The medieval world was an era of immense and global change, when monk-spies stole silkworms from China to bring the finest fabric of the age back to Constantinople, when the Malian king Mansa Musa went on the hajj with so much gold he collapsed the Mediterranean economy, and when arguably the greatest sports hero in history, Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, used his skill in a ritual ballgame to build a kingdom in Central America. A field of history that was once limited to Europe with the odd excursion into the Middle East is now increasingly globalized, and increasingly critical of its own narrow origins.
Like all branches of history, medieval studies has become a battleground between not only academic factions but also political ones. The rise of the so-called alt-right, the white nationalist march in Charlottesville, and horrific mass murders like the Christchurch mosque shooting have all involved neo-medieval invocations of a white supremacist past. Within medieval studies, attempts to point out white supremacist framings have led to conflict between academic factions. Most of the traditionalist academics, however, argue for the neutrality of the medieval era in contemporary politics, rather than explicitly advancing it as a tool for pushing ideological aims.
