ABSTRACT
Two contact events, a generation or so either side of the period covered in this volume, mark key developments in the evolution of truly global history. The first involved the European entry into the Americas in the decades around the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries, led by Scandinavian voyagers and colonizers. While fuller social, economic and cultural developments of this maritime meeting of continents came in later centuries, the Scandinavians unknowingly pointed to that future. The second contact event was the British entry into New Zealand and eastern Australia from the late eighteenth century under Captain James Cook’s command, which heralded the integration of all inhabited continents into a global schema of interlinked economies and maritime empires.
