Our political world map of the world c. 1200 CE helps students visualize a connected Afro-Eurasian world just before the rise of the Mongol Empire. This political map of the world c. 1200 helps students visualize a connected Afro-Eurasian world just before the rise of the Mongol Empire. It highlights major states such as the Song Dynasty and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the network of medieval Silk Roads linking them, while also showing the absence of large, centralized states in the Eurasian steppe.
How to Use This Map
Students can use the map to consider how this political and geographic landscape set the stage for the rapid expansion of the Mongols and, later, the spread of the Black Death. They might also use it to make predictions about how increased connectivity, shifting empires, and movement across the steppe could transform patterns of trade, disease, and cultural exchange.
1200 CE political map, by OER Project, CC BY 4.0.