A History of Civilizations

by Braudel, Fernand; Mayne, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780140124897
• ISBN10: 0140124896
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-04-01
• Publisher: Penguin Books

Summary

"Refreshingly broad-brush in its approach...this history provides the big picture."- The Christian Science Monitor. Written from a consciously anti-enthnocentric approach, this fascinating work is a survey of the civilizations of the modern world in terms of the broad sweep and continuities of history, rather than the "event-based" technique of most other texts.

Author Biography

Fernand Braudel was born in 1902 in Lumeville, north-western Lorraine, France. The son of a teacher, he took his degree in history at the Sorbonne in 1923. He spent much of the war as a prisoner in Germany, where he wrote most of his Mediterranean thesis. In 1949 it was published as The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, and it remains one of this century's seminal works. In 1984 he was elected to the Academie Francaise. Fernand Braudel died in Paris in 1985.

Table of Contents

List of Maps
Translator's Introduction
By Way of Preface
Introduction: History and the Present Day
A History of Civilizations
Changing Vocabulary	p. 3
The Study of Civilization Involves All the Social Sciences	p. 9
The Continuity of Civilizations	p. 24
Civilizations Outside Europe
Islam and the Muslim World
History	p. 41
Geography	p. 55
The Greatness and Decline of Islam	p. 69
The Revival of Islam Today	p. 93
Africa
The Past	p. 117
Black Africa: Today and Tomorrow	p. 137
The Far East
An Introduction to the Far East	p. 155
The China of the Past	p. 171
China Yesterday and Today	p. 199
India Yesterday and Today	p. 217
The Maritime Far East	p. 256
Japan	p. 276
European Civilizations
Europe
Geography and Freedom	p. 307
Christianity, Humanism and Scientific Thought	p. 333
The Industrialization of Europe	p. 373
Unity in Europe	p. 399
America
Latin America, the Other New World	p. 427
America par excellence: the United States	p. 458
Failures and Difficulties: From Yesterday to the Present	p. 480
An English-speaking Universe	p. 507
The Other Europe: Muscovy, Russia, the USSR and the CIS
From the Beginning to the October Revolution of 1917	p. 527
The USSR after 1917	p. 547
Index	p. 575
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.