World History
- This article is about the discrete field of study. See also History of the World.
World History is a discrete field of historical study that originated in the 1980s. It examines history from a global perspective.
Unlike history writing of the 19th and most of the 20th centuries, which focused on narratives of individuals, national and ethnic perspectives, World History looks for common patterns that emerge across all cultures. World historians use a thematic approach, with two major foci: integration (how the processes of world history have drawn peoples of the world together) and difference (how the patterns of world history reveal the diversity of the human experience).
The study of world history is in some ways a product of the current period of accelerated globalization. This period is tending to both integrate various cultures and to highlight their differences.
The advent of World History as a discrete field of study was heralded in the 1980s by the creation of the World History Association[1] (http://www.thewha.org/) and the creation of graduate programs at a handful of universities. Over the past 20 years, scholarly publications, professional and academic organizations, and graduate programs in World History have proliferated. It has become an increasingly popular approach to teaching history in United States high schools and colleges. Many new textbooks are being published with a World History approach.
Examples of a World History approach include Guns, Germs and Steel and Bridging World History (http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/worldhistory/).
Marshall G.S. Hodgson's writings were a precursor to the modern World History approach and in many ways are yet to be surpassed. See Hodgson, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History (Cambridge, 1993) and see also C. Ponting,World History: A New Perspective (London, 2000).
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