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The Oxford Handbook of World History
The Oxford Handbook of World History presents thirty-two essays by leading historians in their respective fields. The chapters address the most important issues explored by contemporary world historians. These broadly fall into four conceptions of the global past, themes in world history, processes of world history, regions in world history.
Chapters on conceptions deal with issues of space and time as treated in the field of world history, as well as questions of method, epistemology, historiography, and globalization as viewed from historical perspective. Themes discussed include the natural environment, agriculture, pastoral nomadism, science, technology, state formation, gender, and religion.
Chapters dealing with large-scale processes review current thinking on some of the most influential developments of the global past, including mass migrations, cross-cultural trade, biological diffusions, imperial expansion, industrialization, and cultural and religious exchanges. Finally, a set of chapters explores distinctive historical developments within the world's major regions, while also situating individual regions in larger global context.
Taken together, the essays in this volume provide the best guide to current thinking in one of the most dynamic fields of historical scholarship.
Chapters on conceptions deal with issues of space and time as treated in the field of world history, as well as questions of method, epistemology, historiography, and globalization as viewed from historical perspective. Themes discussed include the natural environment, agriculture, pastoral nomadism, science, technology, state formation, gender, and religion.
Chapters dealing with large-scale processes review current thinking on some of the most influential developments of the global past, including mass migrations, cross-cultural trade, biological diffusions, imperial expansion, industrialization, and cultural and religious exchanges. Finally, a set of chapters explores distinctive historical developments within the world's major regions, while also situating individual regions in larger global context.
Taken together, the essays in this volume provide the best guide to current thinking in one of the most dynamic fields of historical scholarship.
632 pages, Paperback
First published May 26, 2011
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About the author
Jerry H. Bentley
99 books4 followersJerry H. Bentley was professor of history at the University of Hawaii and editor of the Journal of World History.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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October 22, 2024World History is a fairly young branch on the big tree of historical research. Antecedents can be found in Spengler and Toynbee, but theirs were fairly speculative buildings. The recently deceased William H. McNeill (and his masterpiece The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, 1963) was the first to systematically underline that the development of civilizations, cultures and nations should not only be studied from their own internal dynamics, but also in their interaction with each other. Still, it would take until the 1990s for World History really to get out of the starting blocks, fired up by the current debates on globalization and transmigration.
As Jerry H. Bentley rightly points out in an introductory chapter, this new trend covers a lot of different approaches (Global History, Transnational History, Big History, connected history etc.), but they have in common that they distance themselves from the Eurocentrism that since the 19th century coloured almost all historical research, and from the narrow fixation on nation states. This Oxford Handbook covers this new domain in essays of very different value, but they also show that this is a very young, very exploratory domain, with its own issues.
The regional synthesis papers in the last third of the book illustrate this nicely: some of them are very indebted to the traditional (internal dynamics) approach, others focus on the surplus historical research gains when zooming in on interaction, exchange and comparison, and retaining a more global perspective. The sometimes very different perspectives also prove that World History is an exciting new research domain that still has a long way to go. Just as we like it: work in progress.
As Jerry H. Bentley rightly points out in an introductory chapter, this new trend covers a lot of different approaches (Global History, Transnational History, Big History, connected history etc.), but they have in common that they distance themselves from the Eurocentrism that since the 19th century coloured almost all historical research, and from the narrow fixation on nation states. This Oxford Handbook covers this new domain in essays of very different value, but they also show that this is a very young, very exploratory domain, with its own issues.
The regional synthesis papers in the last third of the book illustrate this nicely: some of them are very indebted to the traditional (internal dynamics) approach, others focus on the surplus historical research gains when zooming in on interaction, exchange and comparison, and retaining a more global perspective. The sometimes very different perspectives also prove that World History is an exciting new research domain that still has a long way to go. Just as we like it: work in progress.
December 1, 2018
As always these Oxford Handbooks come in handy if you're looking for an introduction in some field of interest. And it's quite in-depth, although not all contributions are of the same quality. See my more elaborate review on my Sense-of-History-account: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
July 29, 2023
Great overview of the current state of the discipline. As with all anthologies, it’s a mixed bag, but there are some excellent chapters and all have very helpful bibliographies for further reading.
I found the following chapters the most valuable:
The Task of World History
Theories of World History Since the Enlightenment
Periodization
Modernity
Technology, Engineering, and Science
Biological Exchanges in World History
The Americas, 1450-2000
The Atlantic Ocean Basin
I found the following chapters the most valuable:
The Task of World History
Theories of World History Since the Enlightenment
Periodization
Modernity
Technology, Engineering, and Science
Biological Exchanges in World History
The Americas, 1450-2000
The Atlantic Ocean Basin
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews