Question

1. What is global and world history according to Bruce Mazlish? (Comparing global history to world history- article discussed first class) 2. What were some of the Machiavelli's ideas on how should a Prince rule? (scanned excerpt discussed in class) Why were his ideas historically and politically significant? 3. What is the devshirme system, what is timar? How were they utilized as tools of the Ottoman Empire?

Answer 1

1. As per Bruce Mazlish, the world history and global history are two different subjects, Global history is the one that has into come into existence after the 1960s, and is widely used with respect to the new world that is created due to the interconnected world that is created after globalization, modern technology has made the world a small global village, where people get connected to each other within minutes, and the effects of these interconnection has given rise to Global history, it provides a larger spectrum for analyzing, historical entity phenomenon or process,

The world history is at large not interconnected it is a history of past, that focuses on the social, cultural civilization of that place, and comparing the civilization of the past, it has not stretched to the present day history. It gives information about the ancient history from Stone Age to the present day, throws lights on the civilization of the particular place like; China has different civilization then France. World history basically is of different places, and country. We can compare and get to know how the people were living at that time, how much advance they were, what were the rituals, religion, and languages they were following. How they developed and survived.

2. The prince by Machiavellis is a handbook he has written dedicating to win the fa.vor of Lorenzo de' Medici who was the governor of Florence, as  Machiavellis wanted to return to the politics, he wanted to land an advisory position in the Florence government. It includes 26 chapters, as per Machiavelli's idea of a leader, the leader is one who makes a difficult decision for his subjects, it is not his responsibility that whether he is loved or not loved by the subjects, but he has to be feared and respected by the subjects, it does not imply that to make people fear and respect the leader he has to be cruel to them.

According to him, the states are divided into the republic, hereditary princedoms, brand new princedoms, and mixed principalities. The prince who rises to power on his merit is the true ruler as relying on friends and, army and good luck it is easy to conquer a state but it is very difficult to maintain that state in the hold, to be successful price he has to be wicked or sometimes cruel for the benefit of the subject is justifies. To be a successful leader he has to be generous in the right place and for the right purpose, a successful leader is one who put the foundation of his state on a strong pillar. He has to be fearless and brave to rule the subject.

His ideas are historically and politically justified as we see in the present scenario also the ruler or head of the state have to take difficult decisions for the benefit of the subject sometimes it is liked by people or sometimes rejected. Unless the ruler is strong and has a strong foundation can be overthrown by the public, the law of rule is changed, now no more monarchy or king is there, in its true sense the head of the states are selected by the people by voting, and if the ruler is unjust there can be unrest in that state.

3. Devshirme was the practice by the Ottoman Empire of lifting the boys between the age of 8 to 18 from their families in Eastern and Southeastern Europe mostly Christian boys and were converted to Islam and taken as slaves to serve the Sultan, these slaves were very loyal to the court and they owed their absolute loyalty to the court and are very vital to maintain the Sultan in power, The Ottoman (Turkish) they were very united and kept the knew how to keep the people together.

Timar is like a reward given by the Sultan to an individual for his services in the form of lands or revenues, according to their belief all lands belongs to God, but as the Sultan is Gods representative on earth, automatically the lands becomes of Sultan and, to keep his people happy he presents them as revenue or land in lieu of their loyalty. As the  Ottoman Empire was a vast empire and they used Timar as their tool to keep their military power organized, and strong.