Empires Expand [AP World History Review] Unit 3, Topic 1

hi and welcome back to heimlich sister we're moving on to unit 3 in our ap world history curriculum and in this video we're going to talk about how land based empires developed and expanded from 1450 to 1750 hmm and if you're already starting to taste the sauce let's get to it so one of the main features come into several of these land-based empires during this time is gunpowder and we find these gunpowder empires mainly in Southwest Asia Central Asia and South Asia so what is a gunpowder Empire basically there's just large states that relied on

firearms to control the territory that they had and to expand into new territory see these empires were pretty big and had a lot of territory and a lot of diverse kinds of people within them and one way to keep them under control is to blow a few of them up now and then you see this kind of control especially in Russia the Ottoman Empire the Safavid Empire and the Mughal Empire at their core these empires were fundamentally militaristic but don't let that tempt you into thinking that they didn't also produce some magnificent cultures they did

but even the art and architecture produced by these empires serve the purpose of legitimizing the power of the ruler but I get ahead of myself we'll talk about that in the next video for now let's just look at some empires around the world and see by what means they expanded and developed first let's start in Europe by the mid 1400s the devastation of the Black Plague was wearing off and the population began to recover also the Hundred Years War had come to an end and you also had the invention of the Gutenberg printing press which

made the production of books and pamphlets much easier and as a result the European population began to experience an increase in literacy also you may remember that in the previous period Europe was just emerging from the feudalistic organization of their society but in this period that process really picks up steam new monarchies began to arise all throughout Europe by the 1500s and one of the key features of all these monarchies is that they began to centralize power and feudalism power was distributed throughout the territory and was largely in the hands of the landed elite but

in this period Kings began to gather up all that decentralized power and centralize it in themselves and they did that by exercising control over taxation control over the Armed Forces and control over the religion of their state and as a result of this consolidation of power the bureaucracy expanded now in these next few videos I'm going to be throwing that word around a lot bureaucracy basically a bureaucracy is just a group of government officials that carries out the will of whoever is in power now I've been talking about all this in general but if you

want to throw a couple names on these new European monarchs here's a few you have the tutors in England you had the Valois in France and you had Isabella and Ferdinand in Spain and one little side consequence of all this consolidation of powers that the middle class begins to grow and as it turns out that happened at the expense of the nobility and the clergy and since we're talking about Europe let's talk about Russia Russia's territory stretched from the east to the west and therefore it was in a pivotal position to get wealthy on trade

Ivan the fourth was crowns are in 1547 and later became known as Ivan the Terrible you might say he was a fourth to be reckoned with now Ivan was able to expand the Russian territory even further east and took much of the land that was held by the Mongolian calm now how did he do that gunpowder okay let's move over to East Asia and see how they expanded their empires the Yuan Dynasty established by the Mongols was overthrown in 1368 and was replaced by the Ming Dynasty which held power in China well into the 1600s

even so the Mongolians were still a threat and so it was the main state that restored and expanded the Great Wall of China but right around the mid 17th century another group called the manchu from neighboring Manchuria seized power and established the Qin Dynasty in 1644 and under the leadership of Emperor Kangxi the Chinese territory was significantly expanded into Taiwan Mongolia Central Asia and Tibet weight gunpowder okay now let's turn our attention to the rise of Islamic gunpowder empires now in order to set the stage let's reach back into the last time here let me

introduce you to Tamerlan Tamerlan was the Mongol Turkic leader of Samarkand he was known for his ruthless invasions of Persia in India in fact some historians estimate that when Tamerlan invaded India he kill up to 100,000 Hindus before the gates of Delhi now Tamra lanes Empire was heavily dependent on his military and that was good and bad for him it was good because he used the power of his military to stabilize and protect the comings and goings of merchants on the Silk Roads it was bad because that huge military ain't gonna pay for itself and

unfortunately the enormous amounts of hooch that was required to keep that military operating eventually ravaged the economy and the Empire fell apart okay who cares Tamra Lane isn't in our period that's true but when his empire collapsed three empires that you do need to know rose up out of its ashes the Ottoman Empire the south of it empire and the Mughal Empire and we're gonna look at those each now the Ottoman Empire was the largest and the greatest of all the Islamic empires during this time it was established in the 1300s and lasted six hundred

years so how did the Ottomans expand well in 1453 under the leadership of mehmed ii the ottoman seized the crown jewel of byzantine christianity constantinople and that was no small feat Constantinople was well fortified with three layers of walls how did the Ottomans conquer that seriously do you still not know the answer was it gunpowder yes it was gunpowder anyway the Ottomans changed the name of that city to Istanbul and they found that because it was at the Nexus of all these different trade routes they benefited tremendously I was generally agreed that the Ottomans peaked

in men what's the past tense of pique piqued poke it's generally agreed that the Ottoman spoke under the leadership of Suleiman the Great who held power from 1520 to 1566 1526 Suleiman conquered Hungary and a slew of other territories and he attempted to push further into Europe but was thwarted nevertheless this puts some fear into the European breeches so how did Suleiman conquer so much territory diplomacy gunpowder all right let's check in with our friends in the Safavid Empire the early hero of the Safavids was an empire by the name of is mine he conquered

most of Persia parts of Iraq and here's the kicker Ismail did all this when he was 14 or 15 years old a 15 year olds watching this what are you done with your life do I even need to tell you by what means Ismail conquered all this territory did you make it multiple choice a gunpowder B gunpowder see I hate you a gunpowder that's correct but I would have also accepted B or C now another thing you need to know about the Shah Ismail is that he made Islam the official religion of his empire but

it wasn't just Islam it was a particular form of Islam called Shia Islam this had a way of uniting his empire but while doing this he denied legitimacy to any member of the other major branch of Islam the Sunnis and as it turned out this caused frequent conflicts with the ottomans who just happened to be Sunni there were many conflicts between these two empires but we'll get to that in another okay let's look at our friends in the Mughal Empire in the 1520's a guy named Babur who was a descendant of Tamburlaine founded the Mughal

Empire when India was in disarray and in the middle of all this chaos Babur completed conquest of northern India gunpowder and established a central government similar to Suleiman now the greatest leader of the Mughal Empire was Akbar nope yep and under his leadership the Mughal Empire is one of the most prosperous and well led states in all the world and it shouldn't surprise you to know that all of these Islamic empires eventually fell without overloading you with details is sufficient to know that each of these empires declined basically because they failed to modernize their economies

and their militaries and compare this with the Europeans who modernize like mad especially their navies and you've got a recipe for the downfall of those left behind okay that's what you need to know about the development and expansion of land-based empires from 1450 to 1750 you're into this kind of thing then click here and subscribe and I'll keep making these videos for you if you like blowing things up hit the like button and let me know I'm Laura