The Power of Scale: A Global History Approach


Book Description

Throughout history, the natural human inclination to accumulate social power has led to growth and scale increases that benefit the few at the expense of the many. John Bodley looks at global history through the lens of power and scale theory, and draws on history, economics, anthropology, and sociology to demonstrate how individuals have been the agents of social change, not social classes. Filled with tables and data to support his argument, this book considers how increases in scale necessarily lead to an increasingly small elite gaining disproportionate power, making democratic control more difficult to achieve and maintain.




The Power of Scale: A Global History Approach


Book Description

Throughout history, the natural human inclination to accumulate social power has led to growth and scale increases that benefit the few at the expense of the many. John Bodley looks at global history through the lens of power and scale theory, and draws on history, economics, anthropology, and sociology to demonstrate how individuals have been the agents of social change, not social classes. Filled with tables and data to support his argument, this book considers how increases in scale necessarily lead to an increasingly small elite gaining disproportionate power, making democratic control more difficult to achieve and maintain.




What Is Global History?


Book Description

The first comprehensive overview of the innovative new discipline of global history Until very recently, historians have looked at the past with the tools of the nineteenth century. But globalization has fundamentally altered our ways of knowing, and it is no longer possible to study nations in isolation or to understand world history as emanating from the West. This book reveals why the discipline of global history has emerged as the most dynamic and innovative field in history—one that takes the connectedness of the world as its point of departure, and that poses a fundamental challenge to the premises and methods of history as we know it. What Is Global History? provides a comprehensive overview of this exciting new approach to history. The book addresses some of the biggest questions the discipline will face in the twenty-first century: How does global history differ from other interpretations of world history? How do we write a global history that is not Eurocentric yet does not fall into the trap of creating new centrisms? How can historians compare different societies and establish compatibility across space? What are the politics of global history? This in-depth and accessible book also explores the limits of the new paradigm and even its dangers, the question of whom global history should be written for, and much more. Written by a leading expert in the field, What Is Global History? shows how, by understanding the world's past as an integrated whole, historians can remap the terrain of their discipline for our globalized present.




What Is Global History?


Book Description

The first comprehensive overview of the innovative new discipline of global history Until very recently, historians have looked at the past with the tools of the nineteenth century. But globalization has fundamentally altered our ways of knowing, and it is no longer possible to study nations in isolation or to understand world history as emanating from the West. This book reveals why the discipline of global history has emerged as the most dynamic and innovative field in history—one that takes the connectedness of the world as its point of departure, and that poses a fundamental challenge to the premises and methods of history as we know it. What Is Global History? provides a comprehensive overview of this exciting new approach to history. The book addresses some of the biggest questions the discipline will face in the twenty-first century: How does global history differ from other interpretations of world history? How do we write a global history that is not Eurocentric yet does not fall into the trap of creating new centrisms? How can historians compare different societies and establish compatibility across space? What are the politics of global history? This in-depth and accessible book also explores the limits of the new paradigm and even its dangers, the question of whom global history should be written for, and much more. Written by a leading expert in the field, What Is Global History? shows how, by understanding the world's past as an integrated whole, historians can remap the terrain of their discipline for our globalized present.




Global Perspectives on Global History


Book Description

In recent years, historians across the world have become increasingly interested in transnational and global approaches to the past. However, the debates surrounding this new border-crossing movement have remained limited in scope as theoretical exchanges on the tasks, responsibilities and potentials of global history have been largely confined to national or regional academic communities. In this groundbreaking book, Dominic Sachsenmaier sets out to redress this imbalance by offering a series of new perspectives on the global and local flows, sociologies of knowledge and hierarchies that are an intrinsic part of historical practice. Taking the United States, Germany and China as his main case studies, he reflects upon the character of different approaches to global history as well as their social, political and cultural contexts. He argues that this new global trend in historiography needs to be supported by a corresponding increase in transnational dialogue, cooperation and exchange.




Writing the History of the Global


Book Description

How do we write about the history of a place, a person, an event or an idea in its context in the world? How do we do history in the current age of globalization? In this book historians engage in new dialogues outside their former specialisms to face new challenges of comparative and connective histories.




Thinking History Globally


Book Description

The book brings together many recent trends in writing history under a common framework: thinking history globally. By thinking history globally, the book explains, applies, and exemplifies the four basic strategies of analysis, the big C's: comparing, connecting, conceptualizing, and contextualizing, using twelve different branches of history.




A World Art History and Its Objects


Book Description

Is writing a world art history possible? Does the history of art as such even exist outside the Western tradition? Is it possible to consider the history of art in a way that is not fundamentally Eurocentric? In this highly readable and provocative book, David Carrier, a philosopher and art historian, does not attempt to write a world art history himself. Rather, he asks the question of how an art history of all cultures could be written—or whether it is even possible to do so. He also engages the political and moral issues raised by the idea of a multicultural art history. Focusing on a consideration of intersecting artistic traditions, Carrier negotiates the way meaning and understanding shift or are altered when a visual object from one culture, for example, is inserted into the visual tradition of another culture. A World Art History and Its Objects proposes the use of temporal narrative as a way to begin to understand a multicultural art history.




A Companion to World History


Book Description

A COMPANION TOWORLD HISTORY "This new volume offers insightful reflections by both leading and emerging world historians on approaches, methodologies, arguments, and pedagogies of a sub-discipline that has continued to be in flux as well as in need of defining itself as a relevant alternative to the traditional national, regional, or chronological fields of inquiry" Choice "The focus...on the practicalities of how to do world history probably gives it its edge. Its thirty-three chapters are grouped into sections that address how to set up research projects in world history, how to teach it, how to get jobs in it, how to frame it, and how it is done in various parts of the globe. It is an actual handbook, in other words, as opposed to a sample of exemplary work." English Historical Review A Companion to World History offers a comprehensive overview of the variety of approaches and practices utilized in the field of world and global history. This state-of-the-art collection of more than 30 insightful essays – including contributions from an international cast of leading world historians and emerging scholars in the field – identifies continuing areas of contention, disagreement, and divergence, while pointing out fruitful directions for further discussion and research. Themes and topics explored include the lineages and trajectories of world history, key ideas and methods employed by world historians, the teaching of world history and how it draws upon and challenges "traditional" approaches, and global approaches to writing world history. By considering these interwoven issues of scholarship and pedagogy from a transnational, interregional, and world/global scale, fresh insights are gained and new challenges posed. With its rich compendium of diverse viewpoints, A Companion to World History is an essential resource for the study of the world's past.




Global History with Chinese Characteristics


Book Description

This open access book considers a pivotal era in Chinese history from a global perspective. This book’s insight into Chinese and international history offers timely and challenging perspectives on initiatives like “Chinese characteristics”, “The New Silk Road” and “One Belt, One Road” in broad historical context. Global History with Chinese Characteristics analyses the feeble state capacity of Qing China questioning the so-called “High Qing” (shèng qīng 盛清) era’s economic prosperity as the political system was set into a “power paradox” or “supremacy dilemma”. This is a new thesis introduced by the author demonstrating that interventionist states entail weak governance. Macao and Marseille as a new case study aims to compare Mediterranean and South China markets to provide new insights into both modern eras’ rising trade networks, non-official institutions and interventionist impulses of autocratic states such as China’s Qing and Spain’s Bourbon empires.