This week, Danièle speaks with Dr. Valerie Hansen to get a global perspective on the Middle Ages at the turn of the millennium, including how cultures were connecting in the year 1000, what goods people were trading, and just how far the trade routes went. Dr. Hanson's new book is The Year 1000: When Explorers Connecte

Around the year 1000, merchants, explorers, and missionaries linked the world together from Newfoundland to China. Trade goods, people, and above all ideas flowed across a rich assortment of routes, connecting previously distant places into a single unit. This was the first instance of what we can call globalization, a

Valerie Hansen is the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, where she teaches Chinese and world history. An accomplished scholar and author, she traveled to nearly twenty countries to conduct research for The Year 1000. She is several acclaimed works, including The Silk Road: A New History and The O

People often believe that the years immediately prior to AD 1000 lacked any major cultural developments or geopolitical encounters, that the Europeans hadn’t yet reached North America and that the farthest feat of sea travel was the Vikings’ invasion of Britain. But how, then, to explain the presence of blonde-haired p

Globalisation. It's a word we often associate with the politics, society and economics of our own lifetimes. But Valerie Hansen, an esteemed professor of History at Yale, has argued that globalisation is embedded deep in the past. Whilst traditionally, historians have cited Columbus' 1492 voyage to America as a kick of