Easily Distracted

History 63
Professor Burke
Fall 2003
The Whole Enchilada

This course is an exploration of world history as a form of historical writing. It is not a survey of events in world history, though we will undoubtedly find ourselves learning quite a lot about certain common topics or issues in world history.

The central question of the class is, “What happens when a historian or writer tries to describe the history of the world, whether limited to a particular time period or theme or encompassing literally everything that has happened to humanity in historical time?” As a genre of writing about history, world history is quite distinctive not just in its scope but in its tone and its outlook. The form has a history all its own. We will focus on the debates between world historians (and between historians writing about global history and historians who are more specialized) that are highly distinctive and particular to the form, ranging from the question of why Western Europe achieved global hegemony after the 1500s to the issue of whether there is a meaningful distinction between “civilizations” and other human societies.

While I typically encourage students to skim readings, and will do so in this class, I nevertheless want to caution that in this course, the reading load is quite heavy and I will expect somewhat closer attention to the reading than I normally require. We are reading world histories as a literary form, and that means we need to understand not just the bare bones of their argument and the evidentiary material they assemble in defense of it, but the rhetorical approach they employ. Reading carefully and working from such readings in class discussion are both important requirements in this course, and I will base the final grade more heavily than I normally do on whether or not students are reading with the appropriate discipline and depth.

Do not take this class if you are unprepared to engage the material.

Attendance, as per History Department policy, is required. Unexcused absences will have a serious effect on your grade. Participation and evidence of careful reading are important to your grade. There will also be three papers: two of them short, one of them a longer assignment requiring a modest amount of independent research.

Sept 2
Introduction

“Global history” and “world history” (scholarly standardization of a field; literary breadth of an idea)
The question of “Eurocentrism”
The global and the local; the big picture and the details
The materialist turn in 20th Century world histories

Sept 4
From the particular to the universal: origin narratives and historical thought

*The Old Testament, Genesis
*Pietro Vannicelli, “Herodotus’ Egypt and the Foundations of Universal History”, in Nino Luraghi, ed., The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus

Sept 9
Tuesday
Ibn Khaldun, The Muqadimmah, pp. Vii-48, pp. 58-68
Mini-lecture: St. Augustine, medieval historians and universal history

Sept 11
Khaldun, Muqadimmah, pp. 91-332

Sept 16
*Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality”
*Georg Hegel, “Introduction to the Philosophy of History”
Mini-lecture: Vico, Kant, Rousseau, Hobbes, Hegel, Marx: The idea of a “universal history” and the European Enlightenment

Sept 18
*Leopold von Ranke, “On Universal History”
*M.C Lemon, “Marx on History”, from Philosophy of History: A Guide For Students
First paper due

The development of world history as a scholarly genre

Sept 23
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, pp. 3-86
Mini-lecture: Toynbee and Spengler

Sept 25
Spengler, Decline of the West, pp. 226-418

Sept 30
William H. McNeill, Rise of the West, pp. Xv-63, pp. 167-248, pp. 295-360
Mini-lecture: The Cold War, geopolitics and world history

Oct 2
McNeill, Rise of the West, pp. 484-507, pp. 565-598, pp. 726-808

Oct 7
Ferdnand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life, pp. 23-103, 104-182, pp. 266-333
Mini-lecture: The Annales school and the “longue duree”

Oct 9
Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life, pp. 385-564

FALL BREAK

The idea of world systems

Oct 21
*Immanuel Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein, selections

Oct 23
*Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills, “The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand?”

The critique of Eurocentrism in world history: materialist and philosophical

Oct 28
*JM Blaut, The Colonizer’s Model of the World
*Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony

Oct 30
*Ashis Nandy, “History’s Forgotten Doubles”

Why didn’t China industrialize first? A case study of debate in world history

Nov 4
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence , pp. 3-208
Mini-lecture: Other perennial debates in world history

Nov. 6
Pomeranz, The Great Divergence

Thematic world histories

Nov 11
*Philip Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History
*Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery

Nov 13
*Barbara Freese, Coal: A Human History
*John Keegan, The Face of Battle

Hegel and Kant revisited

Nov 18
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
Mini-lecture: World history and the idea of progress

Nov 20
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
Second paper due.

Politics and power

Nov 25
*Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”
*Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1, pp. 73-178

Sociobiological and materialist world histories

Dec 2
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel
Mini-lecture: McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples and other non-Marxist materialist world histories

Narrative world history

Dec 4
Larry Gonick, The Cartoon Guide to the Universe, Volume 3
*Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, short selection

Dec 9
The Once and Future World History
Final paper (genre critique) due December 15th