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The Rise of the West.
The ‘‘Great Dying’’.
Birth.
The human world.
The Biological Old Regime.
The Weight of Numbers.
Climate Change.
Population Density and Civilization
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The Agricultural Revolution
Towns and Cities in 1400
Nomadic Pastoralists
Wildlife
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Population Growth and Land
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Famine
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The Nitrogen Cycle and World History
Epidemic Disease
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The World and Its Trading System circa 1400
During the fourteenth century, the Old World was connected by eight interlinking trading zones within three great subsystems.
The East Asia subsystem linked China and the Spice Islands in equatorial Southeast Asia to India.
the Middle East–Mongolian subsystem linked the Eurasian continent from the eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia and India.
d the European subsystem, centered on the fairs at Champagne in France and the trading routes of the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice, linking Europe to the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.
these subsystems overlapped, with North and West Africa connected with the European and Middle East subsystems, and East Africa with the Indian Ocean subsystem.
The world in the fourteenth century thus was polycentric: it contained several regional systems, each with its own densely populated and wealthy ‘‘core,’’
the Afro-Eurasian system circa 1300 is called a ‘‘world system’’ not because it literally spanned the entire globe, but because it was greater than any one given part.
epidemic disease and death, soldiers, and war also followed trade routes, as we can see by examining the world’s experience with the Black Death in the mid-1300s, after which most Eurasians shared a common disease pool.
The Black Death: A Mid-Fourteenth-Century Conjuncture
Conclusion: The Biological Old Regime
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