Authors: Christopher I. Beckwith
Tags: #History, #General, #Asia, #Europe, #Eastern, #Central Asia
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (49 page)
In the Mughal Empire, Akbar built in Delhi and other cities, but especially in Agra, where Babur had built the gardens of Arambagh. Agra was one of the four main capitals of Akbar’s long reign and became the main Mughal capital. Artistic works created under his patronage and that of his immediate successors reflect his attempt at an Indian fusion of Islam and Hinduism. The height of the Mughal variant of the Timurid or “Persian-Mughal” architectural style was reached under his son Shâh Jahân, whose crowning achievement was the Taj Mahal (Tâj Mahâl ‘Crown of Mahâl’), the mausoleum he built for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahâl. It has been considered by many architectural historians to be the most perfect monumental building in the world. The Mughals sponsored a brilliant flowering of culture in general in northern India. Many of the great works of Mughal architecture, painting, literature, and music have survived them.
Among the Tibetan-, Mongolian-, Turkic-, and Manchu-speaking Buddhist populations of eastern Central Eurasia, a great intellectual revival took place following the solidification of rule by the Dgelugspa school of Tibetan Buddhism under the leadership of the incarnate Dalai Lama lineage. Buddhist scholars from Tibet, Mongolia, Tuva, China, and neighboring areas produced a vast literature, mostly written in Classical Tibetan, on Buddhist philosophy and other topics. Tibetan became the “medieval Latin” of “High Asia.” Tibetan painters developed uniquely Tibetan styles and produced some of the world’s most sublime paintings,
85
while Tibetan architects reached for the skies in soaring buildings, the most famous of which is the Potala in Lhasa, one of the world’s most stunning architectural monuments.
1
Literally, a ‘Hindu beauty-mark’ (or
bindi),
applied to the forehead by Indian women.
2
The first was that by the early Indo-Europeans, q.v.
chapter 1
.
3
The construction of the Orenburg Line of forts combining military and commercial activity across the northern steppe at this time was coupled with an aggressive stance vis-à-vis the trade with Asia, “especially with the Bukharan Khanate” (Levi 2007b: 105 et seq.).
4
"In the majority of cases, establishment of ‘factories’ (trading stations) or building of forts was accomplished after discussion and negotiation with local potentates.” One of the major exceptions was Gujarat. “Until the Portuguese succeeded in obtaining permission (1535) to build a fort at Diu, Gujarati-Portuguese relations were hostile” (Russell-Wood 1998: 21).
5
Vasco da Gama depended on a Muslim pilot, Aḥmad ibn Majîd, to guide his ships across the Indian Ocean (Russell-Wood 1998: 18).
6
There is considerable debate about Ottoman origins. For the leading recent views, see Kafadar (1995), Lindner (2005), and Lowry (2003). The Ottomans seem to have started out as a Central Eurasian lord-and-comitatus group.
7
Matthee (1999: 10).
8
The name is Arabic
al-ḥamrâ’
‘the red one’.
9
The existence of a few exceptions—such as the Danish colony of Tranquebar on the southeastern Indian coast, founded in the early seventeenth century, or various short-lived colonies in the Americas or Africa—prove the rule.
10
In some cases—such as Sweden, home of the Rus Vikings—they had earlier been successful seafaring conquerors. The Swedes continued to dominate the Baltic Sea coast for several more centuries.
11
One of the reasons for the Ottomans’ success was their generosity toward the conquered peoples. In particular, their reputation for fair dealing and good government encouraged the subjects of the Byzantine Empire to open their gates to the Turks in order to be rid of the tyrannical Byzantine government.
12
This section is largely derived from Bosworth et al. (1995).
13
They are said to have openly declared their belief that the Safavid leader was God, and his son the son of God (Savory et al. 1995: 767).
14
In his discussion of the three main elements of the Safavid forces, Savory et al. (1995: 767) remark that “the Sūfī disciples
(mur
ī
ds)
of the Ṣafawīd order owed unquestioning obedience to their
murshīdd-i kāmil
…, the head of the order, who was their spiritual director.”
15
This created a long-lasting problem because most Muslims in Persia, as in the rest of the Islamic world, were Sunnites.
16
Matthee (1999: 7) notes, “the trade in Safavid silk invariably involved the state…. until its demise, the Safavid state continued to have a crucial role in the collection, sale, domestic manufacturing and distribution of silk.” State control goes a long way toward explaining the steady economic decline of Persia down to modern times. Its cultural decline clearly had other causes.
17
Savory et al. (1995).
18
This section is largely dependent on Richards (1993).
19
Diary of Vasco da Gama,
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1497degama.html
.
20
From the history of Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, volume 2,
chapter 6
, section 3, much of which consists of nearly verbatim quotations from the original Portuguese accounts of the explorers themselves (see
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/kerr/vol02chap06sect03.html
). Castanheda’s work was published in Coimbra in 1552–1554 and first translated and published in English in 1582 (
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/kerr/vol02chap 06sect01.html
).
21
Wills (1998: 343).
22
See below on the trade goods.
23
Russell-Wood (1998: 21). The striking comparison really is between the Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, British, and other Europeans’ relative restraint toward Asians and the violence they habitually used
against each other
both in Asia and, especially, at home in Europe.
24
Russell-Wood (1998: 21), Pearson (1987:31 et seq.). The latter often portrays the Portuguese as trigger-happy conquerors, for example, “Another great port city, Diu, was conquered in 1535.” But in the very next paragraph he notes that “Diu, Bassein and Daman were acquired by treaty” (Pearson 1987: 32). Note also that Diu was not a “great” city.
25
One can perhaps imagine the havoc that would have broken out if an Indian ship had sailed into Lisbon harbor in 1498 to trade odds and ends with the Portuguese, and its crew openly proclaimed that they were Muslims searching for local Muslims.
26
Pearson (1987: 29).
27
Although the Portuguese royal government was involved, the Portuguese too were driven almost completely by trade.
28
Matthee (1999: 9) remarks that the “claim that the European political and cultural impact on early modern Asia was minimal is as true for Safavid Iran as it is for China and Japan.”
29
On Pearson’s (1987) argument that the Portuguese accomplishments were trivial historically, see endnote
86
.
30
Matthee (1999: 9–10 says that in the early premodern period in question, “Unlike India, where nature made the interior relatively accessible from the coast, Iran could only be approached from the southern ports of entry, which were separated from the capital and the country’s most productive regions by 1,000 km of semi-desert and formidable mountain ranges. Unlike Ceylon and most of southeast Asia, including the Indonesian archipelago, where fragmented political power enabled Europeans to establish local footholds, Iran was a centralized state or at least a state with a central power structure.” The Portuguese and their successors did get involved in the local political scene and, in many cases, took control, sooner or later, of the territory immediately adjoining their port cities. Nevertheless, the eventual European penetration of the interior of India was not accomplished until the decline of the Mughals more than two centuries after the Portuguese first established their trading centers on the Indian coast, and similarly for the interior of the other regions mentioned.
31
This section is based largely on Pearson (1987: 30 et seq.).
32
This was also probably connected with the business cycle and thus actually a sign of economic decline rather than revival, as it has been portrayed by Pearson (1987).
33
Pearson (1987: 41) notes that, even accounting for “shrinkage, wastage, shipwrecks and freight” and also “the costs of the forts in the Malabar towns,” the Portuguese profit in Lisbon was about 90 percent or “even higher” according to other estimates.
34
For discussion of this widespread misconception (computers and cell phones are modern “luxuries”), see endnote
87
.
35
For example, Pearson (1987).
36
At that time, the corruption and weakness of Asian peripheral governments made the intervention of the European merchants (see the following note) unavoidable, and this subsequently allowed the Europeans to misuse the power they had gained.
37
This is not to say that European governments at the time were much better, though the rule of uncapricious law often seems conspicuous by its absence in Asia.
38
Pearson (1987: 26–27).
39
Matthee (1999: 6).
40
"At 1500 none of the major states of India played any important role in maritime affairs. In the north, the declining Lodi sultanate, and then the new and expanding Mughal empire, were entirely land based in terms of both resources and ethos. The vast bulk of the revenue of the Mughal state came from land revenue…. Only perhaps 5 percent came from customs revenue…. the revenue resources of the Mughal empire were overwhelmingly from the land” (Pearson 1987: 26–27).
41
Pearson (1987: 26–27).
42
Pearson (1987: 45 et seq.).
43
This was essentially true of the Russian expansion by land also. Russia’s experience includes a gradual shift from being a member of the Silk Road system in the early period (e.g., the Kievan Rus khanate), through the Cossack-led fur-trading, fort-building race across Siberia to the Pacific, to the Russian Empire’s eventual emergence as a Littoral System European power.
44
Wakeman (1985, I: 2–6), who also notes that part of the reason for the influx of silver to China was its relatively high price there.
45
At the same time, European ships obviously connected each of these regions to each of the others, but oddly with almost no effect among the Asians so connected until modern times.
46
Russell-Wood (1998:133).
47
http://www1.city.nagasaki.nagasaki.jp/dejima/en/history/contents/index001.html
. Where did the Portuguese buy live tigers? What did the Japanese do with them?
48
Russell-Wood (1998:135).
49
On the vicissitudes of the adoption of Western sciences in Asia, and the Modernist anti-intellectual reaction against Western scholars studying Asia, see endnote
88
.
50
Richards (1993).
51
This survey of Mughal history depends largely on Richards (1993).
52
Golden (1992: 317–330).
53
Perdue (2005: 81).
54
Perdue (2005: 86).
55
This is the traditional, historical name. It has been given various other names in recent times.
56
This section depends largely on Hosking (2001), Perdue (2005), and Bergholz (1993).
57
Bergholz (1993: 27).
58
A cossack winter camp was established there in 1647; two years later a stockade was constructed
(GSE
19: 116). For the founding of Okhotsk, others have 1647 (Perdue 2005: 95), 1648 (Hosking 2001: 143), 1649 (Perdue 2005: 87), or 1650 (Bergholz 1993: 27); I assume the
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
can be trusted on this one. According to Spence (2002: 151), Nerchinsk was founded in 1658 and Albazin in 1665.
59
Bergholz (1993: 123–127).
60
In the 1860 Sino-Russian Treaty, the Russians acquired the Ch’ing territory north of the Amur River and east of the Ussuri River, extending down to the northeastern border of Korea (Fletcher 1978: 347). The treaty thus effectively established the modern borders of Russia and China between Mongolia and the sea. The region east of Manchuria is known as Primorskiy Kray ‘Maritime Province’, or simply ‘Primor’e’, q.v.
chapter 10
.
61
Millar (2003: 1168).
62
Hosking (2001: 186–187).
63
Hosking (2001: 231).
64
On the Manchu conversion to Buddhism and the controversy over their new national name, see endnote
89
.
65
See below. A contingent of Ming loyalists captured the island of Formosa (Taiwan) from the Dutch in 1622 and raided the coast for several decades. The island was finally taken in 1683 (Struve 1984: 256 n. 99). Several memorial steles in Manchu and Chinese were erected on the island and still stand in Tainan.
66
The Jurchen and Manchu receptivity to Chinese culture—relative to the stronger opposition to it expressed by Mongolic peoples, Turks, and Tibetans—may perhaps be explained by the facts that the Jurchen were not steppe people, they lived at the eastern margin of Central Eurasian culture, and they depended much more on agriculture than the others.
67
I have therefore used the term Manchu-Chinese in most cases as a sort of joint ethnonym for the Ch’ing Dynasty ruling peoples, parallel to the similar Chinese expression
Man-ch’ing
‘Manchu-Ch’ing’, or
Man-Han
‘Manchu-Chinese’.
68
However, already under the Ming in the sixteenth century the Jesuits—most famously Matteo Ricci—had exerted significant influence on the sciences in China.
69
At its height, his realm “extended from Uriyanghai and the Jurchens in the east to Hami in the west” (Perdue 2005: 59).
70
He was known to the Russian Cossacks as Altïn Khan and was a Chinggisid (Atwood 2004: 310).
71
On the name Junghar and its variant spellings and etymology, and the historiographical treatment of the Junghars, see Beckwith (forthcoming-b).
72
His Junghar predecessor Esen, who also had no Chinggisid blood, had suffered the same fate when he similarly assumed the title.
73
Ahmad (1970: 187).
74
This section largely depends on Perdue (2005: 101–107).
75
Perdue (2005: 105).
76
Bergholz (1993: 48).
77
Atwood (2004: 550, 633).
78
Di Cosmo and Bao (2003: 14). The early banners were 300 men supported by land grants and imperial payments.
79
Struve (1988: 710).
80
Gommans (2007: 46–47), who points out that Torgut (Kalmyk) horses from the Volga were sold as far as Köke Khoto in what is now North China.