Encounters Old And New In World History

This collection of essays asserts the specific value of world history research and teaching, showing how the field contributes to the larger historical profession and offering concrete suggestions to develop more interaction between the academy and the public. The twelve contributors, each with their own academic areas of interest, are experienced scholars and classroom teachers. Uniting them together in this volume is their professional relationship with Jerry H. Bentley (1949–2012). This shared connection served as a catalyst to showcase Bentley’s enduring legacy: a commitment to investigating large-scale questions with detailed empirical evidence that explains the human condition—documenting both patterns of similarity and difference in ways that account for regional and temporal variations. The volume continues Bentley’s meticulous attention to world historical methods: focus on scale, cross-cultural encounter, comparison, periodization, critical geography, and interdisciplinarity. Encounters Old and New in World History responds to provocations that Jerry Bentley tendered in his scholarship and through his professional activities. Contributors interrogate the institutional settings, disciplinary proclivities, methodological choices, and diverse source bases of world history research and teaching. Several essays address the ways in which present-day concerns influence research on local and global scales. Other essays pay particular attention to the production and circulation of knowledge across regional, temporal, and class boundaries, as well as between the academy and the wider public. Claiming the centrality of globally informed and focused approaches to historical inquiry, researchers continue the conversations that Bentley carried on through his own scholarship, teaching, editing of the Journal of World History, participating in public forums, and contributing to public discussions about the place of history in understanding today’s global integration. The stakes involved in asking questions about the shared history of humankind continue to increase in the current era of intensified globalization. It is incumbent upon scholars with the skills to work across linguistic, geographic, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries to show the ways that cross-cultural encounters happened historically, and to point out how such interactions play out in the institutions, classrooms, and public debates where historical interpretations are created and shared.

Over a million students at thousands of schools have learned about world history with the best selling book for the course, Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Using the twin themes of traditions and encounters, the text emphasizes both the distinctive patterns of historical development within individual societies and the profound results of interactions between different societies. Exploring the historical record of cross-cultural interactions and exchanges, Traditions and Encounters places the world of contemporary globalization in historical context. The book helps students understand the world’s major societies and shows how the interactions of these societies affect history throughout the world. The authors tell a coherent and digestible story of the past that is not weighed down by excessive detail, so instructors are able to incorporate additional readings. This edition provides an updated map program as well as the latest scholarship. It also moves Primary Source Investigator online, improving access for students to work with primary sources.

History is an encounter with the past, and the past is a history of encounters. Encounters in World History is designed to introduce students to both of these sorts of encounters. Using primary and visual sources, the authors employ the encounter theme as a fundamental organizing principle. By nesting sources in thematically integrated chapters, comparison and analysis of sources can be more substantive, while also providing more internal structure for instructors. At the same time, this is a world history reader, and it follows a chronological format. The material has been presented in such a way that instructors can craft their own courses, emphasizing the aspects they think most important. Chapters are organized so that the general theme is presented in a chapter introduction and then revisited in the separate introductions to specific readings. The readers can be used to highlight preferred eras, cultural zones, or themes, or a unique mixture of all three.

Over a million students at thousands of schools have learned about world history with the best selling book for the course, Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Using the twin themes of traditions and encounters, the text emphasizes both the distinctive patterns of historical development within individual societies and the profound results of interactions between different societies. Exploring the historical record of cross-cultural interactions and exchanges, Traditions and Encounters places the world of contemporary globalization in historical context. The book helps students understand the world's major societies and shows how the interactions of these societies affect history throughout the world. The authors tell a coherent and digestible story of the past that is not weighed down by excessive detail, so instructors are able to incorporate additional readings. This edition provides an updated map program as well as the latest scholarship. It also moves Primary Source Investigator online, improving access for students to work with primary sources.

Traditions & Encounters offers an inclusive vision of the global past—one that is meaningful and appropriate for the interdependent world of contemporary times. Given the diversity of human societies, gathering and organizing the sheer mass of information in a meaningful way is a daunting challenge for any world history survey course. The seven-part chronological organization enables students to understand the development of the world through time, while also exploring broader, big-picture thematic issues in world history. Through new and revised chapter-level and part-level features, the hallmark twin themes of traditions and encounters emerge in greater clarity than ever before in this sixth edition. As a result, students have resources that enable them to move beyond the facts of history and examine the past critically, analyze causes and effects, and recognize similarities and differences across world regions and time periods. By digging deeper into the implications of world history’s stories—not just the who, the what, and the where, but also the why and the how—students can make sense of the human past. Connect is the only integrated learning system that empowers students by continuously adapting to deliver precisely what they need, when they need it, and how they need it, so that your class time is more engaging and effective.

Places of Encounter provides a place-based approach to world history, focusing on specific locations at critical moments when human history was transformed as a result of encounters—physical, political, cultural, intellectual, and religious. Original, contributed essays by leading academics in the field explore places from Hadar to Xi'an, Salvador to New York, and numerous other locations that have produced historical shockwaves and significant global impact throughout history. With a chronologically organized table of contents, each chapter dissects a particular moment in history, with personal commentary from each contributor, a narrative of the location's historical significance at the time, and a section on significant global connections. Primary sources and discussion questions at the end of each chapter allow students a view into the lives of individuals of the time. Students will experience the narrative of historic individuals as well as modern scholars looking back over documentation to offer their own views of the past, providing students with the perfect opportunity to see how scholars form their own views about history. This text can be purchased as two volumes, providing a breadth of information for survey courses in world history.

This innovative book examines cross-cultural encounters before 1492, focusing in particular on the major cross-cultural influences that transformed Asia and Europe during this period: the ancient silk roads that linked China with the Roman Empire, the spread of the world religions, and theMongol Empire of the thirteenth century. The author's goal throughout the work is to examine the conditions--political, social, economic, or cultural--that enable one culture to influence, mix with, or suppress another. On the basis of its global analysis, the book identifies several distinctivepattern of conversion, conflict, and compromise that emerged from cross-cultural encounters. In doing so, it elucidates that larger historical context of encounters between Europeans and other peoples in modern times. _Old World Encounters_ is ideal for students of world geography, religion, andcivilizations.