History week 4 journal entry

750 WORDS

Try to answer the following questions in each of your journal entries:

• What interested you the most in the week’s course content? Why?
• What about the concepts discussed this week? (use the syllabus, course schedule, to see each week’s concepts). Did they help you understand the historical process better, or not? How come? Comment on at least one concept and related event/process discussed in the textbook or lectures.
• What event, concept, or historical process remained unclear to you? Why?
• How do you evaluate your learning process about world history so far?

Trade and Intrusion in the
Indian Ocean and South Asia
History 111 – World History since 1500

Spring 2022

Jorge Minella (jminella@umass.edu)

Indian Ocean World

 Ancient trade and cultural interaction.

 East Africa, Arabian Peninsula, and South
and Southeast Asia.

 Trade network.

 Spread of Islam through Muslim traders.

Today’s Class

 East Africa.



Vijaynagara

and

Mughal Empire

s.

 European intruders.

 Global trade and commodities.

East Africa and the Indian
Ocean

Swahili Coast

 Independent port city-states.

 Focused on trade, not
territorial expansion.

 Bantu culture; Arabic, Persian,
and South Asian influence.

Port Cities and the Interior

 City’s prince.
 Protected merchants.

 In exchange of tribute.

 Mediated with interior chiefdoms.

 Coastal cities and interior independent, but important linkages.
 Food supply.

 Trade goods.

Western vs. Eastern Africa

 Western, Atlantic Ocean.

 Some trade.

 Relatively self-sufficient
chiefdoms.

 Occurrence of expanding
Kingdoms and Empires.

 Eastern, Indian Ocean.

 Trade essential.

 Independent port cities.

 Interior chiefdoms connected to
port cities through trade.

The Indian
Ocean Trade
 Environmental factor:

monsoon winds.

 Trade vessels: Arab dhows;
Chinese junks.

 East Africa’s main trade
goods.
 Exported: gold and ivory.
 Imported: textiles (South

Asia); porcelain (China);
spices (Persia).

 Mostly peaceful trade
relations.

Depiction of a dhow.

South Asia in Early
Modernity

The Trade Cities of South Asia

 Port cities engaged in trade.

 Populous and diverse.

 Hindu princes or Muslim sultans.

 Ties with the interior through Vijaynagara and Mughal empires.

Vijaynagara

 Hindu kingdom, south India
(1336-1565)

 Centered on religion.

 Indian Ocean trade
networks.

 Portuguese arrived in 1500s.

Virupaksha Temple

Mughal Empire

 1520s expansion, northern India.
 Peak territory in 1700.

 Military innovation.

 Tolerance with local religion and local
power.

 Immense wealth with the Indian Ocean
trade.

 Declined in the eighteenth century.Shah Jahan, 5
th Mughal Emperor

(1628-1658).

Taj Mahal, mausoleum commissioned by Shah
Jahan in 1632.

European Intrusion in the
Indian Ocean

The Portuguese

 Pioneered European
expansion.

 But found a well
consolidated Indian Ocean
trade network.

 Not much room for
Portuguese merchants.

Early 20th century depiction of Vasco da
Gama’s arrival in Calicut, an important
trade hub in southwest India,1498

Portuguese Piracy and Plunder

 Aggressive approach to trade.

 Took Goa and Melaka from Muslim rulers.

 Feitorias more military bases than trade outposts.

 Established control of strategic areas for extorsion of Indian Ocean
merchants.

1600s – Northern European Arrival

 British, Dutch, and French.

 New Strategies.

 Trading Companies.
 Private corporations with multiple investors licensed by the early modern

European states to monopolize Asian and other overseas trade goods.

The Dutch East
India Company

 1602, Dutch investors.

 Took possession of
Portuguese and Asian trade
hubs.

 Private company, functioned
as an imperial power.
 Army.
 Navy.

 Monopolistic. Dutch East India fortified trade city built in
current day Indonesia, late seventeenth
century.

Spanish American Silver in the Indian
Ocean
 Dutch East India Company obtained silver from Spanish America.

 Piracy.
 Legal and illegal trade.
 Slave trade.

 Silver used in Asian trade.

 + Freight service to local merchants.

 Some level of acceptance in the Indian Ocean trade networks.

Global Trade Networks
and Local Realities

Emeralds in the 16th and 17th centuries

 Demanded in Mughal India for cultural reasons.

 Extracted by enslaved Africans and native American draft laborers.

 From Spanish owned mines in South America.

 Taken to Goa by Portuguese merchants.

 Bought by local Mughal merchants.

Sri Lanka’s Cinnamon

 Sixteenth century: Portuguese trade.
 Local control production.
 Peasants collect cinnamon.
 Give tribute to nobles.
 Who sell it to the Portuguese.

 Seventeenth century: Dutch control.
 Monopolized Dutch controlled

production.
 Enslavement of locals.

 Local lives changes with global trade.

Cinnamon peeling, Romeyn de
Hooghe, 1682

Global Trade – Local Realities

 Shaped each other.

 Global Trade Networks.
 Trade relations involving actors spread across the globe.

 Novelty of the 16th and 17th centuries.

• Trade and Intrusion in the Indian Ocean and South Asia

Indian Ocean World
Today’s Class

• East Africa and the Indian Ocean
• Swahili Coast

Port Cities and the Interior
Western vs. Eastern Africa

• The Indian Ocean Trade
• Número do slide 9
• South Asia in Early Modernity

The Trade Cities of South Asia
Vijaynagara
Mughal Empire

• Número do slide 14
• European Intrusion in the Indian Ocean

The Portuguese
Portuguese Piracy and Plunder
1600s – Northern European Arrival

• The Dutch East India Company
• Spanish American Silver in the Indian Ocean
• Global Trade Networks and Local Realities

Emeralds in the 16th and 17th centuries
Sri Lanka’s Cinnamon
Global Trade – Local Realities

Political and Cultural
Consolidation in Asia
History 111 – World History since 1500

Spring 2022

Jorge Minella (jminella@umass.edu)

Variety of Situations (late 15th century)

 Russia: expanding from Moscow.

 China: vast, populous, sophisticated.

 Japan: fractured among feuding warlords.

 Korea: small but unified.

 Southeast Asia: neo-Confucianism influences.

Common Trends – 16th

to 18th centuries.

 Population growth.

 Commercial expansion.

 Political consolidation.

 Cultural florescence.

 Weaker links to the outside world.

Pine, Plum and Cranes, 1759, by Shen Quan
(1682–1760). Patronage of the arts was common in

Qing China

.

The Philippines

 Regional exception.

 No dynastic rulers; No religious or
ethical unifying traditions.

 Small kin-based rival communities.

 Conquered by Spain in the 1560s.

 Became a trade hub for Spanish-
Chinese trade.

Russian Political Consolidation
and Expansion

Moscow in the 1450s

 Grand Duchy of Moscow.

 Impacted by the Fall of Constantinople.

 Orthodox Church key to Russian History.

 11th century – East-West Schism.

Ivan, the Great (1462-1505)

 Nobility + Orthodox Religious Authorities.

 United to expand the Orthodox domain.

 Prince Ivan III.

 Expanded toward the Baltic sea.

 Trade opportunities.

 Gunpowder weapons.

Ivan, the Terrible
(1533-1584)

 Expansion toward
northern Asia.
 Siberian fur trade.

 Reforms.

 Conflict with the
nobility.

 Foreign wars.

Nocolai Nevrev’s 1870s depiction of Ivan’s
conflictive relations with the nobility.

Time of Troubles,
1584-1613

 Famine, disease, military defeat, social
unrest.

 Polish invasion.

 Religious undertone: Catholic vs.
Orthodox.

 Orthodox religion united the Russians.

 Nobility, merchants, peasantry against
the Polish.

Konstantin Makovsky’s Appeal of
Minin (1896), depicting the appeal to
form a militia against the Polish.

The Romanov Dynasty

 Political stability restored.

 Western European culture assimilation.

 Investment in the military.

 Resumed eastward expansion.

 Trade of fur and timber.

Russia in the 1750s

 Vast territory.

 Merchant class in the larger cities.

 Religious unity.

 Westernized military and elite culture.

 Majority of Russians remained under serfdom; little social change.

Transition and Growth in
China

Ming China (1368-
1644)

 Population growth.

 Intensive agriculture.

 Vast water and transportation
infrastructure.

 Materially and culturally self-
sufficient empire.

Ming China in 1415

China and Silver

 Wanli’s late sixteenth
century tax reform.

 High demand for silver.

 Trade of silk and porcelain.

Ming Decline

 Severe droughts.

 Regional famine and local unrest.

 Court intrigues undermined stability.

 Major peasant rebellion.

 Beijing controlled by Manchu troops.

Qing China

 Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)

 Manchu ethnic group, minority in China.

 Smooth transition from Ming to Qing rule.

 Qing dynasty maintained distinctive identity.

 But also maintained overall policy.

Qing Expansion

 Territorial expansion.

 Adoption of western gunpowder
technology.

 Self-sufficiency still preserved.

Emperor Kangxi (1661-1722), by an
Anonymous Qing Dynasty Court
Painter.

Unification and Isolation in
Japan

Fragmented
Japan

 Fragmented territory.

 Ruled by Daimyos (landlords
with military power).

 Samurais.

 Disputes among competing
Daimyos.

Tokugawa Ieyasu

 Former samurai turned Daimyo.

 Turned shogun in 1603.

 Started a unification process.

 Some daimyos adhered to Tokugawa.

 Others were militarily defeated.

 Tokugawa shogunate would last until 1867.

Japan’s Seventeenth Century Isolation

 Rejected European influence.

 Problem with Christian missionaries’ religious intolerance.

 Distrust European intentions (example of the Philippines).

 Some ties with China and Korea.

Effects of Peace

 Population growth.

 Cities became thriving cultural
centers and meeting points.

 Leisure activities.

 High literacy and circulation of
written material.

 Formation of a national culture.

“View of Edo” (Edo zu) pair of six-
panel folding screens (17th century) –
Current-day Tokyo.

Concluding Remarks

 Russia, China, Japan.

 Ties to the outside existed but were less relevant.

 Japan: isolation.

 Russia: expansionism and limited interaction.

 China: silver trade, otherwise self-sufficiency.

 Outside world not as relevant as in West Africa, South Asia, Europe, for instance.

• Political and Cultural Consolidation in Asia

Variety of Situations (late 15th century)

• Common Trends – 16th to 18th centuries.

The Philippines

• Russian Political Consolidation and Expansion

Moscow in the 1450s
Ivan, the Great (1462-1505)

• Ivan, the Terrible (1533-1584)
• Time of Troubles, 1584-1613

The Romanov Dynasty
Russia in the 1750s

• Transition and Growth in China
• Ming China (1368-1644)

China and Silver
Ming Decline
Qing China
Qing Expansion

• Unification and Isolation in Japan
• Fragmented Japan

Tokugawa Ieyasu
Japan’s Seventeenth Century Isolation
Effects of Peace
Concluding Remarks

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2

0

Expansion and Isolation in
Asia 1450–1750

721

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Straddling Eurasia: Rise of the Russian
Empire, 1462–1725

FOCUS What prompted Russian territorial
expansion?

China from Ming to Qing Rule,
1500–1800

FOCUS How did the shift to a silver cash economy
transform Chinese government and society?

Japan in Transition, 1540–1750

FOCUS How did self-isolation affect Japan?

Korea, a Land in Between, 1392–1750
FOCUS: How did life for common folk in early
modern Korea differ from life in China or Japan?

Consolidation in Mainland Southeast
Asia, 1500–1750

FOCUS What trends did mainland Southeast Asia
share with China, Korea, Japan, and Russia?

COUNTERPOINT: “Spiritual Conquest”
in the Philippines

FOCUS: In contrast to the general trend of
political consolidation in early modern Asia,
why did the Philippines fall to a European
colonizing power?

backstory
By the fifteenth century, Russia had shaken
off Mongol rule and was beginning to expand
from its base in Moscow. Russian expansion
would eventually lead to conflict with China,
which by the fifteenth century was by far the
world’s most populous state. Self-sufficient,
widely literate, and technically sophisticated,
China vied with Europe for supremacy in
both practical and theoretical sciences. As we
saw in Chapter 14, the Ming dynasty had also
become a global power capable of mounting
long-distance sea voyages, yet by the 1430s
its rulers had chosen to withdraw and focus
on consolidating internal affairs. By contrast,
Japan was deeply fractured in the fifteenth
century, its many districts and several islands
subject to feuding warlords. Korea, though
less densely populated than either of its neigh-
bors east or west, was relatively unified under
the Yi dynasty, which came to power in the
late fourteenth century. In mainland South-
east Asia, several Buddhist kingdoms were
by this time undergoing a major reconfigu-
ration. Neo-Confucianism was on the rise in
Vietnam. The Philippine Islands, meanwhile,
remained politically and ethnically diverse, in
part due to their complex geography.

World in the Making This life-size portrait from
Beijing’s Palace Museum depicts China’s Emperor
Qianlong (1711–1799) at a grand old age. The use
of perspective—the illusion of three-dimensional
space— reflects the influence of European
Jesuit artists who resided at court after the early
seventeenth century, but the emperor’s pose reflects
a Chinese taste for a more statuelike representation
of imperial power. His elaborate silk garments and
pearl-encrusted headgear and necklace suggest the
wealth of the Qing treasury, which despite massive
expenditures and waste, boasted a huge surplus in
silver for much of the emperor’s reign.

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Wang Yangming (1472–1529) had trouble on his hands. As governor of China’s
Jiangxi Province, he had to collect taxes and keep the peace for his Ming overlords.
Wang had risen through the ranks of the civil service through a mix of intelligence,
connections, and ambition. Now he was faced with a rebellious prince, Zhu
Chen-hao, and his followers. Acting as general, Wang successfully attacked the
rebels with every weapon at hand, including bronze cannon probably copied from
the Portuguese. More important than the suppression of the rebellion was the
aftermath. Wang chose not to terrorize the populace as his predecessors might have,
but instead moved quickly to rebuild, pardoning many rebels and winning their
loyalty to the Ming emperor

.

Wang Yangming’s effective governorship won praise, but he was better known as
a philosopher. Wang was among the most renowned Neo-Confucianists of early
modern China. As described in Chapter 14, the philosophical movement known as
Neo-Confucianism revived an ancient tradition. The fifth-century B.C.E. Chinese
philosopher Kongzi (Latinized as “Confucius”) envisioned the ideal earthly society
as a mirror of divine harmony. Although he prescribed ancestor worship, Confucius
developed a system of ethics rather than a formal religion. Education and scientific
experimentation were highly valued, but so was submission to social superiors.
Some of Confucius’s ideas were elaborated by his fourth-century B.C.E. successor,
Mengzi, or Mencius, whose commentaries inspired Wang Yangming.

As the Jiangxi episode suggested, Wang was as much a man of action as he was a
scholar. In fact, Wang saw no clear distinction between his military and intellectual
lives, arguing that only by doing could one learn. In addition to challenging
scholarly reflection in matters of policy, Wang argued that individuals possessed
an innate sense of right and wrong, something akin to the Western notion of
conscience. Some scholars have argued that at least one result of the diffusion of
Wang’s teachings was a heightened sense among Chinese elites of the worthiness of
the individual.

Neo-Confucianists sought to restore order to societies they felt had descended
into chaos. For Wang, putting Ming society back on track required forceful action.
Other Neo-Confucianists favored reflection, but Wang’s activism struck the right
chord in early sixteenth-century China, and was widely promoted by educators,
first in China and later in Korea and Vietnam. Japan borrowed more selectively
from Neo-Confucianism. W hen blended with Buddhist beliefs already rooted in all
these regions, Neo-Confucianism emerged as a religion of state. A foundation for
many legal as well as moral principles, it helped hold together millions of ethnically
diverse and socially divided people. In other parts of Asia, however, religion fueled

Neo-Confucianism 
The revival of
Confucius’s ancient
philosophy stressing
agrarian life, harmony
between ruler and
ruled, and respect for
elders and ancestors.

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division and conflict. The Philippines were a battleground between recent converts
to Islam and Roman Catholicism, and Russia was defining itself as a revived
Byzantium, expanding frontiers across Asia in the name of Orthodox Christianity.

Change swept Asia in early modern times, sometimes provoked by foreigners, but
mostly resulting from internal developments. The overall trend was toward political
consolidation under powerful dynasties. These centralizing governments sought
to suppress dissent, encourage religious unity, and expand at the expense of weaker
neighbors, often using new military technologies to achieve this end. W hole new
classes of bureaucrats and merchants flourished, and with them came wider literacy
in vernacular languages, support of the arts, and conspicuous consumption. Despite
some punishing episodes of war, rebellion, and natural disaster, the early modern
period in East Asia was arguably more peaceful than in most of Europe, the Middle
East, or Africa. It was an era of steady population growth, commercial expansion,
political consolidation, and cultural florescence.

1. What factors led to imperial

consolidation in Russia and China?

Who were the new rulers, and

what were the sources of their

legitimacy?

2. Why was isolation more

common in these empires than

overseas engagement, and what

were some of the benefits and

drawbacks of isolation?

3. In what ways did early

modern Asians transform their

environments, and why?

OVERVIEW QUESTIONS

The major global development in this chapter: The general trend toward politi-
cal and cultural consolidation in early modern Asia.

As you read, consider:

Straddling Eurasia: Rise of the
Russian Empire 1462–1725

FOCUS What prompted Russian territorial expansion?

Beginning in 1462, Moscow-based princes combined new weapons technology
with bureaucratic innovations to expand their holdings. By the time Tsar Peter the
Great died in 1725, the Russian Empire encompassed a huge swath of northern
Asia, stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific (see Map 20.1).

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Russian imperialism was conservative, with Russian Orthodoxy, the state
religion, serving as a kind of nationalist “glue” throughout early modern times.
Religious and cultural unity, plus a tendency toward isolation, inhibited efforts at
social and agricultural reform. A lthough Peter the Great would end his reign by
copying elements of western European governance and science, Russia remained
an essentially tributary, agricultural regime until the nineteenth century. Military
reforms were Peter’s most modern legacy. A lthough a modest merchant class had
long existed in cities such as Moscow and Novgorod, the majority of Russians
remained serfs , bound peasants with little more freedom than slaves.

serf A dependent
agricultural laborer
attached to a property
and treated much like
a slave.

0

0 600 Kilometers

600 Miles

PACIFIC
OCEA

N

ARCTIC
OCEAN

Barents
Sea

Bering Strait

Black Sea

C
as

p
ia

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e
a

Aral
Sea

Sakhalin I.

Yenisey

R.

Lake
Baikal

Ural R.

Volg
a R.

Le
na

R
.

Am
ur R.

Ob R.

JAPAN

QIN

G

EMPIR

E

SWEDEN

NORWAY

GREAT
BRITAIN

NETHERLANDS

O
�

O
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IR

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POLAND-
LITHUANIA

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ts

.

Altai Mts.

Tien S
han

S I B E
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I
A

KAMCHATKA
PENINSU

LA

Irkutsk

Moscow

Okhotsk

Beijing

Nerchinsk

Azov
Omsk

Samara

Tomsk
Astrakhan

Smolensk

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Kiev

Novgorod

St. Petersburg

MONGOLIA

KOREA

M
A

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IA

180ºW

160ºE

1

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120ºE100ºE80ºE60ºE

Tropic of Cance

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4
0
ºN

60ºN

By 1462

Added by 1533

Added by 1598

Added by 1689

Added by 1725

Rise of Russia, 1462–1725
Qing Empire, 1725

Trade route

Furs

Leather

Timber

Russian territory

Trade goods

MAP 20.1 R ise of Russia, 1462–1725 Beginning with the consolidation of Muscov y in the mid-fifteenth century,
Russia grew steadily to become one of the world’s largest—albeit least densely populated—land empires.

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Consolidation in Muscovite Russia
A fter the fall of Constantinople in 1453, some Russian Christians prophesied that
the principality of Muscov y was to be the new Byzantium, and Moscow the “third
Rome.” The Russian Orthodox Church was fiercely anti-Catholic and frequently
energized by apocalyptic visionaries. These visionaries inspired the grand princes
who ruled Moscow following the Black Death, and each seemed more determined
than the last to expand both Muscov y and the Orthodox Church’s domain. As the
early modern period progressed, the Ottomans and their allies threatened Russia
in the south, and the Poles, Lithuanians, and Swedes periodically threatened in
the west. The eastern Tatars, though in decline after Timur (see Chapter 14), also
menaced.

Russia took shape under Moscow’s grand prince, Ivan III (r. 1462–1505),
nicknamed “the Great.” Under Ivan the Great, the Muscovites expanded
northward, tying landlocked Muscov y to the commercially vibrant Baltic Sea
region. By the later sixteenth century, Russian monarchs allowed English, Dutch,
and other non-Catholic European merchants to settle and trade in the capital.
These merchants sought to circumvent the Ottomans and other intermediaries to
purchase East and South Asian fabrics and spices. A lliances with foreign merchants
gave Muscovite rulers access to artillery, muskets, and other Western gunpowder
technologies in exchange for furs and Asian textiles. These new weapons in turn
fueled Russian imperial expansion, mostly across the steppes to the east and south
(see again Map 20.1).

Russia’s next great ruler, and first tsar (literally, “Caesar”), was Ivan IV
(r. 1533–1584), “the Terrible.” A lthough remembered mostly for bizarre behav-
ior in his later years, Ivan IV was an effective monarch. In addition to conquering
cities in the distant territories of the Golden Horde in the 1550s and acquiring fur-
producing territories in Siberia, Ivan IV also reformed the Muscovite bureaucracy,
judiciary, and treasury. The church, always at the heart of Russian politics, was also
reorganized and partly subordinated to the state.

Ivan earned his nickname beginning in the 1560s when he established a personal
fiefdom called the oprichnina (oh-preech-NEE-nah), which, like the Ottoman
timar and devshirme systems, helped to break the power of nobles and replace them
with dependent state servants. This abrupt political shuffling crippled commercial
cities such as Novgorod, however, and generally threw the empire into disarray.
Meanwhile, wars begun in 1558 with Poland and Sweden went badly for Ivan’s out-
gunned forces. Things went no better on the southern front, and in 1571 Moscow

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fell to the eastern Tatars. Psychologically unstable during his last decade, Ivan
died of a stroke in 1584. Thanks in part to Ivan’s personal disintegration, which
included his killing of the heir apparent, Russia descended into chaos after Ivan’s
death. Historians call the subsequent three decades Russia’s “Time of Troubles.”

The Time of Troubles (1584 –1613) was punctuated by succession crises, but
it was also an era of famine, disease, militar y defeat, and social unrest, ak in to
Europe’s “seventeenth-centur y crisis.” Exploiting the dynastic chaos, the k ing of
Poland and Lithuania tried to place his son on the Russian throne. The prospect
of a Catholic ruler sparked Russia’s first massive peasant rebellion, which ended
w ith the humiliating occupation of Moscow by Polish forces. In 1613 an army
of nobles, townspeople, and peasants drove out the intruders and put on the
throne a nobleman, Michael Romanov (r. 1613–1645), founder of Russia’s last
royal line.

The Romanovs’ New Frontiers
The Romanovs rebuilt Muscov y and “rebooted” empire. Starting at seven million
in 1600, Russia’s population doubled by 1700. Impressive as this growth was, all
of Russia’s inhabitants could have fit into a small corner of China. Further, they
looked more to leadership from the church, which had regained authority, than
from the crown.

Tsar Peter the Great (r. 1689–1725) faced a powerful and insubordinate church.
He responded by prosecuting wandering preachers as enemies of the state. But
what made Peter “great” was not his harsh dealings with the church but his push
to make Russia a competitor on par with western European nation-states. To this
end, he stoked expansionist conflicts, imported arms and military experts, built
a nav y, and professionalized the armed forces. The Imperial Russian Army soon
became world class, but at great cost to taxpayers.

Peter, a man of formidable size and boundless energy, is often remembered
for his attempts to Westernize Russia, to purge it of “ backward” characteristics.
Boyars, or nobles, were ordered to shave their beards and change their dress, and
all courtiers were required to learn French. A new capital, St. Petersburg, was
built in the French style, complete with a summer palace inspired by Louis XIV’s
Versailles. But the empire’s destiny lay in Asia.

Russian expansion across Asia was not only a military process. The growth
of the fur trade reverberated through the ecosystems of Siberia, and settling the
steppes of the south and east entailed wrenching social change and transforma-
tion of the landscape. As frontier forts and agricultural and ranching colonization
advanced, indigenous nomads were massacred, driven out, incorporated into trade

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or tributary networks, or forced
to convert to Christianity. The
steppe frontier was a haven
for fugitives, too, including a
number of runaway serfs.

Foreign merchants now
entered Moscow from many
quarters, including the Middle
East and South Asia, yet the
government granted only lim-
ited access to Russian urban
markets and even less to interior
supply regions. Russian mer-
chants thus retained control
of imperial commerce despite
limited access to credit and pre-
cious metals. They used distant
ports such as Archangel, on the
W hite Sea, to trade leather and
other goods with the English
and Dutch. Furs were traded
to Europe, and also to the
Ottoman and Persian Empires.
By the time of Peter the Great,
England depended on Russian
timber, which it paid for with
gold (coming mostly from
Brazil by this time, as we will
see in the next chapter).

The Russian Empire, in sum,
drew from a blend of religious
self-confidence, demographic
growth, commercial links, and
the personal ambitions of its Moscow-based tsars. More gunpowder empire than
modern state, Russia nevertheless grew to encompass more terrain than any
other Eurasian state in its time, despite its sparse population. Repression of the
serf majority, however, would spark a new wave of rebellions before the end of
the eighteenth century.

Peter the Great A giant of Russian history, the Romanov tsar Peter the Great
spent much of his adult life trying to modernize and expand his vast realm,
which spanned the Eurasian continent. He is shown here, tall in the saddle and
supremely confident, at the 1709 Battle of Poltava (in present-day Ukraine),
where he and his army defeated Sweden’s K ing Charles X II. The artist depicts
Peter as blessed by an angel, whereas K ing Charles was forced to seek refuge
with the Ottomans.

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China from Ming to Qing Rule 1500–1800

FOCUS How did the shift to a silver cash economy transform
Chinese government and society?

By 1500, thanks to several millennia of intensive agriculture and a tradition of vast
public works projects, China was home to at least 110 million people, almost twice
as many as Europe. Moreover, China under the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) was
virtually self-sufficient. R ice and other foodstuffs, along with livestock and manu-
factured goods, were transported and redistributed throughout the empire by way
of canals, roads, and fortified posts that had been constructed by drafted peasant
laborers over the centuries.

Only silver was in short supply as Ming rulers shifted China’s economy from
copper or bronze currency and simple barter to silver money exchanges, especially
after 1550. Commercialization and a “hard money” economy necessitated links
to the outside world. China’s surplus of silk, in demand abroad since antiquity,
made exports profitable. Fine porcelain and lacquer wares also brought in foreign
exchange, as would tea later on. Western ideas and technologies arrived with
Christian missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century, but they barely influenced
Chinese culture. China, a technologically advanced and literate society, wanted
only silver from the West.

The final century of Ming rule, from about 1540 to 1644, witnessed a commercial
revival and improvement in standards of living. It also saw the return of mounted
enemies in the north, the Manchu. And, despite the prosperity, there were no
guarantees against the famine and disease that had plagued previous centuries.
China’s bureaucracy, though efficient by world standards, was inadequate to the
task of mass relief. Peasant families could at best hope for community cooperation
in hard times.

Late Ming Imperial Demands and Private Trade
The most important emperor of late Ming times was Wanli (r. 1573–1620). Wanli
was not known for being in touch with his subjects, yet one of his policies had global
implications. Wanli ordered many of China’s taxes collected in silver rather than
in the form of labor service, rice, or other trade goods. The shift to hard currency
eased price standardization across the empire. This was the “Single W hip Law” of
1581, so named since it bundled various taxes into one stinging payment.

Given China’s immense population, demand for silver soared. Portuguese and
Chinese merchants first imported Japanese silver, but the Chinese soon focused

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on Manila, the Philippine capital, where they exchanged silk, porcelain, and other
goods for Spanish-American silver coming from Mexico (see Map 20.3, page 749).
Thanks to Wanli, a Chinese commercial colony emerged in Manila.

The Manila trade was profitable for both Spanish and Chinese merchants. The
annual trans-Pacific voyages of the “Manila galleons” that left Acapulco, Mex ico,
each year loaded with the silver of Potosí (Bolivia), Zacatecas (Mex ico), and other
A merican mining centers, continued through the early nineteenth centur y. Still
more Spanish-A merican silver reached China from the West, traveling through
Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean basin to ports such as Macao
and Guangzhou (Canton). Since China, compared with Europe or India, valued
silver at a relatively higher rate than gold, profit could be made in almost any
exchange.

How China absorbed so many tons of silver without dramatic price inflation
remains a matter of scholarly debate. One outlet was government spending, for by
the early seventeenth century Ming rulers were outfitting costly armies. Defense
against Manchu and other northern raiders grew increasingly expensive, but in
the end proved ineffectual. Were fluctuations in silver income to blame for Ming
decline?

Echoing historians of the seventeenth-century crisis in Europe, scholars
long claimed that a dip in silver revenues after 1630 rendered the Ming almost
defenseless. More recent research, however, suggests no such dip occurred; silver
kept pouring in through the 1640s. Other factors must have trumped imperial
budget issues. Meanwhile, private merchants who supplied the military profited
handsomely from China’s silver-based economy, as did those who exported silk to
Manila. Only in the nineteenth century would China’s vast silver holdings begin to
flow outward in exchange for opium and other imports.

Trade to the outside world stimulated China’s economy in several ways, especially
in the coastal regions around Nanjing and Canton. Men labored on in rice fields
since taxes in the form of raw commodities were still required despite growing
monetization. Women, however, were increasingly drawn into the production of
silk thread and finished textiles for export. Women did most spinning and weaving
in their own households as piecework. This yielded essential household income
but also added to an already burdensome workload. A lthough Chinese women
worked for men, much like Dutch and Irish women in the linen industry, they were
now key suppliers to the global commercial economy (see Lives and Livelihoods:
Silk Weavers in China). A fter silk, China’s most admired product was its porcelain,
known as “chinaware” in the West (see Seeing the Past: Blue-on-W hite: Ming
Export Porcelain).

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LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS

Silk Weavers in China
Silk production, or sericulture, dates back several
thousand years in China, but export volume grew
most dramatically in early modern times, begin-
ning with the late Ming. It was stimulated in par-
ticular by the massive influx of Spanish American
silver after 1581. Most Chinese silk producers were
concentrated in the southeast, especially along the
lower Yangzi R iver (see again Map 20.2). Imperial
factories were established under the Ming in Nan-
jing and Beijing, but most tasks were spread among
peasants who worked at home at specific tasks as-
signed by private merchants. The merchants paid
peasants for their mulberry leaves, cocoons, spun
fiber, and finished fabrics.

Silk fiber is spun from the cocoons of the silk-
worm, produced by the worms’ digestion of large
quantities of mulberry leaves. The worms are frag-
ile creatures susceptible to diseases and in need of
constant supervision and feeding. Since they were
tended in environments susceptible to drastic tem-
perature changes, the worms’ welfare was a con-
stant source of worry.

Chinese Silk Weaving This rare detail from
a Ming ceramic vase shows a group of Chinese
women weaving silk on a complex loom. Both
highly technical and vast in scale, Chinese silk
production was unmatched in early modern times.

Manchu Expansion and the Rise of the Qing Empire
China in the last years of Ming rule faced crisis. Severe droughts crippled the
north from 1641 to 1644, but other factors also accelerated imperial decline.
Court intrigues created a vacuum of leadership just as Manchu raids grew most
threatening, draining resources as early as the 1620s. The Manchu reduced
Korea to tributar y status in 1637, and by 1642 they reached Shandong Province.

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Rather like the linen industry in early modern
Holland and Ireland, silk production in Ming and
Qing China was extremely labor intensive and
largely dependent on women. Caring for silkworms
was added to a host of domestic and agricultural
tasks, and spinning, which had to be finished rapidly
before the cocoons rotted, was often done late into
the night. Many households stopped interacting
with neighbors entirely until silk season had passed,
so intense and delicate was the work. Still, silk
making was attractive to peasants since it allowed
them to enter the market economy at greater advan-
tage than with food products, which were heav y and

susceptible to spoilage or consumption by rodents
and other vermin. Because the industry itself was
not taxed, many peasants planted mulberry bushes
and tended cocoons in order to meet the emperor’s
silver cash tax demands.

Commercial producers eventually developed
large reeling machines operated by men, but in early
modern times most reeling was done by women on
small hand-turned devices. Some peasants also
wove textiles, but often not those who produced
the raw fiber. With time, like European linen
manufacture, Chinese silk production became a
highly capitalized industry.

Questions to Consider

1. From its origins as an ancient Chinese art, how did silk manufacture change in early modern times?
2. How did silk weaving differ from sugar making in the Americas (Chapter 16’s Lives and Livelihoods)

or gold mining in West A frica (Chapter 17’s Lives and Livelihoods)?

For Further Reading:

Vainker, S. J. Chinese Silk: A Cultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004.
Min-hsiung, Shih. The Silk Industry in Ch’ing China. Translated by E-tu Zen Sun. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,

1976.

But it was a local rebel, Li Zicheng, who facilitated the Manchu capture of Beijing
in 1644. As the capital fell to Li, both the Ming emperor and his wife commit-
ted suicide. To rid the capital of the rebels, a Ming official sought Manchu aid.
The Manchus seized the moment and occupied the capital. Calling themselves
the Qing, or “Pure,” dynasty, the Manchus assumed the role of ruling minority
(see Map 20.2).

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SEEING THE PAST

Blue-on-White: Ming Export

Porcelain

Before industrialization, China’s artisans produced a

vast range of consumer goods, from ordinary metal

nails to fine silk textiles. After silk, China was most

renowned for its porcelain, a special variety of clay

pottery fired to the point that it was transformed

into glass. The center of this artisanal industry was

(and remains) Jingdezhen (JING- deh-juhn), in east-

ern Jiangxi Province. The combination of properly

mixed kaolin clay and high heat made it possible

for artisans, mostly men, to fashion durable vessels,

plates, and other items of extraordinary thinness.

Over many centuries Chinese painters and calligra-

phers developed a range of styles and techniques

for decorating porcelain, including the application

of cobalt pigments that emerged from the kiln in

stark blue contrast to the white base. The Ming de-

veloped this “blue-on-white” product specifically

for export, first to the Muslim world and later to

regions throughout the globe. Like the example

shown here from about 1600, many blue-on-white

porcelain products were decorated with Western

and other foreign images, including monograms

and pictures of the Virgin Mary.

Porcelain making continued throughout the

Qing period, as well, but with a shift toward individ-

ual artistic virtuosity rather than mass, anonymous

production.

Examining the Evidence

1. How did Chinese artisans adapt their product to match the tastes of foreigner buyers?

2. Compare this Ming plate of around 1600 with the example on p. 844 of “Wedgwood blue” china created in
industrializing Britain around two centuries later. W hat aesthetic and physical qualities were the British
manufacturers seeking to duplicate, and why?

Ming Blue-on-W hite Export Porcelain Like the
example shown here from about 1600, many blue-on-white
porcelain products were decorated with Western and other
foreign images, including monograms and pictures of the
Virgin Mary.

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0

0 200 Kilometers

200 Miles

PACIFIC
OCEAN

East
China
Sea

South
China
Sea

Bay of
Bengal

Yellow
Sea

Sea of
Japan

Philippine

Is.

(Sp.)

Borneo

Hainan

Taiwan

Ya
ng

zi
R.

Xi R.

Amur R.

Ganges R.

Ye
llo

w
R

.
Lake
Baikal

Lake
Balkhash

G

rand Canal

JAPANKOREA

BHUTAN

RUSSIAN
EMPIRE

SIAM
(THAILAND)

BURMA

VIETNAM

Gobi

Altai M
ts.

H
i m

a
l a

y a M
t s .

Tien S
han
Beijing

Ayudhya

Macao
(Port.)

Quanzhou

Dali

Kaifeng

Kaifeng
Nanjing

Jingdezhen

Kyoto

Lhasa
Chengdu

Xi’an

Guangzhou
(Canton)

Xiamen

Manila

Nagasaki

Seoul

XINJIANG

1760

1759

1730

1771

1767

1666

MONGOLIAILIPROTECTO�TE
1

757

MANCHURIA

AMUR

TIBET
1751

NEPAL
1751

QINGHAI
1724

SHANDONG

Manchu homeland, c. 1620

Added by 1644

Added by 1659

Added by 1697

Added by 1760, with
date of acquisition

Tributary state, with date
established

Great Wall

�e Qing Dynasty, 1644–1799

Porcelain

Silk

Tea

Major trade route

Trade goodsQing territory
6

0º

N

40
ºN

20º
N

Equ
ato

r

Tro
pic

of
Can

cer

140ºE 160ºE

120ºE

MAP 20.2 The Qing Dynasty, 1644–1799 The Qing were mounted outsiders who developed a vast Asian empire,
first by toppling the Ming dynasty to their south in 1644, and then by annexing interior regions one by one through the
eighteenth century. A lthough conquered regions such as Tibet and Mongolia were extensive, most Qing subjects lived
in the former Ming core, home to the world’s largest concentration of people.

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The transition to Qing rule after 1644 proved surprisingly smooth, and most
Chinese subjects’ lives were barely changed. A lthough the new Qing emperors
maintained a distinct ethnic identity and dealt harshly with dissenters, they tended
to improve on rather than revolutionize Chinese patterns of governance. As a result,
the empire quickly rebounded. Under Qing rule, Western gunpowder technology
was so fully embraced that it enabled the conquest of much of Mongolia, Tibet,
and the Amur R iver basin (claimed by Russia) by the 1750s. Tributaries from these
distant provinces trekked to Beijing to pay homage to the “pure” emperor.

The ascendancy of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) was cemented by Emperor
Kangxi’s accession in 1661. By the end of his rule in 1722, China was an expansionist
empire. Mongolia, annexed in 1697, was a base for this project, and a buffer against
Peter the Great’s Russia. By 1700 much of mainland Southeast Asia, formerly
defiant, paid tribute to the Qing emperor in exchange for political autonomy.
Kangxi’s successors followed his example, and by 1751 Tibet and Nepal fell to the
Qing. Chinese colonists were lured west with tax breaks and homesteads.

By the 1750s, under the long-lived emperor Qianlong (chee-YEN-loong), China
seemed to be reaching the limits of its military capability. Victory against southern
Siberian peoples demonstrated Qing military might, but trouble was brewing, and
not just at the fringes. Rebellions rocked the entire realm. Subjects in the core districts
grew restless, and guerrilla warfare and massacres of ethnic Chinese colonists became
constant features of frontier life. Qianlong clung to power until 1796, and despite
ballooning war costs, the emperor’s reign had boasted some of the biggest treasury sur-
pluses in early modern history. The silver of the Americas had funded Qing expansion.

Expanding trade and population growth altered China’s environment in the Ming
and Qing eras. Devastating floods were frequent, but their relationship to human
rather than divine action was rarely explored except by a few alert public works officials.
Deforestation, though not in itself a cause of floods, often exacerbated them. As peas-
ants cleared land for planting and cut forests for firewood and building materials, rain-
fall catchment diminished. Rains swept away exposed soil, creating massive erosion
upstream and river sedimentation downstream. The problem became so widespread
that Chinese territorial expansion and colonization in Qing times were in part aimed at
resettling peasants displaced by environmental catastrophes in the heartland.

Everyday Life in Ming and Qing China
Ming intellectuals were annoyed by China’s shift to commercialism. As in many
traditional societies (except Islamic ones), merchants and traders were an almost
suspect class, esteemed only slightly above actors and musicians. Chinese society

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as defined by Confucius empha-
sized production over exchange,
the countryside over the city,
and continuity over change or
mobility. The ideal was a linked
grouping of agriculturally self-
sufficient provincial units over-
seen by patriarchs. These units
were to be connected not by
trade, but by a merit-based gov-
erning hierarchy headed by a
divine monarch.

Within this model, even
peasant self-sufficiency was ex-
pected. Relying on the market
was a signal of distress. Men
were supposed to farm and
women were supposed to spin
and weave, both remaining in
their home villages and pro-
ducing only for their own consumption. Surpluses, a divine gift to the pious and
industrious, were not to be sold but rather offered to the emperor to express fealty
and submission. Bureaucrats and scholars, who lived from these surpluses, kept
track of them on paper.

Such was the ideal Neo-Confucian society. As we have seen, however, hard times
proved frequent in early modern China: droughts, floods, plagues, and even pirates
took their toll. Peasants suffered most, especially those driven to frontier lands.
Natural disasters, along with increasing state demands for cash taxes, compelled
many to migrate and sell their labor to whoever could pay. Evidence suggests that
many couples practiced birth control to avoid the financial pressure of additional
children.

Meanwhile, landlords and merchants were getting rich through market exchange.
The social inequity resulting from this process was in part what bothered Chinese
traditionalist intellectuals. W hat struck them as worse, however, was the market
economy’s tendency to reward nonproductive and even dishonest behavior. It was
the appearance of the uppity rich, not the miserably poor, that most bothered the
educated old guard.

Chinese Beggars A lthough most early modern Chinese artists depicted
idealized things of beauty, such as rugged landscapes and fanciful creatures in
flight, some turned their attention to ordinary people. This c. 1500 Ming image
depicts two wandering beggars, one apparently talking to himself and the other
brandishing a serpent, presumably his helper at winning alms from curious or
terrified passersby.

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The Flourishing of Art and Culture
As in Golden Age Spain, the arts and literature thrived in China despite political
decline. This seeming paradox was due in part to the patronage of merchants who
had made fortunes in the economic upswing, but it was also a function of the
surplus of unemployed, literate civil servants. Literacy grew in the late Ming era,
and with it came mass distribution of books, many on science. Novels and plays
were also hugely popular. The 1610 play The Lute included woodblock prints of
scenes for those unable to see a live performance. Some writers narrated travel
adventures in the interior for curious urban readers.

In the years around 1600, foreign visitors, notably the Italian Jesuit Matteo R icci
in 1601, impressed the Chinese court with their scientific knowledge, though not
with their religion. W hen he was not fixing European clocks brought as gifts for
the emperor (see page 698), R icci translated Confucius for a Western audience
and composed religious tracts in court Chinese. As in Mughal India, Jesuit court
visitors influenced painting styles, particularly royal portraiture. The Jesuits
remained important at court through the Qing era, but ultimately they won few
converts to Christianity.

Japan in Transition 1540–1750

FOCUS How did self-isolation affect Japan?

Located in the North Pacific Ocean, Japan was isolated from the rest of the
world for most of the early modern period. A brief opening in the sixteenth
century allowed foreign ideas and technologies to enter and permitted a large but
ineffectual invasion of Korea. Soon after 1600, however, Japan’s leaders enforced
seclusion and, like their neighbors in China, consolidated power internally. Japan
would not be reopened for over two centuries.

Most inhabitants of the three major islands, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku,
were peasants, nearly all of them subjects of regional lords, called daimyo. Above
Japan’s rice-farming peasant majority were warriors called samurais, some of
them mercenaries and others permanent employees of powerful daimyo. Above
the daimyo a group of generals, including the top-ranking shogun, jockeyed
to become Japan’s supreme ruler. By 1600 the royal family had been reduced to
ceremonial figureheads. In the peace that came with closure, Japan’s population
expanded and the arts flourished.

daimyo A regional
lord in feudal and early
modern Japan.

samurai The
hereditary warrior
who dominated
Japanese society
and culture from
the twelfth to the
nineteenth century.

shogun The supreme
military commander
in Japan, who also took
political control.

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Rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the
Unification of Japan
As we saw in Chapter 14, Japan’s so-called golden age of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries was followed by a breakdown of
central authority and a rise in competing military factions. This
chaotic period, heyday of the samurai warriors, lasted several
centuries. The daimyo sometimes succeeded in bringing a
measure of order to their domains, but no one daimyo family
could establish predominance over others.

At the end of the sixteenth century, several generals sought to
quell civil war and to unify Japan. One such general, Toyotomi
Hideyoshi (1535–1598), not only conquered his rivals but,
with the Kyoto emperor’s permission, assumed the role of top
shogun. A fter Hideyoshi died, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616)
seized control. Assuming the title of shogun in 1603, he
declared that thereafter rulership was hereditary. The Tokugawa
( TOH-koo-GA H-wah) Shogunate would endure until 1867.

With the shoguns in charge of Japan’s core districts, regional
lords were forced to accept allegiance to the emerging unified
state or face its growing might. Most submitted, and peace
ensued. Peasant rebellions occurred periodically, some-
times led by disgruntled samurais, but the state’s adoption of
Neo-Confucian ideals similar to those embraced in China
and Korea stressed duty and hierarchy over rights and individual freedom. Most
Japanese accepted the benefits of peace and worked within their assigned roles.

Hideyoshi’s rule had been notable for two things: tolerating Iberian Christian
missionaries and launching two invasions of Korea in 1593 and 1597. Ieyasu soon
reversed course, however, banning missionaries and making peace with Korea.
Contact with foreigners, particularly Europeans—called nanban, or “southern
barbarians,” a reference to their arrival from southern seas—was restricted after
1614 to the island of Deshima, near Nagasaki. Foreign families were not permitted
to reside on Japanese soil, and by the 1630s all missionaries and traders had been
expelled but one Dutch merchant. A representative of the Dutch East India Com-
pany, he was forbidden to discuss religion. Chinese bachelor merchants residing in
Nagasaki were treated with similar suspicion.

Was seclusion a response to Christianity? Not entirely, but it played a role. It was
not the foreignness of the nanbans’ religion that worried the shoguns, but rather

nanban A Japanese
term for “southern
barbarians,” or
Europeans; also
applies to hybrid
European-Japanese
artistic style.

0
0 200 Kilometers
200 Miles

Ku
rile

Is
.

Ry
uk

yu
Is

.

Hokkaido

Honshu

Kyushu

Shikoku

Okinawa

Sakhalin I.
Sea of
Japan
PACIFIC
OCEAN

Edo
(Tokyo)

Osaka

Nagasaki
Kyoto

Tokugawa Japan

A
m

ur R
.

JAPAN
KOREA

QING
EMPRE

RUSSIAN
EMPIRE

A I N U

Tokugawa Japan

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its believers’ insistence that it was the one true religion. Japan was religiously
pluralistic. One could follow imported Confucian principles, for example, yet also
be a Buddhist. Taoist ideas and rituals were also widespread. Beyond this, most
Japanese venerated nature spirits according to Shinto traditions.

Strictly monotheistic, focused on eternal salvation rather than everyday
behavior, and fully understood only by foreign specialists, Christianity looked
subversive. Priests and followers were executed in waves from 1597 to the late
1630s, when a Christian-led rebellion was suppressed. Then, the shoguns or-
dered unrepentant priests and converts publicly beheaded, boiled, or crucified.
The only remnants of Catholicism to survive were scattered names of priests and
saints, most of them venerated in older Japanese fashion by isolated peasants and
fishing folk.

Harsh as it was, the shoguns considered their repression of Christianity a
political rather than religious action. Stories of Spain’s lightning-fast conquests
in the distant Americas and nearby Philippines had long circulated in Japan, and
Dutch and English merchants played up alleged Spanish cruelties. Portugal’s
violent actions in India, A frica, and Southeast Asia were also well known,
suggesting to Japan’s rulers that Catholic missionaries, particularly Iberians, were
a spearhead for conquest. Indiscreet Spanish visitors suggested as much in the
1590s, confirming Japanese fears.

Following Christian suppression in the 1630s, the shoguns controlled the inter-
ior by forcing subordinate lords to maintain households in the new capital of Edo
(modern Tokyo). Wives and children lived in the city and its growing suburbs as
virtual hostages, and the daimyo themselves had to rotate in and out of the capital
at least every other year. A new version of court life was one result of this shifting
center, and with it grew both a vibrant capital city and a complex road and inn
system lacing Japan together. With Edo’s primacy, Osaka became a major market-
place. Kyoto thrived as a cultural center.

Only in the north was there any thing like imperial expansion after the
failed invasions of Korea. Japanese merchants had long traded with the A inu of
Hok kaido. The A inu (EY E-new), whose men sported tattoos and long beards, de-
scended from Siberians and probably also Austronesian islanders. The Japanese
considered them barbarians, and the A inu considered the Japanese treacherous.
By 1650 Japanese trading families had colonized southernmost Hok kaido, but
pressures on the A inu sparked rebellion. The Tokugawa state was reluctant to
waste money invading and fortif ying Hok kaido, but it did claim the island as
Japanese territor y. Only when the Russians threatened in the late eighteenth
centur y to annex A inu-inhabited islands farther north did the Japanese back

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their claims with force. A inu culture was violently suppressed, but sur vives to
the present day.

Everyday Life and Culture in Tokugawa Japan
Japan’s population grew from about ten million in 1600 to nearly thirty million in
1700, when it stabilized. This rapid growth was made possible by relative peace,
but expansion and integration of the rice economy contributed as well. R ice’s high
yields encouraged creation of even the smallest irrigated fields, and some daimyo
were skillful marketers of their tributaries’ main product. Most rice was sold in
cities and to elites, while peasants ate a healthier diet of mixed grains, vegetables,
and soy products. Urban-rural reciprocity was key, and processed human excre-
ment collected in cities and villages was the main fertilizer. As surprising as it may
seem, Japan’s system of waste collection and recycling was the most hygienic and
efficient in the world. W hole guilds were dedicated to the collection and marketing
of what in the West was regarded as dangerous filth. The water supply of Edo, with
over half a million people by the eighteenth century, was cleaner and more reliable
than that of London. Thus, this system improved overall human health as it created
connections between urban and rural Japanese.

New strains of rice introduced from Southeast Asia also allowed farmers to
extend cultivation. By contrast, American crops such as maize and peanuts were not
embraced in Japan as they were in China. Only sweet potatoes were appreciated,
and they saved millions of lives during times of famine. As elsewhere, agricultural
expansion and diversification in Japan also had negative ecological consequences.
Leaders recognized that deforestation intensified floods, and they responded to
this problem efficiently, organizing workers to replant depleted woodlands by the
eighteenth century.

Shoguns kept daimyos in check after 1615 by permitting only one castle in each
domain, and sharply limiting expansion, but peace encouraged other forms of
private construction. Like agriculture, Japan’s construction boom took a toll on
forests, as did increased shipbuilding. Vulnerability to earthquakes gave rise to
building codes and design innovations. Hence, in agriculture and construction the
leaders of Tokugawa Japan demonstrated the power of centralized government,
limiting growth, regulating construction, and shaping the connections between
their subjects.

A lthough most Tokugawa subjects remained peasants, a leisure class also
emerged, mostly concentrated in Kyoto. Merchants imported raw silk from China,
which Japanese artisans processed and wove. Other imports included sandalwood,
sugar, and spices from Southeast Asia. Consumption of fine fabrics and other

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products by the wealthy expanded the artisan sector, but did not spark industri-
alization. There was simply not a large enough wage-earning consumer class in
Japan to sustain industrial production. Instead, the trend was toward high-quality
“ boutique” goods such as samurai swords and ceremonial kimonos, rather than
mass-produced consumer goods.

One precursor to modern Japanese industrialization did appear in the produc-
tion of cotton cloth. Most traditional peasant clothing prior to the sixteenth century
had been made from hemp fiber, and only through trade with Korea and China had

Kyoto Festival This c. 1750 painting of a festival in Kyoto depicts not only the daimyo, or local lord, and his ox-drawn
cart and procession of armed samurai, but also daily goings-on about town. Many people seem to be engaged in
conversation indoors, although they are quite visible thanks to open screens, allowing them to view the procession.
Near the top of the panel, women and children stroll toward what appears to be a recitation. The use of patterned gold
clouds to fill in empty spaces was a convention of early modern Japanese art, and here it adds a fog-like layer to the
painting’s depth.

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cotton come to figure in Japan’s economy. Initially, cotton was in demand among
sixteenth-century samurai warriors, who used it for clothing, lining for armor,
and fuses for guns. Fishing folk also consumed cotton sailcloth. Trade restrictions
stimulated internal production of cotton textiles to such a degree that it reached
near-industrial levels by the eighteenth century.

Japanese commoners got by on a diet mostly of grain porridges. They consumed
little meat and no milk or cheese, and away from coastal areas where seafood and
fish could be harvested, most protein came from beans and soy products such as
tofu. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, grasses, fungi, insects, and larvae were roasted or
pickled for consumption in winter or in lean times. Tobacco, an American crop,
grew popular under Tokugawa rule. It was smoked by men and women of all classes
in tiny clay pipes, serving a social function much like the sharing of tea. W hen tea
was too expensive, as it often was, common folk drank boiled water, which was at
least safe. In all, the peasant diet in Tokugawa Japan, though short of protein, was
as nourishing as that of western Europe at the same time.

Women of every class faced obstacles to freedom in Japan’s male-dominated and
often misogynist society. Most were expected to marry at an early age and spend
their lives serving their husbands, children, and in-laws. Still, as in other traditional
societies, there were openings for female self-expression and even access to power
in Tokugawa Japan. At court, noblewomen exercised considerable influence over
succession and the everyday maintenance of proper decorum, and in the peasant
sphere women managed household affairs, particularly when men were away on
military duty or business. Widows could become quite powerful, especially those
managing the affairs of dead merchant husbands.

Emergence of a National Culture
With the growth of cities and rise of a leisure class, Japanese literature and painting
flourished, along with flower arranging, puppet theater, board games, and music.
The writer Ihara Saikaku (EH-hah-rah sigh-kah-KOO) grew popular at the end
of the seventeenth century with his tales contrasting elite and working-class life.
Saikaku idealized homosexual relations between senior and junior samurais, and
also those among actors and their patrons, mostly wealthy townsmen. In “The
Great Mirror of Male Love,” Saikaku described most of these relationships as
temporary, consensual, and often purchased. More than a hint of misogyny per-
vades the writings of Saikaku, but that sentiment is less evident in his “Life of an
Amorous Woman” and other stories relating the adventures of courtesans and
female prostitutes.

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In Edo, Kyoto, and especially the rice-trading city of Osaka, entertainments were
many and varied. Daimyo and samurai landlords came to Osaka to exchange their
rice tributes for money, which they then spent locally or in Edo, where they had to
pay obeisance to the emperor. Regional elites’ frequent visits to these two cities
helped make them economic and cultural crossroads for Japan as a whole. Many
samurais moved to these cities permanently as their rural estates diminished in
size across generations. Social tension arose as the old warrior class tried to adapt
to urban life, but fortunately, there was much to distract them. Some worked for
little compensation as teachers or policemen, but the wealthier samurais found
time for the theater, musical concerts, and poetry readings. Sumo wrestling
matches were popular among many urbanites,  as were board games, the tea
ceremony, calligraphy, bonsai cultivation, and landscaping. More costly pursuits
such as gambling, drinking, and sexual diversions were restricted to the so-called
Licensed Quarters of the major cities.

Early modern European visitors, especially Catholic priests, found the general
Japanese tolerance of prostitution, female impersonation, and homosexuality
shocking, but they made little effort to understand Japanese cultural attitudes
about sex and shame. Prostitution often was degrading to women and in some
places approached the level of sex slavery. Still, there were groups of female escorts
such as the geisha whom outsiders mistook for prostitutes. The geisha were
indentured servants who made their living as private entertainers to the wealthiest
merchants and landowners visiting or inhabiting cities. Geisha dress, makeup, and
comportment were all highly ritualized and distinctive. A lthough the geisha had
control over their adult sexual lives, their first coital experience, or “deflowering,”
was sold to the highest bidder. Many young male prostitutes also acted as female
impersonators in kabuki theater.

Kabuki was a popular form of theater that first appeared in Kyoto in 1603 as a
way to advertise a number of female prostitutes. Subsequent shows caused such
violence among potential customers that the Tokugawa government allowed only
men to perform. As these female impersonators became associated with male
prostitution, the state established official theaters that punished actors and patrons
who engaged in sexual relations. By the eighteenth century, kabuki performances
had become so “sanitized” that they included moralizing Neo-Confucian speeches.
Even so, play wrights such as Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724) retained
ribald humor amid lessons in correct behavior. At the other end of the spectrum
was the somber tradition of Noh theater, associated with Buddhist tales and Shinto
shrines.

sumo A Japanese
professional wrestler
known for his heft.

geisha A professional
female entertainer in
Tokugawa Japan.

kabuki A popular
Japanese theater
known for bawdy
humor and female
impersonation.

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Poetry flourished as never before during the era of seclusion, and poets such as
the itinerant and prolific Matsuo Bashō (1644–1684) were widely read. Here is a
sample of his work:

On my way through Nagoya, where crazy Chikusai is said to have practiced
quackery and poetry, I wrote:

With a bit of madness in me,
W hich is poetry,
I plod along like Chikusai
Among the wails of the wind.
Sleeping on a grass pillow
I hear now and then
The nocturnal bark of a dog
In the passing rain.1

Despite isolation, Japan was
among the world’s most liter-
ate societies in early modern
times. By 1700 there were
some fifteen hundred pub-
lishers active between Edo,
Kyoto, and Osaka, publishing
at least seventy-three hun-
dred titles. Books were sold or
rented in both city and coun-
tryside. Early forms of comic
books were circulating by the
eighteenth century, the most
popular ones resembling to-
day’s pulp fiction. Most books
were published on woodblock
presses despite the fact that
movable type was known
from both mainland Asian and
European sources—another
example of the fact that early
modern Japan, like China, had
little need of the West.

K abuk i Theater Tokugawa Japan’s ribald kabuk i theater tradition became
w ildly popular in major cities a fter 160 0. K abuk i actors were initially
prostitutes, fi rst young women and then young men, but objections from
the samurai led by 1670 to the creation of a class of older men licensed to
act in drag. In this c. 1680 screen painting by Hishikawa Moronobu, actors,
costume designers, makeup artists, washer women, and stagehands all appear
to be absorbed in their ow n litt le worlds. The painting seems to con fi rm
early modern Japan’s inward gaze and cultural and material self-su fficienc y.

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Korea, a Land in Between 1392–1750

FOCUS How did life for common folk in early modern Korea
differ from life in China or Japan?

The Korean peninsula falls between China and Japan, with the Yellow Sea to the
west and the Sea of Japan to the east. In 1392 Korea came to be ruled by the Yi
(or Choson) dynasty, which remained in power until 1910. Though unified since
the late seventh century, the Korean peninsula developed its distinctive culture
primarily during Yi times, partly in response to Chinese and Japanese invasions.
Korea had long been influenced by China, and had likewise served as a conduit
linking the Asian mainland to Japan. The guiding principles of the early Choson

state were drawn from the work of Confucius, as in contempo-
rary China and Japan, and grafted onto a society that mostly
practiced Buddhism. Still, Koreans regarded themselves as
a distinct and autonomous people, unified by a language and
culture.

Capital and Countryside
It was under the first Yi ruler that Seoul, then known as
Hanyang, became Korea’s capital. Following Chinese
principles of geomancy, the city site, backed by mountains and
spread along the Han R iver plains, was considered blessed.
Successive rulers drafted nearby peasants to expand the city
and add to its grandeur. By 1450 Hanyang boasted substantial
royal palaces, bureaucratic buildings, markets, and schools.

Choson leaders asserted central power by reducing Buddhist
temples and monasteries. Temple lands were confiscated and
distributed to loyal officials. A kind of Neo-Confucian consti-
tution was drafted advocating more radical state takeover and
redistribution of land to peasants, but nobles balked and tenant
farming persisted. Early modern Korea’s government mirrored
China’s in some ways, but a difference was the prominence of
a noble class, the yangban. Yangban elites staffed high coun-
cils and regional governorships. A uniquely Korean institution
known as the Samsa, a kind of academic oversight committee,
had power even over the king, acting as a moral police force.
Official historians, also drawn from the educated noble class,

yangban The noble
class in early modern
Korea.

0

0 90 Kilometers

90 Miles

Sea of
Japan
Yellow
Sea

Kor
ea

Str
ait

Hanyang
(Seoul)

Choson Korea

Japanese invasions, 1592, 1597
Manchu invasions, 1627, 1637

Ya
lu

R
.

H
an R.

CHINA

JAPAN
KOREA

Choson Korea

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were allowed to write what
they observed, keeping their
work secret from the king. But
most Korean bureaucrats were
selected via Chinese-style civil
service examinations. The pres-
sure was so great that some en-
terprising students hid tightly
rolled crib-notes in their nos-
trils. Military service proved
unpopular, partly because it
was associated with slavery,
and enrollment in school won
exemption.

Korea’s needed defense ap-
paratus was formed when the
nobles’ private forces were
consolidated into a national,
standing army by the mid-
fifteenth century. Professional
military men took exams,
and peasants were drafted to
serve in frontier outposts. The
Jurchen and other horse war-
riors periodically threatened
Korea’s northern provinces,
but many chieftains were co-
opted by the Choson state in
the fifteenth century. Another
defense strategy was to settle
the northern frontier with
land-hungry peasants from the
south.

A fter these early initiatives, defense became less of a concern, and the general de-
valuing of military service left Korea vulnerable by the time the Japanese invaded
in 1593 and 1597. Despite their massive forces and lightning speed, the Japanese
under Shogun Hideyoshi were soon driven out with aid from Ming China. The
Manchus were not so easily subdued, however. They invaded Korea in 1627 and
1636, rendering it a tributary by 1637. Still, Korea retained considerable autonomy.

Social Order in Early Modern Korea Korean life under the Yi dynasty was
marked by sharp class divisions, with a large portion of the poorer country
folk living as slaves. This eighteenth-century painting on silk shows a notable
individual on promenade, elaborately dressed, shaded, and otherwise attended,
as more humble figures kneel in submission in the foreground. The broad-
brimmed black hats and flowing garments were typical of high-ranking
Koreans.

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Korea exported ginseng, furs, and a few other items to China in exchange for
silk and porcelain, but its overseas trade was limited, and few Korean merchants
ventured beyond Japan or the nearby Ryukyu Islands, especially Okinawa. Korean
merchants in the south complained of Japanese pirates, the same ones who men-
aced China from the thirteenth to seventeenth century. The Choson government
attempted to suppress the pirates, but Japan’s fractured political system and occa-
sional sponsorship of the pirates rendered this fruitless.

Everyday Life in Choson Korea
Most Koreans under Yi rule were rice farmers. Wet-field rice cultivation expanded
dramatically in the south beginning in the fifteenth century thanks to government
initiatives and adaptation of Chinese techniques. Southern populations grew ac-
cordingly. Population estimates are debated, but it appears that Korea grew from
about five million inhabitants in 1450 to some ten million by 1600. In colder and
drier parts of the peninsula, especially in the far north, peasants relied on millet
and barley. As in Japan, these healthy grains were widely disdained as hardship
rations. Soybeans were later planted, adding a new source of protein. Koreans also
exploited seacoasts and rivers for mollusks and fish, and some raised pigs and other
livestock. Vegetables such as cabbage were pickled for winter consumption, spiced
by the eighteenth century with capsicum peppers introduced from the Americas.

Ordinary folk did not obsess over genealogies as much as the noble yangban class
did, but their mating customs could still be rigid. Some marriages were arranged, occa-
sionally between young children. Women appear to have lost considerable autonomy
with the rise of Neo-Confucianism, and widows were even presented with a knife with
which to kill themselves should they be sexually violated or otherwise dishonored.
According to some sources, Korean women more often used their suicide knives to
kill attackers. Female entertainers, or kisaeng—like their Japanese counterparts, the
geisha—were sometimes able to accumulate capital and achieve literary fame.

Teachers in Choson Korea took on the moral advisory role played by priests or imams
in early modern Christian or Islamic societies, and in the seventeenth century Neo-
Confucian scholars, following the lead of China’s Wang Yangming, attempted to reform
Korean society and government. Education was highly valued, and literacy widespread
(see Reading the Past: Scenes from the Daily Life of a Korean Queen). It was in the Choson
era that Korean students became outspoken critics of the state, launching a number of
mass protests in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Despite the ruling
class’s attachment to Neo-Confucian philosophy and suppression of Buddhist monaster-
ies, popular religious ideas persisted, especially in the countryside. Alongside some Bud-
dhist beliefs, mountain deities and sacred stones or trees were venerated, and shamanism
was practiced for divination and healing. Many healing shamans were women.

kisaeng A geisha-like
female entertainer in
early modern Korea.

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READING THE PAST

Scenes from the Daily Life of a Korean Queen
The following selection is taken from the diary of

Lady Hong (1735–1815), a queen during Korea’s

long Yi dynasty. Unlike most male authors of the

time, who wrote in Chinese (in part to show off their

education, much as many European men at this

time wrote in Latin rather than their own vernac-

ulars), Lady Hong wrote in the Korean script. She

also devoted great attention to the details of every-

day life, including close observations of individual

emotions. After stating that she began to write her

memoirs at the urging of a nephew, Lady Hong de-

scribes her birth and early upbringing:

I was born during the reign of King Yongjo, at

noon on 6 August 1735, at my mother’s family’s

home in Kop’yong-dong, Pangsongbang. One

night, before I was born, my father had dreamed

of a black dragon coiled around the rafters of my

mother’s room, but the birth of a daughter did not

seem to fit the portent of his dream.

My paternal grandfather, Lord Chong-hon,

came to look at me, and took an immediate fancy

to me, declaring, “Although it is a girl, this is no

ordinary child!” As I grew up, he became so fond

of me that he was reluctant to let me leave his lap.

He would say jokingly, “This girl is quite a little lady

already, so she is sure to grow up quickly!”

The womenfolk of our family were all con-

nected with the most respected clans of the day.

My mother came from the Yi family—an upright

clan. My father’s eldest sister was married to a

famous magistrate; while his second sister was a

daughter-in-law of Prince Ch’ong-nung; and his

youngest sister was a daughter-in-law of the min-

ister of the board of civil office. Despite these con-

nections, they were not haughty or extravagant, as

is so often the case. When the family gathered to-

gether on festival days, my mother always treated

the elder members with respect, and greeted the

younger ones with a kind smile and an affectionate

word. Father’s second brother’s wife was likewise

virtuous, and her esteem for my mother was ex-

ceeded only by that for her mother-in-law. She was

an outstanding woman—noble-minded and well

educated. She was very fond of me; taught me my

Korean alphabet and instructed me in a wide range

of subjects. I loved her like a mother and indeed

my mother used to say I had grown too close to her.

Source: Lady Hong , Memoirs of a Korean Queen, ed. and trans. Choe-Wall Yangh-hi (London: K PI, 1985), 1–4.

Examining the Evidence

1. In what ways do these passages reveal Neo-Confucian values?

2. W hat do these passages tell us about gender roles in a Neo-Confucian court society?

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Choson Korea appears unique among early modern states in that it was both eth-
nically homogeneous and heavily reliant on slave labor. Korea’s enslaved population,
perhaps as much as 30 percent of the total by 1550, appears to have emerged as a
result of several factors: debt peonage (self-sale due to famine or debt) and penal
servitude (punishment for crimes, including rebellion). Debt peonage and penal
servitude were not unusual in the early modern world, and both could be found in
neighboring China. W hat made slavery different in Korea was that the legal status
of the enslaved, once proclaimed, was likely to be inherited for many generations.
Self-purchase was extremely difficult, and slave owners clung to their chattels tena-
ciously. Korea’s rigid social structure, far more hierarchical than neighboring China’s
or Japan’s, only reinforced perpetual bondage. Moralists criticized slavery as early as
the seventeenth century, but it was not until forced contact with outsiders after 1876
that the institution died out. Korea’s last slaves were freed only in 1894.

Consolidation in Mainland Southeast Asia
1500–1750

FOCUS What trends did mainland southeast asia share with
China, Korea, Japan, and Russia?

Mainland Southeast Asia, encompassing the modern nations of Burma (Myanmar),
Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, followed a path more like that of China
than of the Southeast Asian islands discussed in Chapter 18. Overall trends on
the mainland included political consolidation, mostly by Buddhist kings; growth
of large, tribute-paying populations due to intensive wet rice cultivation; and a
shift toward cash crops such as sugar for export. Unlike the diverse islands of In-
donesia and the Philippines, which fell increasingly into the hands of European
interlopers (see Counterpoint: “Spiritual Conquest” in the Philippines), mainland
Southeast Asia in early modern times experienced gunpowder-fueled, dynastic
state-building.

Political Consolidation
The mainland Southeast Asian kingdoms in place by 1700 formed the basis for the
nation-states of today. As happened in Muscovite Russia, access to European guns
enabled some emerging dynasties to expand in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. Another catalyst for change was the rapid growth of global maritime trade
(see Map 20.3). Overseas commerce transformed not only traditional maritime
hubs such as Melaka and Aceh, as seen in Chapter 18, but also Pegu in Burma,

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0
0 600 Kilometers
600 Miles
M
A

LA
Y
PEN

IN
SU

LA

INDIAN
OCEAN

East
China
Sea
South
China
Sea
Bay of
Bengal
Yellow
Sea
Sea of
Japan
Philippine Is.
Borneo

Sri Lanka
(Ceylon)

Celebes

TimorJava

Sumatra

Taiwan
JAPAN
KOREA
QING
EMPRE

THAILAND

CAMBODIA

GOWATALLOQ

BURMA

LAOS VIETNAM

Beijing
Ayudhya

Luang
Prabang

VientianePegu

Lovek

Aceh

Melaka

Batavia

Macao
(Port.)
Quanzhou

To t
he A

mer
icas

From the
Americas

Nanjing
Hangzhou

Kyoto
Guangzhou
(Canton)
Xiamen
Manila
Nagasaki
Seoul

INDIA

Ya
ng
zi
R.
Xi R.
Ganges R.

M
ekong

R.

Sa
lw

ee
n

R
.
Ye
llo
w
R
.

Southeast Asian Trade, c. 1500–1700
Trade goods

Cinnamon
Co�ee
Copper
Co�on cloth
Gold
Metal wares
Opium
Pepper

Porcelain
Re�ned sugar
Rubies
Sandalwood
Silk

Silver

Spices
Tobacco

Burma, c. 1580
Laos, c. 1540
Vietnam, c. 1540
Dutch control , c. 1700
Spanish control, c. 1700
Large Chinese merchant
community
Trade route

100ºE

80ºE

Equator

120ºE
20ºN

40ºN

Tropi
c of C

ance
r

MAP 20.3 Southeast Asian Trade, c. 1500–1700 Maritime trade between the Indian Ocean and the western
Pacific went back thousands of years, but it grew exponentially in volume and value after 1500, when Europeans arrived
with gunpowder weapons and Spanish-A merican silver, eager to carve out trading enclaves and establish monopolies
on key commodities such as pepper and opium.

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Ayudhya (or Ayutthaya) in Thailand, and Lovek (near modern Phnom Penh) in
Cambodia. Here Buddhist kings used trade revenues to enhance their realms by
attracting scholars, building libraries and monasteries, and constructing temples
and images of the Buddha. Some saw themselves as incarnations of the Buddhist
ideal of the universal king. Funded in part by trade, a massive bronze Buddha and
supporting temple complex were built in the city of Luang Prabang, in Laos, be-
ginning in 1512. A solid gold Buddha was also commissioned. Such costly reli-
gious monuments, as seen elsewhere, are a reminder of early modern devotion and
wealth.

A notable example of mainland Southeast Asian state-building driven by com-
mercial wealth and access to European gunpowder weapons arose in southern
Burma beginning in the 1530s. Portuguese mercenaries aided a regional king’s
takeover of the commercial city of Pegu, and a new, Pegu-based Buddhist dynasty
with imperial ambitions soon emerged. Under K ing Bayinnaung (r. 1551–1581)
the Burmese expanded into Thailand and Laos. A fter building many pagodas, or
ceremonial towers, in his new conquests, admirers referred to Bayinnaung as the
“Victor of Ten Directions.” He preferred the title “K ing of K ings.”

Vietnam followed a different path, largely due to Chinese influence. Even
before Ming expansion southward in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries,
Neo-Confucian principles of law and governance had been adopted by Vietnam-
ese royalty under the Le dynasty (1428–1788). Yet, like Korea, whose nobility
had also embraced the kinds of reformist ideas promoted by Wang Yangming, the
Chinese veneer in Vietnam barely masked a vibrant regional culture whose sense
of identity was never in question. China brokered power-sharing arrangements
between the northern and southern halves of Vietnam in the 1520s, but new, com-
petitive dynasties, led by the Trinh and Nguyen clans, were already in the making.
Their battles lasted until the late seventeenth century and hindered Vietnamese
consolidation.

Mainland Southeast Asia resembled China more than neighboring islands
in another sense: high overall population. This was largely the result of wet-rice
agriculture and acquired immunity to many lowland tropical maladies. Massive
water-control projects reminiscent of those in China and Japan allowed Vietnam’s
feuding clans to field tens of thousands of troops by 1700. R ice-rich Burma was
even more populous, capable of fielding hundreds of thousands of troops as early
as 1650. Unlike China, most of the kingdoms of mainland Southeast Asia col-
lected tribute in the form of rice and goods rather than silver throughout the early
modern period.

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Commercial Trends
Exports from mainland Southeast Asia were not monopolized by Europeans, and
in fact many commodities found their principal markets in China and Japan. Sugar
cane originated in Southeast Asia, but refined sugar found no market until the late
seventeenth century, when growers in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand adopted
Chinese milling technology and began to export their product northward. Only
Taiwan competed with these regions for the Japanese “sweet” market. Tobacco,
introduced from Mexico via Manila, joined betel leaves (traditionally wrapped
around areca nuts) as a popular stimulant throughout the region by the seventeenth
century. Other drugs had more profound consequences. The Dutch were the first
to push the sale of opium from India in the 1680s (initially as a tobacco additive),
and it soon created a class of addicts willing to pay any amount of silver cash for it.

Imports to mainland Southeast Asia consisted primarily of cloth from India,
an old “monsoon circuit” trade good that fostered resident communities of mer-
chants, most of them Muslims, from as far away as Gujarat, in the Arabian Sea.
Chinese merchants brought cloth, too, along with metal wares, porcelain, and a
wide range of goods acquired through interregional trade. On the whole, the
Chinese were more competitive and successful middlemen in mainland Southeast
Asia than Europeans in early modern times.

Interregional commerce and urbanization enabled many Southeast Asian
women to engage in trade as well, a pattern that fit well with the general regional
tendency toward female independence noted in Chapter 18. The wives and concu-
bines of long-distance merchants not only carried on important business transac-
tions on land, they traveled with their husbands and lovers at sea. Some Southeast
Asian women were autonomous intermediaries for European merchants, most fa-
mously Soet Pegu, a Burmese woman who lived in the Thai capital of Ayudhya. She
was the principal broker for the Dutch in Thailand (then known as Siam) for many
years beginning in the 1640s.

The global financial crisis of the seventeenth century, coupled with regional
wars, epidemics, and droughts, left mainland Southeast Asia in a weakened state.
Burma contracted considerably, as did neighboring Siam. Laos survived as a sep-
arate kingdom only due to its isolation from these two neighbors, and it became
even more inward-looking. Cambodia was similarly introverted under K hmer
rule, and Vietnam suffered a severe decline. Mainland Southeast Asia submitted to
paying tribute to China’s Qing emperors in the course of the eighteenth century.
In spite of the trend toward contraction, however, the region remained nearly im-
pervious to European designs.

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COUNTERPOINT: “Spiritual Conquest” in the
Philippines

FOCUS in contrast to the general trend of political consolidation
in early modern asia, why did the philippines fall to a European
colonizing power?

The Philippine Islands are a large volcanic chain in the tropical waters of the west-
ern Pacific (see Map 20.4). Like most Southeast Asian islands, the Philippines were
settled by ancient Austronesian mariners. With the exception of a few small Islamic
sultanates in the southern islands, the Philippines at the dawn of early modern
times had no dynastic rulers or overarching religious or ethical traditions to unify

0

0 1000 Kilometers

1000 Miles

PACIFIC OCEAN

ATLANTIC
OCEANGulf of

Mexico

Caribbean Sea

Galápagos Is.

Marquesas Is.

Tahiti

Society Is.

New Zealand

Philippine
Is.

Marshall Is.

Mariana Is.

Guam

Solomon Is.

Fiji
Samoa

Hawaiian Is.

Kiribati

Tuvalu

CHINA
JAPAN

Acapulco
Manila

Guangzhou
(Canton)
Beijing
Silver

Gold, Lacquerware, Metal wares, Porcelain, Silk, Spices

See
Inset
Map

Arica

Lima

Mexico City
Zacatecas

Potosí

MEXICO

NEW
G�NADA

PERU

NEW SPAIN

Route of Manila Galleon

Other transport of silver

Maritime Trade Between the Americas
and Asia, 1571–1800

Silver mine

Spanish territory

NORTH
AMERICA

SOUTH
AMERICA

160ºE

140ºE

120ºE 160ºW 140ºW 120ºW

20ºN

20ºS

40ºS

Tropic of Capricorn

Equator
0º

Tropic of Cancer

100ºW 80ºW 60ºW 40ºW180ºW

0

0 100 km

100 mi

Manila

Sulu Sea

South
China
Sea
Borneo

Palawan

Luzon

Visayas
Archipelago

Su
lu

Is.

Mindanao

Philippine
Islands

Catholic mission, c. 1700

15ºN

10ºN

5ºN
125ºE

120ºE

MAP 20.4 Maritime Trade Between the A mericas and Asia, 1571–1800 One of the most notable changes in the
early modern period was the permanent linking of East Asia and the A mericas through the so-called Manila galleon.
A lthough only a few of these lumbering Spanish ships traversed the vast Pacific each year after 1571, they brought
millions of ounces of silver to Manila, where the silver was exchanged for Chinese silk, porcelain, and many other
commodities. These luxury goods were then shipped east to Mexico. Some were sold in Spanish A merica, but most
were reshipped to Spain for consumption or resale.

CO U N T ER P O I N T: “S p i r i t u a l C o n q u e s t ” i n t h e Ph i l i p p i n e s 753

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its population. Over one hundred languages were spoken throughout the archipel-
ago, and material culture differed from one river valley or island to the next.

K in-based political units rarely exceeded two thousand members, and most
were mutually hostile. The islands’ total population was probably between one
and two million in 1500, and acquired immunity to Old World diseases appears
to have been robust, certainly superior to that of Europeans who came later. As
in most of Southeast Asia, women in the Philippines were relatively powerful and
autonomous in politics, business, and domestic affairs. Both slavery and long-
distance trade were established institutions, and some Filipinos used a writing
system on bamboo slats, now lost.

Filipino traders sailing large outrigger vessels maintained contact with the East
and Southeast Asian mainland, as well as with southern Japan, and Chinese mer-
chants had long operated small trading posts in the Philippines, including one
at Manila on the northern island of Luzon. Filipino exports included sugar and
cotton, along with a bit of gold panned from mountain streams. Imports included
metal goods, porcelain, spices, and textiles. Most Filipinos mixed farming with
fishing and the raising of small livestock, mostly pigs and chickens.

Arrival of the Spanish
Filipino life was forever altered when Spanish conquistadors arrived from Mexico
in 1565. By 1571 the Spanish had made Manila their capital city: a base for trade
with China and a springboard for regional conquest. Shipyards were established
at nearby Cavite to outfit the great galleons sent annually to Acapulco (see again
Map 20.4). Conquest was difficult in such a divided region, but these same divisions
prevented a unified effort to repulse the Spanish. European invaders managed to
gradually dominate many regions of the Philippines by making alliances with local
chieftains in exchange for gifts and favors. W here local headmen resisted, obedient
substitutes were found and placed in power.

Early Spanish colonists feverishly searched for gold, pearls, and other exportable
commodities, but their hopes fizzled before the end of the sixteenth century. There
was ultimately little to collect in the way of marketable tribute, and the small enclave
around Manila became, rather like a contemporary Portuguese outpost, the exclu-
sive preserve of Spanish merchants, soldiers, and missionaries. A few bureaucrats
eventually followed, linking Manila to its official capital in faraway Mexico City.

Outside Manila’s Spanish core a substantial Chinese merchant community
formed, and many of its residents converted to Catholicism and intermarried with
local Filipino elites. In the end it was Catholic priests arriving on the annual ships
from Mexico who proved responsible for what has come to be known as the “ spiritual

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conquest” of the Philippines. As a result of lax crown oversight, the absence of pre-
cious minerals or other high-value exports, and general Filipino receptiveness to

Roman Catholicism, before
the end of early modern times
a fairly small number of highly
energetic priests managed to
transform much of the archi-
pelago into a veritable theoc-
racy (a state ruled by religious
authority), amassing huge
amounts of territory and much
political power in the process.

Missionaries from several
Catholic orders learned to
preach in Tagalog, the language
of the greater Manila area, as
well as a few other regional
languages. Lack of standard-
ized languages and writing
systems complicated mission-
ary efforts in some places, as
did the racist refusal to train
an indigenous clergy, yet the
absence of a region-wide state
religion or code of ethics simi-
lar to Buddhism or Confucian-
ism probably eased acceptance
of Catholicism’s universalist
claims. Indigenous religion
persisted, however. In time,
Spanish and Mexican mis-
sionaries established hundreds
of rural churches and fron-
tier missions, most of them
concentrated in the northern
islands but some stretching
south through the Visayas ar-
chipelago and into northern
Mindanao.

A n Elite Filipino Couple This rare image from about 1600 shows a Filipino
husband and wife with the local label of Tagalog. A lthough Filipinos spoke
many languages and practiced many religions, the Tagalog language was
the one chosen by Spanish priests for evangelization. A longside Spanish, it
became the islands’ official language. The couple shown here displays dress and
grooming similar to those of Malay elites living throughout Southeast Asia. The
man holds the hilt of a kris dagger, a symbol of high status, while his wife stands
draped in the finest Chinese silk.

C o n c l u s i o n 755

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The Limits of “Spiritual Conquest”
Southern Mindanao and the Sulu Islands remained staunchly Muslim, however, and
hence enemy territory in the Spanish view. Periodic battles pitted self-styled cru-
sading Spaniards against the so-called Moors of this region, and some missionaries
related harrowing stories of martyrdom and captivity among “pirate infidels” rem-
iniscent of accounts from North A frica’s Barbary Coast (discussed in Chapter 19).
Indeed, hundreds of letters to Spain’s kings and to the pope describe these mostly
fruitless struggles.

Other threats to Christian hegemony came from bands of headhunters inhab-
iting the mountainous interior of Luzon and smaller islands, but despite these
challenges, the Philippines emerged from early modern times deeply trans-
formed, in some ways more like Latin America than any other part of Asia. It
would ironically be Filipino youths such as José R izal, trained by the Jesuit and
Franciscan successors of these early missionaries, who would lead the struggle to
end Spanish colonialism at the last years of the nineteenth century.

Conclusion
China, Japan, Korea, and mainland Southeast Asia were home to a large portion of
the world’s peoples in early modern times. Russia was, by contrast, vast but thinly
populated. In all cases, however, the most notable trend in northern and eastern
Asia was toward internal political consolidation. The Philippines, though rela-
tively populous, proved to be an exception, falling with relative ease into the hands
of Spanish invaders. Outside Orthodox Russia and the Buddhist regions of South-
east Asia, Neo-Confucian principles of agrarian order and paternalistic harmony
guided imperial consolidation. Despite some shocks in the seventeenth century,
steady population growth and relative peace in China, Japan, and Korea seemed
only to reinforce Confucius’s ideal notions of educated self-sufficiency and limited
need for foreign trade.

Internal changes, however, particularly in China, profoundly affected the rest of
the world, and some regional political trends were accelerated by foreign imports
such as gunpowder weapons. Wang Yangming, whose story began this chapter, was
just one of many new imperial officials to use these deadly tools of power. Western
weapons also aided Burmese and later Qing overland expansion in a way reminis-
cent of the Islamic “gunpowder empires” discussed in Chapters 18 and 19. Global
trade also proved susceptible to East Asia’s centralizing early modern policies.
China’s shift to a silver-based currency in the sixteenth century reordered world
trade patterns. Suddenly, the Americas, Europe, and many Asian neighbors found
themselves revolving in an increasingly tight, China-centered orbit. Virtually

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overnight, the village of Manila became one of the world’s most vibrant trading
crossroads. Manila was also an outlying colony, as will be seen in the next chapter,
of an increasingly powerful Spanish America. It was only in the nineteenth century
that many parts of East and Southeast Asia began to experience the types of out-
side domination long experienced by these colonies.

review
The major global development in this chapter: The general trend toward political and cultural consolida-
tion in early modern Asia.

Important Events

1392–1910 Yi dynasty established in Korea

1543 Portuguese reach Japan

1555–1581 Expansion of Burma under King Bayinnaung

1565 Spanish conquest of Philippines begins

1571 Manila becomes Philippine capital and key Pacific trading post

1581 Chinese Ming emperor Wanli issues Single Whip Law

1584–1613 Time of Troubles in Russia

1597–1630s Persecution of Japanese Christians

1601 Matteo Ricci demonstrates Western technology in Ming court

1602–1867 Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan

1614 Japanese contact with foreigners restricted

1627, 1636 Manchu invasions of Korea

1644 Manchu invasion of Beijing; Ming dynasty replaced by Qing

1661–1722 Qing expansion under Emperor Kangxi

1689–1725 Russian imperial expansion under Tsar Peter the Great

1751 Qing annexation of Tibet

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757

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KEY TERMS
daimyo (p. 736)
geisha (p. 742)
kabuki (p. 742)
kisaeng (p. 746)

nanban (p. 737)
Neo-Confucianism (p. 722)
samurai (p. 736)
serf (p. 724)

shogun (p. 736)
sumo (p. 742)
yangban (p. 744)

CHAPTER OVERVIEW QUESTIONS
1. W hat factors led to imperial consolidation in

Russia and China? W ho were the new rulers, and
what were the sources of their legitimacy?

2. W hy was isolation more common in these
empires than overseas engagement, and what
were some of the benefits and drawbacks of
isolation?

3. In what ways did early modern Asians transform
their environments, and why?

MAKING CONNECTIONS
1. How did imperial Russia’s rise compare with that

of the Ottomans or Habsburgs (see Chapter 19)?
2. How did China under the Ming and Qing

compare with the other most populous early
modern empire, Mughal India (see Chapter 18)?

3. How did Iberian missionaries’ efforts in the
Philippines compare with those in western
A frica (see Chapter 17)?

For further research into the topics covered in this chapter, see the Bibliography at the end of the book.
For additional primary sources from this period, see Sources for World in the Making.

M a k i n g C o n n e c t i o n s

• PART 3: The Early Modern World, 1450–1750

20: Expansion and Isolation in Asia 1450–1750
The Major Global Development in this Chapter: The general trend toward political and cultural consolidation in early modern Asia.
backstory
Straddling Eurasia: Rise of the Russian Empire 1462–1725
Consolidation in Muscovite Russia
The Romanovs’ New Frontiers
China from Ming to Qing Rule 1500–1800
Late Ming Imperial Demands and Private Trade
Manchu Expansion and the Rise of the Qing Empire
Everyday Life in Ming and Qing China
The Flourishing of Art and Culture
Japan in Transition 1540–1750
Rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Unification of Japan
Everyday Life and Culture in Tokugawa Japan
Emergence of a National Culture
Korea, a Land in Between 1392–1750
Capital and Countryside
Everyday Life in Choson Korea
Consolidation in Mainland Southeast Asia 1500–1750
Political Consolidation
Commercial Trends
COUNTERPOINT “Spiritual Conquest” in the Philippines
Arrival of the Spanish
The Limits of “Spiritual Conquest”
Conclusion
Review
SPECIAL FEATURES
LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS: Silk Weavers in China
SEEING THE PAST: Blue-on-White: Ming Export Porcelain
READING THE PAST: Scenes from the Daily Life of a Korean Queen

smi49245_ch18_640-677 640 07/13/18 01:20 PM

18

Trade and Empire in the
Indian Ocean and South Asia
1450–1750

641

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Trading Cities and Inland Networks:
East Africa

FOCUS How did Swahili Coast traders link the
East African interior to

the Indian Ocean basin?

Trade and Empire in South Asia

FOCUS What factors account for the fall of
Vijayanagara and the rise of the Mughals?

European Interloper

s

FOCUS What factors enabled Europeans to take
over key Indian Ocean trade networks?

COUNTERPOINT:

Aceh

: Fighting Back in
Southeast Asia

FOCUS Why was the tiny sultanate of Aceh able
to hold out against European interlopers in
early modern times?

backstory
For centuries before the rise of the Atlantic

system (see Chapter 16), the vast Indian

Ocean basin thrived as a religious and com-

mercial crossroads. Powered by the annual

monsoon wind cycle, traders, mainly Muslim,

developed a flourishing commerce over thou-

sands of miles in such luxury goods as spices,

gems, and precious metals. The network

included the trading enclaves of East Africa

and Arabia and the many ports of South and

Southeast Asia. Ideas, religious traditions—

notably Islam—and pilgrimages moved along

the same routes. The vast majority of the

region’s many millions of inhabitants were

peasant farmers, many of them dependent on

rice agriculture.

World in the Making In this exquisite miniature
painting from the 1590s, the Mughal emperor A kbar
receives the Persian ambassador Say yid Beg in 1562.
The painting is an illustration commissioned for
A kbar’s official court history, the Akbarnama, and
thus would have been seen and approved by the
emperor himself. The meeting is emblematic of the
generally amiable relationship between the Mughals
and their Safavid neighbors in Iran.

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0

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Born to Persian immigrants in the Afghan city of Kandahar, Princess Mihr un-
nisa (meer oon-NEE-sah), known to history as Nur Jahan, or “Light of the World,”
married the Mughal emperor Jahangir (jah-hahn-GEER) in 1611, at the age of
thirty-four. As the emperor turned to science and the arts, as well as to his addic-
tions to wine and opium, Nur Jahan assumed the ruler’s duties throughout the
last decade of her husband’s life, which ended in 1627. She had coins struck in her
name, and most importantly, she made certain that a daughter from an earlier mar-
riage and her brother’s daughter both wed likely heirs to the Mughal throne

.

As her husband withdrew from worldly affairs, Nur Jahan actively engaged them.
After a visit from the English ambassador in 1613, she developed a keen interest in
European textiles. She established domestic industries in cloth manufacture and
jewelry making and developed an export trade in indigo dye. Indigo from her farms
was shipped to Portuguese and English trading forts along India’s west coast, and
then sent to Europe.

In 1614, Nur Jahan arranged for her niece to marry Jahangir’s favorite son, Prince
Khurram, known after he became emperor as Shah Jahan. The niece, who took the
title Mumtaz Mahal, died in 1631 while bearing her fourteenth child. Heartbroken,
Shah Jahan went into mourning and commissioned a mausoleum for Mumtaz in
the city of Agra. This graceful structure of white marble is known as the Taj Mahal.

Nur Jahan attended court and rode horses proudly in public without her husband.
Such conduct was not considered inappropriate for a woman of her status in her
time. Like other South Asian noblewomen, Nur Jahan expressed her rank through
public piety, commissioning religious buildings and elaborate gardens, several of
which survive. She played an active and sometimes controversial role in politics
until her death in 1644.

For most of the early modern period the lands surrounding the Indian Ocean re-
mained in the hands of powerful local rulers, as exemplified by Nur Jahan. Some,
like her, engaged in maritime trade. Trade on the Indian Ocean followed the
monsoons, alternating dry and humid winds generated by the seasonal heating
and cooling of air masses over Asia. To exploit these winds, Arab sailors developed
swift, triangular-rigged vessels that carried them to and from East Africa. Southeast
Asian sailors developed other vessel types influenced by Chinese shipbuilders.
Large populations, a wide array of luxury trade goods, and religious pilgrimage sites
such as Mecca and Benares, made this area a vibrant saltwater crossroads.

India, with its huge, mostly Hindu population, lay at the center of the basin’s trading
system. India’s black pepper was world-famous, as were its diamonds, but it was

monsoon A wind
system that influences
large climatic regions
such as the Indian
Ocean basin and
reverses direction
seasonally.

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India’s cotton fabrics that were most profitable. Gold from sub-Saharan Africa and
later silver from the Americas lubricated Indian Ocean trade. Nur Jahan minted
rupees in American silver and African gold.

American silver was first brought by the Portuguese, who arrived in the region with
three main goals: to monopolize the spice trade to Europe, to take over key shipping
lanes, and to fight the expansion of Islam and spread Christianity instead. For a
time they succeeded with goals one and two, but the third proved impossible—in
part because Portuguese arrival coincided with the emergence of Eurasia’s so-called
gunpowder empires, most famously the Mughals, Safavids, and Ottomans.1 Some
historians also apply the term “gunpowder empire” to the Portuguese and other
Europeans who took their powerful weapons abroad in the name of commerce and
Christianity. Control of the sea paid off, and with the decline of the Muslim gun-
powder empires in the eighteenth century, Europeans—primarily the English and
the Dutch—gained control of Indian Ocean shores.

OVERVIEW QUESTION

S

The major global development in this chapter: The Indian Ocean trading net-
work and the impact of European intrusion on maritime and mainland South Asia.

As you read, consider:

1. What environmental,

religious, and political

factors enabled trading

enclaves to flourish in

the Indian Ocean basin?

2. How did the rise

and fall of India’s land

empires reflect larger

regional trends?

3. How did Europeans

insert themselves into

the Indian Ocean trad-

ing network, and what

changes did they bring

about?

Trading Cities and Inland Networks:
East Africa

FOCUS how did Swahili coast traders link the east african
interior to the indian Ocean basin?

The history of early modern East A frica is best understood in terms of linkages
among Indian Ocean traders from as far away as China and the cities and peoples
of the A frican interior. Brokering A frica’s ties to Asia were merchant families and

644

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princes clustered in port towns and cities stretching from Ethiopia in the northeast
to Mozambique in the southeast.

By 1500, Muslims predominated in these East A frican trading ports. Some
were descendants of early Persian, A rabian, and South A sian overseas trad-
ers and missionaries, but most were native A fricans, mostly Bantu speakers.
Swahili, still spoken throughout this region, is a Bantu language laced w ith
A rabic terms. In early modern times, scribes recorded transactions in Swahili
using A rabic script. Thus, the societ y and culture of East A frican trading ports
blended A frican and A sian elements, reflecting the economic connections be-
t ween the t wo regions.

Portuguese and Ottoman traders arrived in these ports around 1500, but nei-
ther managed to control more than a few of them at a time. Dutch, French, and
English merchants arrived in the seventeenth century, but they, too, failed to mo-
nopolize East A frican trade. Offshore, the French established a minor presence on
Madagascar and then on much smaller Réunion, but neither island had been vital
to the ancient monsoon trading circuit. As free from each other as they were from
outsiders, the hundred-odd ports of East A frica’s Swahili Coast remained largely
independent until the imperial scramble of the late nineteenth century (discussed
in Chapter 24).

Port Towns and Beginnings
The East A frican coast had served as a regional crossroads for more than a thou-
sand years. A rchaeologists have determined that Muslim trader-missionaries had
reached many East A frican port towns by the eighth century C.E ., soon after the
founding of Islam. Seaborne trade in ivory, gold, and ceramics dated back to classi-
cal antiquity. Early modern East A frican traders continued this commerce, bring-
ing luxury goods from Central, South, and even East Asia to the coast in exchange
for A frica’s treasured raw materials. Traders also exchanged slaves for luxuries,
but the scale of the Indian Ocean slave trade seems to have remained small in
this period.

By modern standards, most East A frican trading ports were towns. The largest,
such as K ilwa, Sofala, Malindi, and Mombasa, had perhaps ten thousand inhabi-
tants at their height. Most towns were much smaller, home to only several hundred
permanent residents. Quelimane (keh-lee-M A H-neh) and Mogadishu fell some-
where in between, with a few thousand inhabitants. Nearly all of the region’s cities
were walled, but only the most opulent had mosques of stone or coral block rather
than adobe. Merchants occupied house blocks clustered within each city’s walls.

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In  exchange for tributes, local princes protected merchant families, negotiating
with inland chiefdoms for trade goods and subsistence items.

Indian Ocean Connections
East A frican traders exported elephant tusks and gold in exchange for South
Asian cloth, much of it from Cambay in the Gujarat region of northwest India
(see Map  18.1). They also imported Persian and even Chinese ceramics, along
with spices, tobacco (after 1500), and many other items. A frican ivory was prized

20ºN

20ºS

40ºN

60ºN

Equator

Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Cancer

100ºE80ºE60ºE40ºE20ºE0º 120ºE 140ºE

0

0 1000 Kilometers

1000 Miles

INDIAN
OCEAN

East
China
Sea

South
China
Sea

Bay of
Bengal

Arabian
Sea

Black
Sea

Caspian
Sea

Persian
Gulf

R
ed

Sea

Philippine Is.

Sumatra

Java

Bali

Banda
Isla

nds

Celebes

Maldives

Madagascar

Sri Lanka
(Ceylon)

Moluccas

Borneo

Malay ArchipelagoSu

m
m

er
m

on
so

on
wi

nds

W
in

ter
m

on
soo

n w
ind

s

Yang
zi

R.

Yellow
R.

Tig
ris R.

Euphrates R.

N
ile

R
.

In
du

s
R.

Ganges R.

M
ekong R.

Brahmaputra R.

Za

m
bezi R.

ETHIOPIA

MUTAPA

EGYPT

BURMA

VIETNAM

SIAM

CHAMPA

ACEH

INDIA

JAPAN

KOREA
CHINA

SAFAVID
EMPIRE

O�OMAN
EMPIRE

Gobi

Sahara

Himalaya Mts.

Aden

Malindi

Mogadishu

Mombasa

Kilwa

Sofala

Mozambique

Saga

Cochin

Banten

Pahang

Patani

Melaka

Aceh Pasai

Manila

Guangzhou

Ningbo

Beijing

Quilon

Calicut

Hampi

Cambay

Goa

Hormuz

Istanbul

Cairo
Alexandria

Jidda

A�BIA

GUJA�T BENGAL

GOLCONDA

Indian Ocean Trade, c. 1500

Spices

Delhi Sultanate, c. 1500

Vijayanagara, c. 1500

Arab and Indian trade route
Indian and Chinese trade route
Trade good

AUSTRALIA

EAS

T

AFRICA

ASIA

Cotton cloth

Porcelain
Bronze coins

Silk

Cotton
cloth
Dyes
Gems
Pepper
Spices
Sugar

Gold
Ivory
Slaves
Timber

Gems
Ivory
Spices

Cotton
Gems
Metals
Teak

Camphor
Pepper

Spices

Cotton cloth
Pepper

Diamonds

Camphor
Pepper

Sandalwood

Spices

MAP 18.1 Indian Ocean Trade, c. 1500 Often manned by East A frican and South Asian sailors, swift-sailing
A rab dhows carried traders, pilgrims, and luxury goods all over the Indian Ocean. Farther east, Chinese junks plied
the warm waters of Southeast Asia, trading porcelain and silk for spices and aromatic woods. The two trade circuits
overlapped, and interactions were largely peaceful, both circuits benefiting from the markets of opulent land empires
such as southern India’s Vijayanagara and sponsoring city-states such as Melaka.

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throughout Asia for its soft texture, and A frican gold, mostly from the southern
interior, was in high demand as currency. In much of India, women brought dow-
ries of gold when they married, displaying it in the form of fine jewelry. As we have
seen in previous chapters, A frican gold was an essential world currency prior to
European expansion into the Americas.

Most goods were carried in dhows (dowz), swift, single-decked ships with trian-
gular sails and about two hundred tons’ capacity. Traders used smaller vessels and
dugout canoes to navigate rivers such as the Zambezi and to ferry goods through
the treacherous coral reefs that lay between East A frica’s towns.

Despite the value of most Indian Ocean trade goods, shippers traveled only
lightly armed. A lthough piracy had long been known, and was even expected in
waters such as India’s Malabar Coast, violent theft at sea seems to have become a
serious threat to Indian Ocean commerce only after the arrival of the Portuguese,
who sought to establish trading monopolies through brute force. Their actions in
turn encouraged contraband trade and the fencing of stolen goods.

Chinese maritime visits to East A frica, though memorable, were few. As we
saw in Chapter 14, the famous Ming admiral Zheng He arrived first in Malindi
in the late 1410s, and then at Mogadishu in the early 1430s. Zheng He’s vessels
were enormous, more than double the size of the largest Portuguese ships to
arrive about a centur y later. In addition to gold and ivor y, the Ming admiral filled
his ample holds with local items, including a veritable zoo for the Chinese em-
peror. There is no evidence of attempts to conquer or to establish trading posts or
colonies, and after ward Chinese goods came to East A frica again only through
Southeast Asian intermediaries, often Muslim Malays. The Chinese retreat from
the Indian Ocean left a void that early modern European interlopers were happy
to fill.

Links to the Interior
Less often described than East A frica’s ties to overseas merchants were its links to
the A frican interior. Each port’s hinterland was small, but coastal towns and cities
did not simply face outward, as once believed. A lmost all Swahili town-dwellers
relied on nearby agricultural plots for survival, and many traded with independent
cattle herders. Swahili elites owned slaves purchased from the interior, who pro-
duced food for both their masters and themselves. The A frican products in great-
est demand overseas, however, came from the more densely populated southern
interior.

This was most true of gold dust, traded northward from the mouth of the Zambezi
R iver (see again Map 18.1). Its main sources lay in the Mutapa kingdom (formerly

dhow A small sailing
vessel with triangular
rigs used in monsoon
trade to East A frica.

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Great Zimbabwe), located on
the Zimbabwe Plateau. Here,
as in parts of contemporary
West Africa, men and women
panned for gold in the agricul-
tural off-season. A few mines
went underground. It appears
that an annual average of about
a ton of gold entered the Indian
Ocean trade circuit during the
sixteenth century.

Ivory was a different sort
of product; collecting it re-
quired the hunting and slaugh-
ter of wild animals. Although
modern demand for ivory has
led to the extinction of ele-
phants in parts of Africa, it ap-
pears that most of the tusks fed
into the early modern Indian
Ocean circuit were a byprod-
uct of subsistence hunting. Hunters went out only seasonally, and without firearms.
Bringing down an adult elephant with spears and longbows was extremely danger-
ous, and the compensation was not attractive enough to make it a livelihood. Aside
from the dangers of ivory procurement, interior peoples such as the Shona speakers
of the Mutapa kingdom were not easily pressured into market exchanges of any kind.
With no particular need for Asian products, they carried ivory and gold to the sea-
ports at their leisure.

By 1500 trade was thriving between East A frica and partners in the Indian
Ocean basin. The arrival of the Portuguese at about that time would disrupt that
valuable balance. With nothing to offer the well-off merchants of East A frica,
India, and the A rabian Sea region, the Portuguese turned to force. Using their
guns, stout vessels, and Mediterranean fort-building techniques, they sought to
profit from the Indian Ocean trade by impeding it—that is, by enforcing monop-
olies on certain items and taking over vital ports. Ultimately this worked better in
India than elsewhere, but the Portuguese tried desperately to gain control of East
A frican trade, and even to penetrate the continent’s southeast interior in search
of Mutapa’s gold. A lthough they failed to conquer Mutapa, the Portuguese traded

Exchanger of Cambay In this early-sixteenth-century watercolor, apparently
by a self-taught Portuguese artist, a merchant in Cambay, on India’s northwest
coast, collects and changes gold, silver, and other coins of many mint marks and
denominations. A tiny balance hangs behind him on one side, and a strongbox
seems to float in midair on the other. To the right, people of many faiths,
clothing styles, and colors come to seek his services. At least two are women
bearing gold coins.

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with its rulers and gained control of gold exports. As they had done in western
A frica, in East A frica the Portuguese concentrated fortified posts, or feitorias,
which they established at Mozambique, Sofala, and Mombasa. The Dutch and
English would soon follow.

Trade and Empire in South Asia

FOCUS What factors account for the fall of Vijayanagara and the
rise of the mughals?

A s in East A frica, dozens of independent trading enclaves in South A sia pros-
pered in early modern times. Many coastal cities and their hinterlands were
subject to Muslim sultans or Hindu princes, most of whom drew their suste-
nance from the merchants they protected. Trading populations were larger
than those of East A frica and more diverse. Religious minorities included Jains,
Jews, Parsis (Zoroastrians), and Christians. A s densely packed commercial
crossroads, India’s port cities maintained close ties to the subcontinent’s rich
interior, at this time home to t wo major empires. One was in ascendance, the
Muslim Mughal Empire in the north, and the other in decline, the Hindu
k ingdom of Vijayanagara (v izh-ah-ya-na-GA R-ah) in the south (see again
Map 18.1).

Vijayanagara’s Rise and Fall 1336–1565
Vijayanagara grew into an empire around 1500, only to disintegrate due to inter-
nal factionalism and external, mostly northern Muslim (although not Mughal)
attacks. Because of its swift demise and the near-total loss of its written records,
Vijayanagara remains one of the most enigmatic empires of the early modern
period. With Muslim kingdoms dominating much of the subcontinent by the time
the Portuguese arrived around 1500, Hindu Vijayanagara appears to have been
something of an anachronism. Like the contemporary Aztec and Inca Empires of
the Americas, Vijayanagara was neither a gunpowder empire nor an early modern,
bureaucratic state. Massive stone temples and lively artistic works hint at great
opulence and power, but the nature of daily life for commoners remains obscure,
although it has been reconstructed in part by archaeological work and from the
observations of early European visitors.

Literally, “cit y of triumph,” the k ingdom of Vijayanagara was said to have
been founded by t wo brothers in 1336. They chose the tow n site of Hampi, in

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the southern interior, to rev ive a purist version of the Hindu state. According
to legend, the brothers had been captured in northern frontier wars and
forced to convert to Islam in Delhi, but once back in their homeland they
renounced  that  faith and sought the adv ice of Hindu Brahmans. Hundreds of
temples were built along the Tungabadhra R iver gorge to venerate the state’s
patron deit y, Virupaksha (vee-rooh-PA HK-shah), among others. By 1370, the
empire covered most of southern India, w ith the exception of Malabar in the
far southwest.

W hereas Muslim and Christian rulers were generally regarded as pragmatic
“warriors of the faith,” Hindu rulers were often seen as divine kings. Their most
important duties involved performing the sacred rituals believed to sustain their
kingdoms. W hether in Vijayanagara or in distant Bali in Southeast Asia, Hindu
kingship relied on theatricality and symbolism quite removed from the everyday

Hampi This is an aerial view of part of Hampi, ancient capital of the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagara in south-central
India. The main temple rises in the smoky distance, marking the end of a long ceremonial promenade fronted by stone
structures. The Tungabhadra R iver winds alongside, and all around are hills strewn with granite boulders, giving the
city a primeval, almost timeless feel. Hampi fell to northern invaders in 1565.

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concerns of imperial administration. Hindu kings participated in warfare and
other serious matters, but their lives were mostly scripted by traditional sacred
texts. Their societies believed that they would ensure prosperity in peacetime
and victory in war by properly enacting their roles.

Life in Vijayanagara cycled bet ween a peacef ul period, when the k ing re-
sided in the capital and carried out rituals, and a campaign season, when the
k ing and his retinue traveled the empire battling w ith neighboring states and
principalities. Like so much under Hindu rule, even v ictor y on the field was
scripted, and the warring season itself ser ved as a reenactment of legendar y
battles. Each campaign started w ith a festival reaffirming the k ing’s div init y.
A lthough he was renow ned for his piet y, it was his martial prowess that most set
him apart from mere mortals. He was the exemplar of the K shatriya (K-SH A H-
tree-yah), or warrior caste, not the technically higher rank ing Brahman, or
priestly caste.

Celebrator y temple inscriptions record the names and deeds of many mon-
archs, but thanks to the records of foreign v isitors the Vijayanagara k ing we
k now most about was K rishna Deva R aya (r. 1509–1529). Portuguese mer-
chants and ambassadors traveled to his court on several occasions, and all were
stunned by the monarch ’s wealth and pomp. At his height, K rishna Deva R aya
controlled most of India south of the K rishna R iver. Most Indian diamonds
were mined nearby, prov iding a significant source of state revenue. But it was
the constant flow of tribute from the rajas, the subject princes, that built his
“cit y of triumph.” Imperial demand drove the rajas to trade their products for
Indian Ocean lu x uries such as A frican gold and ivor y. The k ing sat upon a
diamond-studded throne, and t wo hundred subject princes attended him con-
stantly at court. Each  wore a gold ank le bracelet to indicate his w illingness to
die on the k ing’s behalf.

Krishna Deva Raya welcomed the Portuguese following their 1510 conquest of
Muslim-held Goa (GO-ah), a port on India’s west coast that would become the
keystone of Portugal’s overseas empire. His armies required warhorses in the tens
of thousands, and an arrangement with the Portuguese would give him easier
access to horses from Arabia and Iraq. As they had done in western A frica, the
Portuguese happily served as horse-traders to conquering non-Christian kings in
exchange for access to local goods. Krishna Deva Raya used the imported mounts
to extend Vijayanagara’s borders north and south, and the Portuguese sent home
some of the largest diamonds yet seen in Europe.

Vijayanagara shared some features with the roughly contemporaneous Aztec
and Inca states—it was a tributary empire built on a combination of military force

Kshatriya A member
of the warrior caste in
Hindu societies.

caste A hereditary
social class separated
from others in Hindu
societies.

Brahman A member
of the priestly caste in
Hindu societies.

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and religious charisma. Subject princes were required to maintain armies and give
surpluses to their king at periodic festivals; material display reaffirmed the king’s
divinity. Proper subordination of the rajas was equally important. Krishna Deva
Raya was said to require so much gold from certain rajas that they were forced to
sponsor pirates to generate revenue. Most tribute, however, came from the sale of
farm products, cloth, and diamonds.

Above the rajas, K rishna Deva Raya appointed district administrators called
nayaks. These were usually relatives, and each oversaw several lesser kingdoms.
The system was intended to both replicate and feed the center, with each raja and
nayak sponsoring temple construction and revenue-generating projects. Large-
scale irrigation works improved agricultural yields, and at bridge crossings and
city gates, officials taxed goods in transit. The demands of the city and empire
placed great pressure on southern India’s forests and wetlands, and increased di-
amond mining sped deforestation and erosion of riverbanks. Environmental con-
sequences of expansion were noted but were not, as far as we know, a major cause
of decline.

Dependent as it was on trade, the expansion of Vijayanagara required a policy of
religious tolerance similar to that later practiced by the Mughals. Jain merchants
and minor princes were vital subjects since they helped link Vijayanagara to the
world beyond India. Brahmanic or priestly law largely restricted Hindu trade to
the land, whereas Jains could freely go abroad. Muslim coastal merchants were
also allowed into the imperial fold, as they had far greater access than the Jains to
luxury imports and warhorses. They had their own residential quarter in the capi-
tal city of Hampi. The early Portuguese policy in India was to exploit niches in this
preexisting trade system—not to conquer Vijayanagara, but simply to drive out
competing Muslim merchants.

Though connected to the outside world mainly through the luxury goods trade,
the empire’s economy was based on rice cultivation. W hile kings and Brahmans
reenacted the lives of the gods, most of Vijayanagara’s subjects toiled their lives
away as rice farmers. Around 1522 the Portuguese visitor Domingos Paes (see
Reading the Past: Portuguese Report of a Vijayanagara Festival) described work
on a huge, stone-reinforced reservoir: “In the tank I saw so many people at work
that there must have been fifteen or twenty thousand men, looking like ants, so that
you could not see the ground on which they walked.”2

Vijayanagara’s rice fed its people, but it was also exported. Special varieties were
shipped as far abroad as Hormuz, on the Persian Gulf, and Aden, at the mouth
of the Red Sea. More common rice varieties, along with sugar and some spices,
provisioned the merchants of many Indian Ocean ports, including those of East

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A frica and Gujarat. It was through the sale of rice abroad that many subject princes
obtained A frican gold for their king, with annual payments said to be in the thou-
sands of pounds each by the time of Krishna Deva Raya.

Following K rishna Deva R aya’s death in 1529, Vijayanagara fell victim first
to internal succession rivalries, and then to Muslim aggressors. In 1565, under
K ing R amaraja, a coalition of formerly subject sultans defeated the royal army.
Hampi, the capital city, was sacked, plundered, and abandoned; it was an over-
grown ruin by 1568. Remnant Hindu principalities sur vived in the southeast
but eventually fell to the expansionist Mughals. By the seventeenth centur y only
a few Hindu states remained around the fringes of South Asia, including remote
Nepal. The Hindu principalities of Malabar, meanwhile, fell increasingly into
the hands of Europeans and Muslim Gujarati merchants. Still, the memor y of

READING THE PAST

Portuguese Report of a Vijayanagara Festival
The Portuguese merchant Domingos Paes (PAH-

ish) visited Vijayanagara in 1520 with a larger dip-

lomatic and commercial mission sent from Goa,

the Portuguese trading post on India’s southwest

coast. Paes’s report of the capital of Hampi and

King Krishna Deva Raya’s court, apparently written

for Portugal’s official chronicler back in Lisbon, is

among the richest to survive. Paes describes a por-

tion of a multiday festival that served to glorify the

king and reaffirm the hierarchy of the state but also

to reenact cosmic battles:

At three o’clock in the afternoon everyone comes to

the palace. They do not admit everyone at once (they

allowed us to go into the open part that is between

the gates), but there go inside only the wrestlers

and dancing-women, and the elephants, which go

with their trappings and decorations, those that sit

on them being armed with shields and javelins, and

wearing quilted tunics. As soon as these are inside

they range themselves around the arena, each one

in his or her place. . . . Many other people are then at

the entrance gate opposite to the building, namely

Brahmins, and the sons of the king’s favorites, and

their relations; all these noble youths who serve

before the king. The officers of the household go

about keeping order amongst all the people, and

keep each one in his or her own place. . . .

The king sits dressed in white clothes all cov-

ered with [embroidery of] golden roses and wear-

ing his jewels—he wears a quantity of these white

garments, and I always saw him so dressed—and

around him stand his pages with his betel [to

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chew], and his sword, and the other things which

are his insignia of state. . . . As soon as the king

is seated, the captains who waited outside make

their entrance, each one by himself, attended by

his chief people. . . . As soon as the nobles have

finished entering, the captains of the troops ap-

proach with shields and spears, and afterwards the

captains of archers. . . . As soon as these soldiers

have all taken their places the women begin to

dance. . . . Who can fitly describe to you the great

riches these women carry on their persons?—

collars of gold with so many diamonds and rubies

and pearls, bracelets also on their arms and upper

arms, girdles below, and of necessity anklets on

their feet. . . .

Then the wrestlers begin their play. Their wres-

tling does not seem like ours, but there are blows

[given], so severe as to break teeth, and put out

eyes, and disfigure faces, so much so that here

and there men are carried off speechless by their

friends; they give one another fine falls, too. They

have their captains and judges who are there to

put each one on equal footing in the field, and also

to award the honors to him who wins.

Source: Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India (London: Sonnenschein,

1900), 268–271.

Examining the Evidence

1. W hat does the selection suggest with regard to social hierarchy and prescribed gender roles in Vijayanagara?

2. How does this description of divine kingship compare with, for example, the Incas (see chapter 15)?

Vijayanagara’s greatness and wealth lived on, to be revived much later by Hindu
nationalists.

The Power of the Mughals
Another empire was expanding rapidly in India’s north as Vijayanagara crum-
bled in the south. Beginning around 1500, under a Timurid (from Timur, the
famed fourteenth-century Central Asian ruler discussed in Chapter 14) Muslim
warlord named Babur (the “Tiger,” r. 1500–1530), the Mughal Empire emerged
as the most powerful, wealthy, and populous state yet seen in South Asia. By
the time of Nur Jahan in the early 1600s, the Mughals (literally “Mongols,” the
great fourteenth-century emperors from whom the Mughals descended) had
over 120 million subjects, a population comparable only to that of Ming China.

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Accumulating wealth from plunder and tribute and employing newly introduced
gunpowder weapons and swift warhorses to terrifying effect, the Mughals sub-
dued dozens of Hindu and Muslim principalities as they pushed southward (see
Map  18.2). Like many early modern empire builders, the Mughals were outsid-
ers who adapted to local cultural traditions to establish and maintain legitimacy.

0

0 400 Kilometers

400 Miles

INDIAN OCEAN

Arabian
Sea
Bay of
Bengal
Sri Lanka
(Ceylon)

Ind
us

R.

G
anges R.

Delhi

sacked by
Persian raiders,
1739

BENGAL

GUJA�T

PUNJAB

SAFAVID
EMPIRE
GOLCONDA

H
i

m
a

l
a

y
a

M t s .

M
A

L
A

B
A

R
C

O
A

S
T

R A J P U T S

M A R AT H A S

Agra

Panipat
1526

Lahore

Calicut
Goa

Bombay

Surat

Territory under Babur, 1525

Gains by Babur and Hamayun, to 1539

Gains by Akbar, to 1605

Gains by 1707

Mughal territory lost, by 1707

Major ba�le

�e Mughal Empire, c. 1700

7
0
ºE

60
ºE

8
0
ºE

90
ºE

20ºN

10ºN

30ºN

Tropic of Cancer

MAP 18.2 The Mughal Empire, c. 1700 Descendants of mounted Central Asian raiders, the Mughals expanded
their control over the Indian subcontinent after 1500 with devastating, gunpowder-backed force followed by ethnic
and religious accommodation. By 1700, the empire was approaching its greatest extent, after which rebellions and
invasions began to force it to contract.

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In terms of Indian Ocean commerce, their rapid rise drove up demand for luxury
imports, and, as in the case of Nur Jahan, some high-ranking Mughal nobles in-
vested directly in exports of items such as indigo and gems.

Despite rule by Muslim overlords, most South Asians remained Hindus in early
modern times, but those who converted to Islam enjoyed some benefits. Initially,
conversion to Islam brought tax exemptions, but these were suspended in the
late sixteenth century under Emperor A kbar. As we will see, during and after his
reign, lasting fusions between Hinduism and Islam emerged in various parts of the
subcontinent.

Like its religion, South Asia’s dynamic economy was little changed after con-
quest. Under Mughal rule, South Asia’s legendary textiles, grains, spices, gems,
and many other products continued to find buyers worldwide. Truly new markets
for Indian goods emerged in the Americas and parts of sub-Saharan A frica, sup-
plied by Portuguese and other European shippers. Lacking commodities Indians
wanted, European traders paid for South Asia’s goods in hard cash. As a result,
India, like China, enjoyed a consistently favorable balance of trade throughout
early modern times. A long with funding armies, this wealth from abroad fueled
construction, especially of religious buildings. With royal sponsorship like that of
Nur Jahan, many of India’s most iconic structures, such as the Taj Mahal and Red
Fort, were built along the Ganges R iver plain.

True to the Timurid heritage it shared w ith its Safav id Persian and Ottoman
Turk ish neighbors (discussed in the next chapter), Mughal rule in India was
marked by both extraordinar y court opulence and near-constant power strug-
gles and rebellions. Indeed, factionalism and succession crises eventually led to
Mughal decline. Soon after 1700, this decline in central authorit y left Mughal
India v ulnerable to European as well as Persian imperial designs. Persian raid-
ers sacked the capital of Delhi in 1739, and by 1763 the English East India
Company won rights to ta x former Mughal subjects in the prov ince of Bengal,
effectively exercising sovereignt y in the Indian interior. Despite these reversals
of fortune, life for the bulk of South A sia’s millions of poor farmers and artisans
scarcely changed.

Gunpowder Weapons and Imperial
Consolidation 1500–1763
The emperor, or “Mughal,” Babur spent most of his life defeating A fghan warlords.
Horses and archers were still critical in these early victories, as was Babur’s charis-
matic leadership, but by the 1510s some of the emperor’s forces were using match-
lock guns in battle. By the 1526 Battle of Panipat, outside Delhi, Babur’s armies had
perfected the use of cannons (see again Map 18.2). As Babur recalled nonchalantly

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in his memoir, the Baburnama: “Mustafa the artilleryman fired some good shots
from the mortars mounted on carts to the left of the center [flank].”3 Some sixteen
thousand men were said to have died in this battle, and Babur celebrated by plun-
dering the city of Agra. In 1527, although hugely outnumbered by a Hindu Rajput
alliance of some eighty thousand cavalry and five hundred armored war elephants,
Babur and his army won handily. Gunpowder weapons continued to prove decisive
as Babur and his successors drove south.

Humay un, as Babur’s son was k now n, took over the emerging Mughal Empire
at his father’s death in 1530, but he suffered setbacks. In 1535, he employed
Ottoman militar y engineers and Portuguese gunners to attack the k ingdom
of Gujarat, a major textile ex porter facing the A rabian Sea, but sources say his
crippling addiction to opium cost valuable time, forcing a w ithdrawal of troops.
In the course of this ill-fated adventure, an A fghan warlord rose from the ashes
to reconquer almost ever y thing Babur had won in the north. Humay un went
into ex ile in Safav id Persia, but he returned to India aided by gun-toting Safav id
forces. By 1555, Humay un had used this ex panded firepower to regain his fa-
ther’s conquests, only to die in 1556 after hitting his head on the stairs of his
librar y. Councilors decided the next Mughal would be Humay un’s t welve-year-
old son, A kbar.

India’s historic role as an interfaith crossroads was only heightened during
the long reign of A kbar (literally “the Great,” r. 1556 –1605). Though founded
by Timurid horsemen who regarded themselves as warriors of the Islamic faith
in the Sunni tradition, by the time of A kbar a quick succession of marriages had
linked Shi ’ ite Safav id and Hindu royalt y to the central Mughal line. For over
a centur y Persian remained the language of the court, and relations w ith the
Safav ids were friendly. Most notable, however, was the steady “Indianization”
of the Mughal emperors themselves. The wealth and diversit y of the subcon-
tinent, not to mention the beaut y and charm of Hindu R ajput princesses, ab-
sorbed them. A kbar was no exception: his son Jahangir, the next emperor, was
born to a Hindu princess.

Th is process of absorption was accelerated by A kbar’s eclectic personalit y.
Fascinated w ith ever y thing from yogic asceticism to the fire worship of In-
dia’s Parsi, or Zoroastrian, minorit y, by the 1570s A kbar began formulating his
ow n hybrid religion. It was a variet y of emperor worship forced mostly upon
high-rank ing subjects. Somewhat like the early modern Inca and Japanese royal
cults that tied the ruling house to the sun, A kbar’s cult emphasized his ow n
div ine solar radiance. Staunch Muslim adv isers rebelled against this seeming
heresy in 1579, but A kbar successf ully repressed them. In the end, A kbar’s faith
won few lasting converts—and left v isiting Jesuit missionaries scratching their

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heads—yet its mere ex istence demonstrated an enduring Mughal tendency
toward accommodation of religious difference.

Despite his eclecticism and toleration, A kbar clung to core Timurid cultural tra-
ditions, such as moving his court and all its attendant wealth and servants from one
grand campsite to another. He was said to travel with no fewer than one hundred
thousand attendants. He also never gave up his attachment to gunpowder warfare.
Recalcitrant regional lords such as the Rajput Hindu prince Udai Singh defied
A kbar’s authority in the 1560s, only to suffer the young emperor’s wrath.
A protracted 1567 siege of the fortified city of Chitor ended with the deaths of
some twenty-five thousand defenders and their families. A kbar himself shot the
commander of the city’s defenses dead with a musket, and his massive siege can-
nons, plus the planting of explosive mines, brought down its formidable stone
walls. A similar siege in 1569 employed even larger guns, hauled into position by
elephants and teams of oxen. Few princes challenged A kbar’s authority after these
devastating demonstrations of Mughal firepower.

By the end of A kbar’s reign, the Mughal Empire stretched from A fghanistan
to Bengal, and south to about the latitude of Bombay (today Mumbai; see again
Map 18.2). Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) was far less ambitious than his father
A kbar, and as we saw in the opening paragraphs to this chapter, his addictions and
interests led him to hand power to his favored wife, Nur Jahan, an effective ad-
ministrator and business woman but not a conqueror. Jahangir’s reign was nev-
ertheless significant. A devoted patron of the arts and an amateur poet, Jahangir
took Mughal court splendor to new heights (see Seeing the Past: Reflections of
the Divine in a

Mughal Emerald

). His illustrated memoir, the Jahangirnama, is a
candid description of life at the top of one of the early modern world’s most popu-
lous and wealthy empires.

New conquests under Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) and Aurangzeb (aw-W RONG-
zeb) (r. 1658–1707) carried the empire south almost to the tip of the subcontinent.
These rulers had made few innovations in gunpowder warfare; as in the days of
Babur, religion was as important a factor in imperial expansion as technology.
Shah Jahan was an observant but tolerant Muslim, whereas Aurangzeb was a true
holy warrior who called for a return to orthodoxy. Aurangzeb’s religious fervor was
a major force in the last phase of Mughal expansion.

The emperor’s main foe was Prince Shivaji (c. 1640–1680), leader of the Hindu
Marathas of India’s far southwest. Aurangzeb employed European gunners, whose
state-of-the-art weapons helped him capture several of Shivaji’s forts, but he mostly
relied on muskets, cannons, and other weapons designed and cast in India. Large
swivel guns were mounted on camels, a useful adaptation. For his part, Shivaji

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SEEING THE PAST

Reflections of the Divine in a Mughal Emerald
In the seventeenth century, foreign visitors repeat-

edly claimed that the Mughal court was the richest

in the world. The Mughal emperor and his family

wore delicately tailored silk garments and other

luxurious clothes, dripping with jewels. Many great

stones, such as the one pictured here, have sur-

vived in museums or private collections. Fabulous

gemstones weighing hundreds of carats were rou-

tinely exchanged and given as gifts to important

visitors, loyal subjects, and favored heirs.

India’s early modern rulers had direct access to

precious metals, diamonds, rubies, and pearls, but

emeralds—especially prized because green was the

color of Islam—were hard to come by. Old mines in

Egypt had long since played out, and sources in

Afghanistan and Pakistan remained unknown, or

at least untapped. Emeralds were found, however,

in faraway New Granada, the Spanish American

colony now roughly comprised by the Republic of

Colombia. Beginning in the late sixteenth century,

Spanish mine owners traded emeralds dug from

the high Andes to Spanish and Portuguese mer-

chants with ties to Goa, Portugal’s most important

trading post in India. From there, merchants traded

the stones inland to intermediaries and even to

the Mughal emperor himself. Once in the hands

of the renowned artisans of the world’s most opu-

lent court, raw Colombian emeralds were faceted,

tumbled, and carved into a wide variety of royal

jewels. Some were carefully inscribed with Arabic

verses from the Qur’an or special prayers. The one

pictured here contains a Shi’a prayer praising the

Twelve Imams. It was meant to be sewn into a ritual

garment, prayer-side in, as a protective amulet.

Examining the Evidence

1. How does this precious object reflect patterns of early modern globalization?

2. W hy would the royal owner commission a religious object of such magnificence?

Mughal Emerald

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was never able to field more than a few hundred musketeers, relying instead on
swift mounts and guerrilla raids. Despite a major offensive sent by Aurangzeb after
Shivaji’s death, the Marathas bounced back within a few decades and won recog-
nition of their homeland.

Only under Aurangzeb’s successor, Muhammad (r. 1720–1739), did Mughal
stagnation and contraction set in. Rebellions by overtaxed peasants and nobles
alike sapped the empire’s overstretched resources, and Muhammad ’s guns
proved increasingly outmoded. Europeans were by this time shifting to lighter
and more mobile artiller y, but the Mughals were casting larger and ever-more-
unwieldy cannons. A cannon said to be capable of shooting one-hundred-pound
balls, dubbed “Fort Opener,” was so heav y it had to be pulled by four elephants
and thousands of oxen. Most of the time, it remained stuck in the mud between
siege targets. Muhammad Shah finally lost Delhi and the great Mughal treasur y
to Iran’s Nadir Shah, successor to the Safavids, in 1739. The empire fell into disar-
ray until the reign of Shah A lam II, who took the throne in 1759, only to fall under
British influence in 1763. He ruled as a puppet of English East India Company
until 1806.

Typical of early modern empire builders, the Mughals shifted between peaceful
pragmatism and deadly force. They made alliances with subject peoples, offering
them a share of power and the right to carry on established livelihoods. W hen not
engaged in wars of expansion, emperors such as A kbar and Shah Jahan mediated
disputes, expanded palace structures, and organized tribute collection. Elite
tax-collectors and administrators called zamindars (SAW-mean-dars) lived off
their shares of tribute, ruling like chiefs over zones called parganas, similar to the
Ottoman timars (discussed in the next chapter). Somewhat medieval in structure,
this sort of decentralized rule bred corruption, which in turn led to waves of mod-
ernizing reform.

As in the similarly populous and cash-hungry empire of Ming China, Mughal
tax reform moved toward a centralized money economy (India’s rulers had long
enjoyed the privilege of minting gold, silver, and copper coins), stimulating both
rural and urban markets. By A kbar’s time, most taxes were paid in cash. Meanwhile,
European merchants, ever anxious for Indian commodities, reluctantly supplied
their South Asian counterparts with precious metals. As in China, this boost to
the Mughal money supply was critical, since India had few precious metals mines
of its own. The influx of cash, mostly Spanish-American silver pesos, continued
even after the 1739 Persian sack of Delhi, but it was arguably a mixed blessing.
As in contemporary China, and indeed in Spain itself, the heightened commercial
activity and massive influx of bullion did not beget modern industrialization in

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India. Instead, it bred increased state belligerence and court grandeur. In a sense,
the old “Mongolian” notions of governance were simply magnified, financed in a
new, more efficient way. Even gunpowder weapons became little more than objects
of show.

Everyday Life in the Mughal Empire
Despite its Islamic core and general policy of religious toleration, Mughal India
remained sharply divided by status, or caste, as well as other ty pes of social dis-
tinctions. India’s caste divisions, like the so-called estates of Europe (nobility,
clerg y, and commoners), were thought to be derived from a divine order, or hi-
erarchy, and could scarcely be challenged. Women’s lives were circumscribed
in virtually all but regal and wealthy merchant circles. The Hindu practice of
sati, in which widows committed suicide by throwing themselves onto their
husbands’ funeral pyres, continued under Islamic rule, although there is much
debate about its frequency. A kbar opposed the practice, but he did not ban it.
Polygamy, sanctioned by Islam and embraced by A kbar and other rulers, was
practiced by any man who could afford to support what amounted to multiple
households.

Lower-caste folk, meanwhile, suffered regardless of gender. Worst off were
the so-called Untouchables, who were relegated to disposing of human waste,
animal carcasses, and other jobs requiring the handling of filth. Like those in
many other parts of the early modern world, Mughal elites defined their own
dignity most clearly by denying it to those around them—all the while display-
ing their innate goodness and superiority through ritualized, ostentatious acts
of charity.

Most Mughal subjects were subsistence farmers, many of them tied to landlords
through tributary and other customary obligations. The Mughal state thrived
mostly by inserting itself into existing tributary structures, not by reordering local
economies. Problems arose when Mughal rulers raised tax quotas sharply, or when
droughts, floods, and other natural disasters upset the cycle of agricultural pro-
duction. Unlike the Ming and Qing Chinese, or even the Spanish in Mexico, the
Mughals devoted very little of their tremendous wealth to dams, aqueducts, and
other public works projects. W hat was new, or modern, was that paper-pushing
bureaucrats recorded farmers’ tax assessments.

Even in good times, most South Asians lived on only a small daily ration of
rice or millet, seasoned with ginger or cumin and—lightly—salt, an expensive
state-monopoly item. Some fruits, such as mangoes, were seasonally available, but
protein sources were limited. Even in times of bounty, religious dietary restrictions

sati The ancient
Indian practice of
ritual suicide by
widows.

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Building a Palace This Mughal miniature from the 1590s is quite unusual in depicting
ordinary working folk, along with a pair of animal helpers. Men of several colors, ages,
and states of dress engage in heav y labor, transporting and lifting stones, beams, and
mortar; splitting planks; setting stones; and plastering domes. Several women are sifting
sand or preparing mortar, and at center right are two well-dressed men who appear to be
architects or inspectors. Two similar inspectors appear in the upper right, and only in the
upper left corner do we glimpse the elite palace inhabitants, seemingly oblivious to the
goings-on below.

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kept most people thin. A fter centuries of deforestation, people used animal dung
as cooking fuel. Intensive agriculture using animal-drawn plows and irrigation
works was widespread, but mass famines occurred frequently. The Columbian
Exchange was marginally helpful. A fter about 1600, American maize and tobacco
were planted, along with the capsicum peppers that came to spice up many South
Asian dishes. Maize spurred population growth in some parts of India, whereas
tobacco probably shortened some people’s lives. Most tobacco was produced as a
cash crop for elite consumption.

India’s cities grew rapidly in Mughal times, in part due to stress-induced migra-
tion. Nine urban centers—among them Agra, Delhi, and Lahore—exceeded two
hundred thousand inhabitants before 1700. A fter A kbar’s rule, the shift to tax col-
lection in cash was a major stimulus to urban growth and dynamism. Even small
towns bustled with commercial activity as the economy became more monetized,
and all urban centers formed nuclei of artisan production.

Several South Asian coastal and riverside cities produced abundant cotton and
silk textiles. They usually followed the putting-out, or piecework, system, in which
merchants “put out” raw materials to artisans working from home. As in China
and northern Europe, women formed the backbone of this industry, not so much
in weaving but rather in the physically harder tasks of fiber cleaning and spinning.
Other, mostly male artisans specialized in woodworking, leather making, black-
smithing, and gem cutting. Perhaps the most visible artisanal legacy from Mughal
times was in architecture. Highly skilled stonemasons produced A kbar’s majestic
Red Fort and Shah Jahan’s inimitable Taj Mahal.

Some men found employment in the shipyards of Surat, Calicut, and the Bay
of Bengal, and others set sail with their seasonal cargoes of export goods and pil-
grims. Gujarati Muslim merchants were dominant in the Arabian Sea even after
the arrival of Europeans, but Hindus, Jains, and members of other faiths also par-
ticipated. Unlike the Ottomans, the Mughals never developed a nav y, despite their
control of maritime Gujarat since A kbar’s conquest of the region in 1572 (see again
Map 18.2). On land, by contrast, the empire’s military absorbed thousands of men.
Frontier wars with fellow Muslims and southern Hindus were nearly constant.
Christian Europeans were mostly seen as tangential commercial allies, technical
advisers, and arms suppliers.

In the northwestern Punjab region an internal challenge emerged, this time
mounted by leaders of a relatively new religious sect, Sik hism. Sik hism was
something of a hybrid bet ween Islam and Hinduism, but it tended more toward
the latter and thus found deeper support among Hindu princes than among
Islamic ones. Merchants and artisans were particularly attracted to the faith ’s
recognition of hard work and abstinence (as we saw in Chapter 14). Peasant and

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artisan followers of Guru Gobind
Singh (1666 –1708) rebelled in 1710,
and their plundering raids reached
Delhi. The rebellion was v iolently
quashed by Shah Farruk hsiyar (far-
ROOK-see-yar) (r. 1713–1720) in
1715, but sporadic raids and upris-
ings continued until the end of the
eighteenth centur y, when the Sik hs
at last established a separate state.

In sum, the might y Mughals ruled
over the richest and most populous of
Eurasia’s early modern Islamic em-
pires, and theirs remained by far the
most culturally diverse. Mounted warriors used guns to crush or intimidate
neighbors in new and terrif y ing ways, quick ly absorbing huge swaths of terrain
and millions of subject peoples. Yet generally, the resulting rule was neither in-
tolerant nor authoritarian. A s long as they paid cash tributes, regions could pre-
ser ve their religious diversit y and a degree of autonomy. Problems arose w ith
imperial overstretch, succession crises, and excessive ta xation. Rebels, partic-
ularly non-Muslim ones, increasingly shook imperial foundations. More subtle
but ultimately more serious were the inroads made by European commercial
agents, in particular those of Britain’s East India Company. These men, from
Connecticut-born clerk Elihu Yale to governor-general Robert Clive, formed
the spearhead of a new imperialism.

European Interlopers

FOCUS What factors enabled europeans to take over key indian
Ocean trade networks?

Direct trade for Indian luxuries had been a dream of Europeans since the days of
Marco Polo. Unfortunately, as the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama and his
followers quickly discovered, Europeans had little that appealed to South Asians.
With the exception of certain types of guns and clocks, the Portuguese had no
products that could not be had in some form already, often more cheaply, and guns
would soon be copied. Like Portugal, India was an ancient crossroads, but it was
far larger and richer, and vastly more productive. Complex trade circuits had long

0

0 40 Kilometers

40 Miles

Delhi

Samana

Sirhind

AmritsarLahore

Kalanaur

Sikh Rebellion, 1710–1715 Sikh homeland
Major ba�le

In
d

us
R

.

Sut
lej

R.

G
ang

es R
.

Yam
u

n
a R

.

PUNJAB
Site of Sikh

Golden Temple

Sikh Rebellion, 1710–1715

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linked India’s rich interior and bustling ports to the wider world. In such a crowded
marketplace, only silver and gold found universal acceptance because they func-
tioned as money. Frustrated, the Portuguese turned to piracy, financing their first
voyages by plunder rather than trade.

Portuguese Conquistadors 1500–1600
As would prove true in China, only precious metals opened India’s doors of trade
to newcomers. Even with powerful guns and swift ships on their side, the vastly
outnumbered Portuguese had no choice but to part with their hard-won A frican
gold and Spanish-American silver. They were fortunate in that silver soon arrived
in quantity through Portugal’s growing Atlantic trade with the Spanish, particu-
larly after 1550. Profits made in the slave trade were routinely reinvested in spices
and other goods from India. Meanwhile, the security of all exchanges was guar-
anteed with brute force, and in some places, such as Goa in India and Melaka in
Malaysia, outright conquest.

Genuine Portuguese conquests in Asia were few but significant. Crown-
sponsored conquistadors focused on strategic sites for their fortified trading
posts, mostly traditional mercantile crossroads and shipping straits not effec-
tively controlled by local princes. These feitorias resembled those already estab-
lished along the western coast of A frica, but most proved far more expensive and
difficult to maintain. The Indian Ocean’s sea traffic was huge, and competition
was fierce.

The Portuguese grand plan—never realized—was to monopolize all trade in the
Indian Ocean by extracting tolls and tariffs from local traders, regardless of polit-
ical allegiance. For a time they sold shipping licenses. If traders failed to produce
such licenses when passing through Portuguese-controlled ports, their goods were
confiscated. On top of this, they had to pay duties.

Within a half-century of da Gama’s 1498 voyage to India the Portuguese con-
trolled access to the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, South China Sea, and Atlantic Ocean,
along with many major coastal trading enclaves (see Map 18.3). Being so few in
a region of millions, the Portuguese strategy was pragmatic. By tapping existing
trade networks and setting up feitorias, they could efficiently collect spices and
textiles, along with what were essentially extortion payments. Friends would be
given silver, enemies lead. The method worked as long as the Portuguese faced no
competition and remained unified.

Despite early Ottoman attacks, serious competitors would not arrive until
about 1600. Portuguese unit y was another matter. Given the distance to Lisbon,
it proved impossible to enforce consistent policy in dealing w ith Indian Ocean
merchants and princes. Ironically, it was “ friendly” local merchants, rajas, and

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sultans—A rab, Hindu, and other w ise—who benefited most from Portuguese
sponsorship and protection. A s in western A frica, for several centuries the
Portuguese unw ittingly did as much to facilitate local aspirations as to real-
ize their ow n. W hat they grandly called the “State of India,” Estado da Índia,

0

0 900 Kilometers

900 Miles

20ºE

20ºS

0º

20ºN
40ºN
60ºN

80ºN

Arctic Circle

Tropic of Cancer
Equator

40ºE 60ºE 80ºE 100ºE 120ºE 140ºE

INDIAN OCEAN

PACIFIC
OCEAN

South
China
Sea
Bay of
Bengal
Arabian
Sea
Persian
Gulf

Red
Sea

Philippine Is.

Taiwan

Sumatra

Timor

Ambon

Java Banda
Islands

Celebes
Maldives

Socotra

Bahrain I.

Madagascar
Sri Lanka
(Ceylon)

Borneo
New

Guinea

M
o

l
u

c
c

a
s

BURMA

TIBET

VIETNAM
ACEH

MUGHAL
EMPIRE

JAPAN
KOREA

MING
EMPIRE

SAFAVID
EMPIRE
O�OMAN
EMPIRE

MALAY
PENINSULA

H
i m

a l a y a M t s .

Aden

Malindi

1520

Mogadishu

Mombasa 1505

Kilwa 1505

1506

1515

Mozambique 1507

Bantam
1522

Melaka
1511

1570

Ternate
1522

Makassar
1545

Fort Larantuka
1557

1520

Ayudhya

Syriam
1520

Macao

1555

Fuzhou
1547

Ningbo
1553

Nagasaki

Manila
Beijing

Cambay
1539

Bombay
1530

Diu

1535

Masulipatam
1570

Cochin
1503

Colombo

1518

Hooghly
1537

Goa
1510

Hormuz
1515

Muscat
1550

A�BIA
GUJA�T

Portugal’s Seaborne Empire, c. 1600
Trade goods

Cinnamon
Cloves
Co�on cloth
Cowry shells
Diamonds
Gold

Ivory
Nutmeg
Opium
Other gems
Pearls
Pepper

Porcelain
Sandalwood
Silk cloth
Silver
Tea

Portuguese claims
Spanish claims
Portuguese trading enclave
Date of acquisition
Portuguese trade route
Route of Spanish galleons
from the Americas

1535
AUSTRALIA

EAST
AFRICA

ASIA

Seat of

Portuguese

Viceroy

MAP 18.3 Portugual’s Seaborne Empire, c. 1600 With their castle-like sailing vessels and potent gunpowder
weapons, the Portuguese inserted themselves violently into the greater Indian Ocean basin beginning in 1498. From
their stronghold in Goa, they monopolized regional and export trade in luxury goods, either by shipping these items
themselves or by forcing others to purchase licenses. A fter 1580, the Portuguese were under Spanish rule, which linked
the lucrative Asian trade routes to New World silver arriving in the Philippines.

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gradually proved more “Indian” than Portuguese, though for a short time it was
highly profitable to the Crow n.

Portugal’s grand religious project was similarly absorbed. In 1498 Vasco da Gama
expressed confidence in the spread of Roman Catholicism to East Africa: “On
Easter day the Moors [Muslims] we had taken captive told us that in the town of
Malindi [a Swahili port on the coast of Kenya] there were four vessels belonging to
Christians from India, and if we should like to convey them there they would give us
Christian pilots, and everything else we might need, including meats, water, wood,
and other things.” 4 Da Gama wrongly took this to mean that there was a preexist-
ing Christian base or network in the region upon which the Catholic Portuguese
could build. Ultimately, Portuguese efforts to convert the many peoples of the
Indian Ocean basin failed even more miserably than in Atlantic Africa, though
not for lack of trying. Francis Xavier, an early Jesuit missionary (see Chapter 19),
worked tirelessly and died an optimist. W hereas he focused on converting slaves
and lower-caste people, others sought to bend the will of monarchs such as Akbar,
hoping they would set an example. Small Christian communities formed at Goa
and other strongholds, but everywhere they went, Portuguese missionaries faced
literally millions of hostile Muslims and perhaps equal or greater numbers of unin-
terested Hindus, Buddhists, Confucianists, Jains, Parsis, Sikhs, Jews, and others. In
short, Christianity, at least in the form presented by the Portuguese, did not appeal
to the vast majority of people inhabiting the Indian Ocean basin. As we will see
in Chapter  20, only in Japan, the Philippines, East Timor, and other select areas,
mostly in the western Pacific, did early modern Catholic missionaries strike a chord.

Despite the failure of Christian missionary efforts, trade was brisk. The so-called
carreira da Índia (cah-HEY-rah dah EENDJ-yah), or India voyage, became leg-
endary in Portuguese culture. Even on successful trips, death rates on this annual
sail between Lisbon and Goa were high due to poor sanitation, prolonged vita-
min C deprivation, questionable medical therapies, and other health challenges.
A lso, although early modern navigators were arguably more adept than medieval
ones, shipwrecks plagued the India voyage. Unlike local dhows, sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Portuguese vessels were huge, round-hulled, and built for
cargo rather than speed or maneuverability, and foundered due to overloading.
The coral reefs of southeast A frica became a notorious graveyard of the carreira.

By the later sixteenth century, Portuguese monopolies had weakened. With so
much wealth at stake and so few enforcers on hand, corruption and contraband
flourished. Shipwrecks and piracy became more frequent, as did competition
from better-armed northern Europeans. As Luiz Vaz de Camões (cah-MOYSH),
veteran of adventures in the East Indies, composed the triumphant poem that
would become Portugal’s national epic, The Lusíads, Portugal was on the eve of

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losing not only its heirless king but also its hard-won conquests in the Indian
Ocean. It was the Spanish under Philip II who would offer the first humiliation.
Shortly after, Spain’s sworn enemies, the Dutch, would deal the Portuguese a series
of crushing blows.

The Dutch and English East India Companies 1600–1750
As Portuguese fortunes declined and Mughal expansion continued toward the
turn of the seventeenth century, South Asia’s overseas trade underwent reorgani-
zation. This shift involved many players, including the familiar Gujarati merchants,
the increasingly powerful Ottomans, Persia’s expanding Safavids, and others.
But ultimately it was Dutch and English newcomers, and to a lesser extent the
French, who would have the greatest long-term impact. A ll formed powerful
trading companies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, each backed by
state-of-the-art cannons and first-rate sailing ships.

Despite these important changes, it would be highly misleading to project the
later imperial holdings of these foreigners back onto the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries. Only the Dutch came close to establishing a genuine “Indian
Ocean Empire” during early modern times. Meanwhile, East A fricans, South and
Southeast Asians, and other native peoples of the Indian Ocean continued to act
independently, in their own interests. It was the sudden, unexpected collapse of
the Mughals and other gunpowder-fueled Asian states in the later eighteenth cen-
tury that allowed Europeans to conquer large landmasses and to plant colonies of
the sort long since established in the Americas.

The Dutch East India Company, known by its Dutch acronym VOC, was
founded in 1602. The company aimed to use ships, arms, and Spanish-American
silver to displace the Portuguese as Europe’s principal suppliers of spices and other
exotic Asian goods. Though not officially a state enterprise, the Dutch East India
Company counted many ranking statesmen among its principal investors, and its
actions abroad were as belligerent as those of any imperial army or nav y. In the
course of almost two centuries, the VOC extended Dutch influence from South
A frica to Japan. Its most lasting achievement was the conquest of Java, base for the
vast Dutch colony of Indonesia.

A lthough they never drove the Portuguese from Goa, the Dutch displaced their
Iberian rivals nearly every where else. Their greatest early successes were in south-
ern India and Java, followed by Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Bengal, Melaka, and Japan (see
Map 18.4). In Southeast Asia conquest was followed with enslavement and even-
tually plantation agriculture of the sort established by the Spanish and Portuguese
in the Americas. The VOC also imposed this sequence on Ceylon (see Lives and
Livelihoods: Cinnamon Harvesters in Ceylon).

trading
companies Private
corporations licensed
by early modern
European states to
monopolize Asian and
other overseas trades.

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LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS

Cinnamon Harvesters in Ceylon
Long before the arrival of Europeans in 1506, the
island of Sri Lanka, or Ceylon (its colonial name),
was world-renowned for its cinnamon exports. This
wet, tropical island off India’s southeast tip, largely
under control of competing Buddhist kings, was also
famous for its sapphires, rubies, pearls, and domes-
ticated elephants. Like India’s pepper and South-
east Asia’s cloves, mace, and nutmeg, Ceylonese
cinnamon fetched extraordinary prices throughout
Eurasia and parts of A frica where it was used as a
condiment, preservative, and even medicine. As late
as 1685 a Portuguese observer noted, “Every year a
great number of vessels arrive from Persia, Arabia,
the Red Sea, the Malabar Coast [of India], China,
Bengal, and Europe to fetch cinnamon.” Attempts
to transplant the spice elsewhere, including Brazil,
all failed, and early conquistador claims of finding
cinnamon in Ecuador’s eastern jungles proved false.
As part of the Columbian Exchange, Ceylonese
cinnamon became an ingredient in hot chocolate,
a beverage developed in colonial Mexico that took
Europe by storm.

The spice grew wild in forests belonging to the
kingdom of Kandy, in Ceylon’s southwest high-
lands. In 1517, the Portuguese struck a deal that al-
lowed them to use and fortify the port of Colombo
to monopolize cinnamon exports in exchange for
cloth, metal ware, and military assistance against
rivals. The Portuguese did not engage directly
in cinnamon production, but rather traded for it
with the king and certain nobles. The king and his

nobles in turn collected cinnamon as a tribute item
produced on feudal-type estates called parawenia.
A special caste of male workers known as chalias
was responsible for planting, harvesting, slicing,
drying, and packaging Ceylon’s most prized crop.
The chalias were not enslaved, but rather served as
dependents of the king and various noblemen and
military officers in exchange for use rights to land
for subsistence farming in the off-season, plus ra-
tions of rice and occasionally a cash wage.

Cinnamon is derived from the shaved and dried
inner bark of the small Cinamomum verum tree, a va-
riety of laurel. Although the spice can be harvested
wild, Ceylon’s chalias pruned, transplanted, and even
planted the trees by seed in order to maximize output
and improve quality. At harvest time the chalias cut
ripe cinnamon trees and then removed the bark to
meet quotas set by the king and other estate holders.

Next came peeling, the key process, and the
one for which the chalias were best known. As a
seventeenth-century Portuguese writer described
them, “These cinnamon peelers carry in their girdle
a small hooked knife as a mark of their occupation.”
Working in pairs, one chalia made two lengthwise in-
cisions on the ripe sticks using his hooked knife and
carefully removed the resulting half-cylindrical strips
of bark. His companion then used other tools to sep-
arate a gray outer bark from the thin, cream-colored
inner bark. The inner bark was then left to dry, curl-
ing, thickening, and turning brown as it oxidized. The
chalias then packaged the resulting “cinnamon sticks”

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in cloth-covered bundles weighing about one hun-
dred pounds. These were given to overlords; the king
of Kandy alone was said to demand over five hundred
tons each year. Cinnamon was often bundled with

black pepper for long sea voyages to help draw out
moisture.

We have no documents written by the chalias
to give us a sense of their views, but we do know
that a leader of a 1609 rebellion against the
Portuguese was a member of this caste and the
son of a cinnamon cutter. Tapping into local dis-
content, the Dutch East India Company (VOC)
displaced the Portuguese in 1658 after making
an alliance with the king of Kandy. Once estab-
lished on the island, the Dutch shifted to direct
planting and harvesting, using enslaved laborers
and totally monopolizing trade in cinnamon in
order to maximize profits. The king was reduced
to the status of client. Dutch work demands were
rigorous and punishments harsh for even light
offenses. Dissatisfaction with the VOC ran deep.
The British took over Ceylon in 1796 following
the collapse of the VOC, but their management
of the cinnamon economy was not as careful, and
both price and quality fell. Ceylon’s export sector

would be revived after 1800 with the introduction
of American tropical crops adapted by British bota-
nists: cinchona (quinine), cacao, and rubber.

Questions to Consider

1. How was cinnamon grown, harvested, and prepared for export?
2. How did cinnamon harvesting fit into traditional, precolonial landholding and labor systems?
3. How did Dutch rule change the lives and livelihoods of cinnamon harvesters?

For Further Information:

Valentijn, François. Description of Ceylon. Edited by Sinnappah Arasaratnam. London: Hakluyt Society, 1978.
Winius, George D. The Fatal History of Portuguese Ceylon New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

Harvesting Cinnamon This engraving, based on a
simpler one from 1672, depicts cinnamon harvesters
in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The Portuguese were the first
Europeans to attempt to monopolize the global export of
this spice, but local kings were difficult to conquer and
control. Only in the later seventeenth century did the
Dutch manage to establish plantation-type production,
with the final product, the now familiar cinnamon sticks,
monopolized by the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

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The monopolistic mentality of contemporary Europe drove Dutch aggression:
profits were ensured not by free trade but by absolute control over the flow of com-
modities and the money to pay for them. The VOC began by monopolizing spices.
A fter seizing the pepper-growing region of southern Sumatra, the VOC turned to
the riskier business of establishing plantations to grow coffee and other tropical
cash crops. Like the Portuguese before them, the Dutch devoted at least as much
cargo space to interregional trade as to exports. Thus clever local traders and many

0

0 500 Kilometers

500 Miles

PACIFIC
OCEAN
INDIAN
OCEAN
East
China
Sea
South
China
Sea
Bay of
Bengal

Yellow
Sea

Sea of
Japan

Java Sea

Philippine
Is.

Sri Lanka
(Ceylon)
Celebes
Sumatra

TimorJava

Borneo
Taiwan
M
o

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c

c
a

s

QING
EMPIRE

MA�THA
CONFEDE�CY

JAPAN
KOREA

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VIETN
AMSIAM

ACEH
BURMA
Beijing
Ayudhya
Macao
Manila

Batavia

Colombo

Madras

Bombay
Calicut
Goa
Cambay
Delhi

Calcu�aSurat
Diu

Pondicherry

Melaka
Nagasaki

Dutch and English Colonies in South
and Southeast Asia, to 1750

Portuguese

Spanish

Dutch

English

French

Dutch factory

European Trading Posts
Portuguese

Spanish
Dutch

Territorial claims

Tropic of C
ancer

20ºN
30ºN
10ºN
0º

10ºS

40ºN

140ºE130ºE120ºE110ºE

Equator

MAP 18.4 Dutch and English Colonies in South and Southeast Asia, to 1750 A lthough the Portuguese remained
active in the Indian Ocean basin and South China Sea until the twentieth century, after 1600 the Dutch and English
had largely displaced them. The East India Companies of these two countries sought to conquer and defend key trading
enclaves, both against each other and against the later-arriving French.

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thousands of Chinese merchants benefited from the Dutch determination to mo-
nopolize trade.

The VOC, like other Indian Ocean traders, relied on Spanish-American silver to
lubricate commerce. Between 1600 and 1648, when these rival empires were at war,
some silver was plundered from the Spanish in the Caribbean by Dutch pirates, but
most was extracted through trade, both official and contraband. Recent research
has revealed the importance of illegal Dutch slave traders in Buenos Aires after a
major peace agreement was signed with Spain in 1648. The silver of Potosí in this
case bypassed Europe entirely to go to Dutch trading posts in India, Southeast Asia,
and China. Mexican silver, meanwhile, flowed out of Dutch Caribbean ports such
as Curaçao, through Amsterdam, and into the holds of outbound company ships.
Trade in Manila extracted still more Spanish silver. Though ever more divided in its
political loyalties, the world was becoming ever more unified in its monetary system.

Dutch Headquarters in Bengal Th is painting from 1665 depicts the Dutch East India Company (VOC) trading
for t at Hugly, on the bank s of the Ganges R iver in the Indian prov ince of Bengal. A s they did elsewhere along the
rim of the rich and populous Indian Ocean basin, the Dutch sought to establish exclusive control over speci fic
commodities, usually a fter driv ing out the Por tug uese. In Bengal, the main ex por t items were fi ne cotton print
fabrics, which, along w ith a variet y of products already circulating in the region, they traded mostly for Spanish-
A merican silver.

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Compared with the VOC, the English East India Company (EIC), founded two
years earlier in 1600, had more modest aims and much less capital. Nevertheless,
it used force and a royal charter to displace the Portuguese in several strategic
ports, especially around the Arabian peninsula and on the coasts of India. Given
England’s internal problems in the seventeenth century (discussed in the next
chapter), progress was slow and uneven. Only in the late seventeenth century did
English traders in India begin to amass considerable fortunes, mostly by exporting
spices, gems, and cloth from their modest fortresses at Surat, Bombay, Madras, and
Calcutta (see again Map 18.4). Like the VOC, however, the EIC grew increasingly
powerful over time, eventually taking on an imperial role.

COUNTERPOINT: Aceh: Fighting Back in
Southeast Asia

FOCUS Why was the tiny sultanate of aceh able to hold out
against european interlopers in early modern times?

The province and city of Aceh (A H-cheh), at the northwest tip of the island of
Sumatra in Indonesia, was transformed but not conquered in early modern times.
Like many trading enclaves linked by the Indian Ocean’s monsoon winds, Aceh
was a Muslim sultanate that lived by exchanging the produce of its interior, in this
case black pepper, for commodities supplied by other, distant kingdoms. Aceh’s
rulers participated directly in trade, dictating its terms and enjoying many of its
benefits. Yet unlike most such enclaves, which fell like dominoes to European in-
terlopers, Aceh held out. For many reasons, but perhaps most importantly a new-
found religious fervor, the Acehnese defeated many would-be conquistadors.

The Differing Fortunes of Aceh and Melaka
Aceh’s rulers were probably related to those of the less fortunate Malay trading
city of Melaka. Melaka was a former fishing village with a fine natural harbor and
strategic location on the east end of the narrow Melaka Strait. It was said to have
been founded by a Hindu prince who converted to Islam in around 1420. Melaka’s
rulers forged profitable alliances to regions as far away as China, but ties to the in-
terior were weak, drawing predators. Melaka was attacked repeatedly by Javanese
sultans, and in the end it fell to Portuguese cannons in 1511. A lthough Melakan
forces had guns and fought valiantly against the Europeans, when the tide turned
they found themselves without a backcountry into which they might flee and reor-
ganize. The Dutch followed in 1641, displacing the Portuguese.

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Unlike Melaka, Aceh’s influence reached deep into the interior
and across hundreds of miles of coast. A fter defeating Portuguese
invaders in 1518, Aceh emerged as one of the most assertive sea-
borne Islamic states in the entire Indian Ocean, tapping military
aid from the distant Ottomans and shipping considerable quan-
tities of pepper to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea. But Aceh’s
repeated efforts to conquer Portuguese-controlled Melaka failed,
and by the late seventeenth century the kingdom declined. Still,
it was not until the nineteenth century that the Dutch reduced
Aceh to colonial status.

Aceh, “the Veranda of Mecca”
Aceh’s early modern history has been gleaned from several
outside sources, and also local, sometimes official, chronicles,
including epic poems written in Malay and Acehnese in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries to celebrate the deeds of its sul-
tans. A lthough poets tended to exaggerate the greatness of their
patrons and to conflate or compress events, the epics express
Acehnese Islamic pride, mostly as the region’s bulwark against
the militant Christian Portuguese. Ottoman, Portuguese, Dutch, and English
sources note that Aceh was a great meeting place for Southeast Asian pilgrims on
their way to Mecca, and it came to be known as Serambi Mekkah, the Veranda of
Mecca.

Despite its intensely Islamic identity, Acehnese culture respected female inde-
pendence. Women controlled and inherited nearly all property, from houses to
rice fields, and at marriage men moved to their wives’ households. Men in fact
spent much of their time away on business or engaged in religious study, leaving
women in charge of most everyday life. Pre-Islamic kin structures governed daily
affairs, while ulama, or religious scholars, oversaw matters of business and state.
Criminal cases reveal that local custom could override Islamic prescriptions, es-
pecially when it came to capital punishment. The result was a somewhat mild,
woman-friendly Southeast Asian blend of secular and religious life reminiscent
of West A frica.

Aceh was immediately recognized as a powerful state by northern European vis-
itors in the early seventeenth century. The first Dutch envoys were jailed from 1599
to 1601 for mishandling court etiquette, but soon after, English visitors represent-
ing Queen Elizabeth I and the newly chartered East India Company made a better
impression. Of particular interest to the Acehnese shah was Dutch and English
hostility to Portugal, which also sent ambassadors. Playing competing Europeans

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125 Miles

Gulf of
Thailand

Strait of
Melaka

Andaman
Sea

INDIAN
OCEAN
Ayudhya
Melaka

Pasai

Aceh

Palembang

Aceh
Sumatra
M
A

LAY PEN
IN

SU
LASULTANATE

OF ACEH

Aceh

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off one another soon became a profitable game. And the Europeans were by no
means alone—sizable trading and diplomatic missions arrived in Aceh from east-
ern and western India, Burma, and Siam. Sultan Iskandar Muda used English and
Dutch traders to drive the Gujaratis out of the pepper trade in the 1610s, only to
force the Europeans out of it in the 1620s. He continued to ship pepper to Red Sea
intermediaries, but steadily lost out to both English and Dutch merchants, who
turned to other Southeast Asian sources.

Aceh’s decline has been traditionally associated with the rise of female sultans
in the seventeenth century, much as occurred in the Ottoman Empire at about
the same time (as we will see in Chapter 19). Sultana Taj al-A lam Safiyat al-Din
Shah ruled from 1641 to 1675. She was the daughter of the renowned conqueror
Iskandar Muda Shah (r. 1607–1636), but her politics focused mostly on domestic
affairs, in part because Aceh was in a period of restructuring after her father’s failed
1629 attack on Portuguese Melaka. Like her counterparts in Istanbul and Agra,
Safiyat al-Din was a great patron of artists and scholars. Under her sponsorship,
Acehnese displaced Malay as the language of state and the arts.

Safiyat al-Din was succeeded by three more sultanas, the last of whom was de-
posed following a 1699 decree, or fatwa, from Mecca declaring women unfit to
serve as sultans. Careful reading of sources suggests that female sultans were not
the cause of Aceh’s declining power in the region, but rather a symptom of a gen-
eral shift toward the Malay style of divine kingship. Even in decline, Aceh held out
throughout early modern times and beyond against European attempts to subject
it to colonial rule.

Conclusion
Thanks to reliable monsoon winds, the vast Indian Ocean basin had long been
interconnected by ties of trade and religion, and this general pattern continued
throughout early modern times. The region’s countless farmers depended as they
had for millennia on the monsoon rains.

Change came, however, with the rise of gunpowder-fueled empires both on
land and at sea. Beginning about 1500, seaborne Europeans forcibly took over
key ports and began taxing the trade of others, while Islamic warriors on horse-
back blasted resistant sultans and rajas into tribute-paying submission in South
Asia. Smaller sultanates and kingdoms also adopted gunpowder weapons after
1500, both to defend themselves against invaders and to attack weaker neighbors.
A lthough such armed conflict could be deadly or at least disrupt everyday life,
for most ordinary people in the long run it meant a rise in tribute demands, and

fatwa A decree issued
by Islamic religious
officials.

C o n c l u s i o n 675

smi49245_ch18_640-677 675 07/13/18 01:20 PM

in some places a turn to forced cultivation of export products such as cinnamon
or pepper.

Despite the advances of belligerent Islamic and Christian empires throughout
the Indian Ocean, most inhabitants did not convert. Religious tolerance had long
been the rule in this region, and although the Portuguese were driven by an almost
crusading fervor to spread Catholicism, in the end they were forced to deal with
Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and Muslims to make a profit. Later Europeans, most of
them Protestants, scarcely bothered to proselytize prior to modern times, choos-
ing instead to offer themselves as religiously neutral intermediaries.

The Mughals, like the k ings of Vijayanagara before them, followed a tradi-
tion of divinely aloof religious tolerance, although conversion to the state faith
had its benefits, particularly in trade. As with Christianity, Islamic practices
varied greatly throughout this vast region, and these differences were visible in
customs of female mobility, dress, and access to positions of power. Nur Jahan
represented a temporar y period of Mughal openness to feminine power and
public expression, and Aceh ’s “Sultanate of the Women” represented another in
Southeast Asia.

Europeans adapted to local cultures of trade when using force was impractical.
For most of the early modern period, they had no choice, at least outside their tiny,
fortressed towns. Only with the decline of great land empires such as that of the
Mughals in the eighteenth century did this begin to change. Though it happened
much more slowly than in contemporary Latin America or western A frica, by the
end of the early modern period European imperial designs had begun to alter es-
tablished lifeways throughout the Indian Ocean basin. Expansion into the interior,
first by overseas trading companies such as the English East India Company and
the Dutch VOC, would grow in the nineteenth century into full-blown imperial-
ism. Only a few outliers, such as the Muslim revivalist sultanate of Aceh, managed
to hold out, and even their time would come.

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CH A P T ER 18 T r a d e a n d em pi r e i n T h e i n d i a n O c e a n a n d S O u T h a S i a 14 5 0 –175 0

review
The major global development in this chapter: The Indian Ocean trading network and the impact of Eu-
ropean intrusion on maritime and mainland South Asia.

Important Events

1336–1565 Vijayanagara kingdom in southern India

1498 Vasco da Gama reaches India

1500–1763 Mughal Empire in South Asia

1509–1529 Reign of Krishna Deva Raya of Vijayanagara

1510 Portuguese conquest of Goa, India

1511 Portuguese conquest of Melaka

1517 Portuguese establish fort in Sri Lanka (Ceylon)

1526 Battle of Panipat led by Mughal emperor Babur

1530 Consolidation of Aceh under Sultan Ali Mughayat Shah

1556–1605 Reign of Mughal emperor Akbar

1567 Akbar’s siege of Chitor

1600 English East India Company founded in London

1602 Dutch East India Company (VOC) founded in Amsterdam

1605–1627 Reign of Mughal emperor Jahangir

1641 Dutch take Melaka from Portuguese

1641–1699 “Sultanate of Women” in Aceh

1658 Dutch drive Portuguese from Ceylon

1701 William Kidd hanged in London for piracy

1739 Persian raiders under Nadir Shah sack Delhi

1764 English East India Company controls Bengal

677

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KEY TERMS
Brahman (p. 650)
caste (p. 650)
dhow (p. 646)

fatwa (p. 674)
Kshatriya (p. 650)
monsoon (p. 642)

sati (p. 660)
trading companies (p. 667)

CHAPTER OVERVIEW QUESTIONS
1. W hat environmental, religious, and political

factors enabled trading enclaves to flourish in the
Indian Ocean basin?

2. How did the rise and fall of India’s land empires
reflect larger regional trends?

3. How did Europeans insert themselves into the
Indian Ocean trading network, and what changes
did they bring about?

MAKING CONNECTIONS
1. In what ways did Indian Ocean trade differ

from the contemporary Atlantic slave trade (see
Chapter 17)? W hat role did A frica play in each?

2. How did traditional kingdoms such as
Vijayanagara differ from those of the A mericas
prior to the Spanish conquest (see Chapter 15)?

For further research into the topics covered in this chapter, see the Bibliography at the end of the book.
For additional primary sources from this period, see Sources for World in the Making.

M a k i n g C o n n e c t i o n s

• PART 3: The Early Modern World, 1450–1750

18: Trade and Empire in the Indian Ocean and South Asia 1450–1750
The Major Global Development in this Chapter: The Indian Ocean trading network and the impact of European intrusion on maritime and mainland South Asia.
backstory
Trading Cities and Inland Networks: East Africa
Port Towns and Beginnings
Indian Ocean Connections
Links to the Interior
Trade and Empire in South Asia
Vijayanagara’s Rise and Fall 1336–1565
The Power of the Mughals
Gunpowder Weapons and Imperial Consolidation 1500–1763
Everyday Life in the Mughal Empire
European Interlopers
Portuguese Conquistadors 1500–1600
The Dutch and English East India Companies 1600–1750
COUNTERPOINT Aceh: Fighting Back in Southeast Asia
The Differing Fortunes of Aceh and Melaka
Aceh, “the Veranda of Mecca”
Conclusion
Review
SPECIAL FEATURES
READING THE PAST: Portuguese Report of a Vijayanagara Festival
SEEING THE PAST: Reflections of the Divine in a Mughal Emerald
LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS: Cinnamon Harvesters in Ceylon