Look at Wikipedia's 14th century timeline (a Eurocentric selection as I don't really understand the significance of the events from other continents):
The transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age Beginning of the Ottoman Empire, early expansion into the Balkans The Avignon papacy transfers the seat of the Popes from Italy to France The Great Famine of 1315-1317 kills millions of people in Europe The Hundred Years' War begins when Edward III of England lays claim to the French throne in 1337. Black Death kills almost half of the population of Europe. (1347 - 1351) The heresy of Lollardy rises in England The Great Schism of the West begins in 1378, eventually leading to 3 simultaneous popes. An account of Buddha's life, translated earlier into Greek by St John of Damascus and widely circulated to Christians as the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, became so popular that Buddha (under the name Josaphat) was made a Catholic saint. Reunification of Poland under Ladislaus I of Poland Peasants' Revolt in England The poet Petrarch coins the term Dark Ages to describe the preceding 900 years in Europe, beginning with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 410 through to the renewal embodied in the Renaissance. The Scots win the Scottish Wars of Independence. Union of Krewo between Poland and Lithuania. The English word "abacus" used to describe the calculating device from China. Wang Dayuan, the first Chinese to sail into the Mediterranean while visiting Egypt and North Africa from 1334-1339.
Could you tell us more about him? Or point to an english resource? Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
as for wang dayuan, he claims to have actually visited all the places that he lists in the daoyi zhilue [geography of island barbarians], but his accounts of many places appear to crib from earlier geographies, so it's hard to tell if he personally went there (in a manner similar to marco polo, actually), but clearly he had access to people that did. lots of merchants going back and forth between china and southeast asia and india, probably less getting all the way into the mediterranean.
