How much global history does medieval studies need, how much of the Middle Ages does global history need?

Global history does not begin with European overseas expansion at the end of the 15th century. If we use this term to refer to the commercial, political, social and cultural interdependencies or migrations between more or less distant parts of the Afro-Eurasian world, their beginnings go back at least to the early Middle Ages. The quality of the interaction plays a central role, which raises the following questions: Did the early dynasties in Eastern Europe finance their state formations with Central Asian silver? Did a complex and flourishing economic system exist in the 13th century that included a large number of differentiated, developed societies between China and the Atlantic and collapsed as a result of the “Black Death”, a plague pandemic, around 1350? What impact did natural events in Central America or East Asia and the associated climate anomalies have on the development of Europe? For example, did the eruption of the Il Opango volcano in El Salvador in the middle of the 6th century cause a profound crisis in the Mediterranean region and bring about new social constellations in Eastern Europe? Finally, how fruitful can the world and global history approach be for research into the history of Central Europe in the Middle Ages?

These and other questions will be the focus of an international discussion.

The panel discussion will be simultaneously translated into Polish.

Participants:
PD Dr. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Austrian Academy of Sciences Vienna
PD Dr. Dariusz Adamczyk, German Historical Institute Warsaw

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