When Trade Went Global

A review of Valerie Hansen’s “The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World — and Globalization Began”

If I asked you when explorers connected the world for the first time, what would you say? A month ago, I would have said in 1492. Columbus sailed the ocean blue, a new exchange of food, ideas, animals, people, and microbes changed the world forever. That’s the first time the world was connected in any meaningful way. But with her new book, Valerie Hansen has convinced me of something that sounded illogical: the world had already been connected before Columbus. Columbus and the other 15th century explorers took it a step further, yes, but they were only continuing what had been started by the Vikings around the year 1000.

Valerie Hansen’s most provocative thesis (one which I don’t want to overstate because she doesn’t) is that the process of globalization began and the world was connected for the first time around the year 1000. That is not to say these explorers created a sustained connection like the one seen in the era of the Columbian Exchange, because that is important in itself. Even more provocative is not a thesis of Hansen’s but a subpoint to support it: the Vikings made contact and traded with the Mayans. If this blows your mind, it did mine too. And if I can summarize the two pieces of evidence to support it: 1) the Mayans drew blonde-haired people in their art (okay evidence but explainable if you’re skeptical), and 2) the Mayans drew Viking slatted boats that were visibly different than any that the Mayans ever built. If they had never seen a Viking boat, how would they draw one when no one around them built boats like that? This evidence convinced me that the Vikings did make contact with the Mayans and had more of an effect on the pre-Columbian Americas than I previously thought.

But to zoom in on this point of Hansen’s does not do justice to the entirety of the book. The Vikings’ travels are an important early point, but the larger argument is that the world was much more connected in and around the year 1000 than is often assumed by non-historians. To show this, Hansen takes the reader on a tour of the world focused around the year 1000. Usually, she goes back to about 800 or 900 to give context for each chapter, and she always continues the narrative in abbreviated form until ~1450 to show the effects of trade in the given region or civilization. However, she laser-focuses the narrative around the year 1000 as much as possible, giving credence to the book’s title. This includes an analysis of the Silk Roads, Trans-Saharan trade, and Indian Ocean trade that interwove the economies, cultures, and societies of the majority of the world by c. 1000. Most of this analysis is also focused on people groups that are not given much focus in most histories of globalization, as those histories most often begin the narrative with Columbus.

Hansen is successful in convincing me that the process of globalization began around the year 1000 and that refusing to acknowledge the accomplishments of earlier societies in globalization leads to a history that is too eurocentric. The Year 1000, however, achieves a balance that highlights the achievements of almost all regions of the world. Most importantly, Hansen reveals and analyzes the economic, social, and cultural connections between these distinct regions.

A world map by Sicilian cartographer al-Idrisi (1100–1165). It shows most of Afro-Eurasia.

For fellow teachers of AP World History: Modern, this book is a tremendous primer to enter the world scene in the year 1200. I almost want to call it “The Global Tapestry: The Book” (a reference to the much-maligned name of Unit 1), but it goes back much further in time and also includes many concepts from Unit 2: Networks of Exchange. Some of the people groups explored in The Year 1000 which also overlap with my curriculum include the Kitan/Liao, the Song dynasty of China, the Seljuk empire, Srivijaya, the Angkor empire, the Maya, Great Zimbabwe, Ghana, and Mali. I look forward to using the book to supplement my teaching, and I think it will be a fantastic resource for many others.

The Year 1000 taught me more about this specific period in history than all other books I’ve read combined. This is because of its relentless focus, yet the heavy emphasis on context and causation will help connect readers’ preexisting knowledge to subject matter they may have no background in. For that reason, I would recommend The Year 1000 to anyone even interested in world history. Anyone can pick it up and be successful, and it will serve as foundational knowledge for future learning as well.

I received an eARC of The Year 1000 courtesy of Scribner and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.