User:Martyx/World History

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This page is about the field of historical study known as World History. For the historical events, see History of the world. For a compilation album by Christian rock band Mad at the World, see World History (album).

World History, Global History or Transnational history (not to be confused with Diplomatic or International History) is a field of historical study that emerged as a distinct academic field in the 1980s. It examines history from a global perspective.

Overview[change | change source]

World History looks for common patterns that emerge across all cultures. World historians use a thematic approach, with two major focal points: integration (how processes of world history have drawn people of the world together) and difference (how patterns of world history reveal the diversity of the human experience).

The study of world history is in some ways a product of the current period of accelerated globalization.

Organization[change | change source]

The advent of World History as a distinct field of study was heralded in the 1980s by the creation of the World History Association [1] and of graduate programs at a handful of universities. Over the past 20 years, scholarly publications, professional and academic organizations, and graduate programs in World History have proliferated, although the WHA is still predominantly an American phenomenon.[2] It has become an increasingly popular approach to teaching history in American high schools and colleges. Many new textbooks are being published with a World History approach.

The World History Association publishes the Journal of World History every quarter since 1990.[3] The H-World discussion list[4] serves as a network of communication among practitioners of world history, with discussions among scholars, announcements, syllabi, bibliographies and book reviews.

The international Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations ISCSC approaches world history from the standpoint of comparative civilizations. Founded at a conference in 1961 in Salzburg, Austria, that was attended by Othmar Anderlie, Pitirim Sorokin, and Arnold Toynbee, this is an international association of scholars that publishes a journal, Comparative Civilization Review, and hosts an annual meeting in cities around the world.

Theoretical and scholarly studies[change | change source]

Herodotus (5th century BC) was a world historian as well as founder of Greek historiography.[5] His History presents insightful and lively discussions of the customs, geography, and history of Mediterranean peoples, particularly the Egyptians. However, his great rival Thucydides promptly discarded Herodotus's all-embracing approach to history, offering instead a more precise, sharply focused monograph, dealing not with vast empires over the centuries but with 27 years of war between Athens and Sparta. In Rome, the vast, patriotic history of Rome by Livy (59 BC-17 AD) approximated Herodotean inclusiveness;[6] Polybius (c.200-c.118 BC) aspired to combine the logical rigor of Thucydides with the scope of Herodotus.[7]

United States[change | change source]

Teaching[change | change source]

In college curricula, it became a popular replacement for courses on Western Civilization, beginning in the 1970s. Professors Patrick Manning (Professor), previously of Northeastern University and now at the University of Pittsburgh's World History Center; and Ross E. Dunn at San Diego State are leaders in promoting innovative teaching methods.[8] The U.S. National Standards for teaching history were developed by the National Center for History in the Schools, based in UCLA and directed by well-respected historian, Gary Nash.

Divine intervention[change | change source]

Indian, Chinese, Muslim, Persian and Christian traditions of learning emphasize that Gods determined history and humans played only supporting roles. Thus Saint Augustine City of God (413–26 AD) distinguished sharply between divine purpose and disjointed human history. In Christian Europe narrative writing was replaced by annals and chronicles that often stressed the trivial and the miraculous.

In China Sima Qian circa 100 BC presented a model of Chinese history that assumed Heaven chooses virtuous hereditary rulers, then arranges events so that they were overthrown when a ruling dynasty became corrupt.[9] Each new dynasty begins virtuous and strong, but then decays, provoking the transfer of Heaven's mandate to a new ruler. The test of virtue in a new dynasty is success in being obeyed by China and neighboring barbarians. After 2000 years Sima Qian's model still dominates scholarship, even among westerners who do not believe that the ruler's personal virtue assures divine support.[10]

Ala'iddin Ata-Malik Juvayni (1226–1283) was a Persian historian who wrote an account of the Mongol Empire entitled Ta' rīkh-i jahān-gushā (History of the World Conqueror).[11] The standard edition of Juvayni is published under the title Ta' rīkh-i jahān-gushā, ed. Mirza Muhammad Qazwini, 3 vol, Gibb Memorial Series 16 (Leiden and London, 1912–37). An English translation by John Andrew Boyle "The History of the World-Conqueror" was republished in 1997.

Rashīd al-Dīn Fadhl-allāh Hamadānī (1247–1318) , was a Persian physician of Jewish origin, polymathic writer and historian, who wrote an enormous Islamic history, the Jami al-Tawarikh, in the Persian language, often considered a landmark in intercultural historiography and a key document on the Ilkhanids (13th and 14th century).[12] His encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of cultures from Mongolia to China to the Steppes of Central Eurasia to Persia, the Arab lands, and Europe, provide the most direct access to information on the late Mongol era. His descriptions also highlight the manner in which the Mongol Empire and its emphasis on trade resulted in an atmosphere of cultural and religious exchange and intellectual ferment, resulting in the transmission of a host of ideas from East to West and vice versa.

One Arab scholar, Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) broke with traditionalism and offered a model of historical change in Muqaddimah, an exposition of the methodology of scientific history. Ibn Khaldun focused on the reasons for the rise and fall of civilization, arguing that the causes of change are to be sought in the economic and social structure of society. His work was largely ignored in the Muslim world.[13] Otherwise the Muslim, Chinese and Indian intellectuals held fast to a religious traditionalism, leaving them unprepared to advise national leaders on how to confront the European intrusion into Asia after 1500.

Europe[change | change source]

While the Indian, Chinese, African and Muslim traditions continued their theocentric historiography, there was a radical challenge to it in Christian Europe during the Renaissance. Historians such as Niccolò Machiavelli ignored divine intervention and stressed that men made their own history, and that rulers should study history in order to shape the future. European scholars began a more systematic study of history. Voltaire (1694–1778), the leading intellectual of the French Enlightenment used comparative history, as in Essay on Manners (1753), to ridicule Christian folly and promote the rule of reason. Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) introduced the perspective of the Scottish Enlightenment in An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767).

Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) in Italy broke new ground with his Scienza nuova seconda (The New Science) in 1725. Vico saw history as the expression of human will and deeds. He argued that men are historical entities and that human nature changes over time. Each epoch should be seen as a whole in which all aspects of culture—art, religion, philosophy, politics, and economics—are interrelated (a point developed later by Oswald Spengler). Vico showed that myth, poetry, and art are entry points to discovering the true spirit of a culture. Vico outlined a conception of historical development in which great cultures, like Rome, undergo cycles of growth and decline. His ideas were out of fashion during the Enlightenment, but influenced the Romantic historians after 1800.

A major thoeretical foundation for world history was given by German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, who saw the modern Prussian state as the highest stage of world development.

20th century writers[change | change source]

World history became a popular genre in the 19th century with universal history.

In the 1920s several best-sellers dealt with the history of the world, including surveys The Story of Mankind (1921) by Hendrik Willem van Loon and The Outline of History (1918) by H.G. Wells.

Influential writers who have reached wide audiences include H. G. Wells, Oswald Spengler, Arnold J. Toynbee, Pitirim Sorokin, Christopher Dawson,[14] and Lewis Mumford. Scholars working the field include Eric Voegelin,[15] William H. McNeill and Michael Mann.[16]

Spengler's Decline of the West (2 vol 1919–1922) compared nine organic cultures: Egyptian (3400 BC-1200 BC), Indian (1500 BC-1100 BC), Chinese (1300 BC-AD 200), Classical (1100 BC-400 BC), Byzantine (AD 300–1100), Aztec (AD 1300–1500), Arabian (AD 300–1250), Mayan (AD 600–960), and Western (AD 900–1900). His book was a smashing success among intellectuals worldwide as it predicted the disintegration of European and American civilization after a violent "age of Caesarism," arguing by detailed analogies with other civilizations. It deepened the post-World War I pessimism in Europe, and was warmly received by intellectuals in China, India and Latin America who hoped his predictions of the collapse of European empires would soon come true.[17]

In 1936–1954, Toynbee's ten-volume A Study of History came out in three separate installments. He followed Spengler in taking a comparative topical approach to independent civilizations. Toynbee said they displayed striking parallels in their origin, growth, and decay. Toynbee rejected Spengler's biological model of civilizations as organisms with a typical life span of 1,000 years. Like Sima Qian, Toynbee explained decline as due to their moral failure. Many readers rejoiced in his implication (in vols. 1–6) that only a return to some form of Catholicism could halt the breakdown of western civilization which began with the Reformation. Volumes 7–10, published in 1954, abandoned the religious message, and his popular audience slipped away, while scholars gleefully picked apart his mistakes.,[18]

McNeill wrote The Rise of the West (1965) to improve upon Toynbee by showing how the separate civilizations of Eurasia interacted from the very beginning of their history, borrowing critical skills from one another, and thus precipitating still further change as adjustment between traditional old and borrowed new knowledge and practice became necessary. McNeill took a broad approach organized around the interactions of peoples across the globe. Such interactions have become both more numerous and more continual and substantial in recent times. Before about 1500, the network of communication between cultures was that of Eurasia. The term used to describe these areas of interaction differ from one world historian to another and include "world-system" and "ecumene." But whatever it is called, the importance of these intercultural contacts has begun to be recognized by many scholars.[19]

Academic historians, who increasingly specialize and demand the use of primary sources, tend to disparage scholarship in world history as attempting the impossible.

Recent themes[change | change source]

In recent years, the relationship between African and world history has shifted rapidly from one of antipathy to one of engagement and synthesis. Reynolds (2007) surveys the relationship between African and world histories, with an emphasis on the tension between the area studies paradigm and the growing world-history emphasis on connections and exchange across regional boundaries. A closer examination of recent exchanges and debates over the merits of this exchange is also featured. Reynolds sees the relationship between African and world history as a measure of the changing nature of historical inquiry over the past century.[20]

Histories have traditionally been written from the perspective of national governments or of geographically based communities. However, it is also possible to see world history as the story of a single human civilization developing new institutions and forms of expression over successive periods of time. World history can thus be a “creation story” to tell how the world of human society developed. In this mode, the story would include not only political and diplomatic history but also events relating to religion, commerce, education, and entertainment. Technologies of communication would have an important role in this history.[21]

World historians[change | change source]

Bibliography[change | change source]

  • Adas, Michael. Essays on Twentieth-Century History (2010); historiographic essays on world history conceptualizing the "long" 20th century, from the 1870s to the early 2000s.
  • Bentley, Jerry H. Shapes of World History in Twentieth Century Scholarship. Essays on Global and Comparative History Series. (1996)
  • Costello, Paul. World Historians and Their Goals: Twentieth-Century Answers to Modernism (1993).
  • Curtin, Philip D. "Depth, Span, and Relevance," The American Historical Review, Vol. 89, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), pp. 1–9 in JSTOR
  • Curtin, Philip D. The World and the West: The European Challenge and the Overseas Response in the Age of Empire. (2000) 308 pp. ISBN 978-0-521-77135-1. online review
  • Dunn, Ross E., ed. The New World History: A Teacher's Companion. (2000). 607pp. ISBN 978-0-312-18327-1 online review
  • Frye, Northrop. "Spengler Revisited" in Northrop Frye on modern culture (2003), pp 297–382, first published 1974; online
  • Hughes, H. Stuart. Oswald Spengler (1952).
  • Hughes-Warrington, Marnie. Palgrave Advances in World Histories (2005), 256pp, articles by scholars
  • McInnes, Neil. "The Great Doomsayer: Oswald Spengler Reconsidered." National Interest 1997 (48): 65–76. Issn: 0884-9382 Fulltext: Ebsco
  • McNeill, William H. "The Changing Shape of World History." History and Theory 1995 34(2): 8–26. Issn: 0018-2656 in JSTOR
  • McNeill, William H., Jerry H. Bentley, and David Christian, eds. Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History (5 vol 2005)
  • Manning, Patrick. Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (2003), an important guide to the entire field excerpt and text search; online review
  • Mazlish, Bruce. "Comparing Global History to World History," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Winter, 1998), pp. 385–395 in JSTOR
  • National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA. World History: The Big Eras, A Compact History of Humankind (2009), 96pp
  • Neiberg, Michael S. Warfare in World History (2001) online edition
  • O'Brien, Patrick K., ed. Atlas of World History. (2002)
  • Richards, Michael D. Revolutions in World History (2003) online edition
  • Roberts, J. M., The New Penguin History of the World (2007)
  • Roupp, Heidi, ed. Teaching World History: A Resource Book. (1997), 274pp; online edition
  • Smil, Vaclav. Energy in World History (1994) online edition
  • Stearns, Peter N. The Industrial Revolution in World History (1998) online edition
  • Watts, Sheldon. Disease and Medicine in World History (2003) online edition

Primary sources[change | change source]

See also[change | change source]

References[change | change source]

#REDIRECTen:World History
This page is a soft redirect.

[30]

  1. ↑ http://www.thewha.org/
  2. ↑ World History Association - Mission
  3. ↑ see JWH Website
  4. ↑ see H-World
  5. ↑ K.H. Waters, Herodotus the Historian (1985)
  6. ↑ Patrick G. Walsh, Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods (1961)
  7. ↑ Frank W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, (3 vols. 1957–82)
  8. ↑ Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (2003); Ross E. Dunn, ed., The New World History: A Teacher's Companion. (2000).
  9. ↑ Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian: Qin Dynasty (3rd ed. 1995) excerpt and text search; Burton Watson, Ssu-ma Ch'ien: Grand Historian of China (1958)
  10. ↑ S. Y. Teng, "Chinese Historiography in the Last Fifty Years," The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Feb., 1949), pp. 131–156 in JSTOR
  11. ↑ History of the World Conqueror by Ala Ad Din Ata Malik Juvaini, translated by John Andrew Boyle, Harvard University Press 1958, Project Gutenberg on line edition
  12. ↑ Elliot, H. M. (Henry Miers), Sir; John Dowson. "10. Jámi'u-t Tawáríkh, of Rashid-al-Din". The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians. The Muhammadan Period (Vol 3.). London : Trübner & Co.. http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n15/mode/2up.
  13. ↑ Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History ed. by N. J. Dawood, Bruce Lawrence, and Franz Rosenthal (2004) excerpt and text search
  14. ↑ Bradley J. Birzer, Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson (2007)
  15. ↑ Michael P. Federici, Eric Voegelin: The Restoration of Order (2002)
  16. ↑ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (1986) excerpt and text search
  17. ↑ Neil McInnes, "The Great Doomsayer: Oswald Spengler Reconsidered." National Interest 1997 (48): 65–76. Fulltext: Ebsco
  18. ↑ William H. McNeill, Arnold J. Toynbee a Life (1989)
  19. ↑ William H. McNeill, "The Changing Shape of World History." History and Theory 1995 34(2): 8–26.
  20. ↑ Jonathan T. Reynolds, "Africa and World History: from Antipathy to Synergy." History Compass 2007 5(6): 1998–2013. ISSN 1478-0542 Fulltext: [1. History Compass]
  21. ↑ Five Epochs of Civilization http://www.worldhistorysite.com
  22. ↑ See revised edition
  23. ↑ see Philosophy of History
  24. ↑ Summary of Five Epochs of Civilization
  25. ↑ See McNeill, The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir (2005)
  26. ↑ See excerpt
  27. ↑ B. V. Johnston, Pitirim A. Sorokin an Intellectual Biography (1995)
  28. ↑ William H. McNeill, Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life (1990)
  29. ↑ Jeffrey C. Herndon, Eric Voegelin and the Problem of Christian Political Order (2007) excerpt and text search
  30. ↑ The Secret History of the Mongols: full text, history, translations into Russian, English, French, Bulgarian, Spanish and Czech, original transliteration

External links[change | change source]

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