Talk:World history (field)/Archives/2019

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Disputed title

Calling this article which represents an academic field that did not exist before 1980 "World history" clearly fails WP:PRECISION and WP:COMMONNAME. This article requires a more precise title, possibly using parenthetical disambiguation, or a longer descriptive title. Some candidates are:

and there may be other, better choices. However, the only thing it cannot be called, is World history. This seems like an uncontroversial move to me, as a search on the web, or in books, or in academic journals, or in ngrams, reveals overwhelming support for the conventional understanding of the term "world history", which disagrees with the topic of this article. I'm listing the discussion here, in case there are opposing views.

However, if someone wants to do an immediate move to a more precise term while we wait for a consensus decision about exactly what the article should be called, I would not oppose that move. Mathglot (talk) 06:29, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Listed at: WT:HISTORY
Listed at: WT:AT
Listed at: User:Rjensen (Robert Jensen is a historian.)
Pinging some recently active users who transclude user box historian: @Visorstuff, Visorstuff, Piratesswoop, Tuckerresearch, Canonblack, Ragesoss, Kevlar67, Boddah, GPHemsley, MapsMan, Rachack, Hmich176, George Al-Shami, and Ryan Reeder: Mathglot (talk) 07:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Strongly oppose First of all is absolutely false to say that World History "did not exist before 1980." -- Most of the article actually deals with historians pre-1980. Polybius promoted the concept in ancient Greece -- Voltaire wrote Essay on the manners and spirit of nations a very widely read global history in the 1850s. Hegel, the most influential philosopher of the early 19th century in the 1820s gave "Lectures on the philosophy of world history" that had a major influence especially on German historians. Spengler's The Decline of the West (1919-23) especially volume 2 entitled "Perspectives of World History" was one of the most influential history books ever written. Even larger numbers read Toynbee's multi-volume world history. For more details see Ernst Breisach, Historiography: ancient, medieval and modern (1983), pp 318-21. English language textbooks appeared in the early 20th century, and interest in teaching the field gained dramatic momentum with the Second World War--which ended 74 years ago. Rjensen (talk) 07:47, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

@Rjensen:, I probably wasn't clear in my exposition, but if you looked at the state of the article before your recent changes to the lead, it was not about world history; it was an article claiming to be about a pretty recent discipline that developed chiefly in the 1980s. Of course world history existed since the ancients; that's my whole point. That's why either this article's name must be changed, if it remains about a new academic discipline within history, which apparently calls itself, presumptuously, "world history", or it must be recast to be about what everybody understands by the term. Look at what they say in the first body section of the article:

The advent of world history as a distinct academic field of study can be traced to the 1960s, but the pace quickened in the 1980s.^[3]^[4] A key step was the creation of the World History Association and graduate programs at a handful of universities.

In rev 904291114 just before your changes, a portion of the lead read as follows:

World history or global history (not to be confused with diplomatic, transnational or international history) is a field of historical study that emerged as a distinct academic field in the 1980s.

So the very definition of the article gave an incorrect description of what it is. Your changes are moving in the direction of recasting the article to be about the commonly understood meaning of the term, and that's fine; then we can keep the title, and recast the topic. But only the lead was changed.

So we have a bit of a muddle now after your changes and the new definition, where the lead talks about world history as a study going back to antiquity, i.e., the common understanding of the term, but where the body of the article talks about it as a field that coalesced in the 1980s. I.e, it's neither fish nor fowl at this point. (I've tagged it {{unfocused}} until that internal conflict is resolved.)

Either we should carry on with the changes you started, and recast the rest of the article to make it about what we all understand "world history" to be, as you have started to do with your changes to the lead, or, we let the article remain about the original topic (a field that emerged in the 1980s), in which case it has to be renamed per WP:PRECISION.

My personal preference would be to continue in the direction you are going, and strip out everything about some new field from the 1980s as far as the main topic, or perhaps just relegate it to some new article. Alternatively, it could take its place in some subsection, along with other didactic techniques that have been used to teach history at one time or another. But, that 1980s discipline cannot claim the title "world history" at the level of an article title, that's a perversion of WP:COMMONNAME, and that's what the article was doing as of yesterday. Mathglot (talk) 08:45, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Support I see your point. The casual user searching for "World history" would not expect to see an article with the content shown. They would expect to see something more akin to the article in "History of the World." That article is linked at the top of the page, but it should be less ambiguous. I think "World History" should also have a redirect to "History of the world," with perhaps a link at the top of the page for the article now titled "World history." Of the choices for the naming of the article provided, I think "World History (academic field)" is best (although the word "field" could perhaps be replaced with "discipline" based on personal preference). Using the "1980s" or "1980s academic field" subtitles just adds more confusion. (Are we only talking about world history between 1980 and 1989? Did the academic field only exist between 1980 and 1989 and then disappear from favor?) "World history academic field" is probably fine, but I don't think it correlates with the basic patterns used in the naming of other Wikipedia articles.

I support the name change to either "World history (academic field)" or "World history (academic discipline)," with personal preference leaning toward the latter. Thanks for including me in the ping. Ryan Reeder (talk) 17:29, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Support a changed title in some form, World history (academic field) works, but more importantly redirect 'World history' to History of the world which is a good overview if readers understand and use guiding links. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:21, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

We have two articles one ("history of the world") that talks about events and one )"World History")that talks about how historians deal with those events. The first article is very superficial, --it's a 1/10 of 1% summary of a fat textbook. This article on the other hand does a good job of asking how the zillions of facts in world history have actually been handled by leading historians. It names many of them since Voltaire. It never over-emphasized the 1980s and does not do so now. (the sentence that says it's focused on 1980s was false and has been removed). If a person wants to know the EVENTS of the world in the last 6000 years wikipedia has articles on each continent, each country, each main event. Plus we give guides to huge fat textbooks they can buy. Rjensen (talk) 19:35, 1 July 2019 (UTC)