The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World―and Globalization Began Hardcover – April 14, 2020

Churchill is said to have quipped that history is written by the winners. For centuries, with little variation, that meant teaching world history beginning with Sumer, then demythologizing the Hebrew Bible, surveying Greco-Roman civilization and then studying the details of European thought and state machinery from around 1500. I still remember my high school text for AP History stating, “As the world is divided into Capitalist and Communist states, both derived from Europe, the history of the modern world is largely the history of modern Europe.”Thankfully that era is long passed. European hegemony in world affairs is no longer a matter of fact. We now live in a globalized world where, given the exchange of ideas and people, academics want to write histories of the world that are inclusive of more peoples.A good example of this is The Year 1000. It tells the story of the worldwide trade routes that united Africa, India, China and Oceania. It speculates on potential intercommunication between the Norse and Native Americans. It imagines a North-South trading route through the Americas that few historians have recognized.The story is told in a popular fashion and is told splendidly well. Melding archaeology and primary sources Hansen displays a breadth and detailed knowledge of non-European peoples that is beyond impressive. She’s crafted a thesis, that European colonists inherited a trade network that had already been largely built by the year 1000, that is interesting, provocative and open to critique.I do wish that this history did not have the edge that previous histories were over focused on dead white males. But, as Churchill said, history is written by the winners. As we once had histories that celebrated European civilization we now have histories that celebrate the globalized world.I recommend this book to all interested in the best kind of revisionist history—that which revise narratives in ways that matter and are argued less by harmony to modern ears and more with data driven evidence. By this standard Dr. Valerie Hansen has certainly succeeded.

In this survey of international trade and trade routes of 1000 years ago, the author roams the world unearthing the surprising extent of commerce at that time. Whereas we think of globalization as a recent development, triggered by the internet, her overarching point is that globalization is nothing new--the world was connected, albeit more tenuously and less instantaneously, long before computers were even dreamed of. It's refreshing to read world history that focuses on trade rather than on wars, and conquest, and it's nice that she's conscientiously non-Euro-centric, although in my opinion she ascribes too much importance to the Norse expeditions to North America, which did not involve trade or lead to any prolonged contact. The writing sometimes lacks precision, as when she states that in the year 1000 people in Norway spoke Old Icelandic (they spoke Old Norse) and that the 11th-century doctor Ibn Batuta was an expert in macrobiotics. I think the great strength of this book is the author's deep curiosity about diverse cultures everywhere in the world and her demonstration that trade is one of the things that make us human.

Tied together interesting information about how various cultures interacted and traded globally and helps one understand that people have always been migrating for various reasons including economic, security, food and resources, technology and climate change, Provides insight into slavery, religion and how societies changed from hunter gatherer to ones of economic growth. Well written, interesting and hard to put down.

I expected so much more. “The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World – And Globalisation Began”. What’s not to like about such a provocative title? Unfortunately, I was disappointed.By and large, Valerie Hansen’s book is a dash through the world at the turn of the first millennium. This was the time when the world was beginning to produce agricultural surpluses. Resources could be devoted to such activities as exploration and trade. Indeed, it was the year when Leif Erikson became the first European to reach North America some 500 years before Columbus reached the Americas. Thus, it could be easily argued that the year 1000 was portentous.My criticism of the book is that the subsequent argument is poorly developed. The book jumps about and lacks consistency. This is a great shame. The concept for the book is sound. The problem is the actual execution of the narrative.The book ends with a brief description of the how things changed after about 1500. This was time of European predominance. For example, Vasco da Gama sailing beyond the Cape of Good Hope in 1497, Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 and then the arrival of Cortez in the Americas in 1519. Europe came to dominate until modern times.Overall, this book had so much to offer. The pity is that it failed to deliver.