Introductory description

This module follows the circulation of people, knowledge, religion, and goods in the late medieval world, and compares regions from the Mediterranean and Islamic world to India and China.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

1. Global Connections and the thirteenth-century world
2. Central Asia and the Silk Roads
3. Maritime explorations: Zheng He and the Arab seafarers
4. Travel and Travellers: Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta and Zhou Daguan
5. Religious connections and the spread of Islam
6. Reading week
7. Cities and migrating communities
8. Science and technology: China and the Islamic World
9. Empires: Mongols, Timurids and Mali
10. Global connections and the sixteenth-century world

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of non-European histories, and their connections with and impact on medieval and early modern European history.
• Communicate ideas and findings, adapting to a range of situations, audiences and degrees of complexity.
• Generate ideas through the analysis of a broad range of primary source material, including visual, material and textual sources.
• Analyse and evaluate the contributions made by existing scholarship, including key concepts in global history.
• Act with limited supervision and direction within defined guidelines, accepting responsibility for achieving deadlines.

Indicative reading list

• C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, (2004). [D 299.B2]
• Lynn Hunt, Writing History in the Global Era (New York, 2014), especially ch. 2 [D13.H856]
• Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Peterson, Globalization: A Short History (2005) [JZ1318.O8713] Charles H. Parker, Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400-1800 (2010) [HN13.P37]. Also available as an E-Book.
• Jack Goldstone, Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History, 1500-1850 (2009). [HN373.G65].
• Sanjay Subrahmanyam , ‘Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, Modern Asian Studies, 31 (1997), pp. 735-762.
• Christian, David, ‘Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Ro ads in World History ’, Journal of World History, 11, 1 (2000).
• Ghobrial, John-Paul, 'The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon and the Uses of Global Microhistory', Past & Present, 222:1, (2013), pp. 51-93.
• Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London, 1997), chapter 1. [JV6021.C64]
• Xinru Liu, “ A Silk Ro ad Legacy : The Spread of Buddhism and Islam ,” Journal of World History 22/1 (2011), pp. 55-81.
• Jerry Bentley, 'Seas and Ocean Basins as Frameworks for Historical Analysis', Geographical Review, 89:2, (1999), pp. 215-225.
• Peter Turchin, ‘A theory for formation of large Empires’, Journal of Global History, 4 /2 (2 009 ), pp. 1 91 -217.
• Huff, Toby E., The Rise of Early Modern Science. Islam, China, and the West (2003) [Q 125.H8]
• Hsia, Florence, Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China
• (University of Chincago Press, 2009) [BV 2290.H75]
• Mokyr, Joel, The Lever of Riches. Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, 1990, chs. 7 and 9, pp.
• 151-192, 209-238. [HC79. T4 M648]. Also available as an Oxford Scholarship E-Book, and as an ACLS E- Book.
• C. Brauner, ‘Connecting Things: Trading Companies and Diplomatic Gift-Giving on the Gold and Slave
• Coasts in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of Early Modern History 20, no. 4 (2016), pp. 408-28.
• Zoltán Biederman, Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, eds., Global Gifts: the Material Culture of Diplomacy in early modern Eurasia (CUP 2017).

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.