Valerie Hansen will present at the Global Middle Ages Seminar on Wednesday, April 29, at 6 pm. Her talk is entitled “The Year 1000: When Globalization Began.”

A new system of global pathways formed in the year 1000 following the Vikings’ touchdown in northeastern Canada. Trade goods, people, and ideas moved along these pathways. Globalization affected both those who went to new places (traders, explorers, slaves) as well as those who stayed home. Those who stayed home had to contend with religious change, riots against foreign expats, and onerous labor conditions in workplaces producing goods for overseas markets. Competition with outsiders also stimulated artisans to develop new techniques so that they could hang on to market share. The best example of this was the ongoing competition between Chinese and West Asian potters who modified their products to resemble their rivals and to attract new consumers.

Valerie Hansen teaches Chinese and world history at Yale, where she is the Stanley B. Woodward Professor of History. Her current book is The World in the Year 1000: When Globalization Began. Earlier monographs include The Silk Road: A New History with Documents (2012) and The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800 (2015). Hansen is a frequent visitor to Asia teaching at Yale’s undergraduate program at Peking University, Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and as an invited scholar at Xiamen University in Fujian province, China.