History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0474/04742.txt

Text File | 1992-10-12 | 19KB | 320 lines

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$Title{World Civilizations: Introduction
Prologue}
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$Author{Stearns, Peter N.;Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B.}
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$Date{1992}
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Title:       World Civilizations: Introduction
Book:        Prologue
Author:      Stearns, Peter N.;Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B.
Date:        1992

Prologue

     The study of history is the study of the past. Knowledge of the past
gives us perspective on our societies today. It shows different ways people
have identified problems and tried to resolve them, as well as important
common impulses in the human experience. History can inform through its
variety, remind us of some human constants, and provide a common vocabulary
and examples that aid in mutual communication. One of the ways in which
peoples from different cultures understand one another is through shared
historical information.

     The study of history is also the study of change. Historians seek to
describe major changes in the human experience over time and to examine the
ways in which those changes connect the past to the present. They try to
distinguish between superficial and fundamental change, as well as between
sudden and gradual change, and to explain why change occurs and what impact it
has. Finally, they are attentive to the ongoing nature of change, pinpointing
continuities from the past along with innovations. History, in other words, is
a study of human society in motion.

     World history is not simply a collection of the histories of various
societies, but a subject in its own right. World history is the study of
historical events in a global context. It does not attempt to sum up
everything that has happened in the past. It focuses on two principal
subjects: the evolution of leading civilizations and the framework for
international contacts among different societies. In the first category, world
history identifies major stages in the development of important societies. In
the second category, world history emphasizes major stages in the interaction
between different peoples and societies around the globe.

The Emergence Of World History

     Serious attempts to deal with world history are relatively recent. Many
historians have attempted to locate the evolution of their own societies in
the context of developments in a larger "known world": Herodotus, though
particularly interested in the origins of Greek culture, wrote also of
developments around the Mediterranean; Ibn-Khaldun wrote of what he knew about
developments in Africa and Europe as well as in the Muslim world; and
unsystematically, European historians in the 18th-century Enlightenment liked
to compare the evolution of various societies along with their own. But it was
not until the 20th century, with an increase in international contacts and a
vastly expanded knowledge of the historical patterns of major societies, that
a complete world history became possible. In the West, world history depended
on a growing realization that the world could not be understood simply as a
mirror reflecting the West's greater glory or as a stage for Western-dominated
power politics. This hard-won realization continues to meet some resistance.
Nevertheless, at various points since 1900, historians in several societies
have attempted to develop an international approach to the subject that
includes but goes beyond merely establishing a context for the study of the
emergence of their own civilization.

     There are many other approaches to the study of history. The most
familiar uses a purely national framework, such as the study of American
history or French history, which at best is enlivened by some awareness of how
one national tradition compares with the traditions of other societies. World
history does not replace national histories entirely. The history of the
United States, France, or China can be enhanced when there is a larger context
to fit it in, for this facilitates more precise comparisons and underlines the
ways in which national patterns were shaped by more general forces.

     The need to study world history, however, goes beyond the provision of a
good starting point for examining one's own society. The surge of interest in
world history has been fueled by three other, interrelated factors. The first
factor has been an explosion of knowledge about the histories of societies
outside the Western tradition, in some cases also older than that tradition.
The known past is much larger than ever before. The perspectives and the
interpretive insights history provides have greatly expanded. Analysis of a
host of issues - the effects of a classical tradition on later cultural
development, the relationship between religion and commerce, or the impact of
the Industrial Revolution on women - simply cannot be confined to Western
examples.

     The second factor involves the realization of the increasingly
international context in which we live. Much of what happens in the United
States can still be explained by national or even local contexts, but our
economy and culture, as well as our military and diplomatic framework, are
vitally shaped by developments around the world. For example, wars and
revolutions in the Middle East and economic and population trends in Latin
America have direct impact on the way we live. Living in an international
context creates the need to understand this context and to apply to it the
knowledge and perspectives of history. We need to know how other traditions
besides our own have evolved, what beliefs and attitudes they produce, and
what kinds of economic and political behaviors they generate.

     One world historian has put the case this way: History in the United
States first concentrated on the national experience alone, as part of an
attempt at self-understanding and as a means of building agreed-upon national
values. In the 20th century Americans realized that they were caught up in a
network of which Europe was a vital part. One response was the creation of
programs in the study of the history of Western civilization that made us
better able to deal with European issues in the post-World War II era. Now we
need, and are developing, the same types of programs on a wider international
level - and world history plays a key role here.

     The third factor follows from the growing analytical challenge world
history poses. Historians increasingly understand that key aspects of past and
present alike have been shaped by global forces - exchanges of technologies,
ideas, religions, foods, and diseases. Defining and assessing the emergence of
global forces and tracing their interaction with individual societies stand at
the forefront of the world history agenda as a research area. Our
understanding of these forces, though still incomplete, is steadily improving.

     In addition to explaining the need for world history, it is necessary to
offer a few words at the outset about its manageability. No world history
includes everything, or even most things, about the past. It focuses on the
activities of human civilizations, rather than human history as a whole. No
world history would be manageable if this distinction were not kept in mind.

What Civilization Means

     In dealing with civilizations - societies that generate and use an
economic surplus beyond basic survival needs - world history focuses on only a
tiny portion of the more than 2.5 million years since the genus Homo first
appeared in the savanna of eastern Africa. The era of civilized life makes up
about 9000 of the 40,000 years that our own human species, Homo sapiens
sapiens, has inhabited the earth. Civilized life has made possible human
population densities unimaginable in precivilized time periods; it has given
human groups the capacity to reshape their environments in fundamental ways
and to dominate most other living creatures. The history of civilizations
embraces most of the people who have ever lived; their literature, formal
scientific discoveries, art, music, architecture, and inventions; their most
sophisticated social, political, and economic systems; their brutality and
destruction caused by conflicts; their exploitation of other species; and
their degradation of the environment - a result of advances in technology and
economic organization.

     To be truly global in scope, our inquiry into the history of
civilizations must not be constricted by the narrow, Western-centric standards
for determining what is civilized. Many peoples have seen themselves as
"civilized," regarding outsiders with different physical features and cultures
as uncouth "barbarians" or even subhumans. For example, in awarding a society
civilized status, most European and American writers have insisted that
monumental buildings, cities, writing, and a high level of technology be
present. These criteria banished from the realm of the civilized many
societies that were highly advanced in other areas but deficient in the ones
Western writers deemed critical. Clearly, another approach to the meaning of
civilization has to be taken if one is to write a truly global history of the
human experience.

     Different civilizations have stressed and therefore excelled in different
facets of human creativity. The Chinese have consistently demonstrated the
capacity to build large and effective political systems. But Chinese thinkers
have formulated only one major religion, Daoism, and this has had only a
limited appeal both within and beyond East Asia. By contrast, the peoples of
India have produced some of humankind's most sophisticated and sublime
religions, but they have rarely known periods of political unity and strong
government. The civilizations of the Maya made remarkable discoveries in
astronomy and mathematics, but their technology remained roughly equivalent to
that of stone-age peoples as late as the arrival of the Spaniards in the 16th
century. These examples suggest that, rather than stressing particular
attainments such as the capacity to build pyramids or wheeled vehicles, a
genuinely global definition of what it means to be civilized should focus on
underlying patterns of social development that are common to complex societies
throughout history. The attributes that determine whether a particular society
is civilized or not should be freed from the ethnocentrism - or the tendency
to judge other peoples' cultural forms solely on the basis of how they compare
to one's own - and sense of moral superiority that have dominated definitions
of civilization.

     For our purposes, civilization is a form of human social organization
that arises from the capacity of certain peoples to produce food supplies
beyond their basic needs, and to develop a variety of specialized occupations,
a heightened social differentiation on a class and gender basis, intensified
economic exchanges between social groups, and regional and long-distance
trading networks. Surplus agricultural production spurs the growth of large
towns and then cities inhabited by merchants, artisans, ritual specialists,
and political leaders. Both specialization and town life contribute to an
increase in creativity and innovation that have been characteristic of all
civilizations.

The Comparative Approach To The History Of Civilizations

     In concentrating on civilizations, world history offers an initial focus
that greatly reduces the time period world history covers, and also draws
attention to civilizations that covered particularly extensive geographical
areas. Even in emphasizing major civilizations, however, world history must
offer other ways to select and highlight significant developments. One vital
step involves a comparative approach to the major societies. Much of world
history can be organized through careful comparisons of the leading
characteristics of the principal civilizations, such as formal governments,
family structures, and art. Remembering what civilizations have in common
helps us to manage the complexity of world history and to highlight key
distinctions among major societies. Comparison gives us a means of connecting
historical developments within different civilizations and allows us to
identify key patterns that ought to be remembered and explained.

     Comparison can also help capture the process of historical change. A
single civilization can be compared across time, before and after change.
Furthermore, a situation new to one society can be compared with similar
situations that exist elsewhere. Consider the introduction of a new slave
system, as happened in the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries. By
comparing the American slave system with slave systems developed elsewhere,
one can get a better fix on what American slavery involved and what changes it
brought to the emerging society.

International Contacts And Time Periods

     World history is not, however, simply a progression of separate
civilizations that can be compared in various ways. An understanding of the
kinds of contacts different civilizations developed - and their responses to
the forces that crossed their boundaries - is as important as the story of the
great societies themselves. For example, when the rate of international trade
picked up, it presented questions for each major society to answer: How would
the society participate in the trading system? What domestic impact did
international trade have? How did one society's reactions to the new levels of
trade compare with those of other major societies?

     World history is organized into major time periods primarily on the basis
of changes in the nature and level of international exchange. Because of
parallel developments, contacts, and crosscutting global forces, many
civilizations display some common chronological features that suggest an
international framework encompassing the individual societies. Establishing a
sense of each time period of world history in terms of the characteristics of
international interactions gives coherence to the larger story of world
history. Some time periods see a particular trend toward the formation of
empires; others involve the spread of major religions; others stress the
impact of new technologies or production systems. Not all societies, in a
given time period, neatly responded to the larger world forces - isolation
from the wider world remained possible until just a few centuries ago - but
enough did to enable us to define the basic chronology of world history.

     This book emphasizes six major time periods in world history. The first,
covered in Part 1, involved the emergence of civilization. Early civilizations
arose after people had formed a wide variety of local societies over most of
the inhabitable globe. The early civilizations were regional, but they pulled
more localized groups together into some shared institutions and beliefs; some
of them developed limited contacts with other civilizations.

     The second period of world history saw the formation of much larger
civilization units - the great classical societies of China, India, and the
Mediterranean. Emphasis in the classical period rests on the integration of
and the level of contact among these larger civilization areas. This was the
period when elites in many parts of the world created systems of thought and
artistic styles that continue to have force today: Confucian ideas about
polite behavior and the social good, Greek ideas about nature, and Buddhist
ideas about spirituality.

     The third, postclassical period in world history emerged as the classical
civilizations underwent new challenge and decline. After about a.d. 500,
civilization spread to new areas and new kinds of contact developed, involving
the spread of novel religious systems, the increase of commercial exchange,
and even the acceleration of international disease transmission.

     The fourth period of world history, beginning around a.d. 1450, saw the
Americas and other previously isolated areas brought into the international
framework as trade and exchange reached yet another level of intensity. Humble
American crops such as corn and potatoes encouraged massive population growth
in many societies - a trend that continues into our own time.

     Between about 1750 and 1920, the fifth period of world history was shaped
particularly through the advent of industrial society in western Europe.
Industrial technology brought new rates of international interaction and a
new, and complex, balance of forces among the major civilization areas. Habits
of work changed in response to new ideas of discipline and productivity;
leisure changed as well. This was the time when key sports won an
international audience.

     Finally, world history periodization took a sixth turn during the 20th
century, again because of complicated changes in the nature of international
contacts and the impact these contacts have on particular societies. The new
global patterns of this century gain added meaning against the perspective of
previous world trends.

     The basic framework for managing and understanding world history
resembles a weaving loom, in which two sets of threads interweave. One set
consists of the major civilizations, identified through their principal
characteristics and traced over time; the second set involves parallel
processes and contacts that delineate the principal time periods of world
history. The interaction between civilizations and international forces form
the warp and weave of world history, from civilization's origin to the present
day.

Analysis In World History

     In addition to comparison and periodization, which link the historical
experience of individual civilizations, some world historians have been
fascinated by a third, even more sweeping formula: regularities in historical
development that can be identified and applied on a global basis. Do all
civilizations rise, mature, and then fall in a process like that of human
growth? Is there a historical law that proves that societies that begin to
neglect the welfare of their lowest classes are doomed to decay? A variety of
historical laws have been proposed, and even if some of them prove simplistic,
the more insightful ones can raise valid questions about the larger processes
of world history.

     World history involves comparison, assessment of global interaction, and
consideration of more general formulas about how human societies operate.
There are facts to be learned, but the greater analytical challenge is to use
the facts to compare civilizations, to identify key periods of world history
and the patterns of change from one period to the next, and to test general
propositions about historical causation and development. Using this approach,
world history becomes something to think about, not simply something to
regurgitate. With this approach the task of learning world history gains focus
and purpose.