1. Introduction Benjamin Z. Kedar and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks; Part I. Global Developments: 2. Humans and the environment: tension and co-evolution Joachim Radkau; 3. Women, family, gender, and sexuality Susan Stuard; 4. Society: hierarchy and solidarity Susan Reynolds; 5. Educational institutions Linda Walton; 6. Warfare Clifford Rogers; Part II. Eurasian Commonalities: 7. Courtly cultures: Western Europe, Byzantium, the Islamic world, India, China, and Japan Patrick Geary, Daud Ali, Paul S. Atkins, Michael Cooperson, Rita Costa Gomes, Paul Dutton, Gert Melville, Claudia Rapp, Karl-Heinz Spieß, Stephen West and Pauline Yu; 8. The age of trans-regional reorientations: cultural crystallization and transformation in the tenth to thirteenth centuries Björn Wittrock; Part III. Growing Interactions: 9. Trade and commerce across Afro-Eurasia Richard Smith; [...]opean and Mediterranean trade networks Michel Balard; 11. Trading partners across the Indian Ocean: the making of maritime communities Himanshu Ray; 12. Technology and innovation within expanding webs of exchange Dagmar Schaefer and Marcus Popplow; 13. The transmission of science and philosophy Charles Burnett; 14. Pastoral nomadic migrations and conquests Anatoly Khazanov; Part IV. Expanding Religious Systems: 15. The centrality of Islamic civilization Michael Cook; 16. Christendom's regional systems Miri Rubin; 17. The spread of Buddhism Tansen Sen; Part V. State Formations: 18. State formation and empire building Johann Arnason; 19. State formation in China from the Sui through the Song dynasties Richard von Glahn; 20. The Mongol empire and inter-civilizational exchange Michal Biran; 21. Byzantium Jean-Claude Cheynet; 22. Early polities of the Western Sudan David Conrad; 23. Mesoamerican state formation in the postclassic period Michael E. Smith; 24. State and religion in the Inca empire Sabine MacCormack; 25. 'Proto-globalization' and 'proto-glocalizations' in the middle millennium Diego Holstein.