Interactions among cultures, by 1400 CE, did not involve the peoples of the Americas with those of Eurasia and Africa. This chapter looks at interactions centered on China, Islam, South Asia, and the eastern Mediterranean. It discusses the new global interactions of the Europeans with the great civilizations of the Americas and of Africans with Europeans in Africa and the Americas. There was a logic of political advantage and cultural content in the interactions between Mongols and Tibetans. Careful recording of lineages of teacher-student relations was important both in Islam and in other Chinese traditions, Confucian and Buddhist. The reach of Islam into the unbelieving world was strongly supported by Sufism, and eventually by impressive continuities of Sufi lineages and lodges. The eastern Mediterranean was the scene of dramatic 'clash of civilizations' in the world of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The chapter also explains about Spaniards, Aztecs, Mayas, Incas, Neo-African cultures, and extra-European interactions.

Oaxaca is the state reputed to have the highest percentage of indigenous population in Mexico. During the prehispanic epoch, Oaxaca occupied a position in the heart of Mesoamerica that permitted it to enrich itself through contact with Mayas and Nahuas, and to establish an exquisitely refined culture of its own. Mixtec and Zapotec writing and calendars are the oldest in Mesoamerica, and they used some phonetic signs. On the eve of the Spanish arrival, the territory of Oaxaca was by no means a single political entity. As the end of the sixteenth century approached, the scales tipped in favor of the Spaniards. The villages of Oaxaca tried to rebuild their battered economy. Since the middle of the century the liberal governments themselves had tried to find a substitute for cochineal, promoting new products for export, such as coffee, tobacco, cotton, and other items.