Urbanization accompanies commercial growth and Chinese cities are the largest and most sophisticated in the world at this time.Were there other factors influencing the economic development of the West? Is the Western pattern the "norm" or the Chinese pattern? What made each country's economic evolution follow the path it took? Students might consider the question: Did commercialization have to lead to industrialization, as it did in the West? This is a common assumption.China is distinguished by early development in this area. In China, the production of nonagricultural goods at the household level begins in Song and remains an important form of production and market development in China until the 20th century.( In Japanese history, historians see these pre-modern and proto-industrial developments taking place in the Tokugawa period, 1600-1868.) When this commercial development takes place in European history it is labeled "proto-industrial" growth by historians, important in European history because it is succeeded by industrialization where the production moves to cities.The growth in a) the production of non-agricultural goods in a rural and household context ("cottage industries" such as silk), and in b) the production of cash crops that are sold not consumed (tea), leads to the extension of market forces into the everyday life of ordinary people.The Song is distinguished by enormous commercial growth that historians refer to as "pre-modern" in character. (The fact that the dynasty spans the year 1000 may make it easier for students to locate these developments in time.) the inventions of gunpowder, the compass, and printing all occur under the Song.The Song dynasty (960-1279) follows the Tang (618-906) and the two together constitute what is often called "China's Golden Age.".(The achievements of China under the Song are the subject of Marco Polo's "fantastic" reports when he journeys to China under the Mongols, who rule in China for eighty-nine years (1279- 1368) as the Yuan dynasty, between the Song and Ming)Ĭhina's Preeminence under the Song (960-1279) and Commercial Development to the Ming voyages of exploration (1405- 1433) with ships that reach the coast of Africa.through the "pre-modern" commercial and urban development of the Song, ca.From the Tang (discussed in the unit on the Tang Dynasty).This period of Chinese history, from roughly 600-1600 C.E., is a period of stunning development in China.At first, especially in northern parts of West Francia, these fortresses were of wood, and might sometimes be as small as a wooden palisade surrounding a fortified wooden tower.China China’s “Golden Age”: The Song, the Mongols, and the Ming Voyages The warlords who controlled fiefs often did so by means of armed fortresses called castles. West Francia had little governmental authority and much war.Īs a result of constant warfare (albeit warfare that was usually local in scope), power came to rest in control of fiefs and the ability to extract surplus from their occupants and to use this surplus to outfit armed men. Further, the powerful nobles often lost control of the warlords of more local regions. The near constant warfare (both external attacks and civil wars) of the tenth and eleventh centuries, however, meant that the kings of West Francia gradually lost control over the more powerful nobles. Ultimate control of a kingdom’s army had rested with the king, and the great nobles had also exercised strong authority over their own fighting men. How had such a system emerged? Even in Carolingian times, armies in much of Western Europe had come from war bands made up of a king’s loyal retainers, who themselves would possess bands of followers. They would use the surplus from these fiefs to equip themselves with weapons and equipment, and they often controlled their fiefs with little oversight from the higher-ranked nobles or the king. We call it feudalism because power rested with armed men in control of plots of agricultural land known as fiefs and Latin for fief is feudum. Out of a weak and fragmented kingdom emerged the decentralized form of government that historians often call feudalism. This kingdom would eventually come to be known as France. This decentralization was most acute in West Francia, the western third of what had been Charlemagne’s empire. Most of the rest of Christian Western Europe’s kingdoms, however, were fragmented. In the aftermath of the Abbasid Caliphate’s political collapse and the gradual weakening of Fatimid Egypt (see Chapter Eight), the eleventh-century Byzantine Empire was the strongest, most centralized state in the Eastern Mediterranean, and indeed, probably the strongest state west of Song China. Out of the chaos and mayhem of the tenth and eleventh centuries, East Francia-the eastern third of Charlemagne’s Empire that is in roughly the same place as modern Germany-and England had emerged as united and powerful states.
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