PolledHistory: World History #3

 Hello!

The third episode of World History's timeframe is 500 AD to 1000 AD, but really 476 AD to 1066 AD to be precise. We have the Early Medieval era to cover. 

In 476 AD, a Germanic chieftain, Odoacer, or Odovacar, invaded what was left of the Western Roman Empire, the western half of the Roman Empire, replacing the Romans there with the Ostrogoths. The Eastern Roman Empire survived and so did the Papacy (the Pope) and many Roman institutions were continued. However, it was a huge loss of technology and advancement.

In 527 until 565 AD, however, it seemed like Rome was about to witness a revival. The effective Eastern Roman emperor Justin died and his nephew, Justinian, took the throne. Justinian survived and overcame a riot that almost overthrew him - namely the Nika riots - and began a series of conquests aiming to take back North Africa and Italy into Roman control. Under the intelligent commander Belisarius, the Romans took back the areas lost because of the decline and collapse of the Western Roman Empire. However, this plan was not perfect - it costed a lot for the empire and, unfortunately, was hindered by a plague - the Plague of Justinian - which wiped away lots of Eastern Roman people and made the campaign even more costly. 

If we look a bit more to the east, we can hear of the Sassanid Persian Empire in its Second Golden age. They are the long time enemy of the Romans, which continued to fight the Eastern Romans in many wars, and even one of their kings, Khosrau II, invaded the Eastern Roman Empire in the early 600s AD because Maurice, the emperor of Rome that Khosrau II favored, was killed. Khosrau II went as far as Constantinople, the famous capital of the Eastern Romans built by Constantine I the Great. However, the Eastern Roman emperor Heraclius defeated him and undid his gains.

But nearly everything changed when the Arabs began to believe in the new religion of Islam, starting a conquest lead by the new Rashidun caliphs, taking the entire Arabian peninsula and making  a large scale invasion of Eastern Roman and Sassanid territories. The Sassanids, weakened, quickly succumbed and fell, and the Eastern Roman Empire lost more than half of their territories, only surviving because of their success against a Muslim invasion into Constantinople, where they employed Greek Fire, a technique of basically spewing fire from ships, that burned down the Muslim warfleet.

The Arabs didn't stop in the Middle East, entering Africa, taking Egypt from the Romans, which was under almost completely undisturbed Roman rule for 600 years at that point, and then the rest of North Africa, entering Spain from Morroco and  invading Iberia. They also went east, taking basically everything until India. They had huge success as a civilization with a large influence.

Further to the east, the Guptas had fallen because of external invasion. The next rulers of India would not be as dominant, being known as the Pushyabhyti Dynasty, which ruled a short time over the Gangetic region (the part of India along the Ganges River) until they too collapsed and were eclipsed by the Varman dynasty, which expanded under a ruler named Yashovarman, but after his death his sucessors were less able to rule.

To the north was China. The last time we left off East Asia was during the collapse of the Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasty's collapse made way to a period of political instabillity and strife between warlords and comprting dynasties. However, after a lot of chaos, the Jin dynasty took power, taking over the Wei dynasty, one of the dynasties during the Three Kingdoms period (the period of chaos), and then reunited China, fully collapsing in 420 AD. What succeeded the Jin was a brief period of chaos before the Liu Song dynasty (dynasty means a political family, but in Chinese history you can imagine them as empires), under the rule of the commander Liu Yu, reunited Southern China. Northern China was dominated by the Northern Wei dynasty until 520 AD. The Northern Wei often had conflicts with the Liu Song. The Liu Sing fell in 479 AD, being succeeded by the Southern Qi, who only ruled a a few decades before the Liang Dynasty took over as the rulers of Southern China. In the north, the Northern Wei split into two - East and West. Eastern Wei was eventually subjugated by the Northern Qi, and Northern Qi replaced by the Northern Zhou (at this time, China was divided into Northern and Southern dynasties), who were ruled by the Xianbei, not Chinese but Mongolic. Then the commander Yang Jian united the north under a new Sui dynasty, and then uniting the south by attacking the Chen Dynasty, the sucessors of the Liang Dynasty. And China was finally reunified under the Sui, but the Sui only lasted a few decades until the Sui's unpopularity and exhaustion because of wars caused a collapse, being replaced by the prosperous and long lasting Tang. And we will, finally, leave China - that was really long and complicated. A short description of the events is: the Han Dynasty fell, and then warlords began to fight over China, ultimately ending in Jin domination. The Jin were succeeded by the Northern and Southern dynasties that had a LOT of chaotic events, ending in Sui domination in 589 AD, and then the Sui laid the groundwork for the Tang.

In Mesoamerica notable civilizations of the time included the Teotihuacan, a civilization centered around the city of its name. It fell in around 600 AD. The Mayans, a fundamental Mesoamerican civilization, began to decline three centuries later.

Back to the Middle East and Europe. Eastern Roman control began to fade in Italy, which paved way for the Papal States. The Muslim expansion was halted with the Battle of Tours, when the Franks (a Germanic tribe in modern day France) delivered a crushing victory and ending Muslim expansion further into Europe and beginning the Reconquista - a very slow Christian reconquest of Iberia. France would be reunited by the Franks - notably the Carolingians, and under Charlemagne, France united much of Western Europe and Charlemagne was declared Roman emperor by the Pope, when the Eastern Roman Empire still existed. The Holy Roman Empire began from here. Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman Empire was in its Dark Ages. The Muslims pressed on them from Anatolia and the Bulgars from the north. However, they were still a somewhat stable political entity, though weakened. However, in 867, a new emperor was estanlished on the Eastern Roman throne - Basil I, who started the Macedonian dynasty and began an Eastern Roman Golden Age.

 In Arabia, there were multiple caliphates (caliph was a ruler in the Muslim empires) . The first, the Rashiduns , the first of all Muslim caliphates that was established with the verg beginning of Islam. The Umayyads took over, who were even more succesful and the largest of the Caliphates. The Umayyads were succeeded by the Abbasids. We are nearing the end of the episode and I think next we should cover China again and see the Tang dynasty.

The Tang Dynasty ruled about 3 centuries of prosperity. The Tang had an impressive size. Not only did they unite China ans parts of Korea, their protectorates included modern day Vietnam, Mongolia, going as far as Afghanistan, even coming into conflict with the very far away Abbasids. The Tang during the reign of Taizong reached a great point, where the Chinese would become a dominant power not only in China proper but influenced Korean and Central Asian politics.

That's all for today