Collapse and Recovery in Europe and China

8/3/2019 Collapse and Recovery in Europe and China

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Collapse and Recovery in Europe and China

(Ch. 18: 350-363)

Climate Change: Global Cooling and its Impact

The Plague, 1347-1351:

Origins and Spread

Official Reactions, Medical Measures, LearnedOpinions

Population Loss and Economic Impact

The Long-Term Impact of the Black Death in

Europe and China: China = the Rise of the Ming and the turn to insularity

Europe = the Renaissance and the beginnings ofexpansion


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Bad Times in the 1300s

Agriculture was still essentially subsistence, socouldnt absorb shocks

1314, 15, 16

shocks: famines, floods this wasthe beginning of a climate shift known as theLittle Ice Age

100 Years War and other conflicts, then thegranddaddy of them allthe Black Death


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The Plague: Origins and Spread Originates in Central Asia,

spread to Europe

Summer 1347: arrives in SEEurope, spreads from there

Mortality rates varied from

place to place

from 15% - 65%, for acontinental average of 33%


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Plague:P

athogenesis


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Official Reaction

and Opinion

Not divine, but disease

Control measuresgenerally failed, though

Wild, crazy speculations

for cures abound esp.

the bad smell theory

What the academics

said(not much use)


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Ring around the rosies

Pocket full of posies

Ashes, Ashes

All fall down

Ring a ring oroses

A pocket full of posies

Atishoo! Atishoo!

We all fall down.


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Population and Economic Impact

1 in 3 of everybody dead!

Mortality patterns uneven,

though: some areas harderhit

Post-plague, urban areasrecover quicker than the

countryside Economic disruption

nearly catastrophic


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Long-Term Impact of the

Black Death in Europe 25 million casualties (1/3 of Eurn

Popn)

Labour supply shrank (so labour

value rose) Noble estates devalued

Nobility tries to reassert itself;leads to peasant revolts

But the plague is not only akilling force, but a renewing oneas well it leads to theRENAISSANCE

Peasants Revolts in Action Above: the Jacquerie in France,

1358. Below: the GreatPeasants

Revolt in England, 1381


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WAR One Hundred Years War 1337-1453

Struggle over control over/possession of

France

England vs France. England nearly

victorious, then

Joan of Arc (1412 1431)

Drove English off the continent


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An early (late 15th c

representation ofJoan of Arc

A much later painting

of her capture by the

English.


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Consequences Confined England to island

Increased nationalism in both countries

New war technologies, esp. gunpowder ***

Stimulated growth of English parliament


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Long-Term Impact of the

Plague in China 1350s/60s Yuan collapse, replaced

by the Ming (Brilliant) Dynasty led

by Hongwu (Zhu Yuanzhang) Confucianism and central authority re-

imposed

Technology treated w/ suspicion and

censored Commercial activity changes as

agriculture becomes much moreimportant


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The Great What If: Chinese Exploration,

1405-1433

Emperor Yongle (1403-21) bucked the isolationist trendamong the Ming

Voyages ofZheng He (7 of them), intended to overawe

enemies and control trade in SE Asiaand they work, mostdefinitely

Policy ended by isolationists at court in 1433

Above Left: The Voyages of Zheng He; Above Right: His flagship, with

Columbus flagship, the Santa Maria, to scale


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Romes Imperial Grandeur:Temple of Vesta, Roman Forum, 3rd century.


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Romes Imperial Grandeur: The

Colosseum


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Romes Imperial Grandeur: The Pantheon,

Exterior (left) and Interior (right) views


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Upward Mobility: The Italians and the

Renaissance

Went looking for knowledge to let them

become Roman

Arab civilisations of the Mediterranean hadpreserved much classical knowledge

indeed, they valued knowledge in a way

that earlier Europeans did not

But the new Italians were eager

consumers of that knowledge


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Knowledge = ???

The classical knowledge allowed for a Re-naiss-ance or

Rebirth

It would re-emphasise humanitys place in this world

Goal was not to emulate Rome, but to surpass it

Right: The Duomo of Brunelleschi,

surmounting Florences cathedral

(and a bigger dome than that of the

Pantheon in Rome, which was kind

of the point)


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Renaissance

Humanism

This is one of the most important

things to know from the last part

of this course, because in a veryreal way it sets up much of the

next. Renaissance Humanism deals

with the

recovery, study, interpretation, and

transmission of the intellectual

heritage of classical Greece and

Rome

In practice it meant artistic and

intellectual patronageLeonardo di Vinci's 1492 drawing of the

Vitruvian Man (after the first-century

Roman architect Vitruvius) displays the

mathematical proportions of the human

body man is the measure of all things


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Literary Humanism Faith in language

Civic consciousness (from

Cicero et al.)

Italian sense of personal

achievement

Quality ofvirtu (from viraman)

Cosimo de Medici, a virtuous man


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New Ways of Looking at the World:

Perspective

Above: Mediaeval View of Venice, ca. 1300 Above: Madonna and Child,

Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494)


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A Revolution: Printing Invented in China

Moveable metal type, Germanic states

1400s

Gutenburg, Bible, 1456

Transformed public and private lives

Fostered growth and standardization of

vernacular languages


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Perspective in Cartography, Part 1

Above: Renaissance Woodcut, from 1482, of one page ofClaudius Ptolemys Atlas (or Geographica): What does it show?


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Perspective in Cartography, Part 2

Above: Another page of the same Atlas: What does this one show?

Documents

Collapse and Recovery in Europe and China