World History: A Synopsis
The field of world history is growing in so
many directions that it is time for a guidebook. Such a guide and critique
can provide an overview for those entering the field and can sharpen the
debates for those who will make key decisions on the direction of world
history as an arena of teaching, research, and institution-building. For
instance, will world history be a distinctive field of study for teachers,
students, and specialized researchers? Or will it be linked closely with
other social sciences and humanities in an interdisciplinary analysis of
the global past and present? My recent book, Navigating World History,
is an overview of world history that explores this type of question: I offer
the present synopsis to enable readers of this journal to anticipate the
topics and viewpoints that are addressed in more detail within it.
The audience for the book includes researchers,
teachers, and general readers. The researchers perusing this book may include
professional historians writing monographs, graduate students getting ready
for general exams, and advanced undergraduate students seeking to add to
their knowledge and experience. The teachers among these groups may be preparing
classes for high school or middle school classes, or for graduate or undergraduate
students. One of their primary concerns is how to convey the lessons of
world history in their classrooms. General readers seeking an introduction
to world history may be students of national history exploring wider connections
or scholars in fields such as economics or biology who seek to set their
work in the context of change over time.
The general purpose of the volume is to present
an overview and critique of world history as a field of scholarship and
teaching. I have organized this book around five principal objectives, devoting
a section to each. My first goal involves defining world history in terms
of the patterns of its current rapid development and its firm base in earlier
writings. This discussion focuses on illustrating the long-term continuities
in the conceptualization and study of world history and on demonstrating
how the ideas of world historians and their institutions have influenced
the current expansion of teaching and research in world history.
My second objective centers on showing how
the current expansion of world history is part of a wider revolution in
historical studies. The development of new theories and new data in the
disciplines of social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences has pushed
back the boundaries of historical studies in general and created an exciting
set of "world-centric" insights. In turn, the development of area
studies and the rise of several sorts of global studies have greatly expanded
the world history field.
Third, I summarize recent advances in each
of several sub-fields of world history and examine the current main debates
among world historians. In the course of this review, I contrast the advances
in global political and economic history (historically the strongest sub-fields)
with recent developments in social history; with the interplay of technological,
ecological, and health history; and with the many and varied aspects of
My fourth objective is to enunciate guiding
rules for conducting a logical analysis in world history. This task involves
summarizing the historian's choices in selecting a geographic scale, a time
period, and a topical focus; outlining strategies for researching and interpreting
the global past; and delineating techniques for verifying interpretations.
Overall, these guidelines restate in a world-historical context the discipline
of history as the art, craft, and science of collecting evidence and then
using these data to characterize and interpret the past.
In the fifth and concluding section, I offer
a set of program and curriculum recommendations designed specifically for
promoting successful study and research in world history. These guidelines
address in particular the needs of those participating in organized world
history programs such as graduate or undergraduate schools or professional
development workshops for teachers. They should also prove useful; however,
to readers engaged in individual studies of world history.
While I labored with care on the pages of
my text, perhaps the most outstanding part of the book is the work of other
historians: the bibliography at the end of the book. This listing includes
over a thousand citations of studies in world history and works relevant
to world history, from earliest writings to the present. They are organized
by author within the four periods of historical writing that I identified:
the writings of historical philosophers from ancient times to the end of
the nineteenth century, the works of global synthesis from 1900 to 1964,
the thematic analyses of world history from 1965 to 1989, and the analyses
accompanying the organizing of professional study in world history from
1990. The dramatic expansion in world-historical analysis emerged clearly:
over half of the citations are for works published since 1989.
In the remainder of this synopsis, I describe
the contents of each section in terms of the five principal tasks that I
propose as the basis of solid accomplishments for world history researchers
The first task is to keep track of lessons
already learned. World history is a new field, but it is also an old field.
Recognizing the historical depth of the interpretive debates we carry out
is as important as the emphasis on the latest techniques of analysis and
the newest data. In a six-chapter section on historiography, I discuss the
development of world-historical ideas from various perspectives. While I
emphasize consistently the dual traditions of historians--rethinking old
knowledge and developing new knowledge about society--I argue that this
pattern took a different shape beginning in the nineteenth century. Since
that time we have had two distinct paths toward the development of world
history: what I have called "the historians' path" and the "scientific-cultural
path." The world-historical debates over politics, the social order,
and the economy developed along the historians' path; the new discoveries
in biology, geology, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology led to the
expansion of work along the scientific-cultural path. The historical analyses
of global issues continued for a century along both of these paths at the
fringes of the academy. Meanwhile in the late nineteenth century, the field
of history as a whole was captured by a vision of professionalism that centered
narrowly on the celebration of national histories and excluded world history
as speculative and irrelevant.
William H. McNeill's Rise of the West,
appearing in 1963, arguably opened the professional study of world history
with a broad interpretation of politics and civilization. At the same time,
one can now identify the many other writers who earlier in the twentieth
century conducted historical and sociological studies that laid down much
of the groundwork for the emerging field of world history. For the period
1965-1989, I have focused especially on Philip Curtin's development of monographs
in world history and on Immanuel Wallerstein's development of global analysis
for the early modern period. Both of these scholars worked along the historians'
path to world history as they enunciated new interpretations of old issues
in economic and social history. In the same period, Alfred Crosby did much
to open the scientific-cultural path to world history through his use of
biological and other scientific information to provide interpretations of
environmental history. Andre Gunder Frank, another major scholar with a
long career, articulated a series of connections, cycles, and broad patterns
in world history. The field of world history has its giants, but it also
has many other scholars who have contributed to the development of a remarkably
For the period from 1990 forward, world history
has moved beyond individual accomplishments to the creation of institutions
for professional study. It has seen an extraordinary expansion in the teaching
of world history at secondary and college levels in the U.S. (and, if to
a lesser degree, in a number of other countries, large and small, for which
global connections are recognized as important). The character of world
historical analysis has changed, meanwhile, turning toward more interdisciplinary
and interactive studies.
My preference in historiography is to reaffirm
the importance of both sides of the balance: historians should continue
to reread and rethink the earlier studies of global issues, and they should
keep up with the newest developments. In the last of my six historiographic
chapters, I propose a narrative of the unfolding interpretation of world
history. In it I suggest that the types of historical problems and the types
of interpretive solutions have changed with time, as the character of society
has changed, and as our knowledge about the physical world, the organization
of society, and the patterns of culture has expanded periodically. Despite
this succession of changes, it remains remarkable to see how well such early
writers as Herodotus and Sima Qian can speak to people of today.
Revolution in Historical
A second task of world historians is to be alert to changes in the numerous
disciplines that are relevant to the study of the past. This section of
the book focuses on three great axes of scholarly change -- new and transformed
disciplines, the rise of area studies, and the rise of global studies. In
each of three chapters I trace the panoply of new information, techniques,
perspectives, and theories that developed and entered the purview of historical
studies in the late twentieth century. The results are expanding the frontiers
of historical study, strengthening the tool kit, and broadening collaborative
responsibilities of historians. Yet in every case, the changing disciplines
present historians with new dilemmas along with advances in method.
The disciplines range from social sciences
to humanities, arts, and natural sciences. The chapter reviewing disciplinary
changes notes, for instance, the application to historical topics of theories
in economics, sociology, politics, and demography in the social sciences;
and the rise of literary theory and gender studies in the humanities. In
cultural studies, new methods in historical linguistics, art history, and
music history brought changes along with cultural anthropology. In the natural
sciences; geology, genetics, and medicine are just a few of the disciplines
that have had impact on history. In addition, improvements in computer technology
have transformed data storage and retrieval as well as communication for
Of the new developments in the disciplines,
it has been easiest for historians to utilize or appropriate the results
of the new data and new techniques, especially through a growing reliance
on computers. New perspectives have brought benefits at a somewhat slower
pace. For historians of the scientific-cultural path, shifting perspectives
has meant especially shifting among the standpoints of various disciplines:
from cell biology to zoology to cultural anthropology to ethnomusicology.
For those working along the historians' path, the shifts in perspective
have been principally from one social standpoint to another: history as
seen from the standpoint of gender categories, of regional or of class perspectives.
National perspectives and national histories remain significant, even among
world historians, but it has now become almost automatic for world historians
to view "the nation" as only one of numerous social perspectives
and, in viewing the nation, to consider it from any of several disciplinary
For all the benefits to historians of the
new data, new techniques, and new perspectives for study of the past, it
is in the realm of theory that historians still tend to drag their feet
in appropriating the benefits of the revolution in method. Historians, being
what they are, will always subordinate theory to empirical data. But the
prominence of many sorts of theoretical formulations in the rapidly transforming
disciplines leaves historians with the clear need to learn and implement
a selection of the available theories as part of their historical work.
At best, historians can be critics and creators of theory as well as an
audience for the interpretations of other scholars.
The rise of area-studies analysis made it
possible for world history to become something more than a celebration of
the experience of empires based in Europe and the Mediterranean. From the
1950s in the U.S. and elsewhere, programs of study expanded many fields
of knowledge about Africa, various regions of Asia, Latin America, and Eastern
Europe. Historians participated equally and worked closely with other social
scientists in developing regional knowledge. While studies of Europe and
North America maintained the most resources and the most prestige, a move
toward scholarly equalization gradually advanced. As scholars working on
South Asia and Southeast Asia gained in confidence, they began comparing
and connecting regional experiences. Out of these comparisons emerged a
growing interest in world history.
The resulting dilemma, however, was that the approach
to world history that came out of area studies treated world history as
Third World history (leaving aside large areas of the world) and treated
world history as the comparison of continental regions (stopping short of
exploring global patterns or even continental interactions).
The third element in this revolution in historical
studies was the emergence of global studies and the conceptualization of
the earth as a unit of social and economic analysis. This global vision,
based especially on the recent experience of economic globalization, made
it easier to conceive of the earth as a historical unit as well.
Yet the development of global studies has left world
historians relatively isolated. Global-studies analyses tend to focus on
economic, environmental, and international relations issues for today and
tomorrow and focus little on history. And world historians, who have little
contact with other social scientists, have not had much more contact with
national or area-studies historians. World history, while thriving in its
own terms, stands relatively alone as a field, lacking close ties either
to other groups of historians or to the social scientists who lead in global
World history, newly enabled by the expanded
methods, differs from previous historical studies in addressing a wider
range of topics, specifying previously neglected connections among arenas
of human experience, tracing broad patterns in the past, and clarifying
relationships among different scales of the world's events and processes.
For all its difficulties, it is one of the most exciting areas in scholarship
and teaching today.
Research Agenda and Debate
A third task of world historians is to locate
key debates and to update a research agenda identifying the topics and approaches
of highest priority in new research. In the chapters of Part III, I present
seven sub-fields in four chapters, followed by a review of major debates
in the field. I give considerable emphasis in each chapter to the research
agenda, the historical questions under study for each sub-field. I trace
the origins of the research agenda, in turn, both to scholarly questions
emerging from previous research and to current issues of public interest.
For political and economic history, I focus
on problems of governance and on the production, consumption, and exchange
of goods and services. For social history, I review research on the many
dimensions of family and community. In a combined chapter, I discuss technological
history, centering on human devices for control of nature; ecological history,
addressing at once the influence of nature on human society and the impact
of humanity on the environment; and the history of health, focusing on problems
of illness and healing. For cultural history, I review studies seeking to
address the full range of humans' representations of their experience and
understandings. This chapter includes a review of the recent innovations
in analytical approach to culture which I interpret in terms of "macrocultural"
and "microcultural" studies.
One great current debate focuses on the world
economy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Phrased in terms
of dominance, the question is whether East Asia or Western Europe led the
world in output, productivity, and profit. The same question, phrased in
terms of connection, is what global trade in silver reveals about the mutual
dependence of East Asia, Western Europe, and other regions in a global system
of production. The debate is not only about the answers but about which
question is most useful for developing an interpretation.
Another great debate centers on nationalism
and nationhood. In terms of dominance, the question is whether nationhood
was a system of politics developed in the North Atlantic that was later
exported to the rest of the world. In terms of connection, the question
is how nationhood became the political organization of everyone.
The debates on earlier times are more likely
to be interdisciplinary than these economic and political debates on recent
times. Scholars in linguistics, archaeology, and other fields have been
tracing the early movements of Indo-European speakers across the Eurasian
heartland up to ten thousand years ago, debating their points of origin,
their concentrations of population, and their cultural exchanges with each
other and with other groups. Similarly, scholars have focused on the interplay
among religious traditions in this same Eurasian space. While connections
among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are well known, recent work examines
commercial, cultural, and philosophical links among Buddhism, Hinduism,
Zoroastrian religion, and other traditions.
Other debates have yet to develop in detail,
but we can be certain that they will emerge once new evidence is located.
What is the place of gender in world history? What have been the global
patterns in the structure and behavior of the family? The list of topics
ripe for debate is a long one. The philosophical and analytical range of
approaches to the global past is equally long: historians must distinguish
repeatedly between continuity and change, deterministic and conjunctural
patterns, and between uniqueness and interconnection.
Method in World History
A fourth task of world historians is to explore
world history logically. The four chapters in this section center on research
design, distinguishing among the various elements of framework and strategy
in analyzing history. Overall, the chapters of this section emphasize the
design, execution, validation, and presentation of world-historical research
with attention to assuring that studies in world history account for a range
of both analytical and social perspectives.
The first of these chapters addresses the
issue of scale in world history: the limits in space, time, and topical
coverage. World history necessarily involves analysis at several levels,
and the exterior scale of the historian's framework needs to be linked to
the interior scale and dynamics of space, time, and topic. A second chapter
proposes the appropriate logic of analysis at each scale: I have broken
down research design into frameworks for analysis, strategies of analysis,
and modeling the dynamics of historical change. Then I turn to the important
matters of verifying the validity of interpretations in world history and
presenting the analysis effectively to the readers.
There can be no single method for a field
of study as broad and varied as world history. Yet I have concluded that
there does exist an appropriate framework for the conduct of world historical
analysis. Rather than serving as a precise recipe for creating a preordained
product, the analytical rules of world history provide a set of methodological
and philosophical priorities. I quote a summary statement of these rules
from the book's concluding chapter:
Here is my statement of
the general steps for creating or evaluating an interpretation of issues
in world history. At each stage, these interpretive steps focus on logical
consistency, empirical documentation, and the identification of global
dynamics. The steps alternate in widening and narrowing the analysis,
in order to ensure that the result is at once broadly connected and
grounded in specifics.
Select a topic and purpose
for study. World history faces one with too much to
cover, so one must develop a readiness to select specific topics for
study. Happily, many--perhaps most --topics in history are susceptible
to global analysis. Each historian may take responsibility for selecting
what part of the past to analyze rather than accept someone else's definition
of the problem, debate, or dilemma. He or she should be able to defend
the logic of that choice and should accept the interpretive consequences
of the selection.
Having selected a topic, one should explore comparisons with a wide
range of related or parallel topics considering any possible connections,
similarities, and contrasts among topics. This sort of brainstorming
is essential to guaranteeing breadth and comprehensiveness in world
historical analysis, and it may reveal unsuspected dimensions of the
topic or suggest patterns and interactions to be documented.
Modeling the dynamics.
World historians, in seeking to link disparate bodies of information
into coherent stories, must formalize their logic rather than wait for
the facts to speak for themselves. The models of historians may range
from explicitly detailed and deductive theories to attractive but imprecise
metaphors. In any case, the model needs to be explored to its limit
in search of ideas to be tested, and it must highlight the dynamics
of global change. Modeling world history requires that analysts consider
cases, networks, systems, and debates and develop the art of conducting
several of these activities at once.
World historians seek out connections among events and processes in
the past and also among the models and disciplines with which we explore
the past. In particular since the models may refer to one or several
areas under study, it is important to seek out linkages among the subsystems
within the topic under study. World history links both the accidental
and the systemic connections in the places, times, and themes of the
past to help explain the broader patterns.
Verify the conclusions.
Having developed an argument about the past, the world historian must
next seek to verify it. In general, this means analyzing historical
data to measure one model against another for sections of the analysis
and for the study overall. This task, even when only partially completed,
addresses the questions "How do you know?" and "Compared
to what?" It thereby takes the analysis from insight to confirmation.
A world historian, having completed the steps above and developed a
perspective on the past, will find that there is always another relevant
way to look at the issue. The next step, then, is rethinking the analysis
from inside and outside and reiterating the steps above from a new perspective.
One should evaluate the interpretation from the standpoint of one and
then another person from past time, explore the interpretation through
the optic of one and then another analytical discipline, and reconsider
it in short-term and in long-term perspective.
Having carried out all the steps above at least twice, one may offer
an overall interpretation that is not necessarily a synthesis of all
available information and probably not a definitive conclusion but more
likely a provisional summary. Such a summary presented forcefully can
prove insightful and can stimulate further discussion and research.
Within each of the seven
steps above there is a great range of details and possible sub-categories.
This summary of the logic of world history provides a framework for
analysis of the past that gives systematic emphasis at once to broad
patterns and to specific links in historical experience.
A fifth task of world historians is to follow
a rigorous program of study. The five chapters of the concluding section
present guidelines for such study, arguing that a program of formal study
presents substantial advantages over informal, self-directed study. The
section opens with a chapter reviewing the development of programs of graduate
study and the continuing debates over priorities within graduate study,
especially the choice between area-studies and global approaches to training
in world history. The next chapter proposes programs of study at three levels
of intensity: a one-year program of introduction to the field; a two-year
program for a specialization in teaching; and a full doctoral program for
research. This chapter gives details on proposed courses and on requirements
for language study, research, and curriculum development. A chapter on resources
points out ways of gaining access to the many world-historical materials
in print, in archives, and in electronic form: it highlights the Library
of Congress as the single greatest resource in world history. A chapter
on research techniques describes research seminars in world history and
gives pointers on conducting micro-research projects, small projects, and
large, book-length projects.
These chapters draw on the experiences of
many, but address especially the work of the program of graduate study at
Northeastern University and the World History Center. In the ten years of
its activity, the combination of the center and the graduate program developed
a doctoral specialization in world history, prepared entering teachers of
world history, conducted major research and curriculum development, founded
a world history resource center, and conducted numerous professional development
workshops for teachers. Other institutions and programs are carrying on
Still, the problem of resources presents a
crucial difficulty for world history. In many ways world history can be
said to have proven itself in the classroom and in the outpouring of new
research and debate. Yet in other ways the field has yet to establish its
full credentials as an area of scholarship: both collegiate and secondary
institutions continue to demand the results of world historical analysis
without investing in the programs of research and teacher preparation that
are necessary to expand those results. I hope that Navigating World History
will contribute to strengthening the case for a deeper investment in research
and teaching about the global past.
The single most important unmet need in the
establishment of a strong field of world history is programs of graduate
training. Both teachers and researchers will benefit immensely from programs
of formal study in world history. The relative absence of graduate programs,
with their intensive and specialized study, means that world history has
yet to benefit from the fresh thinking that can emerge from concentrated
and detailed study. To put it in more positive terms, the establishment
of full-scale programs of graduate study in world history will enliven the
discipline of world history and enable world historians to face the challenge
of an immense and complex field of study.
Pat Manning is the Director of the World History Center and Professor
of History and African-American Studies at Northeastern University in
Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past
(Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), 375-377.