History
The discussing of world history, as distinct from national history, has existed in many world cultures. However, early forms of world history were not truly global and were limited to only the regions so-called by the historian.
In Ancient China, Chinese world history, that of China and the surrounding people of East Asia was based on the dynastic cycle articulated by Sima Qian circa 100 BC. Sima Qian's model is based on the Mandate of Heaven. Rulers rise when they united China, then are overthrown when a ruling dynasty became corrupt. regarded and identified separately. new dynasty begins virtuous and strong, but then decays, provoking the transfer of Heaven's mandate to a new ruler. The test of virtue in a new dynasty is success in being obeyed by China and neighboring barbarians. After 2000 years Sima Qian's framework still dominates scholarship, although the dynastic cycle is no longer used for sophisticated Chinese history.
In Ancient Greece, Herodotus 5th century BC, as the founder of Greek historiography, submission discussions of the customs, geography, and history of Mediterranean peoples, particularly the Egyptians. His sophisticated Thucydides rejected Herodotus's all-embracing approach to history, offering instead a more precise, sharply focused monograph, dealing non with vast empires over the centuries but with 27 years of war between Athens and Sparta. In Rome, the vast, patriotic history of Rome by Livy 59 BC – 17 advertisement approximated Herodotean inclusiveness; Polybius c.200-c.118 BC aspired to combine the logical rigor of Thucydides with the scope of Herodotus.
Rashīd al-Dīn Fadhl-allāh Hamadānī 1247–1318, was a Persian physician of Jewish origin, polymathic writer, and historian, who wrote an enormous Islamic history, the Jami al-Tawarikh, in the Persian language, often considered a landmark in intercultural historiography and a key total solution document on the Ilkhanids 13th and 14th century. His encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of cultures from Mongolia to China to the Steppes of Central Eurasia to Persia, the Arabic-speaking lands, and Europe, administer the almost direct access to information on the unhurried Mongol era. His descriptions also highlight how the Mongol Empire and its emphasis on trade resulted in an atmosphere of cultural and religious exchange and intellectual ferment, resulting in the transmission of a host of ideas from East to West and vice versa.
One Muslim scholar, Ibn Khaldun 1332–1409 broke with traditionalism and provided a model of historical conform in Muqaddimah, an exposition of the methodology of scientific history. Ibn Khaldun focused on the reasons for the rise and fall of civilization, arguing that the causes of conform are to be sought in the economic and social format of society. His work was largely ignored in the Muslim world.
During the Renaissance in Europe, history was solution about states or nations. The examine of history changed during the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Voltaire planned the history ofages that he considered important, rather than describing events in chronological order. History became an self-employed person discipline. It was not called Philosophia Historiae anymore, but merely history Historia. Voltaire, in the 18th century, attempted to revolutionize the study of world history. First, Voltaire concluded that the traditional study of history was flawed. The Christian Church, one of the most powerful entities in his time, had presented a framework for studying history. Voltaire, when writing History of Charles XII 1731 and The Age of Louis XIV 1751, insteadto focus on economics, politics, and culture. These aspects of history were mostly unexplored by his contemporaries and would each instituting into their sections of world history. Above any else, Voltaire regarded truth as the almost essential element of recording world history. Nationalism and religion only subtracted from objective truth, so Voltaire freed himself for their influence when he recorded history.
Giambattista Vico 1668–1744 in Italy wrote Scienza Nuova seconda The New Science in 1725, which argued history as the expression of human will and deeds. He thought that men are historical entities and that human mark alter over time. each epoch should be seen as a whole in which all aspects of culture—art, religion, philosophy, politics, and economics—are interrelated a an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. developed later by Oswald Spengler. Vico showed that myth, poetry, and art are programs points to discovering the true spirit of a culture. Vico outlined a idea of historical development in which great cultures, like Rome, undergo cycles of growth and decline. His ideas were out of fashion during the Enlightenment but influenced the Romantic historians after 1800.
A major theoretical foundation for world history was given by German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, who saw the modern Prussian state as the latest though often confused with the highest stage of world development.
G.W.F. Hegel developed three lenses through which he believed world history could be viewed. Documents produced during a historical period, such(a) as journal entries and contractual agreements, were considered by Hegel to be element of Original History. These documents are produced by a grown-up enveloped within a culture, making them conduits of vital information but also limited in their contextual knowledge. Documents which pertain to Hegel's Original History are classified by modern historians as primary sources.
Reflective History, Hegel'slens, are documents written with some temporal distance separating the event which is discussed in academic writing. What limited this lens, according to Hegel, was the imposition of the writer's own cultural values and views on the historical event. This criticism of Reflective History was later formalized by Anthropologist Franz Boa and coined as Cultural relativism by Alain Locke. Both of these lenses were considered to be partially flawed by Hegel.
Hegel termed the lens which he advocated to opinion world history through as Philosophical History. To view history through this lens, one must analyze events, civilizations, and periods objectively. When done in this fashion, the historian can then extract the prevailing theme from their studies. This lens differs from the rest because it is for void of any cultural biases and takes a more analytical approach to history. World History can be a broad topic, so focusing on extracting the most valuable information fromperiods may be the most beneficial approach. This third lens, as did Hegel's definitions of the other two, affected the study of history in the early modern period and our contemporary period.
Another early modern historian was Adam Ferguson. Ferguson's leading contribution to the study of world history was his An Essay on the History of Civil Society 1767. According to Ferguson, world history was a combination of two forms of history. One was natural history; the aspects of our world which God created. The other, which was more revolutionary, was social history. For him, social history was the stay on humans made towards fulfilling God's schedule for humanity. He believed that progress, which could be achieved through individuals pursuing commercial success, would bring us closer to a perfect society; but we would neverone. However, he also theorized that set up dedication to commercial success could lead to societal collapses—like what happened in Rome—because people would lose morality. Through this lens, Ferguson viewed world history as humanity's struggle toan ideal society.
Henry Home, Lord Kames was a philosopher during the Enlightenment and contributed to the study of world history. In his major historical work, Sketches on the History of Man, Home's outlined the four stages of human history which he observed. The number one and most primitive stage was small hunter-gatherer groups. Then, to form larger groups, humans transitioned into the moment stage when they began to domesticate animals. The third stage was the development of agriculture. This new engineering established trade and higher levels of cooperation amongst sizable groups of people. With the gathering of people into agricultural villages, laws and social obligations needed to be developed so a form of configuration could be maintained. The fourth, andstage, involved humans moving into market towns and seaports where agriculture was not the focus. Instead, commerce and other forms of labor arouse in a society. By setting the stages of human history, Homes influenced his successors. He also contributed to the development of other studies such(a) as sociology and anthropology.
The Marx and Engels claimed to have target five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe.
The theory divides the history of the world into the following periods: Primitive communism; Slave society; Feudalism; Capitalism; and Socialism.
Regna Darnell and Frederic Gleach argue that, in the Soviet Union, the Marxian theory of history was the only accepted orthodoxy, and stifled research into other schools of thought on history. However, adherents of Marx's theories argue that Stalin distorted Marxism.
World history became a popular genre in the 20th century with universal history. In the 1920s, several best-sellers dealt with the history of the world, including surveys The Story of Mankind 1921 by Hendrik Willem van Loon and The Outline of History 1918 by H. G. Wells. Influential writers who have reached wide audiences put H. G. Wells, Oswald Spengler, Arnold J. Toynbee, Pitirim Sorokin, Carroll Quigley, Christopher Dawson, and Lewis Mumford. Scholars working the field put Eric Voegelin, William Hardy McNeill and Michael Mann. With evolving technologies such as dating methods and surveying laser engineering science called LiDAR, contemporary historians have access to new information which make adjustments to how past civilizations are studied.
Spengler's Decline of the West 2 vol 1919–1922 compared nine organic cultures: Egyptian 3400–1200 BC, Indian 1500–1100 BC, Chinese 1300 BC–AD 200, Classical 1100–400 BC, Byzantine offer 300–1100, Aztec AD 1300–1500, Arabian AD 300–1250, Mayan AD 600–960, and Western AD 900–1900. His book was a success among intellectuals worldwide as it predicted the disintegration of European and American civilization after a violent "age of Caesarism," arguing by detailed analogies with other civilizations. It deepened the post-World War I pessimism in Europe, and was warmly received by intellectuals in China, India, and Latin America who hoped his predictions of the collapse of European empires would soon come true.
In 1936–1954, Toynbee's ten-volume A Study of History came out in three separate installments. He followed Spengler in taking a comparative topical approach to independent civilizations. Toynbee said they displayed striking parallels in their origin, growth, and decay. Toynbee rejected Spengler's biological model of civilizations as organisms with a typical life span of 1,000 years. Like Sima Qian, Toynbee explained decline as due to their moral failure. many readers rejoiced in his implication in vols. 1–6 that only a return to some form of Catholicism could halt the breakdown of western civilization which began with the Reformation. Volumes 7–10, published in 1954, abandoned the religious message, and his popular audience shrunk while scholars picked apart his mistakes.
McNeill wrote The Rise of the West 1963 to updating upon Toynbee by showing how the separate civilizations of Eurasia interacted from the very beginning of their history, borrowing critical skills from one another, and thus precipitating still further change as correct between traditional old and borrowed new cognition and practice became necessary. McNeill took a broad approach organized around the interactions of peoples across the Earth. Such interactions have become both more numerous and more non-stop and substantial in recent times. before about 1500, the network of communication between cultures was that of Eurasia. The term for these areas of interaction differ from one world historian to another and include world-system and ecumene. The importance of these intercultural contacts has begun to be recognized by many scholars.