--- title: "World History" description: "23 topics in History, in the order they build on each other." canonical: https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/areas/world-history source: https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/areas/world-history.md retrieved: 2026-09-02 --- > **Agent view.** This is the Markdown twin of the page, for tools and assistants. > When to use this site, and the call that answers each job: https://lightmysky.com/agent-instructions.md > API description (OpenAPI 3.1): https://lightmysky.com/openapi.json · Authentication: https://lightmysky.com/auth.md > Pricing: https://lightmysky.com/pricing.md · Catalog: https://lightmysky.com/llms.txt · Full catalog: https://lightmysky.com/llms-full.txt > Every machine-readable file on this domain: https://lightmysky.com/.well-known/ai-catalog.json > Ask for Markdown with `Accept: text/markdown`, a `.md` address, or `?mode=agent`. # World History 23 topics in History, in the order they build on each other. Page: https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/areas/world-history - [China's First Empires](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/chinas-first-empires-mt_l1uAV1oGid): How Qin and then Han rulers turned a set of warring states into one empire with a shared script, shared weights and a road system. The Han governed more people than Rome did, and did it with written exams and paperwork rather than only with soldiers. - [The Silk Roads](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/the-silk-roads-mt_Ud5GTBfVTz): The overland and sea routes that carried silk, horses, paper and glass between China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean. They carried more than goods: religions, technologies and diseases travelled the same way. - [India From the Vedas to the Gupta](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/india-from-the-vedas-to-the-gupta-mt_WylqxfbwwJ): The long story of the Indian subcontinent from the Vedic period through Ashoka's Mauryan empire to the Gupta courts. It is where the numerals we write with, and a great deal of early mathematics and astronomy, were worked out. - [Belief Systems That Travelled](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/belief-systems-that-travelled-mt_1RVIe0k2AU): Why some religions and philosophies moved far beyond where they began while others stayed local. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Confucian ideas all crossed borders, and each changed as it went. - [The Rise of Islam and Its First Empires](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/the-rise-of-islam-and-its-first-empires-mt_kgkvNTMNCD): How a movement that began in seventh-century Arabia came within a century to rule from Spain to the Indus. The new states taxed rather than converted at first, and much of the population they governed stayed Christian, Jewish or Zoroastrian for generations. - [Baghdad, Cordoba and the Work of Translation](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/baghdad-cordoba-and-the-work-of-translation-mt_ZkjqYHk0cN): For several centuries the busiest centres of medicine, astronomy and mathematics were in the Islamic world. Greek works that Europe had lost survived because scholars in Baghdad translated them into Arabic and argued with them. - [Gold, Salt and the Kingdoms of the Sahel](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/gold-salt-and-the-kingdoms-of-the-sahel-mt_EUkNLax9Yz): Ghana, Mali and Songhai grew rich controlling the trade that crossed the Sahara: gold going north, salt coming south. Timbuktu had libraries and a university while the trade was running. - [The Indian Ocean and the Swahili Coast](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/the-indian-ocean-and-the-swahili-coast-mt_0hVCaCE7QL): Monsoon winds that reverse twice a year made the Indian Ocean a predictable highway between Africa, Arabia, India and China. The stone towns of the Swahili coast, and inland Great Zimbabwe, were built on that traffic. - [The Mongol Century](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/the-mongol-century-mt_9dNatkNqRt): In two generations the Mongols built the largest connected land empire there has been, from Korea to Hungary. What they destroyed is well recorded; what they connected, from postal relays to safe roads for merchants, is easier to miss. - [When Plague Crossed a Continent](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/when-plague-crossed-a-continent-mt_852vI5oN6Y): The plague of the 1340s was not a European event. It moved along the same roads and sea lanes that carried silk and silver, and it changed wages, land and belief everywhere it landed. - [Cities of the Americas Before 1500](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/cities-of-the-americas-before-1500-mt_KMAiatbUp8): Tenochtitlan was larger than any city in Europe when the Spanish first saw it, and the Inca ran a mountain state of millions without wheels, money or writing as Europe knew it. Maya astronomers had a calendar more accurate than the one Spain arrived with. - [Why Empires Fall](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/why-empires-fall-mt_ofR2rPlIkQ): Rome, Han China, the Maya cities and the Egyptian New Kingdom all ended, and the explanations repeat: overstretch, disease, climate, a broken succession, a frontier that stops paying. Comparing cases is how you tell a cause from a story. - [The Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/the-ottoman-safavid-and-mughal-empires-mt_CviwlUVthF): Three large Muslim states ran most of the land between the Danube and the Bay of Bengal from the sixteenth century, each built on cannon, cavalry and a paid bureaucracy. They were the powers European traders had to negotiate with, not around. - [Ming and Qing China](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/ming-and-qing-china-mt_-WC-wSZr7f): China under the Ming and early Qing was the largest economy on Earth and the destination for most of the silver mined in the Americas. It traded on its own terms, which is a different story from the one that starts with European ships. - [The Columbian Exchange](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/the-columbian-exchange-mt_R6zh3S5dha): After 1492 crops, animals and diseases crossed the Atlantic in both directions and rearranged diets and populations everywhere. Potatoes and maize fed Europe and China; smallpox and measles emptied much of the Americas before most Europeans arrived. - [Silver, Sugar and the First World Economy](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/silver-sugar-and-the-first-world-economy-mt_uFhCt_GXgN): By 1700 a market in one continent set prices in another, and states ran trade policy to keep bullion at home. Mercantilism is the name for that policy and for the wars it produced. - [The Plantation Atlantic](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/the-plantation-atlantic-mt_yPFkuKzale): Sugar, tobacco and cotton were grown by enslaved people on a scale no earlier slavery had reached, and the societies built on that work invented the racial law that justified it. Resistance ran from sabotage to the revolution that founded Haiti. - [The Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/the-enlightenment-and-the-age-of-revolutions-mt_6lJ0wjVsig): A set of arguments about reason, rights and consent moved from coffee houses into constitutions, in America, France and Haiti within twenty-five years. Each revolution had to decide who counted as the people, and gave a different answer. - [Independence in Latin America](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/independence-in-latin-america-mt_pQVJQQrKvm): Between 1810 and 1825 most of Spanish and Portuguese America became independent, led largely by locally born elites. Independence changed who governed without changing much about who owned the land. - [Industrialising Outside Europe: Japan and Egypt](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/industrialising-outside-europe-japan-and-egypt-mt_DFhpNwT4Rq): Two states tried to industrialise deliberately in the nineteenth century, and one kept its independence while the other lost it. Comparing them is the cleanest test of what industrialisation actually required. - [Resisting Colonial Rule](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/resisting-colonial-rule-mt_7Y5kKzxsBv): Colonised people fought back throughout, and sometimes won: at Adwa an African army defeated a European one and kept its independence. The forms ranged from open war to strikes, boycotts, newspapers and courts. - [The Non-Aligned World](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/the-non-aligned-world-mt_aHyHeLXH20): After 1955 a group of newly independent states refused to line up behind either superpower and tried to act together on trade, aid and racism. The Cold War read from Bandung or Belgrade looks nothing like the Cold War read from Washington or Moscow. - [Globalisation and Who It Left Out](https://lightmysky.com/learn/history/globalisation-and-who-it-left-out-mt_O008yD5Jwa): Since 1980 goods, money and information have moved with less friction than ever, and the gains have been very unevenly shared. Deciding whether that counts as progress means choosing what to measure.