The World: A History

Description

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 ecology—the environmental theme—will 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 interactions—the cultural theme—we return constantly to the ways people make contact with each another: migration, trade, war, imperialism, pilgrimage, gift exchange, diplomacy, travel—and 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. Cover Table of Contents Timeline: The Crucible: The Eurasian Crises of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries The World the Mongols Made The Revenge of Nature: Plague, Cold, and the Limits of Disaster in the Fourteenth Century Expanding Worlds: Recovery in the Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries The Big Picture: The Crucible: The Eurasian Crises of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Timeline: Convergence and Divergence, to ca. 1700 Imperial Arenas: New Empires in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries The Ecological Revolution of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Mental Revolutions: Religion and Science in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries States and Societies: Political and Social Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries The Big Picture: Convergence and Divergence, to ca. 1700 Timeline: Global Enlightenments, 1700–1800 Driven by Growth: The Global Economy in the Eighteenth Century The Age of Global Interaction: Expansion and Intersection of Eighteenth-Century Empires The Exchange of Enlightenments: Eighteenth-Century Thought The Big Picture: Global Enlightenments, 1700–1800 Timeline: The Frustrations of Progress, to ca. 1900 Replacing Muscle: The Energy Revolutions The Social Mold: Work and Society in the Nineteenth Century Western Dominance in the Nineteenth Century: The Westward Shift of Power and the Rise ofGlobal Empires The Changing State: Political Developments in the Nineteenth Century The Big Picture: The Frustrations of Progress, to ca. 1900 Timeline: Chaos and Complexity: The World in the Twentieth Century The Twentieth-Century Mind: Western Science and the World World Order and Disorder: Global Politics in the Twentieth Century The Pursuit of Utopia: Civil Society in the Twentieth Century The Embattled Biosphere: The Twentieth-Century Environment The Big Picture: Chaos and Complexity: The World in the Twentieth Century Maps: The Physical World and the Political World Glossary Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z