Post-classical history
In world history, post-classical history refers to the period from about 500 CE to about 1450 or 1500 CE, roughly corresponding to the European Middle Ages following the decline of the western Roman Empire. The post-classical period is characterized by the expansion of certain civilizations geographically, by ongoing wars fought over land, resources and religion, and by the development of trade networks between often-distant civilizations. This period is also called—with various implications and emphases—the medieval era, the post-antiquity era, the post-ancient era, or the pre-modern era.
In Asia and the Middle East during this time, the spread of Islam helped produce a series of caliphates which fostered the Islamic Golden Age, leading to advances in science and greater trade between those in the Asian, African, and European continents. East Asia experienced the entrenchment of the power of a unitary and Imperial China, the dynastic governance and culture of which influenced Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Religions such as Buddhism and neo-Confucianism spread in the region, while Christianity became entrenched in Europe and increasingly elsewhere. Gunpowder was developed in China during the post-classical era. The Mongol Empire conquered and controlled much of Europe and Asia, permitting more trade and cultural and intellectual exchange between the two regions.
In total, the population of the world broadly doubled in this period of history: from approximately 210 million in 500 CE to some 461 million in 1500 CE. The population generally grew slowly throughout the period, with mortality generally high and rapid major declines due to events including the Plague of Justinian, the Mongol invasions, and the Black Death.
Historiography
Terminology and periodization
Post-classical history is a periodization used by historians employing a world history approach to history, specifically the school developed during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Outside of world history, the term is also sometimes used to avoid erroneous pre-conceptions around the terms Middle Ages, Medieval Period, and the Dark Ages, though the application of the term post-classical on a global scale is also problematic, and may likewise be Eurocentric. Academic publications sometimes use the terms post-classical and late antiquity synonymously to describe the history of Western Eurasia between 250 and 800 CE.The post-classical period corresponds roughly to the period from 500 CE to 1450 CE. Beginning and ending dates might vary depending on the region, with the period beginning at the end of the previous classical period: Han China, the Western Roman Empire, the Gupta Empire, and the Sasanian Empire.
The post-classical period is one of the five or six major periods world historians use:
- early civilization,
- classical societies,
- post-classical
- early modern,
- long nineteenth century, and
- contemporary or modern era.
Approaches
The historical field of world history, which looks at common themes occurring across multiple cultures and regions, has enjoyed extensive development since the 1980s. However, World History research has tended to focus on early modern globalization and subsequent developments, and views post-classical history as mainly pertaining to Afro-Eurasia. Historians recognize the difficulties of creating a periodization and identifying common themes that include not only this region but also, for example, the Americas, since they had little contact with Afro-Eurasia before the Columbian exchange. Thus researchers around the year 2020 emphasized that "a global history of the period between 500 and 1500 is still wanting" and that "historians have only just begun to embark on a global history of the Middle Ages".For many regions of the world, there are well established histories. Although medieval studies in Europe tended in the 19th century to focus on creating histories for individual nation-states, much 20th-century research focused, successfully, on creating an integrated history of medieval Europe. The Islamic World likewise has a rich regional historiography, ranging from the 14th-century Ibn Khaldun to the 20th-century Marshall Hodgson and beyond. Correspondingly, research into the network of commercial hubs which enabled goods and ideas to move between China in the East and the Atlantic islands in the West—which can be called the early history of globalization—is fairly advanced; one key historian in this field is Janet Abu-Lughod. Understanding of communication within sub-Saharan Africa or the Americas is, by contrast, far more limited.
Around the 2010s, therefore, researchers began to explore the possibilities of writing history covering the Old World, where human activities were fairly interconnected, and establish its relationship with other cultural spheres, such as the Americas and Oceania. In the assessment of James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, and Chris Wickham,
Global history may be boundless, but global historians are not. Global history cannot usefully mean the history of everything, everywhere, all the time. Three approaches seem to us to have real promise. One is global history as the pursuit of significant historical problems across time, space, and specialism. This can sometimes be characterized as 'comparative' history. Another is connectedness, including transnational relationships. The third approach is the study of globalization . Globalization is a term that needs to be rescued from the present, and salvaged for the past. To define it as always encompassing the whole planet is to mistake the current outcome for a very ancient process.
A number of commentators have pointed to the history of the Earth's climate as a useful approach to World History in the Middle Ages, noting that certain climate events had effects on all human populations.
Global trends
The post-classical era saw several common developments or themes. There was the expansion and growth of civilization into new geographic areas; the rise and/or spread of the three major world, or missionary, religions; and a period of rapidly expanding trade and trade networks. While scholastic emphasis has remained on Eurasia, there is a growing effort to examine the effects of these global trends on other places. In describing geographic zones historians have identified three large self contained world regions, Afro-Eurasia, the Americas, and Oceania.Growth of civilization
First was the expansion and growth of civilization into new geographic areas across Asia, Africa, Europe, Mesoamerica, and western South America. However, as noted by world historian Peter N. Stearns, there were no common global political trends during the post-classical period, rather it was a period of loosely organized states and other developments, but no common political patterns emerged. In Asia, China continued its historic dynastic cycle and became more complex, improving its bureaucracy. The creation of the Islamic empires established a new power in the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The Mali and Songhai Empires were formed in West Africa. The fall of Roman civilization not only left a power vacuum for the Mediterranean and Europe, but forced certain areas to build what some historians might call new civilizations entirely. An entirely different political system was applied in Western Europe, as well as a different society. However, the once Eastern Roman Empire retained many features of old Rome, as well as Greek and Persian similarities. Kievan Rus' and subsequently Russia began development in Eastern Europe as well. In the isolated Americas, the Mississippian culture spread in North America and Mesoamerica saw the building of the Aztec Empire, while the Andean region of South America saw the establishment of the Wari Empire first and the Inca Empire later. In Oceania, ancestors of modern Polynesians were established in village communities by the 6th century, a gradual intensification of complexity took place. In the 13th century, complex states were established, most notably the Tuʻi Tonga Empire which collected tribute from many island chains in the greater region.Spread of universal religions
Religion that envisaged the possibility that all humans could be included in a universal order had emerged already in the first millennium BCE, particularly with Buddhism. In the following millennium, Buddhism was joined by two other major, universalizing, missionary religions, both developing from Judaism: Christianity and Islam. By the end of the period, these three religions were between them widespread, and often politically dominant, across the Old World.- Buddhism spread from India into China and flourished there briefly before using it as a hub to spread to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam; a similar effect occurred with Confucian revivalism in the later centuries.
- Christianity had become the state church of the Roman Empire in 380, and continued spreading into northern and eastern Europe during the post-classical period at the expense of belief systems that Christians labelled pagan. An attempt was even made to incur upon the Middle East during the Crusades. The split of the Catholic Church in Western Europe and the Eastern Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe encouraged religious and cultural diversity in Eurasia.
- Islam began between 610 and 632, with a series of revelations to Muhammad. It helped unify the warring Bedouin clans of the Arabian Peninsula and, through a rapid series of Muslim conquests, became established to the west across North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and parts of West Africa, and to the east across Persia, Central Asia, India, and Indonesia.