What is Global History?

What is History?

by Pamela Kyle Crossley

Global and world history address the deep structural changes that have shaped human experience. Many are material, related to environmental and climatic alteration, to the domestication of livestock and development of agriculture, to technology, to disease, and to variations in human immunity, reproduction, and physiology. Others are social and cultural, touching upon issues of migration, trade, language development and differentiation, institutions of enslavement and of freedom, traditions of marriage and child-rearing, the emergence of large-scale political organizations from early kingdoms to vast empires, republics and federations, and the management of war and peace. To deal with such challenging issues, global historians draw upon new techniques of analysis and comparison. But they also continue venerable traditions, inherited from the earliest civilizations, of narrating the past on the most comprehensive and significant scale possible. This book examines the long search for an integrated human story, and particularly the points at which rapid changes of philosophy and perspective in the twentieth century transformed the historical disciplines. It provides the perfect introduction to global history for students and scholars alike.

Genres: History, World History, Nonfiction

152 pages, Paperback

First published June 12, 2007

About the author

Pamela Kyle Crossley is an historian who specializes in the history of modern China and northern Asia. Currently, she is Professor of History at Dartmouth College. She is a founding appointment of the Dartmouth Society of Fellows.

Reviews

[Sense of History]

This is a useful, concise overview of the field of Global History, a genre in the historiography that in recent decades really flourished. Crossley nicely shows that the antecedents go very far back in time. In addition, she illustrates the great diversity in the global look on world history. And she also beautifully explores the almost insoluble issue of taking the West as a reference point or not.
But then there are some minor points of criticism to make: she considers global history not really pertaining to the field of historical studies (because it is not based on sources), she doesn't make a link to the economic globalisation debate that has been going on since 1990, and she lets the new domain of Big History (sponsored by Bill Gates) completely out of the picture. But all in all a creditable introduction. (rating 2.5 stars)

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good introduction into the global approach of history, but also with some flaws. See my more elaborate review in my Sense-of-History-account: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Harry Hughen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful succinct summary of the various ways of conceptualizing "world history." Particularly great is the final chapter, which lays out why this process has been so difficult: because history is not a science, and historians are trained to focus on particulars, not the general. These factors, plus (worthwhile) historians' epistemic humility are what makes a coherent narrative of world history nearly impossible to pin down, and in my mind is what makes the discipline the finest for studying the human condition.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent overview of one of the oldest and newest sub-fields of history. Crossley begins with the impulses that have led people to attempt to write universal or global or world history (she is a bit more concerned with defining and differentiating than I am), she moves through the most important ideas that have shaped our consideration of human history on the largest of scales, making specific reference to specific thinkers and their works. Her categories of divergence, convergence, contagion, and systems are useful. Well worth reading for anyone interested in world history, getting ready to teach it, or returning to it after an absence.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 4 out of 5]

as hopeless as the questions "what is world literature"