Talk:World history (field)

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Lack of Perimeter and Focus

This article needs additional references for verification and is often shallow in its approach. What are the challenges of "global history" with respect to "comparative history". There is a good deal of secondary readings out there, highlighting both the possibilities but above all the pitfalls of a global approach to history (sources on a large scale tend not land themselves to historical analysis and can only be taken into account as big data). None of this is found in the article, do the detriment of the reader. --132.187.247.26 (talk) 18:36, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Change to Common Era dating system

Given that this is an article on WORLD history and not western history or Christian history, the dating format used should be BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era). This would help promote the neutral point of view in the article as a whole. I will be making these changes in the next few days if there is no discussion on the topic. EuCJD (talk) 19:52, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't decide era styles based on religion. I object to the change per MOS:VAR. Masterhatch (talk) 17:52, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Human history which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 01:15, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Images

I feel as though this article could improve from some images that might help enhance understanding. ~~~ Lavenderluvr12 (talk) 02:25, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Neutrality

The article seems to imply the existence of a "global perspective", which no one in historical studies advocates because it would be totally acritical. Nor does it make any effort to clarify the meaning of the term "global perspective". The article is also controversial in that fewer and fewer scholars in the EU and elsewhere are teaching it or proposing undergraduate courses in "global history". What most universities around the world offer are majors on knowledge transfer and global connections, which are not immediately related to global history. I would therefore suggest that the NPOV remains in place until all these points are clarified. Thank you very much. 2003:A:A0B:4100:D828:B2C2:2F6A:88CF (talk) 11:45, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@Rjensen and Alarichall: What is the meaning of the "global perspective" described in this article? Jarble (talk) 13:39, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

it means coverage of all the major world cultures --especially Asia and Africa--in terms that experts have identified for them (as opposed to constructions based on the history of Europe.) One of the best approaches is Patrick Manning (historian), Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (2003). See more recently Patrick Manning, "An Empirical Synthesis of Human Labor History." American Historical Review 127.3 (2022): 1394-1397. online abstract The complaints about lack of neutrality above are incoherent and unsourced and posted by a newcomer with zero editing experience. Rjensen (talk) 18:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the comment by the anon user holds up to scrutiny. I could be wrong, but to the best of my knowledge, world history is actually gaining in popularity. Here's a recent example from Sweden.[1] Not saying that proves it's on the rise in the EU, but neither is the anon backing the claim up with anything.

It seems a bit odd that global perspectives would be less popular today when there's a lot more focus on diversity and rejection of Western dominance within academia. There's plenty of critical discussion about how feasible a global historical perspective is, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean the entire premise is rejected. Peter ^Isotalo 19:23, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

So so far we have several sources saying that the field is highly specific to the US (see refs in #Establishment and perimeters of the field) and now one from Sweden. That's not the world. The article should make it more clear that this is a regionally restricted field and avoid gobbling up thematically similar but intellectually distinct schools like comparative history or historical materialism. – Joe (talk) 19:33, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Where are these "several sources" exactly? Peter ^Isotalo 10:21, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

e.g. pg XVII[2][3][4]. P.S. please don't remove the tag after every comment you make here, it's not helpful. – Joe (talk) 10:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

What you're linking appear to be perfectly normal discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of a specific academic sub-discipline of history. From what I can see from your comments here and elsewhere, you appear to have an axe to grind with the merits of the discipline as a whole.

Explain what part of the article is violating WP:GLOBAL and specify how the sources you've linked confirms that. The point of a tag is to explain how an article can be improved, not that you don't like the topic itself. Peter ^Isotalo 11:04, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Would you like to try writing that again without casting aspersions or making demands? – Joe (talk) 11:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

If you want to insist on tagging articles, you need to explain what aspects of the article is problematic. If you can't provide any examples of what needs to be fixed, no one can fix the issue but you. You've made the claim that that "this is a regionally restricted field", but you haven't demonstrated how any sources support that claim.

Please demonstrate how sources support your claim. Peter ^Isotalo 12:58, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Sure I have. Here it is again, from page XV of Peter Gran's book, cited in this article:

What the reader doubtless may also know about the field of world history is that it is very American. In fact, at this point, writing and reading about world history appear to be virtually American pastimes. Few of the books being produced are of interest in Third World countries or even in Europe.

And from Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History?:

We must first admit that well into the twenty first century, global history remains primarily a domain of the industrialized and economically privileged parts of the world. As a perspective, as an additional dimension, it is beginning to have some influence elsewhere; but it is primarily in the United States and in other Anglophone countries, in parts of Western Europe, and in East Asia that global history has found anything like a permanent home in the university system. Institutional structures are important. The different perspectives on global history do not depend solely on theoretical debates and on discursive traditions; to a large extent they are the outcome of diverging sociologies of knowledge.

The rest of the article describes in detail how this geographically-restricted "sociolog[y] of knowledge" affects the content of world history approaches.

Grew describes how world history is evoked most frequently in America as the framework for a survey course for undergraduates but as of 2006 is expanding. Writing earlier (1990), Allardyce describes how academic history was historically hostile to global approaches in both North America and Europe (pg. 23–25), but that Louis R. Gottschalk and his school centred at the University of Chicago rehabilitated it in the 1960s and 1970s, leading to the establishment of world history courses in American universities and the World History Association (also US-based).

As I said when I added the tag, I think the article would be improved by clarifying that world history is an approach that originated and is still most popular in the United States (Gran, Conrad), arising from the particular circumstances of the American education system (Grew, Allardyce), and that this has knock-on effects on the content of world history theories (Conrad). It could then review the extent to which world history and/or related approaches have been embraced in other regions, and how they differ there (sounds like your Swedish article could be useful there). A subsidiary problem is that the article currently covers unrelated but thematically similar frameworks, like comparative history or Marxist history, which implies that the world history approach is older, more geographically diverse, and/or more widely accepted than it really is. – Joe (talk) 14:14, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

"I think the article would be improved" is not the same as it being "un-global". I don't think the GLOBAL tag or its description that the article "deal[s] primarily with the United States" is accurate or justified. You've pointed to reliable sources that discuss the discipline and its history, and that's a very good basis for anyone (including you if you feel like it) to improve the article.

However, the problematic way you describe the situation is not at all in line with texts like "Theories of World History since The Enlightenment" by Michael Bentley in The Oxford Handbook of World History[5] or "Writing world history" by Marnie Hughes-Warrington in The Cambridge History of the World.[6]

I see no problem in including critical perspectives, or pointing out that they should be included, but the way you're presenting it seems to include a lot of your own conclusions which are not actually part of what the sources are critiquing. Peter ^Isotalo 18:15, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

That's what tags are for: drawing attention to things that could be improved. If there are other points of view in reliable sources, they should be included too. – Joe (talk) 18:57, 22 July 2024 (UTC)