What is this about?
How empires increased their cultural and societal influence from 1450-1750
- Throughout this time period land-based empires were a common trend
- Some empires were unable to maintain their authority across their vast empires and collapsed
- Religious conflicts included Protestants vs Catholics, Sunni vs Shia, and Hindu vs Muslim
Military Might
- Most of the land-based empires utilized gunpowder weapons in some way
- Armies were also well-trained and well-equipped
Soldiers
- Some empires maintained elite units of soldiers
- Ottomans for example had the Jannisaries, which were an elite military group deeply loyal to the sultan that consisted of enslaved Christians taken from the Balkans
- Safavids had the Qizilbash, which were deeply loyal to the shah and were also very well-trained
Warfare
- Ottoman and Safavids were in conflict for two main reasons
- Disputes over territory: who controls what
- Control over resources and trade routes
- Sunni vs Shia
- Songhai Empire fell when Moroccan forces invaded in 1591
Centralized Bureaucracy
- Land-based empires were diverse in terms of people and large in terms of land so in order for the central government to have power they had to have an efficient bureaucracy
- Ming and Qing China used the civil service examination system to recruit bureaucrats
- Ottoman Empire used the devshirme system which supplied talented warriors as well as bureaucrats
- In Songhai Empire, the mansa (meaning “sultan”) got bureaucrats from the scholarly class educated in the Islamic schools, or madrasas, of Timbuktu
- Incas divided their empire into provinces, where each province’s leader was loyal to the emperor
- Aztecs had no bureaucracy, instead creating a tributary empire that kept the conquered peoples in control through force, fear, and intimidation
Taxation
- Mughals used zamindars, paid government officials who were responsible for collecting taxes from the peasantry
- Ottomans relied on a system called tax farmers, who paid an annual sum to the central government and were then expected to recoup the money from the land they were in charge of
- Ming Dynasty initially made people pay taxes through paper money, but hyperinflation and counterfeiting became problems, so Ming later switched to rice and later silver coins
- As the Aztecs were a tributary state, their “taxes” were the tribute that conquered peoples were made to pay
- Could be local products or even people, who were used for human sacrifice rituals
Striving for Legitimacy
- As land-based empires were so diverse, rulers had to use other means besides political means to solidify and consolidate their rule throughout their empire
- Rulers used religion, art, and monumental architecture to legitimize their rule
