500ish to 1500
In this era the various regions of Eurasia and Africa became more firmly interconnected than at any time in history. The sailing ships that crossed the wide sea basins of the Eastern Hemisphere carried a greater volume and variety of goods than ever before. In fact, the chain of seas extending across the hemisphere came to form a single interlocking network of maritime trade. In the same centuries caravan traffic crossed the Inner Asian steppes and the Sahara Desert more frequently. As trade and travel intensified so did cultural exchanges and encounters, presenting local societies with a profusion of new opportunities and dangers. By the end of this era, the Eastern Hemisphere constituted a single zone of intercommunication possessing a unified history of its own.(NCHS)
Our global view presents three areas of focus for this time:
The Emergence of Europe. After the fall of Rome, Europe experienced remarkable growth. Western and Central Europe emerged as a new center of Christian civilization, expanding in agricultural production, population, commerce, and military might. Powerful European states presented a new challenge to the civilizations in the Mediterranean world. At the same time Europe was drawn more tightly into the commercial economy and cultural interchange of the hemisphere. (NCHS)
The Resurgence of the Orient. At the opposite side of the hemisphere, the Orient, especially China, experienced a burst of technological innovation, commercialization, and urbanization, emerging as the largest economy in the world. The prosperity and success of China drew the attention of Europe, linking the two regions across the hemisphere. (NCHS)
The Mongol Dominance. The second half of the era saw extraordinary developments in interregional history. The Mongols under Chinggis Khan created the largest land empire the world had ever seen. Operating from Poland to Korea and Siberia to Indonesia, the Mongol warlords intruded in one way or another on the lives of almost all peoples of Eurasia. The conquests were terrifying, but the stabilizing of Mongol rule led to a century of fertile commercial and cultural interchange across the continent. Eurasian unification, however, had a disastrous consequence in the 14th century--the Black Death and its attendant social impact on the two continents. (NCHS)