World History II: 1400 to the Present

This is Unit Six of Social Sciences and History, part one of two: world history from the gunpowder empires to the Atlantic revolutions. Unit five closed at fourteen fifty-three, with Europeans looking for an all-water route to Asia. This part follows what that search set in motion, and it carries one question the anchor keeps asking: who gained. Three Islamic empires gained from firearms that traveled the trade routes. Europeans gained from a trade in captives that reoriented Africa's commerce to the coast, and the exam's sample question four asks what that trade did for Europe. Mercantilism claimed one nation's gain was another's loss, and Smith answered that wealth grows. And when revolutions came, the anchor's chapter asks, revolution for whom. By the end you will be able to compare the three gunpowder empires. To say how the trans-Saharan trade turned to the coast. To answer sample question four on the slave trade. To state mercantilism and its critics. And to rank the revolutions by their break with the past.

Three entries on Asia after fourteen fifty: the Mughals, Malacca, and Japan and China, as Europeans arrived and were sometimes expelled.

The Mughals.

SSH 0501 Akbar's Synthesis and Aurangzeb's Reversal

Babur founded the Mughal Empire; his grandson Akbar forged a culture joining Indian and Persian, Hindu and Muslim, and took Gujarat, heart of Indian Ocean trade, while Sikhism was founded in the Punjab. Aurangzeb attempted Islamic revival, intolerant of Hindus, and the empire weakened against the Marathas. Northern states broke free and allied with Britain instead.

Malacca.

SSH 0502 Malacca and the Straits

Parameswara founded the Malacca Sultanate about fourteen hundred astride the straits between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. It grew rich on diverse merchants, support for Islam, and a maritime code for foreign sailors. Portugal took the city in fifteen eleven, then was expelled for forcing conversion. Spain took the Philippines; the Dutch, indifferent to Catholicism, Indonesia.

Japan and China.

SSH 0503 Tokugawa Closure and Ming to Qing

Europeans reached Japan as daimyos fought to unify it, and guns and converts followed. In sixteen oh three the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu banned Christianity and the Iberians. The Ming forbade foreign trade, then permitted it for revenue; famine ended them in sixteen forty-four, and the Manchu Qing reasserted Confucian values while trading with Europe. Korea's Joseon copied the Confucian model.

Four entries on the gunpowder empires: the Ottomans, the Safavids, the connected Islamic world without a caliph, and the three empires compared on four axes.

The Ottomans.

SSH 0504 The Ottoman Millet System and Suleiman's Law

Suleiman the First, the Magnificent to the West and the lawgiver at home, gave the empire one legal code and its height. Under the millet system each religious community ran its own affairs; Turkish served government, Arabic religion, Persian literature; the devshirme took Christian boys for the sultan. Decline followed Lepanto in fifteen seventy-one, with Russia rising in the Black Sea.

The Safavids.

SSH 0505 Safavid Persia and the Sunni–Shia Rift

Shah Ismail founded the Safavid state in fifteen oh one. Qizilbash factions let Ottomans and Uzbeks take land, so Tahmasp and Abbas built a corps of enslaved Caucasians to replace them, and stable rule produced miniatures, ceramics and royal architecture. The shahs forcibly converted Sunnis to Shi'ite Islam, deepening the Sunni-Shia rift. Nader Shah ended the dynasty in seventeen thirty-six.

The connected Islamic world.

SSH 0506 A Connected Islamic World Without a Caliph

By the sixteenth century Islam reached West and East Africa, southeastern Europe, India and Southeast Asia, with no single caliphate. Shared faith gave cohesion despite disagreement, and trade unified the wider Islamic world through markets under Muslim inspectors, with Jewish and Christian partners. Mapmaking, navigation, firearms and artillery traveled the routes. Those weapons armed the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals.

Comparing the three.

SSH 0507 Comparing Three Gunpowder Empires

The exam compares the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, and the anchor gives four axes. Faith: the Ottomans Sunni, ruling diverse subjects through the millet system; the Safavids Shi'ite, forcibly converting Sunnis; the Mughals Muslim rulers of a Hindu majority, Akbar synthesizing, Aurangzeb reviving Islam. Military: all three took firearms from the trade routes; the Ottomans raised Janissaries by the devshirme, the Safavids replaced the Qizilbash with enslaved Caucasians, the Mughals fought the Marathas. Height: Suleiman the lawgiver, Abbas the First, Akbar. Decline: Lepanto and Russia for the Ottomans; Nader Shah for the Safavids; Marathas, Afghans and British alliances for the Mughals. An empire whose sultan let each religious community regulate itself is Ottoman. An empire that made Shi'ite Islam the state faith by force is Safavid. An empire whose ruler blended Persian and Indian, Hindu and Muslim, is Mughal under Akbar. The naval defeat that began a decline is Lepanto. The trap is treating the three as one Islamic bloc; the anchor stresses that no caliphate held them and that the Safavid-Ottoman border was a Sunni-Shia front. The second trap is dating Mughal decline to the British; the anchor's sequence is Aurangzeb's intolerance, the Marathas, the Afghans, then British alliances.

Four entries on Europeans in Asia and Africa's trade: Portugal and the companies, Mali and Songhai, the Swahili coast and Kilwa, and the trade's turn to the coast.

Europeans in Asia.

SSH 0508 Europeans in Asia: Portugal, the Dutch, the Companies

Portugal built trading posts in India by force, then faced England and France, who allied with Indian rulers and exploited their disputes. Portugal took Malacca and lost it over conversion; Spain held the Philippines; the Dutch, uninterested in spreading Catholicism, held Indonesia. A factory then meant a trading post with warehouses. Joint stock companies pooled money, sharing risk and profit.

Mali and Songhai.

SSH 0509 Mali and Songhai: Gold, Salt, Islam

Islam flourished with the caravan gold trade. Sundiata Keita founded Mali in the thirteenth century on the Bure goldfields; Timbuktu and Djenné taught Islam, and after Mansa Musa the empire weakened. Songhai, under Sunni Ali and Askia the Great, took its place, Askia using Islam to rule while Timbuktu's mosques drew scholars. Moroccan Saadi forces ended Songhai in the sixteenth century.

The Swahili coast.

SSH 0510 The Swahili Coast and Kilwa

East African city-states rode the wind patterns into Indian Ocean trade, united by Islam and the Swahili language, selling interior goods and enslaved Africans for goods from India and China, in dhows of sewn coconut planks under lateen sails. Kilwa, richest through Sofala's gold, led them. A Somali-Ottoman alliance and Oman drove Portugal from all but Mozambique.

The trade's turn to the coast.

SSH 0511 The Trans-Saharan Trade Turns to the Coast

Kanem-Bornu's caravan power ended in the sixteenth century. Its collapse and Songhai's let Dahomey, Oyo and Segou rise and fight, disrupting the Saharan routes. By the eighteenth century European demand for captives and African chiefs' pursuit of gain reoriented trade to coastal West Africa, to ports like Whydah on the Slave Coast. Coastal states became arteries for captives, the anchor says.

Four entries on the Atlantic world: the sample question on the slave trade, the reformations in brief, the crossing, and the exchange.

The sample question.

SSH 0512 The Atlantic Slave Trade's Results: Reading the Key

Sample question four asks for a result of the eighteenth-century Atlantic slave trade, and the key is that it stimulated European capitalism. The anchor's chapter five gives the mechanism. Europeans shipped about twelve million enslaved Africans on the Middle Passage; some ten million arrived, most to grow sugar in the Caribbean and Brazil. Cash crops went to Europe, finished goods to Africa to buy more captives: the triangular trade. Europeans, the anchor says, profited immensely, and many industries were enriched by the slave trade or the sugar production that depended on it. Chapter six adds the undisputed point: plantation profits were invested in capitalist enterprises, including the new factories. The costs ran the other way: population loss in parts of Africa and African industries harmed by imported goods. Choose the option naming European economic gain; distractors name African benefit or a decline in sugar. Brooks, the witness, sets the same trade beside the first phase of capitalism. The trap is the debate the anchor reports on whether plantations were themselves capitalist enterprises; that is voiced as a debate, and the key rests on the undisputed part, that their profits fed capitalism. The figures are the anchor's estimates. Who gained is this lecture's question, and here the anchor answers it plainly.

Luther to Trent.

SSH 0513 Luther to Trent

Luther objected publicly to the sale of indulgences, was excommunicated, and spread by print: faith alone saves, scripture alone rules. Zwingli and Calvin followed in Switzerland; Anabaptists rejected infant baptism; Henry the Eighth rejected the pope over an annulment. Trent, from fifteen forty-five, reaffirmed doctrine and passed reforms. Unit four carries the reformations in depth.

The Atlantic crossing.

SSH 0514 Crossing the Atlantic: Dias, Columbus, Tordesillas

After Constantinople fell in fourteen fifty-three, Europeans dealt with Muslim middlemen for Asian goods and sought an all-water route. Dias rounded the Cape in fourteen eighty-eight and Columbus reached the Caribbean in fourteen ninety-two, steering by an astrolabe that came from the Middle East. Tordesillas in fourteen ninety-four awarded the Americas but Brazil to Spain. Cortés took the Aztecs, Pizarro the Inca.

The exchange.

SSH 0515 The Columbian Exchange and the Great Dying

The Columbian Exchange moved plants, animals and diseases between the hemispheres, altering economies on four continents. Diseases traveling west killed as much as ninety-five percent of the Western Hemisphere's Indigenous peoples, in the anchor's estimate. The encomienda was a Crown grant of Indigenous labor to conquistadors. The black legend, an English myth, held Spain uniquely cruel.

Three entries on mercantilism, colonies and Britain's rise: the policy claim and its critics, colonial motives and native responses, and the war that made Britain dominant.

Mercantilism and its critics.

SSH 0516 Mercantilism and Its Critics: Reading a Policy Claim

The exam asks what mercantilism held and what its critics answered, and the anchor's section supplies both. Mercantilism: a nation's power depended on the wealth gained by exporting goods of greater value than it imported; a gain for one nation was a loss for another; so governments should hoard precious metals, import little, export profitably, and to that end impose tariffs, grant monopolies, subsidize industries, and acquire colonies as sources of raw materials and markets for manufactures. On that logic five nations planted American colonies, sugar the most profitable extraction. Critics: Hume and Smith charged that mercantilism caused inflation and harmed consumers. Smith argued that wealth was not finite, that all nations could prosper together, and that competition among producers, not government management, should regulate the economy. A policy that taxes imports to keep gold at home is mercantilist. A colony required to buy the mother country's manufactures is mercantilist. The claim that trade can enrich both parties is Smith. Ask whether the claim treats trade as a contest or as growth. The trap is calling mercantilism a mere error; the anchor reports conservatives who defended it as imperfect but working. The second trap is reading Smith as opposing colonies; the anchor's Smith opposes management, not commerce.

The colonies.

SSH 0517 Colonies, Motives, and Native Responses

Spaniards came for God, gold and glory; the French more often treated Indigenous peoples as economic allies; the Virginia Company founded Jamestown for profit, and Puritans mixed profit with faith, with indentured servants bound for a term of years. The Aztecs fought and were destroyed; the Tlaxcalans allied with Spain and gained status. Unit one carries the English colonies.

The Seven Years' War.

SSH 0518 The Seven Years' War and Britain's Ascendancy

The Seven Years' War, seventeen fifty-four to sixty-three, made Britain the dominant empire: France surrendered North America and India, Spain surrendered Florida, Louisiana went to Spain, and Hubertusburg confirmed Prussia's Silesia. The East India Company anchored British power in south Asia, while the Canton system had China selling for silver. Resistance came from Ndongo, the Khoisan, the Xhosa, the Asante, and Britain's own colonies.

Four entries to close: the Enlightenment's public sphere, three Atlantic revolutions, the ideologies after eighteen fifteen, and revolutions ranked by their break with the past.

The Enlightenment.

SSH 0519 The Enlightenment and the Public Sphere

The Enlightenment, indebted to the Scientific Revolution and to Muslim, Greek and Indian science, centered on reason and optimism about liberty and rights. It reached a small elite and coexisted with slavery. Coffeehouses, salons, academies and print made a public sphere outside state and church, with salons hosted by women, a rare leadership role. Unit four carries the thinkers.

Three revolutions.

SSH 0520 Three Atlantic Revolutions: America, France, Haiti

Famines and inequality bred revolutions. America's launched the United States on a paradoxical model: political liberty beside slavery. France's built a model of democratic rights and equality, then split into factions. Haiti's was the most radical break, toppling colonial rule and slavery, and France's independence debt of eighteen twenty-five then burdened it. Each challenged monarchical privilege and wealth's grip on power.

The ideologies after.

SSH 0521 Conservatism, Liberalism, Nationalism After 1815

After the revolutions, conservatism, nationalism and liberalism competed to restore order, and the Congress of Vienna asserted conservatism, with the Germanic Confederation replacing the Holy Roman Empire. Upheaval returned by mid-century, and in Italy and Germany unification prevailed over freedom. Liberal principles, toleration and equality before the law, still shaped the nation-state. Unit four classifies the ideologies.

Classifying a revolution.

SSH 0522 Classifying a Revolution by Its Break with the Past

The exam asks which revolution went furthest, and the anchor ranks them by their break. America's: independence and a republic, with slavery intact. France's: monarchy overthrown, democratic rights and equality proclaimed, then factions, the Terror and the Directory. Haiti's: the most radical, toppling colonial government and slavery together and creating a new nation, then burdened by the debt of eighteen twenty-five. Latin America's: creole elites resenting peninsulares and Spanish restrictions, led by juntas after France toppled Spain's king; Mexico's first wave under Hidalgo and Morelos demanded social reform and lost creole support; the second wave under Iturbide won independence to preserve creole privilege. Brazil's: a royal heir declaring independence and keeping a monarchy. A revolution that ended both foreign rule and slavery is Haiti. A revolution won to keep the privileges of a colonial elite is Mexico's second wave. Independence proclaimed by a royal heir is Brazil. Liberty declared while slavery continued is the United States. Rank by what changed: rulers, institutions, or the labor system too. The trap is equating independence with social revolution; the anchor's Latin American chapter is titled revolution for whom, and answers, mostly, the creoles. The second trap is Haiti's cost: the anchor pairs its radicalism with the debt that followed.

Look at what you can now do. You can compare the three gunpowder empires on faith, military, height and decline, and you know no caliphate held them. You can say how the trans-Saharan trade turned to the coast: Kanem-Bornu and Songhai collapsed, and European demand for captives reoriented it. You can answer sample question four: the slave trade stimulated European capitalism, on the undisputed mechanism of plantation profits invested in factories. You can state mercantilism and Smith's answer, and tell a contest claim from a growth claim. And you can rank the revolutions by their break, and answer the anchor's question, revolution for whom, which is the question this lecture carried from the start. Part two opens on the creoles and their juntas, and runs through industry, imperialism, the world wars and the Cold War to the institutions of nineteen ninety-one.