What is Global History?

The challenge of teaching global history is in its dizzying breadth. Out of all the regions of the world and 6,000-ish years of human history, how does one choose what to teach in the span of a year? For a start, it helps to dispose of the idea that world history is having knowledge of all the histories of all the countries of the world, which would be an overwhelming goal indeed. Rather than thinking geographically, it can be more helpful to think topically and/or thematically.

Resources:

Much of my thinking on this is informed by Dr. Antoinette Burton’s A Primer for Teaching World Historywhich also includes a trove of resources for teaching gender history, and by the AP World History course description.

Thinking Topically

A world history course might teach the history of events, processes, and ideologies that are global. These topics focus on connection and interaction between regions Topics that fall into this category might include the causes and impacts of major forced and unforced migratory patterns; the spread of religious, cultural, and political ideologies that have had global reach; global commodity chains and trade patterns; colonization; and, of course, global conflicts. The danger of such an approach is that these patterns can feel abstract to students, so I favor grounding these global patterns in local contexts. For example, what does 18th century European liberalism look like in 19th century Argentina? As well as being more of a ground-up approach, which allows students to hear from more subaltern voices, this approach also allows students to practice primary text analysis.

Thinking Thematically

Another way to conceptualize a world history course is to think thematically and comparatively. I think of this as being a more anthropological approach in some ways, because the themes are experiences and categories that all human beings share. Understandings of gender, race, and class change much more slowly than trade patterns or war, and until recently, have been generally more resistant to global influence. But the value of studying disconnection and variation is in the way such study denaturalizes categories like gender, complicating what students think of as static and unchanging, and providing “models and counter-models for political, social, economic and cultural systems,” as Dr. Burton notes.

This two-pronged schema is only meant to act as a heuristic, and we’re still a long way from day-to-day lesson plans, but defining the stuff of global history is an important step. This definition of global history anchors and circumscribes the next round of choices a teacher of global history must make: exactly which global topics and themes should be covered?