The worlds of the fifteenth century

Section 1

Big Picturethe Indigenous Women's Network in 1992 criticized Columbus; citing the history of death, slavery, racism, and exploitation that followed in the wake of Columbus's first voyage to what was for him an altogether new world

In 1892, the tone of celebration had been very different

A president presidential proclamation cited Columbus as a brave pioneer of progress and enlightenment

Big Picture ContinuedThis sharp reversal of opinion about Columbus provides a reminder that the past is as unpredictable as the future

People in 1492 viewed Columbus very differently from the people in today's world

In hindsight the voyage of Columbus was arguably the single most important event in the 15th century but it was not the only significant marker of the century

Examples of other Events

A Central Asian Turkic warrior named Timur launched the last major nomadic invasion of adjacent civilizations

Russia emerged from two centuries of Mongol rule to begin a huge empire building project across northern Asia

A new European civilization was taking shape in the Renaissance

the Islamic Ottoman Empire put a final end to Christian Byzantium with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453

In the Americas, the Aztec and Inca Empires gave a final and spectacular expression to Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations before they were swallowed up

The Shapes of Human Communities

One way to describe the world of the 15th century is to identify the various types of societies that it contained

There were bands of hunters and gatherers, villages of agricultural peoples, newly emerging chiefdoms or small states, nomadic or pastoral communities, and established civilizations and empires

Paleolithic Persistence in Australia

Despite a millennia of agricultural advance, many areas still hosted gathering and hunting societies, known as Paleolithic peoples

- These societies were found in all of Australia, much of Siberia, arctic coastlands, and parts of Africa and the Americas

In Australia, there was 250 groups of these societies

They practiced their hunting and gathering way of life even until Europeans arrived well into the 18th century

Over the years, these people had been changed by their interactions with outsiders

Examples of Assimilation

Outrigger canoes

Fish hooks

Complex netting techniques

Artistic styles

Rituals

Mythological ideas

Australia ContinuedDespite the absence of agriculture, these people mastered their environment, an example includes the deliberate use of fire to clear underbrush and encouraging certain plant growth called firestick farming

Native Australians also traded over long distance with each other

Creating elaborate mythologies and ritual practices, and developed sophisticated traditions of sculpture and rock painting

North AmericaA different kind of Paleolithic societal structure flourished in the 15th century along the northwest coast of America

These societies included the Chinookan, Tulalip, and Skagit, and other peoples

With 300 animal species and many fishes, this great environment provided the foundation for complex gathering and hunting cultures

These societies used permanent village settlements with sturdy large houses, economic specialization, and ranked societies to distinguish themselves from Australia

Ending Result of these societies

Although these peoples lasted well into the 15th century, they greatly diminished with the spread of the agricultural revolution

The advance of the farming frontier continued in the centuries ahead as the Russian, Chinese, and European Empires encompassed the lands of the Paleolithic peoples

Agricultural village society: The Igbo and

the Iroquois

Village society

Far more numerous than gatherers and hunters, who were fully agricultural, yet avoided incorporation into lager empires or civilizations and had not developed city or state based societies of their own.

These people lived in small village based communities and organized in term of kinship relationship.

When and where

These people are found during the 15th century in much of North America and in parts of the Amazon River Basin, SE Asia, and parts of Africa south of the equator.

They had created their societies without oppressive political authority, class inequalities and seclusion of women that was found in many other civilizations.

What the historians think

Historians have placed such societies in the margin of the world history, with their major focus on states, cities and large scale civilization.

When viewed within their own circles, their societies were at the center of things, with their own history of migration, cultural transformation, social conflict, incorporation of new people, political rise and fall, and interaction with strangers.

Igbo people

Found in the forest region of West Africa, East of the Niger River

Could've

In 15th century, the Yoruba and Bini, the neighbor of the Igbo people had begun to develop small states and urban centers.

The Igbo, with dense population and extensive trading network that could've also given rise to states, declined to follow suit.

On purpose

The Igbo preferred rejecting kingship And state building effort.

They boasted that "the Igbo have no kings".

• It was a "stateless" society, most famously described in the novel "Things Fall Apart".

Instead• They relied on other institutions

to maintain social cohesion beyond the level of the village. Titled societies in which wealthy men received a series of prestigious ranks, women's association, hereditary ritual expert served as mediator, a balance of power amount kinship groups.

Not alone

The Igbo people and their neighbors weren't completely isolated and self contained.

They traded an actively amount between themselves and with more distant people, such as the Kingdom of Songhay.

Unity

They traded Cotton, cloth, fish, copper, and iron goods, which led more people into the network of exchange.

Common artistic tradition reflected a measure of culture unity in a political fragmented region.

These were central to west African history and West African's daily lives. But these people would soon be caught in the transatlantic slave trade, and be changed substantially.

Agriculture Village Societies: Igbo and the Iroquois

• In what is now New York State agricultural civilizations started to change after their incorporation into European trading networks and empires

• The Iroquois speaking people of that region had only recently started agriculture, they adopted maize and bean farming techniques that came from earlier places in Mesoamerica

Agriculture Village Societies: Igbo and the Iroquois

• As this agriculture took hold in 1300, the population grew, settlements grew, and distinct peoples emerged

• Frequent wars erupted• Agriculture was seen as women's work and

warfare replaced successful food getting as the avenue to male prestige

Agriculture Village Societies: Igbo and the Iroquois

• Warfare caused a remarkable political innovation: a loose alliance among five Iroquois peoples: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca

• Based on agreement known as Great Law of Peace

• Called themselves the Five Nations• Resolved differences peacefully through a

confederation council of 50 clan leaders, they had authority to adjudicate disputes and demand reparation payments

Agriculture Village Societies: Igbo and the Iroquois

• The five nations suppresses the blood feuds and tribal conflicts that were wide spread recently

• It also coordinated their peoples relationship with outsiders, including the Europeans, who started to arrive in the centuries after 1500

Agriculture Village Societies: Igbo and the Iroquois

• The Iroquois League gave expression to values of limited government, social equality, and personal freedom which Europeans found attractive

• British colonial administrator declared in 1749 the Iroquois had “such absolute Notions of Liberty that they allow no kind of Superiority of one over another, and banish all Servitude from their Territories.”

Agriculture Village Societies: Igbo and the Iroquois

• Such equality extended to gender, for among the Iroquois, descent was matrilineal, married couples lived with the wife's family, and women controlled agriculture and property

• While men were hunters, warriors, and the primary political officeholders, women selected and could decide the leader

Agriculture Village Societies: Igbo and the Iroquois

• Independent agriculture people in 1500 such as the Iroquois and Igbo were increasingly encompassed by expanding economic networks and conquests in western Europe, Russia, China and India

• They replicated the experience of many other village based communities that were forcibly in the embrace of Egypt, Mesopotamian, Roman, Indian, Chinese, and other civilizations

Pastoral PeoplesNomadic pastoral peoples had long impinged more directly on civilizations than did hunting and gathering or agricultural Village societies

The Mongol incursion was one in a long series of challenges from the steppes, but it was not the last

As the Mongol Empire disintegrated, a brief attempt to restore it occurred in the late 14th and early 15th centuries under the leadership of a Turkic warrior named Timur

Central AsiaTimur’s army of nomads brought immense devastation yet again to Russia, Persia, and India

Timur died in 1405, while preparing for an invasion of China

Conflicts among his successors prevented any lasting Empire, although his descendants retained control of the area between Persia and Afghanistan for the rest of the 15th century

Timur’s EmpireThe state hosted a sophisticated elite culture, combining Turkic and Persian elements, particularly in its splendid capital of Samarkand, as its rulers patronized artist, poets, traders, and craftsmen

Timur's conquest proved to be the last great military success of nomadic peoples from Central Asia 

In the centuries that followed, their homelands were swallowed up in the expanding Russian and Chinese empires, as the balance of power between the steppe nomads of inner Eurasia and the civilizations of outer Eurasia shifted

West AfricaIn Africa, pastoral people stayed independent of the established empires several centuries longer than the nomads of Inner Asia, for not until the late 19th century were they incorporated into European colonial states

The experience of the Fulbe, West Africa's largest pastoral society, provides an example of an African herding people with a highly significant role in the 15th century and beyond

The Fulbe From their homeland in the western fringe of the Sahara along the upper Senegal River, the Fulbe had migrated gradually eastward in the centuries after 1000 C.E.

They generally lived in small communities among agricultural peoples and paid various grazing fees and taxes for the privilege of pasturing their cattle

Relations with their farming hosts were often tense because the Fulbe resented their subordination to agricultural peoples

Fulbe continuedA sense of cultural superiority became even more pronounced as the Fulbe, in the course of the eastward movement, slowly adopted Islam

Some of them in fact dropped out of a pastoral life and settled in towns, where they became highly respected religious leaders

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Fulbe were at the center of a wave of religiously base uprisings, which greatly expanded the practice of Islam and gave rise to a series of new states, ruled by the Fulbe

By: Peter McManus, Heyi chen, Tristan Cavanaugh, Jake White,

Connor Panovich, Jordan Wharton