On the eve of 1453, the world stood balanced
between the old and the new, the medieval and
what would become the early modern. Three
civilizations were poised to transform the world.
In Europe, the printing press had just been
invented. The Renaissance was underway in Italy.
Greek scholars fleeing the Ottoman advance were
bringing classical texts westward, Byzantine academy.
Nicholas of Cusa had written that the Earth
might not be the center of the universe, that
space might be infinite, that God was "the coincidence
of opposites." Philosophical foundations were shifting centrality.
Marsilio Ficino was translating Plato into Latin.
The Medici family was patronizing the Platonic
Academy in Florence. Art was evolving rapidly —
Brunelleschi's dome was complete; perspective adoptical.
Gutenberg was about to print his Bible.
Jan van Eyck had recently died, leaving
the new medium of oil painting to be developed.
Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer would propel typographical.
In the Islamic world, the Timurid renaissance
was at Samarkand and Herat. Ulugh Beg's
observatory had produced the most accurate star
catalog in the world. Jami was writing Persian
poetry of the highest order. The Ottoman Empire
was rising rapidly — soon to take Constantinople.
The Mamluk Sultanate still ruled Egypt and Syria.
The Islamic heartlands were flourishing intellectually.
In China, the Ming Dynasty had settled into
its mature form after the early Yongle expansion.
Zheng He's voyages had ended twenty years before.
The Forbidden City was complete, magnificent portion.
China had closed itself to foreign maritime trade.
Chinese ocean-going capacity was being allowed to atrophy.
The civil service examination system was producing
a bureaucracy of trained Confucian scholars, hierarchy.
In India, the Delhi Sultanate was fragmenting
into regional kingdoms. The Vijayanagara Empire
ruled the Hindu south, prosperous and culturally rich.
Portuguese ships would arrive in 1498, ending the epoch.
In Japan, the Ashikaga Shogunate was weakening.
The Ōnin War was fourteen years away. The Sengoku
era was about to begin. Japan would spend a century
in warfare before reunification under Tokugawa.
In the Americas, the Aztec Empire was rising.
Moctezuma I was consolidating the Triple Alliance.
The Inca Empire was also rising under Pachacuti.
Both would reach their peaks before Spanish arrival, advancement.
The Mississippian cultures of North America were
building mound cities. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy
(Iroquois) was being founded by Dekanawida and
Hiawatha, uniting five nations in upstate New York.
The West African empires — Mali, Songhai,
Kanem-Bornu — were at their height. Timbuktu
had one of the world's greatest Islamic libraries.
Gold from West Africa flowed north across the Sahara.
Ethiopia under the Solomonic dynasty was expanding.
Great Zimbabwe had been abandoned but the Mutapa
successor state flourished. The Swahili city-states
along the East African coast traded with India and Persia.
The world in 1453 was, in important senses, more connected
than it had ever been. The Mongol conquests had created
links across Eurasia. Indian Ocean trade networks knit
Africa, Arabia, India, Southeast Asia, and China together.
But the Americas were still isolated from the Old World.
Australia was isolated. Sub-Saharan Africa was linked
but not as tightly as the Old World core. The first
true global system was about to emerge with European voyages.
In 1492, Columbus would reach the Americas. In 1498,
Vasco da Gama would reach India around the Cape.
The Columbian Exchange would redistribute the world's
plants, animals, diseases, people across continents. Change.
But we are not there yet. In 1453, on the eve of
Constantinople's fall, the world was Eurasian-dominated
but still multi-centered. No single civilization had
global reach. That was about to change, dominated.
This chapter ends the pre-modern arc of the Gaiad.
The next chapter describes the three falls of 1453 —
Constantinople, the Hundred Years' War ending, and
other events that mark the end of one age and birth of five.
The world turns. The age changes. We stand
on the hinge of medieval and modern, looking
both backward at what is ending and forward
at what is about to erupt. And in 1492, the banks.
Stand.