Part 18 (1/2)

Armies of the Song Empire in China use bullets fired from bamboo tubes to help beat back a Mongol invasion-the first use of small firearms.

1274.

The Chinese emperor Kublai Khan sends a ma.s.sive invasion force against j.a.pan, but a typhoon wipes out much of the invading fleet.

1291.

The Christian-held city of Acre, in the Holy Land, falls to invading Muslims, effectively ending the Crusades.

~1300.

The Chimu begin conquering more than 600 miles of Peruvian coast.

SPINNING THE GLOBE.

Europe:

A Case of the Plagues

The Middle Ages were full of good news and bad news for Europe, although, to be honest, the bad was a lot nastier than the good was good. The worst of the bad came in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when a rather sudden climactic change created a succession of colder-than-average years. This led to a series of famines. And just when it looked like things had hit rock bottom, a string of plague epidemics occurred, wiping out huge chunks of the population and generally depressing everyone to the point that survivors got either almost giddy or totally hopeless.

The good news, sort of, was that the precipitous drop in the population meant there was more stuff for the survivors: more food, more land, more building materials. It also meant there were fewer people to compete for work, which made labor more valuable. This contributed to more independence for anyone with a marketable skill.

It also helped lead to the rise of trade a.s.sociations, where merchants or craftsmen of various types could band together to set rules and conditions among themselves and present a united front politically.

THE REAL MCCOY.

In 1040, a Scottish lord murdered the inc.u.mbent king and a.s.sumed the throne. He held it until 1057, when the dead king's son avenged his pop. The usurper's name was Macbeth. Someone eventually wrote a play about him.

Speaking of politics, there was good news on that front, too. While Europe had been mainly a collection of small feudal ent.i.ties in the years after the collapse of the Roman Empire, governments began to coalesce and embrace larger groups of people. This added more stability to civic life and provided greater security from outside threats.

The Holy Roman Empire (which as the eighteenth-century French philosopher Voltaire pointed out ”was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”) pulled together Germany, Austria, northern Italy, and eastern France. Its leaders were selected by a council of n.o.bles rather than through accident of birth, which led to a generally better cla.s.s of rulers. It also served as both a check on the power of the Christian Church and as the Church's protector.

France, as the second millennium began, was pretty much centered on the three cities of Paris, Orleans, and Leon. Expanded in the early thirteenth century by Phillip II Augustus, it came into its own as a nation in the mid-fifteenth century, when it finally defeated England in the Hundred Years' War.

In northwest Russia, a leader named Yaroslav I put together a kingdom centered on the city of Kiev. The city, which boasted some four hundred churches, became a major trading center between Europe and the Byzantine Empire. By the end of the twelfth century, however, the kingdom had all but disappeared, a victim of internal power struggles between Yaroslav's successors.

TAXABLE...a.s.sETS Leofric, who was the Earl of Mercia in England, apparently was a sport. So in 1040, he agreed to remit a heavy tax if his wife rode naked through the streets of Coventry. The Lady G.o.doifv, aka G.o.diva, agreed. And the earl kept his word.

Midway through the eleventh century, England was conquered by the Norman ruler William I. Normans, followed by the French-speaking Angevins, ruled the country until 1399.

China:

From the Song to the Yuan to the Ming

The Song Dynasty, which started under the warlord Chao K'uang in 960, revived the use of Confucian principles of government, with tough civil-service exams required to obtain government posts. This inspired confidence in the government and prompted civil servants to take pride in their jobs. And that, at least for a while, made for a more efficient government.

JUST THE TYPE.

Around 1045, a Chinese alchemist named Pi Sheng carved blocks of clay into characters, fire-hardened them, fixed them to an iron plate, and gave the world moveable type.

The Song Dynasty fostered a strong business and trade climate. Song s.h.i.+ps were the masters of sea routes all over Asia and into the Persian Gulf. The population soared to 110 million by 1100 CE, and the country had several cities that were huge even by today's standards. Song art and culture were the envy of much of the world.

But good times bred complacency and corruption, which led to incompetence and weakness. Continually threatened by nomadic forces from the north and west, which gradually nibbled away at the country, the southern Song Dynasty fell to Kublai Khan and the Mongols in 1279.

Kublai immediately established the Yuan Dynasty, which lasted until 1368, when it fell to the Ming. Under the Ming, the entire country was reunified under a native-run government for the first time in several hundred years.