Connecting Worlds, Connecting Narratives: Global History, Periodisation and the Year 751 CE

The objective of this article is to propose a historiographical exercise through a Global History approach, more precisely, Connected History, trying to understand aspects of pre-modern chronology from a different perspective regarding geographical limits and Eurocentric traditions. Starting from the Battle of Talas, famous for putting Arabs and Chinese against each other, I will establish a connective narrative between East and West, highlighting how the year of 751 CE is paradigmatic regarding the formation of frontiers and patterns of political interaction. In order to demonstrate such pattern, I will analyse the presence of the ʾAbbāsids and the Tang in Central Asia, the crowning of Pippin the Short in Europe, and the destruction of the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Byzantine Iconoclasm. I hope this exercise demonstrates how synchronicity and global connections can be a viable historical approach, allowing us to understand and to relocate pre-modern periodisation beyond its Eurocentric roots. This chronological/geographical shift has the potential to unravel wider, richer, and better-connected narratives and interpretations on pre-modern subjects, breaking with the traditional normalisation of Europe as the ruler to measure and define historical periods, especially the Middle Ages.