The World A History, Volume B

by Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe

• ISBN13: 9780136087571
• ISBN10: 0136087574
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-23
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

The World interweaves two stories-of our interactions with nature and with each other. The environment-centered story is about humans distancing themselves from the rest of nature and searching for a relationship that strikes a balance between constructive and destructive exploitation. The culture-centered story is of how human cultures have become mutually influential and yet mutually differentiating. Both stories have been going on for thousands of years. We do not know whether they will end in triumph or disaster. There is no prospect of covering all of world history in one book. Rather, the fabric of this book is woven from selected strands. Readers will see these at every turn, twisted together into yarn, stretched into stories. Human-focused historical ecologythe environmental themewill drive readers back, again and again, to the same concepts: sustenance, shelter, disease, energy, technology, art. (The last is a vital category for historians, not only because it is part of our interface with the rest of the world, but also because it forms a record of how we see reality and of how the way we see it changes.) In the global story of human interactionsthe cultural themewe return constantly to the ways people make contact with each another: migration, trade, war, imperialism, pilgrimage, gift exchange, diplomacy, traveland to their social frameworks: the economic and political arenas, the human groups and groupings, the states and civilizations, the sexes and generations, the classes and clusters of identity.

Author Biography

Felipe Fernández-Armesto holds the William P. Reynolds Chair of History at the University of Notre Dame. He has master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford, where he spent most of his teaching career, before taking up the Chair of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary College, University of London in 2000, and the Prince of Asturias Chair at Tufts University (2005-9). He is on editorial boards for the History of Cartography for the University of Chicago Press, Studies in Overseas History (Leiden University), Comparative Studies in Society and History, Journeys, and Journal of Global History.  Recent awards include the World History Association Book Prize (2007), Spain’s Premio Nacional de GastronomIa (2005, for his work on the history of food), the Premio Nacional de Investigación (Sociedad Geográfica Española, 2004). He has had many distinguished visiting appointments, including a Fellowship of the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and a Union Pacific Visiting Professorship at the University of Minnesota. He won the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum in 1995 and the John Carter Brown Medal in 1999 and has honorary doctorates from La Trobe University and the Universidad de los Andes.  He has served on the Council of the Hakluyt Society, on the Committee of English PEN, and as Chairman of the PEN Literary Foundation. His work in journalism includes regular columns in the British and Spanish press, and, among many contributions to broadcasting, he is the longest-serving presenter of BBC radio’s flagship current affairs program, Analysis. He has been short-listed for the most valuable literary prize in the U.K. 

Table of Contents

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Foragers and Farmers, to 5,000 BCE

Out of the ice: Peopling the Earth

So you think yoursquo;re Human?

Human Evolution Out of Africa Peopling the Old World Migration, Population, and Social Change

The Last Great Ice Age Ice-Age Hunters Ice-Age Art Ice-Age Culture and Society Peopling the New World Survival of the Foragers

In Perspective: After the Ice

Out of the Mud: Farming and Herding After the Ice Age

The Problem of Agriculture A Case in Point

Aboriginal Australians Preagriculural Settlements The Disadvantages of Farming Husbandry in Different Environments Herdersrsquo;

Environments Tillersrsquo;

Environments

The Spread of Agriculture Europe Asia

The Americas Africa The Pacific Islands So Why did Farming Start?

Population Pressure

The Outcome of Abundance

The Power of Politics Cult Agriculture Climatic Instability Agriculture by Accident Production As an Outgrowth of Procurement

In Perspective: Seeking Stability

Farmers and Builders, 5000 to 500 BCE

The Great River Valleys: Accelerating Change and Developing States

Growing Communities, Divergent Cultures Intensified Settlement and Its Effects

The Ecology of Civilization

The Great Floodplains The

Ecology of Egypt Shifting Rivers of the Indus Valley Fierce Nature in Early Mesopotamia

The Good Earth of Early China Configurations of Society Patterns of Settlement and Labor Politics Statecraft in Mesopotamia

The First Documented Chinese State Ruling Harappan World The Politics of Expansion Literate Culture In Perspective: What Made the Great River Valleys Different?

A Succession of Civilizations: Ambition and Instability

The Case of the Hittite Kingdom

The Importance of Trade Hittite Society and Politics Fragility and Fall

The End of the Hatti Instability and Collapse in the Aegean Cretan Civilization Mycenean Civilization

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