488 – The Year 1100

British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 488. This show is ad free. support. And as a way of thanking members for keeping the show independent, I offer members only content, including extra Transcripts By signing up for the first time. For about the price of a latte per month. Manhir and Jade for signing up already.

We did it. It's the year 1100. And that means it's time for us to take a moment and place our story in the broader context of global human history. Now, as always, this won't be exhaustive, nor ultra detailed. Our only intent here is to break the myopia that's inherent in any history podcast and give you a little bit of a broader view. We do British history here, but there are stories playing out that are just as complex, inspiring, disappointing, and meaningful all over the globe.

And in the year 1100, humanity is entering a very interesting period of our history. I mean, we're about a century before Magna Carta. We're about two hundred and fifty years before Black Death, we're just under four hundred years before Columbus stumbles into the Caribbean, and just over four hundred years before Martin Luther is all Hey guys, is it just me or is this starting to feel less like a religion and more like a get rich quick scheme?

So our story, which has been really interesting and really unstable, is only gonna get crazier from here.

And the pace of change has already been picking up. I mean, if you think about it, a lot has changed for our little island since our last check-in in the year 1000. First of all, the population of England, and honestly populations throughout most of Europe, were growing steadily, and it was now starting to show. Some estimates suggest that the population was on a trajectory to double in size very soon. And that's hard to know for sure, but it is clear by now that numbers were growing rapidly.

And that growth would only continue throughout this new century. And this was due to a lot of factors. But the steady adoption of the heavy plow, the horse collar, and the three-field rotation. along with the associated boom in agricultural output, was certainly playing a major role. So, right off the bat, imagine more people. Though that doesn't mean that medieval England was crowded. England of 1100 had around 2 million people in it.

For comparison, in twenty twenty five, London alone has around nine million people, and England is currently home to around fifty eight or fifty nine million. So the island was sparsely populated compared to the way we live today. But for the people of 1100, they would have been starting to notice that there were more people around than there were when they were kids.

Though longer lines of the market was probably the least of the changes that England was going through over the last hundred years. After all, in that time, it had been conquered by a new dynasty. And I know the word dynasty is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, since dynasty implies a common purpose and a degree of working together. And these guys, they're not all that big on that.

And it's not exactly gonna get better. I mean, as the twelfth century begins, King Rufus had just died in mysterious circumstances. and new King Henry, who was present at said mysterious death, had seized the throne through threat of violence, and then he'd married new Queen Matilda, who might be Henry's solution to his legitimacy crisis,

But Duke Robert Kurthose and his army were on the way, and they very much wanted Henry off the throne. So things are getting a little intense, and that's just the internal issue. There's also King Edgar of Scotland, who had recently prevailed against his uncle, King Donald III, by deposing him and then blinding him. And while King Edgar did seem friendly enough with King Rufus,

mostly because Rufus provided help in defeating Edgar's uncle. Well, the trouble there was that Edgar was friends with Rufus. Not Henry. So if I were Henry, I'd be viewing my relationship with Scotland as an open question. And as for relationships with whales Well, they were very much a settled question, because Wales was um not exactly fond of the House of Normandy. And despite Rufus' many attempts to occupy and conquer it, Wales remains free.

So Henry didn't just seize a kingdom, he also acquired some new enemies. And that is on top of the enemies who were already in England, because the last two monarchs of this house had been incredibly unpopular tyrants as far as a lot of the general public was concerned. And as for the nobility, well, reviews were mixed, and there were plenty of powerful people who likely would have preferred someone else on the throne.

But England isn't all just politics and interpersonal messy drama. For example, while we don't know exactly when Oxford University was founded, There is evidence that education, in one form or another, was already taking place at that site since at least 1096. And we do know that universities were already being established in Europe, with the University of Bologna being founded in 1088.

So universities were already present and were beginning to expand. So even in the cultural and political nightmare that was chivalric society, thought and education were still developing. And that's nice.

Now, across the Channel in France, we can also see the same development of education taking place, as Paris will also soon have its own university. The Cistercians were also beginning to make their mark, and this reform movement, started just before the turn of the century, were basically like Benedictines dialed up to 11. They go super hard on simplicity. So, like, no more fancy decorations and that kind of stuff. And instead, they were really big on doing good work.

These guys were heavily focused on things like labor, construction, education, technology, and is partially thanks to their influence that the next era will bring technological improvements in areas that are related to daily life. Like farming. Their abbeys will also begin to dot the landscape, and their tradition is going to gradually supplant Cluny as the major monastic movement in the West.

And as they do so, their simple unadorned cruciform abbeys will become an unmistakable feature on the landscape. And that is actually not the only change to architecture that's happening. Another trend is just around the corner, and this one is decidedly less rustic. You see, most of the major buildings of France, and Europe in general, were still very Romanesque. However, it's in the 12th century where we begin to see the French transition away from those fortress-like buildings.

and towards the airy gothic style of architecture that we tend to associate with medieval life. Though, while the French are stepping forward as architectural style icons, Politically, they're not doing great. And a huge part of that was because King Philip I was still on the throne. And if you recall, Philip was the king who got excommunicated because he abandoned his wife, accusing her of being too fat, which was rich because old Phil couldn't even get on a horse.

And then he shacked up with a new wife who was twenty years younger. A wife who was actually already married to Count Falc of Anjou. And it's these kind of savvy political moves that led Philip, who had been on the throne for forty years at this point, to leave a legacy that was marked by rebellion and disorder.

Though I'm not entirely sure if he even noticed, because apparently Philip was so preoccupied with his new wife that he stopped paying attention to politics altogether, and even gave up taking care of himself. Which I'm sure his new wife loved. Consequently, the extent of Philip's authority these days was pretty much the Ile de France and vibes.

which wasn't great for his dynasty, because it was weakening the French crown's grip on the region, though it didn't seem like Philip seemed to care, All the while, just next door, the Normans were moving towards a more centralized and robust form of monarchy, and that trend is going to accelerate rapidly under King Henry.

But speaking of weakened monarchs, Emperor Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire was in a hell of a tight spot. You see, at this point, he had been reigning as king for roughly four and a half decades, and he had held the title of Holy Roman Emperor for 16 years. But those had not been easy years. If you recall, Emperor Henry was at the center of the investiture controversy and the papal schism.

In fact, it was Emperor Henry who said that Huebert, his ally, who he had invested as the Bishop of Ravenna, was now actually the real Pope, and he became known as Pope Clement III. Now, this kicked off what can only be described as General Mayhem, and the conflicts have been ongoing ever since. I suspect that Emperor Henry was feeling fairly good in 1099. You see, the first crusade had been taking way longer than expected, and it was starting to look like an absolute debacle.

and major figures of Europe were coming into direct conflict with his rival, Pope Urban the Second. And then, in July, Pope Urban the Second died. Which meant that Clement had outlived multiple rival popes, and maybe Henry and Clement's cause would win out in the end. But then, against all odds. The Crusaders actually took Jerusalem on that same month, and that gave the new rival pope, Pope Pascal II, who was also of the anti imperial line, an enormous amount of gravitas and momentum.

And then, in September of eleven hundred, Pope Clement died. And while they quickly elected a replacement, which was wise because, you know, schism, this guy's name was Theodoric, Well, Pope Pascal's followers kidnapped him, put him on trial, and had him sentenced to live out the rest of his what would turn out to be short-ass life as a monk. So Emperor Henry's cause, which he had been fighting since the days of Pope Gregory, was collapsing and fast.

And this, by the way, is also why Anselm had so much swagger when he met with King Henry of England. Because investiture was at the center of this quarter century of conflict, and his side was beginning to look like the clear victor. But speaking of that swagger.

It's hard to overstate the impact that the fall of Jerusalem had upon the entire region. Emperor Alexios, and Constantinople in general, must have been staring at the entire situation in shock. What had begun as a request for support in their conflict against the Seljuk Turk had somehow turned into the cultural ascendancy of the Western Franks and the establishment of crusader states.

Which were ruled over, at least from the Byzantine perspective, by less of an army of God and more of an oath breaking violent mob that had betrayed their own fellow Christians to seize power and land for themselves. And while I'm guessing that Alexios was happy that they kept Constantinople, well these days he was gonna have to find out a way to deal with both the Seljuk Turks. And now also the frickin' Normans who had entrenched themselves in his backyard.

And this, by the way, was a problem that the Italians were also all too aware of, as by ten ninety-one, the Normans had effectively finished taking Sicily and even had hit Malta. and they were already deeply entrenched across southern Italy. So basically, we've got Normans all over the place living in lands that they have recently seen. But getting back to those crusading Normans, now that the first crusade was complete, they decided to create a brand new kingdom. Sort of.

It was called the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but while Godfrey was ruling over it, he didn't style himself as a king. Which makes the whole kingdom thing a bit confusing. But it turns out that was a short-term problem, because Godfrey, the not king of Jerusalem, would be dead within a year. Now, Christian sources say that this was because he got sick. But Ibn al-Kalanisi tells us he attacked Akir and was killed by an arrow.

Either way, in 1100, the brand new one year old kingdom of Jerusalem was already on to its second king. Godfrey's brother, who actually wasn't all that squeamish about titles, so he became King Baldwin I, who was already eyeing his own attack upon Acker. Which might seem like a crazy thing to do, since those crusader states were small and brittle. But actually, the Crusaders had stumbled upon some absolutely incredible luck.

You see, while the Crusaders were probably not all that aware of the political situation in the East, the fact was the Islamic world was going through a series of upheavals. and was therefore militarily and politically fragmented. The Abbasid Caliphate, which had been the dominant force in the region, had fragmented, and its political power had collapsed. While it still technically existed, these days it was mostly just a symbolic cultural force rather than a true political force.

real power in the region was now mostly in the hands of the Seljuk Turks and the Fatimid Caliphate. And those two powers, oof, they did not get along. Culturally, they came from very different backgrounds. And while they were both Muslim governments, they were from rival sects. With the Seljuks being Sunni and the Fatimids being Shia.

So basically, they had all kinds of reasons to want to rumble, and they have been doing it for quite some time, with the two powers taking advantage of any opportunity to get one over on the other. For example, when a Fatimid Allied commander launched an uprising in Abbasid controlled Baghdad, the Seljuks quickly came in and helped put it down, and then they decided to entrench themselves in Baghdad instead.

But, in spite of their obvious power, the Seljuks were in deep trouble because they were embroiled in a civil war that had begun just a few years before the launch of the First Crusade. Which is just crazy timing. And despite the fact that the Crusaders were out there causing all kinds of problems. There were still no end of Seljuk Nepo babies insisting that actually they were the one true Sultan, and anyone who disagreed needed to die. And this factionalism and chaos.

along with the sudden appearance of crusaders in the west, allowed the Fatimid Caliphate, who were based in Cairo, to surge north into Jerusalem and take it from the Seljuks in ten ninety eight. Now this was a huge accomplishment for the Fatimids in a time where they really needed one, because their caliphate wasn't exactly doing great these days either. Like the Seljuks, their civilization was also racked with years of civil war. But hey, they just got Jerusalem, so things were looking up.

Until the Crusaders showed up and seized Jerusalem from the Fatimids on the following year. Absolutely terrible timing. And things for them are only gonna get worse from here on out. They've got underage rulers, assassinations, further civil wars, and more crusades all on the horizon, putting them in just as bad of a situation as the Selja. And while the Fatimid Caliphate and the Seljuk Empire don't know it yet, this is their last appearance in these global check ins.

See what I mean about how this regional chaos was just extraordinarily lucky for the Crusaders? But while we know where this is all going, and while the crusaders saw the success of the First Crusade as a deliverance from God and proof that the French were now the main characters in this new biblical era.

For the rival powers in Cairo and Baghdad These crusaders were just yet another group of warlords squatting in a fractured land that was already up to its eyeballs with people who were doing that exact same thing. The only difference here was that they followed a different religion, and they got hilariously sunburned whenever they went outside.

So that's the Middle East. Over in Iberia and the Maghreb, you've got the Almoravids, which was initially an Islamic reform movement, but in the process, they united the Berbers and turned into an empire. And right now, they're holding Morocco and Algeria, and they'd recently crossed into Spain and fought a huge battle that basically forced the Christian forces to halt all southern expansion.

This was such a bloody fight that the battlefield was later renamed to Azalaka, meaning the slippery ground. So by 1100, the Mediterranean was basically knee-deep in religious reform movements and schismatic conflicts, both among the Christians, with the investiture controversy and the anti-pope. and among the Muslims, with the Almoravids, Seljuks, and Fatimids. Essentially, everyone was glaring across the sea at everyone else.

From the Almoravids, we can look further south and reach Africa. And let's begin with the once powerful Waggadoo Empire of Ghana. This empire was built primarily upon the wealth accumulated from their trade in gold and salt.

Now, as always, other goods would have gone back and forth across these routes, but gold was the big one. And thanks to their trade route, Some of that gold would eventually make it all the way up to Europe, which means that the gold used for things like ecclesiastical plates and decorations in French and English churches. may have begun its journey in far off Waggadoo. Now, as we reach 1100, we have some genuine questions about what was happening with the Waggadoo Empire.

Details are fuzzy, and modern scholars aren't sure how much of the traditional story is a fabrication. For example, there's a genuine debate as to whether or not they were conquered by the Almoravids just over 20 years ago, or whether the Almoravids just sacked a few of their key towns. Either way, though, the Empire was in a period of slow decline, and was also converting to Islam, likely in response to Almoravid pressure. Now there were Christians in Africa as well.

For example, Nubia and the Ethiopian highlands were still Christian and were hanging on, though at the same time, they also were under quite a lot of pressure from both regional nomads and also the Fatimids. The massive Trans-Saharan trading empire of Kanem Bornu, on the other hand, whose wealth was built upon salt and slave trading, was also in the process of converting to Islam.

And this actually made life for them kind of difficult, as Islam forbids enslaving Muslims, and their entire economy was built upon the slave trade. So, the traders of Kanem Bornu put renewed focus on raiding non-Muslim neighbors in order to support this need for new slaves to sell. Now, these trading networks made the Canem Empire fantastically wealthy, and they also had access to an incredible variety of knowledge and goods, which enabled their empire to grow substantially.

So, from the point of view of caravan merchants moving between Niger, Lake Chad, and the Mediterranean, the year 1100 is high season. Gold, salt, slaves, and ideas are moving across the Sahara in both directions. On the eastern side of the African continent, along the Swahili coast, trade was also bustling. Their coastal cities tied together a massive trade network that reached all the way to India.

Further inland, Great Zimbabwe emerges as a major urban trading center, with infrastructure built in stone. If we continue going east along these trade networks, we reach the Turkic Ghaznavid Empire. which stretched across modern day northern India and Afghanistan. and at this point the Empire was beginning its slow decline. Now to be clear, they were still very much a force to be reckoned with in eleven hundred.

But the Gurids, who were vassals of the Ghaznavids, were rising in power, and they would soon demand independence. And then a whole lot more. Beyond them on the steps. Well, look, I don't have a ton to say about it right now, but in about 60 or so years, a boy named Temujin is going to be born. And when he takes power, he's gonna change everything. Even his name. Which is why you know him as Chengis Khan. And his empire is only about a hundred years away.

In southern India, the Chola dynasty is continuing its rule, and is an incredibly powerful maritime force. To put their expertise in context, while the Normans still got nervous crossing the Channel, over in India, Chola fleets were sailing across the fricking Bay of Bengal like it ain't no thing. Chola dominance formed the backbone of trade networks that had pepper, textiles, and other Indian goods flowing west into the Persian Gulf, up into the Islamic world, and finally into Europe.

Further east, we see the Khmer Empire, which is currently in its golden age, and in the next couple decades, they'll begin constructing Angor Wa. And if you're not familiar with that site, by the way, pause this episode and go look it up. It's absolutely incredible. Though chances are you've already heard about Angkor What before, and you've probably also heard it referred to as Ancient.

Because people do that all the time and it drives Z and I absolutely bananas. Because it implies that the complex is contemporary with the pyramids or something. When in actual fact, It's younger than the Tower of London and roughly the same age as Notre Dame. So, now you know.

Anyway, if we look further north, we'll find China, which was currently under the Song dynasty. And Song China in 1100 is mind-blowing. It looks like a vision of the future. They've got a population well over 100 million at this point, and many of them are living in highly urban cities that look downright modern.

For example, estimates of the total population of Kaifeng during this period are into the hundreds of thousands, and some estimates reach as high as a million people living in the city and the surrounding area. And even the common estimate of 400,000 people indicates that Kaifeng was likely more than 20 times the size of London during this same time. which was estimated to have held only around fifteen to twenty thousand people.

Now, a population of that size requires a lot of food, and Song China's secret weapon for that was champa rice, which allowed for two harvests every year. Though you can't just have food. That many people also requires a lot of bureaucracy. And boy, did Song China ever excel at doing that. Unlike the Normans, civil service in Song China was dominated by people who prized knowledge and acumen, rather than their ability to whack other people while riding on a horse.

And so statecraft and diplomacy flourished, which, naturally, also required a lot of writing. And Song China had a solution for that as well. They dramatically expanded the use of wood block printing. And actually, printing in general expanded, thanks in large part to a man named Bi Shang. Back in the 1040s, he discovered that he could dramatically speed up the printing process by using movable type made out of baked clay.

That's right. China had movable type centuries before the Gutenberg press. And while it didn't fully replace the traditional wood blocks yet, the technology was there and was being used. So, while the West was relying on hand copied manuscripts, the Chinese were able to quickly and cheaply reproduce the printed word and even dual colored images by using their wood block printing method.

This greatly expanded the accessibility of the written word. And while woodblock printing had been in China for hundreds of years and was mostly used for religious writing. In Song China, printing expanded into broader life, including art and literature. Similarly, while Britain was still dealing with minted coins as currency, parts of China had already started using paper money.

They even had a friggin' water-driven astronomical clock tower. Yeah, a guy named Sue Song figured that one out, and frankly, his diagram of it looks like something that you'd see in that old video game, myth. And beyond awesome hydropowered clocks, they're also working with gunpowder, both in fireworks and some weapons, though I feel like that one is something that most people know. But how about this? Did you know they also had the compass?

Navigators in the West were still using the stars and other methods to find their way, but the Chinese had begun using compasses since the 11th century. And Europe won't have the first indication of a similar adoption until the tail end of the 12th century, when Alexander Neckham writes basically, Oh my god, you guys, you would not believe what you could do with a needle. So in the China of 1100, bureaucrats were getting paid in paper money, reading printed books.

They knew more about magnets than the insane clown posse, and were occasionally even setting things on fire with gunpowder while living in cities that were roughly the size of modern-day New Orleans. How crazy is that? The downside, however, was that the Song state often struggled to keep up militarily, especially against its northern neighbors. which will lead to the rise of the Jin dynasty in only a couple of decades.

Looking farther east will bring us to Japan, which at this point is in the late Heian period. The Fujiwara regents are slowly losing their grip, and just like in French-dominated Europe, real institutional power is shifting towards a warrior class. Though in their case, it's not nice. It's samurai. And this would have a dramatic impact on the direction of Japanese history. And at eleven hundred, we're only about a lifetime away of the Genpei War, which would result in the first shogunate.

If you go even further east, that's gonna bring you to places like Hawaii and Rapanui. And exact dates for settlements of these far-off Pacific Islands are hotly debated. But sometime between now and the 1200s, scholars will absolutely fight you in the parking lot over specific. Polynesian navigators will either be in the early stages of settling Hawaii or will be hitting them with larger, more permanent settlement waves.

Again, depending on which site you're looking at and which archaeologist you ask. The settlement of Rapanui then will follow closely behind. And this is one of those things that still blows my mind. I have no idea how they found Hawaii or Rapanui in their double-holed canoe. Hell, even if I had a mega yacht with full GPS and all the other bells and whistles, I'm pretty sure I'd have to call the Coast Guard to come save me in just about three hours. Just absolutely wild.

But back to the Pacific, if we look further south, we'll find Aboriginal Australia. And while we don't have easy stories of kingdoms and warlords like we do with much of the rest of the world, we do know that the Aborigines mastered complex land management in a hostile biome. They also developed far-reaching trade networks, all while also possessing an extremely deep sense of time and artistic tradition.

Now, ironically, this makes placing their story within the context of her own rundown of Eleven Hundred. A little difficult, as from their perspective, this was probably just another moment in a story that is already tens of thousands of years long.

Meanwhile, across the ocean were the continents that will come to be known as the America. And in what will be modern day Mexico, the Toltec civilization was flourishing, constructing massive cities at sites that can still be visited today. However, they had plenty of enemies, and soon they'll come under attack and, after several battles, eventually be forced to abandon their capital of Tolan, along with many others. And the once great Central American civilization will collapse.

Further north, in Chaco Canyon, the massive Pueblo society that stretched across the southwestern part of the U.S., known for its great houses and extensive road networks, was flourishing. Though they probably didn't know it, but they were within one generation of Chaco beginning its collapse, likely triggered by a 50-year drought. Across the plains and the banks of the Mississippi, we're at the Big Bang period of the Cahokia Mound City.

Now, unfortunately, we don't know its original name. The name we use comes from the Native American tribe that was living there when European explorers arrived. But whatever its name originally was, the Cahokia Mound City was the largest city of the Mississippian culture and is the largest pre-Columbian archaeological site north of Mexico.

This was a metropolis, and it was the same size as London during the same period, with between 10 and 20,000 people living there. And it was absolutely thriving at this point in our story.

And so, as always, while we tell the story of Britain here, always remember that it's only one story, not the only story. And as we watch Henry and Matilda get married at Westminster in November of 1100, you're not watching the center of the world. We are taking a peek into one court in one corner of a planet. that is already thick with empires, reform movements, trade routes, and technologies, some of which England won't even hear about for centuries.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can reach me at the British History Podcast at gmail.com. You can join our subreddit. a link to that site and all the others in the community section. Podcast.com.