Tuesday, February 28, 2017

HUM 111 Week 9 Winter 2017

Week 9 Checklist
  • Complete and submit Week 9 Quiz 8: Chapters 15 and 16
  • Read the following from your textbook:
    • Chapter 17: The Reformation – Protestantism rises in Europe
    • Chapter 18: Encounter and Confrontation: The Impact of Increasing Global Interaction –the Americas, Africa, Asia
  • View the Week 9 Would You Like to Know More? videos
  • Explore the Week 9 Music Folder
  • Do the Week 9 Explore Activities
  • Participate in the Week 9 Discussion (choose only one (1) of the discussion options)
What will I do to prepare for Week 10?
Chapter 19: England in the Tudor Age – Henry VIII to Shakespeare
Chapter 20: The Early Counter-Reformation and Mannerism – Italy and Spain

Click the image below to learn more about the Reformation.

Europe's Leap to Pluralism: Learn how the printing press and the Protestants pave a path to a new future.
Click the image below to learn more about Cortez and the conquest of Mesoamerica.

Going for the Gold: Spain's conquest of the Aztecs and Inca.
Click the image below to learn more about the Mughal Empire and the Taj Mahal.

The World's Great Monument to Romantic Love: Shah Jahan's Taj Mahal.

Week 9 Explore



Global Encounters: Achievements and Exploitation
Why did the Chinese, and their Muslim navigator, turn their backs on exploration?

ZH: China's Ghost Fleet (Mystery of China's Greatest Admiral Zheng, 5:29

A Muslim castrated as a young boy in China, this man would still serve his nation with total loyalty.

Zheng He: China's Greatest Admiral who may have discovered America even before Columbus.

A man of peace whose fleet had half the world in his grasp and the other half within easy reach. And a leader whose giant Treasure Fleet suddenly vanished because of a colossal mistake. 600 years ago, China emerges from an age of darkness - with the biggest naval fleet ever assembled. It will forge a new path across unknown oceans, led by a towering Admiral -- 100 years before Columbus. And China will stand as the world's undisputed superpower. But in time, this supreme leader would be brought to an end by a catastrophic decision.

What happened? Join National Geographic photographer Mike Yamashita as he retraces Admiral Zheng

He's epic journeys and discover how China's internal struggles turned this Admiral's forces into a ghost fleet, and setback this great nation for hundreds of years.

From the breathtaking opening shots of the African Swahili coast, this film is cinematic celebration of timeless beauty. Medieval Yemeni hilltop towns, ancient martial arts portrayed with balletic artistry, brutal religious piercings and the incomparable majesty of Perahera, all contribute to a pallet of rarely equaled cultural diversity. From the eerie castration of the young hero to his final faltering steps in the Forbidden City as his enemies close in like vultures around carrion, the historical recreations about the life of Zheng He are executed with the grandeur and distance of a renaissance painting. In tracing the voyages of the great fleet and its enigmatic leader, 'Ghost Fleet' brings the past alive through its observant narrator Mike Yamashita, and brings the documentary film into the realm of the epic feature. This 2-hour documentary was shot on 16 mm film. Its initial airing: Dec 2005 on National Geographic Channel Asia. Winner at the Asian TV Awards 2006: Best Cinematography, Best Original Music Score


In 1999, New York Times journalist Nicholas D. Kristof reported a surprising encounter on a tiny African island called Pate, just off the coast of Kenya. Here, in a village of stone huts set amongst dense mangrove trees, Kristof met a number of elderly men who told him that they were descendants of Chinese sailors, shipwrecked on Pate many centuries ago. Their ancestors had traded with the local Africans, who had given them giraffes to take back to China; then their boat was driven onto the nearby reef. Kristof noted many clues that seemed to confirm the islanders' tale, including their vaguely Asian appearance and the presence of antique porcelain heirlooms in their homes.

With unrivaled nautical technology and countless other inventions to their credit, the Chinese were now poised to expand their influence beyond India and Africa. Here was one of history's great turning points. Had the Chinese emperors continued their huge investments in the treasure fleets, there is little reason why they, rather than the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British, should not have colonized the world. Yet less than a century later, all overseas trade was banned, and it became a capital offense to set sail from China in a multi-masted ship. What explains this astonishing reversal of policy?

Despite the strength and prosperity that marked their empire, Ming emperors deliberately chose not to try to colonize lands beyond the Middle Kingdom. Why?

The conservative Confucian faction now had the upper hand. In its worldview, it was improper to go abroad while one's parents were still alive. "Barbarian" nations were seen as offering little of value to add to the prosperity already present in the Middle Kingdom.

In addition, the threat of a new Muslim Mongol invasion drew military investment away from the expensive maintenance of the treasure fleets. By 1503 the navy had shrunk to one-tenth of its size in the early Ming. The final blow came in 1525 with the order to destroy all the larger classes of ships. China was now set on its centuries-long course of xenophobic isolation.

Historians can only speculate on how differently world history might have turned out had the Ming emperors pursued a vigorous colonial policy. As it is, porcelain shards washed up on the beaches of east Africa and old men's folktales of shipwreck are among the few tangible relics of China's epic voyages of adventure.


 First is not always best if a society remains backward looking.
The transatlantic slave trade today continues the historic commerce.

Saudi Arabs Are Still Selling Castrated Black Slaves TODAY, 3:56





Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade

The Legacy of Arab-Islam In Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue by John Alembillah Azumah


Week 9 Music Folder

Music Folder

HUM111 Music for Week 9


In this week's readings (chaps. 17 and 18), there is one musical composition mentioned, and it is in chapter 17.  This (or a decent equivalent) can be found on YouTube.   Watch and give this a listen.   Here below is some background and description of the work--and the link to the YouTube (and sometimes other helps).  After that, in connection with chapter 18, there is an additional item on traditional mask dances from West Africa.
  1. A Mighty Fortress Is Our God (Martin Luther) (chap. 17, p. 575)
Read carefully p. 575 in chap. 17.  This hymn was composed in 1529 by Martin Luther, the major Protestant Reformer. It remains a popular hymn in Protestant churches worldwide.

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God - Mormon Tabernacle Choir, 1:39


Chapter 18 does not identify a musical selection for listening, but here is a bonus on traditional West African dance, music, and masks. 

  1. Dogon Mask Dance
In chapter 18 (pp. 608-610) discuss the importance of traditional West African dances wearing masks.  The book mentions the banda mask dance (p. 608) as a cultural survival strategy; for this see also this link from the Neww York Metropolitan Museum:  http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1978.412.307 .

In a similar fashion, another West African society, the Dogon, is still living in traditional ways in isolated parts of Mali, and continues to celebrate a Dogon mask dance:

Week 9 Discussion Option A
"Reform" Please respond to the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:

Week 9 Discussion Option B

"Global Encounters" Please respond to the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:
Global Encounters: Achievements and Exploitation

17 The Reformation

A New Church and the Arts


    17.1 Describe both Erasmus’s and Luther’s calls for reform of the Roman Catholic Church.

    17.2 Discuss the spread of the Reformation and its different manifestations in Zurich and Geneva.

    17.3 Assess the impact of the printing press on both the Reformation and the art and literature of the era.

    17.4 Recognize how the Reformation transformed art throughout Northern Europe.


    How did Erasmus and Luther seek to reform the Roman Catholic Church?

Luther’s own antipapal feelings were inspired, at least in part, by his reading of the Dutch humanist and scholar Desiderius Erasmus, whose 1516 translation of the Greek New Testament into Latin especially impressed the young Augustinian monk (see Chapter 16, Continuity & Change, page 565). Luther’s early teachers, like those of Erasmus, were all Augustinians, so he was predisposed to be impressed by Erasmus’s attack on the corruption of the clergy. Erasmus, Luther and the Bible, 5:29

The Satires of Erasmus

Erasmus’s chief tool was satire. Satire is a literary genre designed to convey the contradictions between real and ideal situations. It had lain dormant in Western culture since Greek and Roman times when such writers as Aristophanes, in his comedies, and Horace and Juvenal, in their poems and essays, used it to critique the cultures of their own day. Humanist scholars like Erasmus and More, thoroughly acquainted with these Classical sources, reinvigorated the genre.
Desiderius Erasmus, 4:13
50 Notable Names is a collection of fifty people down through history that are worth learning about and learning from. Notable Name # 30 - Desiderius Erasmus

Martin Luther’s Reformation

The satire of Erasmus was rather too lighthearted for Luther himself. If he and Erasmus recognized the same problems with the Church, they were too serious, from Luther’s point of view, to be dismissed as mere “folly.” Even a cursory comparison of Luther’s demeanor in Lucas Cranach’s portrait of the Wittenberg professor (Fig. 17.3) and the expression of Erasmus in Dürer’s portrait of the Dutch humanist (see Fig. 16.19 in Chapter 16), executed at approximately the same time, reveals their difference in temperament.

Luther’s own early years in the Church underscore how seriously he took his calling. He had entered the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine in Erfurt, in 1505, at the age of 22. This decision was apparently motivated by an oath he had taken when, in a severe lightning storm, he had promised to become a monk if he survived the storm. By 1511, he had moved to the Augustinian monastery in Wittenberg, earning a doctorate in theology in 1512. In the winter semester of 1513 to 1514, he began lecturing at the university there. His primary subject was the Bible.

In the preface to the complete edition of his writings, published just a year before his death, Luther recalled the crisis in belief that preoccupied him between 1513 and 1517 (Reading 17.3)
Luther's 95 Thesis, 4:33
A clip from the "Luther Movie" showing Luther nailing the 95 thesis.

Church Reaction to the Ninety-Five Theses

The Church initially reacted to Luther’s Theses by turning the case over to a Dominican theologian named Prierias (1456–1527), who responded in 1518 with a Dialogue Against the Arrogant Theses of Martin Luther Concerning the Power of the Pope. Luther considered his Theses more the exercise of an academic freedom—the right of a member of the university faculty to offer theses for acceptance or refutation. And if he was impressed by the ferocity of Prierias’s response, he was not by its intelligence: “I thought, ‘Good God, has it come to this that the matter will go before the pope?’ However, our Lord God was gracious to me, and the stupid dolt wrote such wretched stuff that I had to laugh. Since then I’ve never been frightened.”
Why Didn't the Church Honor Martin Luther's Request? 2:43
Established Church VS Martin Luther, 5:53

Luther’s Popular Appeal: The Vernacular Bible

Excommunicated, his life in danger, Luther took refuge in Frederick’s Wartburg Castle, in central Germany, where he spent the next year disguised as a knight. The desperate nature of his situation was mitigated by the broad base of his growing popular support.

At Wartburg, Luther occupied himself with translating Erasmus’s New Testament Bible from Latin into vernacular German, “not word for word but sense for sense,” as he put it. His object was to make the Bible available to ordinary people, in the language they spoke on the street, so that they could meditate for themselves on its meanings without the intervention of a priest. No longer would the Catholic Church be the sole authority of biblical interpretation.

Soon after his return to Wittenberg in September 1522, his popularity helping to assure his safety, Luther’s vernacular New Testament was published. The entire printing of 3,000 copies sold out within three months, and a second printing quickly followed. Considering that the entire population of Wittenberg was only 2,500, the sellout of the first printing was astonishing.
Reformation Music: The Chorale

Luther also sought to reform Church liturgy, especially the use of music in the church service. He was a trained musician and understood the power of a hymn sung in the vernacular by the entire congregation, a form known as the chorale, rather than in Latin by a chorus of monks separated from the worshipers. While he did not invent the chorale form, between 1524 and 1545, he composed and compiled nine hymnals, consisting of Latin hymns, popular religious songs, and secular tunes recast with religious lyrics. The most famous of Luther’s chorales is Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”) (track 17.1), still widely sung today. Luther probably wrote the melody, and he adopted the text from Psalm 46 (“God is our refuge and our strength …”). When sung in unison by all the voices in the congregation, it embodies Luther’s sense that “next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise.”
Martin Luther: Great Translators of the Bible, 3:39
Watch this short video history of Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, and learn how he translated the Bible into German!

Attack on Celibacy and Support of Charity

Luther appealed to the wider populace in other ways as well. He attacked what many considered the absurdity of monasticism and clerical celibacy by marrying a former nun and fathering six children. The Catholic Church had argued that only those who practiced the three “counsels”—poverty, celibacy, and obedience—could have a religious vocation. But for Luther, faith equalized everyone, and monastic vows conflicted with faith because they embrace the notion of good works instead.
Call No Man Father? 3:26
http://www.catholic.com/ Jimmy Akin answers a caller who asks why Catholics call priests "father" when the Bible says not to. Jimmy Akin was born in Texas and grew up nominally Protestant. At age 20 he experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant pastor or seminary professor, Jimmy started an intensive study of the Bible, but the more he immersed himself in Scripture, the more he found it to support the Catholic faith. Eventually, he was compelled in conscience to enter the Catholic Church, which he did in 1992. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in the book Surprised By Truth. Akin is a Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a member on the Catholic Answers Speakers Bureau, a weekly guest on the global radio program, Catholic Answers LIVE, a contributing editor for Catholic Answers Magazine, and the author of numerous publications, including the books Mass Confusion, The Salvation Controversy, The Fathers Know Best, and Mass Revision. His personal blog is www.jimmyakin.com.


    How did the Reformation change as it spread to Geneva and Zurich in particular?

Even as Luther led the Reformation in Germany, other reformists initiated similar movements in France and Switzerland (Map 17.2), and still others radicalized his thinking. The appeal of Luther’s Reformation was as much due to its political as its religious implications. His defense of the individual conscience against the authority of the pope was understood to free the German princes of the same papal tyranny that plagued him. And to many townspeople and peasants, freedom from the pope’s authority seemed to justify their own independence from authoritarian rule, whether of a peasant from his feudal lord, a guild from local government, or a city from its prince.
Grand Reformation Tour, 5:09
An inspiring Christian tour for 12 days through Martin Luther's Germany, John Calvin's Strasbourg, France and the Swiss Reformation with Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich and Geneva's John Calvin, John Knox and William Farell.

Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich

In 1519, Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), strongly influenced by Erasmus, entered the contest to be chosen as people’s priest of the Great Minster Church in Zurich, Switzerland. The town council had been granted authority by the Church to select its own clergy. Zwingli’s candidacy was compromised by the fact that he lived openly with a woman with whom he had fathered six children. The open rejection of celibacy galvanized the electorate, who believed celibacy to be an entirely unfair demand on the clergy. Zwingli was elected, and from that position of power, he soon challenged not only the practice of clerical celibacy, but also such practices as fasting, the veneration of saints, the value of pilgrimages, and the ideas of purgatory and transubstantiation. On this last point, he was especially at odds with Luther. From Zwingli’s point of view, communion was symbolic, while Luther held that consubstantiation, the coexistence of the bread and wine with the blood and body of Christ, did indeed occur when the bread and wine of the Eucharist were blessed. Had the two been able to agree on this point, a single, unified Protestant church might have transpired.
Landmarks of Zurich: Ulrich Zwingli, 2:43
Ulrich Zwingli was one of the most decisive characters of the protestant reformation in Switzerland. A pioneer for Protestantism, he was key in converting the canton of Zurich to the reformed faith. Creating many enemies that effectively decided his fate.

John Calvin in Geneva

The iconoclasm that marked Zwingli’s Zurich erupted in the canton of Geneva in the mid-1530s, as the residents successfully revolted against their local prince (who also happened to be the bishop), and bestowed power on a city council. In May 1536, the city voted to adopt the Reformation and “to live according to the Gospel and Word of God … [without] any more masses, statues, idols, or other papal abuses.” Two months later, with the city essentially purged by iconoclasts, John Calvin (1509–64) arrived.

Calvin was a French religious reformer who had undergone a religious conversion of extreme intensity. Calvin was convinced that the city could become a model of moral rectitude and Christian piety. For four years, he fought to have the city adopt strict moral codes, locking horns with the city’s large population of Catholics. In 1538, his insistence that church worship and discipline belonged in the hands of the clergy, not politicians, led to his banishment from the city. But in 1541, the city recalled him, and he began to institute the reforms that he thought were necessary.

Calvin believed in a doctrine of predestination, the idea that people are “elected” by God to salvation prior to coming into the world, and that anyone so elected self-evidently lives in a way that pleases God. In fact, later Calvinists would come to believe that living a pure and pious life—often coupled with business success—made one’s election manifest to one’s neighbors. As Calvin explained election in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536): “God divinely predestines some to eternal salvation—the Elect—and others to eternal perdition—the Damned; and since no one knows with absolute certainty whether he or she is one of the Elect, all must live as if they were obeying God’s commands.” In effect, one could only intuit one’s election, but never know it with certainty.
John Calvin and the Reformation, 5:49
Join us again at the Reformation Wall in Geneva to learn about John Calvin and his effect on the Reformation. If you liked this film, please subscribe, share it with your friends, and check back next week for a new video! Website - http://www.DiscerningHistory.com Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/discerninghis... Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/discernhistory Intro Credits 26th North Carolina Gabriel Hudelson Henricus Jamestown Yorktown Foundation

Protestant Anti-Semitism

Given the intolerance of Calvin’s Consistory, it is not surprising that Jews were not welcome in Geneva. In fact, they were expelled from the city at the end of the fifteenth century and not allowed to return until the beginning of the nineteenth. They had been blamed for the plague in the fourteenth century (see Chapter 13), and they were also believed to be a race rejected by God for denying Jesus and crucifying him. Both Calvin and Luther were deeply disappointed that Jews did not willingly convert to Christianity in great numbers upon seeing the reforms that the Protestants had put in place. As Calvin put it, “the rotten and unbending stiffneckedness [of Jews] deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone.”
Martin Luther the Great Protestant Reformer on Anti-Semitism, and Treatment of the Jews, 2:12


    How did the printing press impact both the Reformation and the art and literature of the era?

It is debatable whether the Reformation would have occurred without the invention, a half-century earlier, of the printing press. Sometime between 1435 and 1455, in the German city of Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1390–1468) discovered a process for casting individual letterforms by using an alloy of lead and antimony. The letterforms could be composed into pages of type and then printed on a wooden standing press using ink made of lampblack and oil varnish. Although the Chinese alchemist Pi Sheng had invented movable type in 1045 ce, now, for the first time the technology was available in the West, and identical copies of written works could be reproduced over and over again.
Printing a Revolution, 4:03
A very brief overview of how the printing press lead to the success of the Protestant Reformation.
Johannes Gutenberg printing press Animation, 2:14

Writing for Print: The New Humanists

The sudden availability of books in large numbers transformed not only the spread of knowledge but its production as well. Suddenly, scholars could work in their own personal libraries and write knowing that their thinking could quickly find its way into print. Similarly, composers could see their music in print and expect it to be performed across the Continent. In short, the printing press created a new economy that transformed the speed at which information traveled.
François Rabelais

No one better expressed his wonder at print and how it was transforming society than the French writer François Rabelais (ca. 1494–ca. 1553). A former Franciscan and Benedictine monk, Rabelais left the monastery to study at the Universities of Poitiers and Montpellier before moving to Lyon, one of the intellectual centers of France, to practice medicine. In his spare time, he wrote and published humorous pamphlets critical of established authority and stressing individual liberty. Written in a satirical voice, Rabelais’s pamphlets contain keen observations of the social and political events in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, his first book, is a connected series of five novels published over 32 years. It tells the story of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, in a highly amusing and witty mock-epic style because, Rabelais says in his introduction, “to laugh is proper to the man.” There is much scatological humor and violence. In one of the story’s more serious moments, Gargantua writes a letter to Pantagruel extolling the virtues of a humanist education (Reading 17.6):
Francois Rabelais, 3:17

Michel de Montaigne

A generation younger than Rabelais, Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) was nevertheless equally affected by the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in the mid-sixteenth century. He was the son of a wealthy merchant and mayor of Bordeaux, who sent him away at birth to be nursed by a peasant woman so that he might develop a love and respect for the common folk. A resident German tutor taught him Latin as he learned to speak, so that, in fact, Latin was his native tongue. By the age of 6, he was enrolled in the prestigious Collège de Guienne, in Bordeaux, and by the age of 21, he had finished law school. At 24, he became one of 60 magistrates charged with enforcing the king’s law in Bordeaux. In that capacity, watching the sometimes vicious persecution of the Huguenot “heretics,” he developed a lifelong distaste for brutality and cruelty.
PHILOSOPHY - Montaigne, 6:03
Montaigne is a brilliant philosopher in part because he accepted how little philosophers understand. Here is a man wise in so far as he knew how rare wisdom really is. Please subscribe here: http://tinyurl.com/o28mut7 If you like our films take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): http://www.theschooloflife.com/shop/all/ Brought to you by http://www.theschooloflife.com Produced in collaboration with Mad Adam http://www.madadamfilms.co.uk


    How did the Reformation transform art in the North?

In the fever of iconoclasm that swept Europe, most artists working in the North saw at least some of their work destroyed, and those who depended on religious commissions lost their livelihood. Some artists, such as Dürer, discovered ways of working that seemed compatible with the developing Protestant aesthetic of restraint and propriety. Others made the best of things, turning to the creation of more secular imagery—landscape and portraiture, for instance.
Tribute To Albrecht Dürer (Durer), 4:05
"ALBRECHT DURER, perhaps the greatest German artist of the Renaissance era, began his career in the Imperial Free City of Nuernberg with his father, a Hungarian goldsmith who had emigrated to Germany in 1455. Despite his goldsmith origins, however, by 1484 Durer had already begun painting. In 1486 he was apprenticed to the painter and printmaker Michael Wolgumut and began to work with woodcuts and copper engravings as well. Beginning in 1490 Durer travelled widely for study, including trips to Italy in 1494 and 1505-7 and to Antwerp and the Low Countries in 1520-1. During his visit to Venice on his second Italian trip Durer was especially influenced by Giovanni Bellini and Bellini's brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, each then near the end of his career. In The Uffizi: A Guide to the Gallery (Venice: Edizione Storti, 1980, p. 57) Umberto Fortis comments that Durer's journeys enabled him "to fuse the Gothic traditions of the North with the achievements in perspective, volumetric and plastic handling of forms, and color of the Italians in an original synthesis which was to have great influence with the Italian Mannerists." The period between his Italian trips was one of great productivity and artistic growth, characterized by his publication, 1496-8, of a portfolio of woodcuts, The Apocalypse of St. John. Scholars have suggested that the portfolio may have been intended as a veiled expression of support for the Reformation, with Babylon used as a surrogate for Rome."



    On October 31, 1517, the German priest and professor Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of Wittenberg’s All Saints Church. His feelings about the Church were in many ways inspired by the writings of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, who is most noted for his satirical attack on the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church entitled In Praise of Folly. In what terms does Erasmus “praise” human folly? What are the characteristics of satire, and how does irony contribute to it?

    Luther’s calling for the reform of the Roman Catholic Church unleashed three centuries of social and political conflict. Luther deplored the concept of indulgences and he detested the secular spirit apparent in both Church patronage of lavish decorative programs and the moral laxity of the cardinals in Rome. What are indulgences? The Church charged Luther with heresy, but he continued to publish tracts challenging the authority of the pope. The Church excommunicated him, declared all of his writings heretical, and ordered them burned. In hiding, Luther translated Erasmus’s New Testament Bible from Latin into vernacular German. How did Luther transform the liturgy? How did he address the issue of clerical celibacy?


    In Germany, Luther’s defense of individual conscience against the authority of the pope seemed to peasants a justification for their own independence from their feudal lords. What resulted from this newfound sense of freedom? Ulrich Zwingli, in Zurich, and John Calvin, in Geneva, followed Luther’s lead, both convinced that their respective cities could become models of moral rectitude and Christian piety. How did their approach to Church doctrine differ from Luther’s? What effect did their iconoclasm have?


    One of the most important contributors to the Reformation was Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. It made the Bible a best seller. How did the widespread distribution of his texts fuel reformist movements? Printmaking came into its own as a way to illustrate printed books. How did Albrecht Dürer take advantage of the medium? Humanist thinkers quickly took advantage of print to distribute their works—François Rabelais and Michel de Montaigne, in particular. What new form of writing did the latter invent?

17.4 Recognize how the Reformation transformed art throughout Northern Europe.

    The Reformation had a profound effect on the arts throughout Northern Europe. Most artists working in Northern Europe saw at least some of their work destroyed by iconoclasts, and artists who depended on religious commissions lost their livelihood. Dürer attempted to create a new, simpler imagery compatible with the developing Protestant sense of restraint. How would you describe his new style? Other artists turned away from religious themes to take up more secular subject matter. What were some of these new subjects?

READING 17.4 from Martin Luther, Ninety-Five Theses (1517)

READING 17.7 from Michel de Montaigne, “Of Cannibals” (1580)

Montaigne’s essay “Of Cannibals” reflects his fascination with reports of native civilizations in the New World. It is not the exotic details of cannibal life that lie at the center of the essay, however, but rather Montaigne’s own love of simplicity and “naturalness.” In fact, like the Essays as a whole, the piece is more about Montaigne himself than anything else. Montaigne is as interested in how his own life compares with that of the “noble savages” as he is in the savages themselves. Such personal reflections represent a new genre in Western literature—the informal meditation that tracks the meanderings of a charming, witty, and deeply intelligent mind.

18 Encounter and Confrontation

The Impact of Increasing Global Interaction


    18.1 Discuss the impact of the Spanish on the indigenous cultures of the Americas.

    18.2 Describe the impact of the Portuguese on African life and the kinds of ritual traditions that have contributed to the cultural survival of African communities after contact.

    18.3 Outline the ways in which contact with Europe affected Mogul India.

    18.4 Assess the impact of contact with the wider world on Ming China and its cultural traditions.

    18.5 Explain the cultural patronage of the Ashikaga shoguns and the impact of the West on Japan in the Azuchi-Momoyama period.


    How did the Spanish impact the indigenous cultures of the Americas?

When Cortés entered the Aztec island capital of Tenochtitlán, more than 200,000 people lived there. Gold-laden temples towered above the city. Gardens rich in flowers and fruit, and markets with every available commodity, dominated the city itself as Bernal Díaz (1492–1584), one of Cortés’s conquistadores, would later recall the sight (Reading 18.2):
Ask History: What Happened to the Aztecs? | History, 2:26
How and why did the once mighty Aztec Empire crumble in the 16th century? Ask History looks for answers.

Pizarro in Peru
Francisco Pizarro: Spanish Conquistador - Fast Facts | History, 2:58


    What impact did the Portuguese have on African culture and what kinds of traditions did these cultures maintain after contact?

Portugal was as active as Spain in seeking trading opportunities through navigation, but focused on Africa and the East instead of the Americas. In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias (ca. 1450–1500), investigating the coast of West Africa (Map 18.2), was blown far south by a sudden storm, and turning northeast, found that he had rounded what would later be called the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean. Following Dias, Vasco da Gama (ca. 1460–1524) sailed around the cape with four ships in 1497 and reached Calicut, India, 10 months and 14 days after leaving Lisbon. Then, in 1500, Pedro Cabral (ca. 1467–ca. 1520), seeking to repeat da Gama’s voyage to India, set out from the bulge of Africa. Sailing too far westward, he landed in what is now Brazil, where he claimed the territory for Portugal.
Vasco da Gama and Bartolomeu Dias, 3:34
history project november 2011. i used clips from history.com and from gisfilmi's videos in the making of this video. So all of the video clip credit goes to them, not me. Also, the song used in the video is called "Untitled 3" by Sigur Ros, so all the music rights goes to them. Enjoy

Kingdom of the Kongo

A thousand miles south of Benin, in the basin of the Congo River, comprising parts of present-day Angola, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Republic of Congo, the kingdom of the Kongo rose to prominence sometime around 1400. Like many of the West African cultures to the north, its resources derived from the equatorial forest. Its capital city, Mbanza Kongo, was home to from 2 to 3 million people. Mbanza means “residence of the king,” and its king lived in a royal residence on the top of a hill overlooking the Lulunda River.
African slavery Fall of the Kongo, 4:54
"without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy." This is how Nelson Mandela justified the decision to form Umkhonto, as he explained it in his Rivonia address. Was forming Umkhonto an act of terrorism or was it truly an act of self-defence against the socio-political principles of "white supremacy"? We'll look at the distinction between violence and terrorism in future presentations. For now, we address the issue of white supremacy and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) In its Preamble, the UDHR states that the rights within the Declaration are for the benefit of "all members of the human family". This means that there is only one sacred identity - that of you as a human being, no other identity matters when it comes to your rights. This identity cannot be destroyed or denied by virtue of colour, religion, or anything else -- if you are biologically a human being, you belong to the human family and you should be able to enjoy all the rights in the UDHR. The UDHR warns against the danger of denying such rights and explains that people will be "compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression". On this basis, forming Umkhonto should be considered exercising one's human rights rather than an act of terrorism. But does this justify violence in the defence against white supremacy? At its most simple, the principle of white supremacy provides that only white men are capable of higher intellectual functions (white women are often excluded). Accordingly, all non-whites should leave it to whites to run their lives and countries: politically, economically and socially. In support of this principle, a number of European academics and statesmen advanced various 'scientific' theories, one of which (Eugenics) was based on Darwin's own theories on evolution, even though Darwin himself was an active abolitionist! It is therefore not surprising that a minority group of white South Africans truly believed that they were superior to everyone else and that they had a birth-right to rule and do as they pleased with non-whites, their lands, their lives, and all what that entailed. It is also not surprising that the response was the formation of Umkhonto. We can trace the dawn of apartheid in Africa all the way back to the 1500s, or soon after the discovery of America. Then, the Roman Catholic Church distinguished between the rights of Christians and non-Christians. For instance, Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull which provided that, upon the discovery of a new land, if the land was ruled by a Christian prince then it continues to be his, otherwise, the land would come under the sovereignty of either Portugal or Spain. The issue here is not one of land or property, but rather the treatment of the human beings who lived on these lands. ... and this is what the first series of video will be looking at, in an informal and light manner. Organization of From Kongo to Brazil: the Portugal Connection This video concentrates on the role played by Portugal in propagating slavery and the birth of apartheid and white supremacy in Africa: Part 1 - Portugal discovers Brazil Part 2 - Portugal discovers India and creates trouble Part 3 - Portugal returns to Brazil and creates trouble Part 4 - Portugal discovers the Kingdom of the Kongo Part 5 - The Christian Kongo and the Slave Trade Part 6 - The birth of apartheid in the Kongo Music: Red Planet by Terry Devine-King purchased from AudioNetwork.com (UK) All other credits will be listed, with the story behind each source used in all six videos, on a final video 7 once all 6 videos are published.

Strategies of Cultural Survival: The Dance

Almost all African cultures emphasized the well-being of the group over the individual, a conviction invoked, guaranteed, and celebrated by the masked dance. In the face of European challenges to the integrity of African cultures, dance became an especially important vehicle in maintaining cultural continuity. The masked dance is, in fact, a ritual activity so universally practiced from one culture to the next across West Africa that it could be called the focal point of the region’s cultures. It unites the creative efforts of sculptors, dancers, musicians, and others. Originally performed as part of larger rituals connected with stages in human development, the passing of the seasons, or stages of the agricultural year, the masked dance in recent years has become increasingly commercial—a form of entertainment disconnected from its original social context. A modern photograph of the banda mask being used by the Baga Mandori people who live on the Atlantic coastline of Guinea is unique, however, in capturing an actual banda dance (Fig. 18.12). The banda mask dance is always performed at night, with only torches for illumination, but in 1987 villagers agreed, for the sake of photography, to begin the performance at dusk. The photographs taken that evening by Fred Lamp, Curator of African Art at the Yale University Art Gallery, are the only extant photographs of an actual banda performance.

Strategies of Cultural Survival: Communicating with the Spirit World

Throughout Africa, from the moment of European contact onward, traditional systems of belief, ritual practices, and local customs have continued to exhibit a strong presence despite the ongoing influence of Western and Islamic cultures. It is almost certain that many, if not most, of these beliefs, rituals, and customs date back centuries and help to establish a very real sense of cultural continuity.

The Slave Trade: Africans in the Americas

Adaptive strategies were especially important to those Africans transported across the Atlantic in the Portuguese slave trade. Torn from their native cultures, and often re-situated with other Africans from cultures utterly unfamiliar to them, their cultural identity was severely challenged. But before long, across South America and Mexico, Africans outnumbered white Spaniards roughly two to one. Because of the almost total absence of European women in the Americas during the sixteenth century, the Spanish turned to other women for sexual partners. Very soon there were large numbers of people of variously mixed race, called castas or castes. The most common castas were mestizo (Spanish-Indian), mulatto (Spanish-black), zambo (black-Indian), and then later, in the seventeenth century, castizo (a light-skinned mestizo) and morisco (a light-skinned mulatto). By the eighteenth century, as growing numbers of Philippinos and other Asian populations arrived in Mexico (generally as slaves), and as the various castes themselves intermingled, a new term came into the language to indicate racial indeterminacy, tente en el aire, “hold yourself in the air.” By the end of the century, fully one-quarter of the population was of mixed race.
Spaniards, Incas and Mestizos - A Brief History, 2:02
Visit http://www.phenomenalplace.com to check out great information about mysterious and fantastic places on earth. When the Spaniards arrived to Peru, they killed plenty of people with their invisible weapon, the flu virus. Incas started dying in thousands as they had no immunity to fight this disease. So, they fled to the jungle. The Spaniards started to die too, as they were bitten by the mosquitos of the Andean region. It would take a few decades until the Mestizos were created who were able to survive both.


    How did European contact affect Mogul India?

The synthesis of cultures so evident in the pluralistic society that developed in New Spain is also apparent in the art of India during roughly the same period. But in India, the synthesis was far less fraught with tension. The reason has much to do with the tolerance shown by India’s leaders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries toward forces from the outside, which, in fact, they welcomed.
The Last Mughal Emperor of India, 2:05
Abu Zafar Sirajuddin Muhammad Bahadur Shah Zafar, also known as Bahadur Shah or Bahadur Shah II (October 1775 -- 7 November 1862) was the last of the Mughal emperors in India, as well as the last ruler of the Timurid Dynasty. He was the son of Akbar Shah II and Lalbai, who was a Hindu Rajput. He became the Mughal Emperor upon his father's death on 28 September 1837. Zafar, meaning "victory" was his nom de plume as an Urdu poet. Briefly restored during the Sepoy Mutiny or Indian War of Independence, he was deposed by the British and exiled to Burma.

Islamic India: The Taste for Western Art

India’s leaders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were Muslim. Islamic groups had moved into India through the northern passes of the Hindu Kush by 1000 and had established a foothold for themselves in Delhi by 1200. In the early sixteenth century, a group of Turko-Mongol Sunni Muslims known as Moguls (a variation on the word Mongol) established a strong empire in northern India, with capitals at Agra and Delhi, although the Hindus temporarily expelled them from India between 1540 and 1555.
Why Islamic Invaders Failed to Conquer India, 5:51

Mogul Architecture: The Taj Mahal

Addicted to wine laced with opium, Shah Jahangir died in 1628, not long after the completion of the miniature wishing him a life of a thousand years. While his son Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58) did not encourage painting to the degree his father and grandfather had, he was a great patron of architecture. His most important contribution to Indian architecture—and arguably one of the most beautiful buildings in the world—is the Taj Mahal (“Crown of the Palace”), constructed as a mausoleum for Jahan’s favorite wife, Mumtaz-i-Mahal (the name means “Light of the Palace”), who died giving birth to the couple’s fourteenth child (Fig. 18.20).
The Taj Mahal - Architecture of a Love Story, 4:41


    How did China resist foreign influence even as trade with the wider world flourished?

The cultural syncretism, or intermingling of cultural traditions, that marks the Americas, was largely resisted by Chinese populations when Europeans arrived on their shores. The reasons are many, but of great importance was the inherent belief of these cultures in their own superiority. For centuries, the Chinese had resisted Mongolian influence, for instance, and at the same time had come to prefer isolation from foreign influence.
0:03 / 2:27 Global History Review: The Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty Part of series which serves as a review of the major concepts of the New York State Global History curriculum. This video can be used by teachers in the classroom, at home with parents and by students as a study guide to aide in lesson planning and learning. Created with: Mineola School District http://www.mineola.k12.ny.us/ ABOUT ROBLE EDUCATION: Roble Education is founded on the idea that quality education should be accessible to everyone. We work with schools, teachers and universities around the world, producing customized learning experiences for children and adults of all ages: online courses, interactive textbooks, responsive websites, and other fun things. Visit us at: roble.education

The Treasure Fleet: Extending China’s Influence

Zhu Di called himself the Yongle emperor, meaning “lasting joy,” a propagandistic name designed to deflect attention from the tyranny of his court. His massive construction projects served to establish the grandeur of his authority. Among the largest of these was his “treasure fleet” of 317 ships, crewed by 27,000 men and headed by a ship that was 440 feet long, one of the largest wooden ships ever built. Unlike the European ocean expeditions undertaken a century later, these voyages were not primarily motivated by trade and exploration, but rather by the desire of the Yongle emperor to extract tribute from states throughout the Indian Ocean and the Southeast Asia. Still, trade was the result. Under the command of Zheng He (1371–1435), a Muslim eunuch who had served Zhu Di since childhood, the fleet sailed in seven expeditions between 1404 and 1435 throughout the oceans of Southeast Asia to India, Saudi Arabia, and down the African coast (see Map 18.4).
Damned Good Company, Chapter 6, Zhu Di vs. the Mandarins, :54
Video Summary: Damned Good Company by Luis Granados, Chapter 6, Zhu Di vs. the Mandarins. www.DamnedGoodCompany.com

Luxury Arts

The lavish lifestyle of the Ming court ensured the production of vast quantities of decorative luxury goods. In addition, as trade flourished, many Chinese merchants became increasingly wealthy and began to collect paintings, antiques, finely made furniture, and other quality objects for themselves. Lacquerware was extremely popular. Made from the sap of the Chinese Rhus vernicifera tree (a variety of sumac), lacquer is a clear, natural varnish that, when applied to wood, textiles, or other perishable materials, makes them airtight, waterproof, and resistant to both heat and acid. A surface coated with many thin layers of lacquer can be carved through into all manner of designs. Lacquerware furniture, bowls, dishes, and other small articles were very desirable.
Power and Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty Docent Tour, 2:19
Asian Art Museum docent, Elizabeth Green Sah, gives a tour of Power and Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty, during the museum's public program, MATCHA. Visit www.asianart.org for more information.

Painting and Poetry: Competing Schools

The imperial court and the newly rich merchant class also acquired paintings, considered luxury goods in their own right. As in the Tang dynasty (see Chapter 11), a class of highly educated literati, or literary intelligentsia—artists equally expert in poetry, calligraphy, and painting—executed the works. Many paintings combine image and poem, the latter written in a calligraphy distinctly the artist’s own.
Ming Dynasty "Art of Dissent" Debuts at the Met, 3:11
For more news visit ☛ http://english.ntdtv.com Follow us on Twitter ☛ http://twitter.com/NTDTelevision Add us on Facebook ☛ http://facebook.com/NTDTelevision And now something for art lovers, especially if you are interested in how art can be used as a form of self-expression for silent resistance. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is opening an exhibition titled "Art of Dissent" showing 17th-century Chinese art. NTD's Margaret Lau reports. Starting today, visitors to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art will have the chance to feast their eyes on some of the finest 17th century Chinese art. The "Art of Dissent" exhibition will showcase more than 60 landscape paintings and calligraphies from a private collection from Hong Kong. It highlights the intense personal styles of some of the most prominent artists during the traumatic transition of the Ming to Qing Dynasty in 17th century China. The fall of the Ming and the conquest of China by the Manchus in the 17th century is a period of turmoil in Chinese history. This transition triggers a tremendous outpouring of artistic works. Many Ming artists withheld their support for the Qing ruler—asserted their quiet defiance and moral virtue through their artwork. [Maxwell Hearn, Met Museum Curator-in-Charge, Dept. of Asian Art]: "The artists represented in the exhibition are those men who remained loyal to the Ming Dynasty and they express their loyalty by withdrawing into the landscape, by painting images of desolation in the natural world, they convey the sense of their own withdrawal of support for the Manchus." Museum Curator, Maxwell Hearn says it's the not the content of the paintings, but the style that's striking. These Ming artists resisted the Qing rule by using art as a form of silent or passive resistance. [Maxwell Hearn, Met Museum Curator-in-Charge, Dept. of Asian Art]: "The men were primarily individualists who were interested in expressing themselves through their art. So, it's a very personal form of expression. These men were not interested in representing the natural world. Rather, they're using landscape as a vehicle for expressing their deepest feelings." This is not something new. [Maxwell Hearn, Met Museum Curator-in-Charge, Dept. of Asian Art]: "There's a long tradition of using art as a way of expressing one's feelings in response to a political situation." The inclusion of a poem to the landscape composition is an important element in traditional Chinese art. [Maxwell Hearn, Met Museum Curator-in-Charge, Dept. of Asian Art]: "The important thing in appreciating this exhibition is to read both the poetry and the paintings as conveying something of the individual's sentiments and response to what's happening during this period." Some of these artists chose to disguise their identities, seek refuge in the landscape of their art or withheld support for the Qing ruler by becoming Buddhist monks. The "Art of Dissent" exhibition is arranged in five thematic or regional categories and will remain open until January 2nd, 2012. Margaret Lau, NTD News, New York. Margaret Lau

Northern School

Hundreds of Birds Admiring the Peacocks by Yin Hong, a court artist active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, is an example of the Northern style (Fig. 18.26). It has a highly refined decorative style, which emphasizes the technical skill of the painter. It also has a rich use of color and reliance on traditional Chinese painting, in this case the birds-and-flowers genre that had been extremely popular in the Song dynasty, which flourished contemporaneously with the Early Middle Ages in the West. Like Guo Xi’s Song dynasty painting Early Spring (see Chapter 11, Closer Look, pages 370–371), the Yin Hong painting also has a symbolic meaning that refers directly to the emperor. Just as the central peak in Early Spring symbolizes the emperor himself, with the lower peaks and trees subservient to him, here a peacock symbolizes the emperor, and around it “hundreds of birds”—that is, the court officials—gather in respect and submission.

Southern School

The Southern style is much more understated than the Northern School, preferring ink to color and free brushwork (emphasizing the abstract nature of painting) to meticulously detailed linear representation. For the Southern artist, reality rested in the mind, not the physical world, and so self-expression is the ultimate aim. Furthermore, in the Southern School, the work of art more systematically synthesized the three areas of endeavor that any member of the literati should have mastered: poetry, calligraphy, and painting.


    What new developments in the arts were championed by the Ashikaga shoguns, and how did contact with the West impact Japan in the Azuchi-Momoyama period?

Long before Ming rulers finally overthrew the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China in 1368, the Japanese rulers of the Kamakura period (see Chapter 11) had repelled the Mongol Kublai Khan’s attempts to conquer their island country in both 1274 and 1281. The cost was high, and the islands were left impoverished. Conflict between competing lines of succession to the imperial throne destabilized the court. Gradually, in the provinces, localized village-level military leaders gained more and more authority until they controlled, after several generations, large regional areas of land. These lords, who would come to be known as daimyo, or “great names,” gained increasing strength, competing with the shogunate for power even as they began to war among themselves, seeking control of the entire nation. The power of the emperor was, however, rarely challenged, and the daimyo were important patrons of the imperial court, as well as major consumers of court-based arts and crafts. The principles and ethics of Zen Buddhism, the Japanese version of Chinese Chan Buddhism (see Chapter 11), also appealed to them. Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Chan teachings gained an increasing foothold in Japan. The carefully ordered monastic lifestyle of Chan monks contrasted dramatically with the sometimes extravagant lifestyles of the Buddhist monasteries of the Heian period. And the Chan advocacy of the possibility of immediate enlightenment through meditation and self-denial presented, like Pure Land Buddhism (see Chapter 11), with which it competed for followers, an especially attractive spiritual practice.
Kamakura Japan Travel Guide, 3:22
A travel guide for visiting Kamakura Japan. Kamakura has a rich history of temples and the Daibatsu,aka Giant Buddha. Kamakura is an excellent day trip from Tokyo, with zen temples and shinto shrines that are over 1,000 years old. Check out the "Cool Japan" playlist for more Japan videos: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=... Visit my channel for additional fun travel guides: http://www.youtube.com/user/yellowwpr... Subscribe to receive my latest travel guides in your feed: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c...

The Muromachi Period (1392–1573): Cultural Patronage

By 1392, one shogun family, the Ashikaga, had begun to exercise increased authority over Japanese society. They had their headquarters in the Muromachi district of Kyoto (hence the alternative names for the period in which they ruled.) It was a period of often brutal civil war as the daimyo vied for power. Although Kyoto remained in a state of near-total devastation—starvation was not uncommon—the Ashikaga shoguns built elaborate palaces around Kyoto as refuges from the chaos outside their walls. One of the most elaborate of these, now known as Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion (Fig. 18.28), was built as a setting for the retirement of the Ashikaga shogun Yoshimitsu (1358–1408). Begun in 1399, its central pavilion is modeled on Chinese precedents. Its first floor was intended for relaxation and contemplation of the lake and gardens. A wide veranda for viewing the moon, a popular pastime, fronted its second floor. And the top floor was designed as a small Pure Land Buddhist temple, containing a sculpture of Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life who dwells in the paradise of the Western Pure Land, along with 25 bodhisattvas. The gardens surrounding the pavilions at Kinkakuji provided the casual stroller with an ever-changing variety of views, thus creating a tension between the multiplicity of scenes and the unity of the whole. As a matter of policy, Yoshimitsu associated himself with the arts in order to lend his shogunate authority and legitimacy. Therefore, he and later Ashikaga shoguns encouraged some of the most important artistic developments of the era in painting and garden design. They also championed important new forms of expression, including the tea ceremony and Noh drama.
Muromachi Period: Jidai Matsuri, 2015 Kyoto, 5:20
The Muromachi period (室町時代) is a period of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate, which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Takauji (足利 尊氏). The first part of this procession features Ashikaga Shōgun (足利将軍) and his close associates. Ise-shi (伊勢氏),who was minister of financial affairs, Hosokawa-shi (細川氏),the shogun's assistant for government affairs and Nikaido-shi (二階堂氏) who was a supervisor of judicial and government councils. The next part features dancers and musicians, who perform Furyū Odori (風流踊り) or “Wind flow dance” at certain intervals. Very colourful indeed, this was very popular during the Muromachi Period.

Painting in the New Zen Manner

The question of the extent of the influence of Zen on Japanese art is a problematic one. As has often been pointed out, the features normally associated with Zen (Chan) Buddhism in the arts—simplicity of design, suggestion rather than description, and controlling balance through irregularity and asymmetry—are also characteristic of indigenous Japanese taste. Still, a number of Japanese artists, usually Zen monks themselves, turned to China and its Chan traditions for inspiration. In order to acquaint himself more fully with Chinese traditions, for instance, Sesshu Toyo (1420–1506), a Zen priest-painter, traveled to China in 1468–69, copying the Song dynasty masters and becoming adept at the more abstract forms of representation practiced by the Chan Buddhist literati. Like other painters of his era inspired by the Chinese, Sesshu worked in multiple pictorial modes—depictions of Buddhist scenes, portraits, flower and bird painting, and, most famously, landscapes. Haboku Landscape is an example of the latter, painted in the new Zen Buddhist manner known as haboku (Fig. 18.29). Haboku means “broken or splashed ink,” the application of one layer of ink over another, “breaking” the initial surface or description. No mark on this painting could actually be thought of as representational. Rather, the denser ink suggests trees and rocks, while the softer washes evoke tall mountains in the distance, water, and mist. And instead of the panoramic landscapes of the Chinese Song dynasty that Sesshu studied in China, with its deep space, symmetrical balance, and vast array of richly detailed elements (compare Guo Xi’s Early Spring; Chapter 11, Closer Look, pages 370–371), Sesshu’s landscape is startlingly simple, almost impressionistic in its mistiness, and asymmetrical in its composition.
Magic of Zen art sumi-e painting, 2:26

Zen Gardens

Perhaps inspired by the gardens surrounding shogun palaces such as Kinkakuji, designers made gardens a regular feature of Muromachi Zen temples, especially the karesansui, or “withered or dry landscape” garden. Japanese gardeners had long featured water as an important, even primary element, but around Kyoto, with its limited number of springs and mountain streams, gardeners turned their attention away from the streams and ponds that characterize the Golden Pavilion at Kinkakuji and increasingly focused their attention on rocks and a few carefully groomed plantings as the primary feature of garden design.
Zen Gardens in Kyoto, 3:08
A short video with clips and photos from Kyoto's most beautiful dry stone gardens (karesansui niwa). Sit back, relax and enjoy this montage of images from Daitoku-ji, Myoshin-ji, Ryoan-ji, Tenryu-ji and Toufuku-ji.

The Tea Ceremony

Matcha, literally “finely powdered tea,” was introduced into Japan from China during the early Kamakura period. By the end of the Kamakura period, tea contests to discern different teas and the regions in which they were grown had become popular. By the early Muromachi period, rules for the ways in which tea was to be drunk began to be codified, especially in Zen temples. By the sixteenth century, these rules would come to be known as the Way of Tea, chanoyu. In small rooms specifically designed for the purpose and often decorated with calligraphy on hanging scrolls or screens, the guest was to leave the concerns of the daily world behind and enter a timeless world of ease, harmony, and mutual respect. The master of the ceremony would assemble a few examples of painting and calligraphy, usually karamono, treasures imported from China, of which the Ashikaga shogun Yoshimasa (1430–90), grandson of Yoshimitsu, had the finest collection.
Traditional Japanese culture. Tea ceremony．日本の伝統文化 茶道, 3:26
It increases various culture the tea ceremony drinks powdered green tea, and to enjoy; and development In other words etiquette of the tea preparation [this side] manners it is comfortable, and to treat the meals such as the space about the house including a tea-ceremony room and the garden, the industrial arts which I choose the tea service set and appreciate and kaiseki cuisine or the Japanese sweet coming out to a tea party (tea party [ちゃごと]), a guest are the composite art that fused. 茶道は、抹茶を飲み楽しむ事に様々な文化が加わって発展ました。 つまり、茶室や庭など住まいに関する空間、茶道具を選んだり鑑賞したりする工芸、そしてお茶会（茶事〔ちゃごと〕）に出てくる懐石料理や和菓子などの食、客人を気持ちよくもてなすための点前〔てまえ〕作法が融合した総合芸術です。

Noh Drama

The Ashikaga shoguns, including Yoshimitsu and Yoshimasa, also enthusiastically supported the development of the important literary genre of Noh drama. The Noh drama was primarily the result of the efforts of Kan’ami Kiyotsugu (1333–84) and his son Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443). They conceived of a theater incorporating music, chanting, dance, poetry, prose, mime, and masks to create a world of sublime beauty based on the ideal of yugen, which almost defies translation but refers to the suggestion of vague, spiritual profundity lying just below the surface of the Noh play’s action (or, rather, the stillness of its inaction).
Kashu-Juku Noh Theater, 2:07
Kashu-Juku Noh Theater http://www.japansociety.org/event_det... Noh & Kyogen with Live Music In conjunction with Carnegie Hall's JapanNYC festival Thursday, March 24, 7:30 PM Friday, March 25, 7:30 PM Saturday, March 26, 7:30 PM Encounter the theater form developed and preserved since the 14th century! Kyoto-based Kashu-juku Noh Theater, led by Katayama Shingo of the prestigious Katayama noh family, is joined by kyogen actors from the Shigeyama family in providing this rare opportunity for American audiences to experience the 600-year-old tradition of noh and kyogen performed back-to-back. In Japanese with English subtitles. The program includes: MAI-BAYASHI: Literally meaning "dance & music," a mai-bayashi is a solo dance depicting the climax of a famous noh play. This program features the ferocious battle scene from Yashima. KYOGEN: Boshibari (Tied to a Pole) Tied up by their master, two servants are thwarted in drinking his sake. How will the two rascals get a hold of their beloved beverage again? NOH: Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi) In this famous adaptation of a story from the classic novel The Tale of Genji, the jealous Lady Rokujo--who had sent a spirit to possess Genji's wife, Aoi--is confronted in combat by a Buddhist monk intent on saving her soul. Pre-Performance Lecture: One hour before all show times, free to ticket holders. http://www.japansociety.org/event_det...

The Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1573–1615): Foreign Influences

Even as Japanese culture flourished under the patronage of the Ashikaga shoguns, the country simultaneously endured many years of sometimes debilitating civil war. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Ashikaga family had lost all semblance of power, and various daimyo controlled the provinces once again. Finally, one of their number, Oda Nobunaga (1534–82), son of a minor vassal, forged enough alliances to unify the country under a single administration. By 1573, Nobunaga had driven what remained of the Ashikaga out of Kyoto, inaugurating a period now known as the Azuchi-Momoyama, named for the location of Nobunaga’s castle at Azuchi on Lake Biwa and that of his successor, Hideyoshi (1537–98), at Momoyama, literally “Peach Hill,” after an orchard of peach trees later planted on the ruins of the castle, south of Kyoto.
Azuchi Momoyama 安土―桃山, 3:21
The opening of my undergraduation project about japanese history. PUCPR University. Special thanks to Kanno Youko who made the music, a true masterpiece.

The Momoyama Castle

Although the arrival of gunpowder surely encouraged the Azuchi-Momoyama rulers to build much larger, more defensible castles than those of the earlier shoguns, the primary purpose of the castles was more to impress upon the world the power and majesty of the daimyo. The Himeji Castle near Osaka (Fig. 18.31) is an example. Like most other castles of the era—roughly 40 were constructed across the country—it was built at the crest of a hill topped by a tenshu, a defensible refuge of last resort much like the keep of an English castle (see Chapter 10). Lower down the hill’s slope was a massive wall of stone.
Momoyama Castle in Fushimi! 1:42
Fushimi Castle, also known as Momoyama Castle or Fushimi-Momoyama Castle. Fushimi Castle is located on a hill, in other words a hilltop castle, which is known in Japanese as a 'Teikakushiki'. Through numerous instances of being built, burned, and then rebuilt again -- even dismantled and scattered throughout Kyoto -- this modern replica was built in 1964 and stands today made of mostly concrete. Its history is long and complicated. The very first version of the castle was built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi -- one of Japan's most famous historical characters -- in 1592, the year after his retirement from the regency. It took two years to build with a grand total of more than 20,000 workers from twenty provinces working on it, with many elaborate rooms, such as a tea ceremony room plated entirely in gold leaf. Though it looked like a Castle on the outside, it was really meant to be a retirement palace for Hideyoshi, and he had also planned to use it for peace talks with Chinese diplomats seeking an end to the Seven-year War in Korea. Through a stroke of bad luck, though, it was destroyed in an earthquake two years after its building. Hideyoshi re-commissioned the Castle in 1597, 500 meters away from the original site; however, Hideyoshi died before he could see the second version completed and the Toyotomi clan moved to Osaka Castle in 1598. Thus, the castle came to be controlled by Torii Mototada, a vassal of Tokugawa Ieyasu and a vital figure in Japanese history. In 1600, during a war when Japan had split into two factions -- the army of the East led by Tokugawa and the army of the West led by Mouri Terutomo -- Fushimi Castle went under siege by Ishida Mitsunari. In an act of bravery, Torii Mototada defended the Castle for eleven days, allowing time for his lord Tokunaga to amass an army which would tip the scales in his favor at the final Battle of Sekigahara. This Battle marked the final victory of Tokugawa Ieyasu over all his rivals. At the end of the eleven days, Torii and his men committed suicide and the castle was destroyed by fire. The castle was soon reconstructed in 1602 under the order of Tokugawa Ieyasu. However, in 1619 a decision was made to dismantle the castle and incorporate its parts into temples all over Japan. Spectacularly, to this day you can see in several temples in Kyoto such as Yogen-in, Genko-an, and Hosen-in a blood-stained ceiling which was the floor of the corridor at Fushimi Castle where Torii Mototada committed suicide. Finally, in 1625, the castle was abandoned for what seemed to be for good. In 1912 the tomb of Emperor Meiji was built on the original site of the castle, and in 1964 the final replica was completed. The castle had served as the museum of the life and campaigns of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, but it was closed to the public in 2003.

Namban and Kano-School Screen Painting

The presence of foreign traders in Japan, principally Portuguese and Dutch, soon found its way into Japanese painting, particularly in a new genre of screen painting known as namban. Namban literally means “southern barbarian,” referring to the “barbarian” Westerners who arrived from the south by ship. In the most popular theme of this genre, a foreign galleon arrives in Kyoto harbor (Fig. 18.32). The ship’s crew unloads goods, and the captain and his men proceed through the streets of the city to Nambanji, the Jesuit church in Kyoto. The priests themselves are Japanese converts to Christianity.

The Closing of Japan

Nobunaga’s successor, Hideyoshi, was deeply suspicious of Christianity. By 1587, he had prohibited the Japanese from practicing it and, in 1597, went so far as to execute 26 Spanish and Japanese Jesuits and Franciscans in Nagasaki. Succeeding rulers pursued an increasingly isolationist foreign policy. In 1603, Hideyoshi’s successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616) instituted a shogunate based at his castle in Edo (present-day Tokyo) that was to last, in peace, for 250 years. Christianity, even as practiced by foreigners, was banned altogether in 1614. The new Tokugawa shoguns espoused a Confucianist philosophy based on the belief that every individual should be happy in their place if they understood and appreciated their role in a firmly structured society. While the emperor and his court were at the top of this structure, the Tokugawa shoguns were its effective leaders, with 250 or so regional daimyo under the shogun exercising regional authority. The Tokugawa shogunate forbade the Japanese to travel abroad in 1635, and limited foreign trade in 1641 to the Dutch, whom they confined to a small area in Nagasaki harbor, and the Chinese, whom they confined to a quarter within the city of Nagasaki itself.
THE EXPULSION OF CHRISTIANITY FROM JAPAN and why it is important to you in 5 minutes, 5:18
Japan is not usually regarded as a Christian nation. However, Christianity has had a long and troubled history in Japan. One of the most pivotal moments in Japanese history was the expulsion of Christianity from Japan in the seventeenth century and it led to a long period of isolation from the outside world that eventually drove the modernisation and thirst for empire that made Japan the central Asian power of the twentieth century. SOURCES: Ruiz de Medina, Father Juan Garcia Cultural Interactions in the Orient 30 years before Matteo Ricci. Catholic Uni. of Portugal, 1993. H. Bryon Earhart, Religion in Japan: Unity and Diversity, Wadsworth, 2004, p.165 Brett, L. Walker "Foreign Affairs and Frontiers in Early Modern Japan: a Historio-graphical Essay". Early Modern Japan: an Interdisciplinary Journal 10:2 (2002): 44–62. Toshihiko, Abe Japan's Hidden Face. (Bainbridgebooks/Trans-Atlantic Publications, 1998). Mullins, Mark R. "Japanese Pentecostalism and the World of the Dead: a Study of Cultural Adaptation in Iesu no Mitama Kyokai". Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 17:4 (1990): 353–74



    The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492 inaugurated 125 years of nautical exploration of the globe by Europeans. Spain concentrated on the Americas. The Spanish did not come in family groups to settle a New World. Instead, Spanish men came in hopes of plundering America’s legendary wealth of precious metals. The absence of Spanish women accelerated the intermingling of races in New Spain. How do you account for the inhuman treatment of native cultures by European explorers and colonial administrators?


    The Portuguese slave trade transported many millions of Africans across the Atlantic on the Middle Passage, and the presence of the Portuguese is evident in much of the art produced in West Africa in the sixteenth century. How were the Portuguese first received in Africa? How is their presence reflected in West African art? How did the slave trade affect the population of New Spain?

    Nevertheless, African cultures managed to maintain their cultural identity by continuing to engage in ritual practices and traditions. How did dance serve this purpose? What powers did their sculpture contain?


    Mogul leaders in India, particularly Akbar and Jahangir, not only introduced conventions of Islamic art to India but opened the doors of the country to English traders. The style of representation that resulted from this contact is a blend of stylistic and cultural traditions, East and West. The Taj Mahal, on the other hand, is a distinctly Mogul achievement. What aesthetic taste does it reflect?


    Nearly 100 years before the Portuguese sailed into the Indian Ocean, the Chinese emperor Zhu Di’s treasure fleet, commanded by Zheng He, conducted trade expeditions throughout the area. What was the Chinese attitude toward the populations they encountered? One of the most important undertakings of Zhu Di’s reign was the construction of the royal compound in Beijing, known as the Forbidden City. From what various cultural traditions does its design draw? In the Ming court, Dong Qichang wrote an essay dividing the history of Chinese painting into two schools, Northern and Southern. What are the characteristics of each?


    In Japan, political turmoil caused by war with the Mongols, instability at the imperial court, and, in the provinces, the increasing power of local military rulers, who would come to be known as daimyo, was finally mitigated by the ascendancy of Ashikaga shoguns in the Muromachi period (1392–1573). In the midst of what often amounted to civil war, the Ashikaga shoguns were great cultural patrons. Why did they associate themselves with the arts? What was their attitude toward China and Chan (Zen) in particular? What elements of Japanese taste began to assert themselves in painting? In garden design? In the tea ceremony? What aesthetic feeling manifests itself particularly in Noh drama? How did trade with the Portuguese in the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573–1615) influence Japanese culture? Screen painting became especially popular and depicted a wide variety of subjects. How does namban painting reflect Japan’s increasing cultural syncretism? What aesthetic principles inform the large-scale landscapes of the Kano School?


READING 18.1 from Bernadino de Sahagún, History of the Things of New Spain (ca. 1585)

The History of the Things of New Spain was written in the Nahuatl language under the supervision of the Benedictine monk Bernadino de Sahagún. First completed in about 1555, it relies on the memories of aging native Aztecs who had actually been alive during the conquest. The 1555 version has been lost. But in about 1585, Bernadino prepared a second version in Nahuatl. The description of Pedro de Alvarado’s massacre of the Aztecs at the Fiesta of Toxcatl, which follows, is from that later version and is particularly chilling.


When Cortés rescued Alvarado, the latter claimed that informants had told him the Aztecs planned to attack when the Fiesta of Toxcatl was over in order to free Motecuhzoma. Does this claim alter your reaction to this Nahuatl version of events?

READING 18.5 from Zeami Motokiyo, Semimaru (early 15th century)

Noh theater is very different from Western theater. It incorporates music, chanting, dance, poetry, prose, mime, and elaborate masks and costumes to create a total theatrical experience. It is perhaps closest to our musical form opera. But even opera cannot match the slow, ritualistic pace of Noh plays, which seek to create in their audience an ethereal sense of a transcendent, Zen Buddhist world. The following text, representing approximately the first half of the play, was written by one of the founders of the Noh tradition.

Question 1: Multiple Choice Correct What did John Calvin mean by "predestination"? Given Answer: Correct God ordains salvation only for certain people at birth Correct Answer: God ordains salvation only for certain people at birth out of 4 points Question 2: Multiple Choice Correct As pointed out in the chapter's "Continuity and Change" section, why did the Roman Catholics increase the elaborateness of their churches in retaliation against Protestant simplicity? Given Answer: Correct To make the Protestant churches seem emotionally empty Correct Answer: To make the Protestant churches seem emotionally empty out of 4 points Question 3: Multiple Choice Correct What classical literary genre did Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More revive? Given Answer: Correct Satire Correct Answer: Satire out of 4 points Question 4: Multiple Choice Correct What did Luther claim gave him the right to post his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church door? Given Answer: Correct Academic freedom Correct Answer: Academic freedom out of 4 points Question 5: Multiple Choice Correct Why did Luther reject the Church's doctrine that good deeds and work led to salvation? Given Answer: Correct He believed that faith alone would provide salvation Correct Answer: He believed that faith alone would provide salvation out of 4 points Question 6: Multiple Choice Correct As noted in the chapter's "Continuity and Change" section, when Japan reopened its doors to the world in 1853, what about its culture especially appealed to the Westerners? Given Answer: Correct Zen Buddhism Correct Answer: Zen Buddhism out of 4 points Question 7: Multiple Choice Incorrect Why were the Kongolese especially accepting of Christianity? Given Answer: Incorrect They revered a resurrected hero Correct Answer: They believed in an afterlife out of 4 points Question 8: Multiple Choice Incorrect After he fled from his evil brother, what did the legendary Quetzalcóatl promise to do? Given Answer: Incorrect Help the Aztec defeat their enemies Correct Answer: Return one day out of 4 points Question 9: Multiple Choice Correct Why beginning in 1587 did Japan become closed to the rest of the world? Given Answer: Correct To eliminate foreign influence on its culture Correct Answer: To eliminate foreign influence on its culture out of 4 points Question 10: Multiple Choice Correct Why were the Europeans so eager to colonize America? Given Answer: Correct To acquire gold, silver and other treasure Correct Answer: To acquire gold, silver and other treasure