Lecture 1: What is World History?
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Table of Contents
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"...Westerners have narrowed the history of the world into grouping what little they know about the expansion of the human race around the peoples of Israel, Greece, and Rome. They have thus ignored all those travelers and explorers who in their ships plowed the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, or rode across the immensities of Central Asia to the Persian Gulf.
In truth, the larger part of the globe containing cultures different from those of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but no less civilized. These have remained unknown to those who write the history of their little world under the impression that they’re writing world history...."
Key Terms
- Eurocentrism
- Sinocentric
- Globalization
- Approaches to History
- Social History
- African American History
- Gender History
- Cultural History
- Civilizational Approach to World History
- Cross-Cultural Encounters & Diffusion
- Continuity & Change
- Determinism v. Human Agency
- World System Theory
- Interdisciplinary
Guided Viewing Questions
- What is Eurocentrism, and how has it shaped past approaches to world history?
- Describe the origins of world history as a discipline.
- What are the primary objections to world history?
- What non-human factors are involved in world history?
- How does Wallerstein’s world system offer a way to understand world history?
- What are the primary characteristics of world history? In other words, what sets world history apart from other historical approaches? What are some of the different ways that historians approach world history?