This period saw no real creation or revival of trade routes. However, different regions of the Old World became more closely integrated and cross-cultural encounters increased in frequency. There was a dramatic increase in long distance trade, both by land and by sea routes. Substantial military and political expansions were also achieved, particularly by nomadic groups such as Turks and Mongols, and by such movements as the Crusades. These growing hegemonies brought vast regions closer together by fostering regular communication networks and enforcing greater security along major travel routes. As such, we find an increasing number of long distance travellers during this age, among the most famous being Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta. Unfortunately, the intense interactions displayed during this period contained seeds of destruction for the participating societies. Regular contacts between peoples over long distances helped facilitate the spread of epidemics such as the Black Death.

Between 1000 and 1195, the civilisations began to mingle more, especially in the western regions of the Old World. Western Europe borrowed Aristotelian science and philosophy and medicine from Arab sources in Spain and Sicily. In northern China, there was a blending of nomadic and Chinese elements in the domains of the Chin. Northern Indian Hindu society became increasingly feudalised. While the various civilisations were moving to assert themselves, they also borrowed goods and ideas from their neighbours.

The late 13th and first half of the 14th century represent the culmination Western European and Mongol expansion and influence. After 1330, the Mongol Empire began to crumble and the Latin West was affected by internal crises.

East Asia

China, under the Sung dynasty, was the principal East Asian power at the beginning of this period. On land, major commercial ties existed with Hsi Hsia, Liao, Korea, and Nan Chao. Maritime routes linked China with the Indian Ocean commercial sphere and Korea although comparatively little is known about the state of the Japanese foreign trade at this time.

Sung China was basically self-sufficient, producing most of its own food, timber, metals, and industrial products. Except for horses from Hsi Hsia and Liao, for which teas and silks were exchanged, China's imports were mostly tropical and luxury goods, such as spices from the Indic world. Chinese exports were likewise primarily luxurious in nature, the aforementioned teas and silks figuring prominently, as did porcelain products. Because of this self-sufficiency and trade in luxuries, China's impact on her neighbours was economically limited.

In the 12th century, the Sung were driven out of northern China and replaced by the Chins, who maintained commercial ties with central Asia, Korea, and even Japan. Korea acknowledged the power of both the Chins in the north and the Sung in the south. Each of these Chinese powers constructed sizeable navies that the Chins employed offensively, and the Sung used defensively. The Sung emerged victorious in the ensuing naval clashes and, owing to their maritime strength, were able to effect a relatively peaceful coexistence with their northern neighbours.

This period (1195-1270) saw the rise of Genghis Khan, who laid the foundation of the Mongol Empire in Eurasia. The Mongol conquests created great social dislocations as Eurasian populations were scattered, subjugated, and sometimes even decimated. By the time of the third khan, Mangu, the Mongol realm stretched from the Pacific to the Carpathians. But they did experience a reverse at the hands of the Mamluks at Ain Jalut in 1260. The Mongols were also beaten back by the sultanate of Delhi, which by 1270 was an Islamic state that employed the same kind of Mamluk warriors as Egypt. It would not be until 1279 that Kublai Khan would complete the conquest of Sung China. The highly militarised society of Japan managed to escape Mongol domination. Mongol pressure on Burma and Cambodia was, at this time, still indirect.

In terms of trade, the Mongols were oriented to the east-west land routes of central Asia. The Sung were still oriented to the sea routes and to Southeast Asia and Greater India. By 1225, we even have evidence that junks equipped with compasses and stern rudders were sailing to Ceylon, southern India, and even to Ormuz and East Africa.

The Chinese continued to trade porcelain, tea, and silk but also included quantities of tin in exchange for spices, cottons, Islamic wares, and grain. By 1237, rudders and compasses appear in Islamic sources. But the Chinese did not dominate this Indian Ocean network. Much trade was carried out by Indonesian, Champan, Indian, and Islamic merchants.

At the end of the 13th century, the Mongols continued in their attempts to expand their dominions. Pressure was exerted on Syria, India, and Southeast Asia as far as Java. On particularly famous foray against Japan in 1281, the Mongol invasion fleet was devastated by a typhoon that was termed Kamikaze by the grateful Japanese. A much less belligerent and more successful naval expedition was made to Ormuz and Marco Polo was one of its passengers. Yet, for all their power and ambition, the Mongols remained rather tolerant of the religious sensibilities of the many peoples which they ruled. What religious hostility they did exhibit was more generally directed against orthodox Islam and Confucianism.

Mongol interest in commerce also continued. They kept Asian land routes as open and peaceful as possible, making use of police and courier systems. Although the empire was profitable for its elite, this was not the case for most of the ordinary people. Fragmentation and a resurgence of conquered populations began to set in. By the early 14th century, the Golden Horde were more Turk than Mongol and, in China, despite the employment of non-Chinese foreigners in high political and military positions, the Chinese were able to strengthen their presence in the bureaucracy and ruling classes. After the 1330's, a series of revolts swept the empire, which finally fell in 1368 with the ascendancy of the Ming dynasty in China. Mongol rule lasted the longest in Russia but by 1378, the Muscuvite ruler Dmitri dealt a serious blow to Mongol forces from which they were ultimately unable to recover.

Not only was the Mongol empire's political health in a state of terminal decline but her population was being decimated by the Black Death which appears to have arisen in China in the 1320's. The Mongols' achievement in bringing large expanses of Eurasia under the aegis of a single imperial system ultimately helped to aid in the transport of epidemic disease. By 1347, the plague was exacting a terrible toll in Europe.

Greater India

The Indian subcontinent was the focal point of this region that also included Ceylon, Burma, the rest of the Southeast Asian mainland, and Indonesia. It was connected by land with the greater Islamic world to the west by a number of mountain passes. Some land links also existed with East Asia but interconnections with both the east and the west were most strongly facilitated by sea routes.

The 11th century saw the rise of the Chola maritime empire which kept Arabic merchants from effectively operating east of Ceylon and the Malabar Coast and kept the Chinese from likewise operating beyond Srivijaya and Java. The commerce of the Indic world was often more basic to the needs of its peoples. For example, traffic with the Red Sea and Persian Gulf ports carried foodstuffs, timber, metal, and textiles in bulk quantities. Merchants in the Bay of Bengal also transported elephants from Burma or Ceylon westward and carried horses eastward.

There is, unfortunately, a general lack of sources in this time period. Nonetheless, we can discern a marked decline of Chola power and the concomitant rise of Ceylon, the Deccan, Cambodia, and Java.

One of the principal events (1195-1270) was the rise of the sultanate of Delhi. This represented the beginning of significant Islamic penetration into the Indian subcontinent. Sufi mystics, who were especially successful in Bengal, carried out proselytisation of Hindus. In some areas, Islamic and native Indian cultural elements blended.

In the south, the final destruction of the Chola realm was effected by militarised and feudalised Deccan groups such as the Pandya and the Hosala. Thus India was composed of a number of warring states.

Ceylon, by the mid-13th century, was prosperous and used its geography and export commodities, such as cinnamon, gems, and elephants, to build up its wealth. Ceylon was also a centre of Hinayana Buddhist expansion in Southeast Asia. But by the late 13th century, such influence had mysteriously waned.

Indic maritime commerce continued to flourish during this century. The Persian Gulf region, East Africa, the Malabar Coast, and Java all enjoyed prosperity on account of the spices, tropical wares, gold, and gems that they produced and because of the trade that reached them from China and the Islamic worlds.

Yet prosperity in some areas of Greater India was limited. Mongol assaults adversely affected the commerce of the Indus and Ganges valleys. The same situation was found on the Coromandel Coast after the fall of Chola. Ultimately, the evidence for this time period shows a slowdown in both population and economic growth.

As Mongol power waned, the sultanate of Delhi expanded in the Deccan region and Islam at last began to establish itself in the subcontinent. Some Hindu merchants, like those iand French merchants and financiers met at the fairs of Champagne. The economy of Western Europe became more integrated with those of the Islamic and Byzantine worlds because of the commercial routes along the Danube to Byzantium, Spanish traffic to Andalusia, and European maritime activity in the Mediterranean. European merchant colonies were established in Constantinople, Syria, Alexandria, and at numerous points around the Mediterranean.

A distinctive Indian Islamic culture was developing which blended Hindu and Islamic Persian styles, in many aspects of life, including intellectual thought, arts, and letters. It was this Islamic culture which made its influence felt throughout the greater Indian world. Islamic merchants from regions like Bengal and Gujerat helped spread the faith to parts of Malaya, Sumatra, and Java by the end of the 13th century. This went hand in hand with the continued spread of Islam along the coastal areas of East Africa. But there was some opposition to Islam's spread. Hindu resistance helped lead to the establishment of a militant Hindu state in southern India known as Vijiyanagar. The Majapahit dynasty in Java and the rise of a new Thai kingdom by 1350 also helped to check the free spread of Islam.

The transport and commercial system of the Indian Ocean at this time has been richly documented in the writings of travellers such as Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta. It was an active maritime world concerned mainly with bulk transport, luxury goods, and the movement of human traffic in the form of slaves and pilgrims.

The Islamic World

During the 11th century, the Islamic world lost territory in Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Syria to Latin Westerners. But some territorial gains were made in Asia Minor and northern India. The movement of nomadic peoples into settled areas, as well as a decline of Muslim sea power in the Mediterranean marked the period. Yet, despite nomadic and Latin incursions, major trade routes such as the one centred in Cairo and linking Spain, Sicily, and North Africa with India and East Africa, were seldom interrupted. If important land routes were occasionally disrupted or even severed, maritime trade made up for such losses. In the religious sphere, there was a growth of Sunni orthodoxy and a general decline of Shia power.

For export, the Islamic world still offered such commodities as wheat, olive oil, wine, sugar, rice, fruits, dates, horses, wool, hides, salt, pearls, coral, copper, silver, lead, mercury, iron, alum, saffron, perfume, silks, cottons, linens, brocades, metal wares, and objets d'art. Many Islamic areas outside of Armenia and the western provinces continued to import timber and iron. Furs, honey, and wax were obtained from the Baltic and northern Russia. Spices and gems were procured from the Indic world. Gold was obtained from Sudan, the Deccan, and East Africa; the latter also furnished ivory. Slaves also came from East Africa, the Nile Valley, parts of the Sahara, and from Europe, especially the Slavic regions, and Turkestan, which supplied contingents of Mamluks.

By 1195, Islam had effectively rallied to resist Latin expansion in Spain and the Near East. The effects of nomadic movement were also dealt with more decisively. To a great extent, all of this was due to the rise of military elite in many regions of the Islamic world.

This century saw increased economic prosperity in both internal and external commerce. Islamic merchants now sailed past Ceylon to reach Srivijaya, Java, and even southern China. Contacts in East Africa were strengthened as evidenced by Islamic settlements at Kilwa and Zanzibar. Red Sea routes did, on the other hand, decline somewhat, possibly due to the invasions of crusaders in Egypt. Because of this decline, the Persian Gulf routes grew in importance. Trade with central Asia also rose and merchants moved in force along the old silk roads to reopen trade with China. Commerce increased along the Atlantic seaboard, particularly between Morocco, the Canary Islands, and the Guinea Coast. Although Italian and Sicilian merchants actively exported commodities such as timber, grain, and even arms to Islamic ports, Muslims remained active in the east-west trade of the Mediterranean. Overall, Islamic prosperity remained uncompromised by the commercial activities of the other cultural groups.

Despite some resurgence in the previous period, this (1105-1270) was not an easy time in the Islamic world. Latin Christians conquered most of Spain and threatened North Africa. The Mongols seized eastern provinces and destroyed the Abbassid caliphate. There was a considerable population decline, possibly by as much as 10%. Western European merchants dominated Mediterranean trade to such an extent that many Christians now acted as intermediaries between Islamic businessmen. Crusader strikes against Egypt again restricted Red Sea trade but the Persian Gulf routes continued to hold out. It was the power of the new political and military systems of Mamluk Egypt and the sultanate of Delhi which helped stave off greater difficulties. Most of the population was orthodox Sunni in belief and religiously refused to submit to Christian or Mongol invaders. Despite some disruption and decline, the commercial routes of the Sahara and the Indian Ocean remained intact.

After being on the defensive for so long against Mongols and Latins, by the middle of the 14th century, Islamic forces had regained the initiative in the Mahgreb, the western Islamic world. European control was increasingly challenged as Islamic forces once more struck across Gibraltar into the Iberian Peninsula. In the central Islamic world, the Mamluks took over Syria and Lesser Smernia, denying Europe easy access to the Indian Ocean and central Asia. The mid-14th century also saw the beginnings of Ottoman Turk expansion into Europe. The ruling classes of the western Mongol dominions, despite traditional religious antipathies, were being steadily converted to Islam. This was especially strong in the Golden Horde. A generally hostile Islamic world now stood between Europe in the west and India and China to the east. Islam continued its march into southern Russia, Byzantine Anatolia, and sub-Saharan and East Africa. This was due in part to the military power of the military elites such as the Mamluks. Religion was also an important source of strength and unity. Across the Islamic world, the Sharia, the Islamic law, was enforced and many were attracted to the mysticism of the Sufis.

Yet trade with non-Muslims remained essential. The Mamluks, for instance, procured slaves from the Black Sea, timber and arms from Catalans and Italians, and even employed European mercenaries who provided assistance in the manufacture and use of new firearms. But trade in the Mamluk domain was kept under strict state control. Such control allowed Egypt, by the mid-14th century, to become the centre of the spice trade in the Mediterranean world.

The Byzantine-Russian World

This area was the most severely affected by nomadic and Latin Christian expansion. The Byzantines lost southern Italy and effective control of Asia Minor. While the First Crusade of Latin Westerners allowed for the temporary retaking of the coast of Asia Minor, this was offset by the creation of a potentially threatening Latin presence in the east. Economically, the Venetians began to provide serious commercial competition. Furthermore, this period saw the official proclamation of a schism between Latin and Greek churches in 1054.

To the north, by 1100, the Cumans and their nomadic allies controlled the area between the Volga and the Danube. This greatly reduced the trade conducted by the Kievan Rus with Byzantium and the Islamic south. Tenuous contact was maintained between the peoples of Russia with those of central and northern Europe. The Russian economy, therefore, was basically left to develop in isolation.

Byzantium was forced to endure threats from the west like the Normans, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a hostile papacy, the Italian maritime republics of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, as well as expansionist Hungary. In the east, the Byzantines had to deal with the Seljuks, Lesser Armenia, and Crusader-controlled Antioch.

Although much of the Byzantine trade from the Aegean and Mediterranean ports was in Italian hands, the Italians had little effect on commerce flowing into Byzantine domains from the Danube or the Black Sea. What strength Byzantium still possessed was derived in part from the religious unity and stability provided by the Orthodox Church.

The Cumans were at last defeated by Russian forces who once more reopened contact with Constantinople. The city of Novgorod rose in importance and traded with Turkestan and the Caspian region via the Volga. Western merchants were also attracted from Gottland and northern Germany.

This civilisation almost ceased to be self-sufficient because of Western European and Mongol depredations. Between 1204 and 1261, the Venetians and Franks held Constantinople, the Black Sea, and the Aegean. As a result, Byzantium's older merchant and financial classes were almost destroyed. At one point, the population of Constantinople dropped drastically to around 50 000. Byzantine people increasingly turned to the church for direction and began to favour mysticism over intellectualism. There was increased enmity toward the Latin Church, which was seen as a symbol of western European imperialism.

The Russian world was ruled by a Mongol group known as the Golden Horde who, interestingly, tended to culturally adapt to the area they now ruled. Turkish was used as the court language rather than Mongolian. The khans continued to let Russian princes exercise a considerable measure of power over their domains and conciliatory gestures were made to the Orthodox Church. In view of such policies, opposition to Mongol rule from the Kievan Rus does not appear to have been strong. Once the effects of depopulation, deportation, and destruction, which accompanied Mongol invasion, began to wear off, the Russian peoples actually saw some commercial benefits. After more than a century, trade with the Black Sea area was freer than ever before and the routes to Turkestan and central Asia were more secure.

Although the Mongol hegemony lasted longest in Russia, the princes of Moscow had elevated their position to such an extent that they were able to assert themselves against their overlords. Thus, Russia began to rise as a power in her own right under the leadership of Moscow, Novgorod, and Lithuania.

As secular rule weakened in Byzantium, the power of the church grew. But due to the effects of rebellious rural and urban lower classes, and a general rejection of worldly intellectualism in favour of mysticism, there was no firm centre of power that could rally Byzantine society against external threats and increasing internal division. Byzantium's economy continued to be dominated by Italian traders operating in the Aegean and Black Seas. Slave raids depopulated coastal regions. Eventually, Byzantine power became increasingly restricted to the areas around Constantinople, Saloniki, and the Morea.

Western Europe

Internally, Western Europe saw the continued spread of militarisation and urbanisation. Papal power likewise continued to grow and served as a unifying force among the various Western European peoples. Newly Christianised Hungary acted as a conduit for the eastward movements of crusaders and pilgrims. In the first years of the 12th century, European mariners, some of whom began to venture into the Atlantic as well, increasingly dominated the Mediterranean. As Europe continued to expand politically and commercially, more substantial contacts were made and links formed with other Eurasian groups.

Western Europe continued the process of urbanisation and moved toward more effective, nonfeudal centralised governments. Strides were made in agriculture and industry. Merchants carried more goods along international and local routes. German merchants moved between Novgorod, the eastern Baltic, London, and Bergen. English merchant guilds moved along the Atlantic between Lisbon and Norway. Italian, Flemish, and French merchants and financiers met at the fairs of Champagne. The economy of Western Europe became more integrated with those of the Islamic and Byzantine worlds because of the commercial routes along the Danube to Byzantium, Spanish traffic to Andalusia, and European maritime activity in the Mediterranean. European merchant colonies were established in Constantinople, Syria, Alexandria, and at numerous points around the Mediterranean.

Western Europe maintained a relatively high state of religious unity and common purpose. The church moved to quash any dissent, as evidenced by the harsh measures exhibited in the Albigensian Crusade and in the open persecution of Jewish minorities. The work of St Thomas Aquinas and others within organised scholasticism served to give Western Europe an intellectual unifying force.

Europeans displayed greater expertise in agriculture, industry, and technology. Crop rotation, use of the heavy plough, water mills, windmills, and more efficient estate management produced higher yields and made better use of resources. Sugar plantations were introduced in Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily, the necessary techniques having been learned from the Syrians. With an increased food supply came an almost inevitable growth in population which, in turn, spurred the expansion of towns. Although Europe could not yet boast an urban centre to compare with Constantinople, Baghdad, Delhi, or Peking, such cities as Naples, Milan, and Venice were home to around 50 000 people each. London, Paris, and Bruges were nearly as populous. In the realm of technology, machines with interchangeable parts began to be used. Experiments in optics resulted in the development of eyeglasses. By the end of the 13th century, gunpowder may have made its first appearance in Europe, possibly from Chinese sources.

The origins of spaghetti, on the other hand, are more debatable. It may have been a culinary development that was native to Italy rather than imported from the Far East, as popular legend would have it. We also have evidence that mariners were employing compasses by this time.

As for finance, the 13th century saw the growth of modern banking, especially in Italian centres like Milan, Florence, and Sienna. It was an age of achievement and ambition, exemplified most dramatically by the soaring Gothic cathedrals that towered over the European landscape. Such confidence was not lacking in Europe's merchants either. Commercial adventurers began to penetrate beyond foreign coastlands to such regions as Armenia and Russia, and to such centres as Aleppo and Damascus. Even before 1270, Genoese and Venetians moved through central Asia, establishing direct contact with the Chin and with India. But troubled times lay on the horizon.

By the end of the 13th century, Western European mariners had mastered the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Black Seas and were moving into the southern Atlantic. They also pushed increasingly east toward India and China. During the 1320s and 1330s, some European adventurers were actively plying the Indian Ocean via Ormuz. Others ventured into Ethiopia in search of the fabled kingdom of Prester John. By exerting effective control of the seas, the Europeans were able to monopolise the trade that flowed along maritime routes. They were, however, unable to exert much influence over major land routes in North Africa and Central Asia. Most European cargoes were of bulk commodities such as wool and wheat from the towns of the Hanseatic League. Europeans in the Mediterranean also carried similar bulk cargoes, shipping large quantities of alum, various ores, textiles, weapons, spices, and other luxury goods.

European agricultural production increased and so did the number and sizes of towns. But increasing population began to strain resources. European prosperity was severely affected by a series of internal crises. The year 1315 saw the first of a series of bad harvests. European secular leadership became increasingly divided and the church lost much of her former power during the Avignonese papacy. Such political weakening aided in the Muslim resurgence in Iberia and the western Mediterranean. There was also a financial crisis as several of the great Florentine banking houses collapsed. Finally, the effects of the Black Death served as a fatal coup de grace to a Europe whose world influence, so recently great, had already begun to decline.

Index of Articles - Third Period - c. 1000 - 1350 CE