Module description
It is not possible to construct a Global History for the medieval period in exactly the same way that it can be done for more recent eras. Levels of interconnection between human populations occupying so many different parts of the planet did not operate with anything like the same intensity or ranges of form. It is also not possible to study many human populations of this era through written records. Archaeological evidence offers powerful alternative perspectives, but history is a discipline substantially driven by textual evidence. As a result, there will be a greater focus on Eurasia and North Africa than sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Australia (and Antarctica). Even given these limitations, however, Medieval Worlds aims to be a properly global, ground-breaking, innovative course ranging far beyond the normal limits of the vast majority of introductory courses in medieval history currently offered by UK universities and indeed beyond. Throughout, Medieval Worlds will itself be interrogated as an explanatory concept with sustained reflection on the European origins of the term ‘medieval’ and the extent to which it can be used to help understand the history of much broader tranches of the globe.
In pursuit of these overall objectives, the course encompasses a number of key aims and themes. At the most obvious level of macro political history, it is committed to providing an account of the medieval period which stresses diversity of geo-political form, none of which achieved 'hegemonic status' during the medieval period, and none of which should consequently be considered normative or more important than any other. It will stress broader patterns within the overall political narrative, right across Eurasia, in fact marked by sequential transformations from big state structures to small state successors (and back again). The course will aim to do justice to the wide range of means by which political authority was constructed, exercised, and limited in different contexts, and the equally varied ways in which different authority structures responded to ongoing realities of local diversity.
It will also explore, where this is possible, an overarching theme of interconnection. In a whole series of ways, swathes of territory from East Asia to western Europe and then south into sub-Saharan Africa generated historically significant connections in the medieval period. This connectivity did not just encompass, moreover, the pre-history of global capitalism, though the evolution of international trade networks and the human communities caught up in them naturally provides one important focus. Widening the view, the medieval period was marked by far reaching interconnections of many kinds – large-scale population movements not least across the Great Eurasian Steppe, global pandemics and the responses they generated, the sharing of ideas and transfer of broader cultural structures – all of which receive due attention. Not least important, of course, the medieval period threw up ‘globalising’ axial religions - Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam – able to replicate themselves across a wide range of contexts and time periods. These success stories repay close examination and often provide a striking contrast to the accompanying political history. Where states on the whole show a tendency to become smaller, religion went seriously global.
Even where direct connections are lacking, moreover, Medieval Worlds will foster an additional globalising perspective by taking a sustained comparative approach to a wide range of topics. The political narrative offers some points of comparison at the most obvious level, so too do social and family structures, gender, and cultural forms. Comparative history is at its most exciting when mobilised to generate thorough-going analyses of the wide range of thematic topics which have added so many important new dimensions to the traditional subject matter of history in recent decades: not just literacy and technological change, which came relatively early to the party, but far beyond into fields such as crime and punishment, violence and war, which have between them so revolutionised our understanding of the human past.
Overall, Medieval Worlds aims to respond to the exciting, broader challenge to create a post-colonial curriculum for the era before European Empires had even come into existence, by employing many more diverse perspectives to incorporate previously subaltern histories into a new medieval mainstream. The course is subdivided into four chronological blocks with two lectures and supporting seminars each week. The first lecture of each week will take a broadly comparative approach to the week’s theme, the second focus on a particular case study.
Assessment details
1 x 3 hour exam (100%)
Teaching pattern
20 x 1 hour lectures (weekly), 20 x 1 hour seminars (weekly)