This document discusses the historiography of world history as an academic field. It outlines how world history has evolved from earlier universal histories that focused on civilizations and the rise and fall of empires. More recent approaches examine themes of connections, interactions and relations across different places. The document also discusses new methodologies in world history, such as environmental history, transnational history, and big history. It emphasizes teaching world history through essential questions and themes that are globally significant, such as race, revolution, imperialism and decolonization.

1. WHY THE WORLD?
THINKING GLOBALLY IN A GLOBAL AGE
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR BUILDING A NEW
CURRICULUM
BY
DR. WHITNEY HOWARTH
PLYMOUTH STATE UNIVERSITY
APRIL 18, 2016

2. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU
HEAR THE PHRASE:
WORLD HISTORY?

3. WHY DON’T WE STUDY ONE STATE’S HISTORY AT A TIME?

5. WHAT “UNITS” OF STUDY DO WE USE TO EXAMINE
AMERICAN HISTORY?

6. ERIC GILBERT
• “World historians have, like salmon battling their way through
• waterfalls and rapids, struggled mightily against academic history’s dominant unit of
• analysis—the nation-state. Instead we have substituted other units—civilizations, areas
• (in the area studies sense), continents, language groups—all in attempt to get away from
• the limits of the nation-state. The more we employ these units of analysis, however, the
• more they start to seem like nation-states warmed over. Continents and civilizations,
• in particular, have come to be employed much like big nation-states.”

7. World history encourages us to reconsider the validity of teaching in
traditional units such as continents and civilizations and asks us to instead
reflect upon using the best unit possible for the question at hand.*
By looking at what some have called “zones of interaction” or world networks,
such as the Indian Ocean world, we can ask better questions about how places have
connected across time and place.
Martin W. Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997.

8. WAYS OF THE WORLD…
• Patterns and processes across time (trade, migration, revolution, de-colonization)
• Connections across borders (merchants, missionaries, mercenaries)
• Comparative systems (slave trade in Africa pre-1500 vs. the trans-atlantic slave trade)
• Study of one year or era across the globe (1799)
• The study of one place and its interactions with the world (Kochi)
• Following one person’s life and movements across oceans, borders and global events (Equiano Olaudah)
• The Rise of the West (the West and the rest) vs. World Systems (Core/Peripher)
• New special and temporal parameters (ex. The Indian Ocean as a interactive zone 600-1450)

10. • From 600 to 1450, the height of the Indian Ocean world… we can explore key themes in world history:
•
• interregional trade, the Islamic world, Indian Ocean trade, the spread and contacts of major religions
• including missionary movements, initiatives of Ming China (a reference in part to Zheng
• He), Arab migrations (diasporas), and the spread of disease and urban growth due to
• trade. The entire question concerning the existence of a world economic system at this
• time can be answered through a look at the dynamic nature and large scope of Indian
• Ocean trade. By 1450, changes in technology, trade, and encounters began to alter the
• balance in the Indian Ocean world. The effect of the Portuguese and later the British
• and the Dutch on trade and empire—as well as the spread of disease, the introduction of
• new foods to the region, and changes in forced labor systems—changed the region still
• further. Moving forward in time, issues of empire and industrialization are raised as one
• considers the British East India Company’s role.
• -- Dr. Deborah Johnston, AP “Teaching the Indian Ocean” 2007

11. • “The study of the Indian Ocean allows students to discuss the interaction
• of migrants, merchants, missionaries, and others as people from multiple continents,
• regions, and states traversed water routes and overland trade networks to exchange
• commodities and culture on a grand scale.”
• -- Whitney Howarth

14. JEWS OF MALABAR
• Photo 1880
• Cochin, India
• Paradesi Synagogue built 1567

15. AVOIDING THE WORLD TOUR MODEL OF HISTORY…

18. WHOSE STORIES MATTER?
• Select three important people in world history whose values and
experiences matter but who often get left out of the traditional
narrative.
• Write one sentence about each.
• Why do their stories matter?

20. Ram Mohan Roy, India (1772 –1833) reformer, educationalist, scholar.
David Friedländer (1750-1834) German Jewish banker, writer, communal leader
One of the founders of a Jewish free school (1778), which he directed in association with his brother-in-law.
Friedländer also wrote text-books, and was one of the first to translate the Hebrew prayer-book into German.

21. WHY WORLD?
• What Modern values and concepts do we value?
• What values and concepts should we teach when we teach World History?
• How is world history a more effective way to approach “historical thinking”?

22. TEACHING THEMES
THAT SHAPE OUR WORLD
TODAY…
Race/Racism
Revolution
Freedom Struggles
Imperialism
Nationalism
De-colonization
Social Justice

23. Sam Wineburg’s THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN
• Sourcing: Think about a document's author and its creation.
• Contextualizing: Situate the document and its events in time and place.
• Close reading: Carefully consider what the document says and the language used to say it.
• Using Background Knowledge: Use historical information and knowledge to read and understand the document.
• Reading the Silences: Identify what has been left out or is missing from the document by asking questions of its
account.
• Corroborating: Ask questions about important details across multiple sources to determine points of agreement and
disagreement.

24. HISTORIOGRAPHY –
WORLD HISTORY AS A RESEARCH FIELD
• …” the "new" global or world history differs in fundamental ways from its predecessors. Writers of the
new global history are less concerned with comprehensiveness or with providing a total chronology of
human events. Their works tend to be thematically focused on recurring processes like war and
colonization or on cross-cultural patterns like the spread of disease, technology, and trading networks.”
• -- Michael Adas. "Essays on Global and Comparative History," published by the American Historical
Association since 1987.

25. UNIVERSAL OR MACRO HISTORIES
• Jean Bodin (15401-1596)
• Voltaire (1694-1778)
• Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
• Giambattista Vico (1688-1744)
• J.G. Herder (1742-1803)
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
• GWF Hegel (1770-1831)
• Leopold Von Ranke (1795-1886)
• Karl Marx (1919-1883)
Looking to philosophy, law, language,
geography and economics to provide a
framework for their efforts to tell a larger
human story…
In 20th century, scholars who write world
histories will share an interest in the
trajectories of civilizations…

26. 1918-1922 – rise and
fall of civilizations,
organic model,
pessimistic view of
empires 1920 – civilizational approach,
nomadic conquests, rejection of race
1934 -- first attempts at
historiography from a
non-Eurocentric angle w/
significant comments on
Ashoka and Mongols and
Islamic history…

27. 1934-1961, 12 volumes
Challenge and response
Wallerstein 1974
core/periphery, economic
history
1963 – thematic,
ecumenes, diffusion,

28. MOVING BEYOND THE “WEST AND THE REST” HISTORY
• Dependency theory (Andre Gunder Frank), world-systems analysis, and postcolonial world histories
formed part of the wider shift in the 20th century towards the study of relations between peoples across
the globe.
• Increasingly, scholars were also interested in questions related to “modernity” (its definition, origin,
and impact) and “globalization” – scholars asked how old Globalization was, 5000 years or 500?
1993
1998
1996

29. TRANSNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE HISTORY
1986
1990
1985

30. ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
• 1999
1999
1972 2011

31. BIG HISTORY
• David Christian, Macquarie University, Australia.
• He began teaching the first course in 1989 which examined
history from the Big Bang to the present using a
multidisciplinary approach with assistance from scholars in
diverse specializations from the sciences, social sciences,
and humanities. The course frames human history in terms
of cosmic, geological, and biological history. He is credited
with coining the term Big History and he serves as president
of the International Big History Association. Christian's best-
selling Teaching Company course entitled Big History caught
the attention of philanthropist Bill Gates who is personally
funding Christian's efforts to develop a program to bring the
course to high school students worldwide.
-- wikipedia
2005

32. PATRICK MANNING (2004)
• This volume presents an overview and critique of world history as
a field of scholarship and teaching"
• Part 1 defines the field and surveys its evolution;
• part 2 describes recent changes within history and neighboring
disciplines that have contributed to the emergence of modern
forms of world history;
• part 3 summarizes recent debates in the field; while
• part 4 discusses issues of methodology, and
• part 5 discusses the institutional structures within which world
history scholarship and teaching take place. One of the most
valuable parts of the book will be its extensive bibliography of
over 1,000 items, many of which are discussed in the text.

33. NOW IT IS YOUR TURN TO MAKE WORLD HISTORY
• Where to begin?
• Essential Questions…
• http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/default.php WORLD HISTORY FOR US ALL