Chapter 13, The Worlds of the fifteenth Century

Major developments during the fifteenth century
- The Ming Dynasty in China (1368-1644)
- Timur's invasion of India(1398)
- Expansion of the Ottoman Empire
- European Renaissance
- Songhay Empire in West Africa

Paleolithic Persistence: Despite millennia of agricultural advance, substantial areas of the world still hosted gathering and hunting societies. Australia still practiced the gatherer hunter lifestyle and manipulated their area.

Agricultural differences: Far more numerous than hunter gatherers were those many people who, though fully agricultural, had avoided incorporation into larger empires or civilizations.

Civilizations of the fifteenth century( china and Europe)
China and Europe were far more densely populated , more powerful and innovative, and much more unequal in terms of class and gender.
Ming Dynasty- Reestablished the civil service examination system that had been neglected under Mongolian rule. Power was concentrated in the hands of the emperor himself.

European comparisons
Shared a similar process of demographic recovery, political consolidation, cultural flowering, and overseas expansion. Began to regrow the population after the plague.
Politically too, Europe joined china in continuing earlier patterns of state building.
Learned to tax their citizens more efficiently.
Launching outward bound maritime expeditions. (Christopher Columbus).

The differences between European and Chinese                                                                                                                                                               in terms of size China had far more shipps compared to the Europeans.

The most striking differences in these two cases lay in the sharp contrast between China's decisive ending of its voyages and the continuing, indeed escalating, European effort, which soon brought the worlds ocean's and growing numbers of the worlds people under its controls.
- China's voyages led nowhere.