A Journey into Human History

With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, Europeans found themselves forced to deal with Muslim middlemen to access the prized goods of South and East Asia. European countries thus began seeking an all-water route to the eastern lands they called the Indies, aided by navigational technologies from the Middle East and motivated by religious zeal and desire for profit. The Portuguese...

In the sixteenth century, many European Christians were critical of practices within the Catholic Church. Some scholars in northern Europe had turned to Christian humanism as a means of making people more pious and thus achieving religious reform. Martin Luther, a German monk, began the Protestant Reformation when he publicly objected to the church’s sale of indulgences. Luther was excommunicated,...

The establishment of the Safavid state under Shah Ismail I in 1501 was followed by rapid territorial expansion, but conflict between factions of the Qizilbash military corps allowed the Ottoman and Uzbek empires to take advantage and capture territory. Shahs Tahmasp and Abbas I created a corps of enslaved people from the Caucasus to serve as their new elite military force and eventually replace th...

The Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire was one of the most diverse political entities of its time. Sultans such as Suleiman I encouraged people of all ethnicities to settle there, and under the millet system, each religious community had its own leader, regulated its own affairs, and educated its own children. This diversity is reflected in the languages spoken in the empire. Turkish was for intera...

By the sixteenth century, the religion of Islam had spread far beyond its point of origin in Southwest Asia. Islamic communities, large empires, and a number of Islamic kingdoms thrived in West and East Africa, southeastern Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. But although no single powerful caliphate held all these areas together, the religion of Islam allowed for a degree of cohesiveness and unity...

Kanem-Bornu, which dominated Central Sudan and maintained an active caravan trade with the states of North Africa in the thirteenth century, was destabilized by revolts and rebellions in the fourteenth century. Although it regained preeminence in the sixteenth century, by the end of that century, its power was at an end. The collapse of both Songhai and Kanem-Bornu allowed emergent polities like D...

City-states on the east coast of Africa grew in size and prosperity as they took advantage of wind patterns to participate in Indian Ocean trade. Their people were united by a shared religion, Islam, and a shared language, Swahili. Products from the interior of the African continent were sold by the Swahili traders to merchants from Arabia, Persia, and India. In exchange, they purchased goods from...

The basis of the Songhai Empire’s wealth was much the same as for the kingdoms that preceded it: salt, cloth, and gold. Sunni Ali’s program of annexation greatly expanded Songhai. Growth continued under his successors, especially Askia the Great, who used Islam to further his control and brought Songhai into its golden age. Not only did its rulers consolidate state control over trans-Saharan trade...

Until the sixteenth century, caravans routinely plied the sands of the Sahara, moving goods, especially gold, from distant West Africa to centers of trade in North Africa and Egypt. Towns in West Africa became cosmopolitan stopping points, and as merchants, rulers, and caravan leaders converted to Islam for both spiritual and financial reasons, Islam flourished alongside the caravan business. In t...

East Asia was drawn into the network of global maritime trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Portuguese and Spanish arrived in Japan when powerful daimyos were each fighting to unify the country and bring it under their rule. Guns brought by Europeans began to play an important role in Japanese warfare. Many Japanese also began to convert to Christianity. In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu...

The Malaccan Sultanate was established around 1400 by Parameswara, the last king of Singapura. The city’s location on both sides of the Malaccan Straits destined it for success, because the straits were the route taken by trading ships between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. The city grew wealthy and attracted a diverse population of merchants from many countries, and the sultanate thrived under...

Although Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur, a Muslim who founded the Mughal Empire, made little effort to assimilate to Indian culture, his grandson Akbar forged a culture that incorporated Indian and Persian, Hindu and Muslim elements. Under him, the Mughal Empire grew to encompass most of northern and much of central India, including the Sultanate of Gujarat, the heart of a rich Indian Ocean trade. Un...

Knowing the past, the human story, has long been considered a mark of civilization, and its study has never been more important. The study of world history provides the skills necessary to meet global workforce needs while at the same time developing a sense of self and place in our global community. You will gain critical-thinking and analysis skills that will help you fulfill the role of a globa...

Early forms of guns were difficult to use and often inaccurate, but as they improved, rulers began to replace cavalry with infantry armed with guns. Where mounted warriors had been members of the aristocracy, this change often cost them their privileged position in society. Gunpowder also made it easier for armies to destroy fortifications, ending siege warfare. Centralized governments that adopte...

The Abbasids, Ayyubids, and Ottomans all depended on enslaved or formerly enslaved people to staff their armies and run their administrations. Christian boys were taken from their parents, forced to convert to Islam, and trained as soldiers and administrators. In the Abbasid and Ayyubid states, they were called mamluks. In the Ottoman state they were Janissaries. Enslaved women might also become m...

Following the sack of Constantinople by crusaders and the Mongols’ defeat of the Seljuk Turks, the Ottomans emerged as a power in northwestern Anatolia. Under Osman’s successors, they crossed the Dardanelles into Europe, defeating the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo. When the Mongol conqueror Timur invaded the region, he defeated Bayezid, and the subsequent conflict among Bayezid’s sons splintered t...

The challenges and crises of the fourteenth century generated many social and cultural changes as the societies of Afro-Eurasia sought to recover and rebuild. The Ming dynasty represented an era of introspection during which traditional practices and beliefs such as Confucianism were reestablished to shed China of Mongol influence. Islam continued to expand across central Asia and North Africa, in...

From the 1340s to the 1350s, the Black Death unleashed a wave of death and devastation across Afro-Eurasia. This global pandemic of bubonic plague not only resulted in significant population loss, but it also led to profound social and economic transformation. The formerly thriving cities of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt quickly deteriorated, and in Europe, the psychological toll of the plague’s t...

The field of historical climatology has enabled historians to combine analyses of written sources with data about the ecological environment of the past. Thus, we know that at the beginning of the fourteenth century, a prolonged period of temperate climate was followed by a devastating period of lower temperatures and substantial changes in precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere that wiped out c...

The fourteenth century was a time of profound political change across Afro-Eurasia. From the rise of the Yuan dynasty to the emergence of the Il-Khanate, the Mongol Empire began the fourteenth century in a period of growth and expansion. By the end of the century, however, plague, revolts, rebellion, and crises of authority had led to the decline of the once-massive empire. Elsewhere in Europe, co...

During the Mali Empire’s period of decline, the Soninke-speaking people of the Niger established a new polity centered on the trade city of Gao, which soon became the capital of the Songhai kingdom. During the sixteenth century, Songhai grew into a larger and wealthier state than even the fabled Mali. Its prosperity depended on controlling the trans-Saharan trade routes of West Africa. This trade...

Medieval African kingdoms and polities controlled vast territories, used emerging technologies, and governed populations that were heterogeneous and cosmopolitan. In every kingdom, trade was vital not only to longevity and prosperity, but also to their dynamic cultures. Ghanaian control over trans-Saharan trade in West Africa led to a thriving relationship between Muslim traders and the empire’s r...

Africa’s ancient migrations diffused technological and cultural innovations that helped establish settlements later enriched by the spread of new belief systems. Beginning with both Judaism and Christianity in the early centuries of the Common Era and continuing with the long tradition of Islam, monotheism had taken root throughout much of North Africa by the end of the eighth century and graduall...

The forces of centralization and conformity in Western Christendom scored important victories, crushing heretical movements and formalizing institutions such as the Inquisition to keep them down. On the other hand, crusaders and kings alike often ignored the papal will with virtual impunity. Monarchs in France and the Two Sicilies laid the groundwork for strong royal bureaucracies to keep the nobi...

While Kublai’s Yuan dynasty reunited China and gave it the same ruler as the Mongol homeland and much of central Asia, it revived neither the prosperity of China nor the robustness of the steppe people. Trade continued to flow, and the effects of earlier economic growth were still apparent, but less wealth was subsequently produced. This meant less went to the steppe, and those producing wealth sa...