World history
World history is the study and teaching of all or most of recorded history from the beginnings to the present. The World History Association publishes the quarterly Journal of World History.
Teaching
In college curricula, it became a popular replacement for courses on Western Civilization, beginning in the 1970s.
Theoretical and scholarly studies
Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) in Italy pioneered the field with his Scienza nuova seconda (The New Science) in 1725. Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) introduced the perspective of the Scottish Enlightenment in An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767).
Influential writers who have reached wide audiences including H. G. Wells, Oswald Spengler, Arnold J. Toynbee[1], Pitirim Sorokin, Christopher Dawson[2], and Lewis Mumford. Scholars working the field include Eric Voegelin[3], William H. McNeill and Michael Mann.[4].
Academic historians tend to disparage scholarship in world history as virtually impossible.
Bibliography
- Bentley, Jerry H. Shapes of World History in Twentieth Century Scholarship. Essays on Global and Comparative History Series. (1996)
- Costello, Paul. World Historians and Their Goals: Twentieth-Century Answers to Modernism (1993).
- Frye, Northrop. "Spengler Revisited" in Northrop Frye on modern culture (2003), pp 297-382, first published 1974; online
- Hughes, H. Stuart. Oswald Spengler (1952).
- McInnes, Neil. "The Great Doomsayer: Oswald Spengler Reconsidered." National Interest 1997 (48): 65-76. Issn: 0884-9382 Fulltext: Ebsco
- McNeill, William H. "The Changing Shape of World History." History and Theory 1995 34(2): 8-26. Issn: 0018-2656 in JSTOR
- McNeill, William H., Jerry H. Bentley, and David Christian, eds. Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History (5 vol 2005)
- Mazlish, Bruce. "Comparing Global History to World History," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Winter, 1998), pp. 385-395 in JSTOR
Primary sources
- Dawson, Christopher. Religion and the Rise of Western Culture(1991) excerpt and text search
- McNeill, Robert, and William H. McNeill. The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History (2003) excerpt and text search
- Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West (1918-22) vol 1 online; vol 2 online; excerpt and text search, abridged edition
- ↑ William H. McNeill, Arnold J. Toynbee a Life (1989)
- ↑ Bradley J. Birzer, Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson (2007)
- ↑ Michael P. Federici, Eric Voegelin: The Restoration of Order (2002)
- ↑ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (1986) excerpt and text search