A Global History of the Ancient World: Asia, Europe and Africa before Islam

by Eivind Heldaas Seland

Ancient history has traditionally focused on Greece and Rome. This book takes a global approach to the distant past, following the development of human societies across the globe from the last Ice Age, 11,700 years ago, to the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE. The only book of its kind, A Global History of the Ancient World provides succinct narratives of the first Asian, African and European civilizations and their importance for later history without foregoing the key topics of conventional textbooks. Thematic overviews give truly global perspectives on connections, disconnections and parallel developments shaping the ancient world. Written for students of history, classics and related disciplines, the book will appeal to anyone interested in widening their view of early history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Eivind Heldaas Seland er professor i historie
ved Universitetet i Bergen. Han har antikkens
historie og eldre globalhistorie som sine fagfelt.

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This certainly has merit as a world history of the ancient period, roughly from about 3,000 BCE to the rise of Islam in the 7th century CE. Eivind Heldaas Seland is a professor of ancient history at the University of Bergen in Norway. And this is the English translation of the book that he published in Norwegian in 2008, but which has since been revised three times. “The aim of this book is to relate the story of how societies have evolved and changed in contact with each other.” He also involves non-Western societies, and in doing so he moves away from the classical image that mainly focused on Greco-Roman history as the source of Western civilization. The emphasis is on global interaction, but in the first chapters that I read it does not really come into its own: Seland simply places the different civilizations that we know next to each other. Also, this booklet is so brief (barely 140 pages of text) that it necessarily remains superficial. More about that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Sense of History]

Seland (professor of ancient history, University of Bergen, Norway) has quite some ambition: “This book is an attempt to combine traditional ancient history with what we call global history. Global history is a narrative about the past that emphasizes unifying and common developments and the importance of connections across political and cultural boundaries. A main distinction is between processes that are common to all or most societies, and developments that come about as a result of interaction.” That Global History approach has only flourished quite recently, especially for history after 1500 CE; it is therefore commendable that Seland also tries to take on ancient history in this way.

This has one advantage: the classical approach is to treat the earliest civilizations and cultures as separate containers (the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Roman, etc.), barely looking over the wall, and looking at cross-connections. I have lately read quite a few books and studies about those civilizations and was almost always displeased at how myopic archaeologists and ancient history specialists are: they mostly act as if the small sub-area they are investigating was completely separate from the rest of the world. William H. McNeill (1917-2016) was one of the first to systematically attempt to map the sometimes intense interaction between civilizations and cultures (in his 1963 published The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, an unfortunate title he later distanced himself of). But after him it took almost half a century before that trail was also followed for ancient history, and this booklet is the fruit of that. It is modest in size: barely 140 pages, covering almost 4 millennia of history (from 3000 BCE to about 700 CE).

I especially appreciated the theoretical introduction in the 2nd chapter, in which Seland focuses on models of growing social complexity of civilizations. He rightly adds nuances to the classic scheme band-tribe-chiefdom-state. But due to its brevity, this explanation remains rather superficial. Unfortunately, this also applies to the subsequent, chronological chapters, which often get stuck in generalities and in the classic 'container'-like treatment of history. So, this is a worthwhile first introduction, unfortunately too short (a guide for further reading is clearly lacking). There surely is more work to be done!

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hvem var så slem med illustratøren at denne lagde så grusomme infografer?