HIS33010 Global History before AD 1000

Academic Year 2023/2024

Global history in the first millennium AD is a constantly growing field. As its name suggests, it asks big questions about world history, but it also asks how a global perspective can inform regional histories and vice versa. Typical questions that historians have been asking include: what did the Roman Empire have in common with the Han Dynasty in China? Why did religious change in Europe in the early centuries AD coincide with religious change in Arabia and the Eurasian Steppes? To what extent was the world connected by trade? How far did knowledge travel? And how did contemporaries perceive the world beyond their immediate environment? Global history in the first millennium differs from global history of the pre-modern or modern eras, in that it is free from questions about European colonialisation and influence. Consequently there is less Eurocentrism. The reasons for this are that Europe was not yet recognised as a cultural entity of any coherence and that its kingdoms and empires were not dominant on the world stage. Instead, students of global history in the first millennium tend to spread their attention more evenly across Eurasia and Africa (Australia and the Americas are poorly evidenced in this period) and instead of concentrating exclusively on direct connections they seek more comparative approaches. This module will introduce students to regional histories across the globe and the way in which these regional histories articulate with global events and phenomena. We will compare political systems, the lived experiences of those at the lower rungs of the social ladder, the acquisition and spread of scientific knowledge, people's familiarity with the wider world, and also phenomena that are outside human control, like pandemics and climate change, which impacted on human history. The module will also address the challenges of writing a global history, including where to look for evidence, how to conduct valid comparisons, how to conceptualise periodisation, and how to understand places whose cultures and languages are very different from those with which we are familiar.