3.0.4 Knowledge and Growth: the Middle Ages - Overview

Version 1.3 February 2023                                                          (Previous Version)

It is difficult to extract an agreed set of key learnings from the Middle Ages.

The detailed pages of Chapter 3.4 discuss the middle ages, from around 500 to about 1500 CE.  Technological developments and knowledge transmission promoted economic growth.  Increasing technology, especially in communications, allowed for larger, more pervasive, empires.

·       Many empires (Roman, Hun, Mongol) split or collapsed due to disputes about rulers’ succession.  Empires with longer living rulers or clear lines of succession were more stable and flourished, such as the Tang, Song and Ming Dynasties in China (from 600 CE to 1644 CE), and Elizabethan (1558–1603) and Victorian (1837 – 1901) England.

·       Eurasian civilizations had to deal with nomadic tribes from the steppes of central Asia, who periodically raided the settled areas, and many fell when they failed to handle this issue.  The Huns (around 400 CE) and Mongols (around 1200 CE) created empires over much of Eurasia.

·       Christianity was spread by the sword into Europe, and later into the Americas and Africa.

·       From around 600 CE the Muslim Caliphate spread from Arabia by the sword, over the Middle East, north Africa and Spain, the conquered peoples gradually, voluntarily, converting to Islam.  This was superseded by the Ottoman (Turkish) empire which lasted to the early 1900s.

·       The Timurid Empire in Central Asia was established in the late 1300s by Timur, or Tamerlane, reaching from Iraq to Afghanistan.  It declined and split into separate Timurid emirates from the mid-1400s.  In the 1500s, Babur, a Timurid prince invaded and established a kingdom in what is now modern Afghanistan, and twenty years later invaded India to establish the Mughal Empire. After a time, this declined, finally succumbing to British colonialists in the 1850s CE.

Each empire had its own unique blend of coercion and consensus.

·       Some empires (such as the Chinese) established strong, centrally controlled states.  Others (such as the European) were looser collections of governors, vassal states, war lords or nobles.

·       Some promoted people in the military and government based on family ties and connections.  Others promoted on merit (in China selection into the bureaucracy was often by examination).

·       In some states religion conferred legitimacy on the rulers; in others the rulers’ authority was unlimited.  Some rulers callously exploited the people for their family’s or clan’s benefit.

·       In many places, nobles placed limits on the monarch, or councils set up to advise the king became Indian ganas or European parliaments, with some members elected by some citizens – generally free, property owning men, excluding slaves, women and the landless.

·       Many societies overpopulated and stretched or polluted their resources, and their leaders failed to adapt, until an otherwise manageable crisis (an invasion, epidemic or bad seasons) caused the collapse of society: the breakdown of order, homes abandoned, knowledge and skills lost.

We work through the next level of detail on each of the above issues (more).  After considering this evidence, we’ve looked for a way to state our conclusions briefly, and we come to the following summary.

Is this the best way to state our conclusions in this area?  Click on feedback, or add a comment below, if you can improve the substance or the phrasing.

more                                                                 Statement 17

We learn from the Middle Ages the benefits of stability, meritocracy, government accountability, and the rule of law in promoting security and prosperity.  These are effecting values that help us to achieve our core values of truth, diversity, life, love (compassion), responsibility and equality.

We learn that without valuing sustainability advanced societies can collapse and die.