Above: Galata Tower, or Galata Kulesi in Turkish, in Istanbul. Built by the Genoese in 1348, one of many symbols of the complex, multicultural, cosmopolitan history of Istanbul. Photo my own, August 2018.
World History
The history of our world is one of large-sweeping changes, from agricultural revolution and industrial revolution, the rise and fall of regional and global powers, influential worldviews and paradigms, and routes and modes of trade; to and the complex and sometimes chaotic evolution of profoundly influential religious and political ideologies, and of scientific and technological regimes. It is a history of how we got where we are today — why certain ideologies, political and economic structures, and cultural norms are dominant and others are not, and why disparities of political power and economic well-being between countries and within them are how they are, rather than being distributed across the globe in some other pattern. And it is a history of who we are today, exploring the incredible cultural diversity of our world.
In World History, we learn valuable lessons about the origins of our contemporary notions of economics and science, of race and nation, of rights and freedoms, of gender and religion. Why things are the way they are, and why and how we got here. It teaches us how certain factors led to the rise of powerful “civilizations” in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China, as well as in Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific: centers of power that influenced the cultural and political landscape down to today. We learn about the marginality for centuries of Western Europe on the very edges of vital trade routes dominated by Chinese, Arab, Central Asian, Southeast Asian, and Indian Ocean traders, leading to Europeans seeking ways of gaining access to that same trade, or to alternative sources of wealth and power. We learn about the significance of the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, the culmination of numerous factors and developments which lay the groundwork for our fundamental conception today of an international order comprised of equally sovereign nation-states. How the Enlightenment thinking of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and numerous others, led to concepts of freedom, equality, and human rights which bore out in the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions of the 1770s-1800s, while also reinforcing imperialist and colonialist logics which Europeans and others saw as justification for colonialist, exploitative, and oppressive actions which continue to have profound effects all around the world. And how key developments in natural philosophy, natural history, and what eventually came to be called “science,” not only in the West but around the world, led to world-changing developments in communications and transportation, economic prosperity, and safety, health, and quality of life the world over, even as they also increased human beings’ capacity for exploitation and war.
But our world, and indeed our community right here at home, does not consist only of people from the “big name” cultures and countries which most standard accounts of “World History” narratives deem “significant.” World History is also a history of countless peoples, places, and cultures, each of which constitute “worlds” unto themselves — each of which has myriad stories to tell, lessons to impart, about their advances, accomplishments, innovations, experiences, and challenges. All of those peoples are part of our world, not only overseas but within our own communities as well.
Our world, whether by that we mean places we might travel for work or pleasure; people we might meet amongst our neighbors and classmates; family and friends who might live abroad; or peoples and places we merely read about in the news or connect with over the internet, includes not only Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese, but also Taiwanese, Tibetans, Okinawans, Ainu, and Uyghurs; not only Turks and Arabs but also Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, and Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews; not only British, French, Dutch, Germans, Spanish, and Italians, but also Irish, Welsh, Scots, Scandinavians, Poles, Russians, Slavs, and Greeks; not only an incredible diversity of people from Latin America and Africa but also those from the Pacific Islands.
What do you wish others knew about the culture you or your ancestors come from, or about a place you have lived or visited, that is not generally known in the wider society in which you live, or in the wider world at large? I imagine most of us have an answer to that. Some of us may have quite a list of answers to that question. These things, too, are significant, profoundly so. The study of World History presents an opportunity to learn some of those things — to share about our diverse respective histories and cultures, and to come to understand one another, and our world, better, as a result.
Learning about the histories, cultures, and experiences of these many peoples all around the world allows us to put the many political, social, ideological, cultural, and technological shifts we talk about in History into a global perspective, gaining new understandings of how they affected peoples around the world and still do today. Seeing how ideologies and processes such as nationalism, imperialism, and communism, and concepts such as race, ethnicity, and nation manifest(ed) differently around the world provides a crucial opportunity to reconsider our understandings of those ideologies, processes, and concepts, deepening our appreciation for their complexity. It also helps to open our eyes to the incredible diversity contained within our world, so that we might better understand, care about, and know how to better engage with, our neighbors.
Below: A Bhutanese-style Buddhist temple at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Washington DC, June 2008. Photo my own.
