RTI - Hordes of Mongols and Germs (Lesson)

Hordes of Mongols and Germs

The three previous lessons covered life in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa. While the people on these continents were interacting with one another, they were still leading separate existences with varying degrees of sophistication. Then in the 13th and 14th Centuries, two things invaded the three continents that merged their experiences:

 

Mongols

The first invasion came from the Mongols—a nomadic horse-riding people from the Mongolian region in Asia, north of China. There are a couple of things to keep in mind about nomads. First, they did not just walk around the countryside willy-nilly. They had set migratory movements based on seasons and climate conditions. Second, as they were nomadic, they didn't build sites for manufacturing purposes; therefore, they needed to travel to cities to buy manufactured goods. And Third, their lifestyle encouraged and rewarded toughness—theirs was not an easy life—but it also encouraged equality between men and women as roles for both genders were equally important for the survival of the community. For hundreds of years, they existed in clusters of tribes. But in 1206, Genghis Khan (also known as Chinggis) united the Mongol tribes under one khanate to start the Mongol Empire. Over the next twenty-five years, the Mongol Empire conquered more territory than the Roman Empire did in four hundred.

Known for their speedy attacks on horseback and their deadly skill at archery, there were times when just the mere threat of a Mongol attack was enough to lead a community to surrender without mounting any type of defense. Genghis Khan's sons and grandsons continued his "work" following Genghis's death in 1227. Over the next century, they invaded far and wide, establishing khanates and expanding the Mongolian Empire to include China, Persia, Central Asia, and Russia.

 

There were limits to the Mongol expansion—in the west, Egyptian armies halted the Mongol advance; and in the east, water halted the Mongol advance (they were definitely more landlubber than seafarer.) Also, the Mongols were much better at conquering than they were at governing and over time, they slowly lost their lands. But by that time, the effects of the Mongol invasions were already in motion.

 

Germs

The previous section on Mongols ended with the effects of the Mongol invasions and a rumor about "flying corpses."  And that brings us to the most important of all of the regional and transregional interactions occurring during the Middle Ages— "the Black Death."

Beginning in the year, 1300 CE, the world experienced a "Little Ice Age" as average temperatures declined. Harsh winters and rainy summers destroyed the agriculture leading to famine and flooding and a life lived in the wet and the cold. This led to the health of the general population to decline as resources could no longer keep up with previous population explosions. So, when a new germ mingled with this weaker population, illness spread like wildfire.

Let's discuss the "image sentence" above and how it explains "the Black Death." The "Black Death" was the Bubonic Plague that stemmed from a bacterial infection. The flea would become infected by the bacteria and then ride around on the back of a rat (or maybe even its belly.) The rat lived anywhere it could get scraps of food- including piers and ships- bringing the bacteria into the vicinity of humans via the fleas on the rats. The fleas often jumped off of the rats and bit humans, spreading the bacteria. The humans would have a brief window of symptoms manifesting and then would usually die. Exposure to infected fluids from dead bodies, spread the bacteria to family members, neighbors, health care workers, and on and on, leading to mass graves throughout infected areas. The Plague, caused by exposure to the bacteria, started killing people in China in the 1330s and then spread west along the trade and communication routes. At that point, land routes shut down in an attempt to contain the epidemic. But this was a persistent strain of bacteria that would not be thwarted by a "closed" sign.

The part of the rumor that can be substantiated is that the Genoese sailors that retreated from the Mongol invasion of Caffa started dying on their boat ride back to Italy. When they reached Sicily, port authorities were alarmed by the extent of death on the boats from Caffa and sent them away. These sailors went from port to port looking for a place to land in 1346. Within the year, the Bubonic Plague raged through Europe. While the Mongols toppled the political systems everywhere they traveled, the plague actually destroyed the societies themselves.

"The Black Death" or Bubonic Plague, as it is now known, was the most historical development of the 14^th Century CE throughout all of Afro-Eurasia. Over the course of that century, outbreaks reduced the population by 25 to 65% depending on the location. The cities were hit the worst with, at times, the loss of two-thirds of the urban population. Since cities were often the home of governments, economies and religions, the Plague devastated the very social institutions that created society. Therefore, many of these societies needed to start over—which they did late in the 14^th Century CE, as outbreaks became fewer and fewer. However, it would still take over two hundred years to return to pre-Plague population levels. Let's look at how the different regions rebuilt.

 

China

While the Bubonic Plague probably originated in Central Asia in the steppe homelands of the Mongols, it was in China that the first outbreaks with significant societal impacts occurred. By 1300 CE, China's resources were stretched a bit thin and it struggled to feed a population that exploded during the previous century. With the "Little Ice Age" and accompanying famine, China's population was hungry and weak. Starting in the 1330s, the Plague wreaked havoc there over the next seven decades. By the mid-1300s CE, almost all of China's large cities had experienced major outbreaks.

The massive amount of death (one city's population experienced an almost 90% death toll) cost the Mongol Yuan Dynasty their Mandate of Heaven. A new millenarian movement sprung up—this time known as the Red Turban Movement who proclaimed that the end of the world was nigh. Out of that movement, rose Zhu Yuanzhang—the man destined to reclaim the Mandate of Heaven from the Mongols and begin another dynasty. 

In 1368 CE, Zhu Yuanzhang changed his name to Emperor Hongwu ("expansive and martial") after reclaiming some of the land lost to the Mongols along with their Mandate of Heaven. His name change signified the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. Over a course of three decades, Emperor Hongwu reunified China, moved the capital to Nanjing, reestablished the famous bureaucratic system with local leaders (because, as he said, "the mountain is high and the emperor is far away,") and executed 100,000s of "enemies" (he even killed his own prime minister.)

The third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Yongle ("perpetual happiness") moved the capital from Nanjing back to Beijing (where it remains to this day.) In order to continue on the path set by Emperor Hongwu to restore China, Emperor Yongle ordered the construction of a new palace. Located within the Forbidden City within Beijing, the new palace was built with the goal to inspire awe in all who saw it as a way of visually proving the Ming Dynasty's Mandate of Heaven and the resurrection of China from the disastrous centuries of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty and Plague.

[Side note: If you ever watched the Disney movie, Mulan, this palace and the Forbidden City probably look familiar to you. But you should know that the writers at Disney played a bit fast and loose with historical accuracy. The legend that the plot is based on came from 500-1000 years earlier.]

 

Trade thrived during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE), but the emperors of China viewed the outside world with some skepticism (and, really, who can blame them—the Mongols came from the outside and introduced death and destruction through warfare and germs.) Beginning with Emperor Hongwu, the Palace saw travel as a means for trade but not as a means for expansion. Instead, the Ming Dynasty focused on expansion into previous Chinese territories and the prevention of future Mongol attacks. As you can see in the map on the right, the China under the Ming Dynasty was smaller than in previous dynasties.

So, one might say that another effect of the invasions by the Mongols and the Plague on China was a hesitancy to actively engage with the world at large. This will be an important choice made by the Chinese in comparison to the choices of the Europeans as they rebuilt following their own experience with the Plague.

 

Europe

Approximately 50-80 million Western Europeans died within the first five years of the arrival of the Bubonic Plague in Europe. Added to the effects of later outbreaks, nearly half of the Western Europeans died as the pandemic ebbed and flowed during the 14^th Century CE. At first, Christendom reacted in two ways—one side argued that trusting the Gospels and the Church was more futile than trusting one's own "interior instinct;" the other side went to the opposite extreme and was composed of monks who beat themselves as punishment for sin in hopes of driving away the Plague. Either reaction illustrated an extremism in religion that reflected a questioning of Christianity.

The Plague brought everything down in Europe—

• The population was down which affected the feudal system that was built on a pyramid of people.
• Feudalism was down which affected the social hierarchy in Europe (and included the role of the Church.)
• With feudalism on the decline, the power of noblemen, landlords and vassals also fell.
• Faith was down as no amount of faith-based solutions prevented the pandemic.
• The power of the Church was down as those who survived the Plague found little guidance or comfort from priests that either fled the illness, leaving parishioners to fend for themselves, or stayed and died from it along with their parishioners.

The Church responded by stepping up its game against heretics and for those in need—using two institutions or concepts that were already present in the Church. The first was the Inquisition. The purpose of the Inquisition was to weed out heretics (Christians whose interpretations of Christianity differed from the Church,) but this sometimes spilled over onto attacks on persons of other religions. The biggest example of this followed the Plague in Spain as attacks on Jews increased and led to pogrom and forced conversions. The other concept/institution was that of alms-giving, or charity. Many survivors of the Plague felt the Church had abandoned them in their moment of need during the actual outbreaks. So, Church leaders aligned with secular leaders to distribute charity or assistance for those still suffering or in need (and there were many.)

As the Church moved to repair the damage done to its authority and reputation, another movement outside of the Church began. Italian scholars and artists, backed by bankers, nobles and, in some cases, the Church, started a movement to bring new exposure to old ways of thinking. This revival of previous cultural achievements came to be known as the Renaissance and describes the rebirth of old ways that occurred between 1430 and 1550 CE. Starting among Italian city-states (especially Florence,) it then spread to France, the Netherlands, England and the Holy Roman Empire.

Signs of the Renaissance were seen as early as 1351 (shortly after the first round of the Black Plague was beginning to end in northern Italy). For over a century, Crusaders and scholars returned from Constantinople and the Middle East via the trade routes that ran through Northern Italian city-states such as Venice and Florence. They brought back goods and knowledge of the grand philosophical and literary achievements of the Greeks and Romans. The desire to understand the classic Greek and Roman achievements led to a rebirth of knowledge and a period of cultural creativity in Northern Italy that became known as the "Renaissance".

The Renaissance promoted secular reasoning over church doctrine. Borrowing from the ancient Greek and Roman scholarship on healthcare, geometry, astronomy, architecture, and politics (all of which had been preserved in the libraries of the Dar al-Islam,) artists and scholars expanded on ancient accomplishments. Funded by the rising banking and merchant classes, scholars and artists reflected on the Greek and Roman interpretation of human life and applied it to modern-day Europe.

Through these accomplishments, the Renaissance laid the foundation for future European decisions to explore the world and challenge the Church. (Which is why we didn't talk much about the Renaissance and Science—that will come in the next unit.)

 

Dar al-Islam

Before the Mongols and Plague pillaged Afro-Eurasia, the Dar al-Islam was already fractured into three distinct regions. The East (constituting Central Asia, Iran and Eastern Iraq,) the Core (Egypt, Syria and Arabian Peninsula,) and the West (North Africa.) Each region had an impact on the Islamic World following the incursion of Mongols and germs. This was especially seen linguistically as Arabic became the language of religious devotion, Persian- the language of philosophy and art, and Turkish- the language of law and administration. But, from the ashes of the Crusades, the Mongols and the Plague, one region- the East- developed an empire that would soon make Europe very nervous.

Just as China and Europe looked to past traditions as they rebuilt their societies, so did the Islamic World. In particular, a group of nomadic warriors who turned to Sunni Islam. The Crusades of the 12^th Century and the Mongols of the 13^th Century opened up a lot of doors for these nomadic warriors. The Ottoman Turks started their history as nomadic warriors caught between the worlds of Islam and Christianity on the Anatolian Peninsula. They eventually took over a small area of that peninsula under their leader, Osman I, in 1299 CE. The empire that Osman established, the Ottoman Empire, quickly rose as an imperial force. Within a century, the Ottoman Empire controlled the Anatolian Peninsula, poised to take more. In 1453 CE, the Ottoman Empire defeated the remnants of the Byzantine Empire by conquering Constantinople and renaming it Istanbul. With that, the former Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire became an important sanctuary of Islam as Ottoman sultans, the self-proclaimed caretakers of Islam, built beautiful mosques and schools. The Ottoman Empire lasted for more than six centuries and served as the world's mightiest empire for a good portion of that time.

 

 

 

Recap Section

Review what you've learned in the videos and activities below.

 

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