Hansen provides many examples of regional kingdoms aligning themselves with the religions of more powerful rulers. It was also around this time that the world started sorting itself into the broad religious categories of Roman Christianity, Byzantian Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. They could buy what they needed to subsist and then some with the money they made off of specialized commodities.

What the author is relating is that these networks expanded in reach, reliability, and local impact: that goods from far off regions became more widely and routinely available due to increasing trade intensity, that local economies were finding it more profitable to produce goods for far off destinations than to cultivate crops and produce goods for their own immediate consumption or use. The author is not claiming that long trade routes were unknown before this – we all know long trade networks have existed longer than any of us likely appreciate – we’re constantly stunned to find goods from far off regions in the archaeological record of what were imagined to be isolated and remote communities. For the first time, even though we have no evidence of it happening, an item could plausibly be traded around the globe, arriving at the place it started through trickle-trading networks between adjacent regions. Hansen’s theme in the book is that events and circumstances surrounding the year 1000 brought an unprecedented level of trade between regions, and marked the first time where a trade network truly wrapped around the entire planet vis-à-vis the Norse exploration of North America. I started dog-earing pages upon which something remarkable was mentioned and realized I was dog-earing every other page. Therefore it surprised me when I finished this book in about two weekend sittings. The Year 1000 is the kind of book I love, full of fascinating anecdotes and illuminating a period of world history about which I know very little. While I can absorb a high volume of information in a short amount of time – a skill that benefits my career – I usually enjoy reading very slowly, marinating or mentally bathing in a good (usually nonfiction) book.

Taking a break from gun history for a while, I just finished Valerie Hansen’s 2020 book, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World and Globalization Began.

The year 1000 valerie hansen