2010-09-13
13 分钟Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World
in 100 Objects from BBC Radio 4.
Welcome to part three of this History of the World through Objects, which we pick up between 14 and 1500.
As always, we're looking at things that tell us / about how societies organized themselves,
how they viewed their place in the world, / and how they traded with and
almost invariably fought with their neighbors.
At regular intervals, we've been spinning the globe / to see what's been happening on
different continents at the same time.
And we've seen that for thousands of years, / objects have traveled huge distances over land and sea.
But in spite of these connections, the world before 1500 / was essentially still a series of networks.
Nobody could take a global view / because nobody had ever traveled round the world.
Before 1500, nobody could spin the globe.
The programs this week are about the great empires / of the world at that last pre-modern moment
when it was still unthinkable for one person / to visit them all,
and when even superpowers dominated only their region.
We begin with one of the great rulers of the age, / or more specifically, with his name,
painted across two feet of paper, refulgent in blue and gold,
and proclaiming him ruler of a dynamic and expansive Islamic empire,
an empire that would reconfigure the geopolitics of the entire world.
"It speaks of power, glory, magnificence, and there's a statement behind this signature."