High Middle Ages
Around the year 1000 the people in Western Europe began to get their shit together and moved out of the Dark Ages. The economy steadily improve and cities began to grow again. Though no single state had risen to unify Europe since the Carolingian Empire, individual kingdoms had risen to replace the old tribal confederations (though feudalism was still the rule of the day), allowing for a degree of political stability, and with it, trade networks grew. Skills were honed, new technologies were acquired. Some of these were brought in from the east such as gunpowder, giant hamster wheel powered cranes and paper but others were developed locally such as stained glass and an increasingly wide use of water power. Gothic architecture emerged as Cathedrals reached to the sky. Slavery had been abandoned in much of Europe while trade in the Mediterranean became more and more profitable. The Crusades also happened at this time.
Unfortunately the good times did not last as the 14th century was a bit of a doozy. First there was famine, which is never a nice thing. Then in 1346 there was the Black Death which wiped out about a third of the people in Europe with some areas getting hit worse than others. Ironically improvements in trade and the growth of cities with little consideration to public heath made such a die off possible. Small isolated villages hit by plague might be wiped out before it can spread, leaving a ghost town and spooked but healthy neighbors. Cities with tens of thousands of people full of filth (human waste, animal waste, food scraps, blood from slaughtered animals, dead stray dogs, dead rats which feed on this stuff and other such grodiness) in which carts, barges and ships are always coming and going can go on for some time propagating the plague like a Nurgle Machine. However, the tradeoff was that peasants, being in lower supply, were now more valuable and could now earn wages to lift themselves out of serfdom and earn some (very basic) rights. Medicine also advanced as healers were forced to change their means and methods and had plenty of sick people to practice and try new things on.
In Japan the Heian era ended in 1185 with the rise of the Kamakura shogunate. Except for the short lived (3 years) Kenmu Restoration, the Emperor would be a powerless figurehead for almost 700 years until the Meiji revolution of 1868. This is also the era the Samurai class emerged. The Katana would only appear at the very end of this period with the true form only emerging around 1400. Samurai wore the longer tachi instead.
High Middle Age around Europe
The toll from the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the later fall of the Carolingian Empire, plus the raiding campaigns of vikings, magyars and muslims, left the continent in a weakened state. However, by the time the XIth century started, the feudal economic system was in full effect, and the "relative" (keyword being "relative") moment of peace allowed the cities and kingdoms to begin a process of recovery. Trade and commerce began picking up steam once again, making cities important finantial and political points of interests. Likewise, the different monarchies and ruling nobles began a very slow process of recovering their power. The idea of the primus inter pares (first among equals) was fine and good, but it meant that the kings had little more power (and on many ocassion, less effective power) than the nobles they supposedly ruled over. This consolidation of power in the hands of national monarchies was a long, loooong process that only started coming into fruition at the very end of the period. In the meantime, though, there were many processes of cultural renovation with the birth of the romanesque and gothic styles, and even more deep changes with the gregorian reformation, the start of the mendicant orders and the spread of the first universities.
Different areas of Europe evolved in different ways, thoug. In the Iberian Peninsula, this period included most of the second half of the wars of the Reconquista. The fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba in favour of the Taifas system (basically a fragmentation of power in little independent muslim kingdoms) was the signal for the christian kingdoms of the north to kick the reconquest of the south into overdrive. This doesn't mean this was an unified campaign, though. As was usual for medieval kingdoms, backstabbings and general infighting on both sides was abound, but the weakened muslim kingdoms slowly but surely lost ground, despite briefly unifying themselves under the Almoravids and Almohads .The last muslim kingdom, the Kingdom of Granada, was conquered in 1492 by the Catholic Kings. Meanwhile, the christian kingdoms started their unification process, which would culminate in the marriage of Elisabeth of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, setting up the basis for the unification of Spain. Meanwhile, Portugal started a campaign of exploration through the Atlantic, which would later be followed by Castile, birthing a competition for the exploration and discovery for route trades to India (and later the Americas) between the two.
In the region that was once the Carolingian Empire, the Kingdom of France slowly but surely started gaining territories against the other two members of the Treaty of Verdun, and its ruling dinasties managed to slowly build up the power that had been lost centuries ago. Of particular importance was the normand conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy. William the Bastard (which became the Conqueror after his victory) managed to pull off a succesfull invasion of England taking advantage of a dinastic dispute. This generated quite a dilema for the time, because from now on the Duke of Normandy, a vassal of the french king, technically had as much (if not more) power and influence than his lord, which put both of them on a very tense position. The french kings tried to reduce the english monarchs' influence in France by limiting the boundaries of their continental posessions, which kept increasing the tensions between the two kingdoms. This situation finally came to a close with the death of the last capetians without a clear heir to the throne. With no clear ruler and with the english kings having no little dinastic claims to the french throne, he declares war to reclaim the crown against the House of Valois, the other noble family fighting for the french throne. And thus began the Hundred Years War, which, as it name implies, was fucking long. This clusterfuck of a war (both a massive international conflict and a civil war) eventually involved pretty much all active players in Western Europe at one point or another, and, alongside the Black Death and the massive famines that coincided with it, caused a lot of death and destruction. The war kept going on and on until the eventual french victory, managing to drive the english to the other side of the channel. After this defeat, England immediately became embroiled in another civil war, the War of the Roses.
On the Italian Peninsula, the fragmentation caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and the infighting between the different factions was the cathalyst for the birth of most of the italian city-states. With the normand conquest of the Catepanate of Italy (basically a province of the Byzantine Empire in Southern Italy), the biggest political power on Italy became the Papacy by far, since the young city-states simply couldn't compete with the Catholic Church in political, spiritual and finantial power (for now). The Church's power was not uncontested, though. On the one hand, pushing for the Crusades had given the Pope quite a lot of authority and prestige all over Christianity, but on the other hand, the concentration of power in the hands of nobility and the national monarchies meant that their earthly powers were questioned by secular authorities. In particular, the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire clashed frequently in this matters, since both papal and imperial powers claimed to represent the will of God in some form, though the dispute centers around their influence on the "dominium mundi", and more specifically, the temporal powers. The Investiture Controversy was but the first of the many clashes between this two authorities which would continue all throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.
And speaking of the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither holy, nor roman, nor technically an empire), it was the technical successor of the imperial authority. Also, it was big, the biggest christian kingdom by far during the High Middle Ages (the Byzantine Empire had lost quite a lot of ground, and would continue to do so during the period). However, despite its size, population and political influence all around it, it was mostly a confederation of german kingdoms and principates, all with ther own rules and customs. The only real cohesive element was the figure of the Emperor, and the struggles to get that power were frequent. Thus, it was unable to consolidate its power into a centralized monarchy like France, England or Spain, though it was still the great christian power of this period, and would continue to be a powerhouse in the followind centuries.
In the other side of Christianity, the Eastern Roman Empire (or the Byzantine Empire for short) was not in the best shape. It had received a massive mauling during the previous centuries due to the wars against the persians first and later the sudden apparition of islam, which took away most of its territories in Northen Africa and the Middle East. It was the fast advance od the selyucid turks over Anatolia which forced the Roman Emperor to ask for help to anyone that he could find (and considering they had broken with the Roman Church very recently, it was interpreted as a massive sign of weakness everywhere), which led directly to the crusades. While the crusades help the byzantines stabilise their eastern borders by funding the crusade kingdoms, byzantine territories like Bulgaria managed to gain independence. And then the Fourth Crusade happened, which instead of going to the Holy Land to fight the infidels, it ended up sieging and raiding Constantinople itself. By the time the byzantine emperors retake the capital, they've lost most of their territories elsewhere, which left the Eastern Roman Empire as a vestigial state whose only advantage was its geographically advantageous position. Still, by 1453 the Ottomans managed to finally capture the remains of the empire (which was basically just Constantinople by this point), signaling the end of whatever was left of the Roman Empire of old.
Islamic Golden Age
The Islamic Golden age is a period that is commonly said to have occurred (there is some contention here) during the Abbasid Caliphate between 750 and 1258. As you can expect the Muslim world was doing very well during this period, the Abbassid Caliphate during the reign of Harun-Al-Rashid was the largest and most powerful polity in the world. Meanwhile, in the realm of the sciences, the Muslims were making use of a lot of the classical knowledge they had seized and expanded on it. During this time the Islamic World saw major advancing in terms of science (Primitive Chemistry from Alchemical traditions in particular), medicine, mathematics (there's a reason why they call them Arabic Numerals) (the reason is that they were introduced to Europe through Arabs, though the numbers themselves originate from India), technology (optics, ceramics, architecture, windmills), art (a lot of Islamic Art relies on geometric patterns, having trigonometry was a big boon here) and trade. At the heart of it was Baghdad being a center of learning and a large thriving urban center. Yet not far behind were cities like Samarkand, Damascus, and Cordoba. Unfortunately, the Crusades and the Mongols put a stop to it and trashed up a lot of the Middle East. However, the spirit of this era, of scientific advancement and glorious conquest, would live on past the fall of Baghdad, in places like Mughal India, and the Emirate of Cordoba in Spain.
Khmer Golden Age
While Europe wallowed in the grimdark middle ages, half a world away in what is now Cambodia the city of Angkor was busily becoming a (short lived) paradise on Earth. The Khmer were Hindu at the time and Angkor was constructed as a massive temple and urban area encompassing over a thousand square kilometers, complete with canals and two hand-dug reservoirs that are easily visible from space and capable of holding a hundred million cubic meters of water. The entire complex is larger than New York City and at its height may have had over a million residents. The good times ended when they went Buddhist.
Notes
- This is the high points of chivalry, when an Armored Knight on Horseback had been refined into a truly devastating force. Battles were generally won or lost by the strength of the chivalry that one side could bring to bear.
- This is the golden age of castles. Any lord of any significance would put together a stone castle to consolidate his position.
- Cannons and Firearms begin to show up in Europe around the late 13th century, though both were crude affairs.
- While hardly a unique feature to this period or Europe people at this point thought in terms of Knowing Their Place. In medieval society what role you had was largely determined by birth. Some people did the telling and the rest did what they were told. Medieval peasants by in large did not care much about government policy unless it directly and overtly effected them. It was not their business, there were other people out there which knew better than them which should know what to do and that their judgement had god's backing. This is not an absolute mentality and they did have an idea that there were obligations that nobles needed to fulfill to their subjects, but it is a major distinction that people should consider when trying to get into the mind of a medieval peasant or lord.
The appeal of the High Middle Ages
How do you like your medieval fantasy? Do you like it more refined and heroic? With beautiful Gothic cathedrals with stained glass windows and mighty castles of stone with fluttering banners full of fat friars and proud knights. Or scholarly Sultans and zealous Hashashin more your type of deal? Well this period is for you. Not that it was all lolipops and sunshine. The nobles were still playing their Games of Thrones in dynastic squabbles plus there were the Crusades, Islamic marauders, and endless Feudal wars.. Being a serf or a jew in the path of these armies at this time sucked. The mix of Medieval Splendor and Brutality makes for a nice contrast.
This period also gave us some heroes such as Robin Hood. And though King Arthur has his roots in the Dark Age when the native British were fighting against the invading Saxons, his popularity massively took off thanks to Norman literature and adapted by countless countries across Europe.
High Middle Age inspired Games, Factions and Settings
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| Historical Time Periods | |
|---|---|
| Deep Time: | Prehistory |
| Premodern: | Stone Age - Bronze Age - Classical Period - Dark Age - High Middle Ages - Renaissance |
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