research articles on world history

World History

The Thrills of Rediscovering Ancient Greece While Touring Modern Athens

The Mediterranean capital city savors its connections to antiquity—while reappraising its past

April/May 2024

Untold Stories of American History

Eight Secret Societies You Probably Haven't Heard Of

Many of these selective clubs peaked in popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries

Updated: March 20, 2024 | Originally Published: March 7, 2016

This Russian Noblewoman, Beloved by Catherine the Great and Benjamin Franklin, Embodied the Age of Enlightenment

Princess Dashkova led research institutes, wrote plays and music, and embarked on a Grand Tour of 18th-century Europe

March 12, 2024

The Moroccan Sultan Who Protected His Country's Jews During World War II

Mohammed V defied the collaborationist Vichy regime, saving Morocco's 250,000 Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps

March 8, 2024

Russian Revolution

What Really Happened During the Murder of Rasputin, Russia's 'Mad Monk'?

Aristocrats plotted to kill the Siberian peasant, who wielded undue influence over Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. But the conspiracy backfired, hastening the coming Russian Revolution

Updated: March 4, 2024 | Originally Published: December 27, 2016

Based on a True Story

The Real History Behind FX's 'Shogun'

A new adaptation offers a fresh take on James Clavell's 1975 novel, which fictionalizes the stories of English sailor William Adams, shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu and Japanese noblewoman Hosokawa Gracia

February 27, 2024

Recovering the Lost Aviators of World War II

Inside the search for a plane shot down over the Pacific—and the new effort to bring its fallen heroes home

Millennia After Leonidas Made His Last Stand at Thermopylae, a Ragtag Band of Saboteurs Thwarted the Axis Powers in the Same Narrow Pass

A new book chronicles the 16-plus battles that took place in the Greek pass between the ancient era and World War II

February 5, 2024

Discover the Beasts of Switzerland’s Lötschental Valley

During Carnival, villagers wearing wooden masks and dressing like fearsome “tschäggättä” terrorize the streets

January 30, 2024

Why Descendants of Holocaust Survivors Are Replicating Auschwitz Tattoos

Those who choose to put the numbers on their bodies hope the act will spark conversation about the Holocaust and pay tribute to loved ones who survived

January 25, 2024

The Couple Who Fell in Love in a Nazi Death Camp

A new book chronicles the unlikely connection between Helen Spitzer and David Wisnia, both of whom survived Auschwitz

January 22, 2024

History of Now

As Empires Clashed During World War I, a Global Media Industry Brought the Conflict's Horrors to the Public

An exhibition at LACMA traces the roots of modern media to the Great War, when propaganda mobilized the masses, and questions whether the brutal truths of the battlefield can ever really be communicated

January 18, 2024

How Archaeologists Are Unearthing the Secrets of the Bahamas' First Inhabitants

Spanish colonizers enslaved the Lucayans, putting an end to their lineage by 1530

January 11, 2024

The Real History Behind 'The Zone of Interest' and Rudolf Höss

Jonathan Glazer's new film uses the Auschwitz commandant and his family as a vehicle for examining humans' capacity for evil

January 4, 2024

The American Soldier Whose Fear of Fighting in Vietnam Led Him to Defect to North Korea. He Stayed There for 40 Years

During his time in the repressive country, Charles Robert Jenkins married a Japanese abductee, taught English at a school and appeared in propaganda films

Seven Trailblazing Latina Journalists Anchor a New Museum Exhibition

Covering war, hosting presidential debates and conducting uncomfortable interviews, these women speak truths to their community

December 27, 2023

117 Fascinating Finds Revealed in 2023

The year's most exciting discoveries included a stolen Vincent van Gogh painting, a hidden medieval crypt and a gold-covered mummy

December 26, 2023

How 'Schindler's List' Transformed Americans' Understanding of the Holocaust

The 1993 film also inspired its director, Steven Spielberg, to establish a foundation that preserves survivors' stories

December 14, 2023

A New Encyclopedia Explores Europe's Smelly History

Odeuropa is an online database of scents from 16th- to early 20th-century Europe culled from historical literature and art

December 12, 2023

Ukraine Planned an Ambitious Memorial at the Site of a Holocaust Massacre. Then War Came to Kyiv

The Nazis and Soviets sought to erase the mass killing of 33,000 Jews at Babyn Yar, but a new effort seeks to remember the dead even as Russia attacks

December 2023

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University of Hawai'i Press

Journal of World History

Editor: Matthew P. Romaniello, Weber State University

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The Journal of World History publishes research into historical questions requiring the investigation of evidence on a global, comparative, cross-cultural, or transnational scale. It is devoted to the study of phenomena that transcend the boundaries of single states, regions, or cultures, such as large-scale population movements, long-distance trade, cross-cultural technology transfers, and the transnational spread of ideas. Individual subscription is by membership in the World History Association.

Sponsored by the World History Association  and the Department of History , College of Arts, Languages & Letters, University of Hawai‘i

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Book series:  Perspectives on the Global Past

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Editorial Board

Matthew P. Romaniello , Weber State University

Editorial Assistant

R.L. Hughes , University of Hawai‘i

Alison Bashford , University of New South Wales

Roger B. Beck, Eastern Illinois University, Emeritus

Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Li Chen, University of Toronto

Prasenjit Duara, Duke University

Ross Dunn, San Diego State University, Emeritus

Sarah Easterby-Smith, St. Andrews University

Felicia Gottman, Northumbria University

Lee Seung-Joon, National University of Singapore

Paula Michaels, Monash University

Laura Mitchell, University of California, Irvine

Ruth Mostern, University of Pittsburgh

Benjamin Reilly, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar

Giorgio Riello, European Institute in Florence

Leila Rupp, University of California, Santa Barbara

Lise Sedrez, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janiero

Glenda Sluga, University of Sydney

Eric Tagliacozzo, Cornell University

Kerry Ward, Rice University

Merry Wiesner-Hanks, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Ali Yaycioglu, Stanford University

• Recent Articles

Colonial City, Global Entanglements: Intra-and Trans-Imperial Networks in George Town, 1786–1937 Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

Inter-Imperial Entanglement: The British Claim to Portuguese Delagoa Bay in the Nineteenth Century Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

Between World-Imagining and World-Making: Politics of Fin-de-Siècle Universalism and Transimperial Indo-U.S. Brotherhood Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

Britain’s Atomic Energy Strategy toward Japan: The Anglo-American “Special Relationship,” 1945–1959 Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

The Value and Prospect of the Needham Question: A Historiographical Reflection and Elaboration Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

Moving Crops and the Scales of History by Francesca Bray, et al. (review) Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World by Cindy Ermus (review) Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

Many Black Women of this Fortress: Graça, Mónica, and Adwoa, Three Enslaved Women of Portugal’s African Empire by Kwasi Konadu (review) Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

Empire, Kinship and Violence: Family Histories, Indigenous Rights and the Making of Settler Colonialism, 1770–1842 by Elizabeth Elbourne (review) Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples by Mohamed Adhikari (review) Posted on Thursday February 29, 2024

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The Journal of World History publishes research into historical questions requiring the investigation of evidence on a global, comparative, cross-cultural, or transnational scale. Manuscripts must be submitted electronically via the new web portal ( jwh.msubmit.net ); emailed and mailed article submissions are no longer accepted. Please create an account at this web portal, login, and follow instructions.

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Articles appearing in Journal of World History are indexed and/or abstracted in:

Book Review Index

Canada in Context, 03/2000-

Clarivate Analytics– Arts & Humanities Citation Index Current Contents Web of Science

De Gruyter Saur– Dietrich’s Index Philosophicus IBZ – Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur

EBSCOhost– Academic Search Alumni Edition, 1/1/2001- Academic Search Complete, 1/1/2001- Academic Search Elite, 1/1/2001- Academic Search Premier, 1/1/2001- Academic Search Ultimate, 1/1/2001- Academic Search: Main Edition, 3/1/1992- Advanced Placement Source, 1/1/2001- America: History and Life, 3/1/1990- Current Abstracts, 1/1/2001- Historical Abstracts (Online), 3/1/1963- History Reference Center, 1/1/2001- Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 (H.W. Wilson), 1/1/1965-1/4/1972 Humanities Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 (H.W. Wilson), 1/1/1965-1/4/1972 Humanities International Complete, 1/1/2001- Humanities International Index, 1/1/2001- Humanities Source, 1/1/1965- Humanities Source Ultimate, 1/1/1965- Library & Information Science Source, 1/2/1966-1/2/1966 MainFile, 3/1/1992- MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association) Political Science Complete, 3/1/1992- Russian Academy of Sciences Bibliographies Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1983 (H.W. Wilson), 1965/01-1972/12 SocINDEX, 1/1/1993- SocINDEX with Full Text, 1/1/1993- Sociological Collection, 1/1/2001- TOC Premier (Table of Contents), 1/1/2001-

Elsevier BV– GEOBASE Scopus, 1990-

Gale– Academic OneFile, 03/2000- Advanced Placement Global History Collection, 03/2000- Book Review Index Plus Diversity Studies Collection, 03/2000- Educator’s Reference Complete, 03/2000- Expanded Academic ASAP, 03/2000- General OneFile, 03/2000- General Reference Center, 03/2000- General Reference Center Gold, 03/2000- General Reference Centre International, 3/2000- InfoTrac Custom, 3/2000- InfoTrac Student Edition, 03/2000- MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association) Student Resources in Context, 03/2000- US History in Context, 03/2000- World History Collection, 03/2000 – World History in Context, 03/2000- World Scholar: Latin America & the Caribbean, 3/2000-

OCLC– ArticleFirst, vol.11, no.1, 2000-vol.22, no.4, 2011 Electronic Collections Online, vol.11, no.1, 2000-vol.22, no.4, 2011 Sociological Abstracts (Online), Selective

ProQuest– International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, Core Military Database, 4/1/1998- MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association) Periodicals Index Online, 4/1/1992-10/1/2000 Professional ProQuest Central, 04/01/1998- ProQuest 5000, 04/01/1998- ProQuest Central, 4/1/1998- Research Library, 04/01/1998- SciTech Premium Collection, 4/1/1998- Social Services Abstracts, Selective Sociological Abstracts (Online), Selective Technology Collection, 4/1/1998- Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, Selective

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Articles on World history

Displaying all articles.

Life on Our Planet: evolution experts review this ‘hugely entertaining’ Netflix docuseries

Tim Rock , University of Bath and Matthew Wills , University of Bath

I’m an educator and grandson of Holocaust survivors, and I see public schools failing to give students the historical knowledge they need to keep our democracy strong

Boaz Dvir , Penn State

What’s a cold war? A historian explains how rivals US and Soviet Union competed off the battlefield

Robert J. McMahon , The Ohio State University

For parents of color, schooling at home can be an act of resistance

Monisha Bajaj , University of San Francisco

Captain Cook ‘discovered’ Australia, and other myths from old school text books

Louise Zarmati , University of Tasmania

I was an expert witness against a teacher who taught students to question the Holocaust

Jennifer Rich , Rowan University

100 years since the WW1 Armistice, Remembrance Day remains a powerful reminder of the cost of war

Romain Fathi , Flinders University

World politics explainer: the Russian revolution

Mark Edele , The University of Melbourne

World politics explainer: the end of Apartheid

David Robinson , Edith Cowan University

World politics explainer: Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power

James Laurenceson , University of Technology Sydney

World politics explainer: The twin-tower bombings (9/11)

Barbara Keys , The University of Melbourne

World politics explainer: The fall of the Berlin Wall

Andrew Bonnell , The University of Queensland

World politics explainer: the Iranian Revolution

Mehmet Ozalp , Charles Sturt University

World politics explainer: The Holocaust

Daniella Doron , Monash University

World politics explainer: Pinochet’s Chile

Peter Read , Australian National University

World politics explainer: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Amy Maguire , University of Newcastle

World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)

5 things to know about North and South Korea

Ji-Young Lee , American University School of International Service

Is a unified Korea possible?

The concept of ‘Western civilisation’ is past its use-by date in university humanities departments

Catharine Coleborne , University of Newcastle

Related Topics

• Global perspectives
• K-12 education
• Nuclear weapons
• world politics explainer

Top contributors

Senior Lecturer, History, Australian National University

Associate Professor of International Relations, American University School of International Service

Hansen Professor in History, Deputy Dean, The University of Melbourne

Associate Professor in Human Rights and International Law, University of Newcastle

Associate Professor of US and International History, The University of Melbourne

Associate Professor of Journalism, Penn State

Associate Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and Executive Member of Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University

Professor of History, School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle

Associate Professor of Sociology, Rowan University

Associate Professor of History, The University of Queensland

Professor of History, Australian National University

Senior lecturer, Monash University

Lecturer of History, Edith Cowan University

Professor of International and Multicultural Education, University of San Francisco

Professor of History, The Ohio State University

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Publications

The WHA has several outlets for publication, including the  Journal of World History,  the  World History Bulletin, and the WHA -affiliated publications World History Connected and Middle Ground.

Journal of World History

Founded by Jerry Bentley and now in its 30th year, The Journal of World History   publishes research into historical questions across any time period requiring the investigation of evidence on a global, comparative, cross-cultural, or transnational scale. It is devoted to the study of phenomena that transcend the boundaries of single states, regions, or cultures, such as large-scale population movements, long-distance trade, cross-cultural technology transfers, and the global spread of ideas. It engages with the historiographical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to world history, conceived broadly. Along with individual articles based on original research, JWH publishes state of the field pieces, thematic special issues, considerations of pedagogy, topical special forums, and book reviews.

The Journal of World History is published by the University of Hawai‘i Press, and manuscripts should be submitted through the journal’s website: https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/product/jwh/ . The book review office, under the direction of JWH’s editor Matthew Romaniello, is at Weber State University. Books appropriate for JWH to review should be sent to:

Dr. Matthew Romaniello Journal of World History Book Reviews Department of History 1299 Edvalson St. Dept 1205 Ogden, Utah 84408-1205

World History Bulletin

The World History Bulletin is a biannual publication of the World History Association.  Featuring short-form essays (roughly 1,500–3,000 words in length), the Bulletin is a forum devoted to raising interesting questions, stimulating lively debate, and engaging with all aspects of world historical scholarship including pedagogy, research, and theory. Topics may include any period or geographic focus in history.  Pedagogical materials such as syllabi or assignments are welcome, as are reviews of books or other scholarly works.

Submissions for the World History Bulletin should be in Microsoft Word or similar electronic format, and should follow the style guidelines of the  Journal of World History described above. Please address any submissions or inquiries to Editor-in-Chief Joseph Snyder < [email protected] >.  Historians and disciplinarily allied scholars interested in guest-editing a selection of essays on a particular theme are strongly encouraged to contact the editor.

The Fall 2022 World History Bulletin (WHB) will be entitled “Comics and Graphic Novels in the World History Classroom”.  This issue is being guest edited by WHA Vice President, Trevor Getz.  Please email the Editor at [email protected] .  Interested in submitting?  View our style guide here: WHB Style Sheet .

Back issues of the World History Bulletin are available for download.

WHB , see the advertising rate sheet ( PDF ) . -->

World History Connected

World History Connected ,  a journal of world history teaching, gladly welcomes submissions including (a) essays on the state of the field; (b) topical overviews which cross regional boundaries to examine such issues as gender, technology, demography, social structure, or political legitimacy; (c) scholarship which rigorously engages global themes; (d) evaluation of curriculum; and (e) “point–counterpoint” essays presenting two or more perspectives on contentious issues. We are also looking for scholars to review recently published titles in the field of world history.

All submissions are double-blind peer reviewed. To submit an article, please send an abstract or completed essay to editor Marc Jason Gilbert <[email protected]> . For matters of style and format, please follow the guidelines outlined in the  style sheet . Deadlines are as follows: 15 July for the fall issue, 15 November for the winter, and 15 March for the spring.

Middle Ground Journal

The Middle Ground Journal: World History and Global Studies (ISSN: 2155-1103) is an open-access, non-profit, peer-reviewed academic journal for everyone with an interest in world history, including students. In particular, the journal, which is edited by members of the Midwest World History Association , seeks to serve as the shared, common space between world history in the K–12 institutions and world history in the colleges and universities.  Middle Ground  invites submissions of articles and essays as well as nonfiction, fiction, film, and television reviews. It also publishes reviews of textbooks and reflective presentations of teaching materials. Submissions will be accepted on a continual basis. Please see the journal’s site for the submission guidelines. All enquiries should be directed to the chief editor, Professor Jeanne Grant <[email protected]> .

H-WORLD is the primary listserv for the world history community and fosters discussion and news items of interest to the community. To post to H-WORLD, please send your information to editor Christoph Strobel <[email protected]> .

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About the journal

Published since 1923,  Historical Research , flagship publication of the  Institute of Historical Research , is a leading generalist history journal, covering the global history of the early middle ages to the twenty-first century...

Classic articles from the recent archives

The new virtual issue from Historical Research shines a light on some of the classic articles from the journal’s recent archive. It features some of the most read and most cited articles from the journal’s archives and covers a wide range of topics of perennial interest to both historians and to a wider readership.

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Historians and the Public(s)

World History and the Public

The National Standards Debate

Craig A. Lockard | May 1, 2000

Each generation must write its own history, not because past histories are untrue but because in a rapidly changing world new questions arise and new answers are needed. —L. S. Stavrianos 1

The debate over national world history standards that raged for several years confirms that the presentation of history is inherently controversial, and often involves a dialogue between historians and the public. When published in 1994 the standards generated a major discussion well beyond the confines of the campuses. 2 It involved politicians (some of whom boasted they had never held a passport), educators, talk show hosts, newspaper columnists, and other interested parties. Rarely has a history project elicited such national furor. 3 The sharp differences of opinion about what should be emphasized in teaching history underscores many of the inherent issues in the complex relationship between historians and the society at large over what students (the future informed citizenry) should learn from history courses, and who will make the decisions about that content.

The history canon always changes with the times. Often these changes are related to the prevailing political climate. This included the shift to Western civilization courses in U.S. universities after World War I, as Americans became more involved in European affairs. 4 These survey courses dominated American colleges for half a century, playing a formative role in educating generations of citizens. Indeed, studying Western civilization both reflected and shaped the world view and political power of a United States rising to global leadership, in which Americans tended to see themselves as the inheritors of Western history and the protectors of global democracy. As a prominent Western civilization text (tellingly titled The Mainstream of Civilization ) put it, "there is unbroken continuity between the civilization of the Greeks and the Romans and that of the modern West." 5

The ideas that shaped the Western civilization survey course began to be seriously challenged in the 1960s and 1970s, when the notion of shared American values was shattered by domestic turbulence and unpopular foreign wars. Many historians concluded that the old Western civilization course was outdated and that its approach gave students a misleading view of history reflecting only American orientations. These developments did not establish a new consensus but did enlarge the debate. The recent trends have been toward expansion and inclusiveness of subject matter and voices, fostering many new fields, including world history. These constituted something of a "paradigm shift" in historiography that reflected the rapid changes of the post–World War II years as well as vastly increased understanding and hence reassessment of Asian, Islamic, African, and Western hemisphere history.

Many public officials and educators shared the view that an outward-thrusting, globally involved, increasingly diverse nation needed a broader understanding of history and of the world. Federally funded area studies centers and programs proliferated, while returned Peace Corps volunteers became teachers and public officials. The long-established Eurocentric history seemed outmoded in a world where over half the population lives in Eastern and Southern Asia, and whose major patterns include Asian economic revival, global warming, an increasingly transnational economy, and the World Wide Web.

Nonetheless, history and its study, teaching, and interpretation have always played a complicated role in American life. The past few years has seen extraordinary public attention to concerns such as Smithsonian exhibitions and university general education programs that might, in less electric times, be left to professional historians. The national standards debate confirms George Orwell's argument in his novel, 1984 , that who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past.

Today the debate over the world history "canon" is partly a struggle over who owns history and which version of the past should prevail. It takes place among professional historians as well as between historians and the public. Some of the most vocal critics of the world history standards, and of replacing or supplementing Western civilization courses with world history, have not been professional historians or authors of scholarly books in the field but "public" or politically active intellectuals, often based in right-wing think tanks or the mass media. For the most part they finished college before the rapid increase in knowledge of and scholarly interest in non-Western histories. Many were educated in an era when Java meant a caffeinated beverage rather than an island with a 1,500-year-old civilization, when the history of Africa was contemptuously dismissed by a famous Oxford don as "the unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe." 6

Conservatives imbued with this mind-set have seen the national standards issue as a way of waging "cultural war" against interpretations of history that recognize the achievements of non-Western cultures. Some influential historians also support this view; for instance, David Landes, the most prominent current exponent of Eurocentric history, whose recent work mostly treats non-Western civilizations with contempt, calls his critics "Europhobes" who value "feeling over knowing" and who mistakenly promote a globalist and multiculturalist agenda. 7

Two of the most vocal nonacademic critics, Lynne Cheney and William Bennett, zealously promoted (as heads of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Department of Education, respectively, in the 1980s) the study of the Western tradition while waging war against world history and international studies programs. Bennett believes that education should focus on the Western cultural and intellectual heritage as the basis for modern American society and values. Responding to such views, the U.S. Senate voted 99 to 1 to reject the national standards, and require that any recipients of federal money "should have a decent respect for the contributions of Western civilization." 8 The resolution had no legal force but the ultimate effect on history education was chilling nonetheless.

The national world history standards are actually more Eurocentric than some college texts. Intended only as guidelines, they constitute a middle-of-the-road committee product very much in keeping with the broad mainstream of the world history field over the past several decades. The large number of people involved, drawn from all levels of education, insured a reasonably diverse set of ideas. But the public opposition forced a revision of the standards that eliminated, modified, or embellished some of the material. 9 While the revisions satisfied some critics, the uproar made most school districts and states afraid to adopt such controversial standards.

The public debate about teaching world history mirrored differences of opinion among historians and academic leaders about what history undergraduates should learn. Many would teach either Western civilization or world history with a special emphasis on western Europe and the pre-Greek Middle East but with some attention to China, India, and Islam. Advocates of Europe-centered courses reason that American students must understand the dominant cultural and intellectual underpinnings of the United States before they can begin to grasp other traditions.

On the other side have been those advocating a broader global perspective. 10 They contend that not only do American students live in an increasingly interdependent world, but that they also live in a multicultural nation whose inhabitants come from many parts of the globe. American society developed as a creative mixture of influences from various European, African, Latin American, Asian, and indigenous peoples. Today immigrants are rapidly transforming many cities into hubs of world culture and commerce while bringing Latin American grocery stores, Southeast Asian restaurants, Japanese factories, Caribbean music, and African art galleries into once provincial heartland towns. Hence a grounding in world history also helps students better understand the United States.

World history takes the globe rather than Europe as the field of interaction with a more balanced treatment of the various civilizations and societies. Most world historians argue that the "mainstream of civilization" for several millennia, the Afro-Eurasian historical zone, encompassed most of the lands between Morocco and Japan, with China, India, and the Middle East as important cores. Furthermore, there were remarkable developments in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa long before 1492. With a broader perspective they describe not a unique, hermetically sealed Western civilization but rather a merging of the contributions of numerous cultures, such as the ideas, science, mathematics, and technology developed in Asia that later dispersed to Europe. The argument for a truly global history has become urgent as Americans require increased knowledge of the world beyond national borders. Debates about the history curriculum and the role of world history take place on the campus, in state education offices, and within professional organizations. An Advanced Placement world history examination will soon be available. Many courses have been reshaped or introduced as a result of these discussions. After nearly 30 years of college teaching, I believe many students do understand the need for a broader view; often they deliberately choose world history courses. Such classes have grown steadily on college campuses due to both student interest and changing secondary school curriculums. While some students complain there is too much material to learn, many are grateful for the comprehensive coverage, which they see as helping prepare them for the globalized world they must encounter after graduation. As part of the public, students are clearly voting with their feet.

A broad vision, such as that contained in the national standards, is precisely what our students and future teachers need to comprehend a global village where the "sun never sets on" churches, McDonald's, CNN, Reader's Digest , Hard Rock Cafes, symphony orchestras, and Hollywood films but also mosques, Toyotas, Mexican and Brazilian soap operas, Chinese restaurants, Indonesian batik arts, and African-derived rhythms. Hopefully we can produce students comfortable in, and able to navigate confidently through, a diverse world filled with multiple histories and cultural backgrounds.

But in a nation where culture wars and ideological struggles rage, academic decisions are subject to public scrutiny and debate. Political considerations have undermined the national standards. My job as a college history teacher would be made considerably easier if all of my students came in with some of the knowledge and skills promoted by this project. Clearly world historians in both secondary and higher education must try harder to sell this approach to the general public, including political leaders and education officials. Older perspectives remain influential, not least in many university history departments. Perhaps the growing number of national and state conferences and workshops on world history could invite more participation by interested noneducators. The modest dialogue with area studies scholars should also be expanded, and possibly extended to ethnic studies as well. But as globalization increases, the public discussion of world history in school and college curriculums will continue.

1. Lifelines from Our Past: A New World History (New York: Pantheon, 1989), 13.

2. National Standards for World History: Exploring Paths to the Present (Los Angeles; National Center for History in Schools, University of California at Los Angeles, 1994).

3. For a first hand view of the controversy by participants, see Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York: Knopf, 1997).

4. For an overview, see Gilbert Allardyce, "The Rise and Fall of the Western Civilization Course," American Historical Review , 87/3 (June, 1982), 695-725.

5. Joseph Strayer, et al., The Mainstream of Civilization (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1969), pp. xx-xxi.

6. Hugh Trevor-Roper, quoted in Philip Curtin, "African History," in Michael Kammen, ed., The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1980), p. 113.

7. See his The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are Rich and Some Are Poor (New York: Norton, 1998), especially 513–14.

8. The Congressional Record , January 18, 1995.

9. National Standards for History , Basic ed. (Los Angeles: National Center for History in Schools, University of California at Los Angeles, 1996).

10. For a survey of the rise of world history, see Gilbert Allardyce, "Toward World History: American Historians and the Coming of the World History Course," Journal of World History 1:1 (spring 1990), 23–77; Ross Dunn, ed., The New World History (New York: Bedford, 1999); Craig A. Lockard, "The Contributions of Philip Curtin and the 'Wisconsin School' to the Study and Promotion of Comparative World History," Journal of Third World Studies , 11:1 (spring 1994), 180–223. On the intellectual underpinnings see Jerry H. Bentley, Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1996); Craig Lockard, "World History," in Kelly Boyd, ed., Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999), 1330–35; Philip Pomper, et al., eds., World History: Ideologies, Structures, and Identities (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998).

Craig A. Lockard is Ben and Joyce Rosenberg Professor of History in the Social Change and Development Department at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay. He is the author of several books and many articles on world, comparative, and Southeast Asian history. He helped found the World History Association and served as the organization's first elected secretary.

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Article contents

Africa in the world: history and historiography.

• Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia Department of History, Montclair State University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.296
• Published online: 20 November 2018

Since antiquity and through the modern era African societies maintained contacts with peoples in Europe, the Near and Far East, and the Americas. Among other things, African peoples developed local forms of Christianity and Islam, contributed large amounts of gold to European medieval economies, and exported millions of slaves through the Sahara, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Despite this, by the 19th century historians and philosophers of history thought Africa was a continent without major civilizations, whose peoples passively rested at the margins of history. These ideas persisted into the 20th century when historians undertook the challenge of writing histories that explained how communities around the world were connected to one another. In their early iterations, however, these “world narratives” were little more than histories of the Western world; Africa continued to be largely absent from these stories. After World War II, increasing interest in the history of African societies and a more generalized concern with the study of communities that were both mis- and under-represented by historical scholarship called for a revision of the goals and methods of world historians. Among the most important critiques were those from Afrocentric, African American, and Africanist scholars. Afrocentric writers argued that Africa had in fact developed an important civilization in the form of Egypt and that Egypt was the foundation of the classical world. African American and Africanist writers highlighted the contributions that peoples of African descent had made to the world economy and many cultures around the globe. Africanists also questioned whether world historical narratives, which meaningfully accounted for the richness and complexity of African experiences, could be achieved in the form of a single universal narrative. Instead, historians have suggested and produced new frameworks that could best explain the many ways in which Africa has been part of the world and its history.

• African history
• Africanist history
• historiography
• world history
• globalization

World History as the History of Civilizations

In 1981 , University of Chicago historian William H. McNeill delivered an impassioned defense of his vision for world history. 1 At the time McNeill stated:

The pursuit of world history, therefore, conforms to the canons of our profession as far as I can see, and does so just as rigorously as history on any other scale. What is different is the conceptual frame and the geographic and temporal scope of the patterns one seeks to discern. In other respects, the method is identical; the validation the same; and the truthfulness of the result neither greater nor less than what is attainable on other scales of history. 2

McNeill’s optimism as to the capacity of historical research to deliver a new form of ecumenical narrative underestimated the momentous changes that the very “canons” of the profession had undergone since the end of World War II. At the time, this miscalculation was all the more apparent to historians of Africa who, since the 1950s, had succeeded in establishing their own field as an accepted area of historical research. Scholars interested in the study of the African past have offered critiques and engaged in debates about the field of world history in general and about the extent and nature of Africa’s global relations. This engagement has come from different approaches and has taken different forms. Ultimately, these exchanges have resulted in vigorous discussions from which both African and World historical studies have emerged invigorated.

In his 2003 survey of the field of world history Patrick Manning conceded that there is no precise definition of what world history is; rather, he generally described it as “the study of past connections in the human community.” 3 Needless to say, such description hinges largely on what, at any given moment in time, are construed as “connections” and, possibly more importantly, what is understood as constituting “the human community.” The present survey will describe how scholars dedicated to the study of the African past have argued for African societies to be accepted as part of the human community and have debated about the nature and extent of Africa’s relationships with other regions of the world.

African connections to other world regions date back to the very origins of the human species, and attempts to write histories of the “known world” are as old as history itself. Classical writers such as Herodotus and Thucydides sought to write the histories of what they considered the “known world.” Information about Africa was largely limited to the northern parts of the continent that bordered the Mediterranean, particularly Egypt and the Maghrib. Despite their limited knowledge, classical writers thought of Africa as an important component of the world they inhabited. From their writings, we learn about Egypt, the rise and fall of Carthage, Roman North Africa, the spread of Christianity, and the later Vandal and Islamic conquests. Further expansion of Islam into North, East, and West Africa was documented by Arabic chronicles and travel accounts such as those of Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun or the Tarikh of Kalifa b. Khayyat . Among other things, these writers described the thriving trade that ran through the Sahara Desert and the key role that African gold played in the development of European economies during the medieval period. During the era of European exploration, mariners and traders established commercial contacts with societies along the west and east coasts of Africa. This was soon followed by the colonization of the Americas and the beginning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which resulted in the forced migration of millions of Africans and largely dominated European interactions with Africa until its abolition in the 19th century . Ironically, this long process of violent exchange resulted in the consolidation of ideas about Africa that emphasized the continent’s isolation and sociocultural backwardness, many of which were useful in the justification of European conquest and colonization of the African continent in the 20th century . 4

During the 19th century , the writing of history underwent a process that ultimately established its credentials as a discipline focused on the scientific exploration of the human experience. Writers of history became professional historians that were expected to receive training and whose work had to conform to established canons of practice. These gave preeminence to the careful and dispassionate examination of documentary evidence. In addition, the processes of nation-building that swept through Europe at the time gave new vigor and relevance to histories that explained the political processes by which individual states were formed. Thus, the empirical examination of primary documents became the central methodological tenet of the professional study of history and the nation state its preferred object of study. These changes allowed little room for the study of broad historical processes, which came to be of interest to scholars focused on speculative philosophies of history, and the ways in which abstract universal forces affected the historical process.

A prime example of this approach can be found in Georg W. F. Hegel’s Lectures in the Philosophy of History or Lectures in the Philosophy of World History . The lectures were delivered in 1822 , 1828 , and 1830 and later published in 1837 . Here Hegel states that Africa

is no historical part of the World, it has no movement or development to exhibit. Historical movements in it- that is in the northern part- belong to the Atlantic or European World. Carthage displayed there an important transitionary phase of civilization; but, as a Phoenician colony, it belongs to Asia. Egypt will be considered in reference to the passage of the human mind from its Eastern to its Western phase, but it does not belong to the African Spirit. What we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, Underdeveloped spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which have to be presented here only as on the threshold of the World’s History. 5

Hegel was not alone in holding these views about Africa’s place in world history. In 1874 William Swinton published Outlines of the World’s History , where he stated that:

Viewing history as confined to the series of leading civilized nations, we observe that it has to do with but one grand division of the human family, namely, with the Caucasian, or white race. . . . Thus we see that history proper concerns itself with but one highly developed type of mankind; for though the great bulk of the population of the globe has, during the whole recorded period, belonged, and does still belong, to other types of mankind, yet the Caucasians form the only truly historical race. . . . Of the peoples outside of the Caucasian race that have made some figure of civilization, the Chinese, Mexicans, and Peruvians stand alone. But though these races rose considerably above the savage state, their civilization was stationary, and they had no marked influence on the general current of the world’s progress. 6

These approaches were rooted in the concept of “civilizations” as the key objects of historical development. Civilizations were broadly defined as cultural or racial communities that shared a historical experience and had shown significant levels of cultural, political, and economic success. This level of achievement was seen as the work of abstract historical forces that allowed history to progress toward a more “civilized” state. While European or Western civilization was seen as the most advanced in this process, Africa was considered to be absent or at best marginal to this historical evolution.

The tumultuous events that shook Europe during the first half of the 20th century made historians less confident about the inevitable and progressive nature of history. Instead, some started to focus their attention on how societies and civilizations moved between periods of growth and decline. For example, in 1919 Oswald Spengler published The Decline of the West , and between 1931 and 1964 Arnold Toynbee authored a twelve-volume work entitled A Study of History . Both authors saw civilizations as distinct and independent entities and believed that the study of history consisted in understanding the principles and patterns that explained the progress and decline of civilizations. 7

After two world wars and as colonial empires started to crumble, historians started to question not just the primacy and progressive nature of Western societies but also the tools they had used to describe and understand them. An early and influential movement aimed to address some of these questions came to be known as the Annales school and marked a definitive break with the nation-bound histories of the 19th and first half of the 20th century and with the speculative approaches from philosophers of history. The group took its name from the French journal Annales: Economies. Societes. Civilisations . Solely by its name the journal announced an approach that transcended the boundaries of the traditional historical discipline and the nation state. Among its many innovations, the Annales school opened the doors to the use of new sources and the methods of various social sciences. This allowed the group to explore new areas of historical experience that went distinctly beyond political history and the narrow confines of the nation state. Annalistes advocated for the study of society as a whole, and in doing so they advanced the development of fields such as social, economic, and cultural history. But the Annales group introduced methodological changes that were also largely motivated by a shift in their understanding of the work of the historian. They strongly believed, for instance, in the idea of writing a history that could respond to the needs of the 20th century and reflect the experiences of ordinary peoples. This marked a shift in the way historians perceived their work and gradually increased their focus on the study of underrepresented communities. 8

Many of the goals of the Annales group are exemplified in the work of French historian Fernand Braudel. He is credited for coining the term histoire totale , by which he meant a history that could incorporate many aspects and layers of human experience. Braudel is also known for seeking to redefine historical space and time and produce more comprehensive narratives of world history in works such as Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century and A History of Civilizations . 9 The notion of “civilization” reappears as the key organizing principle in these works. In Braudel’s usage the term is never clearly defined, although it is clear that civilizations were characterized by certain social and political features such as urbanism and centralized and hierarchical social and political systems. 10

The study of world history focused on the concept of civilizations was alive and well across the Atlantic. In 1963 , William McNeill published The Rise of the West . McNeill partially adopted Toynbee’s notion of civilization as a distinct historical entity but focused less on discerning abstract patterns of development and more on examining how different societies interacted and affected one another. In his view, a unified civilized world emerged from the ancient Middle East and expanded largely through the introduction and diffusion of agriculture throughout a Eurasian world. 11

Neither Braudel nor McNeill, however, attempted to transcend the Eurocentric focus and assumptions inherent in the notion of civilization. Both authors focused on the Western world as the center of world historical development and kept Africa as a marginal player in this process. Often their works reproduced some of the misconceptions and prejudices that were implied in Hegel’s thought. For instance, Braudel continued to differentiate Africa north and south of the Sahara and Muslim from Non-Muslim Africa in ways that preserve the notion that the spread of civilization came to Africa from the north and more generally from the outside, thus preserving the ideas of Africa’s historical isolation and passivity. McNeill, on his part, sees Africa at the margins of what he describes as the civilized world. In his view, even the development of Africa’s most sophisticated societies, such as those that emerged in the Western Sudan (Ghana, Mali, and Songhay) were a function of their contact with the Eurasian world.

Afrocentric and African American Critiques of World History

Since the first half of the 20th century Afrocentric scholars started to articulate their criticism against the prevailing absence of Africa in the writings of world historians. This critique traces its origins to the writings of the Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop and was most persuasive among intellectuals of African descent in the diaspora. At its center lie two of Diop’s central arguments: first that the writing of African history was possible, and second that African civilization, specifically through Egypt, had strongly shaped the development of European culture. 12 Such ideas came to be popularized in works such as Black Athena , where Martin Bernal argued that Greek civilization had African origins. 13 The Afrocentric perspective certainly offers an alternative understanding of Africa’s relationship to the world, but as several critics have pointed out, it does so without a serious engagement with the diversity and complexity of the African experience and offers only a limited challenge to the Eurocentric values it aims to dislodge. 14

Another critique was offered by historians interested in the study of African American history in the United States and the history of slavery. Particularly influential were Carter G. Woodson, who founded the Journal of Negro History in 1916 , and W. E. B Du Bois, who, through several publications, sought to dispel the view that African peoples had played no significant role in the development of humanity. In 1947 , Du Bois published The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part which Africa Has Played in World History . Here he stated that:

Manifestly the present plight of the world is a direct outgrowth of the past, and I have made bold to add to the many books on the subject of our present problems because I believe that certain suppressions in the historical record current in our day will lead to a tragic failure in assessing causes. More particularly, I believe that the habit, long fostered, of forgetting and detracting from the thoughts and acts of the people of Africa, is not only a direct cause of our present plight, but will continue to cause trouble until we face the facts. I shall try not to exaggerate this thread of African history in the World development, but I shall insist equally that it not be ignored. 15

Du Bois’ interpretation attributes much of what he calls the “distorted development” of Europe to the attitudes toward labor that developed during the centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Du Bois largely sees this process as the central thread that has shaped European views and attitudes toward Africa and Africans and has distorted its political, social, and cultural development. 16

Afrocentric and African American critiques were less informed by extensive scholarship on the African past and more on a conviction that Africa and Africans were in fact part of a human community that had affected the development of the world. More importantly, they emerged from a growing interest among historians in the experiences of societies and peoples that had been socially, politically, and economically oppressed and thus had been ignored by traditional scholarship. Afrocentric and African American writers joined a growing number of historians for whom the history of powerful societies and individuals no longer could be seen as the only or even the central story in the larger history of the world.

Africanist Scholarship and World History

During the 1950s and 1960s, as African nations gained independence, the new field of African history became a valid area of historical research. Growing numbers of African, European, and later American historians became involved in the task of researching and writing the history of African societies. Previous generations had deemed this exercise both unnecessary and outright impossible within the boundaries of what was considered sound history. But, as we saw in the case of the Annales school, such boundaries were beginning to expand. New African universities created history departments that were first staffed by European expatriates and later by African historians who had been trained both locally and in European institutions. Both African and non-African historians of this early generation saw the writing of African history not just as a necessary step toward understanding the past of African societies but also as a direct challenge to the Eurocentric and narrow foundations of the historical discipline more generally. 17

In light of these goals, the emergence and growth of the field of African history has played a key role in rethinking the ways in which world history could be written. At its most simple, it made the “known world” bigger and more complex by expanding the availability of serious historical scholarship about regions of the continent that had previously been ignored and made it impossible for world historians to attribute their neglect of Africa to a lack of reliable research. 18 Modern scholarship has established that Africa is humanity’s ancestral home, that African societies were as diverse, complex, and resilient as the environments they colonized, and that such colonization was possible through creativity, ingenuity, and cooperation. Historians have also shown that Africa’s historical evolution did not take place in complete isolation nor was it purely contingent on external influences. In this regard, the African experiences have exhibited profoundly unique features as well as deeply universal ones.

Moreover, Africanist scholarship has also shown that the study of this diverse and complex continent requires the use of new sources and thus the development of new questions, methods, and approaches. The result has been a broad range of interests and perspectives that has affected the ways in which Africanist historians have sought to rethink the relationship between Africa and the world. For instance, in the United States and Europe, the study of Africa came to be organized around the “area studies” model, which allowed for the study of distinct regions using multidisciplinary approaches. During the 1960s and 1970s, programs of African studies proliferated and Africanist historians endeavored to explore how other disciplines could help them interpret new kinds of sources and encourage new questions. Focus on African studies also meant that scholars gave particular importance to perspectives that they thought effectively countered existing narratives about African passivity and irrelevance. This led to greater focus on things like “African agency,” “African voices,” or “African responses.” For Africanists, it was central to argue against many of the assumptions of a Eurocentric historical discipline by documenting and asserting the intrinsic value and richness of the African past and by exploring the unique contours and features of the African experience.

Despite this, many realized that Africa had never been as isolated as traditional historians had assumed. In the United states, for instance, African history came to be seen as a means to understand the history of slavery and the struggle for civil rights that was in full swing during the 1960s. Founders of African studies programs such as Melville Herskovits at Northwestern University and Phillip Curtin at the University of Wisconsin were strong advocates for the study of African history as part of the study of the African diaspora, particularly in the Americas. 19 Philip Curtin sought to insert Africa in world history through groundbreaking studies such as The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census and Cross-Cultural Trade in World History . 20 In addition, he founded the Program on Comparative World History at the University of Wisconsin that grew within the program of African history. Many Africanist historians who were trained in this program have continued to advocate for a more globalized approach to the study of Africa. It is also the case that Africanist historians are often charged with the teaching of world history courses and are thus forced to both become familiar with and reflect on the shortcomings they may see in the materials they are required to teach. This further underlines the fact that, at least in the European and American contexts (where world history is in greater demand), the growing importance of world history in high school and college curricula has forced Africanists to become more engaged in debates about world history. 21

During the 1960s and 1970s social science analysis came to be strongly influenced by the paradigms of modernization theory and underdevelopment. Within those frameworks, historians of Africa sought opportunities to challenge the Eurocentric view on history while defining a new place for Africa in the world. An important critique along these lines was first articulated by the Guyanese historian Walter Rodney in his 1972 book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa . 22 Rodney argued that Africa’s social and economic development had been stunted by the unequal relationship between Europe and African societies. Rodney’s work introduced an important question in African and world historical studies that was soon followed by other historians. Immanuel Wallerstein offered an alternative to the concept of civilization in the notion of “world systems.” The concept generally refers to a trading network around which one sees the development of a particular social, political, and economic system. 23 Wallerstein’s analysis focuses mainly on what he calls the “capitalist world system,” which in his view started to develop after 1500 and came to dominate the world economy. Wallerstein’s work has proven very influential in world historical narratives, prompting the works of Andre Gunder Frank and Janet Abu-Lughod. 24 A central goal of these works has been to describe and explain the development of a capitalist world system that led to the hegemonic rise of industrialized economies in Western Europe and North America while, at the same time, causing the impoverishment and marginalization of regions such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The notions of a center and a periphery are key organizing principles in world-system analysis. In Wallerstein’s work, Africa was incorporated into the capitalist system as part of the periphery and its relationship to the center was one of dependency. The primary processes through which Africa participated in this system were the contribution of labor through the slave trade and later as part of imperial and neocolonial economies. 25 Rodney and Wallerstein wrote about a world history that highlighted the problems of the present time and centered on a world economic system characterized by growing inequality. Both were primarily motivated by the problems of poverty and underdevelopment that plagued African societies. Both tried to explain how the development of a capitalist system had come largely at the expense of societies at the margins such as Africa. In their view, it was not enough to understand how the industrialized West had ascended. It was also necessary to assess the price that societies such as those in Africa had paid to achieve that process.

Wallerstein’s world-system analysis has resulted in insightful and provocative studies of the development of the world economic system. However, it has arguably fallen short of the expectations of both Africanists and world historians. Chronologically, its focus on the emergence and development of a capitalist system that starts in the 16th century leaves the impression that Africa’s connections to the world did not exist before that time or outside of that context. Historians of Africa would argue that such belief is not only inaccurate but disturbingly reminiscent of notions that African history only started with the European engagement in the continent. Africanist critiques of world-systems analysis strongly object to the erasure of African agency. The particular focus of the world systems approach, by its very nature, highlights the roles of Africans as victims and dependents rather than as active and deliberate agents in their own history. 26

During the 1980s and 1990s Africanist historians were key figures in what came to be known as the “New World History,” a new wave of thinking about world historical writing that specifically tried to transcend obsolete concepts and develop more inclusive frameworks to understand how human communities had interacted in the past. 27 The work of historians such as Ross Dunn, Patrick Manning, Jonathan Reynolds, Erik Gilbert, David Northrup, and Robert Harms has not just increased the presence of Africa in world history surveys, but it has also encouraged a questioning of how existing concepts, such as “civilization,” need to be carefully used or how new thematic and chronological structures can achieve better syntheses and interpretations of the global past. Ross Dunn and Laura Mitchell’s Panorama attempts a broad survey of human history that focuses on the nature of interaction among different societies around the world; it starts by looking at those communities that lived in geographical regions and then traces how these connections started to expand to other areas. Africa starts as part of “Afroeurasia,” but as geographical connections start to be layered by commercial, cultural, and political exchange, such construction is replaced by different themes. 28 On a somewhat smaller scale other authors have focused their work in the African continent but sought to place it in a more global context; two examples are Jonathan Reynolds and Erik Gilbert’s Africa in World History and Robert Harms’s Africa in Global History . 29 Attempts to place Africa in the context of the Atlantic world have remained important among Africanists since the 1950s, and more recent examples include John Thornton’s Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World 1400–1680 and A Cultural History of the Atlantic World . 30 On the Indian Ocean front Edward Alpers published East Africa in the Indian Ocean and The Indian Ocean in World History . 31 Many of these authors have also been active participants in methodological and pedagogical discussions about the goals and methods that world history ought to adopt. No Africanist has been more vocal in these debates than Patrick Manning, who published Navigating World History in 2003 where he surveyed the field of world history and proposed ways in which it could move forward. In this and other places, Manning credits the historical revolution from which African history had emerged as a major source for the reinvigoration of world and global history since the 1960s. African history, for instance, had benefitted from the way in which new approaches such as social and cultural history were breathing new life into more traditional ones such as political and economic history. Modern world history, which has largely privileged politics and economics in its analysis, could also benefit from such shifts in perspective. For instance, Manning suggested, world historical writing should seek to expand its study of non-elite populations. In his view, such a shift of perspective would have the added bonus of increasing the attention given to Africans and their diaspora, thus increasing our understanding of Africa’s place in the world. 32

Africanist scholars have also engaged in debates about globalization as a new approach to the study of how human communities have interacted in the past. For instance, Anthony Hopkins has argued that the study of globalization can offer a “miraculous cure” to the shortcomings of existing world history in that it offers a broad sounding board to the questions and knowledge of historians interested in the study of all manner of global connections. 33 Among the intriguing contributions of this approach is the notion of “waves of globalization,” emphasizing the idea that globalization is not a single unilinear process nor one that has started only recently or has centered in a particular area of the world. For instance, Christopher Bayly has examined the concept of “archaic globalization,” which in his view is “an ideal type or heuristic device. It can help us investigate discontinuous and ruptured processes that brought large areas of the world into contact with each other before the age of the nation state and the international industrial economy.” 34 In the same volume John Lonsdale uses the globalization context to explore the history of ethnicity in Africa and warns that Africa’s “global commercial and ideological connections have filtered through specific networks such as ethnic diasporas, chartered companies, Islamic brotherhoods, cartels, Christian churches and armed mafias. The impersonal markets suggested by the term ‘globalization’ are a fiction with respect to Africa.” 35 The globalization approach is not intended to be a new form of organizing principle that will enable the writing of a new universal narrative. Its goal is to produce discreet thematic studies that may open conversations and debates about the many and complex ways in which societies around the world have interacted with each other.

In their quest to re-examine Africa’s place in the world, historians of Africa have vigorously debated the extent to which Africa’s historical development has been determined by “external” influences. This question has been particularly important when writing about the history of Islam and Christianity in Africa or in the extensive literature about colonialism. 36 In Colonialism in Question Frederick Cooper laments Africanists’ initial disregard for the study of colonial histories and encourages a new examination of the diverse and unique ways in which the colonial experience changed the world for both metropolitan and subject societies. 37 Jean Francois Bayart has suggested yet another model for understanding the relationship between Africa and the world by introducing the concept of “extraversion.” In his view, Africa’s relationship to the rest of the world is best described as “baroque” and “proceeds by reusing existing practices or by juxtaposing them; by processes of sedimentation, transfers of meaning and the manufacture of identities which are subsequently deemed authentic.” 38 The paradigm of extraversion aims to minimize what he sees as a sterile distinction between African internal and external dynamics. Bayart is particularly concerned with the notion that exploring the history of economic dependence and colonialism must come at the expense of minimizing African agency. He argues that Africans actively participated in processes that have led to the increasing dependence of their societies, sometimes opposing them and at other times supporting them. In his view, this proves that strategies of extraversion are not only prevalent in African history, but also that political or economic subjection does not equate with inaction: “New research underlines more clearly than previously, just how much Africans have participated in the processes which have led to the insertion of their societies as a dependent partner in the world economy and, in the last resort, in the process of colonization.” 39

Africanist engagement in the writing of world history has also come in the form of pointed critiques of the way in which traditional world histories have portrayed African societies. Steven Feierman, for instance, has remarked on the “unproblematized” use of a concept such as “civilization,” which is strongly rooted in European historical discourse and conveys notions of an evolutionary progression contingent on decidedly European markers of social and cultural development. 40 Maghan Keita sees the concept of civilization as one of many constructions inherited from the Enlightenment that reveals how “We are subject to racialized historiographies and epistemologies” and that such racialization “has posed a serious impediment to any consideration of Africa in the history of the world.” 41

These critiques led Feierman to wonder about the consequences of “the relationship between the crisis of historical representation that came about when historians began to hear the voices of those who had been voiceless, and the more general epistemological crisis affecting all the social sciences and humanities.” 42 If the history of Africa in world history is any indication, Feierman suggests, both processes fed one another, and among the casualties of this encounter was the belief that a universal history could be written. The more historians of Africa sought to document the African past the more they had to go beyond the traditional historical methods, questions, and sources. At the same time, consecutive attempts to write new universal histories found themselves incapable of reflecting the scope and complexity of African experiences. 43 Should this mark an end to the search for universal narratives or should we just simply forego the expectation that Africa can be meaningfully written into world history?

In a similar critique, Joseph Miller has argued that the knowledge and methodology produced by Africanist history demands a markedly different approach to any attempt to reframe the place of Africa in world history. In Miller’s view, greater knowledge about Africa has taught us that Africans often held views of themselves and the world around them that stood in stark contrast to those of societies in other parts of the world, and that trying to make those worldviews commensurable is a disservice not just to Africans but to historical understanding more generally. He thus advocates for what he calls a “multi-centric” approach to world history.

An awareness of the multiplicity of perspectives inherent in all history must mark the future of the profession. The sphere of unperceived chaos somewhere “out there” is vanishing. We are all becoming neighbors. Fewer and fewer “great unknowns” thus remain, and the frustrations of failure are visited more intensely, and at greater removes, on the “others” to whom we are growing close enough to demonize. Perhaps the resulting agonies are merely growing pains. But most people live too close to the edge to have the space in which to embrace difference with any confidence. Even so, “our story” must now incorporate everyone’s stories. 44

Frederick Cooper, on his part, argued that the concept of globalization is too all-encompassing to be able to reveal anything meaningful about the experiences of distinct, diverse, and ever-changing societies around the world and has the danger of producing abstract and ahistorical interpretations of past experiences.

The incessant talk about globalization—the word, the images associated with it, and arguments for and against “it”—both reflects and reinforces fascination in boundless connectivity. Yet scholars do not need to choose between a rhetoric of containers and a rhetoric of flows. They do not need to decide whether Africa is part of a necessary and universal trend or a peculiar and frustrating exception, but they can instead analyze how it and other regions are linked and bounded and how those links and boundaries shift over time. Activists are not faced with a singular force to oppose or promote, but they . . . need to understand with precision the patterns of interconnection, the choices and constraints which they imply, and the consequences of different sorts of actions along different sorts of interfaces. Not least of the questions which we should be asking concern the present: What is actually new? What are the mechanisms of ongoing change? And above all, can we develop a differentiated vocabulary that encourages thinking about connections and their limits? 45

African Histories and Histories of the World

It is undeniable that critiques by Afrocentric, African American, and Africanist scholars have changed the ways in which Africa is represented in world histories today. This does not mean, however, that Eurocentric assumptions and models have been completely dislodged. In response to some of the criticism directed at his work, William McNeill himself recently offered if not apologies, at least explanations for the shortcomings of his original interpretations. He explained that at the time of writing The Rise of the West the breadth and depth of Africanist scholarship was still in its infancy, and he had no way of reflecting on the complexity of African societies. He also stated that Africa had not been seat to a major civilization, and that this made it unsuitable to be included in a civilizational approach other than at the margins. 46 These remarks underline the naïve expectation that in the writing of world history the challenge of Eurocentrism is one that can be attended primarily by the empiricist methods of traditional historical practice. In this regard, world history has proven to be more than “just history.” Its pursuit and its shortcomings have revealed the fundamental limitations of the historical discipline as it had been defined, both in terms of questions and methods and also in terms of the constituencies it sought to address. In the words of Robert Moore:

Eurocentrism is now sustained not by conviction or complacency, or even by the weight of inertia contained within the traditional hegemony of European and American historiography, so much as by the fact that it is deeply embedded in both the main forms currently available for the writing of synthetic world history, the comparative study of civilizations and world-systems theory. The classical social theory in which both are rooted is itself largely a product of industrial capitalism, and largely designed to explain it. 47

Thus, it is likely that new representations of Africa in world history will have to coexist and compete with persistently Eurocentric approaches. This will continue to be the case as long as world historical accounts are primarily written by European and American historians and for European and American audiences. The road toward producing more diverse and rich world narratives should include mechanisms by which historians throughout the world can appreciate and argue for the relevance of their work in a global context. 48 What is clear is that new frameworks in world history will have to account for questions that Afrocentric, African American, and Africanist historians have tried to answer themselves and that have become central in the writing of modern history: Who is history written for? Who has a right to write it? Are the methods, questions, and perspectives of modern historiographical practice capable of producing the study of societies whose historical trajectories differ from those of Europe and the Western world? Early on, historians of Africa came to realize that perspective matters, and that units of analysis such as the concept of “civilization” privilege certain kinds of experience while diminishing and obscuring others.

It is also the case that scholars dedicated to the study of Africa’s past have been influenced by debates about Africa’s place in the world. It has become increasingly clear that the African experience is a construct that acquires meaning in a diversity of contexts: continental, regional, and local. Any attempt to define it, locate it, or explain it requires a clear-eyed interrogation of epistemological approaches, methodological tools, and avenues for intellectual dialogue. As David Northrup has said, “Africa’s complexities and commonalities admit of many (simultaneous) perspectives.” 49 The search for a single “authentic” narrative of the African past may turn out to be as futile a pursuit as the search for a single universal history. As Keita rightfully concludes, “Can there be a world history? No. But there certainly exist and will exist histories of the world.” 50

Discussion of the Literature

Afrocentric and African American historians were among the first to question the marginalization of Africa in world historical narratives and to provide alternative interpretations. The Afrocentric critique is best represented in the work of Cheikh Anta Diop (for example, The African Origin of Civilization ). 51 Diop did not question the concept of civilization that has been used to organize world historical narratives but rather argued that Africa had in fact produced one major civilization in the form of Egypt and that it was central to the development of the modern world. African American historians also questioned the ways in which the experiences of African peoples were minimized or ignored in world historical narratives. In The World and Africa , W. E. B. du Bois argued that Africa’s fraught relationship with Europe was the root cause of the many problems that shook Europe during the first half of the 20th century . 52 Africa specialists have offered both critiques of existing world histories as well as new interpretative frameworks that reinterpret Africa’s relationship to societies around the world. Important areas of research have included histories of slavery and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and more broadly the place of Africa in the Atlantic world. Particularly important in these areas are the works of Walter Rodney ( How Europe Underdeveloped Africa ), Immanuel Wallerstein ( The World-System and Africa and The Modern World-System ), Phillip Curtin ( Cross Cultural Trade in World History ), and John Thornton ( A Cultural History of the Atlantic World ). 53 Edward Alpers has examined and reflected on the place of Africa in the historical context of the Indian Ocean ( East Africa and the Indian Ocean ). 54 Africanist scholars have produced surveys of African history aimed at examining the history of the continent in the context of world history (see Erik Gilbert and Jonathan Reynolds, Africa in World History ; Robert Harms, Africa in Global History with Sources ; Christopher Ehret, An African Classical Age ; and Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa ). 55 The spread and impact of world religions is another area where Africanist writers have made valuable inroads (see Nehmiah Levtzion and Randall Pouwels, The History of Islam in Africa ; David Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History ; and Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa ). 56 Historians of Africa have produced a wealth of studies that explore and reflect on the history of European colonization. For important critiques of how this particular relationship has been studied by historians of Africa see Frederick Cooper’s Colonialism in Question and Jean Francois Bayart’s article “Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion.” 57

Critical works on the impact of African history in world historiography can be found in the works of Patrick Manning (see Navigating World History , “African and World Historiography,” and “Locating Africans on the World Historical Stage”). 58 The edited collection The New World History includes valuable contributions from the perspective of Africanist scholars such as Jonathan Reynolds, Joseph Miller, David Northrup, and Frederick Cooper. 59 Journals such as History Connected , Historically Speaking , and World History Bulletin have also published special editions devoted to examining the place of Africa and African history in the evolution of world history. 60

Primary Sources

There are important projects, collections, and databases that contain primary sources about the diverse connections of Africa to other parts of the world. One of the most important is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Database , which has information about 36,000 slave voyages. 61 The University of McGill hosts the Indian Ocean World MCRI , which collects information about regions adjacent to the Indian Ocean. 62 Northwestern University is home to the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies. Among its most relevant collections are the Arabic Manuscript from West Africa and 16th–Early Twentieth Century Maps of Africa . 63 The Library of Congress hosts the World Digital Library with the support of UNESCO. The site contains maps, images, and documentary resources. 64 Also at the Library of Congress one can find the Islamic Manuscript from Mali Collection , which holds thirty-two manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha. 65 A separate project dedicated to the collection of Islamic manuscripts is the Timbouctou Manuscripts Project , supported by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung and the University of Cape Town. It supports research in the multiple libraries of Timbuktu. 66 The University of Wisconsin holds the collection Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent . The collection contains 3000 slides, 500 photographs, and fifty hours of sounds from different parts of the continent. 67 The Cooperative Africana Microform Project held at Center for Research Libraries, Global Resources Network, provides guides to multiple collections including the Timbuktu Manuscript Digitization Project , South African Indian Pamphlets , and Pan-Africanist Congress of South Africa among many others. 68 A large collection of African Newspapers between 1800 and 1922 has been made available by the World Newspaper Archives. This is available to subscribing institutions. Finally, the Afriterra Foundation preserves original rare maps of Africa and makes them available in a digital form. Their collection contains more than 2700 maps. 69

Further Reading

• Alpers, Edward A. East Africa and the Indian Ocean . Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2009.
• Austen, Ralph A. Trans-Saharan Africa in World History . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Bayart, Jean-Francois , and Stephen Ellis . “Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion.” African Affairs 99, no. 395 (April 2000): 217–267.
• Clarke, John Henrik . African People in World History . Baltimore: Black Classic, 1993.
• Cooper, F. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History . Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.
• Curtin, Phillip. D. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
• Diop, Cheikh Anta . The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality . Edited and translated by Mercer Cook . Chicago: Chicago Review, 1989.
• Du Bois, W. E. B. The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History . New York: Viking, 1947.
• Dunn, Ross E. , Laura J. Mitchell , and Kerry Ward , eds. The New World History: A Field Guide for Teachers and Researchers . Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016.
• Ehret, Christopher . An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History 1000 BC to AD 400 . Charlottesville and Oxford: University of Virginia Press, 2001.
• Ehret, Christopher . The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 (2nd ed.). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016.
• Feierman, Steven . “Africa in History, the End of Universal Narratives.” In After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements . Edited by Gyan Prakash , 25–42. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
• Getz, Trevor R. , ed. “ Forum: Whose World History Is It? ” World History Connected 8, no. 1 (2011).
• Gilbert, Erik T. , and Jonathan T. Reynolds . Africa in World History (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson, 2011.
• Harms, Robert . Africa in Global History with Sources . New York: W. W. Norton, 2018.
• Miller, Joseph C. (2004). “Multi-Centrism in History: How and Why Perspectives Matter.” Historically Speaking: Special Forum on Africa and World History 6, no. 2.
• Hopkins, Anthony. G. , ed. Globalization in World History . New York: Norton, 2002.
• Manning, Patrick . “The Problem of Interactions in World History.” The American Historical Review 101, no. 3 (June 1996): 771–782.
• Manning, Patrick . Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Manning, Patrick . “African and World Historiography.” Journal of African History 54, no. 3 (2013): 319–330.
• Manning, Patrick . “Locating Africans on the World Stage: A Problem in World History.” Journal of World History 27, no. 3 (September 2016): 605–637.
• Northrup, David . Africa’s Discovery of Europe: 1450–1850 . New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Northrup, David . Seven Myths of Africa in World History . Indianapolis: Hackett, 2017.
• Reynolds, Jonathan T. “Africa and World History: From Antipathy to Synergy.” History Compass 5, no. 6 (2007): 1998–2013.
• Reynolds, Jonathan . “ History and the Study of Africa .” Oxford Bibliographies: African Studies .
• Rodney, W. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa . Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1974.
• Thornton, John . Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

1. William H. McNeill, “A Defence of World History (The Prothero Lecture),” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 32 (1982): 75–89.

2. McNeil, “A Defence,” 86.

3. Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 15 .

4. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (London: James Currey, 1988); and V. Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).

5. Georg W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History , trans. John. Sibree (New York: Prometheus, 1991), 99.

6. William S. Swinton, Outlines of the World’s History (New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, 1874), 2, cited in Craig Lockard, “The Rise of World History Scholarship,” in The New World History: A Field Guide for Teachers and Researchers , ed. Ross E. Dunn, Laura J. Mitchell, and Kerry Ward (Oakland, Ca: University of California Press, 2016), 10–17.

7. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West , 2 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1934); and Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History , 12 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934–1961).

8. George Huppert, “The Annales Experiment,” in Companion to Historiography , ed. Michael Bentley (New York: Routledge, 1997), 873–888.

9. Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century , vol. 1., trans. Syan Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1982); Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce: Civilization & Capitalism 15th–18th Century , vol. 2., trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1982); Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World: Civilization & Capitalism, 15th–18th Century , vol. 3, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1984); and Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations , trans. Richard Mayne (New York: Penguin, 1995).

10. See also Bartolome Bennassar and Pierre Chaunu, eds., Histoire economique et sociale du monde (Paris: Armand Colin, 1977).

11. William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community; With a Retrospective Essay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

12. Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality , ed. Mercer Cook (Chicago: Chicago Review, 1989) .

13. Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008).

14. Maghan Keita, “Africa and the Construction of a Grand Narrative in World History,” in Across Cultural Borders: Historiography in Global Perspective , ed. Eckhardt Fuchs and Benedikt Stuchtey (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 285–308; and Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism,” in Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation , ed. Roy Richard Grinker and Christopher B. Steiner (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 728–731.

15. W. E. B. Du Bois, The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (New York: Viking, 1947), 2 .

16. Du Bois, The World and Africa , 43.

17. John D. Fage, “Reflections on the Genesis of Anglophone African History after World War II,” History in Africa 20 (1993): 15–26; Joseph C. Miller, “History and Africa/Africa and History,” The American Historical Review 104, no. 1 (February 1999): 1–32; and Jan Vansina, “Lessons of Forty Years of African History,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 25, no. 2 (1992): 391–398.

18. Miller, “History and Africa,” 1–32; Joseph Miller, “Life Begins at Fifty: African Studies Enters Its Age of Awareness,” African Studies Review 50, no. 2 (2007): 1–35; Steven Feierman, “Africa in History, the End of Universal Narratives,” in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements , ed. Gyan. Prakash (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 25–42 ; and Patrick Manning, “African and World Historiography,” Journal of African History 54, no. 3 (2013): 319–330 .

19. Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia, “African Historiography and the Crisis of Institutions,” in The Study of Africa , ed. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (Dakar, Senegal: Codesria, 2006), 135–167.

20. Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984) ; and Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, WC: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969).

21. Jonathan Reynolds, “When Fields Collide: Africa and the Even Newer World History,” World History Bulletin XXII, no. 1 (2006): 3–4; Trevor Getz and Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia, “Going Global, Part 1: A Reconnaissance into the Role of Africanists in the Evolution of World History,” World History Bulletin XXII, no. 1 (2006): 4–9; Erik T. Gilbert and Jonathan T. Reynolds, Africa in World History , 3rd ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2011) ; George E. Brooks, Themes in African and World History (Bloomington: African Studies Program, Indiana University, 1973); and Ross E. Dunn, Laura J. Mitchell, and Kerry Ward, eds., The New World History: A Field Guide for Teachers and Researchers (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016) .

22. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1974) .

23. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011); Immanuel Wallerstein, The World-System and Africa (Brooklyn: Diasporic Africa Press, 2017); and Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).

24. Andre Gunder Frank, The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? (London: Routledge, 1996); Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); and Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

25. Immanuel Wallerstein, “Dependence in an Interdependent World: The Limited Possibilities of Transformation within the Capitalist World Economy,” African Studies Review 17, no. 1 (April 1974): 1–26; and Wallerstein, The World-System : Part I, Kindle Edition.

26. Keita, “Africa and the Construction,” 292; and Jean-Francois Bayart and Stephen Ellis, “Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion,” African Affairs 99, no. 395 (April 2000): 217–267 .

27. Dunn, Mitchell, and Ward, The New World History : Introduction, Kindle Edition.

28. Ross E. Dunn and Laura J. Mitchell, Panorama: A World History (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2014).

29. Erik T. Gilbert and Jonathan T. Reynolds, Africa in World History , 3rd ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2011); and Robert Harms, Africa in Global History with Sources (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018) .

30. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 , 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998) ; and John Thornton, A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

31. Edward A. Alpers, East Africa and the Indian Ocean (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2009); and Edward A. Alpers, The Indian Ocean in World History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

32. Manning, Navigating World Histor , 14–15; Manning, “African and World Historiography,” 329; and Patrick Manning, “Locating Africans on the World Stage: A Problem in World History,” Journal of African History 26, no. 3 (2016): 635 .

33. Anthony. G. Hopkins, ed. Globalization in World History (New York: Norton, 2002), 17 .

34. Christopher A. Bayly, “‘Archaic’ and ‘Modern’ Globalization in the Eurasian and African Arena, ca. 1750–1850,” in Globalization in World History , ed. Anthony G. Hopkins (New York: Norton, 2002), 71.

35. John Lonsdale, “Globalization, Ethnicity, and Democracy: A View from ‘the Hopeless Continent,’” in Globalization in World History , ed. Anthony G. Hopkins (New York: Norton, 2002), 202–203.

36. Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, The History of Islam In Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000); and Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present (Lawrenceville, NJ: Eerdmans, 1995).

37. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005) ; and Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (December 1994): 1516–1545.

38. Bayart and Ellis, “Africa in the World,” 251.

39. Bayart and Ellis, “Africa in the World,” 220.

40. Feierman, “Africa in History,” 45–46.

41. Keita, “Africa and the Construction,” 287.

42. Feierman, “Africa in History,” 51.

43. Manning, “African and World Historiography,” 319–320; Manning, “Locating Africans,” 609–610; Keita, “Africa and the Construction,” 286–287; Miller, “History and Africa,” 29–32; and Feierman, “Africa in History,” 40–44.

44. Joseph C. Miller, “Multi-Centrism in History: How and Why Perspectives Matter,” Historically Speaking 6, no. 2 (2004): 30

45. Frederick Cooper, “What Is the Concept of Globalization Good For? An African Historian’s Perspective,” in The New World History: A Field Guide for Teachers and Researchers , ed. Ross E. Dunn, Laura J. Mitchell, and Kerry Ward, Kindle locations 14,389–14,400 (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016).

46. William McNeil, “ The Rise of the West after Twenty-Five Years,” Journal of World History 1, no. 1 (1990): 7.

47. Robert I. Moore, “World History,” in Companion to Historiography , ed. Michael Bentley (New York: Routledge, 1997), 954.

48. Trevor Getz, “ Whose World History? ,” World History Connected 8, no. 1 (February 2011).

49. David Northrup, “Imagining Africa in World History: Perspectives and Problems,” World History Bulletin XXII, no. 1 (2006): 19.

50. Keita, “Africa and the Construction,” 300.

51. Diop, The African Origin .

52. Du Bois, The World and Africa .

53. Rodney, How Europe ; Wallerstein, World-System and Africa ; Wallerstein, Modern World-System ; Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade ; and Thornton, A Cultural History .

54. Alpers, East Africa .

55. Gilbert and Reynolds, Africa in World History ; Harms, Africa in Global History ; Christopher Ehret, An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History 1000 BC to AD 400 (Charlottesville and Oxford: University of Virginia Press, 2001) ; and Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 , 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016) .

56. Levtzion and Pouwels, History of Islam ; Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History ; and Isichei, History of Christianity .

57. Cooper, Colonialism in Question ; and Bayart and Ellis, “Africa in the World.”

58. Manning, Navigating World History ; Manning, “African and World Historiography”; and Manning, “Locating Africans.”

59. Dunn, Mitchell, and Ward, The New World History .

60. History Connected 8, no. 1 (February 2011); Historically Speaking; Finding Africa In World History 6, no. 2 (2004); and World History Bulletin XXII, no. 1 (2006).

61. Voyages, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database .

62. Indian Ocean World MCRI Database .

63. Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies .

64. World Digital Library , UNESCO.

65. Islamic Manuscripts from Mali , African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress.

66. Timbouctou Manuscripts Project .

67. Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent .

68. Cooperative Africana Microform Project , Center for Research Libraries, Global Resources Network.

69. Afriterra: The Cartographic Free Library .

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Klarman Fellow: Digital media connects people in a polarized world

Klarman Fellows

By | Kate Blackwood , A&S Communications

Every time Shiqi Lin traveled back home to China on breaks from college in the U.S., she was sure to pack two things: her phone and a sound recorder.

Armed with these digital tools, she would walk through teeming neighborhoods bustling with new construction to archive disappearing landscapes and interview people whose lives had been upended by China’s massive drive toward urbanization.

“I remember speaking with a lady who was 80 years old. During our oral history interview she burst into tears, tracing back her long history, and I wondered, what does it mean for her that all the neighborhoods around her have been transformed into skyscrapers and shopping malls?” said Lin, a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. “By the end of the conversation she thanked me – that was the moment I saw a strong human bond through our interview and the mediation of my sound recorder.”

Lin, who experienced China’s rapid changes herself growing up, feels drawn to document these events, but she’s become fascinated with forms of documentation, as well as content. She wants to better understand how cultural producers ­– such as filmmakers, writers and videographers – have created strong human bonds through their digital devices, as she experienced in her interview with the 80-year-old woman.

During her Klarman fellowship, Lin is examining how cultural producers in China have taken up literature, film, audio cultures and digital media to tell human stories since 2008, a time when China’s growth coincided with global economic, social and political tension. Situated at the intersection of media and politics, her research explores how critical media culture can push open new spaces for social participation and how new forms of media can bring people together, particularly at times of crisis and radical change.

 “I take the contemporary Chinese world as an especially controversial but critical site for problematizing this quest of media and politics,” said Lin, adding that her project also includes how Chinese diasporas navigate the changing world and how digital cultures cross national borders.

Arnika Fuhrmann , professor of Asian studies (A&S) and Lin’s faculty co-host, describes Lin as “an emerging theorist of the present.”

“Producing highly innovative theorization in the fields of documentation and media studies and pathbreaking research in Chinese studies, Lin combines rigorous analytical skills and robust scholarly training with strong commitments to global social change,” Fuhrmann said.

Lin is writing a book about the rise and shift of documentary media in post-2008 Chinese media landscapes due to digitization. With smart phones, social media and apps like WeChat available to everyone, documentation has opened up beyond traditional cinema and nonfiction writing to include all the tools we carry with us, she said. Videos, podcasts, digital-first writing and other forms make for media collections that “go against the grain.”

Exploring these forms of documentation takes Lin in interdisciplinary directions, including Asian studies, media studies, literature and social theories.

Nick Admussen , associate professor of Asian studies (A&S) and Lin’s faculty co-host, said that “not only is Shiqi Lin active in many scholarly fields simultaneously, her talent for connection and collaboration is off the charts. Her current project on the idea of the document in contemporary China, which includes documentary film and remixes of all kinds, is relevant and meaningful to many different kinds of scholars and provides a meeting place for people from lots of different intellectual, cultural and ideological backgrounds.”

Admussen and Lin are co-organizing a workshop, “ Pandemic Archives: Media, Geopolitics, and Temporalities of Crisis ,” to take place at Cornell May 3-4. Bringing together scholars of fields ranging from Chinese cultural studies to media studies and Asian American studies, the workshop will focus on how the diverse cultural practices that flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic are now transforming into historical and aesthetic archives – with a particular focus on new sources of creativity across continents during this crisis period.

“The study of pandemic media has been central to me since the COVID outbreak in 2020,” Lin said. “My first piece about COVID documentation was published in March 2020, when the whole world was bracing for an uncertain future. Since that moment I’ve been committed to thinking about how digital media created spaces for people to come together while they were physically locked down, and how those new modes of media can negotiate political fractures.”

Lin said the collaborative and interdisciplinary intellectual community at Cornell provides an ideal environment for her multi-faceted research. She has formed connections with scholars across the East Asia Program, as well as media studies scholars from several departments such as Comparative Literature and Performing and Media Arts.

Within the Klarman Fellowship program, Lin enjoys the friendship between the fellows and the organic collaborations that form among those interested in China studies, media studies, literature and cross-cultural comparison.

“Cornell has all the pieces for me,” Lin said. “It’s an energizing community.”

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Explainer-Why Did the Baltimore Bridge Collapse and What Do We Know About the Ship?

A view of the Dali cargo vessel which crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge causing it to collapse in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., March 26, 2024. REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson

By Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) -Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed early on Tuesday after a container ship smashed into a pylon, with the six people missing presumed dead after falling into the frigid water below. Authorities stopped people from using the bridge after the ship sent out a mayday call, which Maryland's governor said saved lives.

It may be some time before one of the busiest ports on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard can reopen.

WHAT HAPPENED IN BALTIMORE?

Shortly after 1 a.m. ET (0500 GMT), a container ship named the Dali was sailing down the Patapsco River on its way to Sri Lanka. At 1:24 a.m., it suffered a total power failure and all its lights went out.

Three minutes later, at 1:27 a.m., the container ship struck a pylon of the bridge, crumpling almost the entire structure into the water. 

The bridge was up to code and there were no known structural issues, Maryland Governor Wes Moore said.

There was no indication of terrorism, police said.

WHY DID THE BRIDGE COLLAPSE?

The metal truss-style bridge has a suspended deck, a design that contributed to its collapse, engineers say. The ship appeared to hit a main concrete pier, which rests on soil underwater and is part of the foundation.

ARE THERE ANY CASUALTIES?

Six people are missing and presumed dead, Maryland state police said. Two people were rescued, one unharmed and one critically injured.

A construction crew was fixing potholes on the bridge and eight people fell 185 feet (56 meters) into the river where water temperatures were 47 F (8 C). 

According to research for the Federal Aviation Administration, that is the upper limit of what a human could survive falling into water.

Authorities saved lives by stopping vehicles from using the bridge after the ship sent out a mayday call, the Maryland governor said.

The ship also dropped its anchors to try to avoid the collision.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE SHIP THAT WAS INVOLVED?

The Dali was leaving Baltimore en route to Colombo, Sri Lanka.

All 22 crew, including two pilots on board, have been accounted for and there were no injuries, the ship's manager, Synergy Marine Group said.

The registered owner of the Singapore-flagged ship is Grace Ocean Pte Ltd, LSEG data show. The ship measures 948 feet (289 meters) — as long as three football fields placed end to end — and was stacked high with containers.

The ship can hold up to 10,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit, or TEU, a measure of cargo capacity. It was carrying 4,679 TEU.

The same ship was involved in an incident in the port of Antwerp, Belgium, in 2016, when it hit a quay as it tried to exit the North Sea container terminal.

A later inspection in June 2023 carried out in San Antonio in Chile found the vessel had "propulsion and auxiliary machinery" deficiencies, according to data on the public Equasis website, which provides information on ships.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE BRIDGE THAT COLLAPSED?

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was one of three ways to cross the Baltimore Harbor and handled 31,000 cars per day or 11.3 million vehicles a year.

The steel structure is four lanes wide and sits 185 feet (56 meters) above the river.    

It opened in 1977 and crosses the Patapsco River, where U.S. national anthem author Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star Spangled Banner" in 1814 after witnessing the British defeat at the Battle of Baltimore and the British bombing of Fort McHenry.

HOW WILL THE BRIDGE COLLAPSE IMPACT THE BALTIMORE PORT? 

Traffic was suspended at the port after the collision.  It is one of the smallest container ports on the Northeastern seaboard, handling about a tenth of the volume that passes through the Port of New York and New Jersey. 

The flow of containers to Baltimore can likely be redistributed to bigger ports, said container shipping expert Lars Jensen. However, there could be major disruptions in shipping cars, coal and sugar.

It is the busiest U.S. port for car shipments, handling at least 750,000 vehicles in 2023, according to data from the Maryland Port Administration.

In 2023, the port was the second busiest for coal exports.

It is also the largest U.S. port by volume for handling farm and construction machinery, as well as agricultural products such as sugar and salt.

(Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Stephen Coates)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

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World History Bulletin

Learn about the spring 2023 CFP here!

The World History Bulletin is a biannual publication of the World History Association that is sponsored by the Southeast World History Association.  Featuring short-form essays (roughly 1,500–3,000 words in length), the Bulletin  is a forum devoted to raising interesting questions, stimulating lively debate, and engaging with all aspects of world historical scholarship including pedagogy, research, and theory. Topics may include any period or geographic focus in history.  Pedagogical materials such as syllabi or assignments are welcome, as are reviews of books or other scholarly works.

Submissions for the World History Bulletin should be in Microsoft Word or a similar electronic format, and should follow the style guidelines of the Journal of World History  described above. Please address any submissions or inquiries to Editor-in-Chief Joseph Snyder < [email protected] >.  Historians and disciplinarily allied scholars interested in guest-editing a selection of essays on a particular theme are strongly encouraged to contact the editor.

Call for Papers | “Democratizing, Diversifying, and Decolonizing the World History Survey” | World History Bulletin |  Due: November 10, 2023

World History Bulletin is seeking quality research essays, lesson plans, and classroom activities for  inclusion in its upcoming Fall 2023 issue, “Democratizing, Diversifying, and Decolonizing the World  History Survey.”

Guest-edited by John Curry, “Democratizing, Diversifying, and Decolonizing the World History Survey”  explores the ways in which world historians and instructors can introduce, examine, and complicate an  array of topics such as slavery, colonialism, world wars, and climate crisis in the world history classroom.  Challenging the way histories are told, by whom, and what voices have been silenced are key to  democratizing, diversifying, and decolonizing world history surveys, as doing so not only fosters critical  thinking and analytical skills in the next generation of scholars, but also encourages the development of  their empathetic selves. 

Democratizing, diversifying, and decolonizing the world history survey often requires de-centering the  Western perspectives which sometimes predominate classrooms, and the incorporation of interdisciplinary approaches – through the introduction of anthropological or archaeological sources – to reassess histories for things like bias. Doing so draws on the long traditional of historical skepticism.  The Bulletin is interested in a range of topics related to the theme of democratizing, diversifying, and  decolonizing world history surveys, including: • Case studies examining how instructors have democratized, diversified, and decolonized their  world history classrooms.  • Techniques used in the classroom to introduce sensitive subjects, including (but not limited to)  slavery, persecution, outgroup creation, and colonization.  • Approaches to recovering histories of the silenced and amplifying the experiences and voices of  indigenous peoples.  • Interdisciplinarity and democratizing, diversifying, and decolonizing World History.  • Recent trends in decolonizing and diversifying World History research. • Historiographies of theories and practice of democratizing, diversifying, and decolonizing World  History.

World History Bulletin therefore invites contributions to a thematic issue on democratizing, diversifying,  and decolonizing the world history classroom. We are especially interested in articles that share fresh  research or historiographical perspectives which explore the questions of diversifying and decolonizing  world history; present innovative teaching at all levels that employs techniques related to democratizing, diversifying, and decolonizing world history themes; or explore the connection between  student engagement and world history as realized through the diversification and decolonization of a  particular curriculum, topic, or subject matter. We also welcome short interviews with designers, artists,  writers, and scholars and small roundtables on a book, film, or other work.

Submission Guidelines : Research and pedagogical articles should range between 1,500 and 8,000 words  in length, including endnote text. The Bulletin accepts submissions which adhere to the style, format,  and documentation requirements as outlined in the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. The Bulletin uses endnote citations, rather than footnote citations. Text of submissions should be  spelled according to American English standard usage (e.g., favorite, rather than favourite). Submissions  should be written in past tense, rather than the literary present, and passive voice should be avoided. 

Interested in submitting?  View our style guide here: WHB Style Sheet .

Publications

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The WHA has several outlets for publication, including the Journal of World History, the World History Bulletin, and the WHA-affiliated publications World History Connected and Middle Ground.

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Using AI to Make the World a Better Place

• The Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University has teamed with Cabells Scholarly Analytics to create ChatSDG.
• The tool rates how well both scholarly journals and individual articles provide content that aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals.
• Schools can use reports generated by ChatSDG in their accreditation materials to demonstrate the impact created by their faculty research.

  Two of the most talked-about trends in management education today are generative AI, as embodied by tools such as ChatGPT; and societal impact, particularly as measured by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Now these two trends have been combined in a pilot program based out of the Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Working with Cabells Scholarly Analytics , the Haub School has developed ChatSDG , a large language model AI tool that provides a framework and metrics for measuring the impact of research on business and society. It not only is built upon the ethical standards embedded in the SDGs, but also satisfies AACSB’s accreditation requirement to show evidence of societal impact.

“Deans and faculty are constantly under pressure to deliver academic research that embraces rigor and relevance in equal measure,” says David Steingard, associate professor at the Haub School and director of the school’s SDG Dashboard initiatives. “Journal impact factors, citation counts, acceptance rates, editorial board composition, and journal rankings are conventional indicators of academic rigor. However, conceptualizing and measuring the relevance of research outside of academia, in the larger ecosystem of humanity and planet Earth, is much more challenging.”

ChatSDG, Steingard emphasizes, aims to make that challenge more manageable.

Assessing Impact

The new chatbot program builds on a previous joint project between Cabells and Saint Joseph’s. That project, the SDG Impact Journal Rating , evaluates the sustainability impact of the 50 journals the Financial Times uses to compile its FT Research Rank and 50 journals that publish in the general area of sustainability.

Using an algorithm that was trained on hundreds of thousands of articles, the rating measures each journal’s SDG Impact Intensity (SDGII) on a scale of 0 to 5, depending on how well it aligns with the SDGs. The SDGII also identifies the three SDGs that the publication focuses on most.

ChatSDG allows a school to see how many of its faculty’s articles are appearing in journals with high SDGII ratings; which three SDGs are featured most prominently in the school’s research; and how well its research aligns with the United Nations Agenda 2030 , which lays out a plan for achieving the targets of the SDGs.

ChatSDG offers suggestions for how a school can increase the impact of its journal articles and how practitioners can use the research to advance the SDGs.

The chatbot then offers suggestions for how a school can increase the impact of its journal articles: how the research can be applied in public policy and business situations, how the research can be made widely available to practitioners, and how practitioners can use the research to advance the SDGs.

“Most academic research is written for other academics and is not readily accessible by practitioners,” Steingard points out. The report provides suggestions on “how to pinpoint real-world applications where faculty research can be operationalized.” It also identifies which existing stakeholders and champions—including agencies, advocacy groups, and policymakers—might be amenable to utilizing the research. This is important because “knowledge transfer is a much overlooked barrier to practitioner uptake of research,” says Steingard.

“These substantive and actionable recommendations move impact beyond scholar-to-scholar and toward scholar-to-society,” he adds. Armed with this information, schools can determine how their faculty research might be used to transform human, economic, and environmental welfare to solve “the vexing grand challenges of our time.”

How It Works

When a school submits its research to ChatSDG, the tool generates a customized, comprehensive report known as the AACSB Standard 8 Research Impact Report. Every report contains an interactive visualization platform based on the Haub School’s SDG Dashboard , where a school will find its SDG-related metrics and insights about individual research articles.

Because the report provides tangible metrics about the impact of the school’s research, the institution can include the report in the accreditation materials it presents to peer review teams. Therefore, the tool helps schools demonstrate that they are fulfilling AACSB’s accreditation Standard 8, which measures the impact of scholarship, and Standard 9, which considers societal impact.

While the data in each report is aggregated at the total faculty level, administrators can also use the tool’s interactive platform to assess the impact of individual articles—either before or after acceptance.

“We can think of ChatSDG as an additional reviewer who offers useful insights to enhance the rigor and relevance of scholarship,” says Steingard. Before publication, the tool can suggest ways an article can improve its alignment with the SDGs. After publication, ChatSDG can provide concrete suggestions for ways the article might be used by practitioners.

ChatSDG helps schools demonstrate that they are fulfilling the AACSB accreditation standards that consider the impact of scholarship.

Schools also can use ChatSDG’s reports to determine whether faculty are publishing in reputable outlets, because the tool incorporates Cabells’ journal quality designations. Publications listed in Cabells Journalytics Database have been fully vetted and meet the highest quality standards. Cabells categorizes other journals as Predatory (those found to be unethical or unlawful), Rejected (those that fail to meet Cabells’ standards of quality), or Pending Evaluation. The database also includes each journal’s article acceptance rate and its score in CiteScore Tracker , Elsevier’s journal impact factor rating.

“Surprisingly, most of the schools in ChatSDG’s pilot phase submitted at least a few articles to journals with the Predatory or Rejected designation,” says Steingard. “In turn, these low-quality or fraudulent journals were evidenced for Standard 8 documentation.” Schools that receive reports from ChatSDG will have “a verifiable method of guaranteeing that they only submit rigorous and relevant research for accreditation.”

Currently, ChatSDG is being used on a trial basis by a number of schools, but soon it will be more widely available to business schools. In fact, it will make its formal debut at AACSB’s 2024 International Conference and Annual Meeting to be held April 15–17 in Atlanta. While the Haub School of Business will generate reports for each school, Cabells will periodically publish aggregated data and overall insights from anonymized reports as a way of showing global trends.

“AI is unlike any other technology or trend I have seen in my three decades with AACSB. It will revolutionize the entire accreditation landscape,” says Joseph DiAngelo, dean of the Haub School and past chair of AACSB. “Our business schools will become more engaged and relevant ‘forces for good’ as a result of AI.”

An Impartial Judge

There’s already a working prototype powered by ChatSDG for articles. It’s the result of a partnership between the Haub School, Cabells, and the Responsible Research in Business and Management ( RRBM ) network. The RRBM SDG Impact Dashboard–Articles contains assessments of 238 journal articles from various disciplines that were recognized on the RRBM Honor Roll and as winners of discipline-based awards.

To evaluate what qualifies as “responsible research,” RRBM uses seven Principles of Responsible Science . These principles will be incorporated into future versions of the Standard 8 Research Impact Report and referred to as ChatSDG+RR7*.

“The RRBM Honor Roll and award evaluation initiative could be a major advancement toward defining, operationalizing, standardizing, and disseminating the fundamental principles of responsibility and impact of research,” says Steingard.

As part of the judging process, ChatSDG can screen entries at the start of the competition, replace human judges entirely, or function as a quality control measure after selections have been made.

In the future, ChatSDG will have a role in the judging process for the RRBM’s journal article honor roll and awards. Other organizations that sponsor sustainability competitions also could use ChatSDG as part of the judging process. “As long as there are clear standards of excellence and at least some evaluative history from human judges, ChatSDG can be programmed to learn the particulars of other competitions or applications,” Steingard says.

As part of the judging process, ChatSDG can be employed in several ways: It can screen entries at the start of the competition; it can replace human judges entirely; or it can be used after selections have been made as a quality control measure.

Steingard acknowledges that there might be some pushback from detractors who fear the “dark side” of AI and worry that human intelligence will be subordinated to machine intelligence. But in the case of awards judging, he thinks the benefits are clear.

“It seems that humans should be better at evaluating the societal impact of research,” he says. But once trained on RRBM’s Principles of Responsible Science, ChatSDG+RR7 “will likely prove to be more consistent, fair, efficient, and objective than human judges.”

What’s Ahead

While ChatSDG is still in its early stages, Steingard foresees a bright future. “I expect that, as with other key performance indicators, schools will use its reports to celebrate research impact when it exists and encourage more when it’s lacking,” he says.

Steingard believes that ChatSDG has great potential to promote sustainability across business and business curricula. Moreover, he hopes that the tool supports the creation of new AI-based technologies that tap “the power of academic research to better the human condition and sustain the earth.”

Note: SDG Dashboard, SDG Impact Intensity (SDGII), ChatSDG, and ChatSDG+RR7 are trademarks of Saint Joseph’s University.

For more information about how business schools are incorporating the SDGs into their curricula and their operations, check out these articles and publications:

• artificial intelligence
• data analytics
• data insights
• societal impact
• sustainable development goals

International Women's Day 2024: What to know about the day and how to #InspireInclusion

International women's day, on friday, march 8, is a day of celebrating the achievements of women now practiced for more than 100 years. but it's also a reminder of how 'we can forge a better world.'.

It doesn't take much to show your support for International Women's Day: just post a selfie making the heart gesture.

But to support women year-round, this year's International Women's Day campaign theme of #InspireInclusion "calls for action to break down barriers, challenge stereotypes, and create environments where all women are valued and respected," the IWD website reads .

"'Inspire Inclusion' encourages everyone to recognize the unique perspectives and contributions of women from all walks of life, including those from marginalized communities," the IWD site says.

Participating in International Women's Day can drive that recognition. "When we inspire others to understand and value women's inclusion, we forge a better world," the organizers say on the site. "And when women themselves are inspired to be included, there's a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment."

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What is International Women’s Day? 

Observed annually on March 8, International Women’s Day celebrates the global “social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women,” according to the event website.

The day also calls for action to advance gender equality. 

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International Women's Day: Gender parity gap remains

Women still face challenges getting equal pay and leadership positions . For instance, women in the U.S. earned 83 cents for every dollar men earned in 2022, according to the  Bureau of Labor Statistics .

Since 2000, women worldwide have made "huge strides forward in higher education, women headship and healthy life expectancy but are still significantly lagging when it comes to disposable income," according to Euromonitor International .

But women’s average disposable income remains 31% lower than those of men worldwide, the research firm says. Women in North America have seen the largest increase with an uplift of 38% in their disposable incomes, compared to the global average of 23%, over the last five years, said Euromonitor International research consultant Jacques Olivier in a statement.

"Income inequality remains one of the most significant obstacles faced by woman in reaching gender equality,” Olivier said.

International Women's Day should be like "a global pep rally celebrating how far we ladies have come while firing us up to keep that momentum raging," said Erica Cronan, global director of marketing for data management firm Datadobi, in a statement. "You can't help but feel inspired thinking about the bold trailblazers throughout history who broke down barriers against all odds. The unstoppable suffragettes, straight-up heroes like RBG, Amelia Earhart, Serena – those unapologetic women heard 'no' and 'you can't' as a challenge to demolish," she said.

"IWD means toasting the brave ones before us while channeling that same spirit as we keep forging new paths,' Cronan said.

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When was International Women’s Day first celebrated? 

The idea for an International Women’s Day was proposed and approved at the second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1910. This came a year after the Socialist Party of America celebrated the first National Woman's Day in the U.S. on February 28, 1909, according to the IWD site .

The event was observed on March 19, 1911 in several European countries, with rallies and events calling for women’s right to vote and an end to gender discriminations. 

Since 1914, March 8 has been the fixed date for International Women’s Day; it was moved to be in line with Russian women who celebrated the day on February 23 on the Gregorian calendar. The United Nations first recognized International Women’s Day in 1975. 

How do we celebrate International Women’s Day?

Across the globe, demonstrations are planned from Tokyo to Mexico City. But these aren't always celebrations.

Last year, women in Turkey protested in Istanbul despite a ban on an IWD march before police used tear gas to disperse the crowd and detain some protesters. Dozens of people were injured as part of an IWD protest in Mexico City in 2021.

You can join in many in-person events across the U.S. Just search for events on  the International Women's Day website .

There are many virtual ones available, too, including:

• 7:30 a.m. ET: At the United Nations, the International Labour Organization will celebrate the day with an "Investing in Women: Accelerate Progress" program. You can watch on UN Web TV .
• 10-11 a.m. ET: A Women in Leadership; "Inspire Inclusion" panel discussion including Blanchard Innovation Lab vice president Britney Cole and Marta Budzyńska, a career coach and former Amazon recruiter.
• 1-2 p.m. ET: The  National Museum of Women in the Arts keynote with artist, art historian and writer Ferren Gipson, author of "Women’s Work: From Feminine Arts to Feminist Art."
• 2-2:45 p.m. ET: Visionary Women: Celebrating Champions of Change: A discussion with speakers from CARE, UNICEF, and Plan International USA about the role women play as agents of change and how they can address global challenges.
• 3-4 p.m. (and again 8-9 p.m. ET) : The Loupe Art streaming service and artist marketplace HUG , whch are collaborating to empower emerging artists, will have an online episode highlighting women artists. See where to watch the livestream or on demand on LoupeArt.com .
• 5 p.m. ET : The Power of Inspiring Inclusion: A Discussion with international women leaders at Northeastern University.

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What is the theme for International Women’s Day 2023? 

This year's theme of #InspireInclusion "encourages everyone to recognize the unique perspectives and contributions of women from all walks of life, including those from marginalized communities," the IWD website reads.

International Women's Day organizers encourage all, not just women, to get involved by striking the #InspireInclusion pose – making a heart symbol with your hands – and sharing selfies on social media with the hashtags #IWD2024 and #InspireInclusion.

International Women's Day is not just about women, the organizers note. "We can all challenge gender stereotypes, call out discrimination, draw attention to bias, and seek out inclusion," the website suggests. "Allies are incredibly important for the social, economic, cultural, and political advancement of women."

People can also submit their selfies to the  International Women’s Day website . 

What colors do you wear on International Women’s Day? 

Purple, green and white are considered the colors of International Women’s Day,  according to the website . These colors have roots in the United Kingdom’s Women’s Social and Political Union from the early 1900’s.

Contributing: Jayme Fraser, Jessica Guynn and Janet Loehrke of the USA TODAY Network and The Associated Press.

Follow Mike Snider on X and Threads:  @mikesnider  & mikegsnider .

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Recent Bridge Collapses Raise Questions About Modern Shipping

The crash in Baltimore was at least the second in just over a month in which a container ship hit a major road bridge.

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By Keith Bradsher

• March 26, 2024

Tuesday’s crash was at least the second in just over a month in which a container ship hit a major road bridge, raising questions about the safety standards of increasingly large ships and the ability of bridges around the world to withstand crashes.

On Feb. 22 in Guangzhou, a port in southern China, a much smaller vessel carrying stacks of containers hit the base of a two-lane bridge, causing vehicles to fall. Officials said that five people were killed.

The crashes have also raised questions about whether more ships should be required to be ready to drop anchors quickly during port emergencies, and whether tugboats should accompany more vessels as they enter and leave harbors.

There has not been a final report on the Guangzhou incident, and investigators have barely begun to look at what happened in Baltimore. But ship collision barriers are standard around the support piers of bridges over major waterways like the entrance to Baltimore’s harbor. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City, for example, has massive barriers of concrete and rocks around the bases of the piers that support it.

• The Francis Scott Key Bridge did not have an obvious fender system, or protective barriers, to redirect or prevent a ship from crashing into the bridge piers. Nearmap
• Engineers point out that some other bridges have more robust barriers. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City has rock walls surrounding its piers. Vexcel Imaging
• Island barriers were installed around the Sunshine Skyway Bridge piers in Tampa Bay, Fla., after a ship crash caused the span’s collapse in 1980. Vexcel Imaging
• Even smaller bridges like this one near Cape May, N.J., have fenders. Creative Composites Group
• While a full determination is not yet possible, some engineers told The Times that the collapse of the Key Bridge might have been avoided if its piers had more effective barriers. StreamTime Live via YouTube

It was not immediately clear how old the barriers are around the piers that supported the bridge in Baltimore. The bridge was built almost half a century ago and designed before then. Vessels have become considerably larger in that time.

The crash in Guangzhou occurred on a less important waterway, a minor channel of the Pearl River. The bridge there was being fitted with devices designed to protect the piers in case of any ship crash. The work was supposed to have been completed by 2022 but had been delayed, and the latest target for completion was August of this year, according to China Central Television, the state broadcaster.

Harbor pilots and crews of many large ships have two anchors ready to drop as they enter or leave a harbor, in case an emergency such as a loss of power means that they need to try to stop quickly. Basil M. Karatzas, the chief executive of Karatzas Marine Advisors, a ship inspection company in New York, said that while he had seen tanker crews commonly take this precaution, it was less common for container ships.

“The anchors have to be unlocked and ready to be dropped, and this takes some time to prepare, as generally crew members physically at the bow have to unlock them and release them,” he said. “That’s not something you can do in an emergency.”

Large ships are often accompanied by tugboats as they leave or enter harbors so that the tugboats can push them away from harm if the ship has difficulties. It was not immediately clear whether tugboats had accompanied the ship that struck the bridge on Tuesday.

The ship in Baltimore was exiting the harbor as a spring tide was rushing out of the harbor. The moon was still almost completely full, having reached its fullest less than 24 hours earlier.

Full moons in springtime are associated with some of the largest tidal changes in local sea level. And while Baltimore’s harbor experiences fairly small changes even during springtime full moon tides, tidal movements of water could have been a factor in the bridge impact.

“The ebbing tide increases the speed of the water seaward, which effectively has a cumulative effect on the speed of an outbound vessel, and any currents in the water could also have complicated navigation,” Mr. Karatzas said.

Amy Chang Chien contributed research.

Keith Bradsher is the Beijing bureau chief for The Times. He previously served as bureau chief in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Detroit and as a Washington correspondent. He has lived and reported in mainland China through the pandemic. More about Keith Bradsher

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Research Roundup: How the Pandemic Changed Management

• Mark C. Bolino,
• Jacob M. Whitney,
• Sarah E. Henry

Lessons from 69 articles published in top management and applied psychology journals.

Researchers recently reviewed 69 articles focused on the management implications of the Covid-19 pandemic that were published between March 2020 and July 2023 in top journals in management and applied psychology. The review highlights the numerous ways in which employees, teams, leaders, organizations, and societies were impacted and offers lessons for managing through future pandemics or other events of mass disruption.

The recent pandemic disrupted life as we know it, including for employees and organizations around the world. To understand such changes, we recently reviewed 69 articles focused on the management implications of the Covid-19 pandemic. These papers were published between March 2020 and July 2023 in top journals in management and applied psychology.

• Mark C. Bolino is the David L. Boren Professor and the Michael F. Price Chair in International Business at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business. His research focuses on understanding how an organization can inspire its employees to go the extra mile without compromising their personal well-being.
• JW Jacob M. Whitney is a doctoral candidate in management at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business and an incoming assistant professor at Kennesaw State University. His research interests include leadership, teams, and organizational citizenship behavior.
• SH Sarah E. Henry is a doctoral candidate in management at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business and an incoming assistant professor at the University of South Florida. Her research interests include organizational citizenship behaviors, workplace interpersonal dynamics, and international management.

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