World History: A Quick Timeline

3000 BC 1st civilizations Sumer (50% enslaved); Egypt; Nubia; Sudan

1-500 Roman Empire (Europe, Near East, and North Africa)

200BC-200AD Han Dynasty (China) silk road to Roman Empire

600-900 Tang Dynasty (China, greater Asia) largest, most urban, most technologically advanced state; Europe in Dark Ages

700-1200 Muslim world system (from West Africa to India)

711-1492 North African Muslims bring civilization to Southern Europe

1100s “Slavic” slaves growing sugar for Europeans in Mediterranean and Middle East.

1250-1350 Mongols world system expands Muslim world system from Europe’s Danube River to Pacific coast of China

1312 Atlantic Islands (Canaries) rediscovered by Malocello for Portugal (taken over by Spain 1480)

1324 Malian king Mansa Musa to Mecca, gold market depressed. Timbuctu intellectual center. Libraries, universities, book trade.
(Ghana 750-1230; Mali 1230-1430; Songhay 1430-1492.)

1415 Portuguese take Moroccan capital Ceuta from Moors during Crusade, hear more about gold to the South

1420 Prince Henry sent to Sicily for cane plantings for Atlantic Islands

1441 African slaves to Portugal (Curtin: slaves were an “un-expected by product of the gold trade.” Bennett: It began as an “exchange of men and ideas.”)

1446 Nuno Tristao’s Portuguese Prince Henry sponsored armed caravel defeated by Gambian archers

1500s Sugar complex of West Africa; Atlantic Islands; Western Europe

1600s Sugar complex of West Africa; Americas; Western Europe

1740-1810 Height of Atlantic slave trade.