FREE ESSAY ON MIDDLE AGES

MIDDLE AGES

The Christian Crusades Positively Impacted the East and the West
Even though countless numbers of people died during the Christian Crusades, there were
many positive effects for both the East and the West. After the Crusades halted, various
trade routes opened up between Eastern and Western cities. Also, the Muslims developed
new military strategies and techniques during the fights with the Europeans, and they
united themselves against one cause, producing a stronger religious nation (Encyclop?dia
Britannica, 1993). Numerous effects of the Christian Crusades in the Middle East had a
positive outcome. 
In John Child's book, The Crusades, he quotes J. Kerr as claiming that the most obvious
result of the crusades was a growth in trade with the east. According to a 1996 AP
article printed in the Jerusalem Post, the English word sugar comes from the Arabic
sukkar, and scallion comes from Ascalon, a Philistine city. Trade extended from England
to the Black Sea, going through the ports of Beirut, Acre and Alexandria. After the loss
of Acre in 1291, Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete were the three Mediterranean islands that
composed some of the main crusader trading centers. From these three islands it was
possible to control goods' ships traveling to and from the Middle East (Child, 1994). 
These trade routes generated a beneficial contact between the cultures of East and West.
Many merchants from the cities of Venice and Genoa settled in Cyprus and Crete. From the
Muslims these merchants bought spices, sugar, cloth and cotton. Other merchants from
Sicily and Aragorn traded for Tunisian gold, and Algerian wool and animal skins. Popular
goods traded from the Middle East were sugar, melons, cotton, ultramarine dye and damask
cloth. Although the Pope tried to stop merchants from trading with the Muslims, he had to
repeal his embargo in 1344. Though most of the traded goods came from the Middle East,
the combined efforts from both East and West brought about many inventions, such as
windmills, compasses, gunpowder and clocks. 
Figure 1
This trade between East and West caused prosperity among the people. Child states in his
book that the merchants made a lot of money out of the trade with the Muslim people.
After the Crusades had terminated, these merchants were able to prosper from trade
between Europe and the Middle East. Outlined in Figure 1 are some trade routes utilized
after the Crusades. 
During the Crusades, the Muslims used weaponry that the Franks were not familiar with.
The battles during the Crusades led to the spread of siege engines, such as the mangonel,
and the Franks learned how to employ fire as a missile. The Franks also learned new
methods of creating fortifications. The use of armorial bearings may have originated in
the Orient, and it is hypothesized that the Europeans learned many new ideas from looking
at Arab armor (Encyclop?dia Britannica, 1993). European soldiers learned to protect
themselves from the heat by imitating Muslim soldiers. The troops covered their heads and
shoulders, and they wore light, loose clothing over their armor (MacDonald, 1993). This
sharing of military machinery brought about positive effects for the people involved. 
In Europe and the Middle East, scholarly developments came along with the trade and
military developments. After the Crusades, the use of northern European pointed arches
became popular with Muslim architects (MacDonald, 1993). Muslim doctors still retained
some of the Greek's knowledge of human anatomy; much of the information had been lost to
the Europeans (Child, 1994). Many twelfth century European scientists voyaged to Arabian
countries to study different methods and new ideas. Leonardo Fibonnaci, the first
Christian algebraist, traveled to Syria and to Egypt to study with mathematicians there.
Also, studies of language were initiated by many missionaries. In 1311, Raimon Lull, a
missionary in the Orient, introduced six schools in Europe designed for the specific
study of Oriental languages (Encyclop?dia Britannica, 1993). 
Literature appeared after the Crusades in great abundance. Some examples are Nathan der
Weise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Carmen Ambrosii and Chanson d'Antioche (Riley-Smith,
1995). The Crusades also brought new light upon old matters. Many old tales were redone
with the spirit of crusading infused in them. The contact that occurred during the
Crusades had many positive effects, and the fine literature produced was just one of them
(Encyclop?dia Britannica, 1993). 
From the Arabs, the Europeans obtained many new ideas and possessions. Merchants traded
food stuffs and goods like sugar, maize, lemons, melons, cotton, muslin and damask
between themselves. The colors azure and gules came from the Arabian people, and the
Europeans added many Arabian words to the language of English (Encyclop?dia Britannica,
1993). The Europeans worked with the Arabs on many scientific accomplishments, such as
the windmill, the compass, gunpowder and clocks. The East and West combined their
greatest minds and worked on science and mathematics (Child, 1994). Together, the Muslims
and Christians helped each other, and, together, they benefited from the contact that
occurred during the Crusades. 
Bibliography 
science
The emergence of systems thinking was a profound revolution in the history of Western
scientific thought . The belief that in every complex system the behavior of the whole
can be understood entirely from the properties of its parts is central to the Cartesian
paradigm. This was Descartes's celebrated method of analytic thinking, which has been an
essential characteristic of modern scientific thought. In the analytic, or reductionist,
approach, the parts themselves cannot be analyzed any further, except by reducing them to
still smaller parts . Indeed, Western science has been progressing in that way, and at
each step there has been a level of fundamental constituents that could not be analyzed
any further. 
The great shock of twentieth-century science has been that systems cannot be understood
by analysis. The properties of the parts are not intrinsic properties but can be
understood only within the context of the larger whole. Thus the relationship between the
parts and the whole has been reversed. In the systems approach the properties of the
parts can be understood only from the organization of the whole. Accordingly, systems
thinking concentrates not on basic building blocks, but on basic principles of
organization. Systems thinking is contextual, which is the opposite of analytical
thinking. Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems
thinking means putting it into the context of a larger whole.
One gathers, indeed, from our standard histories of the sciences, written mostly in the
last generation, that the world lay steeped in the darkness and night of superstition,
till one day Copernicus bravely cast aside the errors of his fellows, looked at the
heavens and observed nature, the first man since the Greeks to do so, and discovered . .
. the truth about the solar system. The next day, so to speak, Galileo climbed the
leaning Tower of Pisa, dropped down his weights, and as they thudded to the ground,
Aristotle was crushed to earth and the laws of falling bodies sprang into being. [Source:
The Career of Philosophy, vol 1, 1962]
It was the achievement of men like Copernicus and Galileo sift through centuries of
scientific knowledge and to create a new world view. This was a world view based as much
on previous science and knowledge as it was on new developments derived from the
scientific method. 
http://www.pagesz.net/~stevek/intellect/newton.html
http://www.pagesz.net/~stevek/intellect/newton.htmlThe greatest scientific achievement of
the 17th century was clearly the mathematical system of the universe produced by Isaac
Newton (1642-1727). It was Newton who went far beyond Galileo by taking observations of
the heavens and turning them into measured and irrefutable fact. Thanks to Newton, the
western intellectual tradition would now include a concrete and scientific explanation of
the motion of the heavens. Because of his greatness, the 17th century could almost be
called the Age of Newton. 
By the 17th century, science, scientific thinking and the experimental method had become
the territory of more men, and by the mid-18th century, increasing numbers of women would
be included as well. 
If I have seen further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
---Isaac Newton
War
Then, in the 300's AD, those people from Inner Asia came once again, this time riding
horses and shooting at the foot soldiers of the Classical Empires with short but powerful
bows. They attacked all of the empires from China to Rome, and succeeded, at least for a
time, in conquering and ruling a sizable portion of each of them. 
The Roman empire was centered on the basins of the eastern and western Mediterranean Sea,
although it had extended its power to include most of continental Europe up to the Rhine
and Danube rivers. Although it had begun as a city-state and a republic, it had become a
empire in about 30 BC and power had been concentrated in the hands of an emperor who,
like the emperors of the other Classical Empires, was considered to be at least
semi-divine if not completely so. When the Roman empire emerged, however, it was missing
one important thing. There was no provision for how power was to pass from a dead ruler
to his successor. Over time, various methods were tried, usually being imposed by
violence of one sort or another. At the same time, the Romans found that they had to
invest a lot of their resources in building fortifications to defend the western portions
of their frontier against various tribes of people, all speaking variations of old German
and so called Germanic barbarians. They were not really barbarians except from the Roman
point of view, but that's how the Romans described them, and the description has more or
less stuck. On their eastern frontier, the Romans found themselves engaged in a long and
costly series of wars with the New Persian Empire, wars which weakened the Romans a great
deal and gained them very little.
In the first place, they were unable to continue the investment necessary to maintain the
unity of the eastern and western halves of the empire, and so divided the empire into two
parts. The western section was far less developed and well-populated than the eastern
portion of the old empire, so it was necessary to increase taxes there. The result of
this was the disappearance of the middle class and the flight of independent farmers to
the protection of their wealthy (and tax-exempt) noble neighbors. The West slowly sank
while the East, freed of the expense of maintaining the West, soon began to flourish. The
old state religion hadn't seemed to work very well in keeping people peaceful and loyal
to the central government, so Constantine, for reasons best known to himself, chose to
make a mystical eastern cult known as Christianity the state religion. It took a long
time for these reforms to take hold, but, by 400, the empire was a far different place
than it had been.
Barbarian Invasions 
The Barbarian Invasions were the Germanic tribes invading the Roman Empire and coincided
with the disintegration of the Roman Empire. The Roman world suffered a series of
disasters, barbarians were only one. Huns, Vandals.. in general there was no resistance,
because the masses knew it was useless. The west fell back again into the elementary
economic life of primitive peoples. The indications are that they were few in number, but
once they invaded a country, they would be joined by the oppressed.
Conclusion
Western Europe was at the end of the great belt of civilizations and was cut off from the
advances those civilizations made in later years. Such things as paper, printing,
gunpowder, the compass, windmills, and many other innovations, reached Europe only after
they had been common for many years in the rest of the civilized world. What is more,
Western Europe was the only portion of a Classical Civilization to fall to barbarian
invaders and not to be recovered. It had to create a new tradition acceptable to the
disparate people who inhabited the region. The Germanic inhabitants had no tradition of
centralized rule and there was no central geographic feature (such as a great river
basin) upon which to base such a centralized rule. Although the ideal of a Roman Empire
of the West remained attractive for a long time, the Europeans began to adapt the
traditions and culture of a Classical Empire to an essentially decentralized and
egalitarian society.