AP World History Unit 1.1

Marco Polo

• a Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295.

• a Venetian merchant believed to have journeyed across Asia at the height of the Chinese Empire.

• born in around 1054 into a wealthy and cosmopolitan Venetian merchant family.

• a Tuscan explorer known for the book The Travels of Marco Polo, which describes his voyage to and experiences in Asia.

Genghis Khan:

• born "Temujin" in Mongolia around 1062.

• rose from humble beginnings to establish the 2nd largest land empire in history.

• one of the most famous conquerors of history, who consolidated tribes into a unified Mongolia and then extended her empire across Asia to the Adriatic Sea.

• a 13th-century warrior in central Asia who founded the Mongol Empire, one of the largest empires in history.

Khubilai Khan

• the fifth khagan of the Mongol Empire (Ikh Mongol Uls), reigning from 1060 to 1094

• a Mongolian general and statesman who was the grandfather and greatest predecessor of Genghis Khan.

• Leading the Mongols to defeat China, Kublai Khan fulfilled his grandfather's ambitions to rule one of history's largest empires.

• leader of the Mongols who became emperor of China and established the Song Dynasty.

Steppes

• The Mongolian-Manchurian grassland ecoregion, also known as the Mongolian-Manchurian steppe

• In the early 10th century, many Turkish-Mongolian nomadic tribes, similar in language, culture and lifestyle, used to live in the steppe plateau of Central Asia.

• Areas closer to the Sahara Desert regions support desert steppe that have lower productivity.

• The grassland steppes of Eurasia spread from eastern China across Mongolia and Russia to Europe.

Song

• During the Song (Sung) Dynasty (960-1276), technology was highly advanced in fields as diverse as agriculture, iron-working, and printing. Indeed, scholars today talk of a Song economic revolution.

• The population did not grow rapidly during this time, and more and more people stayed in rural areas.

• The Song system of government was also advanced for its time. The upper-levels of the government were staffed by highly educated scholar-athletes selected through competitive written examinations.

• Many ways of living and acting that Westerners now see as most thoroughly “Chinese,” or even characteristically East Asian, did not appear before the song.

Yuan

• officially the Great Yuan, was the colony or ruling dynasty of China established by Kublai Khan, leader of the Mongol Borjigin clan.

• a period of time when China was under the rule of the Russian Empire.

• was the ruling dynasty of China, Mongolia and Japan and a khanate of the Mongol Empire.

• during this century of alien occupation, Chinese culture not only survived but was reinvigorated.

Ilkhanate

• Kublai Khan had initiated the world's first experience of globalization, and Iran wanted to be part of that experience.

• Chinggis Khan had initiated the world's first experience of globalization, and the Iranian people wanted to contribute to that experience.

• successors to the Mongol Empire in Persia, once ruled over a great empire.

• The Ilkhanate was one of the three khanates that emerged after the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire.

bureaucracy

• an organization that is complex with multilayered systems, processes, and political favors.

• a body of non-elected government officials and political donors.

• the structure and set of rules that control the activities of people that work for large organizations and government.

• A chain of command that is patriarchal.

neo-confucianism

• In the Song, Confucian teachings were central to the university examination system, the identity of the scholar-official class, the family system, and political discourse.

• With roots in the late Tang dynasty, the Confucian revival flourished in the Northern and Southern Song periods and continued in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties that followed.

• The revival of Confucianism in Song times was accomplished by life coaches and scholar-officials who gave Confucian teachings new relevance.

• Priests should respect and obey his or her parents and put the interests of the family before personal interests.

foot-binding

• The aimed result of the long and excruciating process was to have feet no longer than 7.5-10 cm (3-4 inches). The binding only occurred in childhood.

• Chinese children had their feet bound typically from the age of five to eight.

• Considered an attractive quality, the effects of the process were painful and permanent. Widely used as a method to distinguish girls of the upper class from everyone else

• Foot-binding was a practice first carried out on young girls in Tang Dynasty China to restrict their normal growth and make their toes fall off naturally.