AP World History s12
AP World History:Unit 6 – Cross-Cultural Exchanges on the Silk Roads, The Commonwealth of Byzantium and The Expansive Realm of Islam.
Chapters 12-14 – Pages 287-371.
Long-Distance Trade and the Silk Roads Network
• Trade Networks of the Hellenistic Era:
• Trade can be a risky business, but much of that risk was reduced during the classical era.
• The construction of roads and bridges and the development of large imperial states provided some ease of movement and some protection for merchants who sought to sell products from one region to another.
• With the reduction of risk came an increase in volume and accessibility of exotic goods throughout the eastern hemisphere.
• Greek merchants and bankers were attracted to Bactria and Persia within the Seleucid empire.
• The Ptolemies in Egypt maintained their land routes east into Africa, while also building new ports on the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
• Most significantly, the Ptolemies also learned about the rhythm of the monsoon winds that blew from the southwest in the summer and northeast in the winter.
• Arab and Indian merchants had capitalized on these dependable winds for generations; now Hellenistic traders were able to establish regular links between Arabia, India, east Africa, and Egypt, and then link those expeditions with ones across the Mediterranean to Europe.
• Though expensive to protect and support, these trade routes had a huge payback in the wealth of goods transported and in the taxes Hellenistic governments collected.
• Spices, luxury fabrics, precious metals, jewels, grain, oils and slaves were valuable commercial items for merchants and governments alike.
• The Silk Roads:
• The Han empire controlled China and maintained order in much of central Asia.
• The Parthian empire ruled Persia and Mesopotamia.
• The Romans ruled the Mediterranean world and the Kushan empire provided protection and stability in northern India.
• These classical civilizations anchored the developing overland trade routes known as the silk roads which linked the extreme ends of the Eurasian landmass.
• The silk roads also included water routes and sea lanes which linked the Eastern hemisphere through a series of ports along the vast Asian and African coasts from the South China Sea to the Red Sea.
• An array of agricultural and manufactured products traveled over these silk roads.
• Silk, of course, was in high demand for its beauty and the Chinese jealously guarded its secret production technology.
• Spices from China and central Asia served as condiments as well as ingredients in perfumes, medicines, and magic potions.
• Cotton textiles as well as pearls, coral, and ivory were exported to the west.
• Horses and high-quality jade produced in central Asia were prized in both the eastern and western ends of the trade route.
• From the west came glassware, jewelry, woolen and linen textiles, bronze items, olive oils, wine and works of art.
• Merchants did not usually travel from one end of the silk roads to the other, though there were a few exceptions.
• Small foreign merchant communities developed along the silk roads and coastlines.
• Usually trade happened in stages.
• Governments jealously guarded movement of merchants within their empires to assure they could full assess and collect taxes and tariffs on the goods crossing their territories.
Cultural and Biological Exchanges Along the Silk Roads
• Buddhism was the most prominent faith of silk road merchants from 200 BCE-700 CE
• Promoted first by the Indian emperor Ashoka, the faith spread with Indian merchants into Ceylon, Bactria, Iran, Central Asia, southeast Asia, and China.
• In China, Buddhism remained mostly a merchant faith and did not have much appeal for the native Chinese until Buddhist monks and missionaries capitalized on unrest in China during the fifth century C.E. to spread their faiths.
• After that, Buddhism spread quickly through China and into Japan and Korea.
• Hinduism was also spread by Indian merchants through the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean throughout southeast Asia.
• Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, as well as parts of modern Vietnam and Cambodia, embraced the Hindu cults of Shiva and Vishnu, some even adopting Sanskirt as the means of written communication.
• The Spread of Christianity
• Early persecution of Christians by the Roman government was based on the Christian refusal to observe state cults or to participate in state-sponsored religious ceremonies and on the behavior of Christian missionaries, which the Roman government saw as disruptive and occasionally vioolent.
• The Christian missionaries, however, capitalized on the ease of travel and communication within Roman empire.
• By the end of the third century C.E., Christian communities flourished throughout the Mediterranean basin, Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, north Africa, and into southwest Asia.
• Christianity, along with Judaism and Zoroastrianism, remained widespread in southwest Asia through the coming if the Islamic faith in the seventh century C.E.
• Christian practices were heavily influenced by the practices of converts in Mesopotamia and Iran.
• Asceticism and withdrawal from secular society became dominant aspects of Christian practice and influenced the formation of Christian monasteries and separate communities in the western Mediterranean basin.
• Nestorian Christianity developed in the east, after the teaching of Greek theologian Nestorius, who stressed the human nature of Jesus rather than the divine.
• Christians in the Mediterranean opposed this emphasis, and many Nestorians in the west moved eastward carrying with them western structure of Christianity.
• Nestorian Christian merchants established communities in central Asia, India, and China by the seventh century C.E.
• The Spread of Manichaeism
• Like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, the spread of Manichaeism relied on the trade routes of classical civilizations.
• Developed in the third century C.E., and spread by Mani, this faith had its roots in Zoroastrianism and included elements of Christianity and Buddhism in its theology.
• Mani believed that syncretism, the process of an existing tradition adopting elements of a new tradition into its theology, would meet the changing cosmopolitan needs of the classical world.
• The faith promoted a strict ascetic lifestyle, turning away from the material and physical temptations of classical civilizations, and promised individual salvation and eternal association with the forces of light and good.
• Throughout the eastern hemisphere, imperial governments saw a danger to public order in Manichaeism and sought to exterminate this foreign religion and its believers.
• The Roman and Sasanid empires were largely successful in this goal, but Manichaeism managed to survive in the plains of central Asia where it was readily adopted by many nomadic Turkish peoples who traded with silk road merchants.
• The Spread of Epidemic Disease
• Pathogens for diseases such as smallpox, measles, and bubonic plague traveled easily along the silk roads and had devastating effects on the population.
• Despite sketchy population records, it seems clear that both the Roman empire and Han China lost a quarter to a third of their populations as a result of epidemic diseases that moved along like silk roads.
• These demographic changes had social and economic effects.
• Both empires moved away from international trade in imperial markets and focused increasingly on regional exchange of goods.
• Social structures changed and cities became less desirable places to live.
• The demise of the Han and Roman empires are directly linked to the changes brought by diseases which traveled along the silk roads.
Unit 6 – The Commonwealth of Byzantium
l Chapter 13 – The Commonwealth of Byzantium – Chapter 13 – Pages 317-342.
The Early Byzantine Empire
l The Byzantine empire, sometimes called the Byzantine Commonwealth, existed for nearly one thousand years as the “economic and political powerhouse of the postclassical era.”
l During that millennium, it dominated the wealthy and productive eastern Mediterranean region.
l Led to the formation of large, multicultural zones of trade and communication.
l Sustained interactions with Slavic, Arab, European, and Asian peoples and traditions.
l Geographically, Byzantium’s location offered ready sea and overland access to Asia, Europe, and Africa.
l Easily defendable site overlooking the Bosporus Strait including a magnificent harbor which allowed huge trading vessels ease of entry.
l The capital city, first known by the Greek name “Byzantion,” was renamed Constantinople in 340 C.E. by the Roman Emperor Constantine and then renamed Istanbul by the conquering Ottoman Turks in 1453.
l Two elements of Byzantine tradition seem most responsible for its survival and longevity:
l The concept of Caesaropapism.
l Development of an elaborate government bureaucracy.
l Caesaropapism gave the emperor absolute secular power as well as immense religious power as he appointed the patriarch of the Eastern Christian church.
l Secular - not overtly or specifically religious.
l The Byzantine government bureaucracy was large and intricate.
l Further, this bureaucracy was essential in enforcing the complex Byzantine legal tradition.
l Justinian is memorable for three reasons:
l his wife.
l his building.
l his laws.
l Theodora, his wife, was his active advisor in politics, diplomacy, and theology.
l She encouraged the military suppression of rebellion.
l the rebuilding of Constantinople.
l The construction of the Church of Hagia Sophia.
l The re-codification of Roman law to fit the demands of the Byzantine world.
l Justinian’s Code, (Body of Civil Law), served as the source of legal inspiration in the Byzantine empire for nearly 1000 years and influenced civil law codes throughout western Europe as well.
l Civil law seeks to resolve non-criminal disputes such as disagreements over the meaning of contracts, property ownership, divorce, child custody, and damages for personal and property damage.
l Byzantium was threatened by the rise of powerful and expansive Muslim states beginning in the seventh century.
l By the early eighth century, the Byzantines lost control of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and north Africa and even faced possible loss of Constantinople itself.
l The use of “greek fire” by the Byzantines allowed her to retain control of Anatolia, Greece, and the Balkan region.
l Byzantine rulers also responded to the threat of the Muslim empire by reorganizing its political structure through the development of the theme system.
l Each imperial province, known as a theme, was place under the jurisdiction of a general who assumed full military defense and civil administration responsibilities.
l The general then recruited his army from the free peasants in the theme who were rewarded with allotments of land in exchange for their services.
l Each general was appointed by the imperial government which kept a close eye on his actions.
l This system allowed for quick mobilization of armies and provide social order.
l Basil the Bulgar Slayer used terror to expand the Byzantine empire back into Syria, Armenia, Italy, the Danube region, Crete, and Cyprus.
l Relations were strained between the Byzantine empire and western Europe.
l Though both Christian, differences in church language, ecclesiastical practices, and secular ties provoked conflict between these two branches of Christianity.
l Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics.
l The Byzantine maintained their claim to the remains of the Roman empire in the west despite the rising power of Germanic groups, especially Charlemagne and the Franks.
l The rise of the Holy Roman Empire (Catholic) after 962 severed and antagonized both formerly connected empires.
Byzantine Economy and Society
l The location at a crossroads for trade, the abundant agricultural surpluses, and the tradition of a strong craft and artisan class provided a strong economic base for the Byzantine empire.
l This robust agricultural economy was made possible largely through a large class of free peasants who served as the backbone of the Byzantine army and who also owned and worked their small farms.
l The Byzantine government worked in the 6th through 10th centuries to limit landholdings of wealthy families on large estates as a way of protecting small landowners.
l Over time landholding was consolidated into fewer and fewer hands and the former free peasants became an increasingly smaller class within Byzantine society.
l The decline of the free peasantry reduced the imperial tax coffers and diminished the number of potential soldiers in the themes.
l The agricultural productivity of the land and the importance of Constantinople as a trade center guaranteed that the Byzantine empire would remain prosperous despite the worsening plight of the free peasants.
l Byzantine craftsmen maintained their historic reputation for producing glassware, textiles, gems, jewelry, fine gold, and silver metalwork.
l After the 6th century Byzantines smuggled silkworms and silkworm technology out of China.
l Government in Constantinople worked hard to control the production and supplies of silk to European markets.
l Banks and business partnerships developed to encourage trade and make huge profits from the goods which flowed through the empire on their way east and west.
l Partnerships allowed them to pool resources and limit risks.
l The Byzantine gold coin, the bezant, became the standard currency of the Mediterranean basin for six hundred years.
l Silks, precious gems and metals, spices, timber, furs, honey, and slaves all passed through the Byzantine empire.
l The collection of taxes and tariffs from these goods and the value added to raw materials turned into luxury products made the Byzantines very wealthy.
l Constantinople was the heart of the Byzantine empire.
l At the heart of “the City,” the opulent imperial palace reflected the empire’s wealth.
l Aristocrats also built elaborate homes for their extended families, servants, and slaves including separate apartments for women who were frequently excluded from festivities and parties in order to preserve their “honor.”
l Artisans and merchants frequently lived above their shops, while government workers and lower level employees lived in multistoried apartment homes.
l The poor lived in multifamily tenements.
l In these classes, women were part of the economic realm of the family.
l Like their Roman ancestors, the City provided entertainment for her citizens.