World History as a Way of Thinking

Eric Lane Martin

Lewis-Clark State College

World historians should consider the cultivation of the kinds of thinking skills required 1
to understand global relationships as one of the field's more important contributions
to both knowledge and society. World history scholars, teachers, and students
practice a way of thinking that can help people understand how their communities are
connected with other communities around the world, and how these connections have
developed historically. This is a practical style of thought that is in demand on our
campuses, in our communities, and in our current public policy debates. It is time for
us to conceptualize world history as not only 'what' we choose to study, but also 'how'
we approach a topic in the first place. In this sense the development of global thinking
skills are an important prerequisite to a successful study of any world history content.

The 2004 closure of Northeastern's World History Center marks the conclusion of the 2
most visible effort in the last decade to formally develop a doctoral level program in
world history. The program's emphasis on world history as a primary field of historical
research was unique among Ph.D. programs offering graduate training in world history.
In the pages that follow I do not describe a 'Northeastern School of World History,' a
notion that Program Director Patrick Manning purposely avoided in an effort to be
theoretically and methodologically inclusive and exploratory rather than definitive.
Instead, I offer a conceptualization of 'world history as a way of thinking' in order to
describe the most distinguishing features of the Northeastern program which drew
upon multiple world-historical approaches. Perhaps the most distinguishing
intellectual characteristic of those who completed the program is a tendency to think
about the big picture first and to identify themselves primarily as specialists in the use
of wide-angle historical lenses. My focus on graduate education is designed to
emphasize the benefit of continuing to train at least a few specialists in using the
historical wide-angle lens. But my description of world history as a way of thinking has
broader applications than to those engaged in specialized graduate study in world
history. I also argue that the most important things the field of world history has to offer
the researcher, teacher, student, and general public are the conceptual tools required
for understanding complex global processes and problems.
The Historiography

The field of world history has many developed bodies of specialized literature, which 3
have been the subject of several excellent historiographical surveys in the last decade.
Jerry Bentley's Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship, for example,
provides a succinct account of the major scholarly works and trends that have
influenced the field in the last century.1 Patrick Manning covers much of the same
ground in his 425 page monograph, Navigating World History, but in a much more
detailed and comprehensive fashion.2 Manning also emphasizes issues related to
research method, doctoral training, and the general direction of world history as a
research field. Ross Dunn's edited reader, The New World History, provides critical
selections from many of the works discussed by both Bentley and Manning.3 Indeed,
Bentley, Manning, and Dunn have each created indispensable reference works which
will continue to shape the way we understand the field for years to come.4

Scholars, teachers, and students interested in seriously engaging the historical 4

traditions of the field should begin with these three works. Together, they provide a
historiographical road map to the most important developments in world history
scholarship for the last century. In the rest of this essay, I will describe the ways in
which deep engagement with this literature at the graduate level cultivates a distinctive
way of thinking about historical problems and issues.

The Questions Asked

When doctoral students specialize in world history as a primary field of study, they 5
specialize in a body of literature which models and promotes thinking about historical
problems in two characteristic ways. The first characteristic revolves around the kinds
of questions world historians ask. As the late world historian Marshall Hodgson
argued, the distinctions between the social science disciplines, and even between
historical sub-fields, are not a matter of method or topic but, rather, concern the types
of questions scholars ask about their material.5 So, following 'the Hodgson principle,'
what kinds of questions do world historians tend to ask?

Forty-two years ago William McNeill asked why 'the West' came to dominate so 6
much of the world.6 Nearly a decade later, Alfred Crosby asked what the most
important consequences of 1492 were.7 More recently, Philip Curtin examined how
New World plantations shaped global politics and economics in the early modern
period.8 Jerry Bentley asked how cross-cultural encounters worked in pre-modern
times.9 Ross Dunn wondered how Afro-Eurasia looked to a fourteenth-century Muslim
traveler.10 Patrick Manning asked what forced African migration to the Americas looked
like when placed first in an American, then African, and finally global
perspective.11 Daniel Headrick examined the role of technology in nineteenth-century
European imperialism.12 Walter Rodney explored the relationship between an
overdeveloped Europe and an underdeveloped Africa.13 Immanuel Wallerstein wanted
to know what made the modern world distinct from previous historical periods.14 Eric
Wolf asked if nations or societies were satisfactory units of historical analysis for
understanding large scale processes.15 David Christian wonders what the history of the
world really means when placed into the context of the history of the universe.16

Of course, the above are a mere sampling of some of the key scholars in the field and 7
necessarily represent an oversimplified version of the questions they asked. But they
do allow us to see that the questions of world historians are qualitatively different from
the kinds of questions asked by historians who focus on particular areas. As a whole,
the literature of world history deals with questions related to what Marshall Hodgson
called historical complexes -- large-scale, overlapping historical processes.17 I will limit
myself to three brief examples to better illustrate the nature of historical complexes.
First, in The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex Philip Curtin explains that
"[h]istorians of the medieval Mediterranean, of Africa, of Latin America, of Europe, of
the United States all deal with parts or aspects of the [plantation] complex, but they
rarely try to see it as a whole."18 By contrast, Curtin sought to explore the plantation
complex itself rather than a particular geographic region's role in it, which in turn
required a wide-angle historical lens in order to look for answers. Second, in Tools of
Empire Daniel Headrick questions why "the progress and power of industrial
technology" and "the domination and exploitation of Africa and much of Asia by
Europeans" have been so well examined separately, while relatively few efforts have
been made to connect these two important phenomena in world history.19 Again, his
questions require a historical lens that is wider than those usually employed by
historians who focus on a particular area. Third, in The Columbian Exchange Alfred
Crosby tells us that "[t]he first step to understanding man is to consider him as a
biological entity which has existed on this globe, affecting, and in turn affected by, his
fellow organisms, for many thousands of years."20 The questions Crosby asked required
him to not only to think more widely than historians trained to focus on particular
regions or nations, but also to consider humans as biological entities. Asking these
kinds of broad-based, wide-ranging questions—questions that place events and
problems in their global context—is a defining characteristic of both good world history
research and teaching. It is also a defining feature of those who specialize in the world
history literature at the doctoral level.

The complex nature of the kinds of historical questions world history Ph.D. 8
candidates are likely to propose as dissertation topics can—and should—be well-
grounded in the literature of regional and area-based fields. However, they frequently
do not gain intellectual support from faculty trained to think about fundamentally
different types of historical questions relating to their particular region or area. This
scenario provides the recipe for potentially problematic dissertation committees.21 It is
important, therefore, that programs engaged in doctoral training in world history
understand that their candidates will produce fundamentally different kinds of
dissertations than those produced by more regionally-focused programs. The world
history literature promotes thinking about history from a distinctly global point of view.
As a result, doctoral students in the field will no doubt challenge current area-specific
models of what a history dissertation should look like by asking bigger, and
qualitatively different, questions. Faculty should be prepared for such shifts in
conceptual terrain.

The Models Developed

The second characteristic of the type of thinking that the world history literature 9
promotes revolves around the kinds of problem-solving techniques world historians
utilize to answer their own questions. The world history literature contains numerous
models for approaching complex, world historical questions. For example, William
McNeill explained the rise of the west by combining Arnold Toynbee's principle of
'challenge and response' with ideas about the diffusion of technologies and skills.
Meanwhile, Marshall Hodgson utilized what he described as 'hemispheric interregional
world history' to develop a more complete understanding of the historical complex of
the dar al-Islam. Philip Curtin, by contrast, has made clear arguments for a
comparative world historical approach. The 'Columbian Exchange' model developed
by Alfred Crosby was groundbreaking in the fields of both world history and
environmental history. Indeed, the term itself has become part of the historical
vocabulary in both fields. Walter Rodney utilized a model of underdevelopment,
Emmanuel Wallerstein envisioned a world-system with a hyphen, Andre Gunder-Frank
employed a notion of a world system without a hyphen, Jim Blaut constructed a model
of intellectual colonialism, and Christian theorized a 'Big History' model.
 Again, this is only the tip of the conceptual iceberg. The point, however, is that those 10
who specialize in world history are exposed to numerous models that offer guidance
on such issues as thinking about several different historical variables (such as multiple
places) at once, using relationships and connections as units of analysis, breaking
down complex processes into interrelated component parts, connecting the local to
the global and vice versa, and developing new categories and models of analysis. The
intellectual possession of a conceptual tool box customized for building answers to
complex global questions is another defining intellectual feature of both good world
history research and teaching. Doctoral training in world history offers the additional
opportunity to practice developing original conceptual tools for addressing problems
at the global level.

Just as faculty involved with world history Ph.D. programs should expect to see their 11
students ask conceptually different dissertation questions, they should also expect
their students to address these questions by utilizing the conceptual tools and models
provided by the world history literature. Indeed, explicitly connecting the approach to
global questions to the historiography of the field is of critical importance. A world
history dissertation that is grounded in the literature of the field more clearly conveys
to the rest of the discipline how the historiography of the field can be utilized for theory
and methodology. Thus, faculty trained in the field of world history will be in the best
position to help doctoral students clearly identify their historical approach and
methodology.

Wider Applications of World History as a Way of Thinking

World historians practice a way of thinking defined by these two sets of 12

characteristics: the inclination to ask big questions about how the world works as a
whole and the interest in developing innovative techniques to answer such large-scale,
complicated questions. Thus far, world history as a way of thinking has been primarily
described as an intellectual characteristic shared by professional scholars engaged in
the field. However, there is a much wider demand for the kinds of thinking skills that
world historians practice. For example, world historians have developed ways of
thinking about the kinds of big-picture questions currently being asked by the U.S.
public, including why the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred, and how effective
the war on terrorism has been in decreasing the chances of a repeat disaster. There is
public concern as well about whether the U.S. is a liberating force or an occupying
power in Iraq, and whether or not Iraq is 'another Vietnam.' Americans are wondering
about the causes of—and the solutions to—the economic problems facing our
communities in a globalizing economy, and why people in some countries are rich and
poor in others. They are asking about the relationships between producers and
consumers, and about the nature of globalization and how it affects communities.
World historians practice a way of thinking that provides the conceptual tools to
address questions of such magnitude and complexity: few other fields can say the
same.

Of course, the world history literature does not hold a monopoly on good models for 13
developing the ability to think about the connections between the local and the global.
In fact, many of the key conceptual founders of the field came from disciplines outside
of history. Yet world history is committed to exploring global connections
systematically and in a self-reflective way, which in turn has become the hallmark of
the field. Indeed, the most distinctive feature of the Northeastern world history
program was the encouragement of world history as a way of thinking. Any program
interested in building upon the Northeastern model should begin with this feature.

In conclusion, the most important things the field of world history has to offer the 14
researcher, teacher, student, and general public are the conceptual tools required for
addressing complex global processes and problems. We should highlight our
distinctive set of analytical thinking tools in our research, in our classrooms, and in our
communities. Perhaps conceptualizing world history as a way of thinking makes this
task a little less complicated.

Biographical Note: Eric Martin is an assistant professor of history at Lewis-Clark State

College in Lewiston, Idaho. He teaches both sections of the world history survey,
African history, historical method, political/social philosophy as well as courses on the
history of globalization in the inland/pacific northwest. He received his Ph.D. from
Northeastern University in 2002 and is one of the Editors of H-World. Eric also sits on
the board of directors of a low powered FM community radio station in Moscow,
Idaho KRFP.

Notes
1
Jerry H. Bentley, Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century
Scholarship (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1995).
2
Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
3
Ross E. Dunn, The New World History: A Teacher's Companion (Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin's, 2000).
4
See also Marnie Hughes-Warrington's new book, Palgrave Advances in World
History (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005).
5
Marshall Hodgson, "Historical Method in Civilizational Studies," in Edmund Burke III,
editor, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World
History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 73.
6
William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human
Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963, reprinted version 1992).
7
Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of
1492 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972).
8
Philip D. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic
History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 1998).
9
Jerry Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-
modern Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the 14th
10

Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

Patrick Manning, "Migrations of Africans to the Americas: The Impact on Africans,

11

Americans, and the New World," The History Teacher 26m (May 1993), 279-96.

Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the
12

Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington D.C.: Howard

13

University Press, 1972, revised edition 1981).

14
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the
Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (San Diego:
Academic Press, 1974); see also Wallerstein's The Modern World-System II:
Mercantilism and the Consolidation Of the European World-Economy, 1600-
1750 (Boston: Academic Press, Inc., 1980) and The Modern World-System III: The
Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730-1840s (Boston:
Academic Press, Inc., 1989).
15
Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkley: University of California
Press, 1982, reprint edition 1997).
16
David Christian, "The Case for 'Big History,'" Journal of World History 2 (Fall 1991),
223-38. See also his Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2004).
17
Hodgson defines historical complexes in the following way: "Whenever we find
sequences of historical events interrelated in such a way that significant questions of
substance (not, normally, abstract comparisons of categories) in regard to one of the
sequences involves answers about all of them, we may regard what we have as a
historical complex, whether it is a region with diverse cultural elements which closely
interact (for instance, Buddhist-Hindu-Muslim Southeast Eurasia), or a single cultural
tradition spread widely (for instance, Islamic culture From Java to the Niger), or a set of
developments in a single tradition across many culture lines (for instance, The Greek-
Arabic-Sanskrit-Chinese-Latin mathematical tradition)." Hodgson, Rethinking World
History, 256-257.
18
Curtin, x.
19
Headrick, 3.
20
Crosby, xiii.
21
It should be noted that there is movement towards world history by scholars in some
area-based fields. This is especially true of historians dealing with issues of
colonialism/imperialism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In fact, scholars of Africa,
such as Phil Curtin, Pat Manning, Ross Dunn, Walter Rodney and Immanuel
Wallerstein have been especially instrumental in developing the field of world history.