The first comprehensive overview of the innovative new discipline of
global history
Until very recently, historians have looked at the past with the tools
of the nineteenth century. But globalization has fundamentally altered
our ways of knowing, and it is no longer possible to study nations in
isolation or to understand world history as emanating from the West.
This book reveals why the discipline of global history has emerged as
the most dynamic and innovative field in history--one that takes the
connectedness of the world as its point of departure, and that poses a
fundamental challenge to the premises and methods of history as we know
it.
What Is Global History? provides a comprehensive overview of this
exciting new approach to history. The book addresses some of the biggest
questions the discipline will face in the twenty-first century: How does
global history differ from other interpretations of world history? How
do we write a global history that is not Eurocentric yet does not fall
into the trap of creating new centrisms? How can historians compare
different societies and establish compatibility across space? What are
the politics of global history? This in-depth and accessible book also
explores the limits of the new paradigm and even its dangers, the
question of whom global history should be written for, and much more.
Written by a leading expert in the field, What Is Global History?
shows how, by understanding the world's past as an integrated whole,
historians can remap the terrain of their discipline for our globalized
present.
