In his short article “World History as a Way of Thinking” Eric Lane Martin, “…argue[s] that the most important things the field of world history has to offer the researcher, teacher, student, and general public are the conceptual tools required for understanding complex global processes and problems.” Anyone who follows the evening news or shops at Wal-mart, has encountered the processes and problems Martin speaks of. Our modern society puts pressure on a variety of citizens to grapple with and attempt to understand issues on a scale that moves beyond the local and national. History has long been a tool utilized by scholars, politicians and citizens to help them put current day happenings into context. That context has allowed for a deeper understanding of the present day. In an era when the issues cross national and regional boundaries the need for a different scale of history has become apparent. World history has emerged as a relatively new discipline within academia that is attempting to provide the context for large-scale processes and problems. As the field has grown a variety of authors, some historians, some from other fields, have attempted to write a history of the world. With such a daunting task how can we define success? How can we analyze the history that provides a true global perspective on processes and problems we face? By taking Martin’s two key characteristics of world history, one, it is defined by the kinds of questions it asks and two, it is defined by the problem-solving techniques it uses, we can analyze texts purporting to be world history and access their utility in providing context for the global processes and problems we face today.
Former Oxford professor J.M. Roberts wrote A ...
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...haped the world we live in today. It is imperative that we take both characteristics into account, for to truly benefit from the global perspective of world history we must ask global questions and frame them in the language of a global point of view. By taking the large-scale approach we can see issues in a different light that just may lead to solutions that work better for more people, not just the winners.
Works Cited
Martin, Eric Lane. “World History as a Way of Thinking,” World History Connected 2,
no.2 (May, 2005), http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/2.2/martin.html
(accessed Sept. 25, 2011).
Roberts, J.M. A Short History of the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Stearns, Peter. A Brief History of the World. The Teaching Company Great Courses:
Lecture Series, 2007. Audio Recording.
Ken Wolf, a professor of history at Murray Sate University and author of Personalities and Problems, wrote with the intent to illustrate the varied richness of human history over the past five centuries. He took various personalities such as adventurers, princes, political leaders, and writers and categorized them in a way for readers to draw lines between them to create a clearer view of world history for himself. Beginning each new chapter with a specific question about worldly concerns and disciplines allowed the readers to relate the topics to broader, more general scenarios of their cultures. Answering the questions in essay form gave examples of how certain cultures/ parts of the world dealt with those issues. The answers that pertained to the questions informed readers about many historical figures without drawing a time line for the course of history and simply reiterating information as in a textbook. Wolf's layout of the book created an interesting, clear, and informative study of world civilizations.
I walked out of sophomore AP world history and human geography not only with greater historical awareness, but also the ability to utilize that awareness to engage with other disciplines. In pushing beyond mere identification and recall, APWH challenged me to shift away from passively accepting information at face-value, to understand how context and rhetoric framed knowledge. In constantly deconstructing the nature of historical and empirical evidence and the lenses in which objects of scrutiny are extracted-- especially those defined by conflict and transformations--, I learned to be conscientious of how authors’ material conditions and interests shaped the presentation of given narratives. In-class emphasis of making historical connections while reading became ingrained into my
Holt, Sol. Exploring World History. New Jersey: Globe Book Company Inc, 1990. Pg. 204-205, 311.
“It [history] is like a river. From any vantage point, a river looks much the same day after day. But actually it is constantly flowing and changing…one day, when the banks are thoroughly weakened and the rains long and heavy, the river floods and bursts its banks, and may take a new course.” (Kay 1948)
...is, Elisabeth Gaynor., and Anthony Esler. World History Connections to Today. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. Print.
...iable consideration of western domination of the world. The reader obtains a deeper understanding of western civilization and how history ought to be taught. Ferguson also succeeds in warning the reader of the collapse of western civilization. The economic, political, and military rise of other countries such as China seems to cement the argument that the end of western domination is near. As such, the reader realizes that western domination may just be a subject of historical knowledge (Ferguson 29).
Books, to the scholar, should only be used as a link to gathering information about the past. For these books do not give a definite factual account of the past; they provide information for man to form his own opinions. These books were written by men who already had formulated ideas in their heads spawned by other books. Man must look to these books for inspiration in creating his own thoughts. He must use all the possible resources available to get every side and every opinion out there. When man creates his own thoughts, using every source to aid h...
It’s truly fascinating how there are so many different approaches to history, how so many different types of minds and schools of thought can come together to study the events of the world’s past. There are so many ways to approach what happened in our past, and the groups of historians previously mentioned are only a fraction of the actual number of different ways of researching and thinking that exists as it pertains to the study of history. History is in some ways, always a mystery, and all historians, regardless of schooling, training or biases, seek to accomplish one goal: to understand what occurred before us and why, and to use that knowledge to learn how the world was shaped into the world we live in today.
Iggers opens the book by talking about a revolutionary way that the Western world was taught about history. Throughout the book he ascertains the changes that take place throughout historiography and the nature of history itself. He also examines prior historical notions and the way that historiography was altered after World War II. History morphed from previous antiquarian teachings into a deeper, more evaluated approach. Historians gained a more intimate relationship with postmodern ideas and began looking at history in an objective manner using contemporary discipline. Iggers studies the way postmodernism was changed by new social sciences which allowed more detail into cultural influences and the problems surrounding globalization theories. He also explains the birth of microhistory which replaced macrohistory.
Upshur, Jiu-Hwa, Janice J. Terry, Jim Holoka, Richard D. Goff, and George H. Cassar. Thomson advantage Books World History. Compact 4th edition ed. Vol. Comprehensive volume. Belmont: Thompson Wadsworth, 2005. 107-109. Print.
World history is defined as the study of the relationships between people and different aspects of society such as culture, behavior, freedom and religion (Manning,2003,1). Two factors have had a significant impact on world history, are external and internal factors (World History Connected, n.d). The external factors are based on scientific principles in areas such as chemistry, archaeology and the environment , internal factors are traditional topics of history such as slavery, freedom, abolition and racial discrimination (World History Connected, n.d).
Flory, Harriette, and Samuel Jenike. A World History: The Modern World. Volume 2. White Plains, NY: Longman, 1992. 42.
Beck, Roger B. Modern World History: Patterns of Interaction. Student text and teacher’s ed. Orlando: Houghton, 2012. Print.
One major problem with teaching world history is that there is no consensus on how it should be taught. In an article by Ross E. Dunn titled
After this brief introduction we can now evaluate the importance for different countries to work together to solve global issues or pursue an ambitious goal. As I wrote, in first we need to feel part of the same world, where what it happen far to my house really it isn't too far. The governments, especially those more powerful and wealthy, they...