There have been unending discussions about world history and global history concepts. History as a profession has been adamant in appreciating the significance of globalization. A major contributing factor refers to world history asserting that global history, which involves the study of globalization, is a challenge to its establishment. As world history continues to struggle to realize its own identity, its proponents ignore the new global history or allege that it is already covered by world history. Therefore, it is imperative to discuss the concepts and methods of both global and world history. A closer analysis is crucial in developing the difference between the two subfields of history and insight on what global history offers that world history fails to offer.
World history has acquired different definitions that emerge from different schools of thought.
One of the principal concerns of world history is the interaction among individuals participating in large-scale historical processes. World history focuses on human groups and their interaction across different times and spaces as evidenced in the book Crossing the Bay of Bengal1. McNeill further defines world history as studying the interaction among people from different cultures. According to McNeill, World history includes aspects such as the spread of religion, long-distance trade, plagues, and other trans-civilizational aspects. Different scholars seem to replace the term civilizations in favor of world systems. The world system approach is widely mentioned from the voyages of Columbus Abu-Lughod, who defined the Roman Empire as the “first nascent world system.” Different scholars from McNeill, Braudel, and Abu-Lughod share different world history approaches. However, their major concern revolves around systematic processes and patterns across different natural and historical phenomena that influenced different populations. As opposed to the global history scholars, the world history scholars tend to be less interested in developing forecasts for outlining the development of civilizations through fixed cycles.
The study of world history has never been limited to a specific level like the national level. Historians can study religions, ideas, commerce, and culture, among other aspects from different regions. The practice of world history can be traced from Pokybios, Ibn Khaldun, Herodot, Sima Quian, Eric Hobsbawm, among other notable historians of the 20thcentury. During the 19thcentury, history emerged in Europe as a professionalized discipline as part of cultural nation-building. Self-empowering nations supported the development of history as a discipline; historians construed the link between the past, present, and future to affirm and form national identities. The European domination in the world highly influenced the world history as Marx and Engels are considered Eurocentric2.The methodological concepts of profession required historians to base their studies on primary sources held by the archives developed by the states. World history requires researchers to target space-specific and time-specific descriptions, interpretations, and explanations that cannot fit broad generalizations commonly preferred by natural scientists.
World history tends to differ from global history on the aspect of the world system. In world history, Fernand Braudel abandoned the concept of civilization for world systems which meant worlds developed by culture and trade. In his book The Modern World-System, Wallerstein, a follower of Braudel, specifically portrays how the modern capital and commercial world came into existence. World history establishes that trade networks were the main getaways of civilization as they slowly connected one center to another. The spread further experienced a greater frequency until around 1000 A.D., Abu-Lughod, a world historian, further took the idea of world-system back in time and called for an earlier system of world trade and cultural exchange. The historian notes that the system experienced a turning point in the period 1250-1350 A.D. the world history. However, lacking an international division of labor, it defines the systems connecting disparate locations of the world, including India, Europe, and China, through trade among key cities. While applying the same methodology even in earlier periods, Abu-Lughod talks of the Roman Empire as the foremost promising world system.
As outlined by various world history scholars like Abu- Lughod, Braudel, and Wallerstein, the different variants of world history share a common theme. This theme includes a stern concern of systematic patterns and processes within different natural and historical phenomena that affected populations. Compared to the global historians, these historians are less intrigued in developing predictions regarding tracing the course of civilizations through fixed cycles. Additionally, though coerced to depend on secondary accounts heavily, these historians tend to stay close to the scholarship of ordinary historians. The ordinary history provided a strictly secular account that would even pertain to religion. The accounts outlined throughout history refer to stern trials to interpret historical phenomena that arise on a world scale. Therefore, the meaning of the term world becomes crucial; this is the point where the transition to global history takes place.
Global history is different in various perspectives from world history. Adas, a global historian, shows how global history differs from world history on certain fundamental concepts defined by McNeill. The accounts of Adasstretch far beyond Abu-Lughod’s 18th-century world system, the gender, and Islamic history as well as the Columbian voyages. World history grates against the common explanatory methodologies and analytic categories scholars hold dear. World history is coupled with western imaginations; this aspect has become a challenge for every historian. Today, the world as an integrated globe lacks narration and fails to have any history. The end of the 20th century brought a significant challenge among world historians as it has become fundamentally difficult to narrate the world’s past in an age of globality.
One way world history differs from global history entails the etymology of the terms globe and world. Words do not necessarily mean what certain individuals state they mean. Words tend to have a historical nature. The term world refers to human existence, with the central reference being earth and everything and everyone on it. Words could also mean an imaginary, for instance, the next world, which interprets life after death. The finding of the new world began the advent of world history. Recently, the first, second, and third worlds have been recognized, differentiating various levels of development. The term global cannot be substituted with the term world to refer to the second, first, or third. Global refers to a dissimilar valence emanating from a Latin word globe, meaning something rounded or spherical like a heavenly body. Therefore, global history tends to point toward space; its perspective allows the ideology of being outside our planet and recognizing earth. This perspective is one major thing that differentiates global history from world history.
Global history tends to differ from world history because global history tends to focus on the history of globalization. Global history considers the prevailing processes confined within globalization and traces the processes far back in the past as they might be deemed useful and necessary. Global history pertains to the continuation of the aspects encountered within McNeill’s variation of world history. The difference is that global history tends to be present while appreciating its informed global outlook. While world history focuses on explaining events and interactions within different spaces and times, the starting point for global history lies within certain basic facts. These facts include our time; our thrust into space which entails enforcing an increased sense of one world. The sense is “spaceship earth” as it can be recognized from outside the earth’s atmosphere.
Global history tends to focus more on the factors of globalization in respect to the local reality, which can exist in different forms. Global history includes various basic facts that exist in our time and include global consumerism, globalization of our culture, which has been catalyzed by satellite communication and music3. Other basic facts captured by global history include replacing an international political system with a global political system. A crucial aspect to note amongst the facts in global history is the unparalleled collaboration between one fact and another. This collaboration happens in an ever-increasing force and extent irrespective of their origin in a segregated past. As opposed to world history, global history tends to remain committed to studying different aspects present as a whole. Globalization currently affects every part of the globe and everyone within it though in contradictory local contexts. Therefore, global history seems to commit itself further to learning globalization’s factors concerning a local reality that can adopt different forms.
Experts of Global history support both the strong and weak interpretation of facts instead of world history, which strictly calls for concrete backup from primary sources. World historians seem to be certain that globalization appears to bring in a new global epoch that substitutes the prevailing efforts to conceptualize such periods as post-industrial or postmodern. The proponents of global history tend to stay away from schemes that might divide them and tend to focus their study on the process of globalization without further claims. Some proponents of global history seem to see globalization as bringing a new period. This view brought into question when the global epoch commenced. Some scholars chose the 1950s, while others believe it happened in the 1970s. These questions bring up another perspective in global history that is common in world history. The question of when did adequate synchronicity and synergy arise to warrant the inauguration of a new periodization.
The new periodization depicted in global history entails a technique where time and space have been compacted exceptionally. The roots of the compression can be derived far in the past with periodization of the globalization process classified in different accounts. One account refers to the introduction of sea vessels changing from sail to steam, reducing distance and ultimately duration. Another wave of significant change is characterized by the development of the telegraph, laying of cables, creation of the telephone, and finally, radio communication. Global history currently analyzes the globe as a period of satellites with the assistance of computer-aided connection, which allows real-time communication within any location. People across the globe could witness the first moon landing on their televisions. Currently, people can travel from one point globally to another within a day.
Global history further explains the process of globalization as highly influenced by other aspects such as mapping. From the 15th century, the Ptolemaic maps aided in unlocking the new world while half of the earlier unheard-of parts of the globe were associated with twisted perspectives. Vast areas within the globe remained in darkness, with Africa’s remaining unmapped till the late 19th century. For decades, the earth’s poles never received adequate exploration until recent expeditions. Global history identifies that it is only recently that our globe has been known. Through the help of technology, the globe can be seen and studied from the outside as a spherical body within space. The investigations of various elements that contribute to different factors of globalization show how these factors are entrenched in the past. Nevertheless, global history is a historical investigation even though its starting point is confidently near the present, currently referred to as a global epoch.
Global history differs from world history because the expositions of global historians are highly traced by technological, scientific, and economic occurrences of the current epoch. However, the process involves economic, technological, or scientific advancements; political build-out was also a prerequisite. Initially, the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union was critical in developing today’s highly dependent satellite world, with communications playing a critical role. Additionally, the deterioration of communism disintegrated the earlier political and ideological conflicts, creating a haven for developing a truly global community where all nations must and can contribute uniquely.
World history represents modernization as an imposition from the western countries. On the other hand, globalization represents a global course where various players are developing a novel civilization. Major contributors to the new “civilization” include Japan, the United States, Australia, the European community, Malaysia and Indonesia. Other nations like China and India are also making strides towards contributing to the new global civilization4. Global history portrays that the course of the globalization process cannot be envisaged. Like other historians, global historians seem to be aware of the uncertainty and contingency of human affairs. They are clear of not conducting ecumenical history, nor are they conducting world history in the primal logic of the entire history of the entire world. On the contrary, global historians are attempting to create a more conscious research agenda. These historians understand that each element of globalization needs significant empirical study.
The primary center for world history, contrary to global history, has been civilization. Nevertheless, global historians remain aware that civilizations do not organize the global division of labor, set up rockets, or run television networks. Empires that were the mover s of civilizations in the past do not exist anymore; instead, they have been replaced by nation-states. Therefore, global history investigates the processes that surpass the nation-state structure. Different facets within global history try to support the assertion that global history embodies a new consciousness that highly relies on science and technology. This new perspective has allowed humans to view the planet from space while also emphasizing our planet’s ecological and evolutionary nature.
The implication of global history changes to a certain degree. In comparison to world history, today, global history cannot be described by its global reach but rather by its focus on exchanges, interactions, and linkages between cultures and regions. The majority of global historians tend to avoid using words like “already” and “not yet” to classify a culture, region, civilization, or nation as either backwardness or advancement. The west offers these models as a way to explain a global convergence. However, on the contrary, global historians tend to identify that increased interaction is likely to yield to new differences in, for instance, the field of culture. This practice distinguishes global historians from former modernization theory within and outside the Marxist tradition.
The world historians unified by tradition or trade are commonly wary of theories. Conversely, in global history, theoretical concerns coming from natural and social sciences are central to certain investigations. World historians seem to remain self-restrained towards works from other disciplines. In Global history, a collaboration between and among various disciplines is unrestricted. The future work will have to be a unification of economic historians, economists, historians, and political scientists, the main ideology towards globalization5. There have been numerous discussions concerning the definition of both the world and global history. These definitions are subject to certain uncertainties and overlap. Nonetheless, it is crucial to understand how global history is different from world history.
Today’s world has transformed into an integrated globe; however, it lacks narration and bears no history. The main test of a renewed world history is describing the world’s past in an era of globalization. There is adequate room for world history without necessarily covering global history within its sphere. Improved definitions in the future will make it possible for each subdomain of history to function independently. While both the global and world continue to exist in the same spectrum, it is crucial to recognize a key margin regarding knowledge about the history of globalization; concisely, global history.
Bibliography
Amrith, Sunil S. “Snapshots of Globalization’s First Wave.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 2014. Web.
Amrith, Sunil S. Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Bayly, Christopher Alan. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Malden, MA, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Crossley, Pamela Kyle. “Convergence.” Essay. In What Is Global History, 62–65. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2017.
Mazlish, Bruce. “Comparing Global History to World History.” The New World History, 2019, 495–503. Web.
Footnotes
- 1 – Sunil S. Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015).
- 2 – Pamela Kyle Crossley, “Convergence,” in What Is Global History? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2017), pp. 62-65.
- 3 – Christopher Alan Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004)
- 4 – Sunil S Amrith, “Snapshots of Globalization’s First Wave,” The New York Times (The New York Times, 2014), Web.
- 5 – Bruce Mazlish, “Comparing Global History to World History,” The New World History, 2019, pp. 495-503, Web.