History lessons usually go one country at a time: the Romans, then the Middle Ages, then the discovery of America. So it is hard to tell what else was going on in the same year. Was China still under the Tang when Charlemagne was crowned? What was happening in Africa during the Black Death? Who ruled Moscow when Columbus landed?
This is what a synchronistic view of history is for: pick one year and look at every continent at once. Below are ten years that are worth seeing this way. Each one has a link that opens the Panchronia globe on that year, with the borders and events of the time.
480 BC: Thermopylae, Confucius and the Buddha's generation
- Europe. The Greeks hold off the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae and win the Battle of Salamis. Rome is a small city that became a republic less than thirty years earlier.
- Middle East. Xerxes I rules the Achaemenid Empire, the largest state on Earth at the time, stretching from Egypt to the Indus.
- Asia. Confucius is an old man; he dies the next year. The Death of the Buddha is traditionally placed only a few years earlier. China is entering the age of the Warring States.
Three of the great teachers of humanity lived at roughly the same time, and none of them knew the others existed. Open 480 BC
800: Charlemagne, Harun al-Rashid and the Tang
- Europe. On Christmas Day comes the Coronation of Charlemagne as emperor in Rome. Seven years earlier, the Viking raid on Lindisfarne opened the Viking Age.
- Middle East. Harun al-Rashid rules the Abbasid Caliphate from the new city of Baghdad, the largest city west of China. He and Charlemagne exchanged embassies; Harun sent him an elephant.
- Asia. The Tang Dynasty still rules China, weakened after the An Lushan Rebellion. In Java, work begins on Borobudur; two years later Jayavarman II founds the Khmer Empire.
- Americas. The great Maya cities of the south are being abandoned: Drought and the Classic Maya collapse.
1066: Hastings and the Song
- Europe. William the Conqueror wins the Battle of Hastings, and that spring Halley's Comet over England is taken as an omen.
- Middle East. The Seljuk Turks are on the rise: they take Ani in 1064 and defeat Byzantium at the Battle of Manzikert five years later.
- Asia. The Northern Song is probably the richest state in the world, with printed books and the world's first government-issued paper money.
- Africa. The Almoravids are expanding across North-West Africa; a few years later they found Marrakesh.
1206: Genghis Khan
- Asia. Temüjin is proclaimed Genghis Khan at a great assembly on the Onon River. In the same year in India comes the founding of the Delhi Sultanate. China is divided between the Southern Song, the Jurchen Jin and Western Xia, and all three will fall to the Mongols.
- Europe. Two years earlier, crusaders carried out the Sack of Constantinople. In Pisa, Fibonacci has just published Liber Abaci, which brought Arabic numerals to Europe.
1347: The Black Death
- Europe. The Black Death reaches Sicily and within four years kills perhaps a third of Europe. England and France are in the middle of the Hundred Years' War.
- Africa. The Mali Empire is at its height; twenty years earlier, Mansa Musa made the famous Hajj of Mansa Musa.
- Americas. About twenty years earlier the Mexica founded Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco.
- Asia. The Red Turban Rebellions are about to break out against the Mongol Yuan Dynasty; out of them will come the Ming.
1492: Columbus, the Inca and Moscow
- Americas. Columbus reaches the Americas. The Inca Empire under Huayna Capac and the Aztec Triple Alliance are at their height and know nothing about Europe.
- Europe. In January, Spain completes the Reconquista with the Fall of Granada. Leonardo da Vinci is forty.
- Eastern Europe. Ivan III rules Moscow; twelve years earlier the Great Stand on the Ugra River ended the Horde's rule.
- Asia and Africa. The Ming Dynasty rules China, the Ottoman Empire holds Constantinople, and the Songhai Empire controls Timbuktu.
When Columbus reached America, the Aztec Empire still existed. Open 1492
1603: Shakespeare, the shogun and the Time of Troubles
- Europe. Elizabeth I dies and the Union of the Crowns joins England and Scotland under one king. William Shakespeare is writing his great tragedies.
- Asia. Tokugawa Ieyasu becomes shogun three years after the Battle of Sekigahara. In India, Akbar the Great is in the last years of his reign.
- Russia. The Time of Troubles: famine, pretenders and, soon, Polish troops in the Kremlin.
- Americas. Four years later the English found Jamestown.
1776: The Declaration of Independence
- Americas. The US Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson.
- Europe. Catherine the Great rules Russia, Frederick the Great rules Prussia, and they have just carried out the first of the Partitions of Poland. Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations, and the Industrial Revolution is under way in Britain.
- Asia. China under the Qianlong Emperor is the largest economy in the world.
- Oceania. James Cook sets out on his third and last voyage.
1812: Napoleon in Russia, war in America
- Europe. Napoleon invades Russia: the Battle of Borodino; Moscow burns in September.
- Americas. Across the Atlantic, the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain; in South America, Simón Bolívar is fighting the Spanish American wars of independence.
- Asia. The Qing still look unshakeable. Three years later, the Eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia brings the Year Without a Summer to Europe and North America.
1914: The First World War and the Panama Canal
- Europe. The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand starts World War I.
- Americas. Less than three weeks after the war begins, the Panama Canal opens. Mexico is in the middle of the Mexican Revolution. In September Martha, the last passenger pigeon, dies at Cincinnati Zoo; the species was once counted in billions.
- Asia. China has been a republic for two years since the Xinhai Revolution, and Korea has been a Japanese colony since 1910.
How to see any other year
The ten years above are only examples. On the Panchronia globe, move the timeline to any year from prehistory to today: the borders of all states redraw themselves, and the events of that year light up on the map. To see the same years as a table, by region, open the world history timeline. For people who lived at the same time, see 20 surprising historical overlaps.
Questions
What is a synchronistic history?
A view of history that puts events from different countries side by side for the same date instead of telling each country's story separately. The classic form is a synchronistic table with centuries in rows and regions in columns.
What was happening in the world in 1492?
Columbus reached the Caribbean; Spain took Granada; the Inca and Aztec empires were at their peak; Ivan III ruled Moscow; the Ming ruled China and the Ottomans held Constantinople.
What was happening in the rest of the world during the Middle Ages in Europe?
The Abbasid Caliphate and Baghdad's House of Wisdom, the Tang and Song dynasties in China, the Khmer Empire with Angkor, the empires of Ghana and Mali in Africa, and the Maya, Toltecs and later the Aztecs and Inca in the Americas.