Talk:World history (field)/Archives/2015

Naming

Shouldn't this be at World history? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 22:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

No "world history" is a general term that can mean the history the world whereas "World History" is a discrete field of study and is a proper noun, like as in the World Wide Web or Long Tail. --Stbalbach 23:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Origins

Article doesn't mention McNeal (?) who in 1963 sparked off this field..., says Ed Tenner, Professor & Author, Princeton University. - The name possibly refers to William McNeill, who in 1963 wrote The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. --LA2 18:48, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I think Stbalbach just fixed this nicely. -- TheMightyQuill 11:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

McNeill usually publishes as "William H. McNeill". He has been recognised as "the dean of world historians" in World System History (2000). Philip Day 23:14, 10 January 2009

Mention in New York Times

This article was mentioned in a New York Times Opinion piece, Sunday, March 26, 2006. Specifically, the page was viewed as 'idiosyncratic' but was evaluated as having 'improved' over the period of review. --Ancheta Wis 11:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

"Searching for Dummies", by Edward Tenner, March 26, 2006.

--Stbalbach 14:43, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Eurocentrism

This article needs some expansion, but there's one issue in the field of "World History" that needs to be addressed. That's Eurocentrism (or Westnocentrism). General, universal, world, (whatever) history books almost always excluded the rest of the world (besides Europe, or even Western Europe) until the colonial era. Africa was only discussed in the context of Egypt and Carthage. Asia was only discussed in the context of 'Near Eastern' civilisations. The rest of the world only swam into the picture in the 1800s (in histories), and then Europe still dominated the scene. The biggest revolution in all of historiography, in my own opinion, was the sudden discovery that the rest of the world had history, too, after white supremacy disappeared in the '60s. So this article needs to address how Westnocentric histories were before the '70s, and how theories of world history are (still!) shaped by the fate of the West.

This also needs to be addressed in the pages dealing with the Middle Ages and modern history, which focus on Europe during these periods, presumably because traditionally histories have. Brutannica 01:19, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

--70.121.124.15 21:35, 21 August 2007 (UTC)General, universal, world, (whatever) - yeah, that's a common misconception, that is not what World History is. It's not your typical history book with a political narrative of events. There are plenty of those, but they are not World History. -- Stbalbach 04:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)== Highschool Curriculums etc ==

I just erased a bunch of "World History" external links related to highschool courses, but maybe I was hasty. Any opinions on this? -- TheMightyQuill 17:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

They are more than just about high school courses. -- Stbalbach 17:03, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but it seems like we need to come up with some kind of policy here, or we'll be stuck with a huge list of every website related to the history of the world. - TheMightyQuill 01:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I added all those links when I first wrote the article, I went through Google and culled out all the good and relevant ones. Since WH is a teaching approach, I assumed this article would be of relevance to teachers and thus teaching resources were included. It also helps educate the general reader what the teaching approach to WH means in the real world. I'm not sure we need a blind policy, just common sense and address any particular concerns about particular links when they come up. It hasn't really been a problem (although I did just delete one ext link someone made that had to do with "world history" (the history)). -- Stbalbach 14:24, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Sadly in 2012 still missing other than "eurocentristic" approaches, e.g. Andre Gunder Frank: ReOrient. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.176.112.75 (talk) 14:12, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:52, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

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World History → World history – The (old...) reply at #Naming above cites no sources. I am now reading a world history work (Peter Gran (28 February 2009). The Rise of the Rich: A New View of Modern World History. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-3171-2. Retrieved 25 May 2012.) and it uses lower case for world history, just like all (or at least most) works I've read in the past. Unless somebody can provide comparison of usage (not a random example) that shows that "World History" is indeed a popular and capitalized term for this discipline, I think it should be moved to world history. It is common for academic fields and subfields to be non-capitalized; and a quick glance at Category:Fields of history suggests that this is true for fields of history, with only World History and Big History being the exception (and we should have a similar move request and discussion of sources for the latter, too). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 23:42, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Support. Even if sources elsewhere that this [sub]field is frequently capitalized, that does not translate to Wikipedia where this is not common. A random example: "Analytic geometry, or analytical geometry has two different meanings in mathematics." No capital A, G or M. The Long Tail article cited above is another anomaly. - Sussexonian (talk) 06:09, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

• Support per Piotrus's comprehensive nomination and WP:CAPS. Jenks24 (talk) 08:03, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History  By Richard W. Bulliet, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Daniel R. Headrick, Steven W. Hirsch, Lyman L. Johnson, David Northrup

http://books.google.com/books?id=MEKGLyToQ-EC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Rajmaan (talk) 03:33, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Commercial links

There seem to be quite a few commercial external links in this article... Regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 01:03, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy

0679720197 internationl standard library number, even in hard cover availibe.

i won't wait for the editwar on this page, but it's a kind of history book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.234.231.163 (talk) 12:37, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Spammed papers

Posted to various talk pages by different IPs. These area by an independent scholar, see [1]. Can't comment on the other journals, but the "International Journal of Philosophy and Social Sciences" is on a list of journals with low credit[2] hosted at the [University of Mohaghegh Ardabili]]. Dougweller (talk) 09:02, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Which navboxes belong?

The article has three navboxes: Globalization, Geography and cartography in medieval Islam, and Islamic philosophy.

The last two seem irrelevant to the article's topic. The first seems of questionable relevance to the article's topic.

Why do they appear here?

11:16, 6 August 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by JayDugger (talk • contribs)

I agree and have removed them. Dougweller (talk) 14:48, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Emerged in the 1980s?

The article claims that World History "emerged as a distinct academic field in the 1980s." Is this really true? I think this might only be true for the United States. I've had discussions with friends who grew up in other countries, and they tell me that they studied history from a global perspective when they were younger. This would mean that in other countries, people were studying world history, and "looking for common patterns that emerge across all cultures," in the 1960s and 1970s.

Of course, discussions with my friends don't prove anything, and that's why I haven't edited the article itself. But I think this is something that should be discussed. Remember that Wikipedia articles always strive to have a worldwide view of the subject.

Later in the article, this claim is repeated, and Peter Gran's "The Rise of the Rich" is cited. But Gran lives in the United States, and he may only be looking at the academic field within the United States. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Navigatr85 (talk • contribs) 00:52, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

"they studied history from a global perspective"....well maybe, but not in schools in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia or Japan. (nor in Canada or Australia). Rjensen (talk) 08:13, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

OK, but if you limit yourself to those eight countries, that's still not a worldwide view. One comment that a friend made in this context: larger, richer, more powerful nations tend to have a more self-centered view of world history. Smaller, poorer nations tend to have a more broad view of world history. All the nations you mentioned are among the richer and more powerful nations. Navigatr85 23:08, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

which "other countries" are your friends remembering?