The history of the world, in common parlance, is the history of humanity (or human history), as

determined from archaeology, anthropology, genetics, linguistics, and other disciplines; and, for
periods since the invention of writing, from recorded history and from secondary sources and
studies.
Humanity's written history was preceded by its prehistory, beginning with the Palaeolithic Era ("Early
Stone Age"), followed by the Neolithic Era ("New Stone Age"). The Neolithic saw the Agricultural
Revolution begin, between 8000 and 5000 BCE, in the Near East's Fertile Crescent. During this
period, humans began the systematic husbandry of plants and animals.[2] As agriculture advanced,
most humans transitioned from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle as farmers in permanent settlements.
The relative security and increased productivity provided by farming allowed communities to expand
into increasingly larger units, fostered by advances in transportation.
Whether in prehistoric or historic times, people always needed to be near reliable sources of potable
water. Settlements developed on river banks as early as 3000 BCE in Mesopotamia,[3] on the banks
of Egypt's Nile River,[4][5] in the Indus River valley,[6] and along China's rivers.[7][8] As farming
developed, grain agriculture became more sophisticated and prompted a division of labour to store
food between growing seasons. Labour divisions led to the rise of a leisured upper class and the
development of cities, which provided the foundation for civilization. The growing complexity of
human societies necessitated systems of accounting and writing.
With civilizations flourishing, ancient history ("Antiquity," including the Classical Age,[9] up to about
500 CE[10]) saw the rise and fall of empires. Post-classical history (the "Middle Ages," c. 500–1500
CE [11]) witnessed the rise of Christianity, the Islamic Golden Age (c. 750 CE – c. 1258 CE), and the
early Italian Renaissance (from around 1300 CE). The mid-15th-century invention of
modern printing, employing movable type,[12] revolutionized communication and facilitated ever wider
dissemination of information, helping end the Middle Ages and ushering in the Scientific
Revolution.[13] The Early Modern Period, sometimes referred to as the "European Age",[14] from about
1500 to 1800,[15] included the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Discovery. By the 18th century,
the accumulation of knowledge and technology had reached a critical mass that brought about
the Industrial Revolution[16]and began the Late Modern Period, which started around 1800 and has
continued through the present.[17]
This scheme of historical periodization (dividing history into Antiquity, Post-Classical, Early Modern,
and Late Modern periods) was developed for, and applies best to, the history of the Old World,
particularly Europe and the Mediterranean. Outside this region, including ancient China and ancient
India, historical timelines unfolded differently. However, by the 18th century, due to extensive world
trade and colonization, the histories of most civilizations had become substantially intertwined. In the
last quarter-millennium, the rates of growth of population, knowledge, technology, communications,
commerce, weapons destructiveness, and environmental degradation have greatly accelerated,
creating opportunities and perils that now confront the planet's human communities.[18]

Contents

 1Prehistory
o 1.1Early humans
o 1.2Rise of civilization
 2Ancient history
o 2.1Cradles of civilization
o 2.2Axial Age
o 2.3Regional empires
o 2.4Declines, falls, and resurgence
 3Post-classical history
o 3.1Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia
o 3.2Europe
o 3.3Sub-Saharan Africa
o 3.4South Asia
o 3.5East Asia
o 3.6Southeast Asia
o 3.7Oceania
o 3.8Americas
 4Modern history
o 4.1Early modern period
o 4.2Late Modern period
o 4.3Contemporary history
 5See also
 6Notes
 7References
 8Bibliography
 9Further reading
 10External links

Prehistory
Main articles: Prehistory and Human evolution

Early humans
Genetic measurements indicate that the ape lineage which would lead to Homo sapiens diverged
from the lineage that would lead to chimpanzees and bonobos, the closest living relatives of modern
humans, around 4.6 to 6.2 million years ago.[19] Anatomically modern humans arose in Africa about
300,000 years ago,[20] and reached behavioural modernity about 50,000 years ago.[21]

Cave painting, Lascaux, France, c. 15,000 BCE

"Venus of Willensdorf", Austria, c. 26,500 BCE

Modern humans spread rapidly from Africa into the frost-free zones of Europe and Asia around
60,000 years ago.[22] The rapid expansion of humankind to North America and Oceania took place at
the climax of the most recent ice age, when temperate regions of today were extremely inhospitable.
Yet, humans had colonized nearly all the ice-free parts of the globe by the end of the Ice Age, some
12,000 years ago.[23] Other hominids such as Homo erectus had been using simple wood and stone
tools for millennia, but as time progressed, tools became far more refined and complex.
Perhaps as early as 1.8 million years ago, but certainly by 500,000 years ago, humans began using
fire for heat and cooking.[24] They also developed language in the Paleolithic period[25] and a
conceptual repertoire that included systematic burial of the dead and adornment of the living. Early
artistic expression can be found in the form of cave paintings and sculptures made from ivory, stone,
and bone, showing a spirituality generally interpreted as animism, or even shamanism.[26] During this
period, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers, and were generally nomadic.[27] Archaeological and
genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers survived in sparsely
wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest
cover.[28]

Rise of civilization
The Neolithic Revolution, beginning around 10,000 BCE, saw the development of agriculture, which
fundamentally changed the human lifestyle. Farming developed around 10,000 BCE in the Middle
East, around 7000 BCE in what is now China, about 6000 BCE in the Indus Valley and Europe, and
about 4000 BCE in the Americas.[29] Cultivation of cereal crops and the domestication of
animals occurred around 8500 BCE in the Middle East, where wheat and barley were the first crops
and sheep and goats were domesticated.[30] In the Indus Valley, crops were cultivated by 6000 BCE,
along with domesticated cattle. The Yellow River valley in China cultivated millet and other cereal
crops by about 7000 BCE, but the Yangtze River valley domesticated rice earlier, by at least 8000
BCE. In the Americas, sunflowers were cultivated by about 4000 BCE, and corn and beans were
domesticated in Central America by 3500 BCE. Potatoes were first cultivated in the Andes
Mountains of South America, where the llama was also domesticated.[29] Metal-working, starting
with copper around 6000 BCE, was first used for tools and ornaments. Goldsoon followed, with its
main use being for ornaments. The need for metal ores stimulated trade, as many of the areas of
early human settlement were lacking in ores. Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, is first known from
about 2500 BCE, but did not become widely used until much later.[31]
Cuneiform writing, Mesopotamia

Though early "cities" appeared at Jericho and Catal Huyuk around 6000 BCE,[32] the first civilizations
did not emerge until around 3000 BCE in Egypt[33] and Mesopotamia.[34] These cultures gave birth to
the invention of the wheel,[35] mathematics,[36] bronze-working, sailing boats, the pottery wheel, woven
cloth, construction of monumental buildings,[37] and writing.[38] Writing developed independently and at
different times in five areas of the world:[39]Egypt (c. 3200 BCE),[39] India (c. 3200
BCE),[40] Mesopotamia (c. 3000 BCE),[41] China (c. 1600 BCE),[42] and Mesoamerica (c. 600 BCE).[39]
Farming permitted far denser populations, which in time organized into states. Agriculture also
created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production.[43] The
development of agriculture permitted the creation of the first cities. These were centres
of trade, manufacturing and political power.[44] Cities established a symbiosis with their
surrounding countrysides, absorbing agricultural products and providing, in return, manufactured
goods and varying degrees of military control and protection.
The development of cities was synonymous with the rise of civilization.[a] Early civilizations arose first
in Lower Mesopotamia (3000 BCE),[46][47] followed by Egyptian civilization along the Nile River (3000
BCE),[5] the Harappan civilization in the Indus River Valley (in present-day India and Pakistan; 2500
BCE),[48][49] and Chinese civilization along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers (2200 BCE).[7][8] These
societies developed a number of unifying characteristics, including a central government, a complex
economy and social structure, sophisticated language and writing systems, and distinct cultures and
religions. Writing facilitated the administration of cities, the expression of ideas, and the preservation
of information.[50]
Entities such as the Sun, Moon, Earth, sky, and sea were often deified.[citation needed] Shrines developed,
which evolved into temple establishments, complete with a complex hierarchy of priests and
priestesses and other functionaries. Typical of the Neolithic was a tendency to
worship anthropomorphic deities. Among the earliest surviving written religious scriptures are the
Egyptian Pyramid Texts, the oldest of which date to between 2400 and 2300 BCE.[51]

Ancient history
Main article: Ancient history

Ancient history
 Preceded by prehistory

Near East

Sumer · Egypt · Elam · Akkad · Assyria ·Babylonia · Mitanni · Hittites · Sea

Peoples ·Anatolia · Israel and Judah · Arabia ·Berbers · Phoenicia · Persia

Europe

Minoans · Greece · Nuragic · Tartessos ·Celts · Germanics · Etruscans · Rome · Slavs

Eurasian Steppe

Proto-Indo-Europeans · Afanasievo ·Indo-

Iranians · Scythians · Sarmatians ·Saka · Xiongnu · Huns · Xionites · Turks

East Asia

China · Korea · Japan · Mongolia

South Asia

Indus Valley Civilisation · Vedic period ·Mahajanapada · Nanda Empire ·Maurya

Empire · Sangam period ·Middle Kingdoms · Gupta Empire

Mississippi and Oasisamerica

Adena · Hopewell · Mississippian · Puebloans

Mesoamerica

Olmecs · Epi-Olmec · Zapotec · Mixtec ·Maya · Teotihuacan · Toltec Empire

Andes

Norte Chico · Sechin · Chavín · Paracas ·Nazca · Moche · Lima · Tiwanaku · Wari
 West Africa

Dhar Tichitt · Oualata · Nok · Senegambia ·Djenné-Djenno · Bantu · Ghana Empire

Southeast Asia and Oceania

Vietnam · Austronesians · Australia ·Polynesia · Funan · Tarumanagara

See also

History of the world ·Ancient maritime history

Protohistory · Axial Age · Iron Age
Historiography · Ancient literature
Ancient warfare · Cradle of civilization

 Category
 Portal

Followed by Post-classical history

 v
 t
 e

Cradles of civilization
Main articles: Cradle of civilization, Bronze Age, and Iron Age

Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

The Bronze Age is part of the three-age system (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age) that for some
parts of the world describes effectively the early history of civilization. During this era the most fertile
areas of the world saw city-states and the first civilizations develop. These were concentrated in
fertile river valleys: the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, the Nile in Egypt,[citation needed] the Indus in
the Indian subcontinent,[48] and the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in China.
Sumer, located in Mesopotamia, is the first known complex civilization, developing the first city-
states in the 4th millennium BCE.[47] It was in these cities that the earliest known form of
writing, cuneiform script, appeared around 3000 BCE.[39][52] Cuneiform writing began as a system
of pictographs. These pictorial representations eventually became simplified and more
abstract.[52] Cuneiform texts were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a
blunt reed used as a stylus.[39] Writing made the administration of a large state far easier.
Transport was facilitated by waterways—by rivers and seas. The Mediterranean Sea, at the juncture
of three continents, fostered the projection of military power and the exchange of goods, ideas, and
inventions. This era also saw new land technologies, such as horse-based cavalry and chariots, that
allowed armies to move faster.

Fresco, Knossos, Minoan Crete

These developments led to the rise of territorial states and empires. In Mesopotamia there prevailed
a pattern of independent warring city-states and of a loose hegemony shifting from one city to
another.[citation needed] In Egypt, by contrast, first there was a dual division into Upper and Lower
Egypt which was shortly followed by unification of all the valley around 3100 BCE, followed by
permanent pacification.[53] In Crete the Minoan civilization had entered the Bronze Age by 2700 BCE
and is regarded as the first civilization in Europe.[54] Over the next millennia, other river valleys saw
monarchical empires rise to power.[citation needed] In the 25th – 21st centuries BCE, the empires
of Akkad and Sumer arose in Mesopotamia.[55]
Over the following millennia, civilizations developed across the world. Trade increasingly became a
source of power as states with access to important resources or controlling important trade routes
rose to dominance.[citation needed] By 1400 BCE, Mycenaean Greece began to develop.[56] In India this era
was the Vedic period, which laid the foundations of Hinduism and other cultural aspects of early
Indian society, and ended in the 6th century BCE.[57] From around 550 BCE, many independent
kingdoms and republics known as the Mahajanapadaswere established across the subcontinent.[58]
As complex civilizations arose in the Eastern Hemisphere, the indigenous societies in
the Americas remained relatively simple and fragmented into diverse regional cultures. During
the formative stage in Mesoamerica (about 1500 BCE to 500 CE), more complex and centralized
civilizations began to develop, mostly in what is now Mexico, Central America, and Peru. They
included civilizations such as the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Moche, and Nazca. They developed
agriculture, growing maize, chili peppers, cocoa, tomatoes, and potatoes, crops unique to the
Americas, and creating distinct cultures and religions. These ancient indigenous societies would be
greatly affected, for good and ill, by European contact during the early modern period.

Axial Age
Main articles: Axial Age, History of philosophy, Timeline of religion, and History of religions
Buddha

Socrates

Beginning in the 8th century BCE, the "Axial Age" saw the development of a set of transformative
philosophical and religious ideas, mostly independently, in many different places.[citation
needed]
Chinese Confucianism, Indian Buddhism and Jainism, and Jewish monotheism are all claimed
by some scholars to have developed in the 6th century BCE. (Karl Jaspers' Axial-Age theory also
includes Persian Zoroastrianism, but other scholars dispute his timeline for Zoroastrianism.) In the
5th century BCE, Socrates and Plato made substantial advances in the development of ancient
Greek philosophy.
In the East, three schools of thought would dominate Chinese thinking well into the 20th century.
These were Taoism, Legalism, and Confucianism. The Confucian tradition, which would become
particularly dominant, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and
example of tradition. Confucianism would later spread to the Korean Peninsula and toward Japan.
In the West, the Greek philosophical tradition, represented by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other
philosophers,[59] along with accumulated science, technology, and culture, diffused
throughout Europe, Egypt, the Middle East, and Northwest India, starting in the 4th century BCE
after the conquests of Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great).[60]

Regional empires
Main articles: Civilization and Empire
The millennium from 500 BCE to 500 CE saw a series of empires of unprecedented size develop.
Well-trained professional armies, unifying ideologies, and advanced bureaucracies created the
possibility for emperors to rule over large domains whose populations could attain numbers upwards
of tens of millions of subjects. The great empires depended on military annexation of territory and on
the formation of defended settlements to become agricultural centres. The relative peace that the
empires brought encouraged international trade, most notably the massive trade routes in
the Mediterranean, the maritime trade web in the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road. In southern
Europe, the Greeks (and later the Romans), in an era known as "classical antiquity," established
cultures whose practices, laws, and customs are considered the foundation of
contemporary Western culture.

Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 6th century BCE

Parthenon, Athenian Empire

Pillar erected by India's Maurya Dynasty Emperor Ashoka

Trajan's Column, Rome

Terracotta army, China, c. 210 BCE

Obelisk of Aksum, Ethiopia

There were a number of regional empires during this period. The kingdom of the Medes helped to
destroy the Assyrian Empire in tandem with the nomadic Scythians and the Babylonians. Nineveh,
the capital of Assyria, was sacked by the Medes in 612 BCE.[61] The Median Empire gave way to
successive Iranian empires, including the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE),the Parthian
Empire (247-224 BCE to CE) and the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE).
Several empires began in modern-day Greece. First was the Delian League (from 477 BCE)[62] and
the succeeding Athenian Empire (454–404 BCE), centred in present-day Greece. Later, Alexander
the Great (356–323 BCE), of Macedon, founded an empire of conquest, extending from present-day
Greece to present-day India.[63][64] The empire divided shortly after his death, but the influence of
his Hellenistic successors made for an extended Hellenistic period (323–31 BCE)[65] throughout the
region.
In Asia, the Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE) existed in present-day India;[66] in the 3rd century BCE,
most of South Asia was united to the Maurya Empire by Chandragupta Maurya and flourished
under Ashoka the Great. From the 3rd century CE, the Gupta dynasty oversaw the period referred to
as ancient India's Golden Age. From the 4th to 6th centuries, northern India was ruled by the Gupta
Empire. In southern India, three prominent Dravidian kingdoms emerged: the Cheras,[citation
needed]
Cholas,[67] and Pandyas. The ensuing stability contributed to heralding in the golden age
of Hindu culture in the 4th and 5th centuries.
In Europe, the Roman Empire, centered in present-day Italy, began in the 7th century BCE.[68] In the
3rd century BCE the Roman Republic began expanding its territory through conquest and
alliances.[69] By the time of Augustus (63 BCE – 14 CE), the first Roman Emperor, Rome had already
established dominion over most of the Mediterranean. The empire would continue to grow,
controlling much of the land from England to Mesopotamia, reaching its greatest extent under the
emperor Trajan (died 117 CE). In the 3rd century CE, the empire split into western and eastern
regions, with (usually) separate emperors. The Western empire would fall, in 476 CE, to German
influence under Odoacer. The eastern empire, now known as the Byzantine Empire, with its capital
at Constantinople, would continue for another thousand years, until Constantinople was conquered
by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
In China, the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), the first imperial dynasty of China, was followed by
the Han Empire (206 BCE – 220 CE). The Han Dynasty was comparable in power and influence to
the Roman Empire that lay at the other end of the Silk Road. Han China developed advanced
cartography, shipbuilding, and navigation. The Chinese invented blast furnaces, and created finely
tuned copper instruments. As with other empires during the Classical Period, Han China advanced
significantly in the areas of government, education, mathematics, astronomy, technology, and many
others.[70]

Maya observatory, Chichen Itza, Mexico

In Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum, centred in present-day Ethiopia, established itself by the 1st
century CE as a major trading empire, dominating its neighbours in South Arabia and Kush and
controlling the Red Sea trade. It minted its own currency and carved enormous
monolithic steles such as the Obelisk of Axum to mark their emperors' graves.
Successful regional empires were also established in the Americas, arising from cultures established
as early as 2500 BCE.[71] In Mesoamerica, vast pre-Columbian societies were built, the most notable
being the Zapotec Empire (700 BCE – 1521 CE),[72] and the Maya civilization, which reached its
highest state of development during the Mesoamerican Classic period (c. 250–900 CE),[73] but
continued throughout the Post-Classic period until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century CE.
Maya civilization arose as the Olmec mother culture gradually declined. The great Mayan city-
states slowly rose in number and prominence, and Maya culture spread throughout the Yucatán and
surrounding areas. The later empire of the Aztecs was built on neighbouring cultures and was
influenced by conquered peoples such as the Toltecs.
Some areas experienced slow but steady technological advances, with important developments
such as the stirrup and moldboard plough arriving every few centuries. There were, however, in
some regions, periods of rapid technological progress. Most important, perhaps, was
the Mediterranean area during the Hellenistic period, when hundreds of technologies were
invented.[74] Such periods were followed by periods of technological decay, as during the Roman
Empire's decline and fall and the ensuing early medieval period.

Declines, falls, and resurgence

The ancient empires faced common problems associated with maintaining huge armies and
supporting a central bureaucracy. These costs fell most heavily on the peasantry, while land-
owning magnates increasingly evaded centralized control and its costs. Barbarian pressure on the
frontiers hastened internal dissolution. China's Han dynasty fell into civil war in 220 CE, beginning
the Three Kingdoms period, while its Roman counterpart became increasingly decentralized and
divided about the same time in what is known as the Crisis of the Third Century. The great empires
of Eurasia were all located on temperate and subtropical coastal plains. From the Central
Asian steppes, horse-based nomads, mainly Mongols and Turks, dominated a large part of the
continent. The development of the stirrup and the breeding of horses strong enough to carry a fully
armed archer made the nomads a constant threat to the more settled civilizations.

The Pantheon in Rome, Italy, now a Catholic church

The gradual break-up of the Roman Empire, spanning several centuries after the 2nd century CE,
coincided with the spread of Christianity outward from the Middle East.[75] The Western Roman
Empire fell under the domination of Germanic tribes in the 5th century,[76] and these polities gradually
developed into a number of warring states, all associated in one way or another with the Catholic
Church.[77] The remaining part of the Roman Empire, in the eastern Mediterranean, continued as
what came to be called the Byzantine Empire.[78] Centuries later, a limited unity would be restored to
western Europe through the establishment in 962 of a revived "Roman Empire",[79] later called
the Holy Roman Empire,[80] comprising a number of states in what is now Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy, and parts of France.[81][82]
In China, dynasties would rise and fall, but, by sharp contrast to the Mediterranean-European world,
dynastic unity would be restored. After the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty[83] and the demise of the
Three Kingdoms, nomadic tribes from the north began to invade in the 4th century, eventually
conquering areas of northern China and setting up many small kingdoms.[citation needed] The Sui
Dynasty successfully reunified the whole of China[84] in 581,[85] and laid the foundations for a Chinese
golden age under the Tang dynasty (618–907).

Post-classical history
Main article: Post-classical history
University of Timbuktu, Mali

The Post-classical Era, though deriving its name from the Eurocentric era of "Classical antiquity",
refers to a broader geographic sweep. The era is commonly dated from the 5th-century fall of the
Western Roman Empire, which fragmented into many separate kingdoms, some of which would later
be confederated under the Holy Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire survived
until late in the Post-classical, or Medieval, period. The Post-classical period also encompasses
the Early Muslim conquests, the subsequent Islamic Golden Age, and the commencement and
expansion of the Arab slave trade, followed by the Mongol invasions in the Middle East and Central
Asia,[citation needed] and the founding around 1280 of the Ottoman Empire.[86] South Asia saw a series
of middle kingdoms of India, followed by the establishment of Islamic empires in India.
In western Africa, the Mali Empire and the Songhai Empire developed. On the southeast coast of
Africa, Arabic ports were established where gold, spices, and other commodities were traded. This
allowed Africa to join the Southeast Asia trading system, bringing it contact with Asia; this, along with
Muslim culture, resulted in the Swahili culture. China experienced the
successive Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties. Middle Eastern trade routes along the
Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road through the Gobi Desert, provided limited economic and cultural
contact between Asian and European civilizations. During the same period, civilizations in
the Americas, such as the Inca, Maya, and Aztecs, reached their zenith; all would be compromised
by, then conquered after, contact with European colonists at the beginning of the Modern period.

Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia

Main articles: History of the Middle East, History of North Africa, History of Central Asia, and Islamic
Golden Age
Prior to the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine
Empire and the Persian Sasanian Empire, which frequently fought each other for control of several
disputed regions. This was also a cultural battle, with the Byzantine Hellenistic and Christian culture
competing against the Persian Iranian traditions and Zoroastrian religion. The formation of
the Islamic religion created a new contender that quickly surpassed both of these empires. Islam
greatly affected the political, economic, and military history of the Old World, especially the Middle
East.
Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE

From their centre on the Arabian Peninsula, Muslims began their expansion during the early
Postclassical Era. By 750 CE, they came to conquer most of the Near East, North Africa, and parts
of Europe, ushering in an era of learning, science, and invention known as the Islamic Golden Age.
The knowledge and skills of the ancient Near East, Greece, and Persia were preserved in the
Postclassical Era by Muslims, who also added new and important innovations from outside, such as
the manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India.
Much of this learning and development can be linked to geography. Even prior to Islam's presence,
the city of Mecca had served as a centre of trade in Arabia, and the Islamic
prophet Muhammad himself was a merchant. With the new Islamic tradition of the Hajj, the
pilgrimage to Mecca, the city became even more a centre for exchanging goods and ideas. The
influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was
tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant
economy, in contrast to the Europeans, Indians, and Chinese, who based their societies on an
agricultural landholding nobility. Merchants brought goods and their Islamic faith
to China, India, Southeast Asia, and the kingdoms of western Africa, and returned with new
discoveries and inventions.

Crusader Krak des Chevaliers, Syria

Motivated by religion and dreams of conquest, European kings launched a number of Crusades to
try to roll back Muslim power and retake the Holy Land. The Crusades were ultimately unsuccessful
and served more to weaken the Byzantine Empire, especially with the 1204 sack of Constantinople.
The Byzantine Empire began to lose increasing amounts of territory to the Ottoman Turks. Arab
domination of the region ended in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuq Turks, migrating
south from the Turkic homelands in Central Asia. In the early 13th century, a new wave of invaders,
the Mongol Empire, swept through the region but were eventually eclipsed by the Turks[citation needed] and
the founding of the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey around 1280.[86]
North Africa saw the rise of polities formed by the Berbers, such as the Marinid dynasty in Morocco,
the Zayyanid dynasty in Algeria, and the Hafsid dynasty in Tunisia. The region will later be called
the Barbary Coast and will host pirates and privateers who will use several North African ports for
their raids against the coastal towns of several European countries in search of slaves to be sold in
North African markets as part of the Barbary slave trade.
Starting with the Sui dynasty (581–618), the Chinese began expanding into eastern Central Asia,
and confronted Turkic nomads, who were becoming the most dominant ethnic group in Central
Asia.[87][88] Originally the relationship was largely cooperative, but in 630 the Tang dynasty began an
offensive against the Turks,[89] capturing areas of the Mongolian Ordos Desert. In the 8th century,
Islam began to penetrate the region and soon became the sole faith of most of the population,
though Buddhism remained strong in the east.[citation needed] The desert nomads of Arabia could militarily
match the nomads of the steppe, and the early Arab Empire gained control over parts of Central
Asia.
The Hephthalites were the most powerful of the nomad groups in the 6th and 7th centuries, and
controlled much of the region. In the 9th through 13th centuries the region was divided among
several powerful states, including the Samanid Empire[citation needed] the Seljuk Empire,[90] and
the Khwarezmid Empire. The largest empire to rise out of Central Asia developed when Genghis
Khan united the tribes of Mongolia. The Mongol Empire spread to comprise all of Central Asia and
China as well as large parts of Russia and the Middle East.[citation needed] After Genghis Khan died in
1227,[91] most of Central Asia continued to be dominated by a successor state, Chagatai Khanate. In
1369, Timur, a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region and
founded the Timurid Empire. Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death, however. The
region then became divided into a series of smaller khanates that were created by the Uzbeks.
These included the Khanate of Khiva, the Khanate of Bukhara, and the Khanate of Kokand, all of
whose capitals are located in present-day Uzbekistan.

Europe
Main articles: History of Europe and Middle Ages
Europe during the Early Middle Ages was characterized by depopulation, deurbanization,
and barbarian invasion, all of which had begun in Late Antiquity. The barbarian invaders formed their
own new kingdoms in the remains of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa
and the Middle East, once part of the Eastern Roman Empire, became part of the Caliphate after
conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and
political structures, most of the new kingdoms incorporated as many of the existing Roman
institutions as they could. Christianity expanded in western Europe, and monasteries were founded.
In the 7th and 8th centuries the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, established an empire
covering much of western Europe;[citation needed] it lasted until the 9th century, when it succumbed to
pressure from new invaders—the Vikings,[92] Magyars, and Saracens.

St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City

During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as
technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and crop yields to
increase. Manorialism—the organization of peasants into villages that owed rents and labour service
to nobles—and feudalism—a political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed
military service to their overlords in return for the right to rents from lands and manors—were two of
the ways of organizing medieval society that developed during the High Middle Ages. Kingdoms
became more centralized after the decentralizing effects of the breakup of the Carolingian Empire.
The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were an attempt by western Christians from nations such as
the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire to regain control of
the Holy Land from the Muslims and succeeded for long enough to establish some Christian states
in the Near East. Italian merchants
imported Armenians, Balts, Circassians, Georgians, Greeks and Slavs to work as household slaves
and in processing sugar.[citation needed] Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism and the founding of
universities, while the building of Gothic cathedrals was one of the outstanding artistic achievements
of the age.
The Late Middle Ages were marked by difficulties and calamities. Famine, plague, and war
devastated the population of western Europe.[citation needed] The Black Death alone killed approximately
75 to 200 million people between 1347 and 1350.[93][94] It was one of the deadliest pandemics in
human history. Starting in Asia, the disease reached Mediterranean and western Europe during the
late 1340s,[95] and killed tens of millions of Europeans in six years; between a third and a half of the
population perished.
The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of northern and western Europe. Many
modern European states owe their origins to events unfolding in the Middle Ages; present European
political boundaries are, in many regards, the result of military and dynastic events during this
tumultuous period.[citation needed] The Middle Ages lasted until the beginning of the Early modern period in
the 16th century,[15] marked by the rise of nation states,[96] the division of Western Christianity in
the Reformation,[97] the rise of humanismin the Italian Renaissance,[98] and the beginnings of
European overseas expansion which allowed for the Columbian Exchange.

Collegium Maius of Kraków's Jagiellonian University, Copernicus's first alma mater

In Central and Eastern Europe, in 1386, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania (the latter including territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine), facing depredations by
the Teutonic Knights and later also threats from Muscovy, the Crimean Tatars, and the Ottoman
Empire, formed a personal union through the marriage of Poland's Queen Jadwiga to Lithuanian
Grand Duke Jogaila, who became King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland. For the next four centuries,
until the 18th-century Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Prussia, Russia,
and Austria, the two polities conducted a federated condominium, long Europe's largest state, which
welcomed diverse ethnicities and religions, including most of the world's Jews, furthered scientific
thought (e.g., Copernicus's heliocentric theory), and—in a last-ditch effort to preserve
their sovereignty—adopted the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the world's second modern written
constitution after the U.S. Constitution that went into effect in 1789.

Sub-Saharan Africa
Main article: History of Africa
Brass "Benin bronze", Nigeria

Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa was home to many different civilizations. The Kingdom of
Aksum declined in the 7th century as Islam cut it off from its Christian allies and its people moved
further into the Ethiopian Highlands for protection. They eventually gave way to the Zagwe
dynasty who are famed for their rock cut architecture at Lalibela. The Zagwe would then fall to
the Solomonic dynasty who claimed descent from the Aksumite emperors[citation needed] and would rule
the country well into the 20th century. In the West African Sahel region, many Islamic empires rose,
such as the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, and the Kanem–Bornu Empire.
They controlled the trans-Saharan trade in gold, ivory, salt and slaves.
South of the Sahel, civilizations rose in the coastal forests where horses and camels could not
survive.[citation needed] These include the Yoruba city of Ife, noted for its art,[99] and the Oyo Empire,
the Benin Empire of the Edo peoplecentred in Benin City, the Igbo Kingdom of Nri which produced
advanced bronze art at Igbo-Ukwu, and the Akan who are noted for their intricate architecture.[citation
needed]

Central Africa saw the birth of several states, including the Kingdom of Kongo. In what is now
modern Southern Africa, native Africans created various kingdoms such as the Kingdom of Mutapa.
They flourished through trade with the Swahili people on the East African coast. They built large
defensive stone structures without mortar such as Great Zimbabwe, capital of the Kingdom of
Zimbabwe, Khami, capital of Kingdom of Butua, and Danangombe (Dhlo-Dhlo), capital of the Rozwi
Empire. The Swahili people themselves were the inhabitants of the East African coast from Kenya to
Mozambique who traded extensively with Asians and Arabs, who introduced them to Islam. They
built many port cities such as Mombasa, Zanzibar and Kilwa, which were known to Chinese sailors
under Zheng He and Islamic geographers.

South Asia
Main article: History of India
Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India

In northern India, after the fall (550 CE) of the Gupta Empire, the region was divided into a complex
and fluid network of smaller kingly states.[citation needed] Early Muslim incursions began in the west in 712
CE, when the Arab Umayyad Caliphate annexed much of present-day Pakistan. Arab military
advance was largely halted at that point, but Islam still spread in India, largely due to the influence of
Arab merchants along the western coast. The Tripartite Struggle for control of northern India took
place in the ninth century. The struggle was between the Pratihara Empire, the Pala Empire and
the Rashtrakuta Empire. Some of the important states that emerged in India at this time included
the Bahmani Sultanate and the Vijayanagara Empire. Post-classical dynasties in South India
included those of the Chalukyas, the Hoysalas, the Cholas, the Islamic Mughals, the Marathas and
the Mysores. Science, engineering, art, literature, astronomy, and philosophy flourished under the
patronage of these kings.[citation needed]

East Asia
Main article: History of East Asia
After a period of relative disunity, China was reunified by the Sui dynasty in 581[citation needed] and under
the succeeding Tang dynasty (618–907) China entered a Golden Age.[100] The Tang Empire
competed with the Tibetan Empirefor control of areas in Inner and Central Asia.[101] The Tang dynasty
eventually splintered, however, and after half a century of turmoil the Song dynasty reunified
China,[citation needed] when it was, according to William McNeill, the "richest, most skilled, and most
populous country on earth".[102] Pressure from nomadic empires to the north became increasingly
urgent. By 1142, North China had been lost to the Jurchens in the Jin–Song Wars, and the Mongol
Empire[103] conquered all of China in 1279, along with almost half of Eurasia's landmass. After about
a century of Mongol Yuan dynasty rule, the ethnic Chinese reasserted control with the founding of
the Ming dynasty (1368).
Battle during 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan

In Japan, the imperial lineage had been established by this time, and during the Asuka period (538–
710) the Yamato Province developed into a clearly centralized state.[104] Buddhism was introduced,
and there was an emphasis on the adoption of elements of Chinese culture and Confucianism.
The Nara period of the 8th century[105] marked the emergence of a strong Japanese state and is often
portrayed as a golden age.[citation needed] During this period, the imperial government undertook great
public works, including government offices, temples, roads, and irrigation systems.[citation
needed]
The Heian period (794 to 1185) saw the peak of imperial power, followed by the rise of
militarized clans, and the beginning of Japanese feudalism. The feudal period of Japanese history,
dominated by powerful regional lords (daimyōs) and the military rule of warlords (shōguns) such as
the Ashikaga shogunate and Tokugawa shogunate, stretched from 1185 to 1868. The emperor
remained, but mostly as a figurehead, and the power of merchants was weak.
Postclassical Korea saw the end of the Three Kingdoms era, the three kingdoms
being Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. Silla conquered Baekje in 660, and Goguryeo in 668,[106] marking
the beginning of the North–South States Period(남북국시대), with Unified Silla in the south
and Balhae, a successor state to Goguryeo, in the north.[107] In 892 CE, this arrangement reverted to
the Later Three Kingdoms, with Goguryeo (then called Taebong and eventually named Goryeo)
emerging as dominant, unifying the entire peninsula by 936.[108] The founding Goryeo dynasty ruled
until 1392, succeeded by the Joseon dynasty, which ruled for approximately 500 years.

Southeast Asia

Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia, early 12th century

Main article: History of Southeast Asia

The beginning of the Middle Ages in Southeast Asia saw the fall (550 CE) of the Kingdom of
Funan to the Chenla Empire, which was then replaced by the Khmer Empire (802 CE). The Khmer's
capital city Angkor was the largest city in the world prior to the industrial age and contained over a
thousand temples, the most famous being Angkor Wat. The Sukhothai (1238 CE)
and Ayutthaya (1351 CE) kingdoms were major powers of the Thai people, who were influenced by
the Khmer. Starting in the 9th century, the Pagan Kingdom rose to prominence in modern Myanmar.
Other notable kingdoms of the period include the Srivijayan Empire and the Lavo Kingdom (both
coming into prominence in the 7th century), the Champa and the Hariphunchai (both about 750),
the Đại Việt (968), Lan Na (13th century), Majapahit (1293), Lan Xang (1354), and the Kingdom of
Ava (1364). Taiwanese indigenous peoples formed tribal alliances such as the Kingdom of Middag.
It was during this period that Islam spread to present-day Indonesia (beginning in the 13th century)
and saw the emergenece of the Malay states, including the Malacca Sultanate and the Bruneian
Empire. Several Philippine polities have also risen during this period such as Caboloan,
the Rajahnate of Maynila, the Rajahnate of Cebu, and the Sultanate of Sulu.

Oceania

Moai, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Main article: History of Oceania

In the region of Oceania, the Tuʻi Tonga Empire was founded in the 10th century CE and expanded
between 1200 and 1500. Tongan culture, language, and hegemony spread widely throughout
Eastern Melanesia, Micronesia and Central Polynesia during this period,[109] influencing East 'Uvea,
Rotuma, Futuna, Samoa and Niue, as well as specific islands / parts of Micronesia (Kiribati, Pohnpei
and miscellaneous outliers), Vanuatu and New Caledonia (specifically, the Loyalty Islands, with the
main island being predominantly populated by the Melanesian Kanak people and their
cultures).[110] At around the same time, a powerful thalassocracy appeared in Eastern Polynesia
centred around the Society Islands, specifically on the sacred Taputapuatea marae, which drew in
Eastern Polynesian colonists from places as far away as Hawaii, New Zealand (Aotearoa), and the
Tuamotu Islands for political, spiritual and economic reasons, until the unexplained collapse of
regular long-distance voyaging in the Eastern Pacific a few centuries before Europeans began
exploring the area. Indigenous written records from this period are virtually non-existent, as it seems
that all Pacific Islanders, with the possible exception of the enigmatic Rapa Nui and their currently
undecipherable Rongorongo script, had no writing systems of any kind until after their introduction by
European colonists; however, some indigenous prehistories can be estimated and academically
reconstructed through careful, judicious analysis of native oral traditions, colonial ethnography,
archaeology, physical anthropology and linguistics research.

Americas

Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru

Main articles: History of the Americas, History of North America, and History of South America
In North America, this period saw the rise of the Mississippian culture in the modern-day United
States c. 800 CE, marked by the extensive 12th-century urban complex at Cahokia. The Ancestral
Puebloans and their predecessors (9th – 13th centuries) built extensive permanent settlements,
including stone structures that would remain the largest buildings in North America until the 19th
century.[111] In Mesoamerica, the Teotihuacan civilization fell and the Classic Maya collapse occurred.
The Aztec Empire came to dominate much of Mesoamerica in the 14th and 15th centuries. In South
America, the 14th and 15th centuries saw the rise of the Inca. The Inca Empire of Tawantinsuyu,
with its capital at Cusco, spanned the entire Andes Mountain Range, making it the most extensive
Pre-Columbian civilization. The Inca were prosperous and advanced, known for an excellent road
system and unrivaled masonry.

Modern history
Main article: Modern history
Modern history (the "modern period," the "modern era," "modern times") refers to the history of the
period following the Middle Ages, spanning from about 1500 to the present day. In contrast,
"Contemporary history" is history that covers events from around 1945 to the present day.

Early modern period

Main article: Early modern period
"Early modern period"[b] is a term used by historians to refer to the period between the Middle
Ages (Post-classical history) and the Industrial Revolution—roughly 1500 to 1800.[15] The Early
Modern period is characterized by the rise of science, and by increasingly rapid technological
progress, secularized civic politics, and the nation state. Capitalist economies began their rise,
initially in northern Italian republics such as Genoa. The Early Modern period also saw the rise and
dominance of the mercantilist economic theory. As such, the Early Modern period represents the
decline and eventual disappearance, in much of the European sphere, of feudalism, serfdom, and
the power of the Catholic Church. The period includes the Protestant Reformation, the
disastrous Thirty Years' War, the Age of Discovery, European colonial expansion, the peak of
European witch-hunting, the Scientific revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment.[c]
Renaissance

da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, Renaissance Italy

Main article: Renaissance

Europe's Renaissance, meaning "rebirth," referring to the rebirth of classical culture, beginning in the
14th century and extending into the 16th, consisted of the rediscovery of the classical world's
scientific contributions, and of the economic and social rise of Europe. The Renaissance also
engendered a culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led to Humanism[112] and the Scientific
Revolution.[113] Although it saw social and political upheaval and revolutions in
many intellectual pursuits, the Renaissance is perhaps known best for its artistic developments[citation
needed]
and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired
the term "Renaissance man."
European expansion
Further information: History of Europe, Age of Discovery, Colonialism, 16th century, and 17th
century

1570 world map, with Europeans' discoveries

During this period, European powers came to dominate most of the world. Although the most
developed regions of European classical civilization were more urbanized than any other region of
the world, European civilization had undergone a lengthy period of gradual decline and collapse.
During the Early Modern Period, Europe was able to regain its dominance; historians still debate the
causes.
Europe's success in this period stands in contrast to other regions. For example, one of the most
advanced civilizations of the Middle Ages was China. It had developed an advanced monetary
economy by 1000 CE. China had a free peasantry who were no longer subsistence farmers, and
could sell their produce and actively participate in the market. According to Adam Smith, writing in
the 18th century, China had long been one of the richest, most fertile, best cultivated, most
industrious, most urbanized, and most prosperous countries in the world. It enjoyed a technological
advantage and had a monopoly in cast iron production, piston bellows, suspension
bridge construction, printing, and the compass. However, it seemed to have long since stopped
progressing. Marco Polo, who visited China in the 13th century, describes its cultivation, industry,
and populousness almost in the same terms as travelers would in the 18th century.
Gutenberg Bible, produced using movable type c. 1450

One theory of Europe's rise holds that Europe's geography played an important role in its success.
The Middle East, India and China are all ringed by mountains and oceans but, once past these outer
barriers, are nearly flat. By contrast, the Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines, Carpathians and other
mountain ranges run through Europe, and the continent is also divided by several seas. This gave
Europe some degree of protection from the peril of Central Asian invaders. Before the era of
firearms, these nomads were militarily superior to the agricultural states on the periphery of the
Eurasian continent and, as they broke out into the plains of northern India or the valleys of China,
were all but unstoppable. These invasions were often devastating. The Golden Age of Islam was
ended by the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. India and China were subject to periodic invasions,
and Russia spent a couple of centuries under the Mongol-Tatar yoke. Central and western Europe,
logistically more distant from the Central Asian heartland, proved less vulnerable to these threats.
Geography contributed to important geopolitical differences. For most of their histories, China, India,
and the Middle East were each unified under a single dominant power that expanded until it reached
the surrounding mountains and deserts.[citation needed] In 1600 the Ottoman Empire controlled almost all
the Middle East,[114] the Ming dynasty ruled China,[115][116] and the Mughal Empire held sway over India.
By contrast, Europe was almost always divided into a number of warring states. Pan-European
empires, with the notable exception of the Roman Empire, tended to collapse soon after they arose.
Another doubtless important geographic factor in the rise of Europe was the Mediterranean Sea,
which, for millennia, had functioned as a maritime superhighway fostering the exchange of goods,
people, ideas and inventions.
Nearly all the agricultural civilizations have been heavily constrained by their environments.
Productivity remained low, and climatic changes easily instigated boom-and-bust cycles that brought
about civilizations' rise and fall. By about 1500, however, there was a qualitative change in world
history. Technological advance and the wealth generated by trade gradually brought about a
widening of possibilities.[117]
Many have also argued that Europe's institutions allowed it to expand, that property rights and free-
market economics were stronger than elsewhere due to an ideal of freedom peculiar to Europe. In
recent years, however, scholars such as Kenneth Pomeranz have challenged this view. Europe's
maritime expansion unsurprisingly—given the continent's geography—was largely the work of its
Atlantic states: Portugal, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands. Initially
the Portuguese and Spanish Empires were the predominant conquerors and sources of influence,
and their union resulted in the Iberian Union, the first global empire on which the "sun never set".
Soon the more northern English, French and Dutch began to dominate the Atlantic. In a series of
wars fought in the 17th and 18th centuries, culminating with the Napoleonic Wars, Britain emerged
as the new world power.
Regional developments

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey

Persia came under the rule of the Safavid Empire in 1501, succeeded by the Afsharid Empire in
1736,Zand Empire in 1751 and the Qajar Empire in 1794. Areas to the north and east were held
by Uzbeks and Pashtuns. The Ottoman Empire, after taking Constantinople in 1453, quickly gained
control of the Middle East, the Balkans, and most of North Africa.
In Africa, this period saw a decline in many civilizations and an advancement in others. The Swahili
Coast declined after coming under Portuguese (and later Omani) control. In west Africa, the Songhai
Empire fell to the Moroccans in 1591 when they invaded with guns. The South African Kingdom of
Zimbabwe gave way to smaller kingdoms such as Mutapa, Butua, and Rozwi. Ethiopia suffered from
the 1531 invasion from neighbouring Muslim Adal Sultanate, and in 1769 entered the Zemene
Mesafint (Age of Princes) during which the Emperor became a figurehead and the country was ruled
by warlords, though the royal line later would recover under Emperor Tewodros II. The Ajuran
Empire, in the Horn of Africa, began to decline in the 17th century, succeeded by the Geledi
Sultanate. Other civilizations in Africa advanced during this period. The Oyo Empire experienced its
golden age, as did the Benin Empire. The Ashanti Empire rose to power in what is modern
day Ghana in 1670. The Kingdom of Kongo also thrived during this period. European exploration of
Africa reached its zenith at this time.

Ming Dynasty section, Great Wall of China

In the Far East, the Chinese Ming Dynasty gave way (1644) to the Qing, the last Chinese imperial
dynasty, which would rule until 1912. Japan experienced its Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568–
1603), followed by the Edo period(1603–1868). The Korean Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) ruled
throughout this period, successfully repelling 16th- and 17th-century invasions from Japan and
China. Japan and China were significantly affected during this period by expanded maritime trade
with Europe, particularly the Portuguese in Japan. During the Edo period, Japan would pursue
isolationist policies, to eliminate foreign influences.
Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India

On the Indian subcontinent, the Delhi Sultanate and the Deccan sultanates would give way,
beginning in the 16th century, to the Mughal Empire.[citation needed] Starting in the northwest, the Mughal
Empire would by the late 17th century come to rule the entire subcontinent,[118] except for the
southernmost Indian provinces, which would remain independent. Against the Muslim Mughal
Empire, the Hindu Maratha Empire was founded on the west coast in 1674, gradually gaining
territory—a majority of present-day India—from the Mughals over several decades, particularly in
the Mughal–Maratha Wars (1681–1701). The Maratha Empire would in 1818 fall under the control of
the British East India Company, with all former Maratha and Mughal authority devolving in 1858 to
the British Raj.
In 1511 the Portuguese overthrew the Malacca Sultanate in present-day Malaysia and
Indonesian Sumatra. The Portuguese held this important trading territory (and the valuable
associated navigational strait) until overthrown by the Dutch in 1641. The Johor Sultanate, centred
on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, became the dominant trading power in the
region. European colonization expanded with the Dutch in the Netherlands East Indies, and the
Spanish in the Philippines. Into the 19th century, European expansion would affect the whole of
Southeast Asia, with the British in Myanmar and Malaysia, and the establishment of French
Indochina. Only Thailand would successfully resist colonization.
The Pacific islands of Oceania would also be affected by European contact, starting with the
circumnavigational voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, who landed on the Marianas and other islands in
1521. Also notable were the voyages (1642–44) of Abel Tasman to present-day Australia, New
Zealand and nearby islands, and the voyages (1768–1779) of Captain James Cook, who made the
first recorded European contact with Hawaii. Britain would found its first colony on Australia in 1788.

Russian chapel, Fort Ross, California, U.S.

In the Americas, the western European powers vigorously colonized the newly discovered
continents, largely displacing the indigenous populations, and destroying the advanced civilizations
of the Aztecs and the Inca. Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France all made extensive territorial claims,
and undertook large-scale settlement, including the importation of large numbers of African slaves.
Portugal claimed Brazil. Spain claimed the rest of South America, Mesoamerica, and southern North
America. Britain colonized the east coast of North America, and France colonized the central region
of North America. Russia made incursions onto the northwest coast of North America, with a first
colony in present-day Alaska in 1784, and the outpost of Fort Ross in present-day California in
1812.[119] In 1762, in the midst of the Seven Years' War, France secretly ceded most of its North
American claims to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Thirteen of the British colonies declared
independence as the United States of America in 1776, ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1783,
ending the American Revolutionary War. Napoleon Bonaparte won France’s claims back from Spain
in the Napoleonic Wars in 1800, but sold them to the United States in 1803 as the Louisiana
Purchase.
In Russia, Ivan the Terrible was crowned (1547) the first Tsar of Russia, and by annexing the Turkic
Khanates in the east, transformed Russia into a regional power. The countries of western Europe,
while expanding prodigiously through technological advancement and colonial conquest, competed
with each other economically and militarily in a state of almost constant war. Often the wars had
a religious dimension, either Catholic versus Protestant, or (primarily in eastern Europe) Christian
versus Muslim. Wars of particular note include the Thirty Years' War, the War of the Spanish
Succession, the Seven Years' War, and the French Revolutionary Wars. Napoleon came to power in
France in 1799, an event foreshadowing the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.

Late Modern period

1750–1914
Main articles: 18th century, 19th century, and Long nineteenth century
Further information: Age of Imperialism, Age of Revolution, Diplomatic Revolution, and Industrial
Revolution

Watt's steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution.

The Scientific Revolution changed humanity's understanding of the world and led to the Industrial
Revolution, a major transformation of the world's economies. The Scientific Revolution in the 17th
century had had little immediate effect on industrial technology; only in the second half of the 18th
century did scientific advances begin to be applied substantially to practical invention. The Industrial
Revolution began in Great Britain and used new modes of production—the factory, mass production,
and mechanization—to manufacture a wide array of goods faster and using less labour than
previously required. The Age of Enlightenment also led to the beginnings of modern democracyin
the late-18th century American and French Revolutions. Democracy and republicanism would grow
to have a profound effect on world events and on quality of life.
Empires, 1898

After Europeans had achieved influence and control over the Americas, imperial activities turned to
the lands of Asia and Oceania. In the 19th century the European states had social and technological
advantage over Eastern lands.[citation needed] Britain gained control of the Indian subcontinent, Egypt and
the Malay Peninsula; the French took Indochina; while the Dutch cemented their control over
the Dutch East Indies. The British also colonized Australia, New Zealand and South Africa with large
numbers of British colonists emigrating to these colonies. Russia colonized large pre-agricultural
areas of Siberia. In the late 19th century, the European powers divided the remaining areas of
Africa. Within Europe, economic and military challenges created a system of nation states, and
ethno-linguistic groupings began to identify themselves as distinctive nations with aspirations for
cultural and political autonomy. This nationalism would become important to peoples across the
world in the 20th century.
During the Second Industrial Revolution, the world economy became reliant on coal as a fuel, as
new methods of transport, such as railways and steamships, effectively shrank the world.
Meanwhile, industrial pollution and environmental damage, present since the discovery of fire and
the beginning of civilization, accelerated drastically.
The advantages that Europe had developed by the mid-18th century were two:
an entrepreneurial culture,[120] and the wealth generated by the Atlantic trade (including the African
slave trade). By the late 16th century, silver from the Americas accounted for the Spanish empire's
wealth.[citation needed] The profits of the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to 5% of
the British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution.[121] While some historians conclude that,
in 1750, labour productivity in the most developed regions of China was still on a par with that of
Europe's Atlantic economy,[122] other historians like Angus Maddison hold that the per-capita
productivity of western Europe had by the late Middle Agessurpassed that of all other regions.[123]
1914–1945
Main article: 20th century
Further information: Interwar period, Roaring Twenties, and Great Depression

World War I trench warfare

Atomic bombings: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 1945

The 20th century opened with Europe at an apex of wealth and power, and with much of the world
under its direct colonial control or its indirect domination. Much of the rest of the world was
influenced by heavily Europeanized nations: the United States and Japan. As the century unfolded,
however, the global system dominated by rival powers was subjected to severe strains, and
ultimately seemed to yield to a more fluid structure of independent nations organized on Western
models.
This transformation was catalysed by wars of unparalleled scope and devastation. World War
I destroyed many of Europe's empires and monarchies, and weakened Britain and France. In its
aftermath, powerful ideologies arose. The Russian Revolution of 1917 created the
first communist state, while the 1920s and 1930s saw militaristic fascist dictatorships gain control in
Italy, Germany, Spain and elsewhere.
Ongoing national rivalries, exacerbated by the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, helped
precipitate World War II. The militaristic dictatorships of Europe and Japan pursued an ultimately
doomed course of imperialist expansionism, in the course of which Nazi Germany orchestrated the
murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust and of millions of Poles, Russians, and other Slavs,
while Imperial Japan murdered millions of Chinese. An earlier, World War I model of genocide had
been provided by Turkey's mass murder of Armenians. The World War II defeat of the Axis
Powers opened the way for the advance of communism into Central
Europe, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, China, North Vietnam, and North Korea.

Contemporary history
Main article: Contemporary history
1945–2000
Main article: 20th century
Further information: Cold War, Green Revolution, Space exploration, and Digital Revolution
Civilians (here, Mỹ Lai, Việt Nam, 1968) suffered greatly in 20th-century wars.

When World War II ended in 1945, the United Nations was founded in the hope of preventing future
wars,[124] as the League of Nations had been formed following World War I.[125] The war had left two
countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, with principal power to influence international
affairs.[126] Each was suspicious of the other and feared a global spread of the other's,
respectively capitalist and communist, political-economic model. This led to the Cold War, a forty-
five-year stand-off and arms race between the United States and its allies, on one hand, and the
Soviet Union and its allies on the other.[127] With the development of nuclear weapons during World
War II, and with their subsequent proliferation, all of humanity were put at risk of nuclear
war between the two superpowers, as demonstrated by many incidents, most prominently the
October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Such war being viewed as impractical, the superpowers instead
waged proxy wars in non-nuclear-armed Third World countries.[128]
In China, Mao Zedong implemented industrialization and collectivization reforms as part of the Great
Leap Forward (1958–62), leading to the starvation deaths (1959–61) of tens of millions of people.
The Cold War ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, in part due to inability to
compete economically with the United States and western Europe. However, the United States
likewise began to show signs of slippage in its geopolitical influence,[129][d] even as its private sector,
now less inhibited by the claims of the public sector, increasingly sought private advantage to the
prejudice of the public weal.[e][f][g]
In the early postwar decades, the colonies in Asia and Africa of the Belgian, British, Dutch, French,
and other west European empires won their formal independence.[134] But the newly independent
countries faced challenges in the form of neocolonialism, sociopolitical disarray, poverty, illiteracy,
and endemic tropical diseases.[135][h][i]
Most Western European and Central European countries gradually formed a political and economic
community, the European Union, which expanded eastward to include former Soviet-satellite
countries.[138][139][140] The European Union's effectiveness was handicapped by the immaturity of its
common economic and political institutions, somewhat comparable to the inadequacy of United
States institutions under the Articles of Confederation prior to the adoption of the U.S.
Constitution that came into force in 1789. Asian, African, and South American countries followed suit
and began taking tentative steps toward forming their own respective continental associations.
Last Moon landing: Apollo 17(1972)

Cold War preparations to deter or to fight a third world war accelerated advances
in technologies that, though conceptualized before World War II, had been implemented for that
war's exigencies, such as jet aircraft, rocketry, and electronic computers. In the decades after World
War II, these advances led to jet travel, artificial satellites with innumerable applications
including global positioning systems (GPS), and the Internet—inventions that have revolutionized the
movement of people, ideas, and information.
However, not all scientific and technological advances in the second half of the 20th century required
an initial military impetus. That period also saw ground-breaking developments such as the
discovery of the structure of DNA,[141]the consequent sequencing of the human genome, the
worldwide eradication of smallpox, the discovery of plate tectonics, manned and
unmanned exploration of space and of previously inaccessible parts of Earth, and foundational
discoveries in physics phenomena ranging from the smallest entities (particle physics) to the
greatest entity (physical cosmology).
The century saw many global threats emerge or become more serious or more widely recognized,
including nuclear proliferation, global climate change,[142][143][144] air pollution, deforestation, ocean
acidification and pollution, overpopulation, deadly epidemics of microbial diseases, near-Earth
asteroids and comets,[145] supervolcano eruptions, lethal gamma-ray bursts, geomagnetic storms,
and the dwindling of global natural resources (particularly fossil fuels).[146]
21st century
Main article: 21st century

The September 11, 2001, Al Qaedaattacks influenced U.S. foreign policy.

The 21st century has been marked by growing economic globalization and integration, with
consequent increased risk to interlinked economies, as exemplified by the Great Recession of the
late 2000s and early 2010s;[147] and by the expansion of communications with mobile phones and
the Internet, which have caused fundamental societal changes in business, politics, and individuals'
personal lives, including the advent of social-media platforms such as Facebook.
The early 21st century saw escalating intra- and international strife in the Near East and
Afghanistan, stimulated by vast economic disparities, by dissatisfaction with governments dominated
by Western interests, by inter-ethnic and inter-sectarian feuds, and by the longest war in the history
of the United States, the proximate cause for which was Osama bin Laden's provocative 2001
destruction of New York City's World Trade Center.[j] The Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave of
uprisings in North Africa and the Near East in the early 2010's, produced power vacuums that led to
a resurgence of authoritarianism and the advent of reactionary groups like the Islamic State.

China has become a leader in wind power and solar panels.

U.S. military involvements in the Near East and Afghanistan[k], along with a financial crisis and
resultant recession, have drained U.S. economic resources at a time when the U.S. and other
Western countries are experiencing mounting socioeconomic dislocations aggravated by
the robotization of work and the export of industries to cheaper-workforce countries.[l][m][n] Meanwhile,
ancient and populous Asian civilizations, namely India and especially China, have been emerging
from centuries of relative scientific, technological, and economic dormancy to become potential
economic and political rivals for Western powers.[153]
Worldwide competition for resources has risen due to growing populations and industrialization,
especially in India, China, and Brazil.[o] The increased demand is contributing to
increased environmental degradation and global warming. That, and a need for safe, reliable energy
supplies independent of politically volatile regions, has spurred the development
of renewable sources of energy, chiefly solar and wind energy, in place of carbon-based energy
(petroleum, coal, natural gas) and nuclear energy.[154][155] In recognition of the existential threat posed
by climate change,[p][q] in December 2015 195 countries signed the Paris Climate Agreement, though
in 2017 President Donald Trump announced his withdrawal of the United States from the
Agreement.[158][r][s][t][u][163][v][164]
International tensions were heightened in connection with the efforts of some nuclear-armed
states to induce North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, and to prevent Iran from developing
nuclear weapons.[165][w]