When did the Middle Ages End
Below is part of a Twitter thread, in which medieval scholars discuss the end of the Middle Ages in different areas. The examples included show that this is a difficult question to answer and that geography plays an important role.
What are the Global Middle Ages?
It is difficult to define "Global Middle Ages" when scholars are arguing about the term on two fronts: 1) whether or not the term is even acceptable to use and 2) if it is used, what it means and what it includes. We do believe that the term, even with its issues, is useful. The main goal of "Global Middle Ages" is to include a broader and more robust study of the medieval period beyond the borders of western Europe. While the world was not globalized in the sense it is today, there were many connections across the oceans and continents.
The efforts to define the "Global Middle Ages" so far focus on incorporating Africa, Eurasia, Asia, the Middle East and Levant, and the Americas within the existing field of medieval western Europe. Doing so requires interdisciplinary studies about the various interconnections that existed, including, but not limited to, topics such as: networks, trade, travel, religions, global cities, languages, pandemics, climate, and wars. One of the most difficult parts about defining the "Global Middle Ages" is that the "Middle Ages" are not clearly defined themselves. As the Twitter feed to the left shows, the Middle Ages ended at different times in different places; some say it ended at early as the mid-14th century, while others claim it did not end until the 17th century. For the sake of establishing a definition, we are going to say that the Middle Ages were from c.500 to c.1500.
Journals
- The Medieval GlobeThe Medieval Globe explores the modes of communication, materials of exchange, and myriad interconnections among regions, communities, and individuals in an era central to human history. It promotes scholarship in three related areas of study: (i) the direct and indirect means by which peoples, goods, and ideas came into contact; (ii) the deep roots of global developments; and (iii) the ways in which perceptions of the medieval past have been (and are) constructed around the world.
- Medieval WorldsMedieval Worlds provides a forum for comparative, interdisciplinary, and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. Its aim is to overcome disciplinary boundaries, regional limits and national research traditions in Medieval Studies, to open up new spaces for discussion, and to help developing global perspectives. We focus on the period from c. 400 to 1500 CE but do not stick to rigid periodization.
- Journal of Medieval WorldsJournal of Medieval Worlds serves as a forum for multidisciplinary scholarship on the world, focusing primarily on 750-1600.
Websites
- Global Middle Ages ProjectThis project is an ambitious effort by an international collaboration of scholars to see the world whole, c. 500 to 1500 CE, to deliver the stories of lives, objects, and actions in dynamic relationship and change across deep time.
- The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew ManuscriptsAggregates catalog entries and images of Hebrew manuscripts from repositories around the world.
- Internet Medieval SourcebookPrimary sources
- Medieval Academy of America: Medieval Digital ResourcesMDR is a curated database of peer-reviewed digital materials for the study of the Middle Ages. Users can browse an alphabetical list or search using controlled-vocabulary subject tags to find vetted online resources of many types, including: imagebanks; bibliographies and reference works; pedagogical tools; editions and translations; music and other multimedia collections; interpretative websites; and new works of digital scholarship.
- Middle Ages for EducatorsDesigned for teachers, students, and members of the broader public who want to learn about Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (c. 300-1500 C.E.), this website provides resources for both teaching and research.
- Online Medieval Sources BibliographyA searchable bibliography of over 5000 modern print and online editions of medieval primary sources.
Resources
- Past & Present Volume 238 Supplement Issue 13: The Global Middle AgesThis supplemental issue of Past & Present applies the study of global history to the pre-modern world through a series of thematic chapters incorporating a wide range of periods and regions.
East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times by ISBN: 9783110321517Publication Date: 2013-09-03This volume explores the surprisingly intense and complex relationships between East and West during the Middle Ages and the early modern world, combining a large number of critical studies representing such diverse fields as literary (German, French, Italian, English, Spanish, and Arabic) and other subdisciplines of history, religion, anthropology, and linguistics. The differences between Islam and Christianity erected strong barriers separating two global cultures, but, as this volume indicates, despite many attempts to 'Other' the opposing side, the premodern world experienced an astonishing degree of contacts, meetings, exchanges, and influences. Scientists, travelers, authors, medical researchers, chroniclers, diplomats, and merchants criss-crossed the East and the West, or studied the sources produced by the other culture for many different reasons
Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age by ISBN: 9783110470963Publication Date: 2016-09-12Bi- and multilingualism are of great interest for contemporary linguists since this phenomenon deeply reflects on language acquisition, language use, and sociolinguistic conditions in many different circumstances all over the world. Multilingualism was, however, certainly rather common already, if not especially, in the premodern world. For some time now, research has started to explore this issue through a number of specialized studies. The present volume continues with the investigation of multilingualism through a collection of case studies focusing on important examples in medieval and early modern societies, that is, in linguistic and cultural contact zones, such as England, Spain, the Holy Land, but also the New World.
Toward a Global Middle Ages - Encountering the World Through Illuminated by Call Number: 746.670902 T65ISBN: 9781606065983Publication Date: 2019Toward a Global Middle Ages is the first publication to examine decorated books produced across the globe during the period traditionally known as medieval. Through essays and case studies, the volume's multidisciplinary contributors expand the historiography, chronology, and geography of manuscript studies to embrace a diversity of objects, individuals, narratives, and materials from Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas--an approach that both engages with and contributes to the emerging field of scholarly inquiry known as the Global Middle Ages.
That Most Precious Merchandise by Call Number: HT983.B37 2019ISBN: 9780812296488Publication Date: 2019-09-27At its height during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Black Sea slave trade was not the sole source of Mediterranean slaves; Genoese, Venetian, and Egyptian merchants bought captives taken in conflicts throughout the region, from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, and the Aegean Sea. Yet the trade in Black Sea slaves provided merchants with profit and prestige; states with military recruits, tax revenue, and diplomatic influence; and households with the service of women, men, and children. Even though Genoa, Venice, and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Greater Syria were the three most important strands in the web of the Black Sea slave trade, they have rarely been studied together. Examining Latin and Arabic sources in tandem, Hannah Barker shows that Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the Mediterranean shared a set of assumptions and practices that amounted to a common culture of slavery.
Before European Hegemony by Call Number: HC41.A28 1989ISBN: 9780195058864Publication Date: 1989-08-10By the end of the thirteenth century the regions of Europe, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean area, and China were becoming integrated--through activities in an archipelago of cities located along major land and sea routes--into a world system of commerce and production, albeit one in which Europe still played a minor role. This book traces the formation of the system and explores how the Black Death, circa 1350, and the subsequent isolation of China under the Ming dynasty interrupted its further development. Abu-Lughod argues that demographic, geographic, and political factors, rather than any unique qualities of Western capitalism or "personality," account for the eventual triumph of "the West" during the ensuing period of six hundred years, and suggests that current transformations in the world system may signal the end of this aberrant phase of world history.
Cross-Cultural Trade in World History by Call Number: 382.09 C94CISBN: 9780521263191Publication Date: 1984A single theme is pursued in this book - the trade between peoples of differing cultures through world history. Extending from the ancient world to the coming of the commercial revolution, Professor Curtin's discussion encompasses a broad and diverse group of trading relationships. Drawing on insights from economic history and anthropology, Professor Curtin has attempted to move beyond a Europe-centred view of history, to one that can help us understand the entire range of societies in the human past.
The Making of Europe by Call Number: 940 B284mISBN: 9780691032986Publication Date: 1993-06-06From our twentieth-century perspective, we tend to think of the Europe of the past as a colonizer, a series of empires that conquered lands beyond their borders and forced European cultural values on other peoples. This provocative book shows that Europe in the Middle Ages was as much a product of a process of conquest and colonization as it was later a colonizer.
