded, mainly to settle Arab soldiers (jund) who formed the backbone of the local
administration.
• Among this class of garrison-cities, called misr (the Arabic name for Egypt), were Kufa and
Basra in Iraq, and Fustat and Cairo in Egypt.
• Within half a century of its establishment as the capital of the Abbasid caliphate (800), the
population of Baghdad had reached around 1 million.
• At the heart of the city were two building complexes radiating cultural and economic
power: the congregational mosque (masjid al-jami), big enough to be seen from a
distance, and the central marketplace (suq), with shops in a row, merchants’ lodgings
(fanduq) and the office of the money-changer.
• The cities were homes to administrators (ayan or eyes of the state), and scholars and
merchants (tujjar) who lived close to the centre.
• Beyond the city walls were inns for people to rest when the city gates were shut and
cemeteries. There were variations on this typology depending on the nature of the
landscape, political traditions and historical events.
• Political unification and urban demand for foodstuffs and luxuries enlarged the circuit of
exchange.
• Geography favoured the Muslim empire, which spread between the trading zones of the
Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.
• For five centuries, Arab and Iranian traders monopolised the maritime trade between
China, India and Europe.
• This trade passed through two major routes, namely, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
High-value goods suitable for long-distance trade, such as spices, textile, porcelain and
gunpowder, were shipped from India and China to the Red Sea ports of Aden and Aydhab
and the Gulf ports of Siraf and Basra.
• From here, the merchandise was carried overland in camel caravans to the warehouses
(makhazin, origin of the word magazine which has a similar collection of articles) of
Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo for local consumption or onward transmission.

Shashank Sajwan | 47
• At the Mediterranean end of these trade routes, exports to Europe from the port of
Alexandria were handled by Jewish merchants, some of whom traded directly with India,
as can be seen from their letters preserved in the Geniza collection.
• However, from the tenth century, the Red Sea route gained greater importance due to
the rise of Cairo as a centre of commerce and power and growing demand for eastern
goods from the trading cities of Italy.

Paper, Geniza Records and History

• In the central Islamic lands, written works were widely circulated after the introduction of
paper. Paper (made from linen) came from China, where the manufacturing process was
a closely guarded secret.
• In 751, the Muslim governor of Samarqand took 20,000 Chinese invaders as prisoners,
some of whom were good at making paper. For the next 100 years, Samarqand paper
remained an important export item.
• Since Islam prohibited monopolies, paper began to be manufactured in the rest of the
Islamic world.
• By the middle of the tenth century, it had more or less replaced papyrus, the writing
material made from the inner stem of a plant that grew freely in the Nile valley.
• Demand for paper increased, and Abd al-Latif, a doctor from Baghdad and a resident of
Egypt between 1193 and 1207, reported how Egyptian peasants robbed graves to obtain
mummy wrappings made of linen to sell to paper factories.
• Paper also facilitated the writing of commercial and personal documents of all kinds. In
1896, a huge collection of medieval Jewish documents was discovered in a sealed room
(Geniza, pronounced ghaniza) of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat.
• The documents had been preserved thanks to the Jewish practice of not destroying any
piece of writing that contained the name of God. The Geniza was found to contain over a
quarter of a million manuscripts and fragments dating back as far as the mideighth
century.
• Most of the material dated from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, that is, from the
Fatimid, Ayyubid and early Mamluk periods. These included personal letters between
merchants, family and friends, contracts, promises of dowry, sale documents, laundry
lists, and other trivia. Most of the documents were written in Judaeo-Arabic, a version of
Arabic written in Hebrew characters that was commonly used by Jewish communities
throughout the medieval Mediterranean.
• The Geniza documents provide rich insights into personal and economic experiences as
also into Mediterranean and Islamic culture. The documents also suggest that the
business skills and commercial techniques of merchants of the medieval Islamic world
were more advanced than those of their European counterparts.
• Goitein wrote a multi-volume history of the Mediterranean from Geniza records, and
Amitav Ghosh was inspired by a Geniza letter to tell the story of an Indian slave in his
book, In an Antique Land.

• Towards the eastern end, caravans of Iranian merchants set out from Baghdad along the
Silk Route to China, via the oasis cities of Bukhara and Samarqand (Transoxiana), to bring
Central Asian and Chinese goods, including paper.

Shashank Sajwan | 48
• Islamic coins, used for the payment of these goods, were found in hoards discovered along
the Volga river and in the Baltic region. Male and female Turkish slaves (ghulam) too were
purchased in these markets for the courts of the caliphs and sultans.
• The fiscal system (income and expenditure of the state) and market exchange increased
the importance of money in the central Islamic lands.
• Coins of gold, silver and copper (fulus) were minted and circulated, often in bags sealed
by moneychangers, to pay for goods and services.
• Gold came from Africa (Sudan) and silver from Central Asia (Zarafshan valley).
• Precious metals and coins also came from Europe, which used these to pay for its trade
with the East.
• The greatest contribution of the Muslim world to medieval economic life was the
development of superior methods of payment and business organisation.
• Letters of credit (sakk, origin of the word cheque) and bills of exchange (suftaja) were used
by merchants and bankers to transfer money from one place or individual to another.
• The caliph too used the sakk to pay salaries or reward poets and minstrels.
• Although it was customary for merchants to set up family businesses or employ slaves to
run their affairs, formal business arrangements (muzarba) were also common in which
sleeping partners entrusted capital to travelling merchants and shared profits and losses
in an agreed proportion.
• Islam did not stop people from making money so long as certain prohibitions were
respected.
• Many tales from the Thousand and One Nights (Alf Layla wa Layla) give us a picture of
medieval Islamic society, featuring characters such as sailors, slaves, merchants and
money-changers.

Learning and Culture

• As the religious and social experiences of the Muslims deepened through contact with
other people, the community was obliged to reflect on itself and confront issues
pertaining to God and the world.
• For religious scholars (ulama), knowledge (ilm) derived from the Quran and the model
behaviour of the Prophet (sunna) was the only way to know the will of God and provide
guidance in this world.
• The ulama in medieval times devoted themselves to writing tafsir and documenting
Muhammad’s authentic hadith.
• Some went on to prepare a body of laws or sharia (the straight path) to govern the
relationship of Muslims with God through rituals (ibadat) and with the rest of the
humanity through social affairs (muamalat).
• In framing Islamic law, jurists also made use of reasoning (qiyas) since not everything was
apparent in the Quran or hadith and life had become increasingly complex with
urbanisation.
• Differences in the interpretation of the sources and methods of jurisprudence led to the
formation of four schools of law (mazhab) in the eight and ninth centuries. These were
the Maliki, Hanafi, Shafii and Hanbali schools, each named after a leading jurist (faqih),
the last being the most conservative.

Shashank Sajwan | 49
• The sharia provided guidance on all possible legal issues within Sunni society, though it
was more precise on questions of personal status (marriage, divorce and inheritance) than
on commercial matters or penal and constitutional issues.

The Quran
• The Quran is a book in Arabic divided into 114 chapters (suras) and arranged in descending
order of length, the shortest being the last. The only exception to this is the first sura
which is a short prayer (al-fatiha or opening).
• According to Muslim tradition, the Quran is a collection of messages (revelations) which
God sent to the Prophet Muhammad between 610 and 632, first in Mecca and then in
Medina.
• The task of compiling these revelations was completed some time in 650. The oldest
complete Quran we have today dates from the ninth century.
• There are many fragments which are older, the earliest being the verses engraved on the
Dome of the Rock and on coins in the seventhcentury.
• The use of the Quran as a source material for the history of early Islam has posed some
problems.
• The first is that it is a scripture, a text vested with religious authority. Theologians
generally believed that as the speech of God (kalam allah), it has to be understood literally,
but rationalists among them gave wider interpretations to the Quran.
• In 833, the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun imposed the view (in a trial of faith or mihna) that
the Quran is God’s creation rather than His speech.
• The second problem is that the Quran very often speaks in metaphors and, unlike the Old
Testament (Tawrit), it does not narrate events but only refers to them.
• Medieval Islamic scholars thus had to make sense of many verses with the help of hadith.
Many hadith were written to help the reading of the Quran.

• Before it took its final form, the sharia was adjusted to take into account the customary
laws (urf) of the various regions as well as the laws of the state on political and social order
(siyasa sharia).
• In most regimes, the ruler or his officials dealt routinely with matters of state security and
sent only selected cases to the qazi (judge).
• The qazi, appointed by the state in each city or locality, often acted as an arbitrator in
disputes, rather than as a strict enforcer of the sharia.
• A group of religious-minded people in medieval Islam, known as Sufis, sought a deeper
and more personal knowledge of God through asceticism (rahbaniya) and mysticism.
• In the eighth and ninth centuries, ascetic inclinations were elevated to the higher stage of
mysticism (tasawwuf) by the ideas of pantheism and love.
• Pantheism is the idea of oneness of God and His creation which implies that the human
soul must be united with its Maker.
• Unity with God can be achieved through an intense love for God (ishq), which the woman-
saint Rabia of Basra (d. 891) preached in her poems. Bayazid Bistami (d. 874), an Iranian
Sufi, was the first to teach the importance of submerging the self (fana) in God.
• Sufis used musical concerts (sama) to induce ecstasy and stimulate emotions of love and
passion.

Shashank Sajwan | 50
• Sufism is open to all regardless of religious affiliation, status and gender. Dhulnun Misri
(d. 861), whose grave can still be seen near the Pyramids in Egypt, declared before the
Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil, that he ‘learnt true Islam from an old woman, and true
chivalry from a water carrier’.
• By making religion more personal and less institutional, Sufism gained popularity and
posed a challenge to orthodox Islam.
• An alternative vision of God and the universe was developed by Islamic philosophers and
scientists under the influence of Greek philosophy and science.
• The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs commissioned the translation of Greek and Syriac
books into Arabic by Christian scholars.
• Translation became a well-organised activity under al-Mamun, who supported the Library
cum Institute of Science (Bayt al-Hikma) in Baghdad where the scholars worked.
• The works of Aristotle, the Elements of Euclid and Ptolemy’s Almagest were brought to
the attention of Arabic-reading scholars.
• Indian works on astronomy, mathematics and medicine were also translated into Arabic
during the same period.

The Ideal Student

• Abd al-Latif, a twelfth-century legal and medical scholar of Baghdad, talks to his ideal
student:
• I commend you not to learn your sciences from books unaided, even though you may trust
your ability to understand. Resort to teachers for each science you seek to acquire; and
should your teacher be limited in his knowledge take all that he can offer, until you find
another more accomplished than he. You must venerate and respect him.
• When you read a book, make every effort to learn it by heart and master its meaning.
Imagine the book to have disappeared and that you can dispense with it, unaffected by
its loss.
• One should read histories, study biographies and the experiences of nations. By doing this,
it will be as though, in his short life space, he lived contemporaneously with peoples of
the past, was on intimate terms with them, and knew the good and bad among them. You
should model your conduct on that of the early Muslims.
• Therefore, read the biography of the Prophet and follow in his footsteps. You should
frequently distrust your nature, rather than have a good opinion of it, submitting your
thoughts to men of learning and their works, proceeding with caution and avoiding haste.
• He who has not endured the stress of study will not taste the joy of knowledge. When you
have finished your study and reflection, occupy your tongue with the mention of God’s
name, and sing His praises.
• Do not complain if the world turns its back on you. Know that learning leaves a trail and a
scent proclaiming its possessor; a ray of light and brightness shining on him, pointing him
out.’
– Ahmad ibn al Qasim ibn Abi Usaybia, Uyun al Anba.

• The study of new subjects promoted critical inquiry and had a profound influence on
Islamic intellectual life.
• Scholars with a theological bent of mind, such as the group known as Mutazila, used Greek
logic and methods of reasoning (kalam) to defend Islamic beliefs.

Shashank Sajwan | 51
• Philosophers (falasifa) posed wider questions and provided fresh answers.
• Ibn Sina (980-1037), a doctor by profession and a philosopher, did not believe in the
resurrection of the body on the Day of Judgement.
• The most influential was al-Qanun fil Tibb (Canon of Medicine), a million-word manuscript
that lists 760 drugs sold by the pharmacists of his day and includes notes on his own
experiments conducted in hospitals (bimaristan).
• In medieval Islamic societies, fine language and a creative imagination were among the
most appreciated qualities in a person.
• These qualities raised a person’s communication to the level of adab, a term which implied
literary and cultural refinement.
• Adab forms of expressions included poetry (nazm or orderly arrangement) and prose
(nathr or scattered words) which were meant to be memorised and used when the
occasion arose.
• The most popular poetic composition of pre-Islamic origin was the ode (qasida),
developed by poets of the Abbasid period to glorify the achievements of their patrons.
• Poets of Persian origin revitalised and reinvented Arabic poetry and challenged the
cultural hegemony of the Arabs.
• Abu Nuwas (d. 815), who was of Persian origin, broke new ground by composing classical
poetry on new themes such as wine and male love with the intention of celebrating
pleasures forbidden by Islam.
• By the time the Arabs conquered Iran, Pahlavi, the language of the sacred books of ancient
Iran, was in decay.
• A version of Pahlavi, known as New Persian, with a huge Arabic vocabulary, soon
developed.
• The formation of sultanates in Khurasan and Transoxiana took New Persian to great
cultural heights.
• The Samanid court poet Rudaki (d. 940) was considered the father of New Persian poetry,
which included new forms such as the short lyrical poem (ghazal) and the quatrain (rubai,
plural rubaiyyat).
• The rubai is a four-line stanza in which the first two lines set the stage, the third is finely
poised, and the fourth delivers the point.
• The rubai reached its zenith in the hands of Umar Khayyam (1048-1131), also an
astronomer and mathematician, who lived at various times in Bukhara, Samarqand and
Isfahan.
• At the beginning of the eleventh century, Ghazni became the centre of Persian literary
life. Poets were naturally attracted by the brilliance of the imperial court.
• Mahmud of Ghazni gathered around him a group of poets who composed anthologies
(diwans) and epic poetry (mathnavi).
• The most outstanding was Firdausi (d. 1020), who took 30 years to complete the
Shahnama (Book of Kings), an epic of 50,000 couplets which has become a masterpiece
of Islamic literature.
• The Shahnama is a collection of traditions and legends (the most popular being that of
Rustam), which poetically depicts Iran from Creation up until the Arab conquest.
• The catalogue (Kitab al-Fihrist) of a Baghdad bookseller, Ibn Nadim (d. 895), describes a
large number of works written in prose for the moral education and amusement of
readers.

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• The oldest of these is a collection of animal fables called Kalila wa Dimna (the names of
the two jackals who were the leading characters) which is the Arabic translation of a
Pahlavi version of the Panchtantra.
• The most widespread and lasting literary works are the stories of heroadventurers such
as Alexander (al-Iskandar) and Sindbad, or those of unhappy lovers such as Qays (known
as Majnun or the Madman).
• These have developed over the centuries into oral and written traditions.
• The Thousand and One Nights is another collection of stories told by a single narrator,
Shahrzad, to her husband night after night.
• The collection was originally in Indo-Persian and was translated into Arabic in Baghdad in
the eighth century.
• More stories were later added in Cairo during the Mamluk period. These stories depict
human beings of different types – the generous, the stupid, the gullible, the crafty – and
were told to educate and entertain. In his Kitab al-Bukhala (Book of Misers), Jahiz of Basra
(d. 868) collected amusing anecdotes about misers and also analysed greed.
• From the ninth century onwards, the scope of adab was expanded to include biographies,
manuals of ethics (akhlaq), Mirrors for Princes (books on statecraft) and, above all, history
(tarikh) and geography.
• The tradition of history writing was well established in literate Muslim societies. History
books were read by scholars and students as well as by the broader literate public.
• In the two major historical works, Ansab al-Ashraf (Genealogies of the Nobles) of
Baladhuri (d. 892) and Tarikh al-Rusul wal Muluk (History of Prophets and Kings) of Tabari,
the whole of human history was treated with the Islamic period as the focal point.
• Geography and travel (rihla) constituted a special branch of adab. These combined
knowledge from Greek, Iranian and Indian books with the observations of merchants and
travellers.
• In mathematical geography, the inhabited world was divided into seven climes (singular
iqlim) parallel with the Equator, corresponding to our three continents.
• Muqaddasi’s (d. 1000) descriptive geography, Ahsan al-Taqasim (The Best Divisions) is a
comparative study of the countries and peoples of the world and a treasure trove of exotic
curiosities. Geography and general history were combined in Muruj al-Dhahab (Golden
Meadows) of Masudi (written in 943) to illustrate the wide variety of worldly cultures.
• Alberuni’s famous Tahqiq ma lil-Hind (History of India) was the greatest attempt by an
eleventh-century Muslim writer to look beyond the world of Islam and observe what was
of value in another cultural tradition.
• By the tenth century, an Islamic world had emerged which was easily recognisable by
travellers.
• Religious buildings were the greatest external symbols of this world.
• Mosques, shrines and tombs from Spain to Central Asia showed the same basic design –
arches, domes, minarets and open courtyards – and expressed the spiritual and practical
needs of Muslims.
• In the first Islamic century, the mosque acquired a distinct architectural form (roof
supported by pillars) which transcended regional variations.
• The mosque had an open courtyard (sahn) where a fountain or pond was placed, leading
to a vaulted hall which could accommodate long lines of worshippers and the prayer
leader (imam).

Shashank Sajwan | 53
• Two special features were located inside the hall: a niche (mihrab) in the wall indicating
the direction of Mecca (qibla), and a pulpit (minbar, pronounced mimbar) from where
sermons were delivered during noon prayers on Friday.
• The same pattern of construction – of buildings built around a central courtyard (iwan) –
appeared not only in mosques and mausoleums but also in caravanserais, hospitals and
palaces.
• The Umayyads built ‘desert palaces’ in oases, such as Khirbat al-Mafjar in Palestine and
Qusayr Amra in Jordan, which served as luxurious residences and retreats for hunting and
pleasure.
• The palaces, modelled on Roman and Sasanian architecture, were lavishly decorated with
sculptures, mosaics and paintings of people.
• The Abbasids built a new imperial city in Samarra amidst gardens and running waters
which is mentioned in the stories and legends revolving round Harun al-Rashid.
• The great palaces of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad or the Fatimids in Cairo have
disappeared, leaving only traces in literary texts.
• The rejection of representing living beings in the religious art of Islam promoted two art
forms: calligraphy (khattati or the art of beautiful writing) and arabesque (geometric and
vegetal designs).
• Small and big inscriptions, usually of religious quotations, were used to decorate
architecture.
• Calligraphic art has been best preserved in manuscripts of the Quran dating from the
eighth and ninth centuries. Literary works, such as the Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs),
Kalila wa Dimna, and Maqamat of Hariri, were illustrated with miniature paintings. In
addition, a wide variety of illumination techniques were introduced to enhance the beauty
of a book.

DATE EVENTS
595 Muhammad marries Khadija, a wealthy Meccan trader who later supports
Islam
610-12 Muhammad has first revelation; first public preaching of Islam (612)
621 First agreement at Aqaba with Medinan converts
622 Migration from Mecca to Medina. Arab tribes of Medina (ansar) shelter
Meccan migrants (muhajir)
632-61 Early caliphate; conquests of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt; civil wars
661-750 Umayyad rule; Damascus becomes the capital
750-945 Abbasid rule; Baghdad becomes the capital
945 Buyids capture Baghdad; literary and cultural efflorescence
1063-92 Rule of Nizamul mulk, the powerful Saljuq wazir who established a string of
madrasas called Nizamiyya; killed by Hashishayn (Assassins)
1095-1291 Crusades; contacts between Muslims and Christians
1111 Death of Ghazali, influential Iranian scholar who opposed rationalism
1258 Mongols capture Baghdad

Shashank Sajwan | 54
 THEME V – NOMADIC EMPIRES
• The term ‘nomadic empires’ can appear contradictory: nomads are arguably
quintessential wanderers, organised in family assemblies with a relatively
undifferentiated economic life and rudimentary systems of political organisation.
• The term ‘empire’, on the other hand, carries with it the sense of a material location, a
stability derived from complex social and economic structures and the governance of an
extensive territorial dominion through an elaborate administrative system.
• This chapter studies a different group of nomads: the Mongols of Central Asia who
established a transcontinental empire under the leadership of Genghis Khan, straddling
Europe and Asia during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
• This chapter studies the manner in which the Mongols under Genghis Khan adapted their
traditional social and political customs to create a fearsome military machine and a
sophisticated method of governance.
• The challenge of ruling a dominion spanning a melange of people, economies, and
confessional systems meant that the Mongols could not simply impose their steppe
traditions over their recently annexed territories. forever.

• The steppe dwellers themselves usually produced no literature, so our knowledge of

nomadic societies comes mainly from chronicles, travelogues and documents produced
by city-based litterateurs.
• These authors often produced extremely ignorant and biased reports of nomadic life. The
imperial success of the Mongols, however, attracted many literati.
• Some of them produced travelogues of their experiences; others stayed to serve Mongol
masters. These individuals came from a variety of backgrounds – Buddhist, Confucian,
Christian, Turkish and Muslim.
• The history of the Mongols, therefore, provides interesting details to question the manner
in which sedentary societies usually characterised nomads as primitive barbarians.
• Perhaps the most valuable research on the Mongols was done by Russian scholars starting
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the Tsarist regime consolidated its control
over Central Asia.
• This work was produced within a colonial milieu and was largely survey notes produced
by travellers, soldiers, merchants and antiquarian scholars.
• In the early twentieth century, after the extension of the soviet republics in the region, a
new Marxist historiography argued that the prevalent mode of production determined
the nature of social relations.
• It placed Genghis Khan and the emerging Mongol empire within a scale of human
evolution that was witnessing a transition from a tribal to a feudal mode of production:
from a relatively classless society to one where there were wide differences between the
lord, the owners of land and the peasant.
• The transcontinental span of the Mongol empire also meant that the sources available to
scholars are written in a vast number of languages.
• Perhaps the most crucial are the sources in Chinese, Mongolian, Persian and Arabic, but
vital materials are also available in Italian, Latin, French and Russian.
• The Mongolian and Chinese versions of the earliest narrative on Genghis Khan, titled
Mongqol-un niuèa tobèa’an (The Secret History of the Mongols) are quite different and
the Italian and Latin versions of Marco Polo’s travels to the Mongol court do not match.

Shashank Sajwan | 55
Introduction
• In the early decades of the
thirteenth century the
great empires of the Euro-
Asian continent realised
the dangers posed to them
by the arrival of a new
political power in the
steppes of Central Asia:
Genghis Khan (d. 1227)
had united the Mongol
people.
• Genghis Khan’s political
vision, however, went far
beyond the creation of a
confederacy of Mongol tribes in the steppes of Central Asia: he had a mandate from God
to rule the world.
• It was in the spirit of Genghis Khan’s ideals that his grandson Mongke (1251-60) warned
the French ruler, Louis IX (1226-70): ‘In Heaven there is only one Eternal Sky, on Earth
there is only one Lord, Genghis Khan, the Son of Heaven…
• These were not empty threats and the 1236-41 campaigns of Batu, another grandson of
Genghis Khan, devastated Russian lands up to Moscow, seized Poland and Hungary and
camped outside Vienna.
• In the thirteenth century it did seem that the Eternal Sky was on the side of the Mongols
and many parts of China, the Middle East and Europe saw in Genghis Khan’s conquests of
the inhabited world the ‘wrath of God’, the beginning of the Day of Judgement.

The Capture of Bukhara

• Juwaini, a late-thirteenth-century Persian chronicler of the Mongol rulers of Iran, carried
an account of the capture of Bukhara in 1220.
• After the conquest of the city, Juwaini reported, Genghis Khan went to the festival ground
where the rich residents of the city were and addressed them: ‘O people know that you
have committed great sins, and that the great ones among you have committed these
sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the
punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a
punishment like me upon you’… Now one man had escaped from Bukhara after its capture
and had come to Khurasan. He was questioned about the fate of the city and replied:
‘They came, they [mined the walls], they burnt, they slew, they plundered and they
departed.’

Social and Political Background

• The Mongols were a diverse body of people, linked by similarities of language to the
Tatars, Khitan and Manchus to the east, and the Turkic tribes to the west.
• Some of the Mongols were pastoralists while others were hunter-gatherers.
• The pastoralists tended horses, sheep and, to a lesser extent, cattle, goats and camels.

Shashank Sajwan | 56
• They nomadised in the steppes of Central Asia in a tract of land in the area of the modern
state of Mongolia.
• This was (and still is) a majestic landscape with wide horizons, rolling plains, ringed by the
snow-capped Altai mountains to the west, the arid Gobi desert in the south and drained
by the Onon and Selenga rivers and myriad springs from the melting snows of the hills in
the north and the west.
• Ethnic and language ties united the Mongol people but the scarce resources meant that
their society was divided into patrilineal lineages; the richer families were larger,
possessed more animals and pasture lands. They therefore had many followers and were
more influential in local politics.
• The size of Genghis Khan’s confederation of Mongol and Turkish tribes was perhaps
matched in size only by that which had been stitched together in the fifth century by Attila
(d. 453).
• Unlike Attila, however, Genghis Khan’s political system was far more durable and survived
its founder. It was stable enough to counter larger armies with superior equipment in
China, Iran and eastern Europe. And, as they established control over these regions, the
Mongols administered complex agrarian economies and urban settlements – sedentary
societies – that were quite distant from their own social experience and habitat.
• Although the social and political organisations of the nomadic and agrarian economies
were very different, the two societies were hardly foreign to each other.
• In fact, the scant resources of the steppe lands drove Mongols and other Central Asian
nomads to trade and barter with their sedentary neighbours in China.
• Commerce was not without its tensions, especially as the two groups unhesitatingly
applied military pressure to enhance profit.
• When the Mongol lineages allied they could force their Chinese neighbours to offer better
terms and trade ties were sometimes discarded in favour of outright plunder. This
relationship would alter when the Mongols were in disarray.
• The Chinese would then confidently assert their influence in the steppe. These frontier
wars were more debilitating to settled societies. They dislocated agriculture and
plundered cities.
• China suffered extensively from nomad
intrusion and different regimes – even as
early as the eighth century BCE – built
fortifications to protect their subjects.
• Starting from the third century BCE, these
fortifications started to be integrated into
a common defensive outwork known
today as the ‘Great Wall of China’ a
dramatic visual testament to the
disturbance and fear perpetrated by nomadic raids on the agrarian societies of north
China.

The Career of Genghis Khan

• Genghis Khan was born sometime around 1162 near the Onon river in the north of
present-day Mongolia. Named Temujin, he was the son of Yesugei, the chieftain of the
Kiyat, a group of families related to the Borjigid clan.

Shashank Sajwan | 57
• His father was murdered at an early age and his mother, Oelun-eke, raised Temujin, his
brothers and step-brothers in great hardship.
• The following decade was full of reversals – Temujin was captured and enslaved and soon
after his marriage, his wife, Borte, was kidnapped, and he had to fight to recover her.
• During these years of hardship he also managed to make important friends. The young
Boghurchu was his first ally and remained a trusted friend; Jamuqa, his blood brother
(anda), was another. Temujin also restored old alliances with the ruler of the Kereyits,
Tughril/Ong Khan, his father’s old blood-brother.
• Through the 1180s and 1190s, Temujin remained an ally of Ong Khan and used the alliance
to defeat powerful adversaries like Jamuqa, his old friend who had become a hostile foe.
It was after defeating him that Temujin felt confident enough to move against other
tribes: the powerful Tatars (his father’s assassins), the Kereyits and Ong Khan himself in
1203.
• The final defeat of the Naiman people and the powerful Jamuqa in 1206, left Temujin as
the dominant personality in the politics of the steppe lands, a position that was recognised
at an assembly of Mongol chieftains (quriltai) where he was proclaimed the ‘Great Khan
of the Mongols’ (Qa’an) with the title Genghis Khan, the ‘Oceanic Khan’ or ‘Universal
Ruler’.
• Just before the quriltai of 1206, Genghis Khan had reorganised the Mongol people into a
more effective, disciplined military force that facilitated the success of his future
campaigns.
• The first of his concerns was to conquer China, divided at this time into three realms: the
Hsi Hsia people of Tibetan origin in the north-western provinces; the Jurchen whose Chin
dynasty ruled north China from Peking; the Sung dynasty who controlled south China.
• By 1209, the Hsi Hsia were defeated, the ‘Great Wall of China’ was breached in 1213 and
Peking sacked in 1215.
• Long drawn-out battles against the Chin continued until 1234 but Genghis Khan was
satisfied enough with the progress of his campaigns to return to his Mongolian homeland
in 1216 and leave the military affairs of the region to his subordinates.
• After the defeat in 1218 of the Qara Khita who controlled the Tien Shan mountains north-
west of China, Mongol dominions reached the Amu Darya, and the states of Transoxiana
and Khwarazm.
• Sultan Muhammad, the ruler of Khwarazm, felt the fury of Genghis Khan’s rage when he
executed Mongol envoys. In the campaigns between 1219 and 1221 the great cities –
Otrar, Bukhara, Samarqand, Balkh, Gurganj, Merv, Nishapur and Herat– surrendered to
the Mongol forces. Towns that resisted were devastated.
• At Nishapur, where a Mongol prince was killed during the siege operation, Genghis Khan
commanded that the ‘town should be laid waste in such a manner that the site could be
ploughed upon; and that in the exaction of vengeance [for the death of the prince] not
even cats and dogs should be left alive’.
• Mongol forces in pursuit of Sultan Muhammad pushed into Azerbaijan, defeated Russian
forces at the Crimea and encircled the Caspian Sea.
• At the banks of the Indus, Genghis Khan considered returning to Mongolia through North
India and Assam, but the heat, the natural habitat and the ill portents reported by his
Shaman soothsayer made him change his mind.

Shashank Sajwan | 58
• Genghis Khan died in 1227, having spent most of his life in military combat. His military
achievements were astounding and they were largely a result of his ability to innovate
and transform different aspects of steppe combat into extremely effective military
strategies.

DATE EVENT
c. 1167 Birth of Temujin
1160s-70s Years spent in slavery and struggle
1180s-90s Period of alliance formation
1203-27 Expansion and triumph
1206 Temujin proclaimed Genghis Khan, 'Universal Ruler' of the Mongols
1227 Death of Genghis Khan
1227-60 Rule of the three Great Khans and continued Mongol unity
1227-41 Ogodei, son of Genghis Khan
1246-49 Guyuk, son of Ogodei
1251-60 Mongke, son of Genghis Khan's youngest son, Toluy
1236-42 Campaigns in Russia, Hungary, Poland and Austria under Batu, son of Jochi,
Genghis Khan’s eldest son
1253-55 Beginning of fresh campaigns in Iran and China under Mongke
1258 Capture of Baghdad and the end of the Abbasid caliphate. Establishment of
the Il-Khanid state of Iran under Hulegu, younger brother of Mongke.
Beginning of conflict between the Jochids and the Il-Khans
1260 Accession of Qubilai Khan as Grand Khan in Peking; conflict amongst
descendants of Genghis Khan; fragmentation of Mongol realm into
independent lineages – Toluy, Chaghatai and Jochi (Ogodei’s lineage defeated
and absorbed into the Toluyid)
Toluyids: Yuan dynasty in China and Il-Khanid state in Iran;
Chaghataids in steppes north of Transoxiana and ‘Turkistan’;
Jochid lineages in the Russian steppes, described as the ‘Golden Horde’ by
observers
1257-67 Reign of Berke, son of Batu; reorientation of the Golden Horde from Nestorian
Christianity towards Islam. Definitive conversion takes place only in the 1350s.
Start of the alliance between the Golden Horde and Egypt against the Il-Khans
1295-1304 Reign of Il-Khanid ruler Ghazan Khan in Iran. His conversion from Buddhism to
Islam is followed gradually by other Il-Khanid chieftains
1368 End of Yuan dynasty in China
1370-1405 Rule of Timur, a Barlas Turk who claimed Genghis Khanid descent through the
lineage of Chaghatai. Establishes a steppe empire that assimilates part of the
dominions of Toluy (excluding China), Chaghatai and Jochi. Proclaims himself
‘Guregen’ – ‘royal son-in- law’ and marries a princess of the Genghis Khanid
lineage
1495-1530 Zahiruddin Babur, descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan, succeeds to
Timurid territory of Ferghana and Samarqand, is expelled, captures Kabul and
in 1526 seizes Delhi and Agra; founds the Mughal empire in India
1500 Capture of Transoxiana by Shaybani Khan, descendant of Jochi’s youngest son,
Shiban. Consolidates Shaybani power (Shaybanids also described as Uzbeg,

Shashank Sajwan | 59
 from whom Uzbekistan, today, gets its name) in Transoxiana and expels Babur
and other Timurids from the region
1759 Manchus of China conquer Mongolia
1921 Republic of Mongolia

The Mongols after Genghis Khan

• We can divide Mongol expansion after Genghis Khan’s death into two distinct phases: the
first which spanned the years 1236-42 when the major gains were in the Russian steppes,
Bulghar, Kiev, Poland and Hungary.
• The second phase including the years 1255 1300 led to the conquest of all of China (1279),
Iran, Iraq and Syria.
• The Mongol military forces met with few reversals in the decades after 1203 but, quite
noticeably, after the 1260s the original impetus of campaigns could not be sustained in
the West.
• There were two facets to this: the first was a consequence of the internal politics of
succession within the Mongol family where the descendants of Jochi and Ogodei allied to
control the office of the great Khan in the first two generations.
• The second compulsion occurred as the Jochi and Ogodei lineages were marginalised by
the Toluyid branch of Genghis Khanid descendants. With the accession of Mongke, a
descendant of Toluy, Genghis Khan’s youngest son, military campaigns were pursued
energetically in Iran during the 1250s.
• But as Toluyid interests in the conquest of China increased during the 1260s, forces and
supplies were increasingly diverted into the heartlands of the Mongol dominion. As a
result, the Mongols fielded a small, understaffed force against the Egyptian military.
• Concurrently, conflict between the Jochid and Toluyid descendants along the Russian-
Iranian frontier diverted the Jochids away from further European campaigns.
• The suspension of Mongol expansion in the West did not arrest their campaigns in China
which was reunited under the Mongols.

Social, Political and Military Organisation

• Among the Mongols, and many other nomadic societies as well, all the able-bodied, adult
males of the tribe bore arms: they constituted the armed forces when the occasion
demanded.
• Genghis Khan worked to systematically erase the old tribal identities of the different
groups who joined his confederacy.
• His army was organised according to the old steppe system of decimal units: in divisions
of 10s, 100s, 1,000s and [notionally] 10,000 soldiers. In the old system the clan and the
tribe would have coexisted within the decimal units.
• Genghis Khan stopped this practice. He divided the old tribal groupings and distributed
their members into new military units.
• The largest unit of soldiers, approximating 10,000 soldiers (tuman) now included
fragmented groups of people from a variety of different tribes and clans.
• The new military contingents were required to serve under his four sons and specially
chosen captains of his army units called noyan.

Shashank Sajwan | 60
• Genghis Khan publicly honoured some of these individuals as his ‘blood-brothers’ (anda);
yet others, freemen of a humbler rank, were given special ranking as his bondsmen
(naukar), a title that marked their close relationship with their master.
• This ranking did not preserve the rights of the old clan chieftains; the new aristocracy
derived its status from a close relationship with the Great Khan of the Mongols.
• In this new hierarchy, Genghis Khan assigned the responsibility of governing the newly
conquered people to his four sons. These comprised the four ulus, a term that did not
originally mean fixed territories. Genghis Khan’s lifetime was still the age of rapid
conquests and expanding domains, where frontiers were still extremely fluid.
• The second son, Chaghatai, was given the Transoxianian steppe and lands north of the
Pamir mountains adjacent to those of his brother.
• Genghis Khan had indicated that his third son, Ogodei, would succeed him as the Great
Khan and on accession the Prince established his capital at Karakorum.
• The youngest son, Toluy, received the ancestral lands of Mongolia.
• Genghis Khan envisaged that his sons would rule the empire collectively, and to underline
this point, military contingents (tama) of the individual princes were placed in each ulus.
• Genghis Khan had already fashioned a rapid courier system that connected the distant
areas of his regime.
• For the maintenance of this communication system the Mongol nomads contributed a
tenth of their herd – either horses or livestock – as provisions. This was called the qubcur
tax, a levy that the nomads paid willingly for the multiple benefits that it brought.
• The courier system (yam) was further refined after Genghis Khan’s death and its speed
and reliability surprised travellers.
• The conquered people, however, hardly felt a sense of affinity with their new nomadic
masters.
• During the campaigns in the first half of the thirteenth century, cities were destroyed,
agricultural lands laid waste, trade and handicraft production disrupted.
• Once the dust from the campaigns had settled, Europe and China were territorially linked.
• In the peace ushered in by Mongol conquest (Pax Mongolica) trade connections matured.
Commerce and travel along the Silk Route reached its peak under the Mongols but, unlike
before, the trade routes did not terminate in China.
• In the 1230s, for example, as the Mongols waged their successful war against the Chin
dynasty in north China, there was a strong pressure group within the Mongol leadership
that advocated the massacre of all peasantry and the conversion of their fields into
pasture lands.
• But by the 1270s, when south China was annexed to the Mongol empire after the defeat
of the Sung dynasty, Genghis Khan’s grandson, Qubilai Khan (d. 1294), appeared as the
protector of the peasants and the cities. In the 1290s, the Mongol ruler of Iran, Ghazan
Khan (d. 1304), a descendant of Genghis Khan’s youngest son Toluy, warned family
members and other generals to avoid pillaging the peasantry.
• From Genghis Khan’s reign itself, the Mongols had recruited civil administrators from the
conquered societies. They were sometimes moved around: Chinese secretaries deployed
in Iran and Persians in China.
• In the 1230s, the Chinese minister Yeh-lu Ch’u-ts’ai, muted some of Ogedei’s more
rapacious instincts; the Juwaini family played a similar role in Iran through the latter half
of the thirteenth century and at the end of the century, the wazir, Rashiduddin, drafted

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 the speech that Ghazan Khan delivered to his Mongol compatriots asking them to protect,
not harass, the peasantry.
• The pressure to sedentarise was greater in the new areas of Mongol domicile, areas
distant from the original steppe habitat of the nomads.
• By the middle of the thirteenth century the sense of a common patrimony shared by all
the brothers was gradually replaced by individual dynasties each ruling their separate
ulus, a term which now carried the sense of a territorial dominion.
• This was, in part, a result of succession struggles, where Genghis Khanid descendants
competed for the office of Great Khan and prized pastoral lands.
• Persian chronicles produced in Il-Khanid Iran during the late thirteenth century detailed
the gory killings of the Great Khan and greatly exaggerated the numbers killed. For
example, in contrast to an eyewitness report that 400 soldiers defended the citadel of
Bukhara, an Il-Khanid chronicle reported that 30,000 soldiers were killed in the attack on
the citadel.
• Following the research of David Ayalon, recent work on the yasa, the code of law that
Genghis Khan was supposed to have promulgated at the quriltai of 1206, has elaborated
on the complex ways in which the memory of the Great Khan was fashioned by his
successors. In its earliest formulation the term was written as yasaq which meant ‘law’,
‘decree’ or ‘order’.
• By the middle of the thirteenth century, however, the Mongols had started using the
related term yasa in a more general sense to mean the ‘legal code of Genghis Khan’.
• By the middle of the thirteenth century the Mongols had emerged as a unified people and
just created the largest empire the world had ever seen. They ruled over very
sophisticated urban societies, with their respective histories, cultures and laws.
• The yasa was in all probability a compilation of the customary traditions of the Mongol
tribes but in referring to it as Genghis Khan’s code of law, the Mongol people also laid
claim to a ‘lawgiver’ like Moses and Solomon, whose authoritative code could be imposed
on their subjects.

Yasa
• In 1221, after the conquest of Bukhara, Genghis Khan had assembled the rich Muslim
residents at the festival ground and had admonished them.
• He called them sinners and warned them to compensate for their sins by parting with
their hidden wealth. The episode was dramatic enough to be painted and for a long time
afterwards people still remembered the incident.
• In the late sixteenth century, ‘Abdullah Khan, a distant descendant of Jochi, Genghis
Khan’s eldest son, went to the same festival ground in Bukhara.
• Unlike Genghis Khan, however, ‘Abdullah Khan went to perform his holiday prayers there.
His chronicler, Hafiz-i Tanish, reported this performance of Muslim piety by his master
and included the surprising comment: ‘this was according to the yasa of Genghis Khan’.

Conclusion: Situating Genghis Khan and the Mongols in World History

• When we remember Genghis Khan today the only images that appear in our imagination
are those of the conqueror, the destroyer of cities, and an individual who was responsible
for the death of thousands of people.

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• Many thirteenth-century residents of towns in China, Iran and eastern Europe looked at
the hordes from the steppes with fear and distaste.
• And yet, for the Mongols, Genghis Khan was the greatest leader of all time: he united the
Mongol people, freed them from interminable tribal wars and Chinese exploitation,
brought them prosperity, fashioned a grand transcontinental empire and restored trade
routes and markets that attracted distant travellers like the Venetian Marco Polo.
• Although the Mongol Khans themselves belonged to a variety of different faiths – Shaman,
Buddhist, Christian and eventually Islam – they never let their personal beliefs dictate
public policy.
• The Mongol rulers recruited administrators and armed contingents from people of all
ethnic groups and religions. Theirs was a multi ethnic, multilingual, multi-religious regime
that did not feel threatened by its pluralistic constitution.
• The nature of the documentation on the Mongols– and any nomadic regime makes it
virtually impossible to understand the inspiration that led to the confederation of
fragmented groups of people in the pursuit of an ambition to create an empire.
• At the end of the fourteenth century, Timur, another monarch who aspired to universal
dominion, hesitated to declare himself monarch because he was not of Genghis Khanid
descent.
• When he did declare his independent sovereignty it was as the son-in-law (guregen) of
the Genghis Khanid family.
• Today, after decades of Soviet control, the country of Mongolia is recreating its identity
as an independent nation.
• At a crucial juncture in the history of Mongolia, Genghis Khan has once again appeared as
an iconic figure for the Mongol people, mobilising memories of a great past in the forging
of national identity that can carry the nation into the future.

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 SECTION III – CHANGING TRADITIONS
• We have seen how, by the ninth century, large parts of Asia and America witnessed the
growth and expansion of great empires – some nomadic, some based on well-developed
cities and trading networks that centred on them.
• The difference between the Macedonian, Roman and Arab empires and the ones that
preceded them (the Egyptian, Assyrian, Chinese, Mauryan) was that they covered greater
areas of territory, and were continental or transcontinental in nature. The Mongol empire
was similar.
• Traditions in world history could change in different ways.
• In western Europe during the period from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries, much
that we connect with modern times evolved slowly– the development of scientific
knowledge based on experiment rather than religious belief, serious thought about the
organisation of government, with attention to the creation of civil services, parliaments
and different codes of law, improvements in technology that was used in industry and
agriculture.
• As we have seen, by the fifth century CE, the Roman Empire in the west had disintegrated.
In western and central Europe, the remains of the Roman Empire were slowly adapted to
the administrative requirements and needs of tribes that had established kingdoms there.
• By the ninth century, the commercial and urban centres – Aix, London, Rome, Sienna –
though small, could not be dismissed.
• From the ninth to the eleventh centuries, there were major developments in the
countryside in western Europe.
• The Church and royal government developed a combination of Roman institutions with
the customary rules of tribes.
• The finest example was the empire of Charlemagne in western and central Europe at the
beginning of the ninth century. Even after its rapid collapse, urban centres and trading
networks persisted, albeit under heavy attack from Hungarians, Vikings and others.
• What happened was called ‘feudalism’. Feudalism was marked by agricultural production
around castles and ‘manor houses’, where lords of the manor possessed land that was
cultivated by peasants (serfs) who pledged them loyalty, goods and services.
• These lords in turn pledged their loyalty to greater lords who were ‘vassals’ of kings.
• The Catholic Church (centred on the papacy) supported this state of affairs and itself
possessed land.
• Monasteries were created where God-fearing people could devote themselves to the
service of God in the way Catholic churchmen thought fit.
• Equally, churches were part of a network of scholarship that ran from the Muslim states
of Spain to Byzantium, and they provided the petty kings of Europe with a sense of the
opulence of the eastern Mediterranean and beyond.
• The influence of commerce and towns in the feudal order came to evolve and change
encouraged by Mediterranean entrepreneurs in Venice and Genoa (from the twelfth
century).
• Attracted by the lure of wealth in these areas, and inspired by the idea of freeing ‘holy
places’ associated with Christ from Muslims, European kings reinforced links across the
Mediterranean during the ‘crusades’.
• Trade within Europe improved (centred on fairs and the port cities of the Baltic Sea and
the North Sea and stimulated by a growing population).

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• Opportunities for commercial expansion coincided with changing attitudes concerning
the value of life.
• Respect for human beings and living things that marked much of Islamic art and literature,
and the example of Greek art and ideas that came to Europe from Byzantine trade
encouraged Europeans to take a new look at the world.
• And from the fourteenth century (in what is called the ‘Renaissance’), especially in north
Italian towns, the wealthy became less concerned with life after death and more with the
wonders of life itself.
• Sculptors, painters and writers became interested in humanity and the discovery of the
world.
• By the end of the fifteenth century, this state of affairs encouraged travel and discovery
as never before. Voyages of discovery took place.
• Spaniards and Portuguese, who had traded with northern Africa, pushed further down
the coast of western Africa, finally leading to journeys around the Cape of Good Hope to
India – which had a great reputation in Europe as a source of spices that were in great
demand.
• Columbus attempted to find a western route to India and in 1492 reached the islands
which the Europeans called the West Indies.
• Other explorers tried to find a northern route to India and China via the Arctic.
• In part, they were interested in learning from them. The papacy encouraged the work of
the North African geographer and traveller Hasan al-Wazzan (later known in Europe as
Leo Africanus), who wrote the first geography of Africa in the early sixteenth century for
Pope Leo X.
• Jesuit churchmen observed and wrote on Japan in the sixteenth century.
• An Englishman, Will Adams, became a friend and counsellor of the Japanese Shogun,
Tokugawa Ieyasu, in the early seventeenth century.
• As in the case of Hasan al-Wazzan, peoples that the Europeans encountered in the
Americas often took a great interest in them and sometimes worked for them.
• For example an Aztec woman – later known as Dona Marina – befriended the Spanish
conqueror of Mexico, Cortes, and interpreted and negotiated for him.
• In their encounters, Europeans were sometimes cautious, self effacing and observant,
even as they frequently attempted to establish trade monopolies and enforce their
authority by force of arms as the Portuguese attempted to do in the Indian Ocean after
Vasco da Gama’s arrival in Calicut (present-day Kozhikode) in 1498.
• The Japanese learnt some of the advantages of European technology quickly – for
instance, they had begun large-scale production of muskets by the late sixteenth century.
• In the Americas, enemies of the Aztec empire sometimes used Europeans to challenge the
power of the Aztecs.
• At the same time the diseases the Europeans brought devastated the populations, leading
to the death of over 90 per cent of the people in some areas by the end of the sixteenth
century.

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 TIMELINE III
(C. 1300 TO 1700)
• The period under consideration witnessed several major developments in Europe,
including changes in agriculture and the lives of peasants.
• It was also marked by a range of cultural developments. This timeline draws attention to
contacts between continents, stimulated in many instances by the growth of trade.
• The impact of these contacts was varied – while ideas, inventions and goods were shared
across continents, there was also constant warfare between kingdoms to control land,
resources and access to trade routes.
• As a result, men and women were often displaced and enslaved, if not exterminated. In
many ways, the lives of people were transformed beyond recognition.

DATES AFRICA EUROPE

1300-25 Alhambra and Granada emerge as
important cultural centres in Spain
1325-50 Plague in Egypt (1348-55) Hundred Years War between
England and France (1337-1453);
Black Death (a form of plague)
spreads throughout Europe (1348)
1350-75 Ibn Batuta explores the Sahara French peasants protest against
high taxes (1358)
1375-1400 Peasant revolt in Britain (1381);
Geoffrey Chaucer writes The
Canterbury Tales, one of the
earliest compositions in English
(1388)
1425-50 Portuguese begin slave trading (1442)
1450-75 Songhai empire in West Africa First printed book appears in
established based on trading networks Europe; Leonardo da Vinci (1452-
across the Sahara; Portuguese 1519), painter, architect, inventor
expeditions and settlements along the in Italy
west coast of Africa (1471 onwards)
1475-1500 Portuguese convert the king of Establishment of the Tudor dynasty
Bokongo to Christianity in England (1485)
1500-25 African slaves taken to work on sugar Coffee from South America is drunk
plantations in America (1510); in Europe for the first time (1517)
Ottoman Turks conquer Egypt (1517) and tobacco, chocolate, tomatoes
and turkey are also introduced;
Martin Luther attempts to reform
the Catholic Church (1517)
1525-50 Copernicus propounds theory
about solar system (1543)
1550-75 William Shakespeare (1564-1616),
dramatist in England
1575-1600 Zacharias Janssen invents the
microscope (1590s)

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1600-25 Oyo kingdom of Nigeria at the height One of the first novels, Don
of its power, centres for metal-working Quixote, written in Spanish (1605)
1625-50 William Harvey demonstrates that
blood is pumped through the body
by the heart (1628)
1650-75 Portuguese destroy the Kongo Louis XIV, king of France (1638-
kingdom (1662) 1715)
1675-1700 Peter the Great (1682-1725)
attempts to modernise Russia

DATES ASIA SOUTH ASIA

1325-1350 Establishment of the Vijayanagara
empire (1336)
1350-75 Ming dynasty in China (1368
onwards)
1400-25 Emergence of regional sultanates
1450-75 Ottoman Turks capture
Constantinople (1453)
1475-1500 Vasco da Gama reaches India
(1498)
1500-25 Portuguese entry into China
opposed, driven out to Macao (1522)
1525-50 Babur establishes Mughal control
over north India, first battle of
Panipat (1526)
1550-75 Akbar (1556-1605) consolidates
Mughal rule
1575-1600 First Kabuki play staged in Japan
(1586); Shah Abbas (1587-1629) of
Persia introduces European methods
of military training
1600-25 Tokugawa Shogunate established in Establishment of the British East
Japan (1603) India Company (1600)
1625-50 All European traders with the Construction of the Taj Mahal
exception of the Dutch forbidden to (1632-53)
trade with Japan (1637); Manchu rule
in China, (1644 onwards) which lasts
for nearly 300 years; growing
demand in Europe for Chinese tea
and silk

DATES AMERICAS AUSTRALIA/PACIFIC ISLANDS

1300-25 Aztec capital at Tenochtitlan, Mexico
(1325), building temples,

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 development of irrigation systems
and accounting system (quipu)
1450-75 Incas establish control over Peru
1475-1500 Columbus reaches the West Indies
1500-25 Spanish conquest of Mexico (1521) Magellan, a Spanish navigator,
reaches the Pacific Ocean (1519)
1525-50 French explorers reach Canada
(1534)
1550-75 Spanish conquest of Peru (1572)
1575-1600 Dutch sailors reach Australia by
accident
1600-25 England sets up its first colonies in Spanish sailors reach Tahiti
North America (1607); the first slaves (1606)
are brought from West Africa to
Virginia (1619)
1625-50 Dutch found New Amsterdam, now Dutch navigator Abel Tasman
called New York (1626); first printing sails around Australia without
press is set up in Massachusetts realising it. He then lands on Van
(1635) Diemen’s land, later called
Tasmania. He also reaches New
Zealand, but thinks it is part of a
huge landmass!
1650-75 First sugar plantations are
established in the West Indies (1654)
1675-1700 French colonises the Mississippi
basin, naming it Louisiana after King
Louis XIV (1682)

THEME VI – THE THREE ORDERS

• IN this chapter, we shall learn about the socio-economic and political changes which
occurred in western Europe between the ninth and sixteenth centuries.
• After the fall of the Roman Empire, many groups of Germanic people from eastern and
central Europe occupied regions of Italy, Spain and France.
• Christianity, the official religion of the Roman Empire from the fourth century, survived
the collapse of Rome, and gradually spread to central and northern Europe. The Church
also became a major landholder and political power in Europe.
• Over the last 100 years, European historians have done detailed work on the histories of
regions, even of individual villages. This was possible because, from the medieval period,
there is a lot of material in the form of documents, details of landownership, prices and
legal cases: for example, churches kept records of births, marriages and deaths, which
have made it possible to understand the structure of families and of population.
• The inscriptions in churches give information about traders’ associations, and songs and
stories give a sense of festivals and community activities.
• Of the many scholars in France who have worked on feudalism, one of the earliest was
Bloch. Marc Bloch (1886–1944) was one of a group of scholars who argued that history

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 consisted of much more than just political history, international relations and the lives of
great people.
• French, society between 900 and 1300, describing in remarkable detail social relations
and hierarchies, land management and the popular culture of the period.
• His career was cut short tragically when he was shot by the Nazis in the Second World
War.

An Introduction to Feudalism
• The term ‘feudalism’ has been used by historians to describe the economic, legal, political
and social relationships that existed in Europe in the medieval era.
• Derived from the German word ‘feud’, which means ‘a piece of land’, it refers to the kind
of society that developed in medieval France, and later in England and in southern Italy.
• They also had extensive judicial control over peasants. Thus, feudalism went beyond the
economic to cover the social and political aspects of life as well.
• Although its roots have been traced to practices that existed in the Roman Empire and
during the age of the French king Charlemagne (742-814), feudalism as an established way
of life in large parts of Europe may be said to have emerged later, in the eleventh century.
France and England
• Gaul, a province of the Roman Empire, had two extensive coastlines, mountain ranges,
long rivers, forests and large tracts of plains suited to agriculture.
• The French had very strong links with the Church, which were further strengthened when
in 800 the Pope gave King Charlemagne the title of ‘Holy Roman Emperor’, to ensure his
support.
Early History of France
481 Clovis becomes king of the Franks
486 Clovis and the Franks begin the conquest of northern Gaul
496 Clovis and the Franks convert to Christianity
714 Charles Martel becomes mayor of the palace
751 Martel’s son Pepin deposes the Frankish ruler, becomes king and establishes
a dynasty. Wars of conquest double the size of his kingdom
768 Pepin succeeded by his son Charlemagne/Charles the Great
800 Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor
840 Raids by Vikings from Norway
ONWARDS

The Three Orders

• French priests believed in the concept that people were members of one of the three
‘orders’, depending on their work. A bishop stated, ‘Here below, some pray, others fight,
still others work...’ Thus, the three orders of society were broadly the clergy, the nobility
and the peasantry.
• In the twelfth century, Abbess Hildegard of Bingen wrote: ‘Who would think of herding
his entire cattle in one stable – cows, donkeys, sheep, goats, without difference?
Therefore, it is necessary to establish difference among human beings, so that they do not
destroy each other … God makes distinctions among his flock, in heaven as on earth. All
are loved by him, yet there is no equality among them.’

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The Second Order: The Nobility
• Priests placed themselves in the first order, and nobles in
the second. The nobility had, in reality, a central role in
social processes. This is because they controlled land. This
control was the outcome of a practice called ‘vassalage’.
• The big landowners – the nobles – were vassals of the king,
and peasants were vassals of the landowners. A nobleman
accepted the king as his seigneur (senior) and they made
a mutual promise:
• This relationship involved elaborate rituals and exchange
of vows taken on the Bible in a church.
• He had absolute control over his property, in perpetuity.
He could raise troops called feudal levies. The lord held his own courts of justice and could
even coin his own money.
• His house was called a manor. His private lands were cultivated by peasants, who were
also expected to act as foot soldiers in battle when required, in addition to working on
their own farms.

The Manorial Estate

• A lord had his own manor-house. He also
controlled villages – some lords-controlled
hundreds of villages – where peasants
lived.
• A small manorial estate could contain a
dozen families, while larger estates might
include fifty or sixty.
• Women spun and wove fabric, and children
worked in the lord’s wine-presses. The
estate had extensive woodlands and forests
where the lords hunted. They contained
pastures where his cattle and his horses
grazed. There was a church on the estate
and a castle for defence.
• In fact, in England castles were practically
unknown before the Norman Conquest,
and developed as centres of political
administration and military power under the feudal system.
• Those lords who wanted a luxurious lifestyle and were keen to buy rich furnishings,
musical instruments and ornaments not locally produced, had to get these from other
places.

The Knights
• From the ninth century, there were frequent localised wars in Europe. The amateur
peasant-soldiers were not sufficient, and good cavalry was needed.

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• This led to the growing importance of a new section of people – the knights. They were
linked to the lords, just as the latter were linked to the king. The lord gave the knight a
piece of land (called ‘fief’) and promised to protect it.
• The fief could be inherited. It extended to anything between 1,000 and 2,000 acres or
more, including a house for the knight and his family, a church and other establishment
to house his dependants, besides a watermill and a wine-press.
• A knight might serve more than one lord, but his foremost loyalty was to his own lord.
• In an age when not too many people could read and manuscripts were few, these
travelling bards were very popular.
• Many manors had a narrow balcony above the large hall where the people of the manor
gathered for meals. This was the minstrels’ gallery, from where singers entertained nobles
while they feasted.
• ‘If my dear lord is slain, his fate I’ll share, If he is hanged, then hang me by his side. If to
the stake he goes, with him I’ll burn; And if he’s drowned, then let me drown with him.’
– Doon de Mayence, a thirteenth-century French poem (to be sung) recounting
the adventures of knights.

The First Order: The Clergy

• The Catholic Church had its own laws, owned lands given to it by rulers, and could levy
taxes. It was thus a very powerful institution which did not depend on the king. At the
head of the western Church was the Pope. He lived in Rome.
• The Christians in Europe were guided by bishops and clerics – who constituted the first
‘order’. Most villages had their own church, where people assembled every Sunday to
listen to the sermon by the priest and to pray together.
• Everyone could not become a priest. Serfs were banned, as were the physically
challenged. Women could not become priests. Men who became priests could not marry.
• The Church was entitled to a tenth share of whatever the peasants produced from their
land over the course of the year, called a ‘tithe’.
• Similarly, the use of the term ‘lord’ for God was another example of feudal culture that
found its way into the practices of the Church. Thus, the religious and the lay worlds of
feudalism shared many customs and symbols.

Monks
• Apart from the Church, devout Christians had another kind of organisation. Some deeply
religious people chose to live isolated lives, in contrast to clerics who lived amongst people
in towns and villages.
• Two of the more well-known monasteries were those established by St Benedict in Italy
in 529 and of Cluny in Burgundy in 910.
• Women – men became monks and women nuns. Except in a few cases, all abbeys were
single-sex communities, that is, there were separate abbeys for men and women. Like
priests, monks and nuns did not marry.
• Abbess Hildegard (see p.135) was a gifted musician, and did much to develop the practice
of community singing of prayers in church. From the thirteenth century, some groups of
monks – called friars – chose not to be based in a monastery but to move from place to
place, preaching to the people and living on charity.

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• By the fourteenth century, there was a growing uncertainty about the value and purpose
of monasticism. In England, Langland’s poem, Piers Plowman (c.1360-70), contrasted the
ease and luxury of the lives of some monks with the ‘pure faith’ of ‘simple ploughmen and
shepherds and poor common labourers.’
• Also in England, Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales (see box below) which had comic
portraits of a nun, a monk and a friar.

The Church and Society

• Though Europeans became Christian, they still held on to some of their old beliefs in magic
and folk traditions. Christmas and Easter became important dates from the fourth
century.
• Christ’s birth, celebrated on 25 December, replaced an old pre-Roman festival, the date
of which was calculated by the solar calendar.
• With the coming of Christianity, they continued to do this, but they called the village the
‘parish’ (the area under the supervision of one priest).
• Pilgrimage was an important part of a Christian’s life, and many people went on long
journeys to shrines of martyrs or to big churches.

The Third Order: Peasants, Free and Unfree

• Let us now turn to the vast majority of people, namely, those who sustained the first two
orders. Cultivators were of two kinds: free peasants and serfs (from the verb ‘to serve’).
• Peasant families had to set aside certain days of the week, usually three but often more,
when they would go to the lord’s estate and work there.
• They spun thread, wove cloth, made candles and pressed grapes to prepare wine for the
lord’s use. There was one direct tax called ‘taille’ that kings sometimes imposed on
peasants (the clergy and nobles were exempted from paying this).
• They received no wages and could not leave the estate without the lord’s permission. The
lord claimed a number of monopolies at the expense of his serfs.
• The lord could decide whom a serf should marry, or might give his blessing to the serf’s
choice, but on payment of a fee.

England
• Feudalism developed in England from the eleventh century.
• The Angles and Saxons, from central Europe, had settled in England in the sixth century.
The country’s name, England, is a variant of ‘Angle-land’.
• In the eleventh century, William, the Duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel with
an army and defeated the Saxon king of England.
• From this time, France and England were often at war because of disputes over territory
and trade.
• William, I had the land mapped, and distributed it in sections to 180 Norman nobles who
had migrated with him.
• The lords became the chief tenants of the king, and were expected to give him military
help.
• They could not, however, use their knights for private warfare, which was forbidden in
England. Anglo-Saxon peasants became tenants of various levels of landholders.

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Factors Affecting Social and Economic Relations
• While members of the first two orders saw the social system as stable and unchanging,
there were several processes which were transforming the system.
• Some of these, such as changes in the environment, were gradual and almost
imperceptible. Others were more dramatic, like the changes in agricultural technology
and land use.
• These in turn were shaped by and had an effect on the social and economic ties between
lords and vassals. Let us examine these processes one by one.

The Environment
• From the fifth to the tenth centuries, most of Europe was covered with vast forests. Thus,
the land available for agriculture was limited. Also, peasants dissatisfied with their
conditions could flee from oppression and take refuge in the forest.
• From the fifth to the tenth centuries, most of Europe was covered with vast forests. Thus,
the land available for agriculture was limited. Also, peasants dissatisfied with their
conditions could flee from oppression and take refuge in the forest.

Land Use
• Initially, agricultural technology was very primitive. The only mechanical aid available to
the peasant was the wooden plough, drawn by a team of oxen.
• This plough could at best scratch the surface of the earth and was unable to fully draw out
the natural productivity of the soil. Agriculture was therefore very labour intensive.
• Also, an ineffective method of crop rotation was in use. The land was divided in half, one
field was planted in autumn with winter wheat, while the other field was left fallow.
• Chronic malnutrition alternated with devastating famines and life was difficult for the
poor.
• The peasants did not bow quietly to oppression. Since they could not protest openly, they
resorted to passive resistance. They spent more time cultivating their own fields, and kept
much of the product of that labour for themselves.

New Agricultural Technology

• By the eleventh century, there is evidence of several technological changes.
• These ploughs could dig much deeper and the mould-boards turned the topsoil properly.
With this the nutrients from the soil were better utilised.
• Horses were now better shod, with iron horseshoes, which prevented foot decay. There
was increased use of wind and water energy for agriculture. More water powered and
wind-powered mills were set up all over Europe for purposes like milling corn and pressing
grapes.
• That meant that farmers could break their holdings into three fields. They could plant one
with wheat or rye in autumn for human consumption.
• With these improvements, there was an almost immediate increase in the amount of food
produced from each unit of land.
• For cultivators, it meant better opportunities. They could now produce more food from
less land. The average size of a peasant’s farm shrank from about 100 acres to 20 to 30
acres by the thirteenth century.

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• Some of these technological changes cost a lot of money. Peasants did not have enough
money to set up watermills and windmills. Therefore, the initiative was taken by the lords.
• They also switched to the three-field rotation of crops, and set up small forges and
smithies in the villages, where iron-tipped ploughs and horseshoes were made and
repaired cheaply.
• Lords found it convenient to ask for rent in cash, not services, and cultivators were selling
their crops for money (instead of exchanging them for other goods) to traders, who would
then take such goods to be sold in the towns.

A Fourth Order? New Towns and Townspeople

• Expansion in agriculture was accompanied by growth in three related areas: population,
trade and towns.
• From roughly 42 million in 1000, Europe’s population stood at 62 million around 1200 and
73 million in 1300. Better food meant a longer lifespan.
• The towns of the Roman Empire had become deserted and ruined after its fall. But from
the eleventh century, as agriculture increased and became able to sustain higher levels of
population, towns began to grow again.
• This led to the growth of periodic fairs and small marketing centres which gradually
developed town-like features – a town square, a church, roads where merchants-built
shops and homes, an office where those who governed the town could meet.
• In other places, towns grew around large castles, bishops’ estates, or large churches.
• ‘Town air makes free’ was a popular saying. Many serfs craving to be free ran away and
hid in towns. If a serf could stay for one year and one day without his lord discovering him,
he would become a free man. Many people in towns were free peasants or escaped serfs
who provided unskilled labour.
• The basis of economic organisation was the guild. Each craft or industry was organised
into a guild, an association which controlled the quality of the product, its price and its
sale.
• Guards patrolled the town walls and musicians were called to play at feasts and in civic
processions, and innkeepers looked after travellers.
• In France, by the twelfth century, commerce and crafts began to grow. Earlier, craftsmen
used to travel from manor to manor; now they found it easier to settle in one place where
goods could be produced and traded for food.

Cathedral-towns
• One of the ways that rich merchants spent their money was by making donations to
churches. From the twelfth century, large churches – called cathedrals – were being built
in France. These belonged to monasteries, but different groups of people contributed to
their construction with their own labour, materials or money.
• Thus, small towns developed around them.
• Cathedrals were designed so that the priest’s voice could be heard clearly within the hall
where large numbers of people gathered, and so that the singing by monks could sound
beautiful and the chiming bells calling people to prayer could be heard over a great
distance.
• The stained-glass windows narrated the stories in the Bible through pictures, which
illiterate people could ‘read’.

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The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century
• By the early fourteenth century, Europe’s economic expansion slowed down. This was due
to three factors.
• In northern Europe, by the end of the thirteenth century the warm summers of the
previous 300 years had given way to bitterly cold summers. Seasons for growing crops
were reduced by a month and it became difficult to grow crops on higher ground.
• The shortage of pasturage reduced the number of cattle.
• Population growth was outstripping resources, and the immediate result was famine.
Severe famines hit Europe between 1315 and 1317, followed in the 1320s by massive
cattle deaths.
• Along with the ships came rats carrying the deadly bubonic plague infection (the ‘Black
Death’). Western Europe, relatively isolated in earlier centuries, was hit by the epidemic
between 1347 and 1350.
• As trade centres, cities were the hardest hit. In enclosed communities like monasteries
and convents, when one individual contracted the plague, it was not long before everyone
did.
• There were other relatively minor episodes of plague in the 1360s and 1370s. The
population of Europe, 73 million in 1300, stood reduced to 45 million in 1400.
• Depopulation resulted in a major shortage of labour. Serious imbalances were created
between agriculture and manufacture, because there were not enough people to engage
in both equally.
• The surviving labour force could now demand twice their earlier wages.

Social Unrest
• The income of lords was thus badly hit. It declined as agricultural prices came down and
wages of labourers increased.
• In desperation, they tried to give up the money-contracts they had entered into and revive
labour-services.
• Though these rebellions were ruthlessly crushed, it is significant that they occurred with
the most violent intensity in those areas which had experienced the prosperity of the
economic expansion – a sign that peasants were attempting to protect the gains they had
made in previous centuries.
• Therefore, though the lords succeeded in crushing the revolts, the peasants ensured that
the feudal privileges of earlier days could not be reinvented.
Eleventh to Fourteenth Centuries
1066 Normans defeat Anglo-Saxons and conquer England
1100 ONWARDS Cathedrals being built in France
1315–17 Great famine in Europe
1347–50 Black Death
1338–1461 Hundred Years War between England and France
1381 Peasants’ revolts

Political Changes
• Developments in the political sphere paralleled social processes. In the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, European kings strengthened their military and financial power.

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• The powerful new states they created were as significant for Europe as the economic
changes that were occurring. Historians have therefore called these kings ‘the new
monarchs’.
• The most important reason for the triumph of these monarchies was the social changes
which had taken place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
• Rulers dispensed with the system of feudal levies for their armies and introduced
professionally trained infantry equipped with guns and siege artillery (see Theme 5)
directly under their control.
The New Monarchy
1461–1559 New monarchs in France
1474–1556 New monarchs in Spain
1485–1547 New monarchs in England

• By increasing taxes, monarchs got enough revenues to support larger armies and thus
defended and expanded their frontiers and overcame internal resistance to royal
authority.
• Centralisation, however, did not occur without resistance from the aristocracy.
• A common thread running through all types of opposition to the monarchies was the
question of taxation. In England, rebellions occurred and were put down in 1497, 1536,
1547, 1549 and 1553.
• The ‘religious’ wars in France in the sixteenth century were in part a contest between
royal privileges and regional liberties.
• Precisely the same class of people who had been rulers in the feudal system – the lords–
continued to dominate the political scene.
• The king was no longer at the apex of a pyramid where loyalty had been a matter of
personal dependence and trust. He was now at the centre of an elaborate courtier society
and a network of patron–client relationships.
• Therefore, money became an important way in which non-aristocratic elements like
merchants and bankers could gain access to the court.
• In the reign of the child-king Louis XIII of France, in 1614, a meeting was held of the French
consultative assembly, known as the Estates-General (with three houses to represent the
three estates/orders – clergy, nobility, and the rest).
• What happened in England was very different. Even before the Norman Conquest, the
Anglo-Saxons had a Great Council, which the king had to consult before imposing any tax.
• King Charles I ruled for 11 years (1629–40) without calling Parliament.
• This did not last long, and monarchy was restored, but on the condition that Parliament
would be called regularly.
• Today, France has a republican form of government and England has a monarchy. This is
because of the different directions that the histories of the two countries took after the
seventeenth century.

THEME VII – CHANGING CULTURAL TRADITIONS

• From the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, towns were growing in many
countries of Europe.

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• A distinct ‘urban culture’ also developed. Townspeople began to think of themselves as
more ‘civilised’ than rural people. Towns particularly Florence, Venice and Rome –
became centres of art and learning.
• Artists and writers were patronised by the rich and the aristocratic. The invention of
printing at the same time made books and prints available to many people, including those
living in distant towns or countries.
• A sense of history also developed in Europe, and people contrasted their ‘modern’ world
with the ‘ancient’ one of the Greeks and Romans.

• There is a vast amount of material on European history from the fourteenth century –
documents, printed books, paintings, sculptures, buildings, textiles. Much of this has been
carefully preserved in archives, art galleries and museums in Europe and America.
• Ranke had taught him that the primary concern of the historian was to write about states
and politics using papers and files of government departments.
• Burckhardt was dissatisfied with these very limited goals that his master had set out for
him. To him politics was not the be-all and end all in history writing. History was as much
concerned with culture as with politics.

The Revival of Italian Cities

• After the fall of the western Roman Empire, many of the towns that had been political
and cultural centres in Italy fell into ruin. There was no unified government, and the Pope
in Rome, who was sovereign in his own state, was not a strong political figure.
• However, it was these very developments that helped in the revival of Italian culture.
• They no longer saw themselves as part of a powerful empire, but as independent city-
states. Two of these – Florence and Venice – were republics, and many others were court-
cities, ruled by princes.
• Rich merchants and bankers actively participated in governing the city, and this helped
the idea of citizenship to strike root.
• Even when these towns were ruled by military despots, the pride felt by the townspeople
in being citizens did not weaken.
The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
1300 Humanism taught at Padua University in Italy
1341 Petrarch given title of ‘Poet Laureate’ in Rome
1349 University established in Florence
1390 Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales published
1436 Brunelleschi designs the Duomo in Florence
1453 Ottoman Turks defeat the Byzantine ruler of Constantinople
1454 Gutenberg prints the Bible with movable type
1484 Portuguese mathematicians calculate latitude by observing the sun
1492 Columbus reaches America
1495 Leonardo da Vinci paints The Last Supper
1512 Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Universities and Humanism

• The earliest universities in Europe had been set up in Italian towns. The universities of
Padua and Bologna had been centres of legal studies from the eleventh century.

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• Commerce being the chief activity in the city, there was an increasing demand for lawyers
and notaries (a combination of solicitor and record-keeper) to write and interpret rules
and written agreements without which trade on a large scale was not possible.
• To Petrarch, antiquity was a distinctive civilisation which could be best understood
through the actual words of the ancient Greeks and Romans. He therefore stressed the
importance of a close reading of ancient authors.
• By the early fifteenth century, the term ‘humanist’ was used for masters who taught
grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy.
• The Latin word humanitas, from which ‘humanities’ was derived, had been used many
centuries ago by the Roman lawyer and essayist Cicero (106-43 BCE), a contemporary of
Julius Caesar, to mean culture.
• These revolutionary ideas attracted attention in many other universities, particularly in
the newly established university in Petrarch’s own home-town of Florence.
• Till the end of the thirteenth century, this city had not made a mark as a centre of trade
or of learning, but things changed dramatically in the fifteenth century.
• From then it developed as the most exciting intellectual city in Italy and as a centre of
artistic creativity.
• The term ‘Renaissance Man’ is often used to describe a person with many interests and
skills, because many of the individuals who became well known at this time were people
of many parts. They were scholar diplomat-theologian-artist combined in one.

The Humanist View of History

• Humanists thought that they were restoring ‘true civilisation’ after centuries of darkness,
for they believed that a ‘dark age’ had set in after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
• In the ‘Middle Ages’, they argued, the Church had had such complete control over men’s
minds that all the learning of the Greeks and Romans had been blotted out.
• The humanists used the word ‘modern’ for the period from the fifteenth century.
• Periodisation used by humanists and by later scholars
5th–14th century The Middle Ages
5th–9th century The Dark Ages
9th–11th century The Early Middle Ages
11th–14th century The Late Middle Ages
15th century onwards The Modern Age
• Recently, historians have questioned this division. With more research being done and
more being found out about Europe in this period, scholars are increasingly reluctant to
make sharp divisions between centuries in terms of being culturally vibrant or otherwise.
It seems unfair to label any period as the ‘Dark Ages’.

Science and Philosophy: The Arabs’ Contribution

• Much of the writings of the Greeks and Romans had been familiar to monks and
clergymen through the ‘Middle Ages’, but they had not made these widely known.
• In the fourteenth century, many scholars began to read translated works of Greek writers
like Plato and Aristotle.
• While some European scholars read Greek in Arabic translation, the Greeks translated
works of Arabic and Persian scholars for further transmission to other Europeans.

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• Among the Muslim writers who were regarded as men of wisdom in the Italian world were
Ibn Sina (‘Avicenna’ in Latin, 980-1037), an Arab physician and philosopher of Bukhara in
Central Asia, and al-Razi (‘Rhazes’), author of a medical encyclopaedia.
• Ibn Rushd (‘Averroes’ in Latin, 1126-98), an Arab philosopher of Spain, tried to resolve the
tension between philosophical knowledge (faylasuf) and religious beliefs.
• Though the curricula in universities continued to be dominated by law, medicine and
theology, humanist subjects slowly began to be introduced in schools, not just in Italy but
in other European countries as well.

Artists and Realism

• Formal education was not the only way through which humanists shaped the minds of
their age.
• Art, architecture and books were wonderfully effective in transmitting humanist ideas.
• Artists were inspired by studying works of the past. The material remains of Roman
culture were sought with as much excitement as ancient texts: a thousand years after the
fall of Rome, fragments of art were discovered in the ruins of ancient Rome and other
deserted cities.
• Artists’ concern to be accurate was helped by the work of scientists. To study bone
structures, artists went to the laboratories of medical schools.
• Andreas Vesalius (1514-64), a Belgian and a professor of medicine at the University of
Padua, was the first to dissect the human body. This was the beginning of modern
physiology.
• Painters did not have older works to use as a model. But they, like sculptors, painted as
realistically as possible. They found that a knowledge of geometry helped them
understand perspective, and that by noting the changing quality of light, their pictures
acquired a three-dimensional quality.
• The use of oil as a medium for painting also gave a greater richness of colour to paintings
than before.
• Thus, anatomy, geometry, physics, as well as a strong sense of what was beautiful, gave a
new quality to Italian art, which was to be called ‘realism’ and which continued till the
nineteenth century.

Architecture
• The city of Rome revived in a spectacular way in the fifteenth century.
• From 1417, the popes were politically stronger because the weakness caused by the
election of two rival popes since 1378 had ended.
• They actively encouraged the study of Rome’s history.
• Artists and sculptors were also to decorate buildings with paintings, sculptures and reliefs.
• Some individuals were skilled equally as painters, sculptors and architects.
• The most impressive example is Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) – immortalised by
the ceiling he painted for the Pope in the Sistine Chapel, the sculpture called ‘The Pieta’
and his design of the dome of St Peter’s Church, all in Rome.
• Filippo Brunelleschi (1337-1446), the architect who designed the spectacular Duomo of
Florence, had started his career as a sculptor.

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The First Printed Books
• If people in other countries wanted to see paintings, sculptures or buildings of great
artists, they had to travel to Italy.
• But in the case of the written word, what was written in Italy travelled to other countries.
This was because of the greatest revolution of the sixteenth century – the mastery of the
technology of printing.
• (This was also the case with three other important innovations – firearms, the compass
and the abacus.)
• Earlier, texts existed in a few hand-written copies. In 1455, 150 copies of the Bible were
printed in the workshop of Johannnes Gutenberg (1400-1458), the German who made the
first printing press.
• By 1500, many classical texts, nearly all in Latin, had been printed in Italy. As printed books
became available, it was possible to buy them, and students did not have to depend solely
on lecture-notes.
• This developed the reading habit among people.

A New Concept of Human Beings

• One of the features of humanist culture was a slackening of the control of religion over
human life. Italians were strongly attracted to material wealth, power and glory, but they
were not necessarily irreligious.
• Francesco Barbaro (1390-1454), a humanist from Venice, wrote a pamphlet defending
acquisition of wealth as a virtue.
• In On Pleasure, Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457), who believed that the study of history leads
man to strive for a life of perfection, criticised the Christian injunction against pleasure.
• Humanism also implied that individuals were capable of shaping their own lives through
means other than the mere pursuit of power and money.

The Aspirations of Women

• The new ideal of individuality and citizenship excluded women.
• Men from aristocratic families dominated public life and were the decision-makers in their
families.
• They educated their sons to take their place in family businesses or in public life, at times
sending their younger sons to join the Church.
• Obviously, the public role of women was limited and they were looked upon as keepers
of the households.
• The position of women in the families of merchants, however, was somewhat different.
Shopkeepers were very often assisted by their wives in running the shop.
• In families of merchants and bankers, wives looked after the businesses when the male
members were away on work.
• ‘Even though the study of letters promises and offers no reward for women and no
dignity’, wrote the Venetian Cassandra Fedele (1465-1558), ‘every woman ought to seek
and embrace these studies.’
• Fedele was known for her proficiency in Greek and Latin, and was invited to give orations
at the University of Padua.
• Another remarkable woman was the Marchesa of Mantua, Isabella d’Este (1474-1539).

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• She ruled the state while her husband was absent, and the court of Mantua, a small state,
was famed for its intellectual brilliance.

Debates within Christianity

• Trade and travel, military conquest and diplomatic contacts linked Italian towns and
courts with the world beyond.
• The new culture was admired and imitated by the educated and the wealthy. Very few of
the new ideas filtered down to the ordinary man who, after all, could not read or write.
• But, unlike Italy, where professional scholars dominated the humanist movement, in
north Europe humanism attracted many members of the Church.
• Theirs was a radically new view of human beings as free and rational agents.
• Later philosophers were to return to this over and over again, inspired by the belief in a
distant God who created man but allowed him complete freedom to live his life freely, in
pursuit of happiness ‘here and now’.
• Christians came to realise from printed translations of the Bible in local languages that
their religion did not permit such practices.
• They were pleased when the humanists pointed out that the clergy’s claim to judicial and
fiscal powers originated from a document called the ‘Donation of Constantine’ supposed
to have been issued by Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor.
• He asked his followers to have complete faith in God, for faith alone could guide them to
the right life and entry into heaven.
• This movement – called the Protestant Reformation – led to the churches in Germany and
Switzerland breaking their connection with the Pope and the Catholic Church.
• In Switzerland, Luther’s ideas were popularised by Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) and later by
Jean Calvin (1509-64). Backed by merchants, the reformers had greater popular appeal in
towns, while in rural areas the Catholic Church managed to retain its influence.
• Luther did not support radicalism. He called upon German rulers to suppress the peasants’
rebellion, which they did in 1525.
• But radicalism survived, and merged with the resistance of Protestants in France, who,
persecuted by the Catholic rulers, started claiming the right of a people to remove an
oppressive ruler and to choose someone of their own liking.
• In Spain and in Italy, churchmen emphasised the need for a simple life and service to the
poor.
• In Spain, Ignatius Loyola, in an attempt to combat Protestantism, set up the Society of
Jesus in 1540.
• His followers were called Jesuits, whose mission was to serve the poor and to widen their
knowledge of other cultures.

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

1516 Thomas More’s Utopia published
1517 Martin Luther writes the Ninety-Five Theses
1522 Luther translates the Bible into German
1525 Peasant uprising in Germany
1543 Andreas Vesalius writes On Anatomy
1559 Anglican Church established in England, with the king/queen as its head
1569 Gerhardus Mercator prepares cylindrical map of the earth

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 1582 Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII
1628 William Harvey links the heart with blood circulation
1673 Academy of Sciences set up in Paris
1687 Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica published

The Copernican Revolution

• The Christian notion of man as a sinner was questioned from an entirely different angle –
by scientists.
• The turning point in European science came with the work of Copernicus (1473-1543), a
contemporary of Martin Luther.
• Copernicus asserted that the planets, including the earth, rotate around the sun.
• A devout Christian, Copernicus was afraid of the possible reaction to his theory by
traditionalist clergymen.
• On his deathbed, he gave it to his follower, Joachim Rheticus. It took time for people to
accept this idea.
• It was much later – more than half a century later, in fact – that the difference between
‘heaven’ and earth was bridged through the writings of astronomers like Johannes Kepler
(1571-1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).
• Galileo confirmed the notion of the dynamic world in his work The Motion. This revolution
in science reached its climax with Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation.

Reading the Universe

• Galileo once remarked that the Bible that lights the road to heaven does not say much on
how the heavens work.
• The work of these thinkers showed that knowledge, as distinct from belief, was based on
observation and experiments.
• Consequently, in the minds of sceptics and non-believers, God began to be replaced by
Nature as the source of creation.
• Even those who retained their faith in God started talking about a distant God who does
not directly regulate the act of living in the material world.
• The Paris Academy, established in 1670 and the Royal Society in London for the promotion
of natural knowledge, formed in 1662, held lectures and conducted experiments for public
viewing.

Was there a European ‘Renaissance’ in the Fourteenth Century?

• Let us now reconsider the concept of the ‘Renaissance’.
• Can we see this period as marking a sharp break with the past and the rebirth of ideas
from Greek and Roman traditions? Was the earlier period (twelfth and thirteenth
centuries) a time of darkness?
• Recent writers, like Peter Burke of England, have suggested that Burckhardt was
exaggerating the sharp difference between this period and the one that preceded it, by
using the term ‘Renaissance’, which implies that the Greek and Roman civilisations were
reborn at this time, and that scholars and artists of this period substituted the pre-
Christian world-view for the Christian one.
• To contrast the Renaissance as a period of dynamism and artistic creativity, and the
Middle Ages as a period of gloom and lack of development is an over-simplification.

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• Many elements associated with the Renaissance in Italy can be traced back to the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.
• The archaeological and literary recovery of Roman culture did create a great admiration
of that civilisation.
• But technologies and skills in Asia had moved far ahead of what the Greeks and Romans
had known. Much more of the world had become connected, and the new techniques of
navigation enabled people to sail much further than had been possible earlier.
• The expansion of Islam and the Mongol conquests had linked Asia and North Africa with
Europe, not politically but in terms of trade and of learning skills.
• An important change that did happen in this period was that gradually the ‘private’ and
the ‘public’ spheres of life began to become separate: the ‘public’ sphere meant the area
of government and of formal religion; the ‘private’ sphere included the family and
personal religion.
• Another development was that the different regions of Europe started to have their
separate sense of identity, based on language. Europe, earlier united partly by the Roman
Empire and later by Latin and Christianity, was now dissolving into states, each united by
a common language.

THEME VIII – CONFRONTATION OF CULTURES

• This chapter will examine some aspects of the encounters between Europeans and the
people of the Americas between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries.
• Some Europeans ventured out on unknown oceans in order to find trading routes to areas
where spices and silver were to be obtained.
• The first to do this were the Spanish and the Portuguese. They persuaded the Pope to give
them the exclusive right to rule over any new regions they might locate.
• Later exploration indicated that the ‘Indians’ of the ‘New World’ actually belonged to
different cultural groups and were not part of Asia.
• Two types of culture were to be found in the Americas. There were small subsistence
economies in the Caribbean region and in Brazil.
• The exploration and later the settlement of South America were to have disastrous
consequences for the native people and their cultures.
• It also marked the beginning of the slave trade, with Europeans selling slaves from Africa
to work in plantations and mines in the Americas.

• European conquest of the people of America was accompanied by the ruthless

destruction of their manuscripts and monuments. It was only in the late nineteenth
century that anthropologists began to study these cultures.
• By contrast, we know the European side of the encounters in great detail.
• The Europeans who went to the Americas kept log-books and diaries of their journeys.
There are records left by officials and Jesuit missionaries.

• People have been living in North and South America and nearby islands for thousands of
years, and many migrations from Asia and from the South Sea Islands have taken place
over time.

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• In Mexico, in central America, there were densely settled areas of habitation along the
coast and in the plains, while elsewhere villages were scattered over forested areas.

Communities of the Caribbean and Brazil

• The Arawakian Lucayos lived on a cluster of
hundreds of small islands in the Caribbean
Sea, today known as the Bahamas, and the
Greater Antilles.
• They had been expelled from the Lesser
Antilles by the Caribs, a fierce tribe. In
contrast to them, the Arawaks were a people
who preferred negotiation to conflict.
• A central cultural value was the organisation
of people to produce food collectively and to
feed everyone in the community. They were
organised under clan elders.
• The Arawaks used gold for ornaments, but
did not attach the value to the metal that the Europeans did. They were quite happy to
exchange gold for glass beads brought by the Europeans, because these seemed so much
more beautiful.
• The art of weaving was highly developed – the hammock was one of their specialities, and
one which captured the imagination of the Europeans.
• Within twenty-five years of contact with the Spanish very little remained of the Arawaks
or their way of life.
• The Europeans who met them envied their happy freedom, with no king, army or church
to regulate their lives.

The State Systems of Central and South America

• In contrast to the Caribbean and Brazil, there were some highly organised states in central
America.
• There was a generous surplus of corn, which provided the basis for the urbanised
civilisations of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas.
• The monumental architectural remains of these cities continue to mesmerise visitors
today.

The Aztecs
• In the twelfth century, the Aztecs had migrated from the north into the central valley of
Mexico (named after their god Mexitli). They expanded their empire by defeating
different tribes, who were forced to pay tribute.
• The hereditary nobility were a small minority who occupied the senior positions in the
government, the army and the priesthood.
• Warriors, priests and nobles were the most respected groups, but traders also enjoyed
many privileges and often served the government as ambassadors and spies.
• Since land was limited, the Aztecs undertook reclamations. They made chinampas,
artificial islands, in Lake Mexico, by weaving huge reed-mats and covering them with mud
and plants.

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• Between these exceptionally fertile islands, canals were constructed on which, in 1325,
was built the capital city Tenochtitlan.
• The empire rested on a rural base. People cultivated corn, beans, squash, pumpkins,
manioc root, potatoes and other crops. Land was owned not by individuals but by clans,
which also organised public construction works.
• The poor would sometimes sell their children as slaves, but this was usually only for a
limited period, and slaves could buy back their freedom.
• All others went to the tepochcalli in their neighbourhood, where they learned history,
myths, religion and ceremonial songs. Boys received military training as well as training in
agriculture and the trades.
• In the early sixteenth century, the Aztec empire was showing signs of strain.
• This was largely to do with discontent among recently conquered peoples who were
looking for opportunities to break free from central control.

The Mayas
• The Mayan culture of Mexico developed remarkably between the eleventh and
fourteenth centuries, but in the sixteenth century they had less political power than the
Aztecs.
• Efficient agricultural production generated surplus, which helped the ruling classes,
priests and chiefs to invest in architecture and in the development of astronomy and
mathematics.

The Incas of Peru

• The largest of the indigenous civilisations in South America was that of the Quechuas or
Incas in Peru.
• In the twelfth century the first Inca, Manco Capac, established his capital at Cuzco.
• Expansion began under the ninth Inca and at its maximum extent the Inca empire
stretched 3,000 miles from Ecuador to Chile.
• At the same time, local rulers were rewarded for their military co-operation. Thus, like the
Aztec empire, the Inca empire resembled a confederacy, with the Incas in control.
• There are no precise figures of the population, but it would seem that it included over a
million people.
• They used labour-intensive technology to carve and move stones from nearby rock falls.
• The basis of the Inca civilisation was agriculture. To cope with the infertile soil conditions,
they terraced hillsides and developed systems of drainage and irrigation.
• The Incas grew corn and potatoes, and reared llamas for food and labour.
• However, there was an accounting system in place – the quipu, or cords upon which knots
were made to indicate specific mathematical units.
• Some scholars now suggest that the Incas wove a sort of code into these threads.
• The organisation of the Inca empire, with its pyramid-like structure, meant that if the Inca
chief was captured, the chain of command could quickly come apart. This was precisely
what happened when the Spaniards decided to invade their country.
• Though priests and shamans were accorded an exalted status, and large temples were
built, in which gold was used ritually, there was no great value placed on gold or silver.
This was also in marked contrast to contemporary European society.

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Voyages of Exploration by Europeans
• The people of South America and the Caribbean got to know of the existence of European
people when the latter began to sail across the Atlantic Sea.
• The magnetic compass, which helped identify the cardinal points accurately, had been
known since 1380, but only in the fifteenth century did people use it when they ventured
on voyages into unknown areas.
• The circulation of travel literature and books on cosmography and geography created
widespread interest right through the fifteenth century.
• In 1477, Ptolemy’s Geography (written 1,300 years earlier) became available in print and
thus came to be widely read.
• According to Ptolemy, an Egyptian, the regions of the world were arranged in terms of
latitudes and longitudes. Reading these texts gave Europeans some knowledge of the
world, which they understood to have three continents, namely, Europe, Asia and Africa.
• Ptolemy had suggested that the world was spherical, but he underestimated the width of
the oceans.
• People from the Iberian Peninsula – the Portuguese and the Spanish – were the pioneers
in the fifteenth-century voyages of exploration. For a long time, these were called
‘voyages of discovery’.
• Later historians, however, argued that these were not the first voyages that people of the
“Old World” made to lands unknown to them.
• Arabs, Chinese and Indians had navigated vast stretches of ocean, and sailors from the
Pacific Islands (the Polynesians and Micronesians) had made major ocean crossings.
• The European economy went through a decline from the mid fourteenth to the mid-
fifteenth centuries.
• Plague and wars led to depopulation in many parts of Europe, trade grew slack, and there
was a shortage of gold and silver, used for making European coins.
• Italians managed to do business with Turks, but were now required to pay higher taxes
on trade.
• The possibility that many more people could be brought into the fold of Christianity made
many devout Christian Europeans ready to face adventure.
• As it happened, the ‘Crusades’ against the Turks began as a religious war, but they
increased Europe’s trade with Asia and created a taste for the products of Asia, especially
spices.
• If trade could be followed by political control, with European countries establishing
‘colonies’ in regions with a warmer climate, they would benefit further.
• After that, more expeditions were organised, and the Portuguese established a trading
station in Cape Bojador in Africa. Africans were captured and enslaved, and gold dust
yielded the precious metal.
• The memory of the Crusades and the success of the Reconquista fanned private ambitions
and gave rise to contracts known as capitulaciones.
• Under these contracts the Spanish ruler claimed rights of sovereignty over newly
conquered territories and gave rewards to leaders of expeditions in the form of titles and
the right to govern the conquered lands.

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The Atlantic Crossing
• Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) was a self-taught man who sought adventure and
glory.
• Believing in prophecies, he was convinced that his destiny lay in discovering a route to the
East (the ‘Indies’) by sailing westwards.
• He was inspired by reading Imago Mundi (a work on astronomy and geography) by
Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly written in 1410.
• Nothing, however, prepared Columbus and his crew for the long Atlantic crossing that
they embarked upon, or for the destination that awaited them.
• The fleet was small, consisting of a small nao called Santa Maria, and two caravels (small
light ships) named Pinta and Nina.
• For 33 days, the fleet sailed without sight of anything but sea and sky. By this time, the
crew became restive and some of them demanded that they turn back.
• On 12 October 1492, they sighted land; they had reached what Columbus thought was
India, but which was the island of Guanahani in the Bahamas.
• (It is said that this name was given by Columbus, who described the Islands as surrounded
by shallow seas, baja mar in Spanish.) They were welcomed by the Arawaks, who were
happy to share their food and provisions; in fact, their generosity made a deep impression
upon Columbus.
• Columbus planted a Spanish flag in Guanahani (which he renamed San Salvador), held a
prayer service and, without consulting the local people, proclaimed himself viceroy.
• He enlisted their cooperation in pressing forward to the larger islands of Cubanascan
(Cuba, which he thought was Japan!) and Kiskeya (renamed Hispaniola, today divided
between two countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
• But before they could get very far, the expedition was overtaken by accidents and had to
face the hostility of the fierce Carib tribes. The men clamoured to get back home.
• Subsequent voyages revealed that it was not the ‘Indies’ that the Spaniards had found,
but a new continent.
• Since places are often given the names of individuals, it is curious that Columbus is
commemorated only in a small district in the USA and in a country in north-western South
America (Columbia), though he did not reach either of these areas.
• The name ‘America’ was first used by a German publisher in 1507.
Voyages by Europeans
1492 Columbus claims Bahama Islands and Cuba for Spain
1494 The ‘undiscovered world’ divided between Portugal and Spain
1497 John Cabot, Englishman, explores North American coast
1498 Vasco da Gama reaches Calicut/Kozhikode
1499 Amerigo Vespucci sights South American coast
1500 Cabral claims Brazil for Portugal
1513 Balboa crosses Panama Isthmus, sights Pacific Ocean
1521 Cortes defeats Aztecs
1522 Magellan circumnavigates the globe
1532 Pizarro conquers Inca kingdom
1571 Spanish conquers the Philippines
1600 British East India Company formed
1602 Dutch East India Company formed

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Spain Establishes an Empire in America
• Spanish expansion was based on a display of military strength with the use of gunpowder
and of horses.
• The local people were compelled either to pay tribute or to work in gold and silver mines.
• The initial discovery was typically followed by establishing a small settlement, peopled by
a few Spaniards who supervised the labour of the local inhabitants.
• Local chieftains were enlisted to explore new lands and, hopefully, more sources of gold.
• To military repression and forced labour was added the ravages of disease.
• The diseases of the Old World, particularly smallpox wreaked havoc on the Arawaks
whose lack of immunity resulted in large-scale deaths.
• The expeditions of Columbus were followed by a sustained and successful exploration of
Central and South America.
• Within half a century, the Spanish had explored and laid claim to a vast area of the western
hemisphere, from approximately latitudes 40 degrees north to 40 degrees south, without
anyone challenging them.
• Before this, the Spanish conquered lands of two great empires of the region. This was
largely the work of two individuals: Hernan Cortes (1488-1547) and Francisco Pizarro
(1478-1541).
• Their explorations were financed by members of the landed gentry in Spain, officials of
municipal councils and noblemen. Those joining the expeditions supplied their own
equipment in exchange for a share of the booty they expected from the conquests.

Cortes and the Aztecs

• Cortes and his soldiers (called conquistadores) conquered Mexico swiftly and ruthlessly.
• In 1519, Cortes set sail from Cuba to Mexico, where he made friends with the Totonacs, a
group who wanted to secede from Aztec rule.
• The Spaniards pressed against the Tlaxcalans, fierce fighters who submitted only after a
stiff resistance. The Spaniards proceeded to massacre them cruelly. Then they marched
to Tenochtitlan, which they reached on 8 November 1519.
• His people were apprehensive, having heard of the massacre of the Tlaxcalans. An Aztec
account described the situation: ‘It was as though Tenochtitlan had given shelter to a
monster.
• The people of Tenochtitlan felt as if everyone had eaten stupefying mushrooms... as if
they had seen something astonishing. Terror dominated everyone, as if all the world were
being disemboweled... people fell into a fearful slumber.’
• The fears of the Aztecs proved to be well founded. Cortes without any explanation placed
the Emperor under house arrest and attempted to rule in his name.
• In an attempt to formalise the Emperor’s submission to Spain, Cortes installed Christian
images in the Aztec temple. Montezuma, on his part, suggested a compromise and placed
both Aztec and Christian images in the temple.
• When Cortes returned on 25 June 1520, he had on his hands a full-blown crisis.
• Cortes was forced to retreat.
• Cortes was forced to retreat to Tlaxcala to plan his strategy against the newly elected king,
Cuatemoc.
• The Aztecs thought they could see omens foretelling that their end was near, and because
of this the Emperor chose to give up his life.

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• The conquest of Mexico had taken two years. Cortes became Captain General of New
Spain in Mexico and was showered with honours by Charles V. From Mexico, the Spaniards
extended their control over Guatemala, Nicaragua and the Honduras.

Pizarro and the Incas

• Pizarro, in contrast to Cortes, was uneducated and poor when he joined the army and
found his way to the Caribbean Islands in 1502. He had heard stories about the Inca
kingdom as a land of silver and gold (El-dor-ado).
• Pizarro planned to follow Cortes’ method, but was disconcerted to find that the situation
in the Inca empire was different.
• He had the king executed, and his followers went on a looting spree. This was followed by
the occupation of the country.
• In another five years, the Spanish had located the vast silver mines in Potosi (in Upper
Peru, modern Bolivia) and to work these they made the Inca people into slaves.

Cabral and Brazil

• The Portuguese occupation of Brazil occurred by accident. In 1500, a grand procession of
ships set out from Portugal for India, headed by Pedro Alvares Cabral.
• To avoid stormy seas, he made a wide loop around West Africa, and found to his surprise
that he had reached the coast of present-day Brazil.
• As it happened, this eastern part of South America was within the section assigned on the
map to Portugal by the Pope, so they regarded it as indisputably theirs.
• The natives readily agreed to cut the trees and carry the logs to the ships in exchange for
iron knives and saws, which they regarded as marvels. (’For one sickle, knife or comb
[they] would bring loads of hens, monkeys, parrots, honey, wax, cotton thread and
whatever else these poor people had’.)
• But we are certain that after our death the land that nourished us will also feed them. We
therefore rest without further cares.’
• This trade in timber led to fierce battles between Portuguese and French traders. The
Portuguese won because they decided to ‘settle’ in/colonise the coast.
• In 1534, the king of Portugal divided the coast of Brazil into fourteen hereditary
‘captaincies’.
• In the 1540s, the Portuguese began to grow sugarcane on large plantations and built mills
to extract sugar, which was then sold in Europe.
• In this very hot and humid climate they depended on the natives to work the sugar mills.
• This was a contrast to the Spanish colonies. A large part of the population in the Aztec and
Inca empires had been used to labouring in mines and fields, so the Spanish did not need
to formally enslave them or to look elsewhere for slaves.
• European settlers disliked them because they argued for humane interaction with the
natives, ventured into the forests to live in villages, and sought to teach them Christianity
as a joyous religion. Above all, the Jesuits strongly criticised slavery.

Conquest, Colonies and the Slave Trade

• What had begun as uncertain voyages came to have lasting consequences for Europe, the
Americas and Africa.

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• The South Atlantic was wholly unexplored; no sea-going ship had ever entered its waters,
much less crossed it, or sailed from it to the Pacific or the Indian Ocean.
• For Europe, the ‘discovery’ of the Americas had consequences for others besides the initial
voyagers. The influx of gold and silver helped further expansion of international trade and
industrialisation.
• Their merchants formed joint stock companies and sent out trading expeditions,
established colonies and introduced Europeans to the products of the New World,
including tobacco, potatoes, cane sugar, cacao and rubber.
• Estimates indicate that pre-conquest Mexico had a population of between 30 and 37.5
million, the Andean region a similar number while Central America had between 10 and
13 million.
• The natives on the eve of the arrival of the Europeans totalled 70 million. A century and a
half later, they had reduced to 3.5 million.
• Warfare and disease were primarily responsible for this.
• The contest also revealed a fundamental difference in values. The Spanish avarice for gold
and silver was incomprehensible to the natives.
• The enslavement of the population was a sharp reminder of the brutality of the
encounter.
• Slavery was not a new idea, but the South American experience was new in that it
accompanied the emerging capitalist system of production.
• Working conditions were horrific, but the Spanish regarded the exploitation as essential
to their economic gain.
• In 1601, Philip II of Spain publicly banned forced labour, but made arrangements by a
secret decree for its continuation. Things came to a head with the law of 1609, which gave
full freedom to the local people, Christian and non-Christian alike.
• The European settlers were enraged, and within two years they had forced the king to
revoke this law and to permit enslavement once again.
• The alternative was to turn to Africa. Between the 1550s and 1880s (when slavery was
abolished in Brazil) over 3,600,000 African slaves were imported into Brazil.
• This was almost half the total number of African slaves imported into the Americas. In
1750, there were individuals who owned as many as a thousand slaves.
• They also pointed out that European traders were helped by Africans who helped capture
young men and women to be sold as slaves, in return for crops imported from South
America (maize, manioc and cassava, which became their staple foods).
• In the 1940s, in his book Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams was one of the first modern
historians to initiate a reassessment of the suffering experienced by African slaves.

Epilogue
• In the early nineteenth century, European settlers in the South American colonies were
to rebel against Spain and Portugal and become independent countries, just as in 1776
the thirteen North American colonies rebelled against Britain and formed the United
States of America.
• South America today is also called ‘Latin America’. This is because Spanish and
Portuguese, two of the main languages of the continent, are part of the Latin family of
languages.

Shashank Sajwan | 90
• The inhabitants are mostly native European (called Creole), European, and African by
origin. Most of them are Catholics. Their culture has many elements of native traditions
mixed with European ones.

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 SECTION IV – TOWARDS MODERNISATION
• In the previous section you have read about certain crucial developments in the medieval
and early modern world – feudalism, the European ‘Renaissance’ and the encounters
between Europeans and the peoples of the Americas.
• Two further developments in world history created a context for what has been called
‘modernisation’.
• These were the Industrial Revolution and a series of political revolutions that transformed
subjects into citizens, beginning with the American Revolution (1776-81) and the French
Revolution (1789-94).
• The discussion of Theme 9 will show how historians have begun to question some of the
earlier ideas about the Industrial Revolution.
• Each country drew upon the experiences of other nations, without necessarily
reproducing any model.
• In other countries such as Russia, which began to industrialise much later (from the late
nineteenth century onwards), the railway and other heavy industry emerged in the initial
phase of industrialisation itself.
• The treatment of the British case in Theme 9 will hopefully whet your curiosity about the
industrial trajectories of other nations such as the USA and Germany, two significant
industrial powers.
• European powers began to colonise parts of America and Asia and South Africa well
before the Industrial Revolution.
• Theme 10 tells you the story of what European settlers did to the native peoples of
America and Australia. The bourgeois mentality of the settlers made them buy and sell
everything, including land and water.
• The former did not allow the European deluge to wipe out their cultures although the US
and Canadian governments of the mid-twentieth century desired natives to ‘join the
mainstream’ and the Australian authorities of the same period attempted to simply ignore
their traditions and culture.
• Western capitalisms – mercantile, industrial and financial – and early twentieth-century
Japanese capitalism created colonies in large parts of the third world.
• Here Britain, France, Germany, Russia, America and Japan meddled in Chinese affairs
without directly taking over state power.
• Almost everywhere, colonial exploitation was challenged by powerful nationalist
movements.
• Nationalisms, however, also arose without a colonial context, as in the West or Japan. All
nationalisms are doctrines of popular sovereignty.
• It seeks to create a community of rights-exercising citizens and defines nationhood in
terms of citizenship, not ethnicity or religion.
• Today, most western countries define their nationhood in terms of common citizenship
and not by common ethnicity. One prominent exception is Germany where ideas of ethnic
nationalism have had a long and troubling career going back to the reaction against the
French imperial occupation of German states in 1806.
• As with industrialisation, so with paths to modernisation. Different societies have evolved
their distinctive modernities.
• The Japanese and Chinese cases are very instructive in this regard.

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• The rebuilding of the Japanese economy after a humiliating defeat in the Second World
War should not be seen as a mere post war miracle.
• The Chinese resisted colonial exploitation and their own bureaucratic landed elite through
a combination of peasant rebellion, reform and revolution.
• It had also started implementing its ideas in selected pockets of the country. Its egalitarian
ideology, stress on land reforms and awareness of women’s problems helped it overthrow
foreign imperialism and the Nationalists in 1949.
• But the Chinese Communist Party has been able to retain control over the country largely
because, in embracing certain market principles, it reinvented itself and has worked hard
to transform China into an economic powerhouse.
• The different ways in which various countries have understood ‘modernity’ and sought to
achieve it, each in the context of its own circumstances and ideas, make a fascinating
story.

TIMELINE IV
(C. 1700 TO 2000)
• This timeline will give you an idea of what was happening in different parts of the world
in the last three centuries, and how people in different countries contributed to the
making of our modern world.
• It will tell you about the slave trade in Africa and the establishment of the Apartheid
regime in South Africa, about social movements in Europe and the formation of nation
states, about the expansion of imperial powers and the process of colonisation, and about
democratic and anti-colonial movements that swept through the world in the last century.
• It will also refer to some of the inventions and technological developments that are
associated with modernity. As with all timelines, this one focuses on a few dates.
• There are others that are important. When you see a series of dates in a timeline, do not
think that those are the only dates you need to know. Find out why different timelines
focus on different types of dates, and what this selection tells us.

DATES AFRICA EUROPE

1720-30 King Agaja of Dahomey (1724-34), West
Africa, stops slave trade; it is reintroduced
in the 1740s
1730-40 Carolus Linnaeus invents a
taxonomic system to classify
plants and animals (1735)
1750-60 First outbreak of smallpox (1755) brought
by sailors, in Cape Town, South Africa
1770-80 Peak of international slave trade, all the Emelian Pugachev heads a
colonial powers are involved in it. Several peasant uprising (1773-75) that
hundred thousand Black Africans are taken sweeps across Russia
across the Atlantic every year. As many as
two-thirds die on board ship itself
1780-90 Beginning of the French
Revolution (1789)

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 1800-10 Mohammed Ali rules Egypt, 1805-48; Egypt
breaks away from Ottoman empire
1820-30 Liberia founded (1822) in West Africa as Louis Braille develops a system
home for freed slaves of finger reading (1823);
passenger trains introduced in
England (1825)
1830-40 Abdal-Kadir leads Arab resistance (1832-
47) against French presence in Algeria
1840-50 Liberal and socialist movements
in several European countries
(1848)
1860-70 Suez Canal, one of the most important Russian serfs are freed (1861)
trade routes in the world, opens (1869)
1870-80 Germany and Italy emerge as
unified nation-states
1880-90 Beginning of the European ‘Scramble for
Africa’
1890-1900 Making of the first film (1895);
the modern Olympics are held
for the first time in Athens
(1896)
1900-1910 Mahatma Gandhi advocates satyagraha to
resist racist laws (1906)
1910-1920 South Africa introduces laws to reserve 87 First World War (1914-1918);
per cent of land for whites (1913) the Russian Revolution of 1917
1920-30 Turkey becomes a republic
under Mustapha Kemal (1923)
1930-40 First trans-African railway from Angola to Hitler captures power in
Mozambique completed (1931) Germany (1933); Second World
War (1939-45)
1940-50 Afrikaner National Party wins power in Britain recognises Irish
South Africa (1948). The policy of independence (1949)
Apartheid is put in place
1950-60 Ghana is the first country in sub-Saharan Discovery of DNA; Russia
Africa to become independent (1957) launches the spacecraft Sputnik
(1957)
1960-70 Organisation of African Unity founded Protest movements in Europe
(1963) (1968)
1980-90 Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of
the USSR (1985); Beginning of
the world wide web (1989)
1990-2000 Nelson Mandela freed in South Africa Scientists clone the sheep Dolly
(1990); process of dismantling Apartheid (1997) raising new debates
begins about the limits of genetic
engineering

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DATES ASIA SOUTH ASIA
1720-30 Gujin tushu jicheng, the largest
encyclopaedia ever printed,
commissioned by Kangxi, the Manchu
ruler of China
1740-50 Marathas extend control over
northern India
1750-60 Aoki Konyo, a Japanese scholar, Robert Clive defeats Siraj-ud-daula,
compiles a Dutch-Japanese dictionary Nawab of Bengal, at Battle of
(1758) Plassey (1757)
1780-90 British export of opium from India to
China expands dramatically
1790-1800 Ranjit Singh founds Sikh kingdom in
Punjab (1799)
1820-30 Javanese revolt against Dutch (1825-30) Practice of sati made illegal (1829)
1830-40 Ottoman sultan Abdul Majid starts a
programme of modernisation (1839)
1850-60 King Rama IV rules Thailand, opens the Railway and telegraph line
country to foreign trade (1853) introduced (1853); the Great
Revolt (1857)
1860-70 French begin to occupy Indo-China
(Southeast Asia) (1862)
1870-80 Opening of the first Japanese railway, Famine in the Deccan, southern
Tokyo to Yokohama (1872) India (1876-78), over 5 million die
1880-90 Britain annexes Burma (Myanmar) Foundation of Indian National
(1885-86) Congress* (1885)
1900-1 Japanese navy defeats Russian fleet
(1905)
1910-20 Balfour Declaration promises homeland
for Jews in Palestine (1917)
1920-30 Non-Cooperation Movement
(1921) launched by Mahatma
Gandhi; E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker
launches the Self Respect
Movement in Tamil Nadu (1925)
1930-40 Opening of British oil pipeline from Iraq Alam Ara by Ardeshir Irani (1931) is
to Syria (1934) the first Indian talkie.
Berlin–Baghdad Railway linking
Baghdad to Istanbul begins
operation (1940)
1940-50 USA drops atom bombs on Japanese Quit India Movement (1942); India
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) and Pakistan become independent
killing approximately 120,000 civilians. (1947)
Many more were to die later through
the effects of radiation; formation of
People’s Republic of China (1949)

Shashank Sajwan | 95
1950-60 Bandung Conference (1955) India becomes a republic (1950)
strengthens the Non-Aligned
Movement
1960-70 Arab leaders set up Palestine Liberation Sirimavo Bandarnaike becomes
Organisation to unite Palestinian world’s first woman prime minister
refugees (1964); war in Vietnam (1965- (1960)
73)
1970-80 Shah of Iran is overthrown (1979) Bangladesh emerges as an
independent nation (1971)
1980-90 Mass demonstrations for democracy in A leak at the Union Carbide
Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China (1989) pesticides plant in Bhopal (1984)
leads to one of the worst industrial
disasters in history, thousands die
1990-2000 Gulf War between Iraq, Kuwait and the India and Pakistan conduct nuclear
USA tests (1998)

DATES AMERICAS AUSTRALIA/PACIFIC ISLANDS

1720-30 Portuguese introduce coffee in Brazil Dutch navigator Roggeveen
(1727) reaches Samoa Islands and Easter
Island in the Pacific (1722)
1730-40 Stono Slave Rebellion led by a literate
slave Jemmy (1739)
1740-50 Juan Santos, also called Atahualpa II,
leads Native Americans of Peru in
unsuccessful revolt (1742)
1760-70 Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa tribe leads First of Captain James Cook’s three
protest against the British (1763) voyages to the Pacific (1768-71)
1770-80 US Declaration of Independence (1776)
1780-90 US Constitution drawn up; dollars first First British convicts shipped to
used as American currency (1787) Botany Bay, Australia (1788)
1800-10 Matthew Flinders circumnavigates,
then names, Australia; it means
‘southern’ (1801-03)
1820-30 Simon Bolivar leads Venezuela to
independence (1821)
1830-40 Trail of Tears; in the USA, thousands of Charles Darwin sets out on voyage
eastern Native Americans are forced to to the Pacific, Galapagos Islands
move west, many dying on the way (1831), leading to the development
(1838) of the theory of evolution
1840-50 Meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, calls British and Maoris in New Zealand
for equal rights for American women sign Treaty of Waitangi (1840). This
(1848) was followed by a series of Maori
uprisings (1844-88)

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 1850-60 Beginning of the first regular
steamship service between
Australia and England (1856)
1860-70 Civil War in USA (1861-65); Thirteenth Transportation of prisoners to
Amendment to the Constitution Australia from Britain ends (1868)
outlaw’s slavery
1870-80 Invention of telephone, record-player,
electric bulb
1880-90 Invention of Coca-Cola (1886)
1890-1900 Voting right for women in New
Zealand (1893)
1900-1910 Wright brothers invent the aeroplane
(1903)
1910-1920 Henry Ford begins assembly line Influenza epidemic kills one-fifth of
production of cars (1913); Panama population of Western Samoa
Canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific (1918)
opened (1914)
1920-30 US Wall Street Stock Exchange crashes Uprising of Mau people of Samoa
(1929); Great Depression follows; by against New Zealand government
1932, 12 million are out of work (1929)
1940-50 The US enters Second World War
1950-60 Fidel Castro comes to power after the
Cuban Revolution (1958)
1960-70 Civil Rights movement in the USA
(1963); US Civil Rights Act (1964) bans
racial discrimination. Civil Rights leader
Martin Luther King is assassinated
(1968); US astronauts land on the moon
(1969)
1970-80 US Congress passes Equal Opportunity Tonga and Fiji gain independence
Act in response to women’s movement from Britain (1970); Papua New
(1972) Guinea gains independence from
Australia (1975)
1980-90 New Zealand declared nuclear-free
zone (1984); Treaty of Rarotonga
sets up South Pacific Nuclear-Free
Zone (1986)

THEME IX – THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

• THE transformation of industry and the economy in Britain between the 1780s and the
1850s is called the ‘first industrial revolution’. This had far-reaching effects in Britain.
• Later, similar changes occurred in European countries and in the USA. These were to have
a major impact on the society and economy of those countries and also on the rest of the
world.

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• These made it possible to produce goods on a massive scale compared to handicraft and
handloom industries.
• Industrialisation led to greater prosperity for some, but in the initial stages it was linked
with poor living and working conditions of millions of people, including women and
children.
• This sparked off protests, which forced the government to enact laws for regulating
conditions of work.
• The term ‘Industrial Revolution’ was used by European scholars – Georges Michelet in
France and Friedrich Engels in Germany.
• It was used for the first time in English by the philosopher and economist Arnold Toynbee
(1852-83), to describe the changes that occurred in British industrial development
between 1760 and 1820.
• Later historians, T.S. Ashton, Paul Mantoux and Eric Hobsbawm, broadly agreed with
Toynbee.
• There was remarkable economic growth from the 1780s to 1820 in the cotton and iron
industries, in coal mining, in the building of roads and canals and in foreign trade.
• Ashton (1889-1968) celebrated the Industrial Revolution, when England was ‘swept by a
wave of gadgets’.

Why Britain?
• Britain was the first country to experience modern industrialisation. It had been politically
stable since the seventeenth century, with England, Wales and Scotland unified under a
monarchy.
• By the end of the seventeenth century, money was widely used as the medium of
exchange.
• In the eighteenth century, England had been through a major economic change, later
described as the ‘agricultural revolution’.
• This forced landless farmers, and those who had lived by grazing animals on the common
lands, to search for jobs elsewhere. Most of them went to nearby towns.

Towns, Trade and Finance

• From the eighteenth century, many towns in Europe were growing in area and in
population.
• Out of the 19 European cities whose population doubled between 1750 and 1800, 11 were
in Britain.
• London had also acquired a global significance. By the eighteenth century, the centre of
global trade had shifted from the Mediterranean ports of Italy and France to the Atlantic
ports of Holland and Britain.
• The companies trading in America and Asia also had their offices in London.
• Until the spread of railways, transport by waterways was cheaper and faster than by land.
• As early as 1724, English rivers provided some 1,160 miles of navigable water, and except
for mountainous areas, most places in the country were within 15 miles of a river.
• The centre of the country’s financial system was the Bank of England (founded in 1694).
• By 1784, there were more than a hundred provincial banks in England, and during the
next 10 years their numbers trebled.

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• By the 1820s, there were more than 600 banks in the provinces, and over 100 banks in
London alone.
• The industrialisation that occurred in Britain from the 1780s to the 1850s is explained
partly by the factors described above – many poor people from the villages available to
work in towns; banks which could loan money to set up large industries; and a good
transport network.
• In both developments, if the dates are read carefully, one will notice that there is a gap of
a few decades between the development and its widespread application.
• Of the 26,000 inventions recorded in the eighteenth century, more than half were listed
for the period 1782-1800. These led to many changes.
Coal and Iron
• England was fortunate in that coal and iron ore, the staple materials for mechanisation,
were plentifully available, as were other minerals – lead, copper and tin – that were used
in industry.
• This had several problems: charcoal was too fragile to transport across long distances; its
impurities produced poor-quality iron; it was in short supply because forests had been
destroyed for timber; and it could not generate high temperatures.
• The solution to this problem had been sought for years before it was solved by a family of
iron masters, the Darbys of Shropshire.
• In the course of half a century, three generations of this family– grandfather, father and
son, all called Abraham Darby – brought about a revolution in the metallurgical industry.
• It began with an invention in 1709 by the first Abraham Darby (1677-1717).
• This invention meant that furnaces no longer had to depend on charcoal. The melted iron
that emerged from these furnaces permitted finer and larger castings than before.
• The process was further refined by more inventions. The second Darby (1711-68)
developed wrought-iron (which was less brittle) from pig-iron.
• It now became possible to produce a broader range of iron products.
• Unlike wood, which could burn or splinter, the physical and chemical properties of iron
could be controlled.
• In the 1770s, John Wilkinson (1728-1808) made the first iron chairs, vats for breweries
and distilleries, and iron pipes of all sizes. In 1779, the third Darby (1750-91) built the first
iron bridge in the world, in Coalbrookdale, spanning the river Severn.
• Wilkinson used cast iron for the first time to make water pipes (40 miles of it for the water
supply of Paris).
• Britain was lucky in possessing excellent coking coal and high-grade iron ore in the same
basins or even the same seams.
• Since the coalfields were near the coast, shipbuilding increased, as did the shipping trade.
• The British iron industry quadrupled its output between 1800 and 1830, and its product
was the cheapest in Europe.
• In 1820, a ton of pig iron needed 8 tons of coal to make it, but by 1850 it could be produced
by using only 2 tons.
• By 1848, Britain was smelting more iron than the rest of the world put together.

Cotton Spinning and Weaving

• The British had always woven cloth out of wool and flax (to make linen).

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• From the seventeenth century, the country had been importing bales of cotton cloth from
India at great cost.
• Till the early eighteenth century, spinning had been so slow and laborious that 10 spinners
(mostly women, hence the word ‘spinster’) were required to supply sufficient yarn to keep
a single weaver busy.
• To make it even more efficient, production gradually shifted from the homes of spinners
and weavers to factories.
• From the 1780s, the cotton industry symbolised British industrialisation in many ways.
This industry had two features which were also seen in other industries.
• Raw cotton had to be entirely imported and a large part of the finished cloth was
exported. This sustained the process of colonisation, so that Britain could retain control
over the sources of raw cotton as well as the markets.
• This exemplified the ugly face of early industrialisation, as will be described below.

Steam Power
• The realisation that steam could generate tremendous power was decisive to large-scale
industrialisation.
• Water as hydraulic power had been the prime source of energy for centuries, but it had
been limited to certain areas, seasons and by the speed of the flow of water.
• This meant that steam power was the only source of energy that was reliable and
inexpensive enough to manufacture machinery itself.
• Thomas Savery (1650 1715) built a model steam engine called the Miner’s Friend in 1698
to drain mines.
• Another steam engine was built by Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729) in 1712. This had the
major defect of losing energy due to continuous cooling of the condensing cylinder.
• The steam engine had been used only in coal mines until James Watt (1736-1819)
developed his machine in 1769.
• Backed by the wealthy manufacturer Matthew Boulton (1728-1809), Watt created the
Soho Foundry in Birmingham in 1775.
• By the end of the eighteenth century, Watt’s steam engine was beginning to replace
hydraulic power.
• In 1840, British steam engines were generating more than 70 per cent of all European
horsepower.

Canals and Railways

• Canals were initially built to transport coal to cities. This was because the bulk and weight
of coal made its transport by road much slower and more expensive than by barges on
canals.
• The demand for coal, as industrial energy and for heating and lighting homes in cities,
grew constantly.
• The city of Birmingham, for example, owed its growth to its position at the heart of a canal
system connecting London, the Bristol Channel, and the Mersey and Humber rivers.
• From 1760 to 1790, twenty-five new canal-building projects were begun.
• In the period known as the ‘canal-mania’, from 1788 to 1796, there were another 46 new
projects and over the next 60 years more than 4,000 miles of canal were built.

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• They combined two inventions, the iron track which replaced the wooden track in the
1760s, and haulage along it by steam engine.
• The invention of the railways took the entire process of industrialisation to a second stage.
In 1801, Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) had devised an engine called the ‘Puffing Devil’
that pulled trucks around the mine where he worked in Cornwall.
• In 1814, the railway engineer George Stephenson (1781-1848) constructed a locomotive,
called ‘The Blutcher’, that could pull a weight of 30 tons up a hill at 4 mph.
• In the 1830s, the use of canals revealed several problems. The congestion of vessels made
movement slow on certain stretches of canals, and frost, flood or drought limited the time
of their use.
• About 6,000 miles of railway was opened in Britain between 1830 and 1850, most of it in
two short bursts.
• During the ‘little railway mania’ of 1833-37, 1400 miles of line was built, and during the
bigger ‘mania’ of 1844-47, another 9,500 miles of line was sanctioned.
• Most of England had been connected by railway by 1850.

Changed Lives
• In these years, therefore, it was possible for individuals with talent to bring about
revolutionary changes.
• Similarly, there were rich individuals who took risks and invested money in industries in
the hope that profits could be made, and that their money would ‘multiply’.
• The number of cities in England with a population of over 50,000 grew from two in 1750
to 29 in 1850.
• Newcomers were forced to live in overcrowded slums in the congested central areas of
towns near factories, while the rich inhabitants escaped, by shifting to homes in the
suburbs where the air was cleaner and the water safe to drink.

The Workers
• A survey in 1842 revealed that the average lifespan of workers was lower than that of any
other social group in cities: it was 15 years in Birmingham, 17 in Manchester, 21 in Derby.
• More people died, and died at a younger age, in the new industrial cities, than in the
villages they had come from.
• Deaths were primarily caused by epidemics of disease that sprang from the pollution of
water, like cholera and typhoid, or of the air, like tuberculosis. More than 31,000 people
died from an outbreak of cholera in 1832.

Women, Children and Industrialisation

• The Industrial Revolution was a time of important changes in the way that children and
women worked.
• Children of the rural poor had always worked at home or in the farm at jobs that varied
during the day or between seasons, under the watchful eye of parents or relatives.
• The earnings of women and children were necessary to supplement men’s meagre wages.
• They were employed in large numbers in the cotton textile industry in Lancashire and
Yorkshire. Women were also the main workers in the silk, lace-making and knitting
industries, as well as (along with children) in the metal industries of Birmingham.

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• Children caught their hair in machines or crushed their hands, while some died when they
fell into machines as they dropped off to sleep from exhaustion.
• The owners of coal mines used children to reach deep coal faces or those where the
approach path was too narrow for adults.
• Younger children worked as ‘trappers’ who opened and shut doors as the coal wagons
travelled through mines, or carried heavy loads of coal on their backs as ‘coal bearers.’
• Factory managers considered child labour to be important training for future factory
work.
• Women may well have gained increased financial independence and self-esteem from
their jobs; but this was more than offset by the humiliating terms of work they endured,
the children they lost at birth or in early childhood and the squalid urban slums that
industrial work compelled them to live in.

Protest Movements
• The early decades of industrialisation coincided with the spread of new political ideas
pioneered by the French Revolution (1789-94).
• The movements for ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ showed the possibilities of collective
mass action, both in creating democratic institutions like the French parliamentary
assemblies of the 1790s, and in checking the worst hardships of war by controlling the
prices of necessities like bread.
• The government reacted by repression and by new laws that denied people the right to
protest.
• England had been at war with France for a long time – from 1792 to 1815.
• Parliament in 1795 passed two Combination Acts which made it illegal to ‘incite the people
by speech or writing to hatred or contempt of the King, Constitution or Government’; and
banned unauthorised public meetings of over 50 persons.
• Members of Parliament – landowners, manufacturers and professionals – were opposed
to giving the working population the right to vote.
• As workers flooded towns and factories, they expressed their anger and frustration in
numerous forms of protest. There were bread or food riots throughout the country from
the 1790s onwards.
• Such riots were particularly frequent in the worst year of the war,1795, but they
continued until the 1840s.
• Another cause of hardship was the process known as ‘enclosure’– by which, from the
1770s, hundreds of small farms had been merged into the larger ones of powerful
landlords. Poor rural families affected by this had sought industrial work.
• From the 1790s, these weavers began to demand a legal minimum wage, which was
refused by Parliament.
• There was also resistance to the introduction of machines in the woollen knitting industry
in Nottingham; protests also took place in Leicestershire and Derbyshire.
• In the riots of 1830, farm labourers found their jobs threatened by the new threshing
machines that separated the grain from the husk.
• The movement known as Luddism (1811-17), led by the charismatic General Ned Ludd,
exemplified another type of protest.

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• During the early years of industrialisation, the working population possessed neither the
vote nor legal methods to express their anger at the drastic manner in which their lives
had been overturned.
• They were suppressed brutally in what became known as the Peterloo Massacre and the
rights they demanded were denied by the Six Acts, passed by Parliament the same year.
• After Peterloo, the need to make the House of Commons more representative was
recognised by liberal political groups, and the Combination Acts were repealed in 1824-
25.

Reforms through Laws

• How attentive was the government to the conditions of work of women and children?
• Laws were passed in 1819 prohibiting the employment of children under the age of nine
in factories and limiting the hours of work of those between the ages of nine and sixteen
to 12 hours a day.
• But this law lacked the powers needed for its enforcement.
• Finally, in 1847, after more than 30 years of agitation, the Ten Hours’ Bill was passed. This
limited the hours of work for women and young people, and secured a 10-hour day for
male workers.
• These Acts applied to the textile industries but not to the mining industry.
• The Mines Commission of 1842, set up by the government, revealed that working
conditions in mines had actually become worse since the Act of 1833, because more
children had been put to work in coal mines.
• These laws were to be enforced by factory inspectors, but this was difficult to do.
• The inspectors were poorly paid and easily bribed by factory managers, while parents lied
about the real ages of their children, so that they could work and contribute to family
incomes.

The Debate on the ‘Industrial Revolution’

• Until the 1970s, historians used the term ‘industrial revolution’ for the changes that
occurred in Britain from the 1780s to the 1820s.
• From then, it was challenged, on various grounds.
• Industrialisation had actually been too gradual to be considered a ‘revolution’. It carried
processes that already existed towards new levels.
• Thus, there was a relatively greater concentration of workers in factories, and a wider use
of money.
• Metallic machinery and steam power was rare until much later in the nineteenth century.
• This growth was recorded as being sharp only because it started from a low point.
• Indicators of economic change occurring before and after 1815-20 suggest that sustained
industrialisation was to be seen after rather than before these dates.
• Productive investment, in these senses, grew steadily only after 1820, as did levels of
productivity.
• Technical progress was not limited to these branches, but was visible in other branches
too, like agricultural processing and pottery.
• In searching for an answer as to why British growth may have been faster after 1815 than
before, historians have pointed to the fact that from the 1760s to 1815, Britain tried to do

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 two things simultaneously – to industrialise, and to fight wars in Europe, North America
and India – and it may possibly have failed with one.
• Britain was at war for 36 out of 60 years from 1760.
• Napoleon’s policies of blockade, and British reactions to them, closed the European
continent, the destination for more than half of British exports, to British traders.
• The word ‘industrial’ used with the word ‘revolution’ is too limited.
• In 1851, visitors thronged the Great Exhibition at the specially constructed Crystal Palace
in London to view the achievements of British industry.
• At that time, half the population was living in towns, but of the workers in towns as many
were in handicraft units as in factories.
• Only 20 per cent of Britain’s workforce now lived in rural areas.
• In his detailed study of British industry, the historian A.E. Musson has suggested that
‘There are good grounds for regarding the period 1850-1914 as that in which the Industrial
Revolution really occurred, on a massive scale, transforming the whole economy and
society much more widely and deeply than the earlier changes had done.’

THEME X – DISPLACING INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

• This chapter recounts some aspects of the histories of the native peoples of America and
Australia. Theme 8 described the history of the Spanish and Portuguese colonisation of
South America.
• This led to many of the native peoples being pushed out into other areas. The European
settlements were called ‘colonies.
• In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, people from Asian countries also migrated to
some of these countries.
• They are hardly seen in the towns, and people have forgotten that they once occupied
much of the country, and that the names of many rivers, towns, etc. are derived from
‘native’ names (e.g. Ohio, Mississippi and Seattle in the USA, Saskatchewan in Canada,
Wollongong and Parramatta in Australia).

• Till the middle of the twentieth century, American and Australian history textbooks used
to describe how Europeans ‘discovered’ the Americas and Australia.
• Much later, from the 1960s, the native peoples were encouraged to write their own
histories or to dictate them (this is called oral history).
• Today, it is possible to read historical works and fiction written by the native peoples, and
visitors to museums in these countries will see galleries of ‘native art’ and special
museums which show the aboriginal way of life.
• The new National Museum of the American Indian in the USA has been curated by
American Indians themselves.

European Imperialism
• The American empires of Spain and Portugal (see Theme 8) did not expand after the
seventeenth century.
• From that time other countries– France, Holland and England – began to extend their
trading activities and to establish colonies – in America, Africa and Asia; Ireland also was
virtually a colony of England, as the landowners there were mostly English settlers.

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• From the eighteenth century, it became obvious that while it was the prospect of profit
which drove people to establish colonies, there were significant variations in the nature
of the control established.
• They retained the older well-developed administrative system and collected taxes from
landowners. Later they built railways to make trade easier, excavated mines and
established big plantations.
• After this, some of the European countries reached an agreement to divide up Africa as
colonies for themselves.
• The word ‘settler’ is used for the Dutch in South Africa, the British in Ireland, New Zealand
and Australia, and the Europeans in America.
• The official language in these colonies was English (except in Canada, where French is also
an official language).

NORTH AMERICA
• The continent of North America extends from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic of Cancer,
from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.
• West of the chain of the Rocky Mountains is the desert of Arizona and Nevada, still further
west the Sierra Nevada mountains, to the east the Great Plains, the Great Lakes, the
valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio and the Appalachian Mountains.
• To the south is Mexico. Forty per cent of Canada is covered with forests.
• Today, wheat, corn and fruit are grown extensively and fishing is a major industry in
Canada.
• Mining, industry and extensive agriculture have been developed only in the last 200 years
by immigrants from Europe, Africa and China.

The Native Peoples

• The earliest inhabitants of North America came from Asia over 30,000 years ago on a land-
bridge across the Bering Straits, and during the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago they moved
further south.
• The oldest artefact found in America – an arrow-point – is 11,000 years old.
• The population started to increase about 5,000 years ago when the climate became more
stable.
• These peoples lived in bands, in villages along river valleys. They ate fish and meat, and
cultivated vegetables and maize.
• They often went on long journeys in search of meat, chiefly that of bison, the wild buffalo
that roamed the grasslands (this became easier from the seventeenth century, when the
natives started to ride horses, which they bought from Spanish settlers).
• They did not attempt extensive agriculture and since they did not produce a surplus, they
did not develop kingdoms and empires as in Central and South America.
• They were content with the food and shelter they got from the land without feeling any
need to ‘own’ it.
• Numerous languages were spoken in North America, though these were not written
down.
• They could read the land they could understand the climates and different landscapes in
the way literate people read written texts.

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Encounters with Europeans
• In the seventeenth century, the European traders who reached the north coast of North
America after a difficult two-month voyage were relieved to find the native peoples
friendly and welcoming.
• Unlike the Spanish in South America, who were overcome by the abundance of gold in the
country, these adventurers came to trade in fish and furs, in which they got the willing
help of the natives who were expert at hunting.
• Further south, along the Mississippi river, the French found that the natives held regular
gatherings to exchange handicrafts unique to a tribe or food items not available in other
regions.
• This last item was something the natives had not known earlier, and they became addicted
to it, which suited the Europeans, because it enabled them to dictate terms of trade. (The
Europeans acquired from the natives an addiction to tobacco.)

Quebec American colonies

1497 John Cabot reaches Newfoundland 1507 Amerigo de Vespucci’s Travels published
1534 Jacques Cartier travels down the St
Lawrence River and meets native peoples
1608 French found the colony of Quebec 1607 British found the colony of Virginia
1620 British found Plymouth (in
Massachusetts)

Mutual Perceptions
• In the eighteenth century, western Europeans defined ‘civilised’ people in terms of
literacy, an organised religion and urbanism. To them, the natives of America appeared
‘uncivilised’.
• To some, like the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, such people were to be
admired, as they were untouched by the corruptions of ‘civilisation’.
• It is interesting to note that another writer, Washington Irving, much younger than
Wordsworth and who had actually met native people, described them quite differently.
• ‘The Indians I have had an opportunity of seeing in real life are quite different from those
described in poetry… Taciturn they are, it is true, when in company with white men, whose
goodwill they distrust and whose language they do not understand; but the white man is
equally taciturn under like circumstances.
• When the Indians are among themselves, they are great mimics, and entertain themselves
excessively at the expense of the whites… who have supposed them impressed with
profound respect for their grandeur and dignity… The white men (as I have witnessed) are
prone to treat the poor Indians as little better than animals.’

• To the natives, the goods they exchanged with the Europeans were gifts, given in
friendship.
• For the Europeans, dreaming of becoming rich, the fish and furs were commodities, which
they would sell for a profit in Europe.
• The prices of the goods they sold varied from year to year, depending on the supply.
• The natives could not understand this – they had no sense of the ‘market’ in faraway
Europe.

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• They were also saddened
by the greed of the
Europeans.
• Following the first
Europeans, who were
traders, were those who
came to ‘settle’ in
America.
• As long as there was
vacant land, this was not a
problem, but gradually the
Europeans moved further
inland, near native
villages. They used their
iron tools to cut down
forests to lay out farms.
• The natives, who grew
crops for their own needs,
not for sale and profit, and thought it wrong to ‘own’ the land, could not understand this.
• In Jefferson’s view, this made them ‘uncivilised’.
Canada USA
1701 French treaty with natives of Quebec 1781 Britain recognises USA as an
1763 Quebec conquered by the British independent country
1774 Quebec Act USA 1783 British give Mid-West to the USA
1791 Canada Constitutional Act

• The countries that are known as Canada and the United States of America came into
existence at the end of the eighteenth century.
• At that time they occupied only a fraction of the land they now cover.
• The western ‘frontier’ of the USA was a shifting one, and as it moved, the natives also
were forced to move back.
Canada USA
1803 Louisiana purchased from France
1825-58 Natives in USA moved to reserves
1837 French Canadian rebellion 1832 Justice Marshall’s judgement
1840 Canadian Union of Upper and Lower 1849 American Gold Rush
Canada
1859 Canada Gold Rush 1861-65 American Civil war
1867 Confederation of Canada 1865-90 American Indian Wars
1869-85 Red River Rebellion by the Metis in 1870 Transcontinental railway
Canada
1876 Canada Indians Act America 1890 Bison almost exterminated in
1885 Transcontinental railway links east and 1892 'End' of American frontier
west coasts

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• The landscapes of America changed drastically in the nineteenth century. The Europeans
treated the land differently from the natives.
• Some of the migrants from Britain and France were younger sons who would not inherit
their fathers’ property and therefore were eager to own land in America.
• They cleared land and developed agriculture, introducing crops (rice and cotton) which
could not grow in Europe and therefore could be sold there for profit.
• The climate of the southern region was too hot for Europeans to work outdoors, and the
experience of South American colonies had shown that the natives who had been
enslaved had died in large numbers.
• The northern states of the USA, where the economy did not depend on plantations (and
therefore on slavery), argued for ending slavery which they condemned as an inhuman
practice.
• The latter won. Slavery was abolished, though it was only in the twentieth century that
the African Americans were able to win the battle for civil liberties, and segregation
between ‘whites’ and ‘non-whites’ in schools and public transport was ended.
• The French settlers repeatedly demanded autonomous political status. It was only in 1867
that this problem was solved by organising canada as a Confederation of autonomous
states.

The Native Peoples Lose their Land

• In the USA, as settlement expanded, the natives were induced or forced to move, after
signing treaties selling their land.
• Even high officials saw nothing wrong in depriving the native peoples of their land. This is
seen by an episode in Georgia, a state in the USA.
• (This was despite the fact that, of all the native peoples, the Cherokees were the ones
who had made the most effort to learn English and to understand the American way of
life; even so they were not allowed the rights of citizens.)
• In 1832, an important judgment was announced by the US Chief Justice, John Marshall.
• US President Andrew Jackson had a reputation for fighting against economic and political
privilege, but when it came to the Indians, he was a different person.
• Of the 15,000 people thus forced to go, over a quarter died along the ‘Trail of Tears’.
• Those who took the land occupied by the tribes justified it by saying the natives did not
deserve to occupy land which they did not use to the maximum.
• The prairies were cleared for farmland, and wild bison killed off. ‘Primitive man will
disappear with the primitive animal’ wrote a visiting Frenchman.
• Meanwhile, the natives were pushed westward, given land elsewhere (‘theirs in
perpetuity’) but often moved again if any mineral – lead or gold – or oil was found on their
lands.
• They were locked off in small areas called ‘reservations’, which often was land with which
they had no earlier connection. They did not give in without a fight.
• The US army crushed a series of rebellions from 1865 to 1890, and in Canada there were
armed revolts by the Metis (people of native European descent) between 1869 and 1885.
But after that they gave up.

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The Gold Rush, and the Growth of Industries
• There was always the hope that there was gold in North America. In the 1840s, traces of
gold were found in the USA, in California.
• This led to the building of railway lines across the continent, for which thousands of
Chinese workers were recruited.
• ‘The old nations creep on at a snail’s pace’ said Andrew Carnegie, a poor immigrant from
Scotland who became one of the first millionaire industrialists in the USA, ‘the Republic
thunders on at the speed of an express’.
• In North America, industries developed for very different reasons – to manufacture
railway equipment so that rapid transport could link distant places, and to produce
machinery which would make large-scale farming easier.
• Industrial towns grew and factories multiplied, both in the USA and Canada. In 1860, the
USA had been an undeveloped economy.
• In 1890, it was the leading industrial power in the world.
• In 1892, the USA’s continental expansion was complete. The area between the Pacific and
Atlantic Oceans was divided up into states.
• Within a few years the USA was setting up its own colonies – in Hawaii and the Philippines.
It had become an imperial power.

Constitutional Rights
• The ‘democratic spirit’ which had been the rallying cry of the settlers in their fight for
independence in the 1770s, came to define the identity of the USA against the monarchies
and aristocracies of the Old World.
• Daniel Paul, a Canadian native, pointed out in 2000 that Thomas Paine, the champion of
democracy at the time of the War for American Independence and the French Revolution,
‘used the Indians as models of how society might be organized’.

The Winds of Change…

• Not till the 1920s did things begin to improve for the native peoples of the USA and
Canada.
• The Problem of Indian Administration, a survey directed by social scientist Lewis Meriam
and published in 1928, only a few years before the USA was swept by a major economic
depression that affected all its people, painted a grim picture of the terribly poor health
and education facilities for natives in reservations.
• This led to a landmark law in the USA, the Indian Reorganisation Act of 1934, which gave
natives in reservations the right to buy land and take loans.
• In 1954, in the ‘Declaration of Indian Rights’ prepared by them, a number of native
peoples accepted citizenship of the USA but on condition that their reservations would
not be taken away and their traditions would not be interfered with.
• A similar development occurred in Canada.
• Today, it is clear that the native peoples of both countries, though reduced so much in
numbers from what they had been in the eighteenth century, have been able to assert
their right to their own cultures and, particularly in Canada, to their sacred lands, in a way
their ancestors could not have done in the 1880s.
Taxed arbitrarily; seen as not equal (rationalisation – not
Indians under British rule
ready for responsibility of representative government)

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 Not seen as citizens; not equal Australia (rationalisation
Natives in America and ‘primitive’ as in no settled agriculture, provision for the future,
towns)
Denied personal liberty; not equal (rationalisation – ‘Slavery is
African slaves in America
part of their own social system’, black people are inferior)

AUSTRALIA
• As in the Americas, human habitation in Australia has a long history.
• The ‘aborigines’ (a general name given to a number of different societies) began to arrive
on the continent over 40,000 years ago (possibly even earlier). They came from New
Guinea, which was connected to Australia by a land-bridge.
• In the natives’ traditions, they did not come to Australia, but had always been there.
• The past centuries were called the ‘Dreamtime’ – something difficult for Europeans to
understand, since the distinction between past and present is blurred.
• There is another large group of The Europeans Reach Australia
indigenous people living in the north, 1606 Dutch travellers sight Australia
called the Torres Strait Islanders. 1642 Tasman lands on the island later named
• Australia is sparsely populated, and Tasmania
even now most of the towns are along 1770 James Cook reaches Botany Bay, named
the coast (where the British first New South Wales
arrived in 1770) because the central 1788 British penal colony formed. Sydney
region is arid desert. founded
• The story of the interaction
between the European
settlers, the native peoples
and the land in Australia has
many points of similarity to
the story of the Americas,
though it began nearly 300
years later.
• As often happened, a single
incident of this nature was
used by colonisers to justify
subsequent acts of violence
towards other people.
• They did not foresee that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries nearly 90 per cent of
them would die by exposure to germs, by the loss of their lands and resources, and in
battles against the settlers.
• The British had adopted the same practice in the American colonies until they became
independent.
• With no recourse but to make a life for themselves in this land so different from their own,
they felt no hesitation about ejecting natives from land they took over for cultivation.
The Development of Australia
1850 Self-government granted to Australian colonies
1851 Chinese coolie immigration. Stopped by law in 1855
1851-1961 Gold rushes

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 1901 Formation of Federation of Australia, with six states
1911 Canberra established as capital
1948-75 Two million Europeans migrate to Australia

• The economic development of Australia under European settlement was not as varied as
in America.
• These came to form the basis of the country’s prosperity. When the states were united,
and it was decided that a new capital would be built for Australia in 1911, one name
suggested for it was Woolwheatgold! Ultimately, it was called Canberra (= kamberra, a
native word meaning ‘meeting place’).
• Some natives were employed in farms, under conditions of work so harsh that it was little
different from slavery.
• Till 1974, such was the popular fear that ‘dark’ people from South Asia or Southeast Asia
might migrate to Australia in large numbers that there was a government policy to keep
‘non-white’ people out.

The Winds of Change…

• In 1968, people were electrified by a lecture by the anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner,
entitled ‘The Great Australian Silence’ – the silence of historians about the aborigines.
• Since then, university departments have been instituted to study native cultures, galleries
of native art have been added to art galleries, museums have been enlarged to
incorporate dioramas and imaginatively designed rooms explaining native culture, and
natives have begun writing their own life histories.
• From 1974, ‘multiculturalism’ has been official policy in Australia, which gave equal
respect to native cultures and to the different cultures of the immigrants from Europe and
Asia.
• From the 1970s, as the term ‘human rights’ began to be heard at meetings of the UNO
and other international agencies, the Australian public realised with dismay that, in
contrast to the USA, Canada and New Zealand, Australia had no treaties with the natives
formalising the takeover of land by Europeans.
• The government had always termed the land of Australia terra nullius, that is belonging
to nobody.
• There was also a long and agonising history of children of mixed blood (native European)
being forcibly captured and separated from their native relatives.
• Agitation around these questions led to enquiries and to two important decisions: one, to
recognise that the natives had strong historic bonds with the land which was ‘sacred’ to
them, and which should be respected; two, that while past acts could not be undone,
there should be a public apology for the injustice done to children in an attempt to keep
‘white’ and ‘coloured’ people apart.
1974 ‘White Australia’ policy ends, Asian immigrants allowed entry
1992 Australian High Court (in the Mabo case) declares that terra nullius was legally
invalid, and recognises native claims to land from before 1770
1995 National Enquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Children from their Families
1999 (26 May) ‘A National Sorry Day’ as apology for the children ‘lost’ from the 1820s to
the 1970s

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 THEME XI – PATHS TO MODERNISATION
• EAST ASIA at the beginning of the nineteenth century was dominated by China.
• The Qing dynasty, heir to a long tradition, seemed secure in its power, while Japan, a small
island country, seemed to be locked in isolation.
• Japan on the other hand was successful in building a modern nation-state, creating an
industrial economy and even establishing a colonial empire by incorporating Taiwan
(1895) and Korea (1910).
• The Chinese reacted slowly and faced immense difficulties as they sought to redefine their
traditions to cope with the modern world, and to rebuild their national strength and
become free from Western and Japanese control.
• The Chinese Communist Party emerged victorious from the civil war in 1949.
• However, by the end of the 1970s Chinese leaders felt that the ideological system was
retarding economic growth and development.
• Japan became an advanced industrial nation but its drive for empire led to war and defeat
at the hands of the Anglo-American forces.
• The Japanese path to modernisation was built on capitalist principles and took place
within a world dominated by Western colonialism.

• China and Japan have had a long tradition of historical writings, as history was an
important guide for the rulers.
• The past provided the standards by which they would be judged and the rulers established
official departments to maintain records and write dynastic histories. Sima Qian (145-90
BCE) is considered the greatest historian of early China.
• One of the earliest acts of the Meiji government was to establish, in 1869, a bureau to
collect records and write, as it were, a victor’s version of the Meiji Restoration.
• Printing and publishing were important industries in the pre-modern period and it is
possible, for instance, to trace the distribution of a book in eighteenth-century China or
Japan.
• Modern scholars have used these materials in new and different ways.
• Modern scholarship has built on the work of Chinese intellectuals such as Liang Qichao or
Kume Kunitake (1839 1931), one of the pioneers of modern history in Japan, as well as
earlier writings by European travellers, such as the Italian Marco Polo (1254-1324, in China
from 1274 to 1290), the Jesuit priests Mateo Ricci (1552-1610) in China and Luis Frois
(1532 97), in Japan, all of whom left rich accounts of these countries.
• Scholarship in English from Joseph Needham’s monumental work on the history of science
in Chinese civilisation or George Sansom’s on Japanese history and culture has grown and
there is an immense body of sophisticated scholarship available to us today.
• This has meant that we have scholarly writings from many parts of the globe that give us
a richer and deeper picture of these countries.

Naito Konan (1866-1934)

• A leading Japanese scholar of China, Naito Konan’s writings influenced scholars
worldwide.
• Using the new tools of Western historiography Naito built on a long tradition of studying
China as well as bringing his experience as a journalist there. He helped establish the
Department of Oriental Studies in Kyoto University in 1907.

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• He saw in Chinese history strengths that would make it modern and democratic. Japan,
he thought had an important role to play in China but he underestimated the power of
Chinese nationalism.

Introduction
• China and Japan present a marked physical contrast.
• China is a vast continental country that spans many climatic zones; the core is dominated
by three major river systems: the Yellow River (Huang He), the Yangtse River (Chang Jiang
– the third longest river in the world) and the Pearl River.
• A large part of the country is mountainous.
• The dominant ethnic group are the Han and the major language is Chinese (Putonghua)
but there are many other nationalities, such as the Uighur, Hui, Manchu and Tibetan, and
aside from dialects, such as Cantonese (Yue) and Shanghainese (Wu), there are other
minority languages spoken as well.
• Chinese food reflects
this regional diversity
with at least four
distinct types.
• In the north, wheat is
the staple food, while
in Szechuan spices
brought by Buddhist
monks in the ancient
period, along the silk
route, and chillies by
Portuguese traders in
the fifteenth century,
have created a fiery
cuisine.
• In eastern China, both
rice and wheat are
eaten.
• Japan, by contrast, is
a string of islands, the
four largest being Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku and Hokkaido.
• The Okinawan chain is the southernmost, about the same latitude as the Bahamas.
• More than 50 per cent of the land area of the main islands is mountainous and Japan is
situated in a very active earthquake zone.
• Japan lacks a tradition of animal rearing. Rice is the staple crop and fish the major source
of protein.
• Raw fish (sashimi or sushi) has now become a widely popular dish around the world as it
is considered very healthy.

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JAPAN
The Political System
• An emperor had ruled Japan from Kyoto but by the twelfth century the imperial court lost
power to shoguns, who in theory ruled in the name of the emperor.
• From 1603 to 1867, members of the Tokugawa family held the position of shogun.
• He also controlled the major cities and mines. The samurai (the warrior class) were the
ruling elite and served the shoguns and daimyo.
• This ensured peace and order, ending the frequent wars of the previous century. Two, the
daimyo were ordered to live in the capitals of their domains, each with a large degree of
autonomy.
• The daimyo’s capitals became bigger, so that by the mid-seventeenth century, Japan not
only had the most populated city in the world – Edo– but also two other large cities –
Osaka and Kyoto, and at least half a dozen castle-towns with populations of over 50,000.
• As people enjoyed reading, it became possible for gifted writers to earn a living solely by
writing.
• In Edo, people could ‘rent’ a book for the price of a bowl of noodles. This shows how
popular reading had become and gives a glimpse into the scale of printing.
• Japan was considered rich, because it imported luxury goods like silk from China and
textiles from India.
• Paying for these imports with gold and silver strained the economy and led the Tokugawa
to put restrictions on the export of precious metals.
• The silk from Nishijin came to be known as the best in the world.
• Social and intellectual changes – such as the study of ancient Japanese literature – led
people to question the degree of Chinese influence and to argue that the essence of being
Japanese could be found long before the contact with China, in such early classics as the
Tale of the Genji and in the myths of origin that said that the islands were created by the
gods and that the emperor was a descendant of the Sun Goddess.

Tale of the Genji

• A fictionalised diary of the Heian court written by Murasaki Shikibu, the Tale of the Genji
became the central work of fiction in Japanese literature.
• That period saw the emergence of many women writers, like Murasaki, who wrote in the
Japanese script, while men wrote in the Chinese script, used for education and
government.
• The novel depicts the romantic life of Prince Genji and is a striking picture of the
aristocratic atmosphere of the Heian court. It shows the independence that women had
in choosing their husbands and living their lives.

The Meiji Restoration

• Internal discontent coincided with demands for trade and diplomatic relations.
• In 1853, the USA sent Commodore Matthew Perry (1794 1858) to Japan to demand that
the government sign a treaty that would permit trade and open diplomatic relations,
which it did the following year.
• Perry’s arrival had an important effect on Japanese politics. The emperor, who till then
had had little political power, now re-emerged as an important figure.

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• In 1868, a movement forcibly removed the shogun from power, and brought the Emperor
to Edo. This was made the capital and renamed Tokyo, which means ‘eastern capital’.
• Officials and the people were aware that some European countries were building colonial
empires in India and elsewhere.
• News of China being defeated by the British was flowing in, and this was even depicted in
popular plays, so that there was a real fear that Japan might be made a colony.
• Some argued for a gradual and limited ‘opening’ to the outer world.
• The government launched a policy with the slogan ‘fukoku kyohei’ (rich country, strong
army).
• To do this they needed to create a sense of nationhood among the people, and to
transform subjects into citizens.
• At the same time, the new government also worked to build what they called the
‘emperor system’. (Japanese scholars use this term as the emperor was part of a system,
along with the bureaucracy and the military, that exercised power.)
• His birthday became a national holiday, he wore Western-style military uniforms, and
edicts were issued in his name to set up modern institutions.
• A new school system began to be built from the 1870s. Schooling was compulsory for boys
and girls and by 1910 almost universal.
• The ministry of education exercised control over the curriculum and in the selection of
textbooks, as well as in teachers’ training.
• To integrate the nation, the Meiji government imposed a new administrative structure by
altering old village and domain boundaries.
• The administrative unit had to have revenue adequate to maintain the local schools and
health facilities, as well as serve as a recruitment centre for the military.
• All young men over twenty had to do a period of military service. A modern military force
was developed.
• The military and the bureaucracy were put under the direct command of the emperor.
This meant that even after a constitution was enacted these two groups remained outside
the control of the government.
• The tension between these different ideals represented by a democratic constitution and
a modern army was to have far-reaching consequences.
• The army pressed for a vigorous foreign policy to acquire more territory. This led to wars
with China and Russia, in both of which Japan was the victor.

Modernising the Economy

• Another important part of the Meiji reforms was the modernising of the economy. Funds
were raised by levying an agricultural tax.
• Japan’s first railway line, between Tokyo and the port of Yokohama, was built in 1870 72.
• Textile machinery was imported from Europe, and foreign technicians were employed to
train workers, as well as to teach in universities and schools, and Japanese students were
sent abroad.
• Zaibatsu (large business organisations controlled by individual families) dominated the
economy till after the Second World War.
• The population, 35 million in 1872, increased to 55 million in 1920.
• Within Japan there was a shift to towns as industry developed. By 1925, 21 per cent of
the population lived in cities; by 1935, this figure had gone up to 32 per cent (22.5 million).

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Industrial Workers
• The number of people in manufacturing increased from 700,000 in 1870 to 4 million in
1913.
• Most of them worked in units employing less than five people and using neither
machinery nor electric power.
• After 1900, the number of men began to increase but only in the 1930s did male workers
begin to outnumber women.
• The size of factories also began to increase. Factories employing more than a hundred
workers, just over 1,000 in 1909, jumped to over 2,000 by 1920 and 4,000 by the 1930s;
yet even in 1940, there were over 550,000 workshops that employed less than five
employees.
• The rapid and unregulated growth of industry and the demand for natural resources such
as timber led to environmental destruction.

Aggressive Nationalism
• The Meiji constitution was based on a restricted franchise and created a Diet (the
Japanese used the German word for parliament because of the influence of German legal
ideas) with limited powers.
• The leaders who brought about the imperial restoration continued to exercise power and
even established political parties.
• Between 1918 and 1931, popularly elected prime ministers formed cabinets.
• In 1899, the prime minister ordered that only serving generals and admirals could become
ministers.
• This fear was used to silence opposition to military expansion and to higher taxes to fund
the armed forces.

‘Westernisation’ and ‘Tradition’

• Successive generations of Japanese intellectuals had different views on Japan’s relations
with other countries.
• To some, the USA and western European countries were at the highest point of
civilisation, to which Japan aspired.
• The next generation questioned this total acceptance of Western ideas and urged that
national pride be built on indigenous values.
• The philosopher Miyake Setsurei (1860-1945) argued that each nation must develop its
special talents in the interest of world civilisation:
• ‘To devote oneself to one’s country is to devote oneself to the world.’
• By contrast, many intellectuals were attracted to Western liberalism and wanted a Japan
based not on the military but on democracy.
• Others even advocated voting rights for women. This pressure led the government to
announce a constitution.

Daily Life
• Japan’s transformation into a modern society can be seen also in the changes in everyday
life.
• The new home (homu as the Japanese say, using the English word) was that of the nuclear
family, where husband and wife lived as breadwinner and homemaker.

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• In the 1920s, construction companies made cheap housing available for a down payment
of 200 yen and a monthly instalment of 12 yen for ten years – this at a time when the
salary of a bank employee (a person with higher education) was 40 yen per month.

‘Overcoming Modernity’
• State-centred nationalism found full expression in the 1930s and 1940s as Japan launched
wars to extend its empire in China and other parts of Asia, a war that merged into the
Second World War after Japan attacked the USA at Pearl Harbor.
• An influential symposium on ‘Overcoming Modernity’ in 1943 debated the dilemma facing
Japan – of how to combat the West while being modern.
• He was not rejecting Western music but trying to find a way that went beyond merely
rewriting or playing Japanese music on Western instruments.
• He argued that Japan’s ‘moral energy’ (a term taken from the German philosopher Ranke)
had helped it to escape colonisation and it was its duty to establish a new world order, a
Greater East Asia. For this a new vision that would integrate science and religion was
necessary.

After Defeat: Re-emerging as a Global Economic Power

• Japan’s attempt to carve out a colonial empire ended with its defeat by the Allied forces.
• It has been argued that nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to
shorten the war.
• But others think the immense destruction and suffering it caused were unnecessary.
• Agrarian reforms, the re-establishment of trade unions and an attempt to dismantle the
zaibatsu or large monopoly houses that dominated the Japanese economy were also
carried out.
• Political parties were revived and the first post-war elections held in 1946 where women
voted for the first time.
• The rapid rebuilding of the Japanese economy after its shattering defeat was called a post-
war ‘miracle’. But it was more than that – it was firmly rooted in its long history.
• US support, as well as the demand created by the Korean and the Vietnamese wars also
helped the Japanese economy.
• The 1964 Olympics held in Tokyo marked a symbolic coming of age.
• In much the same way the network of high-speed Shinkansen or bullet trains, started in
1964, which ran at 200 miles per hour (now it is 300 miles per hour) have come to
represent the ability of the Japanese to use advanced technologies to produce better and
cheaper goods.
• Cadmium poisoning, which led to a painful disease, was an early indicator, followed by
mercury poisoning in Minamata in the 1960s and problems caused by air pollution in the
early 1970s.
• From the mid-1980s there has been an increasing decline in interest in environmental
issues as Japan enacted some of the strictest environmental controls in the world.

CHINA
• The modern history of China has revolved around the question of how to regain
sovereignty, end the humiliation of foreign occupation and bring about equality and
development.

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• Chinese debates were marked by the views of three groups.
• The early reformers such as Kang Youwei (1858 1927) or Liang Qichao (1873-1929) tried
to use traditional ideas in new and different ways to meet the challenges posed by the
West.
• Second, republican revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen, the first president of the republic,
were inspired by ideas from Japan and the West.
• The third, the Communist Party of China (CCP) wanted to end age-old inequalities and
drive out the foreigners.
• The beginning of modern China can be traced to its first encounter with the West in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when Jesuit missionaries introduced Western
sciences such as astronomy and mathematics.
• This undermined the ruling Qing dynasty and strengthened demands for reform and
change.

THE OPIUM TRADE

• The demand for Chinese goods such as
tea, silk and porcelain created a serious
balance-of-trade problem.
• Western goods did not find a market in
China, so payment had to be in silver.
• The East India Company found a new
option – opium, which grew in India. They
sold the opium in China and gave the
silver that they earned to company agents
in Canton in return for letters of credit.
• The Company used the silver to buy tea, silk and porcelain to sell in Britain. This was the
‘triangular trade’ between Britain, India and China.

• Qing reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao realised the need to strengthen the
system and initiated policies to build a modern administrative system, a new army and an
educational system, and set up local assemblies to establish constitutional government.
• They saw the need to protect China from colonisation. The negative example of colonised
countries worked powerfully on Chinese thinkers.
• In 1903, the thinker Liang Qichao, who believed that only by making people aware that
China was a nation would they be able to resist the West, wrote that India was ‘a country
that was destroyed by a non-country that is the East India Company’.
• Above all many felt that traditional ways of thinking had to be changed.
• Confucianism, developed from the teachings of Confucius (551-479 BCE) and his disciples,
was concerned with good conduct, practical wisdom and proper social relationships.
• To train people in modern subjects’ students were sent to study in Japan, Britain and
France and bring back new ideas.
• The Chinese borrowed even Japanese translations of European words such as justice,
rights, and revolution because they used the same ideographic script, a reversal of the
traditional relationship.

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The Examination System
• Entry to the elite ruling class (about 1.1 million till 1850) had been largely through an
examination. This required writing an eight-legged essay [pa-ku wen] in classical Chinese
in a prescribed form.
• The examination was held twice every three years, at different levels and of those allowed
to sit only 1-2 per cent passed the first level, usually by the age of 24, to become what
was called ‘beautiful talent’.
• At any given time before 1850 there were about 526,869 civil and 212,330 military
provincial (sheng-yuan) degree holders in the whole country.
• Since there were only 27,000 official positions, many lower-level degree holders did not
have jobs.
• The examination acted as a barrier to the development of science and technology as it
demanded only literary skills.
• In 1905, it was abolished as it was based on skills in classical Chinese learning that had, it
was felt, no relevance for the modern world.

Establishing the Republic

• The Manchu empire was overthrown and a republic established in 1911 under Sun Yat-
sen (1866-1925) who is unanimously regarded as the founder of modern China.
• He studied medicine but was greatly concerned about the fate of China.
• His programme was called the Three Principles (San min chui).
• These were nationalism – this meant overthrowing the Manchu who were seen as a
foreign dynasty, as well as other foreign imperialists; democracy or establishing
democratic government; and socialism regulating capital and equalising landholdings.
• The protest became a movement. It galvanised a whole generation to attack tradition and
to call for saving China through modern science, democracy and nationalism.
• Revolutionaries called for driving out the foreigners, who were controlling the country’s
resources, to remove inequalities and reduce poverty.
• After the republican revolution the country entered a period of turmoil.
• The Guomindang (the National People’s Party) and the CCP emerged as major forces
striving to unite the country and bring stability.
• After the death of Sun, Chiang Kai shek (1887-1975) emerged as the leader of the
Guomindang as he launched a military campaign to control the ‘warlords’, regional
leaders who had usurped authority, and to eliminate the communists.
• The people, he said, must develop a ‘habit and instinct for unified behaviour’.
• He encouraged women to cultivate the four virtues of ‘chastity, appearance, speech and
work’ and recognise their role as confined to the household. Even the length of hemlines
was prescribed.
• Of these, however, only a small percentage were employed in modern industries such as
shipbuilding.
• Most were ‘petty urbanites’ (xiao shimin), traders and shopkeepers.
• Urban workers, particularly women, earned very low wages. Working hours were long and
conditions of work bad.
• Social and cultural change was helped along by the spread of schools and universities
(Peking University was established in 1902).

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• Its circulation increased rapidly from just 2,000 in 1926 to a massive 200,000 copies in
1933.
• The Guomindang despite its attempts to unite the country failed because of its narrow
social base and limited political vision.

TIMELINE
JAPAN CHINA
1603 Tokugawa leyasu establishes 1644 - Qing dynasty
the Edo shogunate 1911
1630 Japan closes country to Western 1839-60 Two Opium Wars
Powers except for restricted
trade with the Dutch
1854 Japan and the USA conclude the
Treaty of Peace, ending Japan’s
seclusion
1868 Restoration of Meiji
1872 Compulsory education system
First railway line between Tokyo
and Yokohama
1889 Meiji Constitution enacted
1894-95 War between Japan and China
1904-05 War between Japan and Russia
1910 Korea annexed, colony till 1945 1912 Sun Yat-sen founds Guomingdang
1914-18 First World War 1919 May Fourth Movement
1925 Universal male suffrage 1921 CCP founded
1931 Japan’s invasion of China 1926-49 Civil Wars in China
1941-45 The Pacific War 1934 Long March
1945 Atomic bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1946-52 US-led Occupation of Japan 1949 People’s Republic of China Chiang
Reforms to democratise and Kai-shek founds Republic of China
demilitarise Japan in Taiwan
1956 Japan becomes a member of the 1962 China attacks India over border
United Nations dispute
1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, the 1966 Cultural Revolution
first time in Asia
1976 Death of Mao Zedong and Zhou
Enlai
1997 Hong Kong returned to China by
Britain

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The Rise of the Communist Party of China
• When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, the Guomindang retreated. The long and
exhausting war weakened China.
• Prices rose 30 per cent per month between 1945 and 1949, and utterly destroyed the lives
of ordinary people.
• The CCP had been founded in 1921, soon after the Russian Revolution.
• The Russian success exercised a powerful influence around the world and leaders such as
Lenin and Trotsky went on to establish the Comintern or the Third International in March
1918 to help bring about a world government that would end exploitation.
• Mao Zedong (1893-1976), who emerged as a major CCP leader, took a different path by
basing his revolutionary programme on the peasantry.
• His success made the CCP a powerful political force that ultimately won against the
Guomindang.
• Mao Zedong’s radical approach can be seen in Jiangxi, in the mountains, where they
camped from 1928 to 1934, secure from Guomindang attacks.
• He had become aware of women’s problems and supported the emergence of rural
women’s associations, promulgated a new marriage law that forbade arranged marriages,
stopped purchase or sale of marriage contracts and simplified divorce.

• In a survey in 1930 in Xunwu, Mao Zedong looked at everyday commodities such as salt
and soya beans, at the relative strengths of local organisations, at petty traders and
craftsmen, ironsmiths and prostitutes, and the strength of religious organisations to
examine the different levels of exploitation.
• He gathered statistics of the number of peasants who had sold their children and found
out what price they received – boys were sold for 100-200 yuan but there were no
instances of the sale of girls because the need was for hard labour not sexual exploitation.
• It was on the basis of these studies that he advocated ways of solving social problems.

• The Guomindang blockade of the Communists’ Soviet forced the party to seek another
base.
• Here, in their new base in Yanan, they further developed their programme to end
warlordism, carry out land reforms and fight foreign imperialism.

Establishing the New Democracy: 1949-65

• The Peoples Republic of China government was established in 1949.
• It was based on the principles of the ‘New Democracy’, an alliance of all social classes,
unlike the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ that the Soviet Union said it had established.
• Critical areas of the economy were put under government control, and private enterprise
and private ownership of land were gradually ended.
• The Great Leap Forward movement launched in 1958 was a policy to galvanise the country
to industrialise rapidly. People were encouraged to set up steel furnaces in their
backyards.
• Mao was able to mobilise the masses to attain the goals set by the Party. His concern was
with creating a ‘socialist man’ who would have five loves: fatherland, people, labour,
science and public property.
• These objectives and methods did not appeal to everyone in the Party.

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• In 1953-54, some were urging for more attention to industrial organisation and economic
growth.

Conflicting Visions: 1965-78

• The conflict between the Maoists wanting to create a ‘Socialist Man’ and those who
objected to his emphasis on ideology rather than expertise, culminated in Mao launching
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1965 to counter his critics.
• Denunciations and slogans replaced rational debate.
• The Cultural Revolution began a period of turmoil, weakened the Party and severely
disrupted the economy and educational system.

Reforms from 1978

• The Cultural Revolution was followed by a process of political manoeuvring. Deng
Xiaoping kept party control strong while introducing a socialist market economy.
• In 1978, the Party declared its goal as the Four Modernisations (to develop science,
industry, agriculture, defence).
• Debate was allowed as long as the Party was not questioned.
• In this new and liberating climate, as at the time of the May Fourth movement 60 years
earlier, there was an exciting explosion of new ideas.
• These demands were suppressed, but in 1989 on the seventieth anniversary of the May
Fourth movement many intellectuals called for a greater openness and an end to ‘ossified
dogmas’ (su shaozhi).
• Student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in Beijing were brutally repressed. This was
strongly condemned around the world.
• The post-reform period has seen the emergence of debates on ways to develop China.
• Finally, there is a growing revival of earlier so-called ‘traditional’ ideas, of Confucianism
and arguments that China can build a modern society following its own traditions rather
than simply copying the West.

The Story of Taiwan

• Chiang Kai-shek, defeated by the CCP fled in 1949 to Taiwan with over US$300 million in
gold reserves and crates of priceless art treasures and established the Republic of China.
• The Cairo Declaration (1943) and the Potsdam Proclamation (1949) restored sovereignty
to China.
• Massive demonstrations in February 1947 had led the GMD to brutally kill a whole
generation of leading figures.
• However, they carried out land reforms that increased agricultural productivity and
modernised the economy so that by 1973 Taiwan had a GNP second only to that of Japan
in Asia.
• Even more dramatic has been the transformation of Taiwan into a democracy.
• The first free elections began the process of bringing local Taiwanese to power.
• Diplomatically most countries have only trade missions in Taiwan.
• Full diplomatic relations and embassies are not possible as Taiwan is considered to be part
of China.
• China may be willing to tolerate a semi-autonomous Taiwan as long as it gives up any
move to seek independence.

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THE STORY OF KOREA
Beginnings of Modernisation
• During the late nineteenth century, Korea’s Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) faced internal
political and social strife and increasing foreign pressure from China, Japan and the West.
• After decades of political interference, the imperial Japan annexed Korea as its colony in
1910, bringing the over 500-year long Joseon Dynasty to its end.
• Desiring independence, Koreans around the country demonstrated against the colonial
rule, set up a provisional government and sent delegations to appeal to foreign leaders at
international meetings, such as the Cairo, Yalta and Potsdam conferences.
• The Japanese colonial rule ended after 35 years in August 1945 with Japan’s defeat in the
World War II.
• However, this division became permanent as separate governments were established in
both the North and the South in 1948.

A Post-War Nation
• In June 1950, the Korean War broke out. With South Korea receiving support from the US-
led United Nations forces and North Korea receiving support from communist China, it
developed into a vintage proxy war of the Cold War era.
• In July 1953, after three years, the war ended in an armistice agreement. Korea remained
divided.
• Furthermore, industrial facilities constructed during the colonial period had been
destroyed entirely.
• As a result, South Korea was forced to rely on the economic assistance being provided by
the USA.
• Though South Korea’s first president Syngman Rhee had been elected in 1948 through
democratic process after the Korean War, he extended his administration, twice through
illegal constitutional amendments.
• With the revolution as an impetus, the spirit of the people, which had been suppressed
during the Rhee administration, erupted in the form of demonstrations and demands.
• Rather, reformist political powers emerged and the students’ movement grew into a
unification movement.
• In May 1961, the Democratic Party government was overthrown in a military coup staged
by General Park Chung-hee and other military authorities.

Rapid Industrialisation under Strong Leadership

• In October 1963, an election was held and military coup leader Park Chung-hee was
elected the president.
• The Park administration adopted a state-led, export-oriented policy to achieve economic
growth.
• Korea’s unprecedented rate of economic growth began in the early 1960s when the state
policy shifted from import substitution industrialisation (ISI) towards a focus on exports.
• During the late 1960s and 1970s, the focus again shifted from light industries to value
added heavy and chemical industries.
• In 1970, the New Village (Saemaul) Movement was introduced to encourage and mobilise
the rural population and modernise the agricultural sector.

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• Rural people were empowered to help themselves in developing their villages and
improve the living conditions of their respective communities.
• Today, Korea is sharing the knowledge and experiences from this movement with
developing countries, who wish to adopt the principles of the Saemaul Movement in their
development efforts.
• The high level of education also contributed to the economic growth of Korea.
• At the same time, the country’s open economic policy worked to absorb more advanced
institutions and technologies from other countries.
• Economic growth was the foundation of the Park administration’s long-term power. Park
revised the constitution so that he could run for a third term and was reelected in 1971.
• Under the Yusin Constitution, the president had complete authority over legislation,
jurisdiction and administration and also had a constitutional right to repeal any law as an
‘emergency measure’.
• However, the second oil crisis in 1979 acted as a hindrance to the economic policy, which
had over invested in the heavy chemical industry.
• Moreover, students, scholars and the opposition continually demonstrated against the
Yusin Constitution as the Park administration’s invocation of emergency measures and
suppression brought about political instability.

Continued Economic Growth and Calls for Democratisation

• The desire for democratisation grew upon the death of Park Chung hee, but in December
1979, another military coup, this time led by Chun Doo-hwan, was staged.
• The military faction suppressed the democracy movement by implementing martial law
across the country.
• In the city of Gwangju, in particular, students and citizens did not back down and
demanded that martial law be ended.
• However, Chun’s military faction suppressed the protests for democratisation. Later that
year, Chun became the president through an indirect election under the Yusin
Constitution.
• The Chun administration strengthened the suppression of democratisation influences in
order to stabilise the regime.
• Due in part to the international economic boom, the Chun administration was able to raise
economic growth from 1.7 per cent in 1980 to 13.2 per cent by 1983, while also
significantly lowering inflation.
• In May 1987, the Chun administration’s minimisation of inquiries into the death-by-
torture of a university student was made known, making citizens begin participate in a
large-scale struggle for democratisation.
• Owing to these efforts, the Chun administration was forced to make a revision to the
constitution, allowing direct elections. A new chapter of Korean democracy thus began.

Korean Democracy and the IMF Crisis

• As per the new constitution, the first direct election since 1971 was held in December
1987.
• But due to the opposition parties’ failure to unite, a fellow military leader of Chun’s
military faction, Roh Tae-woo, was elected.
• In December 1992, Kim, a civilian, was elected the president after decades of military rule.

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• With his election and the consequent dissolution of authoritarian military power,
democracy made its forward march.
• Under the export-driven policy of the new administration, several companies grew to
global prominence, which continued until the early 1990s.
• Meanwhile, under increasing neoliberalist pressure to open its market, the Kim
administration joined the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) in 1996 and attempted to strengthen Korea’s international competitiveness.
• The crisis was dealt with through emergency financial support provided by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).
• In December 1997, long time opposition party leader Kim Dae-jung was elected the
president for the first time in Korea, marking a peaceful transfer of power.
• In 2012, conservative Park Geun-hye was elected as the first female president.
• But in October 2016, as it came to light that she had let a friend secretly manage
government affairs, she met with nationwide protests, leading to her impeachment and
removal from office in March 2017.
• In May 2017, Moon Jae-in was elected the president, in a peaceful transfer of power for
the third time.
• The candlelight protests of 2016, led by citizens who peacefully demonstrated for the
president’s resignation within the boundaries of democratic law and systems, show the
maturity of the Korean democracy.

Two Roads to Modernisation

• Industrial societies far from becoming like each other have found their own paths to
becoming modern.
• Japan was successful in retaining its independence and using traditional skills and
practices in new ways.
• However, its elite driven modernisation generated an aggressive nationalism, helped to
sustain a repressive regime that stifled dissent and demands for democracy, and
established a colonial empire that left a legacy of hatred in the region, as well as, distorted
internal developments.
• While it imitated them, it also attempted to find its own solutions. Japanese nationalism
was marked by these different compulsions — while many Japanese hoped to liberate
Asia from Western domination, for others these ideas justified building an empire.
• For instance, the Meiji school system, modelled on European and American practices,
introduced new subjects but the curriculum’s main objective was to make loyal citizens.
• Similarly, changes in the family or in daily life show how foreign and indigenous ideas were
brought together to create something new.
• The Chinese path to modernisation was very different.
• Foreign imperialism, both Western and Japanese, combined with a hesitant and unsure
Qing dynasty to weaken government control and set the stage for a breakdown of political
and social order leading to immense misery for most of the people.
• Warlordism, banditry and civil war exacted a heavy toll on human lives, as did the savagery
of the Japanese invasion. Natural disasters added to this burden.
• While calling for power to the people, it built a highly centralised state.
• Yet it did remove centuries’ old inequalities, spread education and raise consciousness
among the people.

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• The Party has now carried out market reforms and has been successful in making China
economically powerful but its political system continues to be tightly controlled.
• The society now faces growing inequalities, as well as, a revival of traditions long
suppressed. This new situation again poses the question of how China can develop while
retaining its heritage.

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