The New World History

The New World History is a comprehensive volume of essays selected to enrich world history teaching and scholarship in this rapidly expanding field. The forty-four articles in this book take stock of the history, evolving literature, and current trajectories of new world history. These essays, together with the editors’ introductions to thematic chapters, encourage educators and students to reflect critically on the development of the field and to explore concepts, approaches, and insights valuable to their own work. The selections are organized in ten chapters that survey the history of the movement, the seminal ideas of founding thinkers and today’s practitioners, changing concepts of world historical space and time, comparative methods, environmental history, the “big history” movement, globalization, debates over the meaning of Western power, and ongoing questions about the intellectual premises and assumptions that have shaped the field.

Ross E. Dunn is Professor Emeritus of History at San Diego State University, author of The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century, and coauthor of Panorama: A World History.

Laura J. Mitchell is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, author of Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa, and coauthor of Panorama: A World History.

Kerry Ward is Associate Professor of History at Rice University and author of Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company.

Preface

Introduction 
Further Reading

CHAPTER 1 WORLD HISTORY OVER TIME: THE EVOLUTION OF AN INTELLECTUAL AND PEDAGOGICAL MOVEMENT

Introduction
The Rise of World History Scholarship • Craig A. Lockard
World History • Marnie Hughes-Warrington
Toward World History: American Historians and the Coming of the World History Course • Gilbert Allardyce
Marshall G. S. Hodgson and the Hemispheric Interregional Approach to World History • Edmund Burke III
Further Reading

CHAPTER 2 DEFINING WORLD HISTORY: SOME KEY STATEMENTS

Introduction
Hemispheric Interregional History as an Approach to World History • Marshall G. S. Hodgson
The Rise of the West after Twenty-Five Years • William H. McNeill
Depth, Span, and Relevance • Philip D. Curtin
A Plea for World System History • Andre Gunder Frank
Myths, Wagers, and Some Moral Implications of World History • Jerry H. Bentley
World History and the History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality • Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Further Reading

CHAPTER 3 REGIONS IN WORLD-HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Introduction
The Middle East and North Africa in World History • Julia A. Clancy-Smith
No Longer Odd Region Out: Repositioning Latin America in World History • Lauren Benton
Southeast Asia in World History • Craig A. Lockard
American History as if the World Mattered (and Vice Versa) • Carl Guarneri
Further Reading

CHAPTER 4 RETHINKING WORLD-HISTORICAL SPACE

Introduction
The Architecture of Continents: The Development of the Continental Scheme • Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen
Southernization • Lynda Shaffer
Oceans of World History: Delineating Aquacentric Notions in the Global Past • Rainer F. Buschmann
Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities • Alison Games
Further Reading

CHAPTER 5 RETHINKING WORLD-HISTORICAL TIME

Introduction
Cross-Cultural Interaction and Periodization in World History • Jerry H. Bentley
When Does World History Begin? (And Why Should We Care?) • David Northrup
History and Science after the Chronometric Revolution • David Christian
Worlding History • Daniel A. Segal
Further Reading

CHAPTER 6 WORLD HISTORY AS COMPARISON

Introduction
Global and Comparative History • Michael Adas
Frameworks for Global Historical Analysis • Patrick Manning
How to Write the History of the World • Lauren Benton
What Is World History Good For? • Kenneth Pomeranz
Further Reading

CHAPTER 7 DEBATING THE QUESTION OF WESTERN POWER

Introduction
Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization: Europe, China, and the Global Conjuncture • Kenneth Pomeranz
The West and the Rest Revisited: Debating Capitalist Origins, European Colonialism, and the Advent of Modernity • Joseph M. Bryant
Capitalist Origins, the Advent of Modernity, and Coherent Explanation: A Response to Joseph M. Bryant • Jack A. Goldstone
Comparison in Global History • Prasannan Parthasarathi
Further Reading

CHAPTER 8 WORLD HISTORY, BIG HISTORY, AND THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT

Introduction
The Columbian Exchange • Alfred W. Crosby
Matter Matters: Towards a More “Substantial” Global History • Frank Uekotter
The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature? • Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen, and John R. McNeill
Big History: The Emergence of a Novel Interdisciplinary Approach • Fred Spier
Further Reading

CHAPTER 9 GLOBAL HISTORY AND GLOBALIZATION

Introduction
Global History: Approaches and New Directions • Maxine Berg
Comparing Global History to World History • Bruce Mazlish
Cycles of Silver: Globalization as Historical Process • Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez
What Is the Concept of Globalization Good For? An African Historian’s Perspective • Frederick Cooper
Further Reading

CHAPTER 10 CRITIQUES AND QUESTIONS

Introduction
Global History and Critiques of Western Perspectives • Dominic Sachsenmaier
Much Ado about Something: The New Malaise of World History • Vinay Lal
Myths, Wagers, and Some Moral Implications of World History • Jerry H. Bentley
Beyond Blacks, Bondage, and Blame: Why a Multicentric World History Needs Africa • Joseph C. Miller
Women’s and Men’s World History? Not Yet • Judith P. Zinsser
Histories for a Less National Age • Kenneth Pomeranz
Further Reading

Teaching World History, Further Reading
Credits
Index