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Course: World History Project AP® > Unit 2
Lesson 4: 2.3—Consequences of ConnectivityREAD: Cultural Consequences of Connectivity, Afro-Eurasia 1200–1450
As people moved between societies, they shared ideas including belief systems and technologies with the people they met. A look at how those people decided what to accept, reject, or mix together points us to some important changes in this era.
The article below uses “Three Close Reads”. If you want to learn more about this strategy, click here.
First read: preview and skimming for gist
Before you read the article, you should skim it first. The skim should be very quick and give you the gist (general idea) of what the article is about. You should be looking at the title, author, headings, pictures, and opening sentences of paragraphs for the gist.
Second read: key ideas and understanding content
Now that you’ve skimmed the article, you should preview the questions you will be answering. These questions will help you get a better understanding of the concepts and arguments that are presented in the article. Keep in mind that when you read the article, it is a good idea to write down any vocab you see in the article that is unfamiliar to you.
By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- Did most people in Afro-Eurasia travel extensively between 1200 and 1450?
- In this same period, what two main regions/cultures of Afro-Eurasia made the most remarkable contributions to technology throughout other regions?
- What were some of the major technological contributions made by China and the Islamic world in this period, 1200 to 1450?
- What different religious traditions came together in Southeast Asia in this period?
- According to the article, what shape did Islam take in many of its movements and adaptations around the region?
Third read: evaluating and corroborating
Finally, here are some questions that will help you focus on why this article matters and how it connects to other content you’ve studied.
At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to these questions:
- To what extent does this article help you to explain the intellectual and cultural effects of the various networks of exchange in Afro-Eurasia from c. 1200 to 1450?
- This article gives some examples about how ideas, including religions, were adopted in new areas in this period. Based on evidence from the article, why do you think people were willing or even enthusiastic to adopt ideas coming in from other places? What were their motives?
Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to read! Remember to return to these questions once you’ve finished reading.
Cultural Consequences of Connectivity, Afro-Eurasia 1200-1450
By Trevor Getz
As people moved between societies, they shared ideas including belief systems and technologies with the people they met. A look at how those people decided what to accept, reject, or mix together points us to some important changes in this era.
Connecting societies
If you’d been born in the thirteenth century, your entire life would probably have been lived within an area no larger than a few square miles. Farmers stayed in one place, while pastoralists with their flocks and herds travelled only as far as their seasonal searches for food and water took them. But make no mistake, the world at this time was on the move. The few people really who did travel long distances carried with them ideas that could slowly transform the lives of whomever they met along the way. How did communities react when they learned of those ideas from far away? Did they adopt them enthusiastically? Reject them? Or mix them up with their own traditions and cultures?
When we study Afro-Eurasia in this period, history courses like this one tend to focus first on communities—states, cities, villages. We compare them to each other as if they were entirely separate. Then, as we begin to acknowledge how these societies were interconnected, we usually focus on production and distribution, trying to figure out how they traded products like silk, salt, or silver with each other. But you won’t need a shopping cart for this article, since the focus will be the movement of ideas—namely technologies and belief systems. Ideas were an intangible cargo moving through the same networks as goods and materials, but in different ways.
Diffusion of science and technology
One of the big stories for Afro-Eurasia in this period is the movement of important technologies. These technologies included things that could be engineered and produced—like paper and gunpowder. They also included knowledge technologies, like mathematics. Although technologies often had a limited impact at first, over time they would dramatically change the course of world history.
Every region of the world contributed new and innovative technology in this period, however some regions—like the Americas and Australasia—were isolated from Afro-Eurasia and formed their own networks of exchange. Also, two Afro-Eurasian regions in particular, China and the Islamic world, made especially dramatic contributions to technology in other regions.
The Islamic world of the thirteenth century–really several connected regions—stretched from North Africa all the way to India, and it was particularly important to the development of modern mathematics. In part this was about location. Situated between Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and China, the Islamic world was involved in a whole lot of trade. Its merchants needed to figure out ways to calculate costs and profits. In addition, Islam is a religion that follows a strict calendar, so dates were understood mathematically. Finally, Islam calls for its followers to pray facing the city of Mecca, requiring directional calculations. As a result, Muslim mathematicians developed math that used astronomy, that understood and divided up the circle, and that included fractions. Arab scholars developed a book of calculations with the shortened name al-Jabr that became the basis of modern algebra. These ideas then flowed out to neighboring regions, including Europe. Arguably, the European scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would not have been possible without these mathematical concepts.
Then there’s China, another region where many new technologies emerged. Under the Song Dynasty, economic reforms funded the opening up of the education system (and imperial examinations) allowing many more people to become scholars. The resulting boom in engineering and innovation contributed to inventions like the magnifying glass, the compass, and gunpowder. By 1206, the Mongols had conquered China and ruled it as the Yuan Dynasty, and as their control stretched further across central Asia, the Mongols built a huge system of exchange. Trade goods moved along it from east to west, but so did technologies like gunpowder, which was new, and paper-making, which was not new but hadn’t really gone far beyond China until now.
By the late thirteenth century, then, gunpowder was being used in many parts of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Gunpowder was not very powerful or usable at first, but by the 1380s it was being used for cannon. These cannon allowed the Ottoman Empire to conquer Constantinople and expand Islam into Europe. They also transformed European society. Before cannon, European nobles could hide behind castle walls, and remained immensely powerful. Cannon could bring down castle walls, and with them the nobles’ power.
Spread and transformation of major religions
Religions, also, moved along major trade routes to new areas in this period. Sometimes a traveler from one place would visit a location with a different religion and bring its ideas back. Other times, religion arrived in a new area and was adopted by the local people because of some advantages it brought, such as literacy or connections to trading partners. Often, different religions blended together—a process called syncretism—to create a local, unique system of belief
In Southeast Asia, a wide variety of major belief systems spread along trade routes, mostly by sea. Hinduism and Buddhism had first emerged in India, and both religions had longstanding connections in (relatively) nearby Southeast Asia. This meant that they were often intermingled by people in the region. For example, the great twelfth century Khmer temple at Angkor Wat began as a temple to the Hindu god Vishnu, then was transformed into a Buddhist temple two centuries later. Its design shows the influence of art and ideas from both religions. In some other places, like the island of Java, Hindu and Buddhist temples were often near each other, but kept separate. Across Southeast Asia, kings in this period gave gifts and funding to both religions.
By at least the twelfth century, Buddhism began to dominate in Southeast Asia, even as Hinduism became more central in South Asia. In particular, a monastic form of Buddhism known as Theravada became popular in Southeast Asia.
At the same time and in this same region, Islam was also becoming much more widespread. There is evidence of Muslims in the region as early as the eleventh century, also coming along trade routes from India. Islam was at first a religion of merchants, but it soon spread more widely. By the thirteenth century, many trading ports among the islands of Southeast Asia had a majority Muslim population. In practice, however, the citizens of the trading cities in the region often included many people of different religions.
Islam was also spreading, including to additional parts of Africa. Long established in North Africa and across the Sahara Desert, it was becoming important in the interior of West Africa and along the East African coast—wherever there was extensive trade with the Islamic world. Sufi brotherhoods were particularly important in the spread of Islam through these regions, as in others. These brotherhoods practiced a form of Islam that had a number of advantages in the local context. First, they emphasized ideas of mysticism and a relationship to God that were particularly suited to many of the nomadic, pastoral people of West Africa. Second, they helped those pastoralists come together to create political strength and solve problems. Finally, the beliefs and ideas of the Sufi brotherhood still allowed enough flexibility for local culture and existing religious figures to remain.
In South Asia, also, a Sufi version of Islam attracted many people who were used to a mystical form of Hinduism. However, it also spread through large-scale conquest that created major states like the Delhi Sultanate. These states had to rule many Hindus, and usually tolerated the practice of both religions, but Hinduism and Islam in these states remained largely separate. Christianity also spread by conquest in this era, particularly to the Baltic area of Europe. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, a series of crusades known as the Northern Crusades slowly drove older beliefs out of these regions. As a result, the people of these areas gradually became culturally closer to the people to their west, who spoke languages related to modern German, Dutch, and English.
Conclusion
Each of the brief descriptions above is incomplete. The spread of technology, religion, and other ideas is always complex and has had varied results throughout history. The important lesson here is that, when different areas became connected by trade, they could influence each other. Some of the agents of this change were the few individuals who made these voyages—people like the Islamic trader Ibn Battuta or the Christian merchant Marco Polo, or the missionaries who spread their religions into new areas. Other agents of change, however, were many people they met along the way. Those non-travelers still encountered new ideas and beliefs, and they had to decide what to do with them. Should they accept the new idea and change the way they thought or lived? Should they reject it? Should they mix it with what they already had? These decisions would heavily impact an Afro-Eurasian landmass that was, after all, more than just a bunch of separate societies; it was a series of overlapping networks now becoming more interconnected than ever before.
Author bio
Trevor Getz is a professor of African and world history at San Francisco State University. He has been the author or editor of 11 books, including the award-winning graphic history Abina and the Important Men, and has coproduced several prize-winning documentaries. Trevor is also the author of A Primer for Teaching African History, which explores questions about how we should teach the history of Africa in high school and university classes.