Gunpowder and the Decline of the Steppes Nomads

 

Episode 34: Legacy of the Steppes

Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)

Dr Kenneth Harl

Film Review

By 1500, the steppes nomads had ceased to play the strong historical role (as a military power and means to wealth creation and cultural exchange) they had played for 6,000 years.

In this final lecture, Harl credits their loss of power to the military revolution in Europe leading to hand held weapons and naval vessels fitted with heavy artillery. Ironically both these developments were made possibly by the Mongol Peace allowing the spread of Chinese black gunpowder to Europe.* Nomad horse archers were virtually powerless against firearms.

By 1500. the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran, Russia and the Mughal Empire were encroaching on the steppes, restricting nomad movement and exacting tribute along the Silk Road.

The Silk Road also declined in importance (as did the caravan cities) during the 16th century as European explorers discovered faster and safer sea routes to Europe and the Middle East. Harl explores in detail the Portuguese occupation of both coasts of Africa and India as they dominated the India Ocean. In the 17th century, they would be joined by the Dutch, English and French in their colonization of Africa and Asia.

In summing up the legacy of the steppes nomads, Harl points to the domestication of the horse and the invention of the wheel. Both, he feels, were as important as the agricultural revolution. Not only did the two inventions open up the steppes grasslands to human habitation, but they linked the steppes nomads to the prehistoric sedentary civilizations arising along major Middle East and Asian rivers.

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*Ironically this was one of the few Eastern cultural innovations to make it as far as Europe.

Film can be viewed free with a library card.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5694984/5695059

India’s BJP and the Right Wing Nationalist Government of Narenda Modi

In Search of India’s Soul: From Mughals to Modi Episode 1

Directed by Bruno Rosso (Al Jazeera) 2020

Film Review

In this documentary series, writer and journalist Aatish Taseer returns to his country of birth, to investigate increasing vigilante violence by Hindus against Indian Muslims.

India’s current 1.25 billion population breaks down into 1 billion Hindus, 200 million Muslims and 50 million members of other faiths (mainly Sikh, Buddhist and Christian). When India obtained independence from Britain in 1947, it was divided into Pakistan, which adopted Islam as its official religion, and India, remained a secular state. Many Muslims born in British-occupied India emigrated to Pakistan. However many remained.The last three decades has seen the rise of Hindu nationalism, which helped bring right wing Hindu nationalist party BJP and Narenda Modi to power in 2014. Many analysts believe Modi is deliberately stoking anti-Muslim sentiment, just as Trump stoked anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiment to win votes in the US.

In Part 1, Taseer mainly investigates the vigilante attacks by Hindu nationalists against Muslim cow herdsmen and traders (at present cattle is a big export for India, even though cows are sacred in the Hindu religion). Although numerous Muslims have been killed in the attacks, no perpetrators have been convicted as yet.  When the Congress party recently replaced the BJP in the state of Rajasthan, the new government passed an anti-lynching law and launched an appeal against the acquittal of six Hindu nationalists in a high-profile murder case.

At least half of the film is devoted to Taseer’s efforts to understand the intensity of the anger Hindus feel towards Muslims they have lived alongside for 500 years. Most of the Hindus he interviews blame historical atrocities by Emperor Barbur, founder of the Mughal Empire. He and the sixth Mughul emperor Aurangzeb destroyed many Hindu temples to force Hindus to convert to Islam.

An Indian psychiatrist Taseer interviews a psychiatrist who points out that India was under continuous occupation (first by Mughal and then by the British) between 1526 and 1947.  He blames the ongoing racial hatred on intergenerational trauma stemming from colonization.