The Asian World

A.

B.

C.

China Reunified
a. After the Han Dynasty ended in 220, China had chaos for 300 yrs. However, in 582 it
was unified by the Sui Dynasty (581-618)
b. The Tang Dynasty (618-907) restored the civil service examination and broke up power
of large landowners.
i.
They expanded their control to the borders of Tibet, but in the 8th
cen, the Uighurs, a group of Turkic-speaking people were hired to stop rebellions.
c. The Song Dynasty (960-1279) rose to power, but faced problems from the north, so the
the imperial court moved to Hangzhou in the south.
i.
The Mongols from the Gobi, conquested China in the 1200s.
d. China was a monarchy that employed a bureaucracy. Govt. was centered on provinces,
districts, and villages,
i.
Confucian ideals held the system together.
ii.
Btw. the Sui and Song, the economy, agriculture, manufacturing,
technology, and trade grew.
1. L. distance trade decreased in 4-6th cen. because
of the collapse of Rome, but because of the unification under the Arabs, trade revived
under the Tang.
2. Economic brought prosperity for people in the
city, but also in the villages.
The Mongol Empire
a. Mongols were a pastoral people from Mongolia organized in loose clans.
i.
Temujin united the Mongols, and in 1206 he was elected Genghis
Khan and created the largest empire in history.
1. After his death in 1227, his heirs split the
territory into khanates, which are each ruled by one of his sons.
2. In 1231, Mongols attacked Persia and defeated
the Abbasids in 1258. They attacked the Song in 1260. They brought guns and
gunpowder to Europe by the 14th cen.
b. In 1279, Kublai Khan created the Yuan Dynasty, and ruled until 1294. He moved the
capital to Beijing.
i.
He expanded the empire, adopted the Chinese political system.
1. However, in 1368 Zhu Yuanzhang raised an army,
defeated the Mongols, and began the Ming Dynasty.
c. Under the Han Confucianism was the main religion, during the Sui and Tang it was
daoism, and buddhism, but during the Song, Confucianism regained its popularity.
d. Btw. the Tang and Ming was the great age of Chinese art and literature.
i.
During the Song and Mongol Dynasty, landscape painting reached its
high point and invented printing. Also, one of the most popular poets Li Bo, was a free spirit from
the Tang Era.
The Rise of the Japanese State
a. In the 7th cen, Shotoku Taishi, a prince of the Yamato clan, to try to unify Japan to resist
invasion by China.
i.
He wanted to limit the power of the aristocrats, but increase the
Yamatos rulers authority.
1. As a result, the ruler was a divine figure and
symbol of the Japanese nation.
b. After Prince Shotokus death, political went to the Fujiwara clan in 622, and in 710 the
new capital was in Nara.
i.
The govt. couldnt overcome the aristocrats because they kept their
taxes for themselves, so the govt. lost power.
c. In 794, the capital was moved to Heian, which is now Kyoto. There was still an emperor,
but the Fujiwara clan still ruled, so the govt. was returning to its decentralized beginnings.
i.
The aristocrats used samurai to protect them. They fought on
horseback and carried a bow and sword. They had to adhere to a strict warrior code called Bushido.

D. A civil war almost occurred by the end of the 12th cen, so a noble, Minamoto Yorimo moved the capital to
Tokyo and made govt. under a military leader, the shogun, and the system was the shogunate.
a. The emperor was ruler in name, but the Shogun had all of the power. The Kamakura
shogunate lasted from 1192 to 1333. The system worked when Kublai Khan sent 150,000 warriors to invade
in 1281.
i.
However in 1333 the Ashikaga family took over, so the power of
aristocrats grew in the 14th and 15th cens. Heads of noble families, the daimyo were in control.
There was a c. war in 1467-1477.
E. Life and Culture in Early Japan
a. Japan was a farming culture, but trade and manufacturing grew in the Kamakura period.
i.
They made paper, iron casting, and porcelain, and traded with Korea
and China in the 11th cen.
b. Early Japanese worshiped spirits called kami, and these beliefs evolved into the state
religion, Shinto.
F. India after the Guptas
a. Islam became popular in the NW corner of India in the 8th cen. Its success was caused
b/c India divided into 70 states that constantly fought, because of the Gupta collapsed.
i.
In the 10th cen, rebellious Turkish slaves found an Islamic state,
Ghanzi
1. When the founder died in 997, Mahmud of
Ghazni attacked Hindu states to the SE. Before his death in 1030, he expanded to the
Indus valley and the Indian Ocean.
ii.
The Hindu warriors, the Rajputs, tried to resist Mahud, but by 1200,
mUslim power reached northern India, which created the Sultanate of Delhi, which later expanded
to the Deccan Plateau.
b. In the 14th cen, the Sul. of Delhi declined, which let Timur Lenk invade.
i.
He was born in 1330s, the ruler of a Mongol state, and by the 1380s
he had the entire region east of the Caspian Sea in his control, but in 1405 he died in a military
campaign
1. In the 16th cen, the Moguls invaded and
Portuguese arrived looking for gold and spices.
c. Muslim rulers viewed themselves as foreigners and were intolerant of Hindus, but
couldnt convert them all.
G. Civilization in Southeast Asia
a. The region is between China and India and is made up of a mainland region and an
extensive archipelago.
i.
Btw 500 and 1500, the people in SE Asia used models from India and
China.
1. China conquered Vietnam in 111 BC, but China
was overthrown in the 10th cen.
a. They still used Confucianism
and govt, but called themselves Dai Viet.
ii.
Angkor (Khmer empire) rose in the 9th cen. established a capital at
Angkor Thom
1. In 1432, the Thai destroyed the Angkor capital,
and set another one on the Chao Phraya River, where they remained powerful for 400
years, but they were threatened by the Burman who founded the 1st Burman st, the
Kingdom of Pagan.
2. Both Burman and Thailand were influenced by
India.
iii.
In the Malay Peninsula and Indian Archipelago were of Malay
descent, but not unified.
b. At the top of the social ladder were hereditary aristocrats that lived in major cities.
i.
The rest of the pop. were farmers, fishers, artisans, and merchants.
1. Most were rice farmers that paid high taxes to
landowners.