070226 VO Further Historical Approaches - The globalization of Marco Polo (2024S)

From a Western European perspective, the 13th century is often interpreted as a transitional period between the High and Late Middle Ages, characterized, among other things, by the decline in power of the Holy Roman Empire and the rise of more centralized states such as the Kingdom of France. But the 13th century was also associated with major upheavals beyond Western Europe: the conquest of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade in 1204 marked the collapse of the Byzantine Empire's sphere of power around the Aegean. Even larger territories were affected by the western expansion of the Mongols, which brought about the collapse of Kievan Rus' (1240) in Eastern Europe, the Seljuk Empire in Anatolia (1243), and the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad (1258). Only the Mamluks, who took power in Egypt in 1250, managed to stop the Mongol advance into Syria in 1260. They then destroyed the Crusaders' remaining possessions in the Levant, whose last mainland base, Acre, fell to the Mamluks in 1291. In addition, the Armenian kingdom in Cilicia continued to exist as an ally of the Mongols until 1375.
The Mongol expansion also links the events in western Eurasia with those in Central and East Asia, whose states were also subjugated by Genghis Khan and his successors, including the Empire of Khorezm between the Aral Sea and eastern Iran (1221) or the southern Song dynasty in China (1279), while attacks on Japan in 1274 and 1281 failed. The “Pax Mongolica” also intensified the mobility of people, goods and ideas across the Eurasian continent, which is often associated with the name of Marco Polo (1254-1324), whose 700th anniversary of death falls into 2024. But he was just one of numerous (voluntary and involuntary) travelers during these decades. The exchange between the Islamic world and the Mongol empires in Central and East Asia was even more significant.
In addition to these Eurasian entanglements, the lecture also takes a look at developments that are often less noticed, such as the rise of the Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopia, which ruled from 1270, and the heyday of the Empire of Mali in West Africa, as well as the equally successful resistance against the Mongols by the northern Indian Sultanate of Delhi , the gradual decline in power of the Khmer Empire in Southeast Asia or the far-reaching voyages of discovery and settlement by the Polynesians, who also reached New Zealand in the 13th century. In addition to the rhythms of political history and mobility through conquest, migration, trade and scholarship, environmental-historical dynamics serve as a connecting link, as the 13th century also marked the global transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly to the Little Ice Age, which then shaped the following “crisis of the late Middle Ages”.
The course combines global perspectives with regional studies, using texts, images and maps based on historical, archaeological and scientific findings. It offers both an introduction to global historical perspectives on the period that is known in Europe as the “Middle Ages” as well as on related current debates in historical science. The lecture will also include results from the FWF project “Entangled Charters of Anatolia (1200-1300, ENCHANT), from whose team, in addition to the two main lecturers (Ekaterini Mitsiou and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller), András Barati and Samvel Grigoryan will present on individual topics.