High Middle Ages

Salisbury Cathedral built in the 1200s with a 100 meter tall spire, not the work of illiterate dung farmers

Around the year 1000 the people in Western Europe began to get their shit together and moved out of the Dark Ages. The economy steadily improve and cities began to grow again. Though no single state had risen to unify Europe since the Carolingian Empire, individual kingdoms had risen to replace the old tribal confederations (though feudalism was still the rule of the day), allowing for a degree of political stability, and with it, trade networks grew. Skills were honed, new technologies were acquired. Some of these were brought in from the east such as gunpowder, giant hamster wheel powered cranes and paper but others were developed locally such as stained glass and an increasingly wide use of water power. Gothic architecture emerged as Cathedrals reached to the sky. Slavery had been abandoned in much of Europe while trade in the Mediterranean became more and more profitable. The Crusades also happened at this time.

Unfortunately the good times did not last as the 14th century was a bit of a doozy. First there was famine, which is never a nice thing. Then in 1346 there was the Black Death which wiped out about a third of the people in Europe with some areas getting hit worse than others. Ironically improvements in trade and the growth of cities with little consideration to public heath made such a die off possible. Small isolated villages hit by plague might be wiped out before it can spread, leaving a ghost town and spooked but healthy neighbors. Cities with tens of thousands of people full of filth (human waste, animal waste, food scraps, blood from slaughtered animals, dead stray dogs, dead rats which feed on this stuff and other such grodiness) in which carts, barges and ships are always coming and going can go on for some time propagating the plague like a Nurgle Machine. However, the tradeoff was that peasants, being in lower supply, were now more valuable and could now earn wages to lift themselves out of serfdom and earn some (very basic) rights. Medicine also advanced as healers were forced to change their means and methods and had plenty of sick people to practice and try new things on.

In Japan the Heian era ended in 1185 with the rise of the Kamakura shogunate. Except for the short lived (3 years) Kenmu Restoration, the Emperor would be a powerless figurehead for almost 700 years until the Meiji revolution of 1868. This is also the era the Samurai class emerged. The Katana would only appear at the very end of this period with the true form only emerging around 1400. Samurai wore the longer tachi instead.

Islamic Golden Age

The Islamic Golden age is a period that is commonly said to have occurred (there is some contention here) during the Abbasid Caliphate between 750 and 1258. As you can expect the Muslim world was doing very well during this period, the Abbassid Caliphate during the reign of Harun-Al-Rashid was the largest and most powerful polity in the world. Meanwhile, in the realm of the sciences, the Muslims were making use of a lot of the classical knowledge they had seized and expanded on it. During this time the Islamic World saw major advancing in terms of science (Primitive Chemistry from Alchemical traditions in particular), medicine, mathematics (there's a reason why they call them Arabic Numerals) (the reason is that they were introduced to Europe through Arabs, though the numbers themselves originate from India), technology (optics, ceramics, architecture), art (a lot of Islamic Art relies on geometric patterns, having trigonometry was a big boon here) and trade. At the heart of it was Baghdad being a center of learning and a large thriving urban center. Yet not far behind were cities like Samarkand, Damascus, and Cordoba. Unfortunately, the Mongols put a stop to it and trashed up a lot of the Middle East. However, the spirit of this era, of scientific advancement and glorious conquest, would live on past the fall of Baghdad, in places like Mughal India, and the Emirate of Cordoba in Spain. Ironically, despite the name "Islamic" in it, lions share of contribution came from Jews and Christians (Mostly Nestorians, that formed significant part of the population of the region, before Tamerlane went on sperging extermination campaigns).

Khmer Golden Age

While Europe wallowed in the grimdark middle ages, half a world away in what is now Cambodia the city of Angkor was busily becoming a (short lived) paradise on Earth. The Khmer were Hindu at the time and Angkor was constructed as a massive temple and urban area encompassing over a thousand square kilometers, complete with canals and two hand-dug reservoirs that are easily visible from space and capable of holding a hundred million cubic meters of water. The entire complex is larger than New York City and at its height may have had over a million residents. The good times ended when they went Buddhist.

Notes

• This is the high points of chivalry, when an Armored Knight on Horseback had been refined into a truly devastating force. Battles were generally won or lost by the strength of the chivalry that one side could bring to bear.
• This is the golden age of castles. Any lord of any significance would put together a stone castle to consolidate his position.
• Cannons and Firearms begin to show up in Europe around the late 13th century, though both were crude affairs.
• While hardly a unique feature to this period or Europe people at this point thought in terms of Knowing Their Place. In medieval society what role you had was largely determined by birth. Some people did the telling and the rest did what they were told. Medieval peasants by in large did not care much about government policy unless it directly and overtly effected them. It was not their business, there were other people out there which knew better than them which should know what to do and that their judgement had god's backing. This is not an absolute mentality and they did have an idea that there were obligations that nobles needed to fulfill to their subjects, but it is a major distinction that people should consider when trying to get into the mind of a medieval peasant or lord.

The appeal of the High Middle Ages

How do you like your medieval fantasy? Do you like it more refined and heroic? With beautiful Gothic cathedrals with stained glass windows and mighty castles of stone with fluttering banners full of fat friars and proud knights. Or scholarly Sultans and zealous Hashashin more your type of deal? Well this period is for you. Not that it was all lolipops and sunshine. The nobles were still playing their Games of Thrones in dynastic squabbles plus there were the Crusades, Islamic marauders, and endless Feudal wars.. Being a serf or a jew in the path of these armies at this time sucked. The mix of Medieval Splendor and Brutality makes for a nice contrast.

This period also gave us some heroes such as Robin Hood. And though King Arthur has his roots in the Dark Age when the native British were fighting against the invading Saxons, his popularity massively took off thanks to Norman literature and adapted by countless countries across Europe.

High Middle Age inspired Games, Factions and Settings

• A Song of Ice and Fire

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Historical Time Periods
Deep Time:	Prehistory
Premodern:	Stone Age - Bronze Age - Classical Period - Dark Age - High Middle Ages - Renaissance
Modern:	Age of Enlightenment - Industrial Revolution - The World Wars - The Cold War - Post-Cold War