From the Huns to the European Era

In Mongolia one after another of the Altaic groups became dominant and embarked on campaigns of conquest. First were the Huns, who began occupying northern China early in the fourth century and were among the ruling factions there for more than 250 years. Another group of Huns swept westward in the first mass movement from the Far East, reaching the Volga River in the 370's. The Alans, a Scythian people in Turkestan, and the Goths and Slavs in eastern Europe were forced westward by the Hunnish onslaught.

A new horde of Eastern barbarians known as the White Huns, or Ephthalites, seized the Oxus Valley and invaded northern India in the fifth century. Many of the earlier Huns joined the Avars, another Altaic people, who pushed into Europe in the sixth century, followed by the Bulgars. To escape the barbarians, some of the peoples of the Ural Mountains, including the Magyars and the Finns, migrated into Europe.

In the early part of the seventh century a new religion, Islam, developed in the Arabian Peninsula. Its followers, the Muslims, surged out of Arabia and subjugated all the Middle East except Asia Minor, which was part of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) domain. In a little more than a century, the Muslim Empire extended into Turkestan, where it collided with the expanding Chinese empire of the Tang dynasty, which had come into power after the Hunnish upheavals. Defeat of a great Chinese army by the Muslims at Talas, near Tashkent, in 751 began 500 years of military decline and territorial shrinkage for China.

Meanwhile the Turks, an Altaic people, had in the sixth century built a Central Asian empire, in the process absorbing most of the Indo-Europeans still in that region. The empire soon divided. The eastern Turks were overrun by the Tangs, but a Turkic empire was reestablished in the eighth century by the Uighur tribes. The western Turks retreated from the Tangs into Turkestan, where they were converted to Islam.

In the 11th century the Turkic Ghaznavid dynasty of Afghanistan annexed northwestern India, and the Seljuk Turks established their rule over Persia, Armenia, Syria, and western Asia Minor. Arab possession of Jerusalem had not interfered with Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land, but pilgrims were not safe in Turkic territory. The First Crusade—the object of which was to recover the Middle East for Christendom—was launched, its armies reaching Asia in 1097. Other crusades followed. The last of the Crusaders were expelled in 1291 by the Turkic armies of Egypt.

The decline of Tang power in the Far East had permitted various Altaic peoples in turn to rule northern China. One of these, the Mongols, established authority over the eastern Turks in 1206, conquered northern China, and then, incorporating Turkic tribes, swept across Asia into Russia, 1218–22. The savage horde of Mongols and Turks was known in western Asia and Europe as the Tatars. The Mongol conquest of southern China was completed in 1279, bringing within the Mongol Empire all of the continent except Southeast Asia, India, and a portion of the Middle East.

During the latter half of the 13th century, three Venetians, the Polos, made several overland trips from Italy to China. This was the first direct contact between Europe and the Far East.

The Mongol, or Yuan, dynasty in China was replaced in 1368 by the native Ming dynasty. A brief period of military expansion extended the empire into Annam (northern Vietnam) to the south and Manchuria to the north. Under the Mings regular commercial contacts were established with Europe, where Chinese luxury wares were in great demand.

Mongol power in western Asia weakened after a century, and in the mid-1300's several areas regained independence. In 1370 Tamerlane, a Tatar also known as Timur, made himself ruler of Turkestan. In the next 35 years he conquered Persia, southern Russia, Afghanistan, and northwestern India. After Tamerlane's death the empire shrank to a kingdom centering on Afghanistan. In the early 15th century the Timurid dynasty moved into India and there established the Mogul Empire. In Central Asia tribal warfare made the Silk Road unsafe, and contact between Europe and China was largely lost.

In Asia Minor a Turkic people known as the Ottomans gained supreme power and gradually conquered the Balkan Peninsula of Europe. About 1500 the Ottomans turned eastward and soon absorbed Syria, Palestine, Armenia, Mesopotamia (western Persia), and the coastlands of Arabia.

Spices were for many centuries the major Asian export to Europe; they were valued even more than silk and porcelain. By the end of the Middle Ages, however, Europe also wanted sugar, cotton, and rice from the East. Carrying goods between East and West had become a Muslim monopoly. It was the European desire to trade directly with the so-called Indies (all southeast Asia) that launched the great Age of Discovery at the end of the 15th century. Spreading Christianity was often a second goal. Eventually control of foreign lands became a matter of prestige among European nations.

The Portuguese made the first voyages of discovery to Asia, reaching India in 1498, Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula in 1509, China in 1513, and Japan in 1542. They established trading posts all along the route. The Philippine Islands were discovered by the Spanish in 1521 and colonized in the latter part of the century. The Dutch had started taking over trade in the Malay archipelago (what is now Indonesia) by 1600. In 1638 they established a protectorate over Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The English began trading in India in 1640; the French, a few decades later. Meanwhile Russia had started its territorial advance into Siberia, reaching the area near Lake Baykal in 1652.