Hansen/Curtis, Voyages in World History, 1e, Ch 10

Summary

Between 500 and 1000, new power centers emerged outside the Byzantine [BIH, zan, teen] empire. Gudrid [GOOD-rid], Erik the Red’s Saga reports, visited Greenland and Vinland before returning to Iceland; later in life, she traveled to the Christian center of Rome. Originally an Icelander, Thorfinn [THOR-finn] visited Greenland, Vinland, and Norway, too.

• What events caused the urban society of the Byzantines to decline and resulted in the loss of so much territory to the Sasanian and Abbasid empires?

After 476, Byzantium [bih-ZAN-tee um] was Europe's sole empire. In 500, Byzantine city life closely resembled ancient Rome’s. However, successive outbreaks of plague eroded urban life and trade and forced people to take up subsistence farming. Plague also weakened the army which lost territory to the Sasanians and Abbasids. After its defeat by Seljuk [SELL-jook] armies in 1071, Byzantium retained only a fraction of its original empire.

• What was the warband of traditional Germanic society? How did the political structures of the Merovingians and the Carolingians reflect their origins in the warband?

The primary Germanic social unit was the warband. Warband leaders provided for their followers who, in turn, gave leaders their loyalty. Even the greatest Merovingian and Carolingian kings were warband leaders who held their followers together only as long as they had plunder to distribute.

• When, where, how, and why did the Scandinavians go on their voyages -- and what was the significance of those voyages?

The Germanic Scandinavians traveled by longboat, first to England and Ireland in the 790s, Iceland in 870, Greenland in 980, and finally the Atlantic coast of Canada around 1000. Scandinavian settlers shared the same goal: they wanted more farm land than was available to them in Scandinavia. These migrations occurred while other Germanic peoples settled in France and Germany. The Scandinavians' short-lived settlement in Canada preceded Columbus’s by nearly 500 years but had no long-term consequences.

• What were the earliest states to form in the area that is now Russia, and what role did religion play in their establishment and development?

The Scandinavian Rus [ROOS] took their longboats down Russia's rivers to trade with the Islamic world. Before 970, Rus traders paid taxes to the Jewish Khazars and Muslim Volga Bulgars. After 970, the Rus formed the Kievan [key-EV-uhn] state, whose ruler Prince Vladimir [vla-DEE-meer] converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.

• What did all the new states have in common?

Europe's new Germanic states were all based on the traditional warband. Early kings adopted Christianity but often continued to worship their old gods for a few generations. These societies all had wergeld-based legal systems. Kings convened assemblies that replicated the meetings of warband leaders with their followers.

Europe' new Christian states provided slaves and raw materials to the powerful Abbasids [ah-BAS-idz]. As we saw in chapter 9, slaves entered the Islamic world from Scandinavia, Russia, and Africa. However, expanding trade with Europe and the Islamic world had different results in Africa, as we will see in the next chapter.