François-Xavier Fauvelle, , trans. Troy Tice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018 (orig. 2013), ix, 264 pp., b/w drawings, 7 color photos, 2 maps, 1 b/w facsimile.

Recent scholarship has increasingly demanded that we translate our traditional research into Global Medieval Studies. The challenges are daunting, of course, and it might not be practically possible to pursue that goal because most scholars are working in their specific areas and can handle not more than two or three medieval languages. Reaching out to the Asian continent and its medieval past is a very promising, though also highly difficult effort, especially because it seems that if there were any contacts, then those were organized mostly by Europeans exploring the Orient, and hardly the other way around. The connections between Europe and Africa were tenuous and seem to have been limited to trade, primarily with representatives in northern Africa. Nevertheless, gold, ivory, and slaves coming from the kingdom of Mali, for instance, reached the Mediterranean coast. The Americas also experienced a medieval past, but we all know that the first direct contact was established only in 1492, here disregarding the efforts by the Vikings under Eric the Red around 1000. Australia or New Zealand constitute very different and highly distant players in that global spectrum.