PolledHistory : World History #4

 Hello! This is the fourth episode which is about the Latter Medieval Era (precisely 1066-1453), which is our shortest timeframe yet. 

Following the Norman conquest into Britain, William the Conqueror consolidated his power there and England became a more established nation under William's descendants. A bit to the south, France remained a regional power that often waged war against England. However, the Normans did not completely take over the island of Britain - in the north was Scotland, which also had lots of conflicts with England especially later on.

In Iberia, the Iberians began to push back the Arabs and Muslims which was in control of the peninsula for centuries. This was known as the Reconquista, but it would not be finished until the end of this episode's timeframe. 

Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman Empire was facing a threat from the east: the Seljuk Turks that had invaded most of the Middle East quickly, defeating the empire at the crucial battle of Manzikert in 1071. Alexios Konmenos, the emperor soon after the battle, decided to begin the Conmenian Restoration, wanting to restore Eastern Roman power in the region by calling several crusades to help them out and regain the Holy Land (modern day Israel).

The Pope in Rome, Urban II, agreed and sent forth an army in the First Crusade from throughout Europe. This began a series of crusades against the Islamic states of the Middle East. We have covered the first crusade before, but it was a success and took back Jerusalem and many other territories. Then another crusade came - the Second Crusade - a failure. Later was the Third crusade, a very famous crusade starring Saladin, an Egyptian person who managed to have many success (including retaking Jerusalem). The Third Crusade was, too, a failure.

However, the Fourth Crusade in 1204 was a particular failure. The Pope sent for a crusade and the crusade force was controlled by the Venetians and it was offtracked to the city of Isaacstantinople where the crusaders sacked the city, temporarily ending the Eastern Roman empire and forming the Latin Empire. Fifty years later, the Eastern Roman remnants took back the city and remade the empire.

Let's go to East Asia. The Tang dynasty collapsed in 907 AD when the last emperor of the Tang was deposed. Someone briefly restored the dynastybut in the end, in 960 AD, the Song dynasty was the one that reunited the empire for good again. The Song dynasty was a relatively prosperous one, but mostly stayed in China proper, at least wth its conquests. 

However, in the early 1200s AD in the Mongol steppe north of China, a warlord named Temujin began uniting the Mongol tribes, and managed to expand his empire into Iran and into China. He was known as Genghis Khan. His family would become the next rulers of his vast empire and expand it into Eastern Europe, further into the Middle East, and Southern China. 

In 1258, Hulegu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, sacked the city of Baghdad, ending centuries of the "Islamic Golden Age". However,  the Mongol Empire would split and disintegrate in the next century or two. 

However, these conquests would bring a plague to Europe in the middle 1300s - Yersinia Pestis. This bacteria ravaged Europe, which decimated the original European population and strengthened one particular nation in Anatolia - the Ottomans, which grew in ppwer. Though the Timurids under Timur (or also known as Tamerlane) almost destroyed them entirely, they managed to take most of the Eastern Roman territory besides a small area near Constantinople.

India was rarely united in the medieval era. The Cholas were in the south, a dominant naval power which also had control in some parts of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia were under the control of the Khmers, Srivijaya, Pagan, and Chenla.

In India there were also the Palas, the last Buddhist major empire in India, the Delhi Sultanate based in the city of Dehli itself, and  many more.

After the Mongol invasion into China, China became ruled under the Mongolic Yuan Dynasty that ruled more than a century until its collapse to the Ming. The Yuan was more of a mix of Mongol and Chinese cultures and was quite large.

In 1453, an Ottoman army under Sultan Mehmed II descended on Constantinople, besieging the city and taking it, ending the Roman state (though some empires would claim to be Roman and some Eastern Roman holdouts would remain for a few more years). This marked the end of the medieval age.