The Challenges of World History

1
The Challenges of World History

• What does world history mean?
• Can it be done?

2
What is the world?

• The first problem we encounter when we begin to
  study world history is simply what do we mean by
  the world?
• From different geographical and cultural
  perspectivesas well as different geographical
  periodsthe world can be defined in quite
  different ways
• If we are going to make any headway we have to
  agree on what the term world actually means

3
Some 19th century ideas

• Hegel believed that world history was a process
  leading towards an inevitable final cause the
  idea of freedom
• Karl Marx had a similar idea but emphasized the
  material aspects of freedom
• In the 20th century, historians have challenged
  (an even rejected) the idea that history is
  progressing through stages towards one final end

4
Globalization

• We also have to take account of the fact that we
  live in an era of globalization
• This challenges us to see world history from the
  perspective of how we arrived at where we are
  today

5
History and Globalization

• Even if we agree that the world is the planet
  that we live on, we still have some
  methodological concerns to deal with
• How can we understand world history in an
  inclusive way that does not rely on our cultural
  biases and assumptions?
• Just how objective can we be?
• How can we understand the past if we look at
  everything from a 21st century perspective?

6
How do we understand the past?

• Historians use a number of categories of analysis
  in order to assess the past
• Political
• Economic
• Social
• Religious
• Intellectual
• Technological
• Artistic
• All of these categories can be use to make
  comparisons about different parts of the world

7
Other categories

• Since the 1960s historians have tended to focus
  on the following three categories
• Class
• Gender
• Race
• Building on these themes historians have also
  emphasized the importance of
• Power
• Ideology
• Identity

8
Regions and Interactions

• One of the major themes of this course is the
  interaction and divergence between different
  regions of the world
• While we need to know something about the
  distinct nature of each region, we do not want to
  look at them in isolation
• Sometimes these interactions are harmonious,
  other times they engender deep-seated conflict

9
World Populations
10
Afro-Eurasia

• The textbook uses the term Afro-Eurasia to
  designate the area that was the most
  interconnected around 1000 CE
• The authors argue that this designation best
  reflects how pre-modern understood their
  geography
• It includes Europe, Northern Africa, and Asia

11
T-O World Maps
12
Postcolonial Theory

• Postcolonial theorists analyze the effects of
  colonialism on societies and try to come up with
  working solutions to the effects of colonialism
  in places like India, Africa, and Latin America
• The great impact of postcolonial theory has been
  to challenge some of the underlying assumptions
  of Western culture as a natural dominator of
  the rest of the world

13
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)

• Born in the French colony of Martinique, studied
  psychiatry in France
• His works, like Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
  explored the effects of colonial domination on
  the colonized
• Inspired revolutionary movements across the
  world, as well as the study of colonial
  domination

14
Edward Said

• In his pioneering 1978 work Orientalism, Said
  argued that the Western mindset which sees the
  other as inferior and an object to be conquered
• Often seen as the father of postcolonial theory

15
Impact of Postcolonial theory

• Effort to write a history of the colonial era
  that does not simply appropriate the colonizers
  view but also takes into account the
  experiences and history of colonized people
• In order to do this, we must be aware of western
  historical traditions and avoid projecting them
  on to non-western peoples

16
Our Goal

• To sketch the outline of the roots of our modern
  global system (narrative)
• To identify and discuss major themes that emerge
  from the interaction between people from
  different parts of the globe
• To develop a balanced view of the past that takes
  in the perspectives of the various historical
  actors involved