Blog Post #10

The Worlds of the Fifteenth Century

What's interesting is how people of the fifteenth century interacted with each other. According to Strayer, they all lived in different and self-contained communities. However, they were somewhat connected through overlapping webs of influence, communication and trading. One of the main webs of influence is the webs of empires that were brought together different people and their cultures. For example, Christians and Muslims encountered each other in the Ottoman Empire just as Hindus and Muslims in the Mughal Empire. Religion was one of the webs that connected them as well. Christianity provided a religion for people from England to Russia, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy bear hardships but was shattered by Christians of the Latin West. Buddhism remained the link among China, Korea, Japan and parts of Southeast Asia, although it vanished from South Asian homeland. Moreover, are the established patterns of trading roads. It occupied people of different environments of different parts of the world producing different goods of people in the fifteenth century. This is why the silk, sea and sand roads were very important at the time. I'm also surprised to see my homeland (Samoa) was part of the trade that happened during the time. As Strayer said, they connected and exchanged of mats and canoes with other Pacific islanders.