Changing Traditions

2.1 Core concepts

• By the ninth century, large parts of Asia had seen great empires — some nomadic, some city-and-trade-based; the Macedonian, Roman, Arab and Mongol empires were distinguished from earlier (Egyptian, Assyrian, Chinese, Mauryan) empires by being continental or transcontinental in scope (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 78).
• In western Europe from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries, features we associate with modernity evolved slowly: experimental science (rather than purely religion-based knowledge), organisation of government with civil services and parliaments, codes of law, and improvements in industrial and agricultural technology (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 78).
• By the fifth century CE the Roman Empire in the west had disintegrated; in western and central Europe the surviving Roman institutions were adapted to the needs of tribal kingdoms, and urban centres in western Europe remained smaller than further east (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 78).
• By the ninth century, small but significant commercial and urban centres such as Aix, London, Rome and Sienna existed; from the ninth to the eleventh centuries there were major rural developments in western Europe (NCERT Theme III intro, pp. 78–79).
• The Church and royal government combined Roman institutions with the customary rules of tribes; the finest example was Charlemagne's empire in western and central Europe at the beginning of the ninth century. After its collapse, urban centres and trading networks survived attacks by Hungarians, Vikings and others (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 79).
• "Feudalism" was characterised by agricultural production around castles and manor houses where lords held land cultivated by peasants (serfs) who pledged loyalty, goods and services; lesser lords were in turn vassals of greater lords and ultimately of kings (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 79).
• The Catholic Church, centred on the papacy, supported the feudal order and itself held land; in an age of poor medicine and low life expectancy it taught how to live so that the afterlife would be tolerable, and monasteries were created for devotion to God (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 79).
• Churches were part of a scholarly network running from the Muslim states of Spain to Byzantium, giving the petty kings of Europe a sense of the opulence of the eastern Mediterranean and beyond (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 79).
• From the twelfth century, Mediterranean entrepreneurs of Venice and Genoa carried growing trade with Muslim states and the eastern Roman remains; lured by wealth and the wish to free the holy places associated with Christ, European kings reinforced links across the Mediterranean during the Crusades, while trade within Europe grew around fairs and the Baltic and North Sea ports (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 79).
• From the fourteenth century, especially in north Italian towns, the Renaissance saw the wealthy turn from preoccupation with the afterlife to "the wonders of life itself"; sculptors, painters and writers became interested in humanity and discovery, shaped also by Islamic respect for living things and Greek art and ideas transmitted via Byzantine trade (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 80).
• By the end of the fifteenth century this fed an age of voyages: Spaniards and Portuguese pushed down the west African coast around the Cape of Good Hope to India (sought for its spices); Columbus reached the "West Indies" in 1492 trying for a western route; others sought a northern route to India and China via the Arctic (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 80).
• European travellers encountered diverse peoples. The papacy commissioned the North African geographer Hasan al-Wazzan (Leo Africanus) to write the first geography of Africa in the early sixteenth century for Pope Leo X; Jesuits wrote on Japan in the sixteenth century; the Englishman Will Adams became counsellor to the Japanese Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early seventeenth century (NCERT Theme III intro, pp. 80–81).
• Non-Europeans sometimes assisted Europeans: an Aztec woman later known as Dona Marina befriended, interpreted and negotiated for the Spanish conqueror of Mexico, Cortes (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 81).
• European attitudes ranged from cautious and observant to overbearing and cruel; the Portuguese tried to enforce a trade monopoly in the Indian Ocean after Vasco da Gama reached Calicut (Kozhikode) in 1498. The Catholic Church both studied other cultures and encouraged attacks on those it considered "un-Christian" (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 81).
• Non-European responses varied: for the Islamic lands, India and China, Europeans remained a curiosity till the end of the seventeenth century; the Japanese rapidly adopted muskets and began large-scale production by the late sixteenth century; in the Americas, Aztec rivals used Europeans against the Aztecs, while European diseases killed over 90 per cent of people in some areas by the end of the sixteenth century (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 81).
• The "long century" 1300–1700 covered by Theme III is best read as four overlapping movements — (a) the late-medieval crisis of feudalism (Black Death 1348, Hundred Years War 1337–1453), (b) the Renaissance from north Italian city-states, (c) the Age of Discovery (Portuguese coastal voyages, Columbus 1492, Vasco da Gama 1498), and (d) the early modern globalisation of contacts in which the Mughal, Ottoman, Ming/Qing and Tokugawa empires interacted with European traders (NCERT Theme III intro + Timeline III, pp. 78–85).
• The Black Death (1348) — bubonic plague — wiped out one-third of Europe's population in three years, causing a labour shortage that loosened serfdom and accelerated the move to a wage economy; it appears in Timeline III as a hinge between the feudal and Renaissance phases (NCERT Timeline III, p. 83).
• The Ottoman capture of Constantinople (1453) ended the Byzantine state, redirected European traders away from the Black Sea route, and pushed Iberian states to seek alternative sea routes to Asia — a chain of cause that ultimately produced Columbus (1492) and Vasco da Gama (1498) (NCERT Timeline III, p. 83).
• Mediterranean entrepreneurs of Venice and Genoa pioneered cross-cultural exchange — borrowing Arabic numerals, double-entry book-keeping, marine insurance and bills of exchange — practices that travelled north as the Renaissance economy expanded; Venice's Doge Palace (p. 80) and Avignon's Palace of the Popes (p. 79) are the two anchor images.
• "Exchange" was the dominant motor of the period: exchange of goods (silver from American mines for Asian textiles and spices), of ideas (Greek and Arabic texts entering Renaissance Europe via Byzantine and Andalusi channels), of people (Jesuits in Japan, African slaves to the Americas) and of micro-organisms (smallpox in the Americas killed over 90% in some regions). This is the Columbian Exchange in NCERT language (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 81).
• Will Adams (English navigator, c. 1564–1620) reached Japan in 1600, became samurai-ranked counsellor of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and helped negotiate Dutch/English trading rights; he is a counter-example to the stereotype that all early-modern contact was European conquest (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 80).
• Hasan al-Wazzan / Leo Africanus (c. 1494–1554), born in Granada, captured by Christian pirates and gifted to Pope Leo X, was baptised and commissioned to write Description of Africa — Europe's first systematic geography of the continent (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 80).
• The Aztec interpreter "Dona Marina" (Malintzin/La Malinche) was a Nahua-speaking woman gifted to Hernán Cortés in 1519; her Nahuatl-Spanish translation enabled the Spanish conquest of Mexico (1521). She illustrates the active role of non-European intermediaries (NCERT Theme III intro, p. 81).

2.2 Definitions to memorise

2.3 Diagrams / processes to remember

• Photograph of the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, a fourteenth-century town in south France (p. 79) — visual cue for the papacy and the period after Charlemagne.
• Photograph of the Palace of the Doge, Venice, fifteenth century (p. 80) — visual cue for the role of Mediterranean entrepreneurs (Venice, Genoa) in trade and the Renaissance.
• Timeline III (c. 1300 to 1700) — a five-column chart covering Africa, Europe, Asia, South Asia, Americas and Australia/Pacific Islands.
• Process — sequence from feudal crisis to global voyage: (1) Black Death (1348) wipes out a third of Europe's labour force; (2) wage labour rises, serfdom weakens; (3) Hundred Years War (1337–1453) drains feudal aristocracies; (4) Ottoman capture of Constantinople (1453) blocks Black Sea trade; (5) Iberian states fund Atlantic voyages; (6) Columbus 1492 reaches the Americas; (7) Vasco da Gama 1498 reaches Calicut. Each link is examinable.
• Process — early modern global encounter (sixteenth century): Portuguese and Spaniards in Asia and the Americas → silver from Potosí flows to China for porcelain and silk → Jesuits reach Japan (1549) and China → Japanese craftsmen copy musket → Aztec-Inca empires destroyed by disease + alliance with Spanish rivals → Mughal and Ottoman empires tolerate but do not depend on European merchants.

2.5 Timeline / Key events

2.4 Common confusions / NTA trap points

• "Vassal" vs "serf": the serf is a peasant tied to the lord's land; the vassal is a lord who owes loyalty to a greater lord. NTA often swaps these in match-the-following items.
• The Renaissance began in north Italian towns (not in France or Spain) — distractors will often substitute these locations.
• Columbus in 1492 reached islands the Europeans called the "West Indies"; he did not reach mainland India. Vasco da Gama is the one who reached Calicut (Kozhikode) in 1498.
• The Catholic Church both studied other cultures (e.g., commissioning Leo Africanus) and encouraged attacks on "un-Christian" peoples — questions test the dual character, not a single attitude.
• Timeline III mixes continents: students often confuse which event belongs to which column (e.g., Ottoman conquest of Egypt 1517 is under Africa; capture of Constantinople 1453 is under Asia).
• Charlemagne's empire vs. the Holy Roman Empire of the later medieval period — both are called "Roman," but Charlemagne belongs to early-medieval (c. 800 CE) Europe, not the later imperial revival.
• "Renaissance" is not a single date but a movement from the fourteenth century; NTA distractors will date it to 1453 (the Constantinople fall) or 1492 (Columbus).
• East India Company year confusion — the British EIC was chartered 1600; the Dutch VOC was chartered 1602; the French Compagnie des Indes much later (1664). Only the British EIC is mentioned here.
• Will Adams was English, not Portuguese or Spanish; he served the Japanese, not the Chinese, Shogun.
• "Crusades" in this chapter is about Mediterranean trade reinforcement, not just religious war — the economic dimension is what NCERT highlights.
• Dona Marina assisted Cortes (Mexico, Aztec), not Pizarro (Peru, Inca) — common geographic mix-up.