The World Around 1600

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Background
To see what the world was like by 1600, we need to look at what was happening before
then. In March 1421 a great fleet of over 100 ships set sail from China. The fleet was
under the command of the eunuch, Admiral Zheng He, a slave who had been captured by
the Chinese, castrated and taken into the royal household. The Emperor of China had
instructed Admiral Zheng He to ‘proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect
tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas’. China was the most powerful state in the
world and undoubtedly the wealthiest and most technologically advanced country. The
Chinese dominated the trade in the Indian Ocean and the states of South and Southeast
Asia, though not colonised by China, paid tribute to the Chinese in recognition of their
superiority. In global terms, Europe was a small player before 1600. It had a vigorous
trading network but did not have the technology and wealth or centralised government, a
key feature of China, the Songhai Empire and India. The map opposite shows Europe and
the Chinese, Songhai and Indian Empires.
Chinese inventions arrived in Europe centuries after India and other states in the Arab
world had adopted them. The Chinese first made paper from mulberry bark in 105 CE, and
wood-pulp paper was common by 700. The Arabs learned of paper around 750 but Italians
only started buying it from the Arabs after 1150 and only started making their own in 1276.
By then Chinese publishers had been using engraved woodblocks to print paper books for
five centuries and using movable type for two centuries. Europeans only borrowed or
reinvented woodblocks around 1375 and movable type around 1430. Chinese and Indian
innovations in rigging and steering also moved west, passing through Arab hands into the
Mediterranean in the late 12th century. Along with ancient technologies such as the
wheelbarrow, Westerners also picked up the newest advances. The magnetic compass,
first mentioned in a Chinese text in 1119, had reached Arabs and Europeans by 1180,
and guns moved even faster.
After China withdrew from external trade in 1433, their place in the Indian Ocean system
was taken by the Arab merchant sailors. Wherever travellers and merchants went in the
Muslim world they spoke a common language and were welcomed as part of dãr al-islãm.
This included the Songhai Empire and other regions of Africa. Their maritime technology,
much of it learned from the Chinese, equalled the Chinese and was far better than anything
in Europe at the time. It was only around 1770 that Western development overtook that of
the East. Throughout all of the regions, networks of trade and religion had contributed to
early forms of globalisation. From ancient times kings and soldiers travelled looking for
wealth and honour in wars, merchants for trade and pilgrims for religious reasons visiting
the shrines of saints or sacred sites. Islam and Christianity were not the only world
religions. By the mid-15th century, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism
were all universal belief systems linking countries and continents. In the late 14th century
the Chinese expelled foreigners and the land route to China was closed. At the same time
the Turks expanded their empire, the Ottoman Empire, and captured the old Christian city
of Constantinople, thus closing all overland trade to the East. This opened the way for the
Age of Exploration.

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Ming China
Government and society
In 1368 a rebel peasant leader, Zhu Yuanzhang, defeated the Mongol emperor of China
and took the throne himself. He announced a new dynasty, the Ming dynasty, and took the
title Hong Wu. Hong Wu is remembered as being one of the greatest emperors to rule
China. He was in power from 1368 until his death in 1398 and during this time he
reorganised the government and administration of the country and provided China with a
code of laws.
Hong Wu created a highly centralised state with an efficient bureaucracy answerable to
him alone. All government officials became his servants. He demanded a high standard of
integrity and service and publicly beat incompetent or corrupt officials. Palace eunuchs
became increasingly powerful during the Ming period. The eunuchs were not answerable
to state laws, being accountable directly to the emperor. They controlled officials at all
levels, interfered in court affairs and even exercised unauthorised power in the name of
the Emperor. China had been divided into four classes based on different occupations: the
Shi were the scholars; the Gong were artisans and craftsmen; the Shang were merchants
and traders, and the Nong were peasant farmers. Hong Wu made all occupations
hereditary, grouping them into three classes: peasants, craftspeople, and soldiers. In the
later Ming period these classes became less rigid, and as trade became more important,
a merchant class grew rapidly.
Hong Wu introduced a code of laws called the Ta-Ming lü. This is the most famous of the
Chinese codes of law. Laws were divided into two categories: the lü, or ‘unchanging laws’
and the li, a more flexible set of laws to meet the needs of changing conditions in the
country. Several surveys and censuses were carried out. The information the Emperor
gathered was entered in government registers. This helped him to regulate taxation and
collect taxes more efficiently.

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Eunuchs
A eunuch is a castrated man. In ancient times servants and slaves were sometimes
castrated to make them serve more loyally. In China, prisoners of war were castrated and
turned into eunuch slaves. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were about 70 000
eunuchs employed by the emperor in a range of occupations. Some, such as Admiral
Zheng He, became very influential. The practice survived in China until the early 20th
century.
The role of women
The status and rights of women in Chinese society were determined by their social status
and position within the family system. Women living in rural areas had to work as hard as
men in order to survive. Work was divided along gender lines from a very early period. Men
were involved in agriculture, hunting and other outside activities; women were involved
with domestic work, food preparation and care of the children, the elderly and the sick.

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Women in urban areas and those in well-off families would have had a quite different life
from those in the rural areas. While some were free to go out in public, some wealthy
women were kept at home and forbidden to take part in any kind of social activity. Others
might be allowed to take part in activities outside of the house as long as they were
appropriately dressed and attended by servants or guardians. A custom among wealthy
families was the binding of the feet of baby girls. Their feet became so deformed that they
could hardly walk. This was a symbol of wealth and leisure – a woman with bound feet was
unable to carry out manual labour.
Travel and trade in the Ming dynasty
We will discuss ship building, navigation and the development of the compass, how
Chinese mariners mapped the world, Chinese trade and influence along the Asian sea
routes, and the treasure fleet expeditions of Zheng He from 1405–1433.
Shipbuilding
Chinese shipbuilding began over 2 000 years ago. The Qin emperors (221–206 BCE) had
fleets of louchuan (war ships with deck castles). By the 16th century, shipbuilding in China
was more advanced than anywhere in the world. The ships had hulls with a number of
watertight holds for buoyancy, nine masts and 12 massive sails divided into panels by
horizontal bamboo slats called battens, similar to venetian blinds. The sails could be
moved inwards along the ship’s central axis. This allowed the ship to sail against the wind.

Navigation
The compass was one of the most significant Chinese inventions. The first round compass
developed was known as a ‘south-pointer’. It was a spoon-shaped compass made of
magnetic lodestone and bronze. The circular centre represented heaven, and the square
plate represented earth. The handle of the spoon pointed south. By the 13th century more
refined compasses had been developed by magnetising iron needles and floating them in
water or suspending them from a silk thread. From this time Chinese trading ships, using
the compass, were able to sail out of sight of land without getting lost. By the time Zheng
He set sail in 1405, the Chinese were aware of longitude and they assumed that the world
was round.

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Chinese maps
China also had a long tradition of map-making. Explorers of the pre-Ming dynasty travelled
with Marco Polo (1254–1324), a Christian merchant from the Venetian Republic. They
produced detailed maps of their journeys, and Marco Polo took copies of the Chinese maps
back to Venice. Venetian cartographers used the information from the Chinese maps to
draw their own maps. One of the most important maps produced in 14th century China
was the ‘Da Ming Hun Yi Tu’, or Integrated Map of the Great Ming Empire. The Nile River
and the Drakensberg Mountain range can be clearly seen on the map, providing evidence
of contact with Africa long before the European explorers.

Trade and influence along the Asian sea routes

When the Ming dynasty came in to power in 1368, the silk route overland from Asia to
Europe was blocked to China. This stimulated exploration of the Indian Ocean to find new
trade routes. By the end of the 16th century, the Chinese traded extensively in East Asia,
Southeast Asia, southern India, Ceylon, the Persian Gulf, and Africa, as well as with
Portugal and Holland. The Chinese traded silks, cotton and porcelain in return for Spanish
silver, fi rearms and American goods such as sugar, potatoes and tobacco.
Admiral Zheng He made a number of treasure fleet expeditions between 1405 and 1433.
He set sail on his first voyage in 1405 with 27 000 men aboard 317 ships. The most
impressive ships were the treasure ships carrying trade and tribute goods. His seven
voyages took him to more than 30 countries in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the
east coast of Africa. It has also been claimed that the last fleet continued around the Cape
of Good Hope and reached America. The ships brought back treasures for the emperor:
the first giraffe that China had seen, spices, wood, precious stones and Arabian horses.
The sailing charts compiled during these voyages were published in a book in 1621.

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Scientific and Cultural Achievements
The stability and prosperity of China during the Ming period provided the conditions for
great achievements in science, technology and culture. The Chinese had discovered the
secret of making fi ne porcelain as early as 220 CE and it remained the best in the world
until the 18th century. Silk was another major export. The Silk Road wound its way through
Asia, Europe and Africa. China was the first to develop writing paper and printing. By the
10th century high quality paper was made using bamboo. An early form of engraved block
printing was invented in China between the 3rd and 5th century CE and movable type
printing in the 10th century. The Chinese developed and were using gunpowder for military
weapons by the early 10th century. Explosive bombs were filled with gunpowder and fi red
from catapults during wars. Later other weapons such as the fire cannon, rocket, missile
and fireball were introduced. Other technological advances in China included blast
furnaces for casting iron, the water clock and sophisticated textile weaving equipment. A
Chinese mathematician, Liu Hui, was the first to introduce the concept of decimal numbers
in the 3rd century. The Chinese also invented the abacus, which was used to add, subtract,
multiply and divide, as well as for working out fractions and square roots. The Grand Canal
and the Great Wall of China were restored during the Ming Dynasty. This improved
communication and defence. The Forbidden City was built in the heart of Beijing during
the first quarter of the 15th century and was the home of the emperors from 1420 to 1911

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China looks inwards after 1433
Zheng He’s last great voyage of 1431-1433 marked the end of China’s golden age of
exploration. He died during the voyage and was buried at sea. Emperor Hong Xi had taken
power, and he decided to end the voyages. This was because of the advice of Confucian
officials who felt that the previous emperor’s expansionist policies had robbed them of
influence and power. He destroyed the ships and maps, thus beginning China’s isolation
from the rest of the world. The idea that all outside of China was barbarian took hold, and
this was another reason for the Chinese to isolate themselves. Strife among the ministers
and corruption in the court all contributed to the demise of this long dynasty. The
successors would have to deal with the increased influence of the European powers in
China, and the subsequent loss of complete autonomy. The Portuguese presence in the
Indian Ocean disrupted the centuries-old trading networks. In 1510 they captured the Arab
port of Goa on the west Indian coast and established the headquarters of what was to
become a trading empire in the region.
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The Songhai Empire
The Songhai Empire under Sonni Ali
In the 15th century, Songhai in West Africa grew to be the largest empire in Africa and
many parts of the world. The heart of the Songhai Empire lay along the middle Niger River
south east of the city of Gao. A Songhai kingdom in the region of Gao had existed since the
11th century CE but had come under the control of Mali in 1325. In the late 14th century,
Gao began to grow powerful again, but it was during the reign of the king, Sonni Ali, that
Songhai became the most powerful empire in western Sudan.

The people of the Gao kingdom were farmers, hunters and fishermen. The Niger River
became very important for the expansion of Songhai influence even before Sonni Ali
became king. The fishermen used canoes as they traded along the river. It was easy to
adapt these canoes for military use. They set up trading villages along the middle Niger
and from these villages dominated the trade with the nearby communities of peasant
farmers. Sonni Ali the Great became king in 1464. He married the queen of Jenne, Queen
Dara. He had been brought up as part of an exclusive ruling class, a warrior-horseman and
became a great military general. He reorganised the army, which had a fleet of war canoes
commanded by a body of foot soldiers and an elite cavalry. The cavalry wore iron
breastplates beneath battle tunics, and had lances, swords and arrows with poisoned tips.
The infantry used leather and copper shields. The Songhai cavalry became the top military
force in the region and was famous for its speed and toughness. The members of the army
lived in barracks separated from the civilian population.
His first major conquest was the city of Timbuktu with its great University of Sankore from
the Tuareg in 1468. The Muslim leaders of Timbuktu asked for help against the Tuareg,
nomads from the desert who had occupied the city since 1433. Sonni Ali not only defeated
the Tuareg but took the city as well. Songhai oral tradition says that he took Timbuktu in
retaliation against the Muslim leadership who had promised transport for his troops to
cross the river but failed to provide it. His next conquest was the important trading city of
Jenne. By this time he had built up his navy to over 400 boats and he used them in the
campaign to take Jenne, situated on the Niger River. He laid siegeto the city with the fleet
blockading the port. It took seven years before Jenne fell to Sonni Ali in 1473. He now had
control over three of the greatest trading cities on the Niger River: Gao, Timbuktu and
Jenne.

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Much of Sonni Ali’s reign was spent fighting off the Tuareg raiders and extending his empire
by military conquest. His cavalry was critical in his military campaigns.

Religion in the Songhai Empire

The Songhai royal house at Gao had converted to Islam by the 11th century as being a
Muslim was important for gaining access to the major trade routes. However, Sonni Ali was
only nominally Muslim and the majority of the people of Songhai did not convert to Islam.
Rulership and authority were still based on the ability to communicate with the local
ancestors and rulers could not ignore the fact that the majority of their people followed
traditional religion. He continued to practise the traditional religion but gave contributions
to the mosques.
Like Sonni Ali, a lot of people who converted to Islam still kept many of their old beliefs as
well. For women, this meant that they were freer than women in strict Muslim societies.
There were a number of societies in this region of Africa which were matrilineal, where
descent came through mothers and not through fathers. Islamic or Sharia law was just the
opposite. They were patrilineal, meaning that descent came through the father and men
dominated society. Muslim visitors from North Africa were shocked at the way that men
and women mixed freely in the markets and streets and at the freedom that women had.
For example, they did not have to cover their faces as they would have had to in strict
Muslim countries.
Government and power
As emperor Sonni Ali held the sacred power that ensured prosperity. He was a brilliant
administrator who created a centralised administration. The empire was divided into
separate provinces and each province was placed under the control of its own governor.
Traditional rulers were replaced by men appointed by the emperor. They were usually
members of the royal family or trusted servants. Each governor recruited his own local
army which was used for gathering the payments of tribute by the farmers of the province.
The removal of traditional rulers and the centralisation of power helped prevent provinces
from breaking away.

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In the royal city of Gao, the court included members of Sonni Ali’s family, high officials and
ambassadors. The king sat on a raised platform and was surrounded by 700 eunuchs. The
Wandu (chief griot or praise-singer) announced people as they came in. People could only
approach in a prostrate position, that is, lying face down on the floor. Below the king and
royal family were the noblemen and direct descendants of the original Songhai people.
Next were the freemen who were independent farmers and traders. At the bottom of
society were war captives, slaves and immigrants.
Economy
The Songhai society and economy were based on a clan system. The clan a person
belonged to not only determined their status in society, but also their occupations. The
most common occupations were metalworkers, fishermen and carpenters.
Sonni Ali developed new methods of farming. The biggest change he made was to
introduce slave-based farms. Before this, individual slaves were used to cultivate smaller
pieces of land and provide grain for the king. Sonni Ali grouped the slaves into villages and
each village had to produce a certain amount of grain. Any surplus grain could be used by
the village. Children born in the villages automatically became slaves and were expected
to work for the villages or were sold on the slave markets.
The end of the Songhai Empire
Sonni Ali died in 1492 as he was returning from a military campaign. A year later, his son
was overthrown by Muhammad Ture, who became the founder of the Askiya dynasty.
Muhammad Ture strengthened the administration of the empire and consolidated Ali’s
conquests. He was a Muslim and used Islam to reinforce his authority throughout the
empire and to extend the trade of the Songhai empire
Travel and trade in Songhai at the height of its power
The Songhai Empire was a very strong trading empire and controlled the gold and salt
trade across the Sahara to Europe. The army was used to protect the trade routes. The
Julla (merchants) would form partnerships, and the state would protect these merchants
and the port cities on the Niger. The three major trading centres were Gao, Timbuktu and
Jenne. Under Emperor Muhammad Ture, the founder of the Askiya dynasty, another
important trading centre was captured. This was the salt producing centre of Taghaza in
the north.
The main source of government income was the tribute from the provinces and royal farms
and the taxes on trade. The main currency of the long-distance trade was salt, while cowrie
shells were used for internal trade. Gold was the main item of trade across the Sahara and
slaves were also captured and sold in north Africa.

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Arab, Italian and Jewish merchants at Timbuktu
Timbuktu became a thriving cultural and commercial centre. Arab, Italian and Jewish
merchants all gathered there for trade. Jews had settled in Timbuktu from as early as the
8th century, but the community increased in the 15th century when many Jews migrated
there to escape persecution in Spain. For hundreds of years Timbuktu was inhabited by
Muslims, Christians and Jews and was a centre of religious and racial tolerance. However,
when Mohammad Ture came to power in 1493, he decreed that Jews must either convert
to Islam or leave the area of Mali.
Learning and culture in the Songhai Empire
Muhammad Ture revived Timbuktu as a great centre of Islamic learning. However, he did
not force the Songhai people to convert to Islam and the majority continued to keep their
traditional religious beliefs. Scholars and students travelled from as far away as Cairo,
Baghdad and Persia to study in Timbuktu and to consult with learned historians and
writers. They studied grammar, law and surgery at the University of Sankore. The respected
scholars who taught in Timbuktu were referred to as ambassadors of peace throughout
North Africa. Some of the great mosques, the university, schools and libraries built at that
time still stand today.

Fall of the Songhai Empire

After the death of Muhammad Ture in 1538 the Songhai Empire began to lose its strength
and control over its vast territory. In the late 16th century it slid into civil war. The wealth
and power of Songhai was also undermined by environmental changes which caused
droughts and diseases.
In 1591, Morocco under the rule of Sultan Ahmad Al-Masur, attacked Songhai’s main
commercial centres. He was determined to gain control of the wealth from the gold trade.
The Moroccan army was equipped with European fi rearms and was successful at first, but
Morocco was unable to consolidate its conquest of Songhai. The invasion did, however,
lead to the decline of Songhai. Timbuktu was plundered by the army and the five-hundred-
year-old university of Sankore was destroyed. The lecturers from the university were exiled
to Morocco. The greatest scholar ever to teach at the university, Ahmed Baba, was among
those who were exiled. Baba had written more than forty books on theology, astronomy,
ethnography and biography. His rich library of 1 600 books was lost when he was exiled.
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