Tang China
Under the Tang Dynasty, (618 - 907 CE) China expanded foreign trade.  Chinese merchants traded with India, Persia, and the Middle East.  The Chinese built many new ships to handle this trade and became a major naval power in Asia.  Within China, they built a series of canals that linked major cities and allowed vast internal trade.  Tang China also heavily influenced Japan.  The Japanese had first received Chinese culture through Korea, but communicated with them directly during the Tang Dynasty.  The Japanese adopted much of Tang culture including styles of dress, food, language, music, art, and the tea ceremony.

Byzantine Empire
The Roman Empire divided under the Emperor Diocletian in the late 200s CE.  The Eastern half of the empire became known as the Byzantine Empire, as its new capital was built on the site of the old Greek city Byzantium.   The Byzantine Empire preserved much of the Greco-Roman culture, and helped spread them across a vast region.  The empire's biggest influence was on Russia.  Byzantine missionaries spread the Orthodox Christian religion to Russia, and also adapted the Greek alphabet to provided the Slavic speaking peoples a written language called Cyrillic, after the monk Cyril who helped create it. Russia and Eastern Europe also adapted art and literature from the Byzantines, as well as architecture.  The Byzantine Empire was considered to be the heir to the Roman Empire, and on its decline in the 1400s CE, Russia began to think of itself as their successor, or Third Rome.

Byzantine Empire

Mongols
The Mongols were a nomadic tribe of herders who lived in Central Asia.  Under their greatest leader, Genghis Khan, they conquered the world's largest empire to date.  The Mongols ruled, at one time or another, Russia and parts of Eastern Europe, China, India, and parts of the Middle East.
 

Mongol Empire

During the Pax Mongolia, or Mongol Peace, global trade expanded due to the political stability provided by Mongol rulers.  Silk Road trade flourished as goods and ideas, such as gunpowder, porcelain, and the technology of papermaking were traded with the west.  Explorers, like Marco Polo, also traveled safely along these routes.  Marco Polo spent many years at the court of Kublai Khan, and upon his return to Europe, described life in China to many disbelieving people.  The Pax Mongolia was a time of trade and cultural diffusion

Expansion of Global Trade
Ming Dynasty: The Ming replaced the Mongols as rulers of China in 1368.  Under their rule, China expanded trade and industry, and began to seek new markets and resources overseas.  Between 1405 and 1433, Chinese admiral Zheng He sailed along the coasts of Southeast Asia, India, the Arabian Peninsula, and to port cities in east Africa.  Zheng He opened trade between China and these places, and promoted Chinese culture.  Later, the Chinese city of Canton became an important port city.  Portuguese, English, and Dutch merchants all traded at this center.

Major Trade Routes: Sea routes across the Indian Ocean and into the Arabian Sea provided links between Asia, East Africa, and the Middle East.  European ships sailing around the tip of Africa often traded with the east coast trading ports.  The Mediterranean continued to be a major trade route between the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, with both Islamic and Italian merchants dominating the trade. Overland routes included the Silk Road, and roads between Europe and Russia, with Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire acting as a crossroads.

Revival of European Trade
European interest in goods from the east was stimulated by returning Crusaders who brought back many things. As the Crusades ended, ships that were once used to carry soldiers to the Middle East, now carried trade goods.  Merchants from rich Italian city states, such as Venice and Florence, dominated this trade.  Goods from the Middle East would arrive in Venice, before following newly established trade routes to the rest of Europe.  Along these new trade routes, trade fairs were established in towns with larger populations, or at major crossroads.  Over time, merchants and craftsman settled in these towns, and some grew to be cities of several thousand people.  This fundamentally altered the way people lived in Europe, and marked the beginning of the end of feudalism and the Middle Ages.

The Black Death
The bubonic plague was a highly contagious disease that was transmitted by the fleas that lived on rats.  People infected would experience swellings and black bruises before eventually dying in extreme pain.  In the early 1300s, China experienced a breakout of the plague.  As a result of the expansion of trade during this time period, the plague was carried west into the Middle East and Europe. The plague killed about 35 million people in China, about a third of the population of Europe, and at its peak, killed 7,000 people a day in Cairo, Egypt.  The death of so many people disrupted trade for some time.  Areas that had been very prosperous before the plague, struggled to survive for years as trade was slowly reestablished.