14 Prologue Beginnings
Islamic world was nearly as populous, but stretched
across three continents, ranging from the North
Africa and eastern Europe through Arabia, Persia,
and northern India with outposts in Southeast
Asia. Unlike China, it was divided into many differ-
ent empires.
Clovis Pointsatmyhistorylab.comEurope in Ferment
Christendom, the predominant civilization of
Europe, was less consequential; its total population—
perhaps 70 million—was far less than China or the
Islamic World; its main cities and institutions of learn-
ing were less well-developed. But in 1500, Europe
was in dynamic ferment. During the 1400s, after a
period of severe plagues, Europe’s population had
increased by nearly a third; by 1500, population pres-
sure was acute. When harvests were poor or grain
shipments failed to arrive in towns, hunger riots
destabilized the political order. Genoa, Italy, for
example, was convulsed by fourteen revolutions from
1413 to 1453. Overpopulation was one reason why
Jews, a vulnerable minority, were expelled from Spain
and Portugal in 1492, and from Sicily in 1493.
Scarcity shook many peasants from the land and
drove the urban poor from one city to another.
Christoforo Colombo—or Columbus, as we call
him—was among the restless youths who left home
and took to the sea in search of a better life.
New ideas also unsettled European society.
Movable type, which made the printing of booksView theImageThis depicts a scene of a city on the Yellow River in northern China around 1500. Chinese cities were generally cleaner, with better water
supplies and sewage disposal, than their European counterparts.These Arab and Ottoman scholars, in the late 1500s, are using
astronomical tools to devise a better globe of the world, shown in
the foreground.