Chapter 18 Notes: The Atlantic System and Africa

Slave Trade in Africa is a controversy that lasted many years, taking in to account that the first main
route passed through the Sahara tying into the Arab Slave trade. Then the African slaves became
part of the Atlantic Slave trade system.
Slave trade would also have a great influence on the economy of certain African Nations.

Plantations in the West Indies

Before 1650: The Spanish introduced sugar cane to the West Indies around 1500 but it was not
cultivated extensively – instead, by the 1600s, tobacco and other crops were grown by Europeans.
English colonies prospered first because of their government support.
Though tobacco was popular, trading it was made difficult by natural disasters, attacks by the Caribs
and other countries, and shortages. The English and French used chartered companies which
provided passage to Europeans. They paid for it by becoming indentured servants. This quickly
bolstered the population, but in the mid-1500s Virginian tobacco was offering competition.
The Dutch, French, and English colonies re-emerged growing sugar cane and using African slaves as
the labor force. Brazil became the greatest producer in sugar.
As the Dutch fought for independence against the Spanish, they chartered the Dutch West India
Company in 1621 to attack the Spanish’s overseas possessions. They served as a form of the Dutch
Navy and private trading company. By 1653 the company controlled 1000 miles of northeastern
Brazil’s coast. The company also took West African port Elmina and the port of Luanda from the
Portuguese, which they used to export slaves the Brazil and the West Indies.
The Portuguese were freed from the Spanish in 1640 and they soon drove out the Dutch sugar
planters from Brazil.
Sugar cultivation caused an increase in slave trade, and they made up most of the workers,
especially in English colonies. They cost twice as much as indentured Europeans so poor tobacco
planters in the 17th century could not afford them.
By 1750, however, the price of land in the West Indies had risen to the point that indentured
servants nearly done with their time could not purchase it. They instead worked on the English
mainland colonies. Sugar planters in the West Indies then switched to slaves, and rising sugar prices
allowed them to purchase them. Because they lived longer than an indentured servant served, they
were a profitable investment.

Plantation Life in the Eighteenth Century

Technology
Sugar cane could be harvested fourteen to eighteen months after planting, and could be
harvested every nine months thereafter. The tools required for this process were very simple.
The factory required for the processing of sugar was more complex. In a mill, cane was crushed
by sets if heavy rollers, sometimes powered by humans or animals and in larger mills, windmills
or water-powered mills.
After the mill, cane juice was carried to a series of kettles in the boiling shed, where water
would be evaporated to create syrup.
In a drying shed the syrup was dried. Sugar crystals and molasses were exported separately.
Sugar cane cultivation favored large plantations because of the complexity of the machinery
required for the operation. All this intensive cultivations caused environmental degradation,
mainly soil exhaustion and deforestation. Planters did not rotate crops, they merely moved on
 to new land once the soil was useless. Most forests in the Caribbean were cleared for pasture
and farming land by the end of the eighteenth century.
The Spanish introduced new animals: cattle, pigs and horses. They also introduced new crops:
bananas and plantains from the Canary Islands and rice, which was important along with
tobacco and sugar. Many other crops also came from Africa, and some New World crops spread
to Africa in return.

Population
Slaves

Most of the indigenous Arawak people were wiped out within fifty years of Columbus’s arrival.
Likewise, the Carib peoples were annihilated as plantations spread.
In the 18th century, most of the West Indies’ population was made up of slaves. Because there
was a plantocracy, few rich men owned most of the land. A small master class dominated an
expansive black population.
Their work was primarily on sugar, coffee, cotton plantations, in gold and silver mines, in rice
fields, and cocoa as well as working in houses to work as servants.
In plantations, the maximum amount of work possible was extracted from all slaves except
infants, the elderly and the sick. Most slaves worked in the field and ‘great gangs’ did the heavy
work while the weaker slaves did simpler tasks. Most slaves were male, and about half of male
slaves did not do gang work. Most slaves worked in order to escape punishment.
Driver’s, privileged male slaves, oversaw all the other slaves’ work. Slaves that disobeyed or
lagged behind were punished harshly.
The population did not increase as much as it should have because of the sex imbalance and
the heavy work the women had to do. It cost less to buy a slave than raise one to the same age.
Deaths were common because of the dangerous conditions, overwork and malnutrition.
Disease was the most prevalent cause of death 0 around 1-3rd of slaves died in the process of
seasoning.
Slaves were rewarded for good work and punished harshly for failure to meet their duties or
chores. They had very little rest, no education, and little time or opportunity for family life. But
they were allowed on Sundays to cultivate their own crops
Some slaves attempted to run away – in extreme cases, there would be large rebellions. For
example, In Tacky’s rebellion in Jamaica, Tacky and various slaves stormed plantation before
Tacky was killed.

Free

The free population was a minority – the most prosperous, the grands blancs or platation
owners dominated the island in St. Domingue. Petis blancs, or little whites were officials and
merchants. Last came free blacks who served similar jobs (some even owning slaves) as the free
whites but were below them socially.
The plantocracy in English colonies was more evident – the amount of exported sugar was about
80% of the total and left little room for small farmers.
West Indian planters invested a great deal of money in just buying their land, let alone the
slaves they required.
Manumission, or the freeing of slaves, was not unheard of. Some slaves were freed because the
slave owner had fathered a child with one of the women slaves. Other slaves bought their
 freedom. Manumission allowed a free black population to grow, even outnumbering slaves in
Spanish colonies in the eighteenth century.
Escaped slaves, or maroons, sometimes lived in their own communities, particularly in Jamaica
and Hispaniola. Treaties were signed with them to stop runaways and revolts.

The Atlantic Economy

The important elements in the creation of the Atlantic economy were the plantations, new economic
institutions, new partnerships between private investors and governments in Europe, and new
relationships between European and African merchants.

Economic Institutions and Government Relations

Because government monopolies were expensive, private enterprise, which was much more
efficient, prevailed in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Private investors funded new growth through capitalism and
In capitalism large financial resources could be managed. The expansion of credit and financial
institutions (such as banks and chartered companies) allowed investors to reduce risks and raise
profits while conducting business far from home. Banks were an important institution in which
money could be stored – banks, in turn, invested that money in real estate, local industries and
institutions, and overseas trade.
Those who wanted profit more than the banks’ interest gave them purchased shares from joint-
stock companies. Shares were dealt in stock exchanges – The Amsterdam Exchange was the
greatest stock market in the 17th and 18th centuries. Insurance could be bought to reduce risks in
overseas trading.
Mercantilism was the policy adopted by European states to promote citizens’ overseas trade
and accumulate precious metals. Its policies discouraged citizens from trading with foreign
merchants and instead encouraged using armed forces to secure exclusive relations. Chartered
companies were an important part of this.
Successes with chartered companies made other countries set them up as well – in 1672 all
English trade in West Africa was given to the Royal African Company. The French government
also chartered the French East India Company and French West India Company.
The Dutch and English also used military force to gain commercial dominance – they fought with
the Dutch and Spain and forced them to give in. The government, however, now removed the
companies’ monopoly privileges, creating competition amongst the governments’ citizens, while
placing restriction on foreigners, such as the Navigation Acts that restricted the colonies’ trade
to only the English, and the Exclusif by France.
The Atlantic became Britain’s, France’s and Portugal’s most important overseas trading system.
The Dutch found the Asian trade to be more important.

The Atlantic Circuit

It was a clockwise network of sea routes beginning in Europe, running south to Africa, going
west to the Americas, and then returning to Europe. The ships relied on winds to push them
along. Each leg of the journey could result in a large profit.
 From Europe to Africa, European manufactured goods were carried (metal bars, guns,
hardware) and traded for West African resources. The goods were the taken back to Europe.
Slaves were also purchased and then taken to the plantation colonies.
Plantation colonies were in the Middle Passage – it was in this area that the slaves were taken
to.
In the last part of the journey, goods from the colonies returned to Europe.
There were many other commercial groups. Some sea routes ran from Europe to the Indian
Ocean and then to Africa. A ‘Triangular Trade’ carried rum to West Africa, slaves to the West
Indies, and molasses and rum back to New England.
Increased prosperity in Europe led to increased consumption by its people.
The flow of sugar to Europe depended on the flow of slaves from Africa. As sugar trade boomed
from 1650 to 1800, so did slave trade. Slave trade became highly specialized, requiring modified
ships. 17th century mercantilist policies gave most of the slave trade to chartered companies.
A slave trader had to deliver as many living slaves as possible, though the trip was 6 to 10 weeks
long, and so huge losses were common. Deaths resulted from escape attempts, depression,
disease, rebellion, abuse, and so on.

Africa, the Atlantic, and Islam

The Gold Coast and the Slave Coast

Europeans were not interested in conquering Africa, but trading with it. Though slaves later
became valuable exports, products such as gold, ivory and timber still remained predominant.
African merchants were very picky on what goods the y received. Their greatest demands were
for textiles, hardware and guns.
Both Europeans and Africans did whatever they had to get more profit. Africa had the
advantage, however, because the price of slaves in the Gold Coast in the 18th century had more
than doubled. West Africans strength also came from African government on the Gold and
Slave coasts which forced Europeans to obey African trading customs and to not take their land.
Africans kings obtained their slaves from other African kings, as captives.

The Bight of Biafra and Angola

In the eighteenth century slave trade expanded to the Bight of Biafra. It was not densely
populated such as in the Coasts.
Inland African merchants supplied Europeans with slaves who debtors, victims of kidnappings,
and criminals. The largest inland traders in the Bight were the Aro of Arochukwu who used an
oracle to promote their prestige. Some inland markets became huge fairs were large amounts of
slaves were sold.
Angola, not the Bight, was the greatest source of slaves and the only place where Portugal
controlled a good deal of territory. In Luanda and Benguela, caravan traders dealt with ships.
They traded slaves that were prisoners of war for goods. Slaves were also procured from
droughts – leaders took in the water-less populace but would often sell the men. Sometimes
Angolan states rose from this.

Africa’s European and Islamic Contacts

 Up to 1800, Europeans gained little land in Africa save the Portuguese colony of Angola and the
Dutch East India Company’s Cape Colony which dealt in the Indian Ocean trade and imported
slaves.
Africa learned of Muslim beliefs from traders from North Africa or the Middle East. The Sahara
protected southern Africa from invasion until the Islamic Ottoman Empire took Morocco and
Ethiopia lost territory to Muslim invaders.
The Songhai Empire of West Africa spread its influence into the Sahara from the South. They
were wealthy due to trans-Saharan trade and were ruled by a Muslim dynasy. Morocco
challenged it; it lost many troops in the dessert but still managed to defeat Songhai’s troops
because they lacked firearms.
Soon, Hausa trading cities in the Central Sudan attracted most trans-Saharan trade. They took
similar goods as coastal African traders did and exported gold, slaves, and the kola nut which
was popular among the Muslims.
Slave trade was substantial, but most slaves in the Islamic African world were soldiers and
servants, women and children, and eunuchs.
The Sudanese kingdom of Bornu grew in the 16th century due to imported guns from the
Ottoman Empire. They sold or kept captives as slaves. Muslims saw nothing wrong with
enslavement,
Islamic influences were prevalent - Islamic legal and administrative systems influenced African
trading cities on the Swahili Coast. There were very few Christians, and most people used
African languages.
As much as 4 times more slaves were exported into Atlantic rather than Islamic trade – Africa’s
population remained large due to the amount of men exported in relation to the amount of
women exported. Also, cultivation of New World crops helped fend off starvation.

Vocabulary

Arawak: Amerindian peoples who inhabited the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean at the time of
Columbus.
Atlantic Circuit: The network of trade routes connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas that
underlay the Atlantic system. The Atlantic System came to be due to slave trade, new economic
institutions, new partnerships between private investors and governments in Europe, and new
working relationships between European and African merchants.
Bight of Biafra: Located off the West African coast - it was densely populated but had no large
states. Through a trade network, some of its merchants supplied slaves. In the late eighteenth
century, as the trade expander, large trade fairs were held.
Bornu: A powerful West African kingdom at the southern edge of the Sahara in the Central
Sudan, which was important in trans-Saharan trade and in the spread of Islam. Also known as
Kanem-Bornu, it endured from the ninth century to the end of the nineteenth.
Capitalism: The economic system of large financial institutions (banks, stock exchanges,
investment companies) that first developed in early modern Europe. Commercial capitalism, the
trading system of the early modern economy, is often distinguished from industrial capitalism,
the system based on machine production.
Caribs: An Amerindian people who occupied the Lesser Antilles at the time of Columbus and
who originated from the northern Coast of South America and the West Indies
Chartered company: Groups of private investors who paid an annual fee to France and England
in exchange for a monopoly over trade to the West Indies colonies.
Driver: A privileged male slave whose job was to ensure that a slave gang did its work on a
plantation
Dutch Cape Colony: A colony of the Dutch East India Company in the southern tip of the
continent that was part of Indian Ocean trade. It mainly imported slaves from Madagascar,
South Asia and the East Indies.
Dutch West India Company: (1621-1794) Trading company chartered by the Dutch government
to conduct its merchants' trade in the Americas and Africa.
Gold Coast: Region of the Atlantic coast of West Africa occupied by modern Ghana; named for
its gold exports to Europe from the 1470s onward.
Great Circuit: Also called ‘Triagular Trade’ that carried rum to West Africa, slaves to the West
Indies, and Molasses and rum to New England.
Hausa: An agricultural and trading people of central Sudan in West Africa. Aside from their brief
incorporation into the Songhai Empire, the Hausa city-states remained autonomous until the
Sokoto Caliphate conquered them in the early nineteenth century.
Manumission: A grant of legal freedom to an individual slave.
Maroon: A slave who ran away from his or her master. Often a member of a community of
runaway slaves in the West Indies and South America.
Mercantilism: European government policies of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries designed to promote overseas trade between a country and its colonies and
accumulate precious metals by requiring colonies to trade only with their motherland country.
The British system was defined by the Navigation Acts, the French system by laws known as the
Exclusif.
Middle Passage: The part of the Atlantic Circuit involving the transportation of enslaved Africans
across the Atlantic to the Americas.
Plantocracy: In the West Indian colonies, the rich men who owned most of the slaves and most
of the land, especially in the eighteenth century.
Royal African Company: A trading company chartered by the English government in 1672 to
conduct its merchants' trade on the Atlantic coast of Africa.
Saint Dominigue: (present-day Haiti) A French colony that in the eighteenth century was the
greatest producer of sugar in the Atlantic world.
Seasoning: An often difficult period of adjustment to new climates, disease environments, and
work routines, such as that experienced by slaves newly arrived in the Americas.
Slave Coast: The part of the coast of West Africa extending from the River Volta to the Niger
Delta and its ports were centers of African slave trade.
Songhai: A people, language, kingdom, and empire in western Sudan in West Africa. At its height
in the sixteenth century, the Muslim Songhai Empire stretched from the Atlantic to the land of
the Hausa and was a major player in the trans-Saharan trade.
Chapter 19 Notes
The Ottoman Empire
It was at first a small state in northwestern Anatolia that grew due to (1) its leader, Osman, (2)
control of a link between Europe and Asia at Gallipoli on the Dardanelles Strait, and (3) its innovative
army that used nomadic skills, Christian soldiers and gunpowder.

Military: (1) They first warred with Christian Empires and conquered a Serbian kingdom.

(2) In 1402 Bayazid I lost to Timur, leading to civil war until Mehmed I reunified the sultantate.

(3) Sultan Mehmed I attacked and won against as Constantinople (later known as Istanbul) in 1453.

(4) Selim I defeated the Safavids and stopped their threat from Iran. Selim also conquered the Mamluk
Sultantate in 1516-1617, giving him the Red Sea. The rulers of port cities in Algeria and Tunisia joined
the Ottomans of their own violation.

(5) Suleiman the Magnificent conquered Belgrade, expelled the Knights of the Hospital of St. John from
Rhodes, and almost conquered Vienna.

(6) Starting 1453 the Ottomans warred with Venice for its profitable maritime trade.

The Ottomans used Christian war prisoners as military slaves – these troops, converted to Islam,
were called Janissaries and were crucial to the Ottoman’s military. The Janissaries were trained all
year long. In the 15th century a system called devshirme came into being. Children in Christian
villages we drafted, placed in Turkish families to learn the language, and then sent to train in the
military. Some of these children received special training at the Sultan’s palace and became
government or military officials.
The ranks of the military included mounted Turkish archers, Janissaries, and sailor’s of various
origins in the navy. The adoption of firearms gave them a great advantage over the Safavids, who
were warred with frequently. As the firearms improved, they grew increasingly important in battles.
Due to a land-grant system, cavalrymen were in charge of most rural areas in Anatolia and the
Balkans, and their land usually went to their sons.

Politics:

After revolts in Anatolia, the Sultans resided mostly in their palaces and knew little of the
outside world. This resulted from keeping the king’s male relatives isolated so that they could
not revolt. The chief administrators, or grand viziers, administered the government; the sultan’s
mother and the chief eunuch oversaw the palace.
The Janissaries influence increased greatly during turmoil from 1585-1650, and they were able
to remove many prohibitions on themselves. Military power decreased during the 1600s
because the devshirme was discontinued and many Janissaries hired soldiers to serve in their
place. They became an important faction in urban politics, however.
Tax farmers caused the government to rely on provincial governors and wealthy men that
behaved like private landowners. Rural disorder, however, allowed new economic opportunities
to arise. For example, the port of Izmir had a booming trade because they did not pay many
taxes. Izmir became multiethnic, multireligious, and cosmopolitan. Europeans slowly gained
dominance in the meanwhile.
 The Tulip Period (1718-1730) was the final stage in the decline of the Ottoman’s. A sudden craze
of European culture swept through Istanbul and cause religious revolts from the Janissaries.
Patrona Halil, the leader of the Patrona Halil rebellion, took over Istanbul for several months.
Though the government and administration decayed, the elite of the provinces took advantage
of the little authority exerted on them. Mamluks became important in Egypt once more and
dominated over Janissaries in Baghdad, though the Janissaries dominated in Aleppo and
Damascus. A Sunni movement caused by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab created another
powerful, separate faction.

Economy:

1585-1650 was a period of great economic troubles. The increasing size of the Janissaries corps
led to increased expenses, and the sultan reduced the number of landholding cavalrymen to cut
back on costs.
The landholding cavalrymen who had not lost their land found themselves in the midst of
inflation caused by cheap silver from the New World. The European’s ability to buy more than
an Ottoman caused the purchasing ability of the landowners to decline. The government took
advantage of this to reclaim some of their land from the cavalrymen.
The government inconvenienced the populace by overtaxing the peasants and hiring badly-
trained soldiers for a short amount of time. People in religious collages could not afford to stay
there.
Between 1590 and 1610, the previously landholding cavalrymen, the peasants, and previous
members of religious collages revolted. There was a decline in agricultural production and an
increase in banditry.
When land grants disappeared after the revolts, tax farmers emerged. They gained profit by
paying taxes in advance and collecting a larger sum from the actual tax payers.
Capitulations, or trade agreements, made it so that certain traders did not have to pay so many
fees. Though it was started by ultans, Europeans took advantage of it to dominate Ottoman’s
trade. European’s paid much less in fees than Ottoman traders.

The Safavid Empire (1502-1722)

It arose in Iran and was a long-time enemy with the Ottomans. Both the Ottomans and the Safavids
supported the cavalry with land-grants, spoke various languages, and relied on urban leaders to act as
intermediaries between the populace and the government.

Politics:
Ismail, a boy, emerged triumphant from a power struggle between Turkish chieftains in Iran. He
was the leader of a Sufi brotherhood, the Safaviya. The Safaviya believed Ismail to be a god. He
declared himself Shah in 1502 and made Shi’ite Islam the official religion, though the populace
and surrounding countries were Sunni. Many Sunni fled to neighboring lands, and it took a
violent century to make Iran mainly Shi’ite.
In Iran, the Sufi were fused with military and political objectives, and were banned by later
Safavid Shahs.
 The Safavids used both Persian and Arabic as their language. After the Mongols destroyed
Baghdad, however, Persian became the official language.
In Shi’ism, all rulers after the Hidden Imam were considered replacements. The Hidden Imam
was the twelfth descendant of Ali that went missing as a child in the ninth century.
Nomad warriors, the qizilbash, were granted land in return for military service. They treated
these lands as their own, however, not of the empire, and were ruled by chieftains.
When these nomad warriors withdrew due to pressure from the Safavid Empire, they severely
weakened the government. By 1722, Afghans captured Isfahan and ended Safavid rule.

Military:
The Safavids had difficulty paying their troops and their firearms, and nomad warriors refused to
take up firearms. Shah Abbas created a year-round slave corps instead. These soldiers were
mostly Christian converts to Islam from Georgia. Those that became powerful in court were
counterweights to nomad chiefs. Though Shah Abbas controlled these rivalries, his successors
did not do so as well.
The Safavids did not possess a navy. Nadir Shah who reunified Iran between 1736-1747 started a
navy, but it deteriorated soon after.

Religion:
In Iran, the Sufi were fused with military and political objectives, and were banned by later
Safavid Shahs.
Shi’ism had a significant impact. In Shi’ism, all rulers after the Hidden Imam were considered
replacements. The Hidden Imam was the twelfth descendant of Ali that went missing as a child
in the ninth century. Shi’ism also affected the psychology of the people – they observed various
religious rituals and plays throughout the year.

Society:
Isfahan was Iran’s capital from 1598 by Shah Abbas I. On the surface, it appeared to be very
similar to Istanbul. Both had few wheeled vehicles, lacked open spaces, secluded their women,
and social life was monopolized by men. They had differences in their culture such as Isfahan’s
not being cosmopolitan like Istanbul. They also had many superficial differences, such as the
style of the buildings and the materials used in their construction.
Artisans served in guilds that forged religious, social, and economic bonds between them.
Women were usually kept out of society in the women’s quarters. Women’s society had some
sort of contact with the outside world through male agents. Women were also allowed to own
property and appear in court.
Men monopolized public life, and homosexuality was common.

Economy:
The shahs’ silk monopoly was the main component of the Safavid’s foreign trade. The
manufacture of carpets, however, became very important, and they had various designs and a
high value.
Manufacture was generally not very productive, for most of the populace lived pastorally or by
subsistence farming.
In the late 16th century, an influx of cheap silver caused inflation. At the same time, overland
trade through Safavid territory declined due to mismanagement of the silk monopoly after the
death of Shah Abbas. There was great difficulty in paying the military and bureaucracy. The
government attempted to dislocate nomads from their lands to gain more taxes.
The Mughal Empire (1526-1761)
Politics:
Babur, a descendant of Timur, was the founder of the Mughal Empire. He was of Turkish
descent, and his rule was legitimized by the marriage of Timur to a descendant of Genghis Khan.
Babur invaded from Central Asia and defeated the Muslim sultan of Delhi in 1526, thus creating
a new state in India.
Akbar, Babur’s grandson, was illiterate but he established the central administration of the
empire. He married a Hindu Rajput princess and his hair had both an Islamic and Hindu
heritage. Akbar attempted to achieve social harmony in his empire. He also sought Muslim-
Hindu reconciliation.
There were several factors in the decline of the Mughal Empire: the land-grant system,
Aurangzeb’s failure to incorporate territories in Southern India, and regional powers challenging
the Mughal’s military.
In 1723, Nizam al-Mulk, the powerful vizier of the Mughal sultan, gave up on central
government and established an independent state at Hyderabad in the eatern Deccan. Other
deputies, the Marathas, and the Afghans did the same.
In 1741 Joseph Francois Dupleix took over the presidency of the east coast French stronghold of
Pondicherry. He captured English trading centers and became a power broker in southern India.

Military:
Akbar granted mansabs, or land revenues, to government officials and the military fir tgeur
service.
Akbar and his successors faced few threats, but often warred with Hindu kings in their western
frontier.
After Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, various regional powers challenged the Mughal’s military
supremacy, including Marathas, Sikhs, Hindu Rajputs, and Muslim Afghans.
In 1739, Nadir Shah, who had seized power in Iran after the fall of the Safavids, sacked Delji, the
Mughal capital, and the empire survived only in name thereafter.

Economics:
Akbar rescinded the head tax that Muslims traditionally gave to non-Muslims (though this was
more of a symbolic gesture).

Religion:
Though the ruling family was Muslim, the vast majority of the population was Hindu. Muslims
often destroyed Hindu monuments, expanded their territory, and forced Hindu war prisoners to
convert to Islam. However, the Mughal Empire was not intolerant – for example, 15 percent of
officials owning land under Akbar were Hindu warriors from the north called Rajputs.
Akbar allowed for Muslims and Hindus to be judged by their own laws – respectively village
customs or Shari’a law.
Akbar attempted to make his own “Divine Faith” which incorporated Muslim, Hindu, Zoroastrian
and Christian beliefs as well as Sunni rituals. It did not last after his death, but the mixed Hindu-
Muslim court did.
Akbar’s great-grandson Aurangzeb reinstated many restrictions on Hindus.
Sikhism emerged in the Punjab region of northwest India. The religions first spiritual guru,
Nanak, preached meditation and drew on both Muslim and Hindu images. The followers formed
 a single, caste-less community. After Aurangzeb beheaded the 9th guru in 1675 for refusing to
convert, the Sikh became an ‘army of the pure’.

Factors of Decline
Ottoman

Internal

The sultan began living a secluded life in his palace and had very little real-world experience.
This manner of living came from forcing male relatives to live in the palace in order to prevent
coups from arising. The sultan’s mother and the chief eunuch oversaw the palace affairs and
were important in royal favor. Chief administrators or grand viziers oversaw the government.
As the devshirme was discontinued, Janissaries made membership in their corps hereditary and
though their military skills declined, they became prominent in politics. They even began hiring
substitutes and so the sultan had to rely on half-trained troops.
Tax farming arose, damaging rural administration and imperial administration. The imperial
government began relying on governors or wealthy men. There was much rural disorder and
lack of imperial control.
In the Tulip Period, the Janissaries revolted causing the Sultan to abdicate. While central
government decayed, the provinces prospered.

External

Political order in Safavid Iran cut into Iranian Silk Production. Costly fees impaired trade for
coffee beans from the highlands of Yemen. The Ottomans could not match European trade.
Trade agreements called capitulations led to European Domination of Ottoman seas trade.

Mughal

Internal

After Aurangzeb’s (s Sikh leader who organized an ‘army of the pure’) death, Mughal power did
not last for long.
The land-grant system was a central element in the rapid decline of central authority.
The vizier Nizam al-Mulk established an independent state at Hyderabad in the eastern Deccan.
Other deputy officials did likewise as did the Marathas and Afghans. This disintegration of
central power allowed European adventurers to intrude. Eventually, Joseph Francois Dupleix
took over the presidency of the French stronghold Pondicherry and began expanding his
influence across India.

External

Aurangzeb’s failure to integrate new Mughal territories in southern India led to strong regional
powers opposing Mughal supremacy. They included the Marathas, Sikhs, Hindu Rajputs and
Muslim Afghan.
 The climax of this tension was when Nadir Shah who had seized power in Iran after the fall of
the Safavids invaded and sacked Delhi. The empire lived on only in name after that.

Safavids

Internal

There were few technological advances and most of the shah’s subjects lived on subsistence
farming or herding. Shahs also granted qizilbash nomads land in return for mounted warriors,
but then many people in rural areas lived under nomad chieftains who didn’t care for
agriculture.
There was difficulty in paying troops with firearms and the Safavids found that they would have
to adopt firearms more systematically in order to fend off their enemies. There was resistance
to this from nomad warriors and so shahs made a slave corps.
Christian converts to Islam were in a tense relationship with nomad chiefs, and some shah’s
were not able to keep their hostilities at bay.
The Safavids never possessed a decent navy.

External

In the sixteenth century inflation caused cheap silver to spread into Iran. Mismanagement of the
silk monopoly by shahs after Shah Abbas’s death created funding crisis. They forced the nomads
to withdraw to tax their lands, but by 1722 they were very weak and had no support from
nomad groups, and so Afghans easily captured the capital and ended Safavid rule.

The Maritime Worlds of Islam

Joint-stock companies, in which investors pooled their capital, allowed for much exploitation of
new possibilities.

Muslims in Southeast Asia

Islam spread widely during European commercial expansions, and was a resistance of sorts.
Christianity did not spread quite so easily.
The path of Islam’s spread in Southeast Asia isn’t very clear. In the 14th century, signs of
conversion and Muslim communities appear, most likely through the sea link to the port of
Cambay in India. Islam first spread to port cities and then slowly inland.
Muslims provided resistance against Europeans in the Philippines on the Mindanao Island and
the Sulu archipelago, eventually founding the Sulu Empire. The Brunei Sultanate in Borneo and
the Acheh Sultanate in northern Sumatra used Islam against the aggressive Christianity of the
Europeans. The Acheh was the center of Islamic expansion in Southeast Asia in the seventeenth
century and it traded cloth from Gujarat in India.

Muslims in Coastal Africa

Muslims ruled East African ports. In the Swahili Coast, people had little contact with the interior,
though droughts in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries caused massive migrations.
Cooperation in trading ports was made difficult by vegetation and their competition in ivory,
ambergris, and forest products. Slave trade became important in the 18th century.
 The Portuguese conquered all coastal ports north of Mozambique except Malindi, in which the
ruler cooperated. The Portuguese first favored Malindi causing other ports to decline, and their
power was shaken when the Arabs of Oman captured Musquat, and Arabian stronghold and
Mombasa (1689) which had become the Portuguese capital in Africa.
The Omanis’ empire worked with African populations, and Arabic, Persian, and Portuguese
loanwords created the Swahili language.
Arabs and other Muslims who settled in the region intermarried with the local families, giving
rise to a mixed population that helped towards the Swahili culture.
In northwest Africa, the Sa’adi family, which claimed to be descended from the Prophet resisted
and triumphed against the Portuguese, allowing the Moroccan state to regain power.
Corsairs or sea raiders worked out of Algerian, Tunisian and Libyan ports.

European Powers in Southern Seas

The Dutch drove the Portuguese from the East Indies and Malacca, a strategic town on the
Malay Penninsula, and focused on spice-producing islands of Southeast Asia.
The governor-generals of the United Netherlands were appointed by the Dutch East India
Company and had nearly unlimited power. The Dutch fought with the Acheh and local kingdoms
on Sumatra and Java. In 1628 and 1629 the capital Batavia was attacked by the ships of a
Javanese kingdom and barely held out. Though they survived military attacks, they could not
keep the spice monopoly once European countries copied their methods. In the 18th century,
the Dutch began growing their own crops, mainly in Java. The Dutch discovery of eastward-
blowing winds that allowed them to reach Australia.
Vocabulary
Acheh Sultantate: Muslim kingdom in northern Sumatra. Main center of Islamic expansion in
Southeast Asia in the early seventeenth century, it declined after the Dutch seized Malacca from
Portugal in 1641.
Akbar: (1542-1605) most illustrious sultan of the Mughal Empire in India (r. 1556-1605). He
expanded the empire and pursued a policy of conciliation with Hindus.
Babur: (1438-1530) Founder of the Mughal Empire – a descendant of Timur. He invaded from
Central Asia and defeated the last Muslim sultan of Delhi.
Batavia: Fort established ca. 1619 as headquarters of Dutch East India Company operations in
Indonesia; today the city of Jakarta.
Devshirme: Selection in Turkish. The system by which boys from Christian communities were
taken by the Ottoman state to serve as Janissaries.
Hidden Imam: Last in a series of twelve descendants of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali, whom
Shi'ites consider divinely appointed leaders of the Muslim community. In occlusion since ca. 873,
he is expected to return as a messiah at the end of time.
Isfahan and Istanbul: Isfahan was Iran’s capital from 1598 by Shah Abbas I. Both had few
wheeled vehicles, lacked open spaces, secluded their women, and social life was monopolized
by men. They had differences in their culture such as Isfahan’s not being cosmopolitan like
Istanbul. They also had many superficial differences, such as the style of the buildings and the
materials used in their construction.
Ismail: The founder of the Safavid Empire, who was of Kurdish, Iranian, and Greek ancestry and
the hereditary leader of a Sufi brotherhood called the ‘Safaviya’.
Janissaries: Infantry, originally of slave origin, armed with firearms and constituting the elite of
the Ottoman army from the fifteenth century until the corps was abolished in 1826.
Mansabs: In India, grants of land given in return for service by rulers of the Mughal Empire.
Mughal Empire: Muslim state (1526-1857) exercising dominion over most of India in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Oman: Arab state based in Musqat, the main port in the southwest region of the Arabian
peninsula. Oman succeeded Portugal as a power in the western Indian Ocean in the eighteenth
century.
Ottoman Empire: Islamic state founded by Osman in northwestern Anatolia ca. 1300. After the
fall of the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire was based at Istanbul (formerly
Constantinople) from 1453 to 1922. It encompassed lands in the Middle East, North Africa, the
Caucasus, and eastern Europe.
Rajputs: Members of a mainly Hindu warrior caste from northwest India. The Mughal emperors
drew most of their Hindu officials from this caste, and Akbar I married a Rajput princess.
Shi’ite Islam: A branch of Islam that believes God vests leadership of the community in a
descendant of Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali.
Sikhism: Indian religion founded by the guru Nanak (1469-1539) in the Punjab region of
northwest India. After the Mughal emperor ordered the beheading of the ninth guru in 1675,
Sikh warriors mounted armed resistance to Mughal rule.
Suleiman the Magnificent: (1494-1566) he most illustrious sultan of the Ottoman Empire (r.
1520-1566); also known as Suleiman Kanuni, "The Lawgiver. He significantly expanded the
empire in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean.
Swahili: Bantu language with Arabic loanwords spoken in coastal regions of East Africa.
Tulip Period: (1718-1730) Last years of the reign of Ottoman sultan Ahmed III, during which
European styles and attitudes became briefly popular in Istanbul