4.7: Changing Social Hierarchies

Ottoman Empire

• Their social hierarchy was built around a warrior aristocracy
• Meaning warriors were at the top and the empire emphasized military prowess

• Soon began to compete for power with the ulama (Islamic scholars)

• There were also the Janissaries, an elite squad of soldiers, who also started to yearn for power
• Sometimes they tried to launch coups but they failed

Power Shift in the Sultanate

• As sultans became increasingly ineffective and incapable, viziers, who are advisors to the sultan, started to gain more power

Treatment of Religious Minorities

• The Ottomans were relatively tolerant towards Jews and Christians

• Ex: When Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, Ottomans offered to take them in
• However they still had to pay jizya (tax for not being Muslim) and were only allowed to live in certain parts of the city

Women in the Ottoman Empire

• They did not have much direct power, but played very important social and political roles at court
• Many of the wives and concubines tried to promote their own children as heirs to the throne
• Known as harem politics
• Through harem politics, a small group of women could wield immense power in the empire

Qing Dynasty

• Established in 1644 by the Manchu people

• Like Mongols, they were of a different ethnic background than the majority of the people in China

• Unlike the Mongols, instead of being tolerant, the Qing tried to make their culture dominant
• Ex: if you worked for the government, your hair had to be like the traditional hair style of the Manchus

• Also like the Mongols, they retained some traditional Chinese practices
• Ex: Chinese civil service exams and bureaucracy

• Qing massacred hundreds of thousands of Han who refused to comply with their cultural requirements

European Hierarchies

• With the rise of absolutism, the power of nobles ⬇️
• Ex: King Louis XIV forced all the nobles to live in the Palace of Versailles so he could keep an eye on them

Russia

• Russian social structure: tsar → boyars (landowners/aristocracy) → merchants → peasants

• Many peasants sunk into debt and became serfs
• Worked on the land of nobles and had no hope in ever being able to leave it due to their debts

• Main conflict was between boyars and tsar
• Boyars opposed the expansionist policies of Ivan the Terrible
• Led to armed conflict between boyars and Ivan the Terrible
• Ivan won and confiscated the land of boyars and made them to live in Moscow so he could keep an eye on them

The Casta System in Latin America

• Similar to Hindu caste system as your class was determined at birth as it is by ancestry

• One difference from the Hindu caste system though is that you can marry up and down (this didn’t happen often though)