Event Description
A new system of global pathways formed in the year 1000 AD following the Vikings’ arrival in northeastern Canada. Trade goods, people, and ideas moved along these newly discovered routes. The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World―and Globalization Began, written by Valerie Hansen, tells the story of the most surprising journeys around the year 1000 took place when speakers of Malayic languages departed from the Malay peninsula and arrived on the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa some 4000 miles away. The shipping route from the port of Basra in the Middle East to Guangzhou, China via India and Southeast Asia was the longest maritime pathway in regular use before 1492. Stretching some 8000 miles long, it was nearly twice as long as the distance Columbus covered (4400 miles) when he crossed the Atlantic. In this Quantitative History Webinar, Valerie Hansen will take us back to the year 1000 and discuss how globalization began. For the first time in world history an object or a message could travel all the way around the world. Europeans did not invent globalization. They changed and augmented what had been there since 1000. If globalization had not yet begun in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, Europeans would not have been able to penetrate the markets in so many places as quickly as they did after 1492.
Event Speaker
Valerie Hansen, Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. For additional information, please visit the event webpage. Hosted by the University of Hong Kong as part of the Quantitative History Webinar Series.
