Establishment and parameters of the field
Jerry H. Bentley has observed that 'the term world history has never been a clear signifier with a stable referent', and that usage of the term overlaps with universal history, comparative history, global history, big history, macro history, and transnational history, amongst others.
The advent of world history as a distinct academic field of study
can be traced to the 1960s, but the pace quickened in the 1980s.
A key step was the creation of the World History Association and
graduate programs at a handful of universities. Over the next decades
scholarly publications, professional and academic organizations, and
graduate programs in World History proliferated. World History has often
displaced Western Civilization in the required curriculum of American
high schools and universities, and is supported by new textbooks with a
world history approach.
World History attempts to recognise and address two structures that have profoundly shaped professional history-writing:
- A tendency to use current nation-states to the set the boundaries and agendas of studies of the past.
- A deep legacy of Eurocentric assumptions (found especially, but not only, in Western history-writing).
Thus World History tends to study networks, connections, and systems
that cross traditional boundaries of historical study like linguistic,
cultural, and national borders. World History is often concerned to
explore social dynamics that have led to large-scale changes in human
society, such as industrialisation and the spread of capitalism,
and to analyse how large-scale changes like these have affected
different parts of the world. Like other branches of history-writing in
the second half of the twentieth century, World History has a scope far
beyond historians' traditional focus on politics, wars, and diplomacy,
taking in a panoply of subjects like gender history, social history, cultural history, and environmental history.
Organizations
- The H-World discussion list 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 J. 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.
- The Journal of World History has been published quarterly by the World History Association since 1990.
- The Journal of Global History is a scholarly journal established in 2006 and is published by Cambridge University Press.
- World History Association (WHA) - Established in the 1980s, the WHA is predominantly an American phenomenon.
History
Pre-modern
The
study of world history, as distinct from national history, has existed
in many world cultures. However, early forms of world history were not
truly global, and were limited to only the regions known by the
historian.
In Ancient China, Chinese world history, that of China and the surrounding people of East Asia, was based on the dynastic cycle articulated by Sima Qian in circa 100 BC. Sima Qian's model is based on the Mandate of Heaven. Rulers rise when they united China, then are overthrown when a ruling dynasty became corrupt.
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, although the dynastic cycle is no longer used for modern Chinese history.
In Ancient Greece, Herodotus (5th century BC), as founder of Greek historiography,
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; Polybius (c.200-c.118 BC) aspired to combine the logical rigor of Thucydides with the scope of Herodotus.
In Central Asia, The Secret History of Mongols
is regarded as the single significant native Mongolian account of
Genghis Khan. The Secret History is regarded as a piece of classic
literature in both Mongolia and the rest of the world.
In the Middle East, 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).
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).
His encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of cultures from Mongolia to
China to the Steppes of Central Eurasia to Persia, the Arabic-speaking
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 Muslim scholar, Ibn Khaldun (1332-1409) 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.
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
AD.
Early modern
During the Renaissance in Europe, history was written about states or nations. The study of history changed during the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Voltaire
described the history of certain ages that he considered important,
rather than describing events in chronological order. History became an
independent discipline. It was not called philosophia historiae anymore, but merely history (historia).Voltaire,
in the 18th century, attempted to revolutionize the study of world
history. First, Voltaire concluded that the traditional study of history
was flawed. The Christian Church, one of the most powerful entities in
his time, had presented a framework for studying history. Voltaire, when
writing History of Charles XII (1731) and The Age of Louis XIV (1751), instead choose to focus economics, politics and culture.
These aspects of history were mostly unexplored by his contemporaries
and would each develop into their own sections of world history. Above
all else, Voltaire regarded truth as the most essential part of
recording world history. Nationalism and religion only subtracted from
objective truth, so Voltaire freed himself for their influence when he
recorded history.
Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) in Italy wrote Scienza nuva seconda
(The New Science) in 1725, which argued history as the expression of
human will and deeds. He thought 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 theoretical foundation for world history was given by German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, who saw the modern Prussian state as the latest (though often confused with the highest) stage of world development.
G.W.F. Hegel developed three lenses through which he believed
world history could be viewed. Documents produced during a historical
period, such as journal entries and contractual agreements, were
considered by Hegel to be part of Original History. These documents are
produced by a person enveloped within a culture, making them conduits of
vital information but also limited in their contextual knowledge.
Documents which pertain to Hegel’s Original History are classified by
modern historians as primary sources.
Reflective History, Hegel’s second lens, are documents written
with some temporal distance separating the event which is discussed in
the academic writing. What limited this lens, according to Hegel, was
the imposition of the writers own cultural values and views on the
historical event. This criticism of Reflective History was later
formalized by Anthropologists Franz Boa and coined as Cultural
relativism by Alain Locke. Both of these lenses were considered to be
partially flawed by Hegel.
Hegel termed the lens which he advocated to view world history
through as Philosophical History. In order to view history through this
lens, one must analyze events, civilizations, and periods objectively.
When done in this fashion, the historian can then extract the prevailing
theme from their studies. This lens differs from the rest because it is
void of any cultural biases and takes a more analytical approach to
history. World History can be a broad topic, so focusing on extracting
the most valuable information from certain periods may be the most
beneficial approach. This third lens, as did Hegel’s definitions of the
other two, affected the study of history in the early modern period and
our contemporary period.
Another early modern historian was Adam Ferguson. Ferguson’s main contribution to the study of world history was his An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767).
According to Ferguson, world history was a combination of two forms of
history. One was natural history; the aspects of our world which god
created. The other, which was more revolutionary, was social history.
For him, social history was the progress humans made towards fulfilling
God’s plan for humanity. He believed that progress, which could be
achieved through individuals pursuing commercial success, would bring us
closer to a perfect society; but we would never reach one.
However, he also theorized that a complete dedication to commercial
success could lead to societal collapse—like what happened in
Rome—because people would lose morality. Through this lens, Ferguson
viewed world history as humanities struggle to reach an ideal society.
Henry Home, Lord Kames was a philosopher during the Enlightenment
and contributed to the study or world history. In his major historical
work, Sketches on the History of Man, Home’s outlined the four stages of human history which he observed.
The first and most primitive stage was small hunter-gatherer groups.
Then, in order to form larger groups, humans transitioned into the
second stage when they began to domesticate animals. The third stage was
the development of agriculture. This new technology established trade
and higher levels of cooperation amongst sizable groups of people. With
the gathering of people into agricultural villages, laws and social
obligations needed to be developed so a form of order could be
maintained. The fourth, and final stage, involved humans moving into
market towns and seaports where agriculture was not the focus. Instead,
commerce and other forms of labor arouse in a society. By defining the
stages of human history, Homes influenced his successors. He also
contributed to the development of other studies such as sociology and
anthropology.
Contemporary
World history became a popular genre in the 20th 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, Carroll Quigley, Christopher Dawson, and Lewis Mumford. Scholars working the field include Eric Voegelin, William Hardy McNeill and Michael Mann.
With evolving technologies such as dating methods and surveying laser
technology called LiDAR, contemporary historians have access to knew
information which changes how past civilizations are studied.
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.
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 picked apart his mistakes.
McNeill wrote The Rise of the West
(1963) 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
Earth. 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
for these areas of interaction differ from one world historian to
another and include world-system and ecumene. Whatever it is called, the importance of these intercultural contacts has begun to be recognized by many scholars.
History education
United States
T. Walter Wallbank and Alastair M. Taylor co-authored Civilization Past & Present,
the first world-history textbook published in the United States (1942).
With additional authors, this very successful work went through
numerous editions up to the first decade of the twenty-first century.
According to the Golden Anniversary edition of 1992, the ongoing
objective of Civilization Past & Present "was to present a
survey of world cultural history, treating the development and growth of
civilization not as a unique European experience but as a global one
through which all the great culture systems have interacted to produce
the present-day world. It attempted to include all the elements of
history – social, economic, political, religious, aesthetic, legal, and
technological." In college curricula of the United States, world history became a popular replacement for courses on Western Civilization. Professors Patrick Manning, 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.
In schools of architecture in the U.S., the National Architectural Accrediting Board
now requires that schools teach history that includes a non-west or
global perspective. This reflects a decade-long effort to move past the
standard Euro-centric approach that had dominated the field.
Recent themes
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.
Marxian theory of history
The Marxist theory of historical materialism claims the history of the world is fundamentally determined by the material conditions
at any given time – in other words, the relationships which people have
with each other in order to fulfil basic needs such as feeding,
clothing and housing themselves and their families. Overall, Marx and Engels claimed to have identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe.
The theory divides the history of the world into the following periods: Primitive communism; Slave society; Feudalism; Capitalism; and Socialism.
Regna Darnell and Frederic Gleach argue that, in the Soviet
Union, the Marxian theory of history was the only accepted orthodoxy,
and stifled research into other schools of thought on history. However, adherents of Marx's theories argue that Stalin distorted Marxism.
World historians
- Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World: Global Connections and Comparisons, 1780–1914 (London, 2004)
- Jerry Bentley, (1949-2012) Founder and editor of the Journal of World History
- Jacques Bertin, Atlas historique universel. Panorama de l'histoire du monde, Geneva, Minerva, 1997
- Fernand Braudel, (1903-1985) Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme (Paris, 1973, 3 vols.); English translation, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries, translated by Siân Reynolds, 3 vols. (1979)
- Philip D. Curtin (1922-2009), 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
- Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950) excerpt and text search
- Will Durant (1885-1981) and Ariel Durant (1898-1981); Story of Civilization(1935-1975).
- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (b.1950), "Millennium" (1995), "Civilizations" (2000), "The World" (2007).
- Francis Fukuyama (1952– ) The End of History and the Last Man (1992)
- Peter Haugen, professor of the University of Wisconsin; writer of World History for Dummies
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1830), philosopher of world history
- Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (2003)
- William Hardy McNeill (born 1917); see especially The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)
- Robert McNeill and William H. McNeill. The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History (2003) excerpt and text search
- Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (2014) excerpt
- Carroll Quigley (1910-1977), The Evolution of Civilizations (1961), Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966), Weapons Systems and Political Stability: A History (1983)
- Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968), Russian-American macrosociology; Social and Cultural Dynamics (4 vol., 1937–41)
- Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), German; Decline of the West (1918–22) vol 1 online; vol 2 online; excerpt and text search, abridged edition
- Peter Stearns, (1936- ) USA; World History in Brief: Major Patterns of Change and Continuity, 7th ed. (2009); Encyclopedia of World History, 6th ed. (200pp)
- Luc-Normand Tellier, Canadian; Urban World History, PUQ, (2009), 650 pages; online edition
- Arnold J. Toynbee, British; A Study of History (1934–61); see especially A Study of History.
- Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) Order and History (1956–85)
- Immanuel Wallerstein, World-systems theory
