AP World History - Book: Ways of the World by Robert Strayer . Chapter 15: Cultural transformations: Religion and Science. Summary

1. CULTURAL
TRANSFORMATIONS
CHAPTER 15: RELIGION AND SCIENCE
1450 – 1750
AP WORLD HISTORY
WAYS OF THE WORLD
R. STRAYER

2. GLOBALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY
• Christianity was largely limited to Europe at the beginning
of the modern era. In 1500 Christendom stretched from
Spain to England and West Russia.
• Christianity was divided in to Roman Catholic of Western
and Central Europe and Eastern Orthodox of Eastern
Europe.
• Christian crusaders from their toeholdds in the Holy Land
by 1300 with the Ottoman seizure of Constantinople in
1453.
• 1529 Muslim marked an advance into the heart of Central
Europe.

3. PROTESTANT REFORMATION
• The Reformation began in 1517 when priest Martin Luther
(1483-1546) publicly invited debate about various abuses
within the Roman Catholic church (wrote a document
called the 95 Theses – critics). – Church selling
indulgences, corruption, immortality to some clergy etc.
• Martin Luther – talked about the new understanding to
salvation, only through faith alone. Faith as a free gift.
• To Luther, religious authority in general, was not the
teaching of the Church, but the Bible alone – interpreted
according to owns conscience. (challenged the authority
of the church)
Luther provoked massive schism, and social tensions as
well as religious differences.

4. Protestants vs Catholics
• The importance of protestants gave to reading the Bible
for oneself stimulated education and literacy for women
(still viewed as housewives, under male supervision=.
• Reformation thinking spread quicky beyond German
country. – Printing press
• Variety of Protestant churches: Lutheran, Calvinist,
Anglican, Quaker, Anabaptist (all of them with protestant
denominations).
• French society was torn by violence between Catholics
and Protestants known as Huguenots. = Edit of Nantes,
which granted measure to religious tolerance.
• = Thirty Years War Catholic-Protestant struggle,
Destructive war 15-30% German population died.

5. Counter Reformation
• These conflicts, war = provoked the Counter Reformation
(catholic reformation). = Council of Trent (1545-1563)
Catholics clarified their unique doctrines: Authority to
pope, Priest celibacy, veneration of saints and relics,
church tradition of good works.
• New religious orders evolved, such as the Society of
Jesus (Jesuits), provided dedicated brotherhood of priests
commited to the renewal of the Catholic Church. –
Specially abroad.

6. Differences of Catholic and Protestants

7. CHRISTIANITY OUTWARD
• Religion drove justified European ventures abroad.
Brought faith to many conquered homelands,
• New England: Protestant version of Christianity in North
America. (emphasis on education, moral murity, civic
responsability).
• Missionary orders: Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans took
lead in Africa, Philippines and Latin America.
• Christianity represented major cultural tradition in Latin
america.
• Europeans saw their political and military success as a
demonstration of power of the Christian God.
• By 1700 millions accepted baptism, specially for women
conversion was high, - prominence of Virgin Mary.

8. ASIAN COMPARISON: JESUITS AND
CHINA
• Peoples of Spanish America had been defeated, their
societies largely disrupted and cultural confidence shaken,
• China encountered Christianity between 16th century and
18th during prosperous Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and Qing
(1644-1912). There was NO cultural integrity threatened by
European missionaries.
• China: Strong, Independent and Confident. Europeans
needed permssion of Chinese authority to operate
(missionaries).
• Jesuists were respectful of Chinese culture, pointing out the
parallels between Confucianism and Christianity.
• Christian monogamy, require Chinese men to put away their
concubines.
• Many expelled, and missionaries lost.

9. AFRO ASIAN CULTURAL TRADITIONS
African forms of religious ideas and practices accompanied
slaves to the Americas (dream interpretation, visions, spirit
possession) found a place in the Africanized versions of
Christianity.
Vodou in Haiti, Santeria in Cuba, Candomble and
Macumba in Brazil persisted. – derived from West African
traditions.

10. EXPANSION AND RENEWAL ISLAMIC
WORLD
• The expansion of the Islamic frontier, a process of 1000 years,
extended far. Conversion to Islam meant assimilating Islamic
rituals, cosmologies and literatures.
• Islamization was not a product of conquering armies and
expanding empires. Depended on holy men, sufis, Islamic
scholars and traders. – Schools, Quran teachings.
• Some Islamic Slaves (Africa) practiced their faith in North
America and Brazil.
• Southeast Asia illustrate the diversity of belief and practice.
• Sumatra: Islamic law and dietary codes.
• Java: Some women served in court.
• India: Mughal Empire (toleration to Hinduism) until Aurangzeb

11. Arab world
• Well known Islamic renewal movement: in Arabia;
Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab (1703-1792).
• Al Wahhab upset about common religiois practices in
central arabia that seem to him as idolatry (veneration of
saits or sufis) or even the respect to Muhammads tomb at
Mecca.
• The Wahhabi movement took a new turn 1740s and
tombs, were eliminated, idols or any images of sufis,
eliminated.
• He authorize the stoning of a woman who comitted
adultery,
• He emphasized the rights of women within a partriarchal
Islamic framework.

12. CHINA: NEW DIRECTIONS
• China during the Ming Dynasties continue to operate
broadly within a Confucian network, enriched now by the
insights of Buddhism and Daoism = a new system of
thought called NEO CONFUCIANISM.
• Chinese intellectuals to support the new dynasty, whithin
this context, a considerable amount of controversy, debate,
and new thinking emerged during the early modern era.
• Wan Yanming´s (intellectual thinker) ideas had undermined
the Ming dynasty and contribuited to Chinas conquest. – By
his contemplation, without education, study of classical texts
of Confucianism.
• Elite culture in China took shape in a movement known as
KAOZHENG, or “research based on evidence”. – seek for
the truth trough facts.

13. INDIA: BRIDGING THE HINDU AND
MUSLIM
• Hindus and Muslims together in a new form of religious
expression. Another grew out of devotional form of
Hinduism known as BHAKTI. – through songs, dances,
poetry and prayers. Poets like Mirabai a high caste
women who abandoned her upper class and declined
sati.
• Another major cultural change that blended in Islam and
Hinduism emerged with the growth of SIKHISM a new
distinctive religious tradition. “There is no Hindu, no
Muslim, only God” – the brotherhood of all mankind.
• They developed their own sacred book: Guru Granth

14. A NEW WAY OF THINKING: MODERN
SCIENCE
• Vast intellectual and cultural transformations that took
place between the mid sixteetn and 18th centuries.
• Men no longer rely on the authority of the Bible, Church.
• Knowledge acquired through careful observations and
controlled experiments. Ex: Copernicus (Poland), Galileo
(Italy), Descartes (France), Newton (England) = Scientific
Revolution.
• Altered ideas about the place of humankind within the
cosmos and challenged the teachings and the authority of
the Church.
• Tecnological innovations of the Industrial Revolution
fostered both marvels of modern production and horrors
of modern means of destruction.

15. QUESTION OF ORIGINS: WHY
EUROPE?
• Why did the Scientific Revolution occur first in Europe?
• 12th and 13th centuries, Europeans had evolved a legal
system that guaranteed a measure of independence for a
variety of institutions- Church, towns, cities, guilds,
associations and UNIVERSITIES.
• 1215 University of Paris grant licence to “teach”, Oxford,
Cambridge and Salamanca became neutral zones of
intellectual autonomy. Major Scientific Revolution had been
trained with these universities.
• VS the Islam world – science was patronized by variety of local
authorities. Quranic Studies and religious law held the central
place. Quran held all wisdom and scientific thinking for them.
• China – focused on preparing for a rigidly set of civil service
examination and emphasized the moral texts of Confucianism.
Behaviour to authority.

16. SCIENCE AS CULTURAL REVOLUTION
• Scientific Revolution was revolutionary because it
fundamentally challenged this understanding of the
universe.
• Nicolas Copernicus – earth was no longer unique
• Kepler – Planets followed orbits
• Galileo – Telescope
• Isaac Newton – culmination of the Scientific Revolution
came with his work: laws of motion and mechanics,
gravity.

17. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION THINKERS

18. SCIENCE AND ENLIGHTENMENT
• Adam Smith (1723-1790) formulated laws that accounted for
the economy.
• People started to believe in the term Enlightenment. – if human
reason could descover how the universe moved, surely we
could discover ways to govern effectively.
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) “Encourage to use your own
understanding!” – knowledge to transform society.
• Enlightenment thinking was directed against the superstition,
ignorance and corruption of established religion.
• People became also pantheists, who believed that God and
Nature were identical. “Natural Religion”.
• Encyclopedias were printed, people started reading, thinking
and sharing their ideas.

19. LOOKING AHEAD: NINETEENTH
CENTURY
• Modern science was a cumulative and self critical enterprise,
which led to new domains of human inquiry.
• Charles Darwin (1808-1882) laid complez argument that all life
was in constant change, struggle for survival. (The Origins of
Species (1859).
• Karl Marx (1818-1883) articulated a view on human history that
emphasized on struggle, Conflicting social classes, slave
owners and nobles, capitalits and workers. = historical
transformation.
• Darwin and Marx believed strongly in progress, and education
was a motor for progress.
• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) applied scientific techniques to
operation of the human mind and emotions. Sexuality and
aggression derived from civilization.

20. EUROPEAN SCIENCE BEYOND THE
WEST
• European science had substantial impact on a number of
Chinese scholars. Kaozheng thinkers interested in
mathematics. – Chinese scholars assimilated ideas with their
own terms (confucianism).
• Japan closed their country for West, when Dutch was permitted
to trade (west books were imported) Japanese leaerned about
medicine, astronomy, geography.
• Until the mid 19th century Japan was fully opened to Western
penetration of European Science.
• Like China, Japan, the Ottoman Empire in the 16th & 17th
centuries, were independent, powerful and successful
societies. The elites saw no need to embrace European
thinking. Ottoman scholars were conscious o the rich tradition
of Muslim astronomy. Focused on making maps and calendars.

21. CULTURAL BORROWING AND ITS
HAZARDS
• Ideas are important in human history, they shape the mental or
cultural worlds that people everywhere inhabit, often influence
the behaviour as well.
• Western Hemisphere solidly incorporated into Christendom.
• Wahhabi version of Islam remains official faith of Saudi Arabia
in the 20th century and has influenced many contemporary
Islamic revival movements.
• Cultural borrowing of Christianity into Native American peoples,
Siberians, Filipinos.
• Asian and Africa borrowerd, scientific and medical ideas from
the Islamic world.
• Many people accepted Christianity and Islam but not
monotheism.
• Elite Chinese more interested in mapmaking and maths.
• Japanese fascinated with anatomical work of dutch.

22. CONSEQUENCES CULTURE
BORROWING
• Borrowing culture frequently caused conflict.
• Taki Onqoy movement in Peru VS Spanish
• Chinese and Japanese VS European missionaries.
• To ease tensions, there were efforts to “domesticate”
foreign ideas and practices. Jesuits in China tried to point
out similarities between Christian and Confucianism.
Native Americans identified Christian saints with their own
gods and spirits.
• The pace of global corrowing and its associated tensions
stepped up even more as Europes modern transformation
unfolded in the 19th centuries.