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- 1. Maps, Time, and World History
- What tools do world historians use in the study of history? This begins the study of
world history by examining its use of geographical and chronological frameworks: how they
have shaped the understanding of world history and have been used to chart the past.
- 2. History and Memory
- How are history and memory different? Topics in this range from the celebration of
Columbus Day to the demolition of a Korean museum to the historical re-interpretation of
Mayan civilization, exploring the ways historians, nations, families, and individuals
capture, exploit, and know the past, and the dynamic nature of historical practice and
knowledge.
- 3. Human Migrations
- How did the many paths of human migration people the planet? From their origins on the
African continent, humans have spread across the globe. This explores how and why early
humans moved across Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas, based on recent studies in
archaeology and linguistics.
- 4. Agricultural and Urban Revolutions
- What do historians know about the earliest farmers and herders, and the evolution of
cities? Newly emerging evidence about the “cradles of civilization” is examined
in light of the social, technological, and cultural complexity of recently discovered
settlements and cities.
- 5. Early Belief Systems
- How did people begin to understand themselves in relation to the natural world and to
the unseen realms beyond, and how was religion a community experience? In this unit,
animism and shamanism in Shinto are contrasted with philosophical and ethical systems in
early Greece and China, and the beginnings of Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Judaism.
- 6. Order and Early Societies
- How do diverse political structures and relationships distribute power and material
resources? Through the rise of the Chinese empire, Mayan regional kingdoms, and the
complex society of Igbo Ukwu, this considers the origins of centralized states and
alternative political and social orders.
- 7. The Spread of Religions
- How do religions interact, adopt new ideas, and adapt to diverse cultures? As the
missionaries, pilgrims, and converts of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam moved around the
world, the religions created change and were themselves changed.
- 8. Early Economies
- How do societies assign value to land, labor, and material goods? Manorial economies in
Japan and medieval Europe are contrasted with the tribute economy of the Inka, and the
experience of dramatic economic change is illustrated by the commercial revolution in
China.
- 9. Connections Across Land
- How were land-based trade routes conduits of both commerce and culture? The Eurasian
Silk Roads, the trans-Saharan Gold Roads, and the Meso-American Turquoise Road trace the
transmission of commodities, religions, and diseases, as well as the movements of people.
- 10. Connections Across Water
- How were water routes used as conduits of expansion and trade? The traders of the Indian
Ocean, the early Mississippians, and the Norsemen carried death and disease, skills and
technologies, philosophies and religion down rivers and across oceans.
- 11. Early Empires
- What makes an “empire”? Through the Mongol empire, the Mali empire, and the
Inka empire, this examines the construction of empires, their administrative structures,
legitimating ideologies, and the environmental and technological conditions that shaped
them.
- 12. Transmission of Traditions
- What are traditions and how are they transmitted? Islamic Spain, Korea, and West Africa
provide examples of many different modes of transmission, including oral, written,
artistic, and architectural.
- 13. Family and Household
- What does the study of families and households tell us about our global past? In this
examining West Asia, Europe, and China, families and households become the focus of
historians, providing a window into the private experiences in world societies, and how
they sometimes become a model for ordering the outside world.
- 14. Land and Labor Relationships
- What factors shape the ways in which the basic resources are exploited by a society?
From Southeast Asia to Russia, Africa, and the Americas, the ratios between land
availability and the usable labor force were the primary basis of pre-industrial
economies, but politics, environment, and culture played a part as well.
- 15. Early Global Commodities
- What is globalization and when did it begin? Before the sixteenth century, the
world’s four main monetary substances were silver, gold, copper, and shells. But it
was China’s demand for silver and Spain’s newly discovered mines in the Americas
that finally created an all-encompassing network of global trade.
- 16. Food, Demographics and Culture
- What role has food played in human societies? Studying the production and consumption of
food allows historians to uncover hidden levels of meaning in social relationships,
understand demographic shifts, and trace cultural exchange. This examines the earliest
impact of globalization including changing cuisine, environmental impact, and the rise of
forced labor as a global economic force.
- 17. Ideas Shape the World
- How do ideas change the world? This traces the impact of European Enlightenment ideals
in the American and Haitian revolutions and in South America. It also examines the
revitalization of Islam expressed in the Wahhabi movement as it spread from the Arabian
peninsula to Africa and Asia.
- 18. Rethinking The Rise of the West
- How does historical scholarship change over time, and why do the perspectives of
historians shift? This recaps the economic and political events that led to the rise of
the West, but examines and re-examines those events through differing opinions of its
causes, reflecting changes in historical interpretation.
- 19. Global Industrialization
- How was the industrial revolution a global process, not just a European or American
story? This links Cuba, Uruguay, Europe, and Japan, examining the impact of industry on
trade, environment, culture, technology, and lives around the world.
- 20. Imperial Designs
- What lasting impacts did modern imperialism have on the world? The profound consequences
of imperialism are examined in the South African frontier and Brazil, where politics,
culture, industrial capitalism, and the environment were shaped and re-shaped.
- 21. Colonial Identities
- How did colonialism and eventual de-colonization mutually affect the colonizer and the
colonized? From Zanzibar to India, colonial and post-colonial identities are examined
through clothing.
- 22. Global War and Peace
- How “global” were the World Wars? This examines Japanese imperialism, the
Belgian Congo, and twentieth century peace institutions to study how local, national,
ethnic, and religious conflicts shaped these wars and their aftermaths.
- 23. People Shape the World
- What is the impact of the individual in world history? This examines the role of
individual and collective action in shaping the world through the lives of such diverse
figures as Mao Zedong, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo.
- 24. Globalization and Economics
- How have the forces of globalization shaped the modern world? This travels from the
Soviet Union to Sri Lanka and Chile to study the role of technology and the impact of
economic and political changes wrought by globalization.
- 25. Global Popular Culture
- What are the sounds and sights of an emerging global culture? From World Cup soccer to
Coca Cola, modern icons reflect the intertwined cultural, political, and commercial
dimensions of globalization. This listens to and looks at the music and images of global
production and consumption from reggae to the Olympics.
- 26. World History and Identity
- How have global forces redefined both individual and group identity in the modern world?
This examines the transnational identity that emerged from the Chinese diaspora, and
compares it to a newly re-defined national Chechen identity forged through war with Russia
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About These Videos
This is a series that is appropriate for
secondary school and college teachers. It is based upon the Annenberg/CPB video series,
Bridging World History. It consists of 26 half-hour videos.
Free sign up required for first-time users.
To hear the sound and view video, you should have Windows Media Player, DSL, a cable
modem, or a LAN connection to a T1 line or greater, and have Javascript enabled.
You can download a free copy of the player from here:
About World History
World History is a field of historical study that
originated in the 1980s. It examines history from a global perspective.
Unlike history writing of the 19th and most of the 20th
centuries, which focused on narratives of individuals, national and ethnic perspectives,
World History looks for common patterns that emerge across all cultures. World historians
use a thematic approach, with two major foci: integration (how the processes of world
history have drawn peoples of the world together) and difference (how the patterns of
world history reveal the diversity of the human experience).
The study of world history is in some ways a product of the
current period of accelerated globalization. This period is tending to both integrate
various cultures and to highlight their differences.
The advent of World History as a distinct field of study
was heralded in the 1980s by the creation of the World History Association and the
creation of graduate programs at a handful of universities. Over the past 20 years,
scholarly publications, professional and academic organizations, and graduate programs in
World History have proliferated. It has become an increasingly popular approach to
teaching history in United States high schools and colleges. Many new textbooks are being
published with a World History approach.
Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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