History has lots of definitions, but if you ask your teacher what it means to study history, they’ll probably say something about continuity and change over time. Human societies change, but not everything changes all the time. Some things exhibit continuity, which means that they stay the same even when other things change. You can think about continuity and change in your own history, too. You’re not the exact same person you were five years ago, but you probably still have some of the same likes and dislikes. But as with your personal history, human history is usually more about the changes than the continuities.

Collapse and restructuring

When we look at the history of the world, one of the big changes relates to communities, networks, and how things are produced and distributed. Everything just seems to get bigger as time moves forward. By the time we reach the period covered in this unit (200–1500 CE), for example, human societies have gone from small extended families to large states and vast empires. Before, trade between neighbors was a big deal. Now, networks of commerce might extend thousands of miles. Once, belief systems were tied to a local shrine or mountain, now people might share a religion across distances so big that they will never meet each other!

Yet, although change happens, it doesn’t always happen in one direction. For example, sometimes networks and communities get smaller for a while, instead of getting bigger. In fact, during the period covered by this unit, there were several great examples of scales getting smaller, which we call periods collapse. But periods of collapse don’t last forever. They’re usually followed by another period of growth, which we call eras of restructuring.

Systems collapse

The biggest collapse and restructuring we look at in this unit features Eurasia. In the year 200 CE, two very large states—the Roman Empire and China under the Han Dynasty—each anchored one end of a long-distance trade route reaching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Then, independently, those two states collapsed. As a result, the system that connected them broke down, too.

Collapse can describe a lot of different situations. It might mean total destruction—the burning of cities, the decline of population, the loss of knowledge. It might be used to describe a change of government or ruler.

Even within Eurasia, several other states, including the Gupta Empire in South Asia, experienced collapse in this period. The collapse of large empires often affected other states beyond their borders. So, for example, while overall human population grew during this period, in large areas of Eurasia, the population sharply declined between 300 and 600 CE.

A dark age?

Sounds pretty terrible, right? In fact, so terrible that we might call this era, at least for Eurasia, a “dark age.”

Or should we? A dark age?

For some people, empire collapse was probably a terrible thing. Trade diminished, so it was harder to get goods. Law and order broke down, making everything less safe. Wars increased while learning decreased. The territory that is now England — once part of the Roman Empire— suffered from invasions and raids after the Roman Empire collapsed.

Yet, other parts of the world, even nearby Ireland, didn’t suffer as much. And recovery in Asia—even the Asian portions of the Roman Empire—was more rapid.

One important way to look at this question of a “dark age” is to look at the lives of women. They changed dramatically in both China and western Europe in this period.

Systems restructure

Eurasia recovered, but the process looked different across different regions. China was sometimes united and sometimes divided. Much of the eastern Roman Empire lived on as the Byzantine Empire. In southwestern Asia and North Africa, Roman rule was replaced by a political infrastructure built around an emerging religion known as Islam. In western Europe, societies restructured around the Catholic Church.

Instead of two great powers on either end of a long trade route, the reorganization of Eurasia featured a strong center. The religion of Islam emerged in the seventh century. It helped to provide trading links, a shared moral compass, and political stability. Islam also politically united several large empires in Southwest Asia and facilitated trade between East and West. The Indian Ocean also became important for trade. Rising trade created new possibilities for taxation, which in turn strengthened governments. Sometimes, as in the Crusades, political clashes were created by conflict between religious communities.

In East Africa, the once-powerful state of Aksum declined rapidly, but Swahili-speaking city-states arose on the coast. For a time, they dominated trade between the Indian Ocean and the African interior. In West Africa, large states, including Mali, began to emerge for the first time. In Mesoamerica, states (including the Maya) and systems grew and collapsed, before seemingly disintegrating in the ninth century.

Conclusion

The Silk Road was a major long-distance trade route across Eurasia. It grew even wider and busier than it had been before the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty. Other large, long-distance trade networks had also developed in the Americas.

Religion played an important role in the recovery and reorganization of the Afro-Eurasian system in the period of restructuring. For example, Europeans lacked a strong, central government, but Christianity provided a sense of unity. In Southeast Asia, Buddhism and Hinduism acted as networks to support traders and also offered ideologies and organizing principles for states. But the relationship between the state and religion was not exact or perfect. In Western Europe, the Christian (Catholic) pope had great authority, but he did not rule over vast territory. The Orthodox Church based in Byzantium was at times friendly to and at other times enemies with Catholic powers. The Muslim world was also frequently divided. Moreover, some stateless peoples could survive and thrive as part of a reorganized system, which was true in particular of the Jewish community.

All this evidence about recovery leads us to ask more questions about collapse—both the idea of collapse as well as specific historical events. What do historians mean when they say that some societies collapse or fall? What actually changed and who was affected by those changes? How did things either change back or start growing again? Finding some answers to these questions about the past might help us to look at our own society in the present. It might even help us to plan for the future.