Blog #10

                          The Worlds of the Fifteenth Century

There were many kinds of civilizations during the Fifteenth Century. There were the nomadic people in Central Asia and West Africa, the hunters and gatherers in Australia and North American as well as the agricultural village societies like the Igbo and the Iroquois. The world's population in the fifteenth century was concentrated in Europe and China. China though had just gone through a population loss. That was mostly due to the century of Mongol rule and the appearance of the plague. After the Mongols rule, China went through a huge culture change and put the Mongols in its past. They started to promote Confucian learning and females had more traditional expectations. During this century was when China recovered and became the most prosperous of the world's major civilization. That happened because their economy rebounded as trade flourished and population grew. On the other end of Eurasia, similar things happened. Although Europe had escaped the Mongols, they had been devastated by the plague but their population started to grow again during the second half of the fifteenth century. The difference between China and Europe was that in Europe, they started rebuilding separate, independent and highly competitive states. They learned how to tax their citizens more efficiently than China which helped them rebuild their state at a faster pace. Since there were so many independent states, there were more conflicts, like the Hundred Years' War between France and England.