The peculiarity of world history

Hartford Web Publishing is not the author of the documents in World History Archives and does not presume to validate their accuracy or authenticity nor to release their copyright.

The Changing Shape of World History
By William H. McNeill, University of Chicago, Emeritus. Paper originally presented at the “History and Theory” World History Conference, March 25–26, 1994. The model of world history that has emerged defines it in terms of all-embracing inclusiveness. Therefore the causal interaction of peoples ought to be the framework of world history. McNeil then sketches the history of this dimension of the past.
A World History for the Future
By Theodore H. Von Laue, Professor Emeritus, Clark University. A paper presented at the premier conference of the New England Regional World History Association, Bentley College, Waltham, MA. 23 April, 1994. Assessing the human experience through time is a novel and urgent challenge in this age of wide-open post-modernity. As we face worldwide uncertainties, we need to experiment with historical interpretations that convey a sense of control over the present and the foreseeable future.
Defining World History—Contribution to a dialog
By Haines Brown, 12 April 1995. A brief discussion of trying to represent world history as a process rather than as a collection of things or properties.
World History for the Twenty-first Century
By Haines Brown. 1995, rev. August, 1997. Defends notion of “contemporary history” by suggesting that the essence of historical statements is their focus a struggle for constructive development in time, not simply the discovery of the past.
Review of Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens, eds. Conceptualizing Global History (1993)
Reviewed by Jerry H. Bentley, University of Hawaii, for H-World, 20 September 1995. Most would take interactions between peoples participating in large-scale historical processes to be one of the principal concerns of world history, and it offers a context for modern globalization. In contrast, Mazlich believes world history is characterized by its universalism, but in need of selective criteria.
Global History vs. World History
By Eric Martin, 28 October 1996. Does a global economy offer a vantage point to grasp the course of world history? A discussion of a point of Bruce Mazlich concerning global vs. world history.
A global perspective
By Haines Brown, 9 February 1998. Responds to the debate over global history versus world history by attempting a definition of global history.
Introduction: The Golden Age of Macro-Historical Sociology
By Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania, 10 May 1998. Whatever is large and widely connected can be brought into focus within no perspective but one larger still. Briefly explores the two sides of this century of historical consciousness. A permanent gestalt switch in the way we do macro-history; the subject of analysis can no longer be taken as the isolated unit.
Macrohistory? World history?
Exchange between Whitney Howarth and Nikolai Rozov, 27–28 January 1999. Do the names that we call ourselves (globalists, world historians, world-system analysts, world systems scholars, macrohistorians, or universalists) make a difference? Rosov defines the difference between world history and macrohistorical dynamics.
“But a Local Phase of a World Problem”: Black History's Global Vision, 1883–1950 (excerpt)
By Robin D. G. Kelley, New York University, December 1999. “globalization” has pushed the U.S. scholars to think beyond the nation-state, develop “transnational” and international approaches, and reconsider “diaspora” as an analytical framework.
Reinterpreting World History
By David Livingstone, 5 September 2003. The construction of history with a Eurocentric perspective from the 18th century: the forward march of reason in history and its obscuring of an alternative and hidden history based on irrationality.
Should we abolish black history month?
By Haines Brown, 24 December 2005. There seem to be a variety functions that are served by multicultural studies, and we can't very well discuss them without taking these functions into account.