The Mental Floss History Of The World Part 18

Armies of the Song Empire in China use bullets fired from bamboo tubes to help beat back a Mongol invasion-the first use of small firearms.

1274.

The Chinese emperor Kublai Khan sends a ma.s.sive invasion force against j.a.pan, but a typhoon wipes out much of the invading fleet.

1291.

The Christian-held city of Acre, in the Holy Land, falls to invading Muslims, effectively ending the Crusades.

~1300.

The Chimu begin conquering more than 600 miles of Peruvian coast.

SPINNING THE GLOBE.

Europe:

A Case of the Plagues

The Middle Ages were full of good news and bad news for Europe, although, to be honest, the bad was a lot nastier than the good was good. The worst of the bad came in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when a rather sudden climactic change created a succession of colder-than-average years. This led to a series of famines. And just when it looked like things had hit rock bottom, a string of plague epidemics occurred, wiping out huge chunks of the population and generally depressing everyone to the point that survivors got either almost giddy or totally hopeless.

The good news, sort of, was that the precipitous drop in the population meant there was more stuff for the survivors: more food, more land, more building materials. It also meant there were fewer people to compete for work, which made labor more valuable. This contributed to more independence for anyone with a marketable skill.

It also helped lead to the rise of trade a.s.sociations, where merchants or craftsmen of various types could band together to set rules and conditions among themselves and present a united front politically.

THE REAL MCCOY.

In 1040, a Scottish lord murdered the inc.u.mbent king and a.s.sumed the throne. He held it until 1057, when the dead king's son avenged his pop. The usurper's name was Macbeth. Someone eventually wrote a play about him.

Speaking of politics, there was good news on that front, too. While Europe had been mainly a collection of small feudal ent.i.ties in the years after the collapse of the Roman Empire, governments began to coalesce and embrace larger groups of people. This added more stability to civic life and provided greater security from outside threats.

The Holy Roman Empire (which as the eighteenth-century French philosopher Voltaire pointed out "was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire") pulled together Germany, Austria, northern Italy, and eastern France. Its leaders were selected by a council of n.o.bles rather than through accident of birth, which led to a generally better cla.s.s of rulers. It also served as both a check on the power of the Christian Church and as the Church's protector.

France, as the second millennium began, was pretty much centered on the three cities of Paris, Orleans, and Leon. Expanded in the early thirteenth century by Phillip II Augustus, it came into its own as a nation in the mid-fifteenth century, when it finally defeated England in the Hundred Years' War.

In northwest Russia, a leader named Yaroslav I put together a kingdom centered on the city of Kiev. The city, which boasted some four hundred churches, became a major trading center between Europe and the Byzantine Empire. By the end of the twelfth century, however, the kingdom had all but disappeared, a victim of internal power struggles between Yaroslav's successors.

TAXABLE...a.s.sETS Leofric, who was the Earl of Mercia in England, apparently was a sport. So in 1040, he agreed to remit a heavy tax if his wife rode naked through the streets of Coventry. The Lady G.o.doifv, aka G.o.diva, agreed. And the earl kept his word.

Midway through the eleventh century, England was conquered by the Norman ruler William I. Normans, followed by the French-speaking Angevins, ruled the country until 1399.

China:

From the Song to the Yuan to the Ming

The Song Dynasty, which started under the warlord Chao K'uang in 960, revived the use of Confucian principles of government, with tough civil-service exams required to obtain government posts. This inspired confidence in the government and prompted civil servants to take pride in their jobs. And that, at least for a while, made for a more efficient government.

JUST THE TYPE.

Around 1045, a Chinese alchemist named Pi Sheng carved blocks of clay into characters, fire-hardened them, fixed them to an iron plate, and gave the world moveable type.

The Song Dynasty fostered a strong business and trade climate. Song ships were the masters of sea routes all over Asia and into the Persian Gulf. The population soared to 110 million by 1100 CE, and the country had several cities that were huge even by today's standards. Song art and culture were the envy of much of the world.

But good times bred complacency and corruption, which led to incompetence and weakness. Continually threatened by nomadic forces from the north and west, which gradually nibbled away at the country, the southern Song Dynasty fell to Kublai Khan and the Mongols in 1279.

Kublai immediately established the Yuan Dynasty, which lasted until 1368, when it fell to the Ming. Under the Ming, the entire country was reunified under a native-run government for the first time in several hundred years.

Ma.s.s-PRODUCED BEAUTY.

While the Chinese had been known for hundreds of years for their artistic accomplishments, many art scholars believe their porcelain-making skills reached their zenith during the Song Dynasty (9601279 CE).Song porcelain was known for its complexity and inventiveness, and for its restraint in the use of color. It was often painted over after it had been glazed, which added a new wrinkle. While thousands of kilns and porcelain factories sprang up all over the empire, there were five dominant brands: Ru, Guan, Ge, Ding, and Jun.So popular was Song porcelain in other countries that many factories began using a.s.sembly lines and other ma.s.s-production techniques. And you thought that Henry Ford invented all of that.

j.a.pan:

Shogun-ing for Power

j.a.pan was heavily influenced by China during what is called the Heian Period, from 794 to 1185, and like early medieval Europe, it was pretty much just a bunch of small quarreling states stuck together.

By the late eleventh century, however, two powerful aristocratic clans-the Minamoto and the Taira-had developed enough influence to thwart the ambitions of all the other groups. The two settled things in the usual way, by fighting, and the Minamoto clan came out on top.

A KNIGHT BY ANY OTHER NAME...

Instead of knights, medieval j.a.pan had Samurai, professional warriors who served as policemen (or enforcers) for provincial lords. So if our Eurocentric view of history had been j.a.pan-centric, whenever we thought of the Middle Ages we might think of Bushido ("the way of the warrior") instead of chivalry, and seppuku (ritual suicide) instead of the search for the Holy Grail.

Instead of abolishing the highly symbolic but generally impotent position of emperor, the Minamoto clan instead chose to rule "in the emperor's name." The clan leader became Shogun, or military governor. For most of the next four hundred years, a Shogun of the Minamoto clan would rule j.a.pan.

The Muslim World:

Controlling Trade, Crushing Crusades

By 1000 CE, the part of the world dominated by Islamic governments stretched from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) to the Malay Peninsula (Southeast Asia).

But the sheer distances from one part to another led to a continual struggle for dominance among various Muslim groups: the Berbers in North Africa, the Mamelukes in Egypt, the Seljuk Turks and later the Ottoman Turks in Asia Minor.

Despite the spate of spats among different Muslim factions, the faithful of Allah continued to spread their influence. They gradually ate away the Byzantine Empire, and by the mid-fourteenth century they dominated most of the subcontinent of India. In Africa, Islamic forces controlled most of the northern part of the continent, including the vital trans-Saharan trade routes for gold and slaves. And they still had time to win most of the battles they fought with Christian Europeans during the Crusades.

LION TAMER.

Salah-al-din Yusuf ibn Ayyub was an iconic Arab civil and military leader and arguably the most famous Muslim warrior of the Crusades. He was known in the West by the name Saladin, which means "righteousness of faith" in Arabic.In July 1187, Saladin's forces destroyed most of the Crusader forces at the Battle of Hattin, in Palestine. The Muslim army took back all but one or two Holy Land cities that had been conquered by the Crusaders. In October, Saladin's armies capped a three-month siege of Jerusalem by capturing the city and ending eighty-eight years of Christian control.Saladin's successes stunned Christendom, which decided to launch a Third Crusade, led by King Richard I of England, known as "the Lionhearted." Both men were personally brave and were able military leaders, and each had a deep mutual respect for the other.According to contemporary accounts, Saladin once offered Richard the use of his personal physician when Richard was wounded, and gave him a horse after the English king had lost his mount.In 1192, after the Crusaders had taken back some territory but failed to retake Jerusalem, Saladin and Richard agreed to an armistice. Under it, the city remained in Muslim hands, but Christian pilgrims were free to visit.Saladin died in Damascus in March 1193, not long after Richard returned to Europe.

The Byzantine Empire:

We'll Always Have Constantinople...

The inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire generally started the eleventh century in pretty good shape. A succession of emperors from Macedonia had provided stability, beaten down challenges from the Bulgarians and other Slavic neighbors, and actually expanded the borders of what once was the eastern half of the Roman Empire.

It remained a center of arts, culture, and learning, even during tough times. It also enjoyed a robust economy as the crossroads of trade between East and West and the manufacturer of many goods on its own. Its gold coin, the bezant, was standard currency for the Mediterranean basin.

But like its Roman forebear, Byzantium suffered from a combination of internal weaknesses and external threats. After the death of the last Macedonian ruler, Basil II, in 1025, the Byzantines had thirteen emperors over the next fifty-six years.

In the West, Norman forces took the last Byzantine strongholds in Italy. In the East, the Seljuk Turks, the dominant force of the Muslim world, were a constant threat. Because of the split between the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church of Constantinople, Byzantium could expect little help against the Muslims from its fellow Christians in Europe.

CAE WHAT?.

The dominant political ideology of the Byzantine Empire favored the consolidation of authority over both the Church and the State. It was called caesaropapism. Really.

In fact, the Crusaders were generally bad news for the Byzantines, since the Western armies were covetous of the empire's wealth. By the time of the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders proved to be as interested in conquering Constantinople (which they did, in 1204) as they were in "freeing" the Holy Land. Western-backed emperors then ruled the city until 1261.

By that time, the empire had devolved into a collection of independent city-states. The Black Death decimated Constantinople in 1347; the city began paying tribute to the Turks around 1370, and finally fell on May 29, 1453.

Many historians think the fall of Constantinople severed the world's last active link with the Cla.s.sical Era. It may also have marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times.

The Americas: