Empire Administration from 1450 to 1750

Welcome to the chapter 3.2 overview, Empires Administrations. So in the last chapter, we looked at the expansion of land-based empires. And in this chapter, we're focusing on many of the same empires. And this time, we're looking at the techniques they used to administer or manage their empire. So what did they do to control these ever-expanding empires? So our essential question along that line says, how did rulers and land-based empires legitimize and consolidate their power from 1450 to 1750? And again, we've talked about this before. Whenever I see that word, how, I think causation. And I don't really see any other key word like a comparison word, similar, different, or something like that. So we're looking at the causes of these empires legitimizing and consolidating their power. So legitimizing is sort of like, you know, why listen to them? In other words, people thinking, why should I listen to you? You're the ruler. you have to back up your rule. And consolidate has more to do with control. So this is more of a control topic. So we'll look at those two parts and talk later about how we could organize those in a response to that question. So we'll start with our historical patterns. These are the main topics we'll look at down here, and they're sorted by theme. So we're going to look at bureaucratic professionals. And today in the United States we have a very similar system to what we'll see developing in terms of some kind of overriding authority. In this diagram it's the Constitution. And then we have different branches, Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. And then this bureaucracy just keeps going. There's different departments and then every one of those has other people working under it. So it's a pretty common way to organizing a government, and we'll see that used also 1450 to 1750. We're also going to talk about religion and monumental architecture as reinforcing the authority of the state. And as you can see with this picture of the pyramids, that's been going on for a very long time as well. And of course taxes have been with us for a long time and we'll look at the role in taxes and tax collection in enforcing the authority of the state. So again the idea with these connections is that they are patterns that recur throughout world history and that's why it's a good thing to pay attention to them. So we talked about this a little bit in the last slide before our relevance. We're looking at what these topics and ideas have to do with our world today. So this is the United States government, this graph right here, and it's talking about how many people work in the executive branch. And we start with the late 1700s, and you can see the growth of the state over time, and now we're all the way up here between two and a half and three million. So just the point that this idea of a bureaucracy is an ever-present way to organize a government. And we also have the Lincoln Memorial up here as another example of monumental architecture. And then this famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, in our own country, in terms of taxes being a continuity as the way the governments manage their state. So for context, the things that occurred to me that would be relevant before 1450 to 1750 has to do with the size of these expanding empires. Because if we're going to talk about how they managed their governments, I think it's important to note how large they were getting. And also the fact that these empires were rather diverse. And we'll see that coming up with the religion topic especially. So I'm mentioning these empires, and I'm talking about the early years. This is technically kind of in the beginning of this time period. But I do want to introduce the fact that the Ottoman Empire has expanded in Europe, and that has brought Christians into the empire. So see, I'm kind of merging these two things about the size and the ethnic diversity. Sorry, the religious diversity. And then for the Mughal Empire, I have a similar idea that established Muslim control in India, and then that the Russians expanded across Siberia. So these sentences right here are my number one from my success criteria. They're my specific historical details. And notice that the things that make it specific... are things like place, like India, instead of just the Mughal Empire expanded, and also the names of religions, like Christians right here. And then my number two is down here when I'm trying to make a connection to this idea of what we've already talked about, about managing the state and enforcing the ruler's power. So without this sentence right here, which is my connection, it seems to just be some random facts about the topic without understanding of what it has to do with this question right here. So for starters, before we get specific, let's look at this idea of bureaucratic elites and remind us about feudalism. And we'll start with Europe in our examples of countries that had this process. So with feudalism, remember we had a king and then under the king were the nobles, right? The landowners. And then under the nobles were knights who enforced their authority. And then we had peasants at the very bottom. And what's going to happen... in this time period is feudalism is going to start to decline and we're going to have a similar setup Instead of the knights, what we're going to have replacing them is people who work for the government, government officials. So there's still a lot of departments, a lot of people. If you're the king, this is going to centralize and expand your power because these people work directly for you. If you've got a noble with his own castle and his own army, there's a lot more conflict happening here. There's a lot more tension and the power is kind of going in both directions, depending on the relationship between the king and the nobles. But here it's a more stable system for the king because the government is reporting directly to the king. So we're going to look at how whatever is happening down below in these levels, everything is kind of funneling back to the king and it kind of creates a more absolute authority, especially if there's no kind of democratic tradition. So speaking of democratic traditions, we will see that developing in England. The bureaucratic elites that England used were known as gentry officials. And gentry means landowner. So these are the wealthy members of the society. And they were officials in the state, and they were basically justices of the peace. They were like judges. That's kind of what this illustration is showing. And they had the authority to enforce the king's laws. They were sort of a combination of police force and court system. And so, again, in that diagram we just talked about, you know, they would be down here on this level, and they would be enforcing the king's authority throughout the land. And that was a really strong way to reinforce the legitimacy of the king's power and help him consolidate his power. But we did have a development in the late 1600s in England in which the king's power was limited. And basically there was a revolution in England called the Glorious Revolution, and the result was the English Bill of Rights that was agreed to by a new king and queen, that's William and Mary. There's a college in Virginia named after them because people here in the colonies were impressed with their advancements towards democracy. And so what the English Bill of Rights does is similar to ours, it guarantees some rights protecting the individual's freedom from the government. so that the accused have the right to a legal process, they can't just be thrown in jail, and that Parliament has to agree to key decisions like raising taxes or raising an army. And this map over here is a recent UK map of a parliamentary election, but sort of like we have in the United States with senators from different states, Parliament has representatives from different districts throughout England and the UK, and this picture down here shows them meeting, it's basically the English equivalent of Congress. And the other thing to keep in mind, and we'll look at this in a little bit more detail in France, is that there is a religious component to this. Okay, so in this section we're looking at France, and one of the things that happens in France, unlike England, is the king's power in France becomes more absolute than it does in England. They don't have a revolution and a Bill of Rights. And this guy right here, this is Louis XIV, is kind of... classic example of that. So this diagram over here is meant to represent this idea of divine right, that God has chosen the king and the king rules with God's authority. What they did in France is also use their own bureaucratic elites and these guys were called intendants, sometimes called tax farmers, and so their job was to collect taxes on behalf of the king. And down here in this diagram we have the king up here and then this is meant to represent all the departments of the government and right here we have these intendants and you can see by this diagram that there's a lot of people working underneath the intendant. So they have quite a bit of power and what we talked about on the last slide, since they're reporting directly to the government and the government is the king, this really helps to reinforce the king's authority because these guys are essentially working for him. They're not just their own private entity with their own army and things. Another thing that kings did, like Louis, this guy over here, is they kept the nobles close to them at their palace. And we'll see this in Japan later. This is the palace of Versailles, which is an incredibly large palace. And There were so many rooms, a lot of times nobles were required to live there. The king kind of thinking, if I can keep the nobles close to me, they're going to give me less trouble. And that worked pretty well. And during this time period, again, the authority of the king intensifies and consolidates in France. So now we're going to move over to Russia. And the relationship between these bureaucratic elites and the king, which in Russia, by the way, is called the Tsar, is a little bit more tense than it is in the two examples we looked at so far. So the nobles, the... kind of equivalent of the gentry in Russia. These guys are called the boyars. And there's a diagram over here that shows what that looks like. The Tsar is right here. And these guys in this section, this is the aristocracy, these are the boyars right here. So it is sort of a feudal structure, but what we see is that the boyars give the Tsars lots of trouble. In order to become the Tsar, Ivan the Terrible had to conquer the boyars. So it's not a situation where the Tsar has these guys working for him and they're working directly for him. There's much more conflict happening here like in the old feudal model. So one of the things that I have in the terrible day was he forced them all to move to Moscow. That's similar to that idea we had with The last slide with the King of France forcing the nobles to live in his palace. Another thing that the Tsars did to reinforce their power is use military professionals. And in Russia they are called oprychnina and they're taken from the second tier of classes, from these guys right here, and from government bureaucrats. And they're basically a police force, that's what this is a picture of. They are the precursor, if you know anything about Soviet Russia, to the secret police or the KGB or something like this. They're essentially a private army slash police force that reinforces the authority of the Tsar. As things developed over time, you see Ivan the Terrible is way back here in the 1500s. Another great Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, is in the early 1700s. And something that Peter the Great did was he created throughout Russia 50 provinces. And each of those provinces had a governor that reported to him. So if you can imagine, that's a very rough map of Russia. There'd be all these different provinces, again, analogous to the 50 states. and each of those would have a governor that reported directly to the king. So again, that's a way of consolidating the power and make sure everything is going through the king, which is the big trend we're looking at. You can see this general question over here. That's the big trend we're looking at in this section. So leaving Europe, we're going to look at the Ottoman Empire now, and we've talked in previous slides about the Ottoman Empire expanding. That's what all these different colors show, that they started in this little area right here. over a period of centuries expanded and the one I think is really relevant for us right now is their expansion into Europe because as the Ottoman Empire goes increasingly into this part of Europe they're going to absorb more and more Christians into the empire and that's going to create some tension because you might remember in Islamic governments it's quite common for the authority of the ruler to be based on the religion of Islam. So when Islamic governments encounter non-muslims there is potential conflict there. So one of the things that the Ottomans developed is a system called devshirme. And it essentially is a form of a tax, really. But instead of a tax and money, you actually had to send one of your sons, this was for Christians, to serve the government. And there were basically two ways that these boys could serve the government. They could either be an official in the government, such as a tax collector, or they could be in the army. And they formed an elite... army force that are called janissaries. And even though these boys were removed from their homes and they were forced to give up their Christian beliefs, some people saw it as an opportunity of social mobility because they did receive a high level of education. And some of them even were served as diplomats and negotiated treaties and things with other governments, but they were definitely expected to serve the state. So one of the things that that's doing for the Ottomans is again, consolidating their power and taking potentially some conflict here in this region of Europe and turning it with this devshirme system into something that supports the authority of the government in these ways down here. So now we're moving over to East Asia, specifically Japan. And you might remember, we learned about this in a previous chapter, that Japan had its own system of feudalism. So this is the European system where we had king, nobles, and knights. We talked about that. And basically, it's the same idea in Japan. They just have different titles. You had the emperor and the shogun. I guess one point I should make about these two is that... You might remember that the Shogun took over Japan and the Shogun becomes the central government in Japan. And the Emperor is a figurehead only, doesn't really have any power. So this is a little skewed, I think. But basically the Daimyo and the nobles are at the same level. And the samurai are the warriors of Japan. So they're like the knights and then we have these guys on the same level at the bottom. So we have the beginning of this time period, we have this feudal system in Japan. And what that looks like in terms of our theme about how rulers legitimized and consolidated their power is that the samurai were paid. And they were paid originally in rice, but eventually in gold. And when you have people who are paid, and I'll just make this diagram again, you know, we have the shogun, we have the daimyo, they're the lords, and then under them are the samurai. And if they're paid, they have a direct influence and interest in supporting the authority of the daimyo. and then back up to the shogun. And again, that's how we're reinforcing the power of the state. And our textbook uses this chapter to give us a little bit of Japanese history that didn't come up in a previous section. And that introduces us to the idea of the Tokugawa shogunate. So after some conflict between these various families, because these daimyos are based on family, one of the daimyo families called the Tokugawa family essentially conquered all of Japan and established this rule by Shogun. To do that, they used gunpowder weapons. So that's a trend we saw in a previous chapter. We just didn't talk about Japan at that point. And there's essentially a dynasty of the Tokugawa family from about the 17th to the 19th century. And one of the things that the Tokugawa family does to control these nobles, because remember they are from a single family, but there are daimyo from different families, is they also, and this is similar to what we saw in the Palace of Versailles with France, they force the daimyo to live in the capital. And if they leave the capital, they have to leave the family behind, basically as a hostage. And so the idea being if a daimyo leaves the capital and wants to go off and start a rebellion Then their family is going to be held hostage and that was pretty effective and we can see up here They maintain their rule for over 200 years So now we're going to go over to South Asia specifically the Mughal Empire in India And we've learned about Akbar in a previous section and one of the things that Akbar is known for is his religious tolerance remember that With the Mughal Empire, we have Islamic rule of India, and the people who lived in India were predominantly Hindu. So one of the ways Akbar legitimizes his rule is by respecting the other religions in his kingdom and allowing people to practice it. And another thing we'll look at in terms of consolidating power is tax collection. In the Mughal Empire, these guys are called zamindars. This person is a more recent picture of a zamindar. And essentially, they're government officials who... carry out important functions of the government like tax collection. And we've talked about taxes a lot because governments can't really do the things that they do, especially expand, without money. And so having a system of tax collection in which people report directly to the ruler is going to be a very critical component in consolidating your power. Okay, for this review slide we're just listing all of the different systems that were used and we're focusing on this idea of bureaucratic officials and military professionals. So you can use this to help you. I've just gone through all the different states that we looked at. I've listed the system they used, who these people are, and how it is that they help manage the empire. So these two boxes combined, really, if you were doing some writing about this, would be evidence. And then this one would be the development of the evidence in which you would explain how that helped them manage the empire. And that way, you'd be coming back here to this essential question. So this might be a good time to pause, check your notes. Make sure you have this, maybe even reproduce this chart in your notes to help you review all of that information. So now we're switching topics and we're looking at religion and art. And in a lot of cases, this has more to do with the legitimize their power in terms of why should I listen to you? So I highlighted this in orange for our cultural theme. And we're going to start by reminding us of the European tradition of divine right, which we talked about with France. So in Europe, that's a common way to legitimize. In other words, the reason you should listen to the king in Europe is because he's been chosen by God. And of course, you wouldn't want to go against the god of your own religion. Another example of legitimizing rule with religion is in the Songhai Empire. Remember, these guys came after Mali in West Africa. And we had talked about Mansa Musa in a previous chapter. And similar to Mansa Musa, there's a king of the Songhai Empire named Askia the Great, who also made a pilgrimage to Mecca. That's shown over here. And he... established Islam as a common religion. This picture down here is an example of a mosque that he encouraged to be built in the Songhai Empire. And if you have a common religion, it helps to create unity and it helps to, like the divine right in Europe, create the religious authority for the ruler. So when you have a devout, in this case Islamic ruler, the message is that the king is ruling with the authority of God. In this section we're looking a little bit more at art, although we will touch on religion, and I think we're still in this idea of legitimizing the power. You might have heard of the Taj Mahal. It's one of the most famous buildings in the world. A lot of people don't know that this is a tomb for the wife of a Mughal emperor, and it is an incredibly large building. And one of the things that we see with monumental architecture is just with the sheer size of buildings and the expense and the amount of time it takes to build them, it is a reminder of the power of the ruler. It's a reminder visually to people that this person has a lot of power who can compel this to be built. And the Palace of Versailles, remember this is in France, is another example of that. And our third example of monumental architecture here also works as using religion to legitimize your rule. This is a mosque that Suleiman the Magnificent had built in the Ottoman Empire. And it sort of accomplishes both purposes because it's a religious building that is also monumental and very large. So it... is a constant reminder of the power of the leader of the Ottoman Empire, and it also establishes Islam as the main religion and helps to legitimize authority that way, in the same way that it did with Askia the Great in the Songhai Empire. Okay, our last system we're looking at is financing empires, and I would say this fits better under the consolidate power, and we're looking at essentially where the money comes from. We've touched on this a little bit, but the last section of your book focuses specifically on this. So we talked about the zamindars in the Mughal Empire collecting taxes. In the Ottoman Empire, we have the same idea. These guys are called tax farmers, and we'll see a review slide where that comes up, but we've seen that in a few different areas. There's also some in France. And so just to review, these guys are bringing in revenue for the state. And one of the features we see is that these taxes tend to oppress peasants. The peasants tend to have to pay the most money, certainly the highest percentage of their income. And this further oppresses peasants and reinforces rule by monarchy. Another thing our book mentions a little bit in the Aztec Empire is the tribute list of the Mexica. So when the Aztecs conquered people, they required tribute from them. You might remember. That's also true in China. We'll talk about that in a second. And this reinforces their power. It also is a source of revenue and residents of the Aztec Empire pay taxes as well. Then the big change in the Ming Dynasty, which we'll talk about in a little bit in a future chapter, is requiring taxes to be paid in silver. And what that does is create a demand for silver and helps to encourage trade from other places. And people who have silver can go to China and buy goods. And you remember the tribute system? Korea is an example of a place where they collected tribute. And here's our note down here about the importance of silver. And all of these things help to consolidate power and help to organize the government because they're a source of income. And remember, governments on this scale cannot function without a well-designed system of collecting revenue. So now for the essential question. We said that this was going to be a causation question because of that word how. And so we're looking for how they legitimized and consolidated their power. And so we talked about how some of these headlines work better than others. So having a bureaucratic official is more of a consolidating power, making sure those people report to you. Having military professionals is consolidating because it helps to reinforce your power. Having tax collection systems is consolidating because it brings in the money and makes sure that people know who's in charge. And then the religion and the art and architecture is a little bit more legitimizing in terms of reinforcing the authority of the ruler to begin with. So what I did was simply again go down these places and I put a reminder of the different systems used in different places that our book went over and you would go back in your notes and in this video if you needed more information about what that was. If I was going to answer this essential question and I wanted a two-part answer, we've talked in your, you know, the writing we do in class that if you were answering a full question you might have two body paragraphs. Because it says legitimize and consolidate, I would probably plan to have a legitimize paragraph and I'd have a consolidate paragraph. And so I would pick two of these columns. And if I chose to talk about bureaucratic officials, I would pick two of these as my evidence. And then I would develop that evidence. And if I chose to talk about religious ideas, I would pick these two. And I would talk about how the Ottoman Empire promoted Islam. And I would use more specific evidence, for instance, the mosque. that Suleiman had built that we talked about. And so this is a good way to conceptualize this topic and imagine that you were reviewing and answering it as if you were writing an essay and making sure that you have specific evidence and that you can explain how that evidence helps them either consolidate or legitimize their rule. That's your chapter 3.2 overview. Happy studying!

And this time, we're looking at the techniques they used to administer or manage their empire. So what did they do to control these ever-expanding empires? So our essential question along that line says, how did rulers and land-based empires legitimize and consolidate their power from 1450 to 1750?

And again, we've talked about this before. Whenever I see that word, how, I think causation. And I don't really see any other key word like a comparison word, similar, different, or something like that.

So we're looking at the causes of these empires legitimizing and consolidating their power. So legitimizing is sort of like, you know, why listen to them? In other words, people thinking, why should I listen to you?

You're the ruler. you have to back up your rule. And consolidate has more to do with control. So this is more of a control topic.

So we'll look at those two parts and talk later about how we could organize those in a response to that question. So we'll start with our historical patterns. These are the main topics we'll look at down here, and they're sorted by theme. So we're going to look at bureaucratic professionals. And today in the United States we have a very similar system to what we'll see developing in terms of some kind of overriding authority.

In this diagram it's the Constitution. And then we have different branches, Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. And then this bureaucracy just keeps going. There's different departments and then every one of those has other people working under it.

So it's a pretty common way to organizing a government, and we'll see that used also 1450 to 1750. We're also going to talk about religion and monumental architecture as reinforcing the authority of the state. And as you can see with this picture of the pyramids, that's been going on for a very long time as well. And of course taxes have been with us for a long time and we'll look at the role in taxes and tax collection in enforcing the authority of the state.

So again the idea with these connections is that they are patterns that recur throughout world history and that's why it's a good thing to pay attention to them. So we talked about this a little bit in the last slide before our relevance. We're looking at what these topics and ideas have to do with our world today. So this is the United States government, this graph right here, and it's talking about how many people work in the executive branch.

And we start with the late 1700s, and you can see the growth of the state over time, and now we're all the way up here between two and a half and three million. So just the point that this idea of a bureaucracy is an ever-present way to organize a government. And we also have the Lincoln Memorial up here as another example of monumental architecture. And then this famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, in our own country, in terms of taxes being a continuity as the way the governments manage their state. So for context, the things that occurred to me that would be relevant before 1450 to 1750 has to do with the size of these expanding empires.

Because if we're going to talk about how they managed their governments, I think it's important to note how large they were getting. And also the fact that these empires were rather diverse. And we'll see that coming up with the religion topic especially. So I'm mentioning these empires, and I'm talking about the early years.

This is technically kind of in the beginning of this time period. But I do want to introduce the fact that the Ottoman Empire has expanded in Europe, and that has brought Christians into the empire. So see, I'm kind of merging these two things about the size and the ethnic diversity. Sorry, the religious diversity.

And then for the Mughal Empire, I have a similar idea that established Muslim control in India, and then that the Russians expanded across Siberia. So these sentences right here are my number one from my success criteria. They're my specific historical details.

And notice that the things that make it specific... are things like place, like India, instead of just the Mughal Empire expanded, and also the names of religions, like Christians right here. And then my number two is down here when I'm trying to make a connection to this idea of what we've already talked about, about managing the state and enforcing the ruler's power.

So without this sentence right here, which is my connection, it seems to just be some random facts about the topic without understanding of what it has to do with this question right here. So for starters, before we get specific, let's look at this idea of bureaucratic elites and remind us about feudalism. And we'll start with Europe in our examples of countries that had this process. So with feudalism, remember we had a king and then under the king were the nobles, right? The landowners.

And then under the nobles were knights who enforced their authority. And then we had peasants at the very bottom. And what's going to happen... in this time period is feudalism is going to start to decline and we're going to have a similar setup Instead of the knights, what we're going to have replacing them is people who work for the government, government officials.

So there's still a lot of departments, a lot of people. If you're the king, this is going to centralize and expand your power because these people work directly for you. If you've got a noble with his own castle and his own army, there's a lot more conflict happening here.

There's a lot more tension and the power is kind of going in both directions, depending on the relationship between the king and the nobles. But here it's a more stable system for the king because the government is reporting directly to the king. So we're going to look at how whatever is happening down below in these levels, everything is kind of funneling back to the king and it kind of creates a more absolute authority, especially if there's no kind of democratic tradition. So speaking of democratic traditions, we will see that developing in England. The bureaucratic elites that England used were known as gentry officials.

And gentry means landowner. So these are the wealthy members of the society. And they were officials in the state, and they were basically justices of the peace. They were like judges. That's kind of what this illustration is showing.

And they had the authority to enforce the king's laws. They were sort of a combination of police force and court system. And so, again, in that diagram we just talked about, you know, they would be down here on this level, and they would be enforcing the king's authority throughout the land. And that was a really strong way to reinforce the legitimacy of the king's power and help him consolidate his power.

But we did have a development in the late 1600s in England in which the king's power was limited. And basically there was a revolution in England called the Glorious Revolution, and the result was the English Bill of Rights that was agreed to by a new king and queen, that's William and Mary. There's a college in Virginia named after them because people here in the colonies were impressed with their advancements towards democracy.

And so what the English Bill of Rights does is similar to ours, it guarantees some rights protecting the individual's freedom from the government. so that the accused have the right to a legal process, they can't just be thrown in jail, and that Parliament has to agree to key decisions like raising taxes or raising an army. And this map over here is a recent UK map of a parliamentary election, but sort of like we have in the United States with senators from different states, Parliament has representatives from different districts throughout England and the UK, and this picture down here shows them meeting, it's basically the English equivalent of Congress.

And the other thing to keep in mind, and we'll look at this in a little bit more detail in France, is that there is a religious component to this. Okay, so in this section we're looking at France, and one of the things that happens in France, unlike England, is the king's power in France becomes more absolute than it does in England. They don't have a revolution and a Bill of Rights. And this guy right here, this is Louis XIV, is kind of... classic example of that.

So this diagram over here is meant to represent this idea of divine right, that God has chosen the king and the king rules with God's authority. What they did in France is also use their own bureaucratic elites and these guys were called intendants, sometimes called tax farmers, and so their job was to collect taxes on behalf of the king. And down here in this diagram we have the king up here and then this is meant to represent all the departments of the government and right here we have these intendants and you can see by this diagram that there's a lot of people working underneath the intendant.

So they have quite a bit of power and what we talked about on the last slide, since they're reporting directly to the government and the government is the king, this really helps to reinforce the king's authority because these guys are essentially working for him. They're not just their own private entity with their own army and things. Another thing that kings did, like Louis, this guy over here, is they kept the nobles close to them at their palace. And we'll see this in Japan later.

This is the palace of Versailles, which is an incredibly large palace. And There were so many rooms, a lot of times nobles were required to live there. The king kind of thinking, if I can keep the nobles close to me, they're going to give me less trouble. And that worked pretty well.

And during this time period, again, the authority of the king intensifies and consolidates in France. So now we're going to move over to Russia. And the relationship between these bureaucratic elites and the king, which in Russia, by the way, is called the Tsar, is a little bit more tense than it is in the two examples we looked at so far.

So the nobles, the... kind of equivalent of the gentry in Russia. These guys are called the boyars. And there's a diagram over here that shows what that looks like.

The Tsar is right here. And these guys in this section, this is the aristocracy, these are the boyars right here. So it is sort of a feudal structure, but what we see is that the boyars give the Tsars lots of trouble.

In order to become the Tsar, Ivan the Terrible had to conquer the boyars. So it's not a situation where the Tsar has these guys working for him and they're working directly for him. There's much more conflict happening here like in the old feudal model. So one of the things that I have in the terrible day was he forced them all to move to Moscow. That's similar to that idea we had with The last slide with the King of France forcing the nobles to live in his palace.

Another thing that the Tsars did to reinforce their power is use military professionals. And in Russia they are called oprychnina and they're taken from the second tier of classes, from these guys right here, and from government bureaucrats. And they're basically a police force, that's what this is a picture of.

They are the precursor, if you know anything about Soviet Russia, to the secret police or the KGB or something like this. They're essentially a private army slash police force that reinforces the authority of the Tsar. As things developed over time, you see Ivan the Terrible is way back here in the 1500s. Another great Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, is in the early 1700s. And something that Peter the Great did was he created throughout Russia 50 provinces.

And each of those provinces had a governor that reported to him. So if you can imagine, that's a very rough map of Russia. There'd be all these different provinces, again, analogous to the 50 states.

and each of those would have a governor that reported directly to the king. So again, that's a way of consolidating the power and make sure everything is going through the king, which is the big trend we're looking at. You can see this general question over here. That's the big trend we're looking at in this section.

So leaving Europe, we're going to look at the Ottoman Empire now, and we've talked in previous slides about the Ottoman Empire expanding. That's what all these different colors show, that they started in this little area right here. over a period of centuries expanded and the one I think is really relevant for us right now is their expansion into Europe because as the Ottoman Empire goes increasingly into this part of Europe they're going to absorb more and more Christians into the empire and that's going to create some tension because you might remember in Islamic governments it's quite common for the authority of the ruler to be based on the religion of Islam.

So when Islamic governments encounter non-muslims there is potential conflict there. So one of the things that the Ottomans developed is a system called devshirme. And it essentially is a form of a tax, really.

But instead of a tax and money, you actually had to send one of your sons, this was for Christians, to serve the government. And there were basically two ways that these boys could serve the government. They could either be an official in the government, such as a tax collector, or they could be in the army. And they formed an elite... army force that are called janissaries.

And even though these boys were removed from their homes and they were forced to give up their Christian beliefs, some people saw it as an opportunity of social mobility because they did receive a high level of education. And some of them even were served as diplomats and negotiated treaties and things with other governments, but they were definitely expected to serve the state. So one of the things that that's doing for the Ottomans is again, consolidating their power and taking potentially some conflict here in this region of Europe and turning it with this devshirme system into something that supports the authority of the government in these ways down here. So now we're moving over to East Asia, specifically Japan.

And you might remember, we learned about this in a previous chapter, that Japan had its own system of feudalism. So this is the European system where we had king, nobles, and knights. We talked about that. And basically, it's the same idea in Japan. They just have different titles.

You had the emperor and the shogun. I guess one point I should make about these two is that... You might remember that the Shogun took over Japan and the Shogun becomes the central government in Japan. And the Emperor is a figurehead only, doesn't really have any power.

So this is a little skewed, I think. But basically the Daimyo and the nobles are at the same level. And the samurai are the warriors of Japan.

So they're like the knights and then we have these guys on the same level at the bottom. So we have the beginning of this time period, we have this feudal system in Japan. And what that looks like in terms of our theme about how rulers legitimized and consolidated their power is that the samurai were paid. And they were paid originally in rice, but eventually in gold. And when you have people who are paid, and I'll just make this diagram again, you know, we have the shogun, we have the daimyo, they're the lords, and then under them are the samurai.

And if they're paid, they have a direct influence and interest in supporting the authority of the daimyo. and then back up to the shogun. And again, that's how we're reinforcing the power of the state. And our textbook uses this chapter to give us a little bit of Japanese history that didn't come up in a previous section.

And that introduces us to the idea of the Tokugawa shogunate. So after some conflict between these various families, because these daimyos are based on family, one of the daimyo families called the Tokugawa family essentially conquered all of Japan and established this rule by Shogun. To do that, they used gunpowder weapons.

So that's a trend we saw in a previous chapter. We just didn't talk about Japan at that point. And there's essentially a dynasty of the Tokugawa family from about the 17th to the 19th century. And one of the things that the Tokugawa family does to control these nobles, because remember they are from a single family, but there are daimyo from different families, is they also, and this is similar to what we saw in the Palace of Versailles with France, they force the daimyo to live in the capital. And if they leave the capital, they have to leave the family behind, basically as a hostage.

And so the idea being if a daimyo leaves the capital and wants to go off and start a rebellion Then their family is going to be held hostage and that was pretty effective and we can see up here They maintain their rule for over 200 years So now we're going to go over to South Asia specifically the Mughal Empire in India And we've learned about Akbar in a previous section and one of the things that Akbar is known for is his religious tolerance remember that With the Mughal Empire, we have Islamic rule of India, and the people who lived in India were predominantly Hindu. So one of the ways Akbar legitimizes his rule is by respecting the other religions in his kingdom and allowing people to practice it. And another thing we'll look at in terms of consolidating power is tax collection.

In the Mughal Empire, these guys are called zamindars. This person is a more recent picture of a zamindar. And essentially, they're government officials who... carry out important functions of the government like tax collection.

And we've talked about taxes a lot because governments can't really do the things that they do, especially expand, without money. And so having a system of tax collection in which people report directly to the ruler is going to be a very critical component in consolidating your power. Okay, for this review slide we're just listing all of the different systems that were used and we're focusing on this idea of bureaucratic officials and military professionals. So you can use this to help you.

I've just gone through all the different states that we looked at. I've listed the system they used, who these people are, and how it is that they help manage the empire. So these two boxes combined, really, if you were doing some writing about this, would be evidence.

And then this one would be the development of the evidence in which you would explain how that helped them manage the empire. And that way, you'd be coming back here to this essential question. So this might be a good time to pause, check your notes.

Make sure you have this, maybe even reproduce this chart in your notes to help you review all of that information. So now we're switching topics and we're looking at religion and art. And in a lot of cases, this has more to do with the legitimize their power in terms of why should I listen to you?

So I highlighted this in orange for our cultural theme. And we're going to start by reminding us of the European tradition of divine right, which we talked about with France. So in Europe, that's a common way to legitimize.

In other words, the reason you should listen to the king in Europe is because he's been chosen by God. And of course, you wouldn't want to go against the god of your own religion. Another example of legitimizing rule with religion is in the Songhai Empire.

Remember, these guys came after Mali in West Africa. And we had talked about Mansa Musa in a previous chapter. And similar to Mansa Musa, there's a king of the Songhai Empire named Askia the Great, who also made a pilgrimage to Mecca.

That's shown over here. And he... established Islam as a common religion. This picture down here is an example of a mosque that he encouraged to be built in the Songhai Empire.

And if you have a common religion, it helps to create unity and it helps to, like the divine right in Europe, create the religious authority for the ruler. So when you have a devout, in this case Islamic ruler, the message is that the king is ruling with the authority of God. In this section we're looking a little bit more at art, although we will touch on religion, and I think we're still in this idea of legitimizing the power. You might have heard of the Taj Mahal. It's one of the most famous buildings in the world.

A lot of people don't know that this is a tomb for the wife of a Mughal emperor, and it is an incredibly large building. And one of the things that we see with monumental architecture is just with the sheer size of buildings and the expense and the amount of time it takes to build them, it is a reminder of the power of the ruler. It's a reminder visually to people that this person has a lot of power who can compel this to be built.

And the Palace of Versailles, remember this is in France, is another example of that. And our third example of monumental architecture here also works as using religion to legitimize your rule. This is a mosque that Suleiman the Magnificent had built in the Ottoman Empire. And it sort of accomplishes both purposes because it's a religious building that is also monumental and very large. So it...

is a constant reminder of the power of the leader of the Ottoman Empire, and it also establishes Islam as the main religion and helps to legitimize authority that way, in the same way that it did with Askia the Great in the Songhai Empire. Okay, our last system we're looking at is financing empires, and I would say this fits better under the consolidate power, and we're looking at essentially where the money comes from. We've touched on this a little bit, but the last section of your book focuses specifically on this.

So we talked about the zamindars in the Mughal Empire collecting taxes. In the Ottoman Empire, we have the same idea. These guys are called tax farmers, and we'll see a review slide where that comes up, but we've seen that in a few different areas.

There's also some in France. And so just to review, these guys are bringing in revenue for the state. And one of the features we see is that these taxes tend to oppress peasants.

The peasants tend to have to pay the most money, certainly the highest percentage of their income. And this further oppresses peasants and reinforces rule by monarchy. Another thing our book mentions a little bit in the Aztec Empire is the tribute list of the Mexica.

So when the Aztecs conquered people, they required tribute from them. You might remember. That's also true in China. We'll talk about that in a second.

And this reinforces their power. It also is a source of revenue and residents of the Aztec Empire pay taxes as well. Then the big change in the Ming Dynasty, which we'll talk about in a little bit in a future chapter, is requiring taxes to be paid in silver.

And what that does is create a demand for silver and helps to encourage trade from other places. And people who have silver can go to China and buy goods. And you remember the tribute system?

Korea is an example of a place where they collected tribute. And here's our note down here about the importance of silver. And all of these things help to consolidate power and help to organize the government because they're a source of income.

And remember, governments on this scale cannot function without a well-designed system of collecting revenue. So now for the essential question. We said that this was going to be a causation question because of that word how. And so we're looking for how they legitimized and consolidated their power. And so we talked about how some of these headlines work better than others.

So having a bureaucratic official is more of a consolidating power, making sure those people report to you. Having military professionals is consolidating because it helps to reinforce your power. Having tax collection systems is consolidating because it brings in the money and makes sure that people know who's in charge. And then the religion and the art and architecture is a little bit more legitimizing in terms of reinforcing the authority of the ruler to begin with.

So what I did was simply again go down these places and I put a reminder of the different systems used in different places that our book went over and you would go back in your notes and in this video if you needed more information about what that was. If I was going to answer this essential question and I wanted a two-part answer, we've talked in your, you know, the writing we do in class that if you were answering a full question you might have two body paragraphs. Because it says legitimize and consolidate, I would probably plan to have a legitimize paragraph and I'd have a consolidate paragraph. And so I would pick two of these columns.

And if I chose to talk about bureaucratic officials, I would pick two of these as my evidence. And then I would develop that evidence. And if I chose to talk about religious ideas, I would pick these two. And I would talk about how the Ottoman Empire promoted Islam.

And I would use more specific evidence, for instance, the mosque. that Suleiman had built that we talked about. And so this is a good way to conceptualize this topic and imagine that you were reviewing and answering it as if you were writing an essay and making sure that you have specific evidence and that you can explain how that evidence helps them either consolidate or legitimize their rule.

That's your chapter 3.2 overview. Happy studying!

Transcript for:Empire Administration from 1450 to 1750

Transcript for:
Empire Administration from 1450 to 1750