Trade and Intrusion in the Indian Ocean and South Asia History 111 – World History since 1500

Spring 2022

Jorge Minella ([email protected])

Indian Ocean World

 Ancient trade and cultural interaction.

 East Africa, Arabian Peninsula, and South and Southeast Asia.

 Trade network.

 Spread of Islam through Muslim traders.

Today’s Class

 East Africa.

 Vijaynagara and Mughal Empires.

 European intruders.

 Global trade and commodities.

East Africa and the Indian Ocean

Swahili Coast

 Independent port city-states.

 Focused on trade, not territorial expansion.

 Bantu culture; Arabic, Persian, and South Asian influence.

Port Cities and the Interior

 City’s prince.  Protected merchants.

 In exchange of tribute.

 Mediated with interior chiefdoms.

 Coastal cities and interior independent, but important linkages.  Food supply.

 Trade goods.

Western vs. Eastern Africa

 Western, Atlantic Ocean.

 Some trade.

 Relatively self-sufficient chiefdoms.

 Occurrence of expanding Kingdoms and Empires.

 Eastern, Indian Ocean.

 Trade essential.

 Independent port cities.

 Interior chiefdoms connected to port cities through trade.

The Indian Ocean Trade  Environmental factor:

monsoon winds.

 Trade vessels: Arab dhows; Chinese junks.

 East Africa’s main trade goods.  Exported: gold and ivory.  Imported: textiles (South

Asia); porcelain (China); spices (Persia).

 Mostly peaceful trade relations.

Depiction of a dhow.

South Asia in Early Modernity

The Trade Cities of South Asia

 Port cities engaged in trade.

 Populous and diverse.

 Hindu princes or Muslim sultans.

 Ties with the interior through Vijaynagara and Mughal empires.

Vijaynagara

 Hindu kingdom, south India (1336-1565)

 Centered on religion.

 Indian Ocean trade networks.

 Portuguese arrived in 1500s.

Virupaksha Temple

Mughal Empire

 1520s expansion, northern India.  Peak territory in 1700.

 Military innovation.

 Tolerance with local religion and local power.

 Immense wealth with the Indian Ocean trade.

 Declined in the eighteenth century.Shah Jahan, 5 th Mughal Emperor

(1628-1658).

Taj Mahal, mausoleum commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1632.

European Intrusion in the Indian Ocean

The Portuguese

 Pioneered European expansion.

 But found a well consolidated Indian Ocean trade network.

 Not much room for Portuguese merchants.

Early 20th century depiction of Vasco da Gama’s arrival in Calicut, an important trade hub in southwest India,1498

Portuguese Piracy and Plunder

 Aggressive approach to trade.

 Took Goa and Melaka from Muslim rulers.

 Feitorias more military bases than trade outposts.

 Established control of strategic areas for extorsion of Indian Ocean merchants.

1600s – Northern European Arrival

 British, Dutch, and French.

 New Strategies.

 Trading Companies.  Private corporations with multiple investors licensed by the early modern

European states to monopolize Asian and other overseas trade goods.

The Dutch East India Company

 1602, Dutch investors.

 Took possession of Portuguese and Asian trade hubs.

 Private company, functioned as an imperial power.  Army.  Navy.

 Monopolistic. Dutch East India fortified trade city built in current day Indonesia, late seventeenth century.

Spanish American Silver in the Indian Ocean  Dutch East India Company obtained silver from Spanish America.

 Piracy.  Legal and illegal trade.  Slave trade.

 Silver used in Asian trade.

 + Freight service to local merchants.

 Some level of acceptance in the Indian Ocean trade networks.

Global Trade Networks and Local Realities

Emeralds in the 16th and 17th centuries

 Demanded in Mughal India for cultural reasons.

 Extracted by enslaved Africans and native American draft laborers.

 From Spanish owned mines in South America.

 Taken to Goa by Portuguese merchants.

 Bought by local Mughal merchants.

Sri Lanka’s Cinnamon

 Sixteenth century: Portuguese trade.  Local control production.  Peasants collect cinnamon.  Give tribute to nobles.  Who sell it to the Portuguese.

 Seventeenth century: Dutch control.  Monopolized Dutch controlled

production.  Enslavement of locals.

 Local lives changes with global trade.

Cinnamon peeling, Romeyn de Hooghe, 1682

Global Trade – Local Realities

 Shaped each other.

 Global Trade Networks.  Trade relations involving actors spread across the globe.

 Novelty of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Political and Cultural Consolidation in Asia History 111 – World History since 1500

Spring 2022

Jorge Minella ([email protected])

Variety of Situations (late 15th century)

 Russia: expanding from Moscow.

 China: vast, populous, sophisticated.

 Japan: fractured among feuding warlords.

 Korea: small but unified.

 Southeast Asia: neo-Confucianism influences.

Common Trends – 16th

to 18th centuries.

 Population growth.

 Commercial expansion.

 Political consolidation.

 Cultural florescence.

 Weaker links to the outside world.

Pine, Plum and Cranes, 1759, by Shen Quan (1682–1760). Patronage of the arts was common in Qing China.

The Philippines

 Regional exception.

 No dynastic rulers; No religious or ethical unifying traditions.

 Small kin-based rival communities.

 Conquered by Spain in the 1560s.

 Became a trade hub for Spanish- Chinese trade.

Russian Political Consolidation and Expansion

Moscow in the 1450s

 Grand Duchy of Moscow.

 Impacted by the Fall of Constantinople.

 Orthodox Church key to Russian History.

 11th century – East-West Schism.

Ivan, the Great (1462-1505)

 Nobility + Orthodox Religious Authorities.

 United to expand the Orthodox domain.

 Prince Ivan III.

 Expanded toward the Baltic sea.

 Trade opportunities.

 Gunpowder weapons.

Ivan, the Terrible (1533-1584)

 Expansion toward northern Asia.  Siberian fur trade.

 Reforms.

 Conflict with the nobility.

 Foreign wars.

Nocolai Nevrev’s 1870s depiction of Ivan’s conflictive relations with the nobility.

Time of Troubles, 1584-1613

 Famine, disease, military defeat, social unrest.

 Polish invasion.

 Religious undertone: Catholic vs. Orthodox.

 Orthodox religion united the Russians.

 Nobility, merchants, peasantry against the Polish.

Konstantin Makovsky's Appeal of Minin (1896), depicting the appeal to form a militia against the Polish.

The Romanov Dynasty

 Political stability restored.

 Western European culture assimilation.

 Investment in the military.

 Resumed eastward expansion.

 Trade of fur and timber.

Russia in the 1750s

 Vast territory.

 Merchant class in the larger cities.

 Religious unity.

 Westernized military and elite culture.

 Majority of Russians remained under serfdom; little social change.

Transition and Growth in China

Ming China (1368- 1644)

 Population growth.

 Intensive agriculture.

 Vast water and transportation infrastructure.

 Materially and culturally self- sufficient empire.

Ming China in 1415

China and Silver

 Wanli’s late sixteenth century tax reform.

 High demand for silver.

 Trade of silk and porcelain.

Ming Decline

 Severe droughts.

 Regional famine and local unrest.

 Court intrigues undermined stability.

 Major peasant rebellion.

 Beijing controlled by Manchu troops.

Qing China

 Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)

 Manchu ethnic group, minority in China.

 Smooth transition from Ming to Qing rule.

 Qing dynasty maintained distinctive identity.

 But also maintained overall policy.

Qing Expansion

 Territorial expansion.

 Adoption of western gunpowder technology.

 Self-sufficiency still preserved.

Emperor Kangxi (1661-1722), by an Anonymous Qing Dynasty Court Painter.

Unification and Isolation in Japan

Fragmented Japan

 Fragmented territory.

 Ruled by Daimyos (landlords with military power).

 Samurais.

 Disputes among competing Daimyos.

Tokugawa Ieyasu

 Former samurai turned Daimyo.

 Turned shogun in 1603.

 Started a unification process.

 Some daimyos adhered to Tokugawa.

 Others were militarily defeated.

 Tokugawa shogunate would last until 1867.

Japan’s Seventeenth Century Isolation

 Rejected European influence.

 Problem with Christian missionaries’ religious intolerance.

 Distrust European intentions (example of the Philippines).

 Some ties with China and Korea.

Effects of Peace

 Population growth.

 Cities became thriving cultural centers and meeting points.

 Leisure activities.

 High literacy and circulation of written material.

 Formation of a national culture.

"View of Edo" (Edo zu) pair of six- panel folding screens (17th century) – Current-day Tokyo.

Concluding Remarks

 Russia, China, Japan.

 Ties to the outside existed but were less relevant.

 Japan: isolation.

 Russia: expansionism and limited interaction.

 China: silver trade, otherwise self-sufficiency.

 Outside world not as relevant as in West Africa, South Asia, Europe, for instance.

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20

Expansion and Isolation in Asia 1450–1750

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Straddling Eurasia: Rise of the Russian Empire, 1462–1725

FOCUS What prompted Russian territorial expansion?

China from Ming to Qing Rule, 1500–1800

FOCUS How did the shift to a silver cash economy transform Chinese government and society?

Japan in Transition, 1540–1750 FOCUS How did self-isolation affect Japan?

Korea, a Land in Between, 1392–1750 FOCUS: How did life for common folk in early modern Korea differ from life in China or Japan?

Consolidation in Mainland Southeast Asia, 1500–1750

FOCUS What trends did mainland Southeast Asia share with China, Korea, Japan, and Russia?

COUNTERPOINT: “Spiritual Conquest” in the Philippines

FOCUS: In contrast to the general trend of political consolidation in early modern Asia, why did the Philippines fall to a European colonizing power?

backstory By the fifteenth century, Russia had shaken off Mongol rule and was beginning to expand from its base in Moscow. Russian expansion would eventually lead to conflict with China, which by the fifteenth century was by far the world’s most populous state. Self-sufficient, widely literate, and technically sophisticated, China vied with Europe for supremacy in both practical and theoretical sciences. As we saw in Chapter 14, the Ming dynasty had also become a global power capable of mounting long-distance sea voyages, yet by the 1430s its rulers had chosen to withdraw and focus on consolidating internal affairs. By contrast, Japan was deeply fractured in the fifteenth century, its many districts and several islands subject to feuding warlords. Korea, though less densely populated than either of its neigh- bors east or west, was relatively unified under the Yi dynasty, which came to power in the late fourteenth century. In mainland South- east Asia, several Buddhist kingdoms were by this time undergoing a major reconfigu- ration. Neo-Confucianism was on the rise in Vietnam. The Philippine Islands, meanwhile, remained politically and ethnically diverse, in part due to their complex geography.

World in the Making This life-size portrait from Beijing’s Palace Museum depicts China’s Emperor Qianlong (1711–1799) at a grand old age. The use of perspective—the illusion of three-dimensional space— reflects the influence of European Jesuit artists who resided at court after the early seventeenth century, but the emperor’s pose reflects a Chinese taste for a more statuelike representation of imperial power. His elaborate silk garments and pearl-encrusted headgear and necklace suggest the wealth of the Qing treasury, which despite massive expenditures and waste, boasted a huge surplus in silver for much of the emperor’s reign.

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Wang Yangming (1472–1529) had trouble on his hands. As governor of China’s Jiangxi Province, he had to collect taxes and keep the peace for his Ming overlords. Wang had risen through the ranks of the civil service through a mix of intelligence, connections, and ambition. Now he was faced with a rebellious prince, Zhu Chen-hao, and his followers. Acting as general, Wang successfully attacked the rebels with every weapon at hand, including bronze cannon probably copied from the Portuguese. More important than the suppression of the rebellion was the aftermath. Wang chose not to terrorize the populace as his predecessors might have, but instead moved quickly to rebuild, pardoning many rebels and winning their loyalty to the Ming emperor.

Wang Yangming’s effective governorship won praise, but he was better known as a philosopher. Wang was among the most renowned Neo-Confucianists of early modern China. As described in Chapter 14, the philosophical movement known as Neo-Confucianism revived an ancient tradition. The fifth-century B.C.E. Chinese philosopher Kongzi (Latinized as “Confucius”) envisioned the ideal earthly society as a mirror of divine harmony. Although he prescribed ancestor worship, Confucius developed a system of ethics rather than a formal religion. Education and scientific experimentation were highly valued, but so was submission to social superiors. Some of Confucius’s ideas were elaborated by his fourth-century B.C.E. successor, Mengzi, or Mencius, whose commentaries inspired Wang Yangming.

As the Jiangxi episode suggested, Wang was as much a man of action as he was a scholar. In fact, Wang saw no clear distinction between his military and intellectual lives, arguing that only by doing could one learn. In addition to challenging scholarly reflection in matters of policy, Wang argued that individuals possessed an innate sense of right and wrong, something akin to the Western notion of conscience. Some scholars have argued that at least one result of the diffusion of Wang’s teachings was a heightened sense among Chinese elites of the worthiness of the individual.

Neo-Confucianists sought to restore order to societies they felt had descended into chaos. For Wang, putting Ming society back on track required forceful action. Other Neo-Confucianists favored reflection, but Wang’s activism struck the right chord in early sixteenth-century China, and was widely promoted by educators, first in China and later in Korea and Vietnam. Japan borrowed more selectively from Neo-Confucianism. W hen blended with Buddhist beliefs already rooted in all these regions, Neo-Confucianism emerged as a religion of state. A foundation for many legal as well as moral principles, it helped hold together millions of ethnically diverse and socially divided people. In other parts of Asia, however, religion fueled

Neo-Confucianism  The revival of Confucius’s ancient philosophy stressing agrarian life, harmony between ruler and ruled, and respect for elders and ancestors.

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division and conflict. The Philippines were a battleground between recent converts to Islam and Roman Catholicism, and Russia was defining itself as a revived Byzantium, expanding frontiers across Asia in the name of Orthodox Christianity.

Change swept Asia in early modern times, sometimes provoked by foreigners, but mostly resulting from internal developments. The overall trend was toward political consolidation under powerful dynasties. These centralizing governments sought to suppress dissent, encourage religious unity, and expand at the expense of weaker neighbors, often using new military technologies to achieve this end. W hole new classes of bureaucrats and merchants flourished, and with them came wider literacy in vernacular languages, support of the arts, and conspicuous consumption. Despite some punishing episodes of war, rebellion, and natural disaster, the early modern period in East Asia was arguably more peaceful than in most of Europe, the Middle East, or Africa. It was an era of steady population growth, commercial expansion, political consolidation, and cultural florescence.

1. What factors led to imperial

consolidation in Russia and China?

Who were the new rulers, and

what were the sources of their

legitimacy?

2. Why was isolation more

common in these empires than

overseas engagement, and what

were some of the benefits and

drawbacks of isolation?

3. In what ways did early

modern Asians transform their

environments, and why?

OVERVIEW QUESTIONS

The major global development in this chapter: The general trend toward politi- cal and cultural consolidation in early modern Asia.

As you read, consider:

Straddling Eurasia: Rise of the Russian Empire 1462–1725

FOCUS What prompted Russian territorial expansion?

Beginning in 1462, Moscow-based princes combined new weapons technology with bureaucratic innovations to expand their holdings. By the time Tsar Peter the Great died in 1725, the Russian Empire encompassed a huge swath of northern Asia, stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific (see Map 20.1).

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Russian imperialism was conservative, with Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion, serving as a kind of nationalist “glue” throughout early modern times. Religious and cultural unity, plus a tendency toward isolation, inhibited efforts at social and agricultural reform. A lthough Peter the Great would end his reign by copying elements of western European governance and science, Russia remained an essentially tributary, agricultural regime until the nineteenth century. Military reforms were Peter’s most modern legacy. A lthough a modest merchant class had long existed in cities such as Moscow and Novgorod, the majority of Russians remained serfs , bound peasants with little more freedom than slaves.

serf A dependent agricultural laborer attached to a property and treated much like a slave.

0

0 600 Kilometers

600 Miles

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ARCTIC OCEAN

Barents Sea

Bering Strait

Black Sea

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QING EMPIRE

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Irkutsk

Moscow

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Nerchinsk

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Novgorod

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MONGOLIA

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180ºW

160ºE

140ºE

120ºE100ºE80ºE60ºE

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By 1462

Added by 1533

Added by 1598

Added by 1689

Added by 1725

Rise of Russia, 1462–1725 Qing Empire, 1725

Trade route

Furs

Leather

Timber

Russian territory

Trade goods

MAP 20.1 R ise of Russia, 1462–1725 Beginning with the consolidation of Muscov y in the mid-fifteenth century, Russia grew steadily to become one of the world’s largest—albeit least densely populated—land empires.

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Consolidation in Muscovite Russia A fter the fall of Constantinople in 1453, some Russian Christians prophesied that the principality of Muscov y was to be the new Byzantium, and Moscow the “third Rome.” The Russian Orthodox Church was fiercely anti-Catholic and frequently energized by apocalyptic visionaries. These visionaries inspired the grand princes who ruled Moscow following the Black Death, and each seemed more determined than the last to expand both Muscov y and the Orthodox Church’s domain. As the early modern period progressed, the Ottomans and their allies threatened Russia in the south, and the Poles, Lithuanians, and Swedes periodically threatened in the west. The eastern Tatars, though in decline after Timur (see Chapter 14), also menaced.

Russia took shape under Moscow’s grand prince, Ivan III (r. 1462–1505), nicknamed “the Great.” Under Ivan the Great, the Muscovites expanded northward, tying landlocked Muscov y to the commercially vibrant Baltic Sea region. By the later sixteenth century, Russian monarchs allowed English, Dutch, and other non-Catholic European merchants to settle and trade in the capital. These merchants sought to circumvent the Ottomans and other intermediaries to purchase East and South Asian fabrics and spices. A lliances with foreign merchants gave Muscovite rulers access to artillery, muskets, and other Western gunpowder technologies in exchange for furs and Asian textiles. These new weapons in turn fueled Russian imperial expansion, mostly across the steppes to the east and south (see again Map 20.1).

Russia’s next great ruler, and first tsar (literally, “Caesar”), was Ivan IV (r. 1533–1584), “the Terrible.” A lthough remembered mostly for bizarre behav- ior in his later years, Ivan IV was an effective monarch. In addition to conquering cities in the distant territories of the Golden Horde in the 1550s and acquiring fur- producing territories in Siberia, Ivan IV also reformed the Muscovite bureaucracy, judiciary, and treasury. The church, always at the heart of Russian politics, was also reorganized and partly subordinated to the state.

Ivan earned his nickname beginning in the 1560s when he established a personal fiefdom called the oprichnina (oh-preech-NEE-nah), which, like the Ottoman timar and devshirme systems, helped to break the power of nobles and replace them with dependent state servants. This abrupt political shuffling crippled commercial cities such as Novgorod, however, and generally threw the empire into disarray. Meanwhile, wars begun in 1558 with Poland and Sweden went badly for Ivan’s out- gunned forces. Things went no better on the southern front, and in 1571 Moscow

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fell to the eastern Tatars. Psychologically unstable during his last decade, Ivan died of a stroke in 1584. Thanks in part to Ivan’s personal disintegration, which included his killing of the heir apparent, Russia descended into chaos after Ivan’s death. Historians call the subsequent three decades Russia’s “Time of Troubles.”

The Time of Troubles (1584 –1613) was punctuated by succession crises, but it was also an era of famine, disease, militar y defeat, and social unrest, ak in to Europe’s “seventeenth-centur y crisis.” Exploiting the dynastic chaos, the k ing of Poland and Lithuania tried to place his son on the Russian throne. The prospect of a Catholic ruler sparked Russia’s first massive peasant rebellion, which ended w ith the humiliating occupation of Moscow by Polish forces. In 1613 an army of nobles, townspeople, and peasants drove out the intruders and put on the throne a nobleman, Michael Romanov (r. 1613–1645), founder of Russia’s last royal line.

The Romanovs’ New Frontiers The Romanovs rebuilt Muscov y and “rebooted” empire. Starting at seven million in 1600, Russia’s population doubled by 1700. Impressive as this growth was, all of Russia’s inhabitants could have fit into a small corner of China. Further, they looked more to leadership from the church, which had regained authority, than from the crown.

Tsar Peter the Great (r. 1689–1725) faced a powerful and insubordinate church. He responded by prosecuting wandering preachers as enemies of the state. But what made Peter “great” was not his harsh dealings with the church but his push to make Russia a competitor on par with western European nation-states. To this end, he stoked expansionist conflicts, imported arms and military experts, built a nav y, and professionalized the armed forces. The Imperial Russian Army soon became world class, but at great cost to taxpayers.

Peter, a man of formidable size and boundless energy, is often remembered for his attempts to Westernize Russia, to purge it of “ backward” characteristics. Boyars, or nobles, were ordered to shave their beards and change their dress, and all courtiers were required to learn French. A new capital, St. Petersburg, was built in the French style, comple