The Oxford Handbook of World History

by Bentley, Jerry H.

• ISBN13: 9780199235810
• ISBN10: 0199235813
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-05-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Oxford Handbook of World Historypresents thirty-three 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 categories: conceptions of the global past, themes in world history, processes of world history, regions in world history. Those 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, the historiography of the area, and globalization as viewed from historical perspective. Themes present in the book 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. And finally, a set of chapters explores the distinctive historical development within the world's major regions, while also situating individual regions in the 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.

Author Biography

Jerry H. Bentley is professor of history at the University of Hawai`i and editor of the Journal of World History. He has written extensively on the cultural history of early modern Europe and on cross-cultural interactions in world history, including Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (1983), Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples (1987). His more recent research has concentrated on global history and particularly on processes of cross-cultural interaction, resulting in Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (1993) and Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship (1996).

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. x
The Task of World History	p. 1
Concepts
Theories of World History since the Enlightenment	p. 19
Geographies	p. 36
Periodization	p. 54
Modernity	p. 72
Globalizations	p. 89
Epistemology	p. 105
Themes
World Environmental History	p. 125
Agriculture	p. 143
Nomadic Pastoralism	p. 160
States, State Transformation, and War	p. 176
Genders	p. 195
Religions and World History	p. 210
Technology, Engineering, and Science	p. 229
Advanced Agriculture	p. 246
Processes
Migrations	p. 269
Trade across Eurasia to about 1750	p. 288
Industrialization	p. 304
Biological Exchanges in World History	p. 325
Cultural Exchanges in World History	p. 343
Pre-modern Empires	p. 361
Modern Imperialism	p. 379
Regions
East Asia and Central Eurasia	p. 399
South Asia and Southeast Asia	p. André Wink
The Middle East in World History	p. 437
Africa in World History: The Long, Long View	p. 455
Europe and Russia in World History	p. 475
Mediterranean History	p. 493
The Americas, 1450-2000	p. 508
The Atlantic Ocean Basin	p. 529
Oceania and Australasia	p. 546
The Pacific Ocean Basin to 1850	p. 564
Index	p. 581
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