Inevitably, Chinese scholarship, industry and commerce tie many points along the “network of global pathways” Hansen ( pictured below) follows here. Plenty of studies have restored China – which accounted for perhaps 100 million of the 250-300 million people alive in 1000 – and its broad sphere of influence to the centre of the pre-modern map.
Lately, as historians have broadened their horizons beyond Europe, so the geopolitical balance has shifted in this kind of panoramic survey. Published at a moment when the pandemic shutdown has thrown shadows of doubt over the future of our planetary connectivity, this book shows in fascinating detail how deeply intertwined the cultures of ten centuries ago had become – and how a pushback against early-medieval internationalism had already started.
But Asian horsemen in relays could cover 300 miles in a day, Viking ships attained speeds of 17 mph, and navigators’ knowledge of fast-moving oceanic currents – the “gyres” – might make long-haul journeys surprisingly speedy. Of course, most people then still lived within the narrow confines of their farmstead, village or town. But Hansen – a professor at Yale University, and previously the author of histories of China and the Silk Road – gathers a wealth of cutting-edge research into a modestly-sized work studded with mind-expanding gems. Not every reader will accept that banner message or the generously stretched definition of “globalisation” that it sometimes presumes. Hence her headline claim that, at this time, “globalisation began”. She maintains that, around the year 1000, new trans-oceanic contacts between peoples ensured that “for the first time an object or a message could have travelled across the entire world”. Her book, however, takes a familiar argument much further. “They lived in a globalised world, pure and simple,” Valerie Hansen insists. It hardly counts as news, perhaps, that the Chinese elites of a thousand years ago stood at the wealthy heart of an international trading and information system that spanned distant continents.
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