In Order to understand what a “global Middle Ages” might be, we need to define “global” in and in relation to the “Middle Ages.” To do so, I turn to medieval (Christian) maps. Their construction of the world-the most, maybe all, others-was founded on inclusion and exclusion. In seeking to construct a global Middle Ages, the authors in this volume are therefore working not only against scholarly traditions of periodization but also against indigenous medieval ideas, against autochthonous ideologies. “Global Middle Ages” is a term that is gaining increasing currency as part of a welcome and much-overdue effort to acknowledge in teaching and research that the Middle Ages can encompass more geography than present-day Europe, more religions than Latin and Byzantine Christianity, and more humanity then whiteness. But what this term might mean is dependent on the lens we bring to the period, the geography, the people, and the material we study.