Empire: The Emergence of Early Modern States and Empires ...Vijayanagar and especially the Mughal Empire rapidly overcame fragmented princedoms. On Eurasia’s southern fringe, the

The world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was shaped by “modern” empires thatspanned the globe or dominated great regions of it. Emerging from industrial societies such asBritain, the United States, France, Japan, the Soviet Union, and more briefly Germany and Italy,these states were constructed and maintained by vast armies and navies with military superior-ity over the peoples they conquered. Their empires were sustained by enormous industrialeconomies whose managers and profiteers benefited from empire. They were justified by con-temporary ideologies of race, technology, and religion that proclaimed a duty to dominate andto “civilize” other peoples.

These empires have often been studied as part of a “new” imperialism that resulted fromgreat transformations in the nineteenth century. They are described as the products of thechanges wrought by modernity upon Europe: industrialization, new sciences and scientificracialism, liberalism. In future chapters, we will explore exactly these connections. However, thenineteenth- and twentieth-century empires were, in fact, rooted in long-term trends that con-nected them to earlier eras of history and to the history not just of Europe but of the entire world.Perhaps most significantly, the empires of our recent past faced remarkably similar challenges tothose of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. These empires of the early modernperiod—as it is often termed—also struggled to centralize power in the hands of the state, to con-vince merchants and the general populace of the metropole to support their policies of imperial-ism, and to find ways to rule the culturally, spiritually, and economically diverse people of theirempires and to bind them together.

Can we connect the technologies and strategies of these early modern empires with those ofthe nineteenth- and twentieth-century empires? Geographically, the imperial cores of the twoperiods do not match up. The largest empires of the early modern period were centered in Asiaand North Africa: the Mongol state, Ming China, Tımurid (Mughal) India and Central Asia, andthe Ottoman Empire. The only comparable European empires were those of the Spanish andAustrian Habsburgs and Portugal. The great imperial centers of the modern era in northernEurope, Japan, and the United States were either politically fragmented or politically peripheralin this earlier period. The longest direct geographical continuity that existed was the Russian

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state centered upon Muscovy, which expandedalmost unceasingly from the fifteenth to the twen-tieth century.

Yet as the first four chapters of this bookwill show, the early modern era was a period ofincreasing globalization and the building ofeconomic and intellectual connections betweenregions of the world. This rising interconnect-edness made it possible for states like England(later Britain) to begin to learn techniques ofcolonial rule from established powers like theMughals. The migration of peoples and ex-panding trade gradually enriched establishedstates like France and built new nations like theUnited States. The flow of technologies spreadmilitary expertise and equipment to regions likeJapan where they could become tools of empire.

In this chapter, we explore the rise of earlymodern empires in Eurasia and North Africaduring the period 1380–1650. We suggest that anumber of large, cohesive imperial statesemerged during this period—partially as aresult of a sharing of ideas and technologies,which itself was made possible by the Eurasiansystem created by the Mongol Empire. We thengo on to explore several ideas about the ways inwhich these empires came into being and oper-ated: the rise of gunpowder military economies,the emergence of alliances between differentsectors of society, and the development ofunique but interestingly interconnected culturesof imperialism. This leaves for chapter 2 thelarger issues of early modern imperial interac-tion and colonialism. Alone, however, thesechapters do not give a global picture. Thus inchapters 3 and 4 we expand our scope to includethe Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and thePolynesian Pacific: early modern imperial sys-tems that themselves grew from earlier Eurasianand North African roots.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE EARLYMODERN STATE SYSTEM

Beginning in the late fourteenth century, a rush ofempire-building washed across the world. The

largest of these empires blossomed first inEurasia: the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal andSpain), eastern Europe (Russia and the AustrianHabsburgs), Central Asia (the Ottoman andTımurid Empires), and China. Together with aconstellation of smaller states, their emergencereversed a period of political and economic frag-mentation following the Black Death of the1340s–1380s and the collapse of the MongolEmpire. Within a century, for the first time inhuman history, they began to connect all of theworld’s continents in commercial, intellectual,and biological ties. Although each empire wasunique, and each emerged in the context of dis-tinctive local events, nevertheless their expansionreflected similar attempts to control the resurgentinter-continental commerce of the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries and to mobilize new technolo-gies and equipment.

These great Eurasian empires were merelythe largest manifestations of a trend of state-building that stretched across Eurasia and parts ofAfrica from the end of the fourteenth centuryonward. At the beginning of the early modernperiod, for example, Europe possessed 500–600co-existing polities. By the late nineteenth cen-tury, this number was reduced to 25. Across east-ern Europe and Central Asia in the sametimeframe, Russia swallowed 30 independentstates and khanates. In mainland South-East Asia,22 independent states that existed in 1350 werereduced to 3 by 1823.1 Similar consolidationstook place in South Asia, where large states likeVijayanagar and especially the Mughal Empirerapidly overcame fragmented princedoms. OnEurasia’s southern fringe, the Ottoman Empirecame to span three continents, fusing togetherSouth-West Asia, the Balkans, and North Africa.Nearby, the Horn of Africa was consolidated inthe hands of a few large states of which the mostexpansive was Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Gradually,

1 Victor Lieberman, “Transcending East-West Dichotomies:State and Culture Formation in Six Ostensibly DisparateAreas,” Modern Asian Studies, 31 (1997), 463–546.


18 Part I • The Rise of Early Modern Empires, c. 1350–1650

Beijing

Nanjing

DelhiAgra

Constantinople

MoscowMoscowMoscow

MadridMadridMadrid

GaoTimbuktuTimbuktuTimbuktu

ViennaViennaVienna

São Salvador

Mughal Empire

Ming China

Ottoman Empire

Russian Empire

Habsburg Empire in Europe

Principal directions of imperial expansions, late 16th – early 17th c.Songhai Empire

Kongo Kingdom1000 miles5000

1000 km5000

Early Modern Empires of Eurasia and North Africa, c. 1550



the process was extended to areas beyond theolder Eurasian trading zone to new regions ofsub-Saharan Africa. There, however, the inde-pendent consolidation of large states was over-taken by the extension of European maritimeempires and especially by the effects of theAtlantic slave trade. In the Americas, the largestates and independent communities that hadformed a political and commercial network oftheir own were overcome by European armies,settlers, and diseases after 1492.

While the political regimes of each statewere unique, they were all characterized to vary-ing degrees by three linked processes. The firstwas centralization, by which both power andauthority tended to become consolidated under asingle state authority, usually a ruling monarchor dynastic family and a royal or imperial court.The second was rationalization, by whichauthority and power in the state became increas-ingly subject to a permanent, organized bureau-cracy at the center of the state. The third wasexpansion, by which states increased in size andin some cases developed imperial institutionsand relationships.

The context in which these processes tookplace was the disintegration of the MongolEmpire.2 From about 1220 to well into the latefourteenth century, the great bulk of Eurasia hadcome under the control of this single politicalentity. Only the fringes of the landmass—Europe, Japan, South and South-East Asia, andNorth Africa—had remained independent. Theresult of this unique unification had been a flow-ering of “cultural and artistic achievement” andlong-distance trade.3 These developments werecatalyzed by the Mongol rulers’ ability to safeguardoverland trading routes and to provide relative

safety and stability across vast stretches ofEurasia.4 Cities in a band across Eurasia and sur-rounding the Indian Ocean and the Mediterraneanand China seas—London, Bruges, Genoa, Venice,Constantinople, Cairo, Bukhara, Samarkand,Hormuz, Kilwa, Cambay, Calicut, Malacca, andGuangzhou—flourished in these conditions form-ing a vast “archipelago of towns.”5 Each city wasa center of commerce and production, connectedto surrounding agrarian regions and to long-dis-tance trading partners by economic, political, andsocial links.

The causes of the mid-fourteenth-century col-lapse of this network are debated, but the verynature of its connectedness may have been onekey culprit. Like a two-edged sword, the connec-tions that enabled societies across the Old Worldto share wealth and innovations also made themdependent upon each other. The collapse of oneprop of the system was bound to affect the others.In this context, a series of diseases, bad harvests,and political upheaval across the Mongol domainssignaled the beginning of a commercial decline.Perhaps the most significant was the outbreak ofepidemics that stretched far beyond the borders ofthe empire. The best known of these was thedreaded Black Death, which spread rapidly alongboth overland and maritime trade routes, devastat-ing both commercial towns and the surroundingcountryside from China across the vast expanse ofEurasia and North Africa to England.6 The effectsof the epidemic were exacerbated in some regionsof Asia by a series of bad agricultural years.7

2Some scholars argue that commercial integration of Eurasiaand North Africa goes back much further. See, for example,Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills, eds., The World System:Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand (New York: Routledge,1994).3 This phrasing is taken from the influential modern pan-Eurasian work of Janet Abu-Lughod, Before EuropeanHegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New York:Oxford University Press, 1989), 4.

4One of the best short treatments of the Mongols comes in theDavid P. Ringrose’s superb survey of global interaction.Ringrose, Expansion and Global Interaction, 1200–1700(New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2001), 5–24.5 Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18thCentury, vol. III, The Wheels of Commerce (New York:Harper & Row, 1984), 30.6 William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York:Anchor Books, 1976), 132–146. Admittedly, McNeill’s workremains controversial and some scholars have suggested thatcontemporaneous plagues in various parts of the world mayhave been caused by a variety of epizootics.7 K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia Before Europe: Economy andCivilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),246–268.



Moreover, Black Death may have come at a periodof great vulnerability for the Old World economicnetwork, as there is some evidence that parts ofEurasia were already experiencing a commercialdownturn as early as the 1330s.8

The economic depression of the mid-fourteenthcentury was hard on many societies, but it was dev-astating to the Mongol leadership that relied heavilyon income from trade to run their vast empire. InAsia, insurgents began to see this weakened condi-tion as an opportunity to challenge their Mongolrulers, and these challenges form the context for theorigins of four early modern empires: MingDynasty China and the Ottoman, Russian, andMughal Empires.

China was in the early fourteenth century thehead—if not the heart—of the Mongol state.Chinggis Khan had begun the assault on China in1210, and his grandson Khubilai had defeated thelast rulers of the Chinese Song Dynasty in a 12-yearcampaign that ended in 1279. Calling themselvesthe Yuan dynasty, Khubilai and his successorsruled China from approximately 1271 to 1368.Yet Yuan leadership began to decline as early asthe 1330s, as factional intrigue weakened the cen-tral government and rebel movements emerged inthe provinces.9 The most significant of thesemovements was the Daoist Red Turban move-ment, whose leader Zhu Yuanzhang captured theYuan capital at Beijing in 1368, took the title theHongwu Emperor, and established the Mingdynasty, with authority over all of the coreprovinces of China.10 This massive polity thusbecame the first of the major states to assert itsindependence from the Mongols.

The first half of the fourteenth century alsowitnessed a decline of Mongol power in South-West Asia (the Middle East). Here the most sig-nificant challenger was a small Turkic-speaking

state ruled by the Bey Osman (Bey 1281–1299,Sultan 1299–1326), which had for decades paidtribute to the Mongol emperors. In 1299, Osmandeclared his (then still small) state independentfrom Mongol Rule, and it came afterward to benamed in his honor the “Ottoman” state.11 Osmanand his successors rapidly claimed territory notonly from the Mongols, but also from theByzantine Empire to the west, from whom theyacquired Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, southernSerbia, and in 1392, Albania.12 They briefly lostground again in the fourteenth century to the bril-liant Mongol warrior-lord Tımur (known in thewest as Tamerlane), but upon his death in 1405his empire immediately contracted, enablingthe Ottomans to re-establish themselves. Bymid-century, Anatolia (modern Turkey) was re-conquered and the Ottomans were able toadvance again in Europe. The accession ofMehmed II (1451–1481) to the Sultanate openeda new period of expansion and the developmentof a truly imperial Ottoman state. The descendentsof Tımur maintained hold only of Persia, until theywere defeated in 1501 by an alliance of Persianreligious and military figures led by a soldier whocrowned himself Shah Isma’¯ıl I (1501–1524). ThisSafavî (or Safavîiyya) state quickly became theOttomans’ main rival in the east.13

Arising to the east of Persia, the greatMughal Empire is most often associated withnorthern India. In fact, however, it too emergedout of the T ımurid upheavals of the late four-teenth century. The founder of the Mughalemperor, Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur (here-after known as Babur, 1526–1530), claimeddescent both from Tımur and Chinggis Khan.14

11See Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age1300–1600 (London: Phoenix Press, 1994). First published1973.12Ringrose, Expansion and Global Interaction, 44.13 H.R. Roemer, “The Safavî Period,” in The CambridgeHistory of Iran, vol. 6, The Timurid and Safavî Periods, editedby Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1986), 190–193.14John F. Richards, The New Cambridge History of India, vol. 5,The Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1993), 9, 44–47.

8Frank and Gills, The World System, 179–180.9F.W. Mote, Imperial China 900–1800 (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1999), 518–528.10Ibid., 563–564. See also the English or Chinese versions ofThe Cambridge History of China, vols. 7 and 8, The MingDynasty, edited by Denis C. Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).



Babur led his followers to northern India fromCentral Asia in the 1520s, and in 1526 hedefeated the Muslim rulers of Delhi, the Lodifamily. Gradually, they extended their sway overAfghan and Hindu rivals. Under Akbar(1556–1605), the Mughals occupied much ofnorthern India including the rich and fertileregion of Bengal. By the end of Akbar’s reign, theMughal state comprised a vast, multi-ethnic, andstill expanding empire.

The Mughals, Ottomans, and Safavîs sharedan Islamic identity with the Mongols, but aChristian successor to the Mongols also cameinto being in the western portion of their domain.The Slavic state of Russia began as the GrandDuchy of Muscovy, which for much of the thir-teenth century was a leading tributary to theMongol Khanate of the Golden Horde. As thepower of the Mongol state waned in the four-teenth century, that of Muscovy increased, allow-ing the Grand Dukes to flex their muscles on themargins of the Khanate. In 1478, Grand DukeIvan III conquered his once-powerful neighboringcity-state of Novgorod.15 By the mid-sixteenthcentury, allied to other former subjects of theMongols, the Muscovite Russians were powerfulenough to take on two Muslim-dominatedMongol successor states located to their east—theKhanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. Kazan wasconquered in 1552 and Astrakhan in 1556. Theconquest of Kazan and Astrakhan decisivelyturned Russia into a truly multi-ethnic empire,under a self-proclaimed czar (emperor).16 It alsoopened up the steppe lands of Central Asia andthe sparsely populated reaches of Siberia to theexpansion of the Russians, who were limited inthe west by emerging European rivals.

These European peoples, located at theextreme western limit of Mongol strength, hadnever been conquered by them. In any case,

Europe’s fragmented geography—its islands,peninsulas, and mountain chains—has through-out history made it difficult for any single state torule the continent effectively. The exception wasthe Habsburg Empire, which at its heightincluded Spain, the Low Countries, Burgundy,Austria, Bohemia, parts of Hungary, and posi-tions in Italy and North Africa as well as a grow-ing empire in the Americas. Yet even this vastdomain proved too large to rule effectively. Itsterritories could not be effectively mobilized forunified action, it only gradually developed a uni-fied state bureaucracy, and it dissolved quitequickly under pressure.

The Habsburg Empire was formed largelythrough marriage, and it’s worth briefly listingthe weddings that built their dominion. TheHabsburgs were descendents on the male side ofa leading German aristocratic family, the Dukesof Austria. In the fifteenth century, members ofthe Habsburg family were regularly elected HolyRoman emperors, although this latter title gavethem little real additional authority or poweroutside of their ancestral lines. Their horizonsbecame greatly widened by the wedding ofMaximilian Habsburg (Holy Roman EmperorMaximilian I, 1486–1519) to Mary, heiress ofBurgundy, in 1477. This added to his ancestraldomains not only the territory of Burgundy ineastern France, but also Mary’s family posses-sions in the Netherlands. A second wedding—that of Maximilian’s son Philip the Handsome toJoan of Aragon-Castile—doubled the size of theHabsburg inheritance. As the heir to Ferdinandof Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Joan gavePhilip claim to Spain as well as territories inItaly and the Americas. Maximilian alsoarranged a double wedding for himself and forhis daughter that sealed an alliance with therulers of Bohemia and Hungary (VladislavJagellon) and of Poland-Lithuania (SigismundJagellon) in 1515.17 Following the death of

17Victor S. Mamatey, Rise of the Habsburg Empire 1526–1815(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 1–7.

15 Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire, translated byAlfred Clayton (Harlow: Longman Press, 2001), 14–16.16 Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: TheMaking of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 2002), 105–110. See also Kappeler,The Russian Empire, 14–22.



Vladislav while fighting the Ottomans at the bat-tle of Mohács in 1526, Bohemia became aHabsburg domain, while Hungary was parti-tioned between the Habsburgs, Ottomans, and anindependent Transylvania.

Upon Maximilian I’s death, therefore, hisgrandson Charles was not only elected HolyRoman Emperor Charles V (1519–1556), but alsoinherited an enormous domain stretching acrossmuch of Europe. Yet he almost immediately rec-ognized that his inheritance was too vast for oneindividual to rule. Choosing to focus on Spainand its dependents, Charles therefore turned theadministration of the eastern territories includingthe Austrian hereditary lands over to his brotherFerdinand in 1521. In 1555, Charles abdicated asHoly Roman Emperor in Ferdinand’s favor(1555–1564) and, in the following year, turnedthe Spanish division of the Empire over to his sonPhilip II (King of Spain, 1556–1598). The Habsburgdomains were now permanently divided, althoughthe two branches of the family remained inter-twined and allied.

Philip II inherited the throne of an increas-ingly wealthy, largely unified Spain with extensivecolonies in the Americas (discussed in chapters 3and 4) as well as in the Philippines and withdominion over the Netherlands. It was at this pointthat the Habsburg Empire in Spain transformeditself into a Spanish Empire. In the years prior tothe Habsburg marriages, Ferdinand and Isabella ofSpain had forged from their domains both aSpanish identity and a unified Spain, largelythrough wars with the Muslim rulers of southernSpain known as the reconquista (or reconquest).18

The dual monarchs also sponsored overseas adven-tures such as that of Christopher Columbus.Ferdinand and Isabella were succeeded by theHabsburg Charles V, child of Philip the Handsomeand their daughter Joan. Yet throughout his reign,Charles saw Spain as merely one of his domains,and visited it only intermittently.19 His son Philip,

by contrast, recognized Spain as the center of hisempire, and its overseas colonies as an imperialperiphery.

The reconquista produced not one but twogreat early modern maritime empires. Spainshared the Iberian Peninsula with Portugal, aswell as with several Islamic states, and their histo-ries are intertwined with each other. In the latemedieval period, the peninsula was a zone ofintense intermingling and interaction betweenMuslims, Christians, and Jews. Yet relations werenot always friendly, and the two Christian statesof Spain and Portugal became unified largely outof a struggle to evict their Islamic rivals. Thesmaller, more westerly Portuguese state coa-lesced earlier than the larger Spanish state, and byaround 1250 it was virtually territorially com-plete. Thus in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-turies, the task of the Portuguese monarchs wasnot to expand the state within the peninsula but tosubdue alternate power centers—the nobility, thechurch, and the military orders. All of theseremained useful tools, as we will see, but had tobe subverted to the monarch’s authority. This taskwas largely completed by 1410.20 For the remain-der of the modern period, Portugal under its kingswould be an expansionist independent state,except for a brief period of unification with Spainbetween 1580 and 1640.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,Portugal and Spain took the energy that had builtthem into powerful states and turned it outward.Neither had neighboring territory, but both hadAtlantic coastlines and access to favorable oceancurrents. Thus, both states turned their attention toAtlantic Islands such as the Canaries. Portuguesemonarchs Dom João II (1481–1495) and DomManuel I (1496–1521) sponsored commercialexpeditions along the West African coast and theestablishment of fortified positions meant to domi-nate the gold trade with West Africa, of which themost important was São Jorge da Mina, built in

18Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power1492–1763 (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 16–17.19Ibid., 49–67.

20See Sanjay Subrahmanyan, The Portuguese Empire in Asia,1500–1700: A Political and Economic History (Harlow:Longman, 1993), 30–36.



1482 on what came to be known as the GoldCoast.21 Successive voyages brought Portugueseexpeditions further down the coast, culminating inBartholomeu Dias’s “doubling,” or passing andreturning, of the Cape of Good Hope in southernAfrica. By 1498, a squadron under the commandof Vasco da Gama entered the Indian Ocean, con-necting the Iberian states to the vast Indian Oceantrading zone.22 A second wing of Iberian overseasacquisition brought sailors flying Spanish andPortuguese flags across the Atlantic to theAmericas, a story told in chapters 3 and 4.

The great empires of the early modern erawere in constant interaction with other, smalleremerging states. In North Africa, for example,Spain, Portugal, and the Ottomans interacted witha variety of local Muslim authorities. Some, likethe Barbarossa brothers Arrudj and Khayruddin,accepted Ottoman suzerainty in return for aidagainst the Spanish. In this way, the areas com-prising coastal Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia werebrought informally into the Ottoman tributarysystem.23 In Morocco, on the other hand, theSa’adi family managed to play the Ottomans,Spanish, and Portuguese against each other and inthis way to build an independent state.24 In North-East Africa, the development of the independentChristian Ethiopian (Abyssinian) state similarlyput it in a position to preserve its independencefrom the Ottomans by seeking an alliance withPortugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In Asia as well, small and medium-sizedstates gradually coalesced in the early modernperiod. The unification of Japan was one signifi-cant example. Split by feuding factions of feudallords, or daimyo, Japan lacked anyone who couldclaim to represent a centralized authority until1615, when Tokugawa Ieyesu eliminated his final

rival for the position of shogun, or state warlord,in 1614.25 In South-East Asia, a small number ofcohesive states emerged in the fifteenth centurylinked economically to China. These includedboth trading city-states such as Melaka and Acehand larger agglomerations such as Burma, Siam,and Vietnam. While China was economicallyintertwined with South-East Asia, it interferedmilitarily with its southern neighbors onlytwice—intervening in Vietnamese (Annamese)politics in 1406–1427 and in Burma in the mid-1440s.26 It was following the Chinese withdrawalafter 1427 that the local Le dynasty establisheditself as the rulers of Vietnam.

Vietnam and other emerging South-EastAsian states rapidly built commercial links toSouth Asia trading partners. These included notonly the Mughal Empire but also a number ofemerging states at the tip of the Indian sub-conti-nent such as the Hindu state of Vijayanagar. Thesein turn were linked to maritime towns such asHormuz and Aden on the Arabian Peninsula, tothe emerging Ottoman Empire, and to a string ofEast African city-states that shared a set of culturaland linguistic attributes that we now know as Swahili. These Swahili polities—includingthe important port-cities of Mogadishu,Malindi, Sofala, and Mombasa—were connectedto resource-rich states of the African interior.Several of them experienced significant popula-tion expansion in the fifteenth century, as IndianOcean trade revived.27

Between the east coast of Africa and South-East Asia, the Indian Ocean formed a vast andmulti-national maritime zone of exchange—therichest in the world—with the Mughal Empire asits central pivot. Chinese merchants participatedas well. In the first part of the fourteenth century,

21John Vogt, Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast 1469–1682(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1979), 21–34.22J.H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance (London: PhoenixPress, 2000), 131–148. First printed 1963.23“Algeria, Tunisia and Libya: the Ottomans and Their Heirs,”in UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. 5, Africa from theSixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1999), abridged edition, 120–134.24“Morocco,” in Africa from the Sixteenth to the EighteenthCentury, 104–119.

25George Sansom, A History of Japan 1334–1615 (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1961), 397–406.26Jung-pang Lo, “Policy Formulation and Decision-Makingon Issues Respecting Peace and War,” in Chinese Governmentin Ming Times, edited by Charles O. Hucker (New York:Columbia University Press, 1969), 41–72.27 See Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear, The Swahili:Reconstructing the History and Language of an AfricanSociety, 800–1500 (Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1985), 80–98.



the great maritime cities of the Indian Ocean fromMelaka to Mombasa were visited by the vastChinese fleets of the Muslim eunuch-admiralZheng He. These great convoys ended in 1433,yet less ostentatious but equally significant com-mercial networks continued to tie the entireregion together in annual trade circuits.28 TheOttomans, too, participated in this trade followingSultan Selim I’s (1512–1520) 1516 conquest ofEgypt. Ottoman control over this strategic linkbetween east and west helped to drive thePortuguese toward an alternate route into theIndian Ocean around the southern tip of Africa.The wealth of the Indies was a major attractionfor Europeans, and the Portuguese were only thefirst of a number of states to support voyages ofexploration and piracy that aimed to possess atleast part of it. Portuguese and Spanish expedi-tions were rapidly followed by others mounted byFrench, British, and multinational groups.29

The parallel developments of large empiresand centralizing states in many parts of Asia,Africa, and Europe in this period should notobscure differences among them. Some of thestates described earlier were vast agrarianempires with powerful landed gentry and reli-gious or scholarly elites. Others were small, prin-cipally commercial, and dominated by merchantelites. Some were built and maintained largelythrough conquest, others more through dynasticmarriage, religious and national identity-building,and alliance. Yet beneath these differences was ashared history that can be highlighted by investi-gating the origins, forms, mechanisms, and func-tions of the state across this vast region of theearly modern world. Within this shared historywe can locate the development of modern imperi-alism, empires, and colonialism. This is the task

to which we now turn, by considering three inter-linked sets of analyses proposed by scholars toexplain the emergence of these new large statesand empires.

A GUNPOWDER REVOLUTION?

The principal theory advanced to explain this sud-den efflorescence is called the gunpowder revolu-tion. Wrapping technology, economy, and culturetogether, this theory begins by positing thatEurasian and some African societies in the earlymodern period jointly participated in the recoveryof local, inter-regional, and long-distance tradefollowing the subsidence of the mid-fourteenth-century depression. This resurgence in trade facil-itated the spread of new transportation andmilitary technologies—particularly firearms, butalso ship-building and navigation techniques.Together, these trends intensified the power andauthority of those rulers who could afford to par-ticipate in the expensive technological arms race,and allowed them to enhance their power espe-cially with respect to feudal lords, communityleaders, and nomadic peoples. The resultingdecrease in the number of viable militaries was acritical factor in the development of early modernstates. In order to maintain these costly armiesand navies, however, states had to compete tocontrol and to tax greater shares of global produc-tion and commerce. What this meant was thatstates that wanted to maintain their power had tocontinue to expand. To do this, governments cre-ated alliances with merchants, which then com-peted with rival state-merchant alliances tocontrol natural resources, commercial entrepots,and production centers. Such increased competi-tion in turn drove the need for larger and moreexpensive weapons and armies. It was partly thissearch for new sources of income and trade routesthat led to the “voyages of exploration” thatestablished connections among previously sepa-rated regions of the world.

The centralized governments that evolvedthrough this process shared certain characteristicsto varying degrees. These included the use ofgunpowder technologies, the mobilization of

28For a primary account of one of Zheng He’s voyages, seeMa Huan, Ying-Yai Sheng-Lan [The overall survey of theocean’s shores], edited by Feng Ch’eng Chun and J.V.G. Mills(Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1970), 179–180. For more onIndian Ocean commerce in this era, see Andre Gunder Frank,ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1998).29A venerable work on the subject is Joseph R. Strayer, On theMedieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1970).



religious and secular heritage in a search forlegitimacy, and the development of alliances withmerchants and religious leaderships as well aslanded elites. In many states, these trends helpedto create fledgling cultures of imperialism. Fromsome of these states emerged true empires. Inmost of these empires, some types of moderncolonialism emerged.

In 1983, the pioneering world historianWilliam McNeill put together a unified theorythat proposed that the development of gunpowderand firearms was the key factor leading to the for-mation of early modern world empires.30

Gunpowder was probably discovered or inventedonly once in world history, by tenth-centuryChinese alchemists. During the Song dynasty,weapons were developed that made use of thisgunpowder, including “fire arrows” and cylindersthat spewed perforated iron balls. The MongolYuan emperors further elaborated these weaponsand built the first guns probably around 1288. Thespread of gunpowder technology from China wasfacilitated by the vast Mongol hegemony.31 Thereis evidence that Arab armies were making use ofgunpowder-filled rockets and fireworks around1240 and of Syrian “fire lances” around 1280.The earliest European recipes for making gun-powder appeared around the same time.32 Unlikegunpowder, the cannon may have been developedin several places independently. The earliestChinese cannon dates to about 1332. In Europe, atype of cannon was used to defend Florence in1326, and later at the Hundred Years War Battle ofCrécy in 1346. However, the cannon remainedlargely underpowered until the early fifteenthcentury. The debut of truly powerful cannonoccurred at the 1451–1453 Ottoman siege ofConstantinople, where the Sultan Mehmed IIcommissioned a Hungarian metallurgist to cast

enormous firearms capable of blasting down thewalls of that great city.33

Aside from turning the tide of some set-piecesieges, however, this evidence does not make itclear why cannon, and later personal firearms,had such a decisive effect in world history. Afterall, early firearms were enormous, liable to explodeand kill their operators, and in the case of musketswere often less powerful than existing bow-and-arrow technology. Yet the rapid spread and uti-lization of gunpowder technology suggests that itwas indeed significant. McNeill proposes that thismight have been because gunpowder weapons—and especially cannon—reversed the power bal-ance between monarchs and local authorities inmany regions of Eurasia and Africa.

In the late medieval period across most ofEurasia and North Africa, the balance of powerand authority generally resided in the relationshipbetween rulers and land-owning elites. Theselandowners, who can perhaps be titled feudal oraristocratic classes, held a great deal of powerlargely because of their military contribution andstrength. Often, they held sway over large areasfrom fortified castles that were difficult todestroy. These aristocrats used proceeds fromtheir land to arm themselves heavily and to equipand maintain entourages of skilled cavalrymen(knights, samurai, sipahis) and footmen. Theintroduction of the cannon, however, shattered thepower of these elites. In the first place, cannonwere specifically designed to destroy fortifica-tions such as castles, thus eliminating their onlyreal advantage over the larger forces of themonarch. In the second place, cannon were soexpensive that most landowners could not affordthem. This gave certain authorities—usuallymonarchs and central governments—a monopolyon the new weapon. The introduction of personalfirearms also contributed to the weakening ofthese local authorities. States could equip peasantarmies, or professionals, with muskets. Althoughthe musket was not in early years as effective as

30William H. McNeill, Pursuit of Power: Technology, ArmedForce, and Society Since 1000 A.D. (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1983). See also by the same author, The Age ofGunpowder Empires, 1450–1800 (Washington, DC: AmericanHistorical Association, 1989).31 Jack Kelly, Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, andPyrotechnics (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 2–15.32Ibid., 22–25.

33 One eyewitness account is Nicolo Barbaro, Diary of theSiege of Constantinople 1453, translated by John Melville-Jones (New York: Exposition Press, 1969).



the bow, it was easy to learn to use and thereforegave the state the ability to arm a force of ama-teurs to fight the experienced henchmen of thelanded elites.

The result was threefold. First, the new wea-pons shifted the balance of power (and conse-quently the ability to tax populations) from localto central authorities, thus enabling state central-ization and rationalization. Second, they in-creased the power of the first states in the regionto adopt this technology against surroundingstates and nomadic/pastoral peoples, thus facili-tating the integration of states noted in thisperiod. Finally, the new technology increased thefinancial needs of the state, thus leading to com-petition for resources and for control of inter-regional commerce.34

These effects can be seen in every region towhich gunpowder technology spread in the earlymodern world, but especially among the greatearly modern empires. As we have seen, theOttoman Empire first used firearms to greateffect. Although the cannon that destroyed thewalls of Constantinople were designed by aHungarian, the Ottoman Sultans subsequentlysponsored an indigenous bronze cannon industrycontrolled by the state alone. Equally signifi-cantly, Sultan Murad I (1359–1389) financed astate army manned largely by slaves that servedas a counterpoint to aristocratic power. By themid-fifteenth century, this force, known as theJanissary Corps, was largely armed with muskets.Throughout much of the sixteenth century,Ottoman military engineers, artillerymen, andmusketeers were feared from Europe to East Asia,while Ottoman galleys controlled much of theMediterranean and, periodically, the westernIndian Ocean as well.35

Similarly, the founding of the MughalEmpire by Babur rested on his effective use ofmuskets and cannon against the cavalry of hisnemesis the Sultan of Delhi at the 1526 Battle ofPanipat. Yet his successor, Humayun (1530–1556)was almost undone by the rulers of Gujarat whopossessed a large army of cannon and Turkish andPortuguese gunners. Partly as a result, the greatEmperor Akbar undertook a campaign of militaryinnovation and reorganization that includeddeveloping a centralized army, an over-archingsystem of military ranks, and a prohibitionagainst the possession of artillery by any forceother than that of the emperor. His large, profes-sional army enabled him to conquer most of cen-tral India. Most assessments suggest, however, thatmilitary technology stagnated and finally declinedunder the rule of Shah Jahan (1628–1658).36

The Russian ascendance over the successorKhanates in Central Asia depended in part on itstransition from a cavalry-centered, feudal societyinto a musket-and-cannon centralized power. Thefirst steps were taken by Ivan III (1462–1505) andVasilii III (1505–1533). In 1571, Russian cannondefended Moscow from the besieging army of theKhanate of Crimea and marked the inability ofCentral Asian rulers to take fortified cities armedwith gunpowder weapons. In 1532, a second inva-sion turned back when it encountered Russianunits defending the Oka River with arquebus(early muskets) and cannon.37 Nevertheless, theRussian military forces remained dominated untilthe seventeenth century by middle-class cavalryarmed with edged weapons and bows, many ofwhom were soldiers given land in the newly con-quered territories in return for service.38

In many regions of Eurasia and Africa, sev-eral competing gunpowder-armed states arosesimultaneously. This was true, for example, incontinental South-East Asia, where Burma, Siam,

34McNeill, The Age of Gunpowder Empires, 1, 8, 10, 27–28,34, 38, 39. See also Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam,vol. 3, The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1974), 17. First published 1961.35John F. Guilmartin, Jr., “The Military Revolution: Originsand First Tests Abroad,” in The Military Revolution Debate:Readings on the Military Transformation of Early ModernEurope, edited by Clifford Rogers (Boulder, CO: WestviewPress, 1995), 300–305.

36 Richards, The Mughal Empire, 42–43, 57, 60, 68, 80,142–143.37Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, 19–21.38 Richard Hellie, “Warfare, Changing Military Technology,and the Evolution of Muscovite Society,” in Tools ofHegemony, edited by John Lynn (Chicago: University ofIllinois Press, 1990), 75–99.



and Vietnam used personal firearms and cannonto subdue surrounding states and to resist Chineseincursions and later Portuguese interventions.Island states such as Melaka and Aceh alsoproved themselves capable of developing sophis-ticated cannon and gun-wielding ships.39 Thiswas also true in Europe, where the brief period ofdramatic cannon superiority over masonry cameto an end rather rapidly in the late fifteenth cen-tury with the development of the trace italienne, anew form of fortification resistant to cannon. Thisinnovation helped to halt the consolidation ofEurope and facilitated a balance of power amongmany, mid-sized states. It halted the developmentof a truly hegemonic Habsburg Empire based onSpain and Austria in the sixteenth century andresulted in an era of almost constant warfare thatincluded the struggles of the eastern Habsburgsagainst the Ottomans, the Spanish–French wars,the revolt of the Netherlands, and the Thirty Years’War (1618–1648). This competitive environmentspurred further, even more costly military develop-ments that culminated in the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries in large and professional standingarmies, new types of military organization, heavierfinancial burdens, and thus higher levels of taxa-tion, as well as more brutal and lengthy wars.40

Equally significant was the effect of this sus-tained burst of military diffusion and innovationon western European maritime technology.Before the early modern period, the principalnaval vessel of competing states in both theMediterranean and the Indian Ocean was the oar-driven galley. Indeed, even in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, galleys retained someadvantages over sail-driven ships because of their

maneuverability in coastal areas. However, the gal-ley had several key disadvantages. Its large crewmade it difficult to operate over long distances,cargo space was small, and perhaps most impor-tantly the ranks of oars made it difficult to carrylarge numbers of cannon.41 Before the fifteenthcentury, however, it faced little competition fromsail-driven ship designs. From China to England,most sailing ships were smaller and more fragilethan large galleys and could not stream against thewind. This situation was transformed, however,between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuriesthrough a complex and long process of diffusionand innovation. First, ship-building techniquesusing strong internal frames were developed in thewestern Mediterranean. These formed the base fora new sail configuration that mixed Arab lateen (ortriangular) rigging with Breton square rigging.This arrangement allowed the new ship—calledthe caravel—to travel both fast and against thewind.42 By the early sixteenth century, these car-avels were mounting small numbers of guns inrear-pointing gunrooms. Although useful for bom-barding ports such as the Swahili cities of EastAfrica, these were initially of limited use in gun-battles. Only after 1545 were long rows of broad-side-mounted cannon introduced in England,where cheaper iron cannon were also replacingbrass guns. The combination vastly increased ship-board firepower.43 These types of innovations,which spread gradually around maritime Europe,slowly led to European domination of the seas.There is a great deal of scholarship, however, thatsuggests that for the sixteenth and early seven-teenth centuries the naval gap between Europe andother regions should not be overstated.44

39 Lieberman, “Transcending East-West Dichotomies,”516–517; and A. Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age ofCommerce, 1450–1680 (New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress, 1990), 220–226.40This is the heart of Michael Robert’s famous assertion of asixteenth- and seventeenth-century military revolution thateffectively propelled European military organization and tech-nology to the global forefront. However, one of his critics,Geoffrey Parker, argues that it was based on the fifteenth-cen-tury developments. Clifford Rogers, ed., The Military RevolutionDebate: Readings on the Military Transformation of EarlyModern Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).

41Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, 56, 120.42 Ibid., 57–65; and N.A.M. Rodger, “Guns and Sails in theFirst Phase of English Colonization, 1500–1650,” in TheOxford History of the British Empire, vol. I, The Origins ofEmpire, edited by Nicholas Canny (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1998), 80–81.43Rodger, “Guns and Sails,” 85–91.44P.J. Marshall, “Western Arms in Maritime Asia in the EarlyPhases of Expansion,” Modern Asian Studies, 14 (1980),13–28; and John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Makingof the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992), 40–42.



One of the great mysteries of the gunpowderempire theory is why the Ming emperors of China,the home of gunpowder, largely chose not to equiptheir armies with muskets and the new types of can-non. The answer certainly isn’t a lack of ability.Zheng He’s fifteenth-century vast fleets of enor-mous ships, which towered over the Portuguese car-avels of later centuries, were equipped withfirearms.45 Moreover Japan, China’s neighbor,developed an advanced musket industry in the1560s. Indeed, it was the effective use of theseweapons by Nobunaga and the Tokugawa’s descen-dants that led to the island’s unification.46 UnderHideyoshi, Japan even turned these weapons againstthe Choson (Korean) state. Significantly, however,the musket-equipped Japanese armies failed todefeat the Choson and Ming forces that came totheir aid. Such evidence, which suggests thatfirearms were not in all cases decisive, makes theMing Emperor’s decisions more understandable.

In fact, the search for some type of excep-tional “otherness” in Ming China, popular thoughit is among western academics, is a misguidedone. Simply put, the types of battles that were ofmost concern to the Ming emperors—foughtagainst mobile nomadic armies—rendered heavycannon useless. Ming weaponry was, in fact, suf-ficient for their needs, although in the long runsitting out the next stages of the gunpowder revo-lution would prove to be a mistake. A similar sit-uation existed in much of Africa, where, forexample, Portuguese firearms proved useless inthe dense forests of Angola against bow andspear-wielding forces.47

SECTORAL ALLIANCES

For those states that did adopt them, however, thenew weapons were not cheap—a fact that leads us

to a second set of analyses concerning the rise oflarge states and empires—in this case combiningpolitics, economics, and culture. Simply put, theexpense of all of this new technology and theexpertise needed to operate it made it necessaryfor sovereign rulers to turn to other segments insociety who could help pay these costs. Theseallies could also assist the state in developingbureaucracies and in ruling new populations.Both the financial and the logistical requirementsof maintaining the empire thus facilitated the for-mation of partnerships between the state on onehand, and merchants and religious authorities onthe other. Moreover, existing land-owning elitesalso often remained an important part of the equa-tion. In short, rulers turned to these groups insearch of money. In return, each group demandedcertain concessions, often asking to have a say inthe making of laws. Political scientists describethe resulting collaboration between governmentson the one hand and financial, religious, and mili-tary elites on the other as an alliance of severalsectors.48

Nowhere was the relationship between impe-rial ruler and sectors of society more complexthan in the Mughal state under Akbar. TheTımurid Emperor was backed up by a sophisti-cated set of institutions that centralized power inhis hands. The most obvious were the class ofmilitary commanders, or Mansabdari, who owedallegiance to the emperor. This multi-ethnic mar-tial aristocracy included Iranians, Central Asians,and Indians; Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. Themansabdari were ranked according to importance,and some of the most significant had personalrelationships with the emperor as disciples in aroyal cult that transcended religion, ethnicity, andfamily identity.49 The emperor and his militaryofficials alike were sustained by a system of

45 Kuei-Sheng Chang, “The Maritime Scene in China at theDawn of Great European Discoveries,” Journal of theAmerican Oriental Society, 94 (1974), 347–359.46 Conrad Totman, A History of Japan (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), 205–209.47John K. Thornton, “The Art of War in Angola, 1575–1680,”Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30 (1988),360–378.

48 These have been remarked upon in early modern Europefrequently, but existed elsewhere to similar degrees. David B.Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: EuropeanOverseas Empires, 1415–1980 (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 2000), 35–38, 61–63.49 J.F. Richards, “Formulation of Imperial Authority UnderAkbar and Jahangir,” in The Mughal State 1526–1750, editedby Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyan (Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press, 1998), 21–22, 151–153.



landed gentry, or zamindari, who held title toboth vast and in some cases quite tiny cultivatedlands.50 Many of the mansabdari and zamindariinvested heavily in both internal and long-dis-tance commerce, and by the seventeenth century atype of royal trade in which the state invested incommerce also developed.51 At the same time,Akbar relied for both religious and legal adviceupon Sufi Muslim leaders from Central Asia andIndia. He sponsored orthodox Muslim orders, butat the same time was generally tolerant of the vari-ety of faiths within his state.52 This brought Akbarinto conflict with ulamâ, or religious magistrates,and his successors would eventually abandon thisbroad-mindedness.

The Ottoman state, as well, combined apotent mix of religious, land-owning, and com-mercial elites. At its heart was the feudal timarsystem, by which the Sultan granted rural land-holding rights to feudal knights, or sipâhîs, inreturn for military and administrative service.However, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,the Ottoman Empire was also a center of globalcommerce. Thus, the Ottomans specifically spon-sored the development of commercial society,including welcoming Jews evicted from ChristianEurope. Sultans such as Bayezid I (1389–1403)and Mehmed II used their control of importanttrade routes as a foreign relations tool. Internally,they carefully regulated the guilds, or hirfet, andalso protected them from external threats.53 BothMuslims and non-Muslims could be members ofguilds, but despite this general tolerance theSultan’s identity as the champion of Sunnî Islamand supreme representative of Sharî’a law wascentral to his power and authority. The Ottomanulamâ were more closely integrated into the statethan in the Mughal Empire. Many served as kâdîs(religious magistrates who also served as thestate’s legal system) and were closely aligned

with the army.54 Both institutions were seen asextensions of the Sultanate, and helped to enforcehis will within the empire and without. Thisalliance gave a flavor of religious crusade toOttoman expansions, both against the Shî’i Safavîand against Christian states. The complex motiva-tions for Ottoman expansions thus often com-bined elements of military aspiration, pursuit ofeconomic gain, and militant Islamic objectives.However, both the Ottoman emperors and thereligious authorities were generally pragmaticallybroad-minded.55 Non-Muslims were organizedinto special communities, or millets, and enjoyedtolerance in return for special duties.

Religion similarly played an important rolein the development of Christian-dominated impe-rial states. This was particularly true of societiesthat bordered Muslim competitors, especiallyRussia, Spain, and Ethiopia. Russian imperialismcontained a very strong sense of an OrthodoxChristian mission, especially after the fall ofConstantinople to the Ottomans.56 After 1589,Russian czars even appointed their own inde-pendent patriarch of the Orthodox Church.Although this militant Christianity had to be tem-pered by the realities of ruling large numbers ofMuslims, it remained an important aspect ofRussian imperial rhetoric, and Orthodox priestsremained among the most vocal proponents ofexpansionism. Other proponents included thesons of middle-class and aristocratic familiesseeking land of their own. In annexing Novgorodin 1470, Ivan III expropriated all of the landowned by local landlords and turned it over tothese young men. In return, they committed them-selves to serve in the military in times of war, andthus increased the Russian central government’sability to wage war and mobilize resources.57

Commercial interests contributed to empire-build-ing as well. As the Russians expanded into Siberia,family firms such as the Stroganovs set up vast

50S. Nural Hasan, “Zamindars under the Mughals,” in Alamand Subrahmanyan, The Mughal State, 284–300.51Alam and Subrahmanyan, The Mughal State, 26–28.52Richards, The Mughal Empire, 30–33, 34–36, 60, 153–158.53 M.A. Cook, ed., Studies in the Economic History of theMiddle East (London: Oxford University Press, 1970),207–218.

54Hodgson, The Gunpowder Empires, 101–109.55Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire.56 Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, 2, 34, 103–104.57 Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and ItsRivals (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 240.



economic networks and even employed Cossackmercenaries to defeat the Siberian Khanates.Imperial soldiers and forts soon followed.58

For the Catholic rulers of the Spanish andAustrian Habsburg empires, Islam was not theonly religious foe—Protestantism too threatenedthe foundations of the Church and the state. Tofund the fight against Protestant “heresy” andMuslim states at the same time required a com-plex balancing act. The Spanish crown controlledtwo of the most significant mercantile regions inthe Low Countries (Spanish Netherlands) and inportions of Italy, but silver from the Americas wasincreasingly important as a source of income aswell. The Castilian nobility could be countedupon to pay taxes regularly, but the Aragoneseand other subjects could not. In the east, theGerman states of the Holy Roman Empire con-tributed little to the Austrian Habsburg emperors,who relied mostly on revenue from the wealthyprovinces of Bohemia.59 Both sets of Habsburgmonarchs were closely affiliated with the CatholicChurch, and their intolerance of Protestantismgradually increased during this period. Rudolf IIof Austria (1576–1612) was militantly anti-Protestant and allied himself closely with theclergy in persecuting Protestants during and afterthe Thirty Years’ War.60 The Church’s supportwas also a significant prop to royal authority inthe continuing conflict against the OttomanEmpire in Hungary and elsewhere.

The consolidation of Spain by Ferdinand andIsabella and of the Portuguese state in the fif-teenth century mobilized Church, landed gentry,and merchant-bankers, even while the sovereignsof both states sought to control these variousgroups. Spain’s 1482–1492 conquest of the lastMuslim state on the Iberian Peninsula, Granada,was funded by the Church as well as Italian and

Jewish financiers.61 Subsequently, the CastilianCardinal Cisneros promised to turn over theincome of his entire diocese to the King if hewould invade Muslim Africa. Spanish aristocratsalso supported the reconquista or elimination ofMuslim states from the Iberian Peninsula, notonly out of ideology but also as a way to acquirenew tracts of land. Yet landowners, too, wereimportant components of Iberian overseas expan-sion. Before 1492, the gradual acquisition of for-merly Muslim territories had meant that new landhad periodically become available to Spanish andPortuguese aristocrats and their sons. After the fallof Granada, however, this process came to an end,and new land became scarce. Thus, aristocrats—and especially second and third sons who stood toinherit little—looked to the overseas empire as aplace to acquire lands and wealth.62 This combi-nation of Church, bankers (many of them for-eign), militarized aristocrats, and a growing bodyof merchants became even more important asSpain and Portugal turned their attentions over-seas. The Church also provided an ideology of theongoing crusade against Islam and the duty ofconverting non-Christians overseas, while finan-ciers helped fund state-sponsored voyages ofexploration and conquest in hopes of high profits,and soldier-aristocrats of the reconquista quicklybecame conquistadors. At the center of thesewebs were the royal courts of Spain and Portugal,which developed and disseminated across theirtwo states the sense of a royal prerogative and aChristian duty to create an empire.

The integration of state, Church, finance, andmilitary was, in fact, never entirely completed ineither Spain or Portugal. Religious orders—likethe Jesuits—and knightly orders often pursuedtheir own goals, as did the merchants who oftencompeted with royal trading monopolies. Yet thesectoral alliances in Spain and Portugal weremutually supportive of an aggressive, outwardlooking set of policies emanating from the monar-chies. Scholars have often compared this Iberianculture of exploration with that of Ming China,

58Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 34–35.59 Charles Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy 1618–1815(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 11–13; andPaul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers:Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000(New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 43–44.60Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, 36–38.

61Kamen, Empire, 15–18.62Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, 20.



which seemed after 1430 to turn inward and evenbecome isolationist. Thus, they have created theidea of a vibrant, innovative culture in the westand a stagnating culture in the east. In fact, theturn inward in China was a result only of govern-ment policies, rather than any cultural shift awayfrom commerce. Even as the Ming emperorsrefused to sponsor overseas commercial and mili-tary endeavors, Chinese merchants continued tobe as entrepreneurial as those of any other region.In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Chinesemerchant-family networks built strong and lastingties with South-East Asia, Japan, the Philippines,and other regions. In South-East Asia, some evencame to assume important political roles as keysupporters of commercially oriented regimes.Around these family firms, communities ofChinese traders and migrants developed in statesacross the western Pacific, and as a result a China-centered economy continued to dominate theregion. Thus, sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuryChina was perhaps the greatest consumer of silverfrom the Spanish colonies in the Americas, andthe producer of what were arguably the finest con-sumer goods in the world.63

Why then did the Ming emperors choose notto support these ventures with state resources?One compelling argument has to do with the spe-cial sectoral alliances that formed under the Mingemperors. China’s exploding population anddynamic economic growth in this period is star-tling, but little of this money reached the Mingemperors, who were isolated from the increas-ingly commercial urban population of China by apowerful class of land-owning aristocrats andimperial bureaucrats that sought to maintainpower by excluding the growing merchantclass.64 The power of the land-owning familieswas based largely upon their ability to address thegovernment’s need to feed and manage thelargest, most populous of the early modern stateslargely from resources found within the state. Asa result, not only were merchants’ interests notstrongly represented in the court, but those trading

overseas were especially sidelined. While thisunique alignment may indeed highlight the differ-ences between the expansionist policies of Spainand the internally concentrated policies of thepost-1433 Ming emperors, these differencesmerely reflect the manner in which two earlymodern states responded to different local reali-ties. For China, these included the fact that theMing dynasty ruled a territory that was alreadyperhaps as large as was manageable using earlymodern technology, whose internal trade waslarger than that of Europe as a whole, and that wasculturally and historically cohesive. Such consid-erations are evidenced by Ming decisions not tointervene in neighboring states or actively supportChinese merchant communities overseas.65

The Ming example, while unique, demon-strates that the formation of sectoral alliances wasa shared strategy of empire-building states acrossEurasia in this period, and not one unique only toEurope. These alliances were significant not onlyin strengthening the state, but also because theygave different groups within society the ability toshape the ways in which empires expanded andfunctioned in this period.

THE SEARCH FOR LEGITIMACY

The third set of arguments about the connectednature of these early modern states and empires isthat they all had to seek ways to get their popula-tions to acknowledge the legitimacy—or right torule—of their ruling families and elites. Armiesof soldiers, bureaucrats, and merchant fleets werethe most obvious agents of the imperial state, butthey could not alone convince the general popu-lace of the legitimacy of the state. Thus beneaththem, empires mobilized intellectual, historical,and religious claims of sovereignty and legiti-macy aimed at their own people, at potential chal-lengers, and at competing states. Most often,these claims represented popular ideologiesadapted to the service of the state. Because of themulti-sectoral alliance structure of gunpowder

63Mote, Imperial China, 717–721.64Ringrose, Expansion and Global Interaction, 168–172.

65An interesting study on this topic is Lo, “Policy Formulationand Decision-Making.”



states, these ideologies usually incorporated ele-ments that could serve the interests of importantcommercial, religious, and sometimes land-owningelites, as well as the monarch and his court. Inthe case of the great empires of the early modernworld, they were also linked to worldviews thathad expansionist or outward-looking compo-nents and that amounted essentially to cultures ofimperialism.

Portugal is an excellent example of the devel-opment of this type of culture. In their struggle todominate powerful political, military, and reli-gious groups and to defeat the Muslim Almoravidsin southern Portugal, the Portuguese kings had inthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries developed acrusading ideology. This sense of a religious dutybound the nobility to the king and also increasedthe sovereign’s popularity. Therefore, rather thanabandoning the crusading ideology following theexpulsion of the Muslims from the IberianPeninsula, Dom Manuel I developed it into a formof royal messianism, through which he came tobelieve that he had been chosen to liberateJerusalem. His strategy for achieving this goal wasthe unification of European and EthiopianChristians, which helps to explain both his supportfor expeditions to the east and the aid Portugalgave to Ethiopia in its struggle against Muslimrivals. However, Manuel’s religious goals by nomeans conflicted with Portugal’s commercialobjectives: the struggle against the EgyptianMamlûks and later the Ottomans not onlyreflected Portugal’s sense of a religious duty but atthe same time helped to establish a Portuguesemonopoly of the pepper and spice trade from Asiato Europe by blocking an alternate trade routethrough Egypt to Venice. Both Portuguese and for-eign merchants at Manuel’s court lobbied for statefunds to be committed to eastward exploration andoverseas expansion, and Manuel’s support forthese ventures marks their ascendance over land-owning aristocrats.66

Portugal was not the only state to incorporateChristianity into its sense of an imperial mission.Spanish identity, too, was bound up in the recon-quista and the subsequent expulsion of Jews andMuslims, and later in the struggle of Philip IIagainst both Protestantism and rebellion in theNetherlands. The Austrian Habsburgs, as well,used their status as champions of the CatholicChurch both to promote their struggle against theOttomans and to justify their suppression ofregional autonomy and local authorities inBohemia and Hungary during the Thirty Years’War.67 The Habsburgs also employed a secondclaim to legitimacy—their designation as HolyRoman emperors. Although the Holy RomanEmpire was entirely dysfunctional after the fif-teenth century, and although its German stateswere in effect wholly autonomous, the Habsburgs’claim to the title asserted their right to rule asheirs to the Roman emperors.

Russian imperial identity, too, asserted theczar’s position as defender of the Church and heirto the Roman emperors. The title czar itself is aderivation of the Roman title Emperor, or Caesar,and its assumption by Ivan IV (1530–1584) in1547 indicated the maturity of the Russian senseof an imperial mission. Although Ivan II had alsocalled himself czar, few foreign rulers of his dayhad recognized the title and Vasilii III had aban-doned it. By reclaiming the title czar, Ivan IVdeclared his sole imperium over Russia. By pro-claiming it without the Pope’s explicit consent,he declared his independence from the Popeand laid his claim to the position of defender ofChristianity. His coronation also asserted his rightto rule all of the lands of the Khanate of theGolden Horde. His subsequent invasion of Kazanand Astrakhan backed his grandiose coronationwith actions, but the Christian identity of theimperial mission necessitated that the Muslimpopulation of his empire be ruled as subjects,rather than citizens.68

66 Subrahmanyan, The Portuguese Empire, 49–51; and LuísFilipe Thomaz, “Factions, Interests, and Messianism: ThePolitics of Portuguese Expansion in the East, 1500–1521,”Indian Economic and Social History Review, 28 (1991),98–109.

67Many of the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburg monarchsclearly took this role very seriously. Mamatey, Rise of theHabsburg Empire, 8, 38–57.68Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, 34, 40, 103–104;and Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 14.



Like the Russians, the Mughal emperorscombined religious and historical claims to legiti-mate their sovereignty over a vast and multi-ethnic empire. Because, however, they relied onHindu and Sikh as well as Muslim elites to holdthe empire together, their ideology was, at leastinitially, far more focused on dynastic heritagethan religious mission. Under Akbar, the expand-ing empire was bound together by imperialmythology that held the emperor to be the infalli-ble heir to Tımur, and essentially a divine figureat the center of a wide ring of discipleship, bywhich leading officials, zamindari, and mansab-dari bound themselves in a solemn commitmentceremony—incorporating aspects of differentfaiths—to obey and to serve him.69 Subsequentemperors, however, turned toward a stricterMuslim ideology. Aurangzeb (1658–1707) com-pleted this transition by embracing the idea of animperial duty to spread Islamic law, by elevatingthe power of the ulamâ, and by discriminatingagainst non-Muslim subjects of the empire.70

Ottoman claims to imperial legitimacymatured in the sixteenth century through the dualprocesses of autocratic centralization and assump-tion of religious authority as inheritors of the man-tle of the Prophet. Although the authority of earlySultans was heavily restricted by powerful soldiers-turned-landowners—the ghâzîs—the develop-ment of the Janissary corps, a ranking system forall civilians and military officials, and a ceremo-nial royal court under Mehmed II gave the Sultana type of imperial sovereignty. This developmentof autocratic rule was supported by an absolutistideology, which declared that all officials were rit-ually slaves of the Sultan, who represented bothreligious and temporal authority.71 This trendpeaked under Selim I, who built up the Janissariesto defeat the Mamlûks, and thus elevated his per-sonal power at the expense of the ghâzîs. By cap-turing the holy cities of Medina and Mecca fromthe Mamlûks, Selim was also able to use Islam asa central prop of his authority to a greater degree

than his predecessors. He added to his titles thedesignation Caliph—the chosen successors to theProphet—and the Sunnî ulamâ of the empire, atleast, accepted this claim.

Unlike the other major early modern empires,Ming China was based on a historically cohesiveand coherent Chinese state that had pre-existedunder a number of dynasties culminating in theSong period immediately prior to Mongol rule.Zhu Yanzhang carefully designed his imperial ide-ology to capitalize on the existing Chinese identityeven before he became the Hongwu Emperor. Thedoctrine of the Red Turban sect of which he was aprincipal leader was openly anti-Mongol, and ittherefore embraced a somewhat xenophobic eth-nic Chinese sentiment. During the early years ofhis struggle for power, he rapidly attached himselfto the “Little Prince of Radiance,” who wasclaimed to be a descendant of the last Songemperor. Yet he abandoned both his pledged loy-alty to the “restored” Song and to the Red Turbansafter he had built a large following among Chineselandowners and scholar-bureaucrats and came intopossession of sufficient authority to claim thethrone for himself in 1367. Nevertheless, Zhufound it expedient to name his new dynasty Ming,or “radiance,” after the “Little Prince” in recogni-tion of the people’s sentiments.72 As the HongwuEmperor, Zhu claimed to have restored Chineserule to China and asserted that his victories wereproof of the God’s approval, or “mandate ofheaven.” These two ideas remained intertwined asthe principal ideological props of the Ming emper-ors’ rule.

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN EMPIRES?

While the revival of trade and the gunpowder revo-lution helped to spur the growth of large states inEurasia and North Africa during the period fromthe late fourteenth to the early seventeenth century,not all regions of the world necessarily experi-enced similar trends. Indeed, the populations ofmuch of sub-Saharan Africa, Australasia, and theAmericas as well as some parts of Europe and Asia

69 Richards, “Formulation of Imperial Authority,” 151–153.70Richards, The Mughal Empire, 171–178.71Hodgson, The Gunpowder Empires, 100–104. 72Mote, Imperial China, 558–532, 559.



were outside of the Eurasian and North Africanzone of state-building. Nevertheless, this does notmean that states and empires did not develop andexist in these regions during this period. In subse-quent chapters, for example, we will explore thelarge states of the fourteenth-century meso-America and the Andean zone of South Africa. Butit is appropriate here to discuss whether sub-Saharan Africa had empires during this period.

We have already seen that much of coastalAfrica was very much part of the story of revivingglobal trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.The Swahili city-states, Senegambians, Ethiopians,the peoples of the Gold Coast and even regions fur-ther south traded and otherwise interacted withOttoman, Portuguese, and Mughal subjects as wellas each other. However, because of the obstacle ofthe vast Sahara desert and because of distance,wind patterns, and ecological differences eventswithin Africa tended to dominate the ways inwhich states formed in these regions.

In most contemporary world history text-books, it has become common to label a numberof early modern African states as empires. Theseinclude the West African states of Ghana, Mali,and Songhai along with Central Africa politiessuch as Luba, Lunda, and Kongo and of courseEthiopia. There are numerous reasons why thishas happened. In the first place, later rulers ofthese areas claimed descent from early emperors.Similarly, early North African and Europeanexplorers and missionaries often applied to thestates they encountered titles such as “kingdom,”“empire,” and “caliphate” in an attempt to under-stand them in familiar language. Lastly, modernscholars of Africa seeking to reverse the idea ofthe continent as “backward” and “tribal” haveoften endorsed these titles. Yet are they correct?Did empires in fact exist in sub-Saharan Africa inthe early modern period?

Certainly, numerous states existed in Africasouth of the Sahara during this time. Yet Africanhistorian John Thornton has pointed out that mostof them were relatively small.73 Simply put, mostof sub-Saharan Africa did not experience the

same trends of centralization and expansion asEurasia and North Africa during this period. Thisdoes not prove, however, that there were no earlymodern sub-Saharan African empires. In fact, wehave plenty of evidence of several very large statesin the West African region just south of the Saharaafter 1250 including Mali and Songhai, both ofwhich may have controlled up to 1 million squarekilometers. While not as large as the OttomanEmpire at its height (4 million square kilometers)or the Mughal state (almost 2 million square kilo-meters), these are nevertheless sizable states.Similarly, large states existed south of the vastCongo rain forests including after 1390 Kongo,which figures heavily in the story of Portugueseexpansion discussed in the next chapter.

Were these large states in fact empires? Sizealone cannot prove anything. In going back to ourdefinition of empire used in this book, we mustlook at questions of authority and control, of dif-ferentiation between metropolitan citizens andsubjects, and of networks of exchange betweenmetropole and periphery. Thornton, for example,would probably argue that most sub-SaharanAfrican states in this period were more like con-federations—alliances of small states tiedtogether—than empires.74 In this section, we willexplore whether the title empire applied well tothe three most likely candidates in this region andperiod—Mali, Songhai, and Kongo.

It makes sense to begin with the stateThornton knows the most about: Kongo. Thislong-lived state on the west coast of CentralAfrica seems to have formed around 1390 and tohave existed at least until the late seventeenthcentury, when it fragmented under both externaland internal pressures.75 There is a debate aboutthe origins of the state that is important to ourunderstanding of its configuration. We have nowritten sources from this area for the late four-teenth century, and most local oral sources sug-gest that its leaders were descendants of invaderswho had conquered the peasants who made up

73Thornton, Africa and Africans, 103–104.

74Ibid., 9.75Another state later formed in about the same region, but in adifferent configuration and under different leadership.



most of the rural population. This story has beenused to explain the dualism of Kongolese society,which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesseems to have been split into a rural peasantry andan urban nobility in the capital of São Salvadorewho lived off the peasants’ surplus as well as lux-ury goods produced by slaves on plantationsaround the capital city.76 Yet Thornton doubts thisexplanation. Instead, he argues, this divisionobscures the origins of the Kongolese state as aconfederation. Although later kings seem to havesponsored stories of earlier military prowess as ameans of legitimizing their rule, there is evidencein these stories that the urban nobility of the six-teenth and seventeenth centuries were descendedfrom many lineages (families) who were rulers ofmultiple small states that fused by marriage withthe rulers of Kongo.77 Only some peripheralprovinces seem to have been added by conquest,and many of these remained nominally independ-ent so long as they paid an annual tribute.

Nevertheless, it could be argued that Kongohad a metropole–periphery configuration, if arather different one than most Eurasian empires.The metropole in this case was the capital, wherealmost the entirety of the nobility lived and whichhad an economic system based on slave labor. Bycontrast, the rural provinces largely producedfood through communal or family-based laborsystems. These provinces were ruled by noblestemporarily dispatched from the interior, whosemain job was to collect food surpluses for thecapital. The stability of the state was based on thefact that there was only really one prize for anypower-seekers: the capital. Whoever controlledSão Salvadore controlled the state. Indeed,arguably, the reason it finally broke up in the sev-enteenth century was that Portuguese tradehelped to revive several provincial towns, whichthen became centers for dissidents to gather in

order to challenge the central authorities.78 Basedon the difference between the urban center andrural periphery of Kongo, the argument could bemade that Kongo was a confederation that atsome point turned into a sort of an empire.

Was this a common process in sub-SaharanAfrica? Certain similarities seem to exist in theso-called Sahelian region just to the south of theSahara Desert. There, a series of states succeededone another beginning with Ghana (Wagadou),which emerged from a small base in the tenthcentury to control the important trading centers ofthe Niger bend for about a century, followed byMali (c.1235–1550), which gradually cededpower to a rival to the east called Songhai(c.1390–1591). Both Ghana and later Songhaiwere apparently the victims of invasions fromMorocco in 1054 and 1591, although neither ofthese resulted in a long occupation by NorthAfricans.

Although typically now described as asequence of empire, the situation in the Sahelseems to have been rather more complex.Unlike in much of Eurasia, populations in thispart of Africa were relatively sparse, especiallyaway from the river. As a result, control overland was less important than control over peo-ple. Less powerful groups often affiliated withtheir more powerful neighbors through negoti-ated relationships, through the payment ofannual tributes, or sometimes through forcedenslavement. Relationships among the more pow-erful were characterized by shifting patterns ofextended family alliances and at times warfare.The object of this maneuvering was to control thegold and salt trade between North and WestAfrica and especially the trading centers ofTimbuktu, Gao, and Jenné. Safe (or isolated)from the effects of the Mongols and the spread ofgunpowder armies, these patterns provided conti-nuity from the Ghana period into the era ofSonghai ascendancy.

76John Thornton, “The Kingdom of Kongo, ca. 1390–1678:The Development of an African Social Formation,” Cahiersd’Études Africaines, 22 (1982), 326–329.77 John Thornton, “The Origins and Early History of theKingdom of Kongo, c.1350–1550,” International Journal ofAfrican Historical Studies, 34 (2001), 102, 104, 111.

78 Much of this paragraph is based on Thornton, “TheKingdom of Kongo,” 326–329, 338.



One example is that of the best-knownSahelian states: Mali. Conventional histories ofthis state depict it as an empire created by aMande-speaking king named Mar ı-Djata orSundiata (c.1235–1255), who was the creator ofan empire that reached its height during the ruleof the glorious and expansive Mansa (king) MusaI in the late fourteenth century. These Mansa andtheir successors ruled their vast empire, includ-ing the important trading from a capital calledMande Kaba (modern Kangaba), using imperialadministrators to rule a core area that was cultur-ally Mande and armies (sofas) to conquer non-Mande speakers and incorporate them into theempire.79

However, recent scholarship suggests that theMalian state was more of a confederation than acentralized empire. Jan Jansen, for example, hassuggested that imperial Mali was really a “seg-mentary” society of relatively equal and alliedextended families (kafuw) and that Mar ı-Djatawas just a temporary war leader.80 The “empire”was thus built by a core group of kafuw who wereallied over long periods of time, and occasionallyspun off groups who conquered outsiders andruled them as essentially independent polities.Similarly, Kathryn L. Green suggests that MandeKaba was not really an imperial capital or seat ofan empire. Instead, the idea that it had been wasintroduced by much later rulers of a much-reduced Mali state to legitimize their own rule.81

Yet this formulation does not exclude thepossibility of Mali being an “empire” of a some-what decentralized sort. At least by the time ofMusa I, there existed a Mande-speaking metro-pole of shared language and cultural values,whereas many non-Mande-speaking groups from

the Gambia River area all the way east to the mid-dle Niger River were ruled as subordinates byMande-speaking elites who had trade and culturalties to the core. The rebellion of some of thesegroups, including the inhabitants of Songhai,helped to fragment this large state in early six-teenth century.

The sixteenth-century Songhai, which suc-ceeded Mali as the largest Sahelian state, simi-larly ruled many different groups including (asdefined by their languages) Fube, Soninke,Tuareg, Dogo, Bambara, and Bozo. Equallyimportantly, like Mali they came to control themajor trading center of Timbuktu. Under the ruleof the Askia dynasty, the Songhai ruling classbecame increasingly Muslim, and Islam became adefining feature of citizenship. This essentiallycreated a colonial underclass of “traditionalists,”non-Muslims in the provinces who were notforced to convert but were nevertheless restrictedfrom entering the ruling elite. Most Muslims wereconcentrated in Timbuktu and the 11 coreprovinces of the state, while further provincesthat were mostly not Muslim were ruled by impe-rial governors.82 Perhaps because of its economicimportance and its Muslim majority, Timbuktuseems to have enjoyed an intermediate status withlocal administrators (kâdîs, as in the OttomanEmpire, but loyal to the local population morethan the state) and imperial officers sharingpower.83

Were these sub-Saharan African states actu-ally empires? The difficulty in answering thisquestion comes largely from the problems ofapplying a Eurasian term to African situations. Aswe discussed in the introduction, our understand-ing of “empire” is shaped by the western empiresmore familiar to us, many of which were muchmore centralized than these African states. Yetthis does not necessarily mean that there were not

79The father of the study of this region using Arabic sources isNehemia Levtzion. See especially Nehemia Levtzion, AncientGhana and Mali (London: Metheun and Co, 1973).80Jan Jansen, “The Representation of Status in Mande: Did theMali Empire Still Exist in the Nineteenth Century?” History inAfrica, 23 (1996), 87–109; and “Polities and PoliticalDiscourse: Was Mande Already a Segmentary Society in theMiddle Ages?” History in Africa, 23 (1996), 121–128.81 Kathryn L. Green, “ ‘Mande Kaba’ the Capital of Mali:A Recent Invention,” History in Africa, 18 (1991), 127–135.

82John O. Hunwick, “Songhay, Borno and the Hausa States,1450–1600,” History of West Africa, vol. I, 3rd ed., edited byJ.F.A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1985), 323–371.83Michael A. Gomez, “Timbuktu Under Imperial Songhay: AReconsideration of Autonomy,” Journal of African History, 31(1990), 5–24.



similar processes at play in both sets of states,which may be enough to convince us that the termcan appropriately be applied to Songhai, Kongo,and/or Mali.

Conclusion

In Eurasia and North Africa, early modernempires were created out of the context of theeconomic revival of the early modern era. Thewealth generated by this revival drove commer-cial rivalries, and new weapons technologies wereadopted to fight these conflicts. However, onlylarge, centralized states could afford to competeat this level, and thus commercial conflicts droveimperial expansion and interaction at several lev-els. The conquest of new territories increased thetax base, whether by acquiring taxable farmers orby gaining control of trade. In their drive toacquire these new territories, monarchs oftensought funds from other sectors of their societies,and imperial expansion thus often came to servetheir needs—whether economic, evangelical, orpolitical. Finally, in order to maintain control overboth powerful sectors of society and the generalpopulation, rulers devised ideologies and notionsof a national mission that amounted to cultures ofimperialism. This process differed somewhat butnot entirely from other parts of the world such assub-Saharan Africa, where distinctive processeswere at work.

As we shall see in the next chapter, thisprocess created a competitive environment thatpromoted imperialism on a global scale. It also

ushered in exploitative systems of colonialism.The linking of Eurasia and North Africa with sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, and Polynesiaexpanded and extended these trends. Together,these regions participated in the development ofearly modern forms of empires, imperialism, andcolonialism that were analogous, but not identi-cal, to those of later centuries.

Questions

1. Why did so many empires and large states form in Eurasia and North Africa in this period? Whatfactors enabled or caused this transformation to happen? What was the role of commerce andtechnology?

2. Explain how strategies of centralization, rationali-zation, and expansion characterized the states inthe Habsburg Empire, the Russian Empire, MingChina, Tımurid (Mughal) India and Central Asia,and the Ottoman Empire in this period.

3. Compare and contrast the operation of sectoralalliances in the Habsburg Empire, the RussianEmpire, Ming China, Tımurid (Mughal) India andCentral Asia, and the Ottoman Empire.

4. What tools, messages, and agents did thePortuguese kings, the Habsburg emperors, theRurik and Romanov (Russian) czars, the Mingemperors of China, the Tımurid (Mughal) emper-ors, and the Ottoman sultans use to legitimize theirrule in this period? What, if any, general conclu-sions can you draw from this?

5. Consider the information presented about Mali,Songhai, and Kongo. Given the definition used inthis book, would you define these states as empiresat their height? Why or why not?


Documents

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