World History Connected | Vol. 1 No. 2 | Tom Laichas: On My Desk: History and the Textbooks

On My Desk: History and the Textbooks

Tom Laichas

Recent world history textbooks are vastly superior to those they replaced. Anyone who can recall Western Civ and area studies texts masquerading as world history will be relieved at the quality of the works now available.

The chief complaint I have with these texts, and with history textbooks generally, is their pretense that historians agree, that history is not a work in progress but a finished product. Most texts hush up disagreement over the meaning of particular events, never mind contests over grand historical theory.

In short, textbooks sacrifice complexity for narrative coherence. It's a trade-off that serves students poorly. Forcing contentious historians to make nice with one another risks a version of the past that is contradictory and confused.

Asking that textbooks introduce historical theory as well as historical content is asking a lot. Yet research in cognitive development teaches that students construct their own grand historical theories whether or not we teach theory in the classroom. Do heroes make history? Does history tend towards some greater good? What role do Europe and the United States play in world history? Why are some countries rich and others poor? Walking in the door on the first day of their world history classes, students already have answers to the big questions. Whether sophisticated or superficial, these answers later shape political thought and behavior.

I do not argue that students should learn a particular point of view and reject the others. I do hope that they come out of world history class empowered to question fundamental assumptions about the way the world works: their own assumptions and those of others.

This is not a book review. I have used several of the books discussed here in my own classroom and have found much to like in all of them. I have not seen all the texts on the market, and for this essay I refer to the books on my shelf: editions whose successors may well have addressed the problems I mention.

All of that is beside the central point: ignoring historiography can undermine the very critical skills we want to teach.¹

I: The Center of the Web

Recently, world history has been imagined as leading to a "human web" a "networked society", and a "world system".² Though webs, networks, and systems are not new to the study of history, never before have they organized an entire introductory curriculum: the AP World History program urges students to "develop greater understanding of the evolution of global processes and contacts" which have been "knitting of the world into a tightly integrated whole."³ The publishers of Peter Stearns et al., World Civilizations promise their textbook will "present a truly global historyƒ [dividing] the main periods of human history according to changes in the nature and extent of global contacts."⁴ Richard Bulliet and his co-authors write that their text envisions

human societies beginning as sparse and disconnected communities reacting creatively to local circumstances; experiencing ever more intensive stages of contact, interpenetration, and cultural expansion and amalgamation; and arriving at a twenty-first century world in which people increasingly visualize a single global community.⁵

While texts agree on a web, they finesse the questions vexing historical debate for some years now: Does this web have a center? And if so, whereOnce upon a time, nearly every "world history" text located the web's origins and core in Europe.⁶ A growing band of scholars disagreed, adding "eurocentrist" to the short list of academic slurs.⁷

Textbook authors who want to decenter Europe have plenty of choices. They can focus on China. They can take in the or all of the Afro-Eurasian "ekumene" or "ethnosphere".⁸ Texts can span the Indian or the Atlantic oceans. It is possible to organize a history of such webs on the basis of environmental, technological, demographic, or religious history.

However, texts cannot pursue all of these strategies at once. A few years ago, Northeastern University's World History Center hosted a debate between Andre Gunder Frank and David Landes. No one watching that debate would dare suggest that historians have come to some kind of consensus about the central issues in world history.⁹

Textbooks usually ignore such conflicts; doing so only makes matters worse. Consider two passages from Richard Bulliet et al., The Earth and Its Peoples. The first passage sums up a chapter on 11^th-14^th century western Europe, setting the stage for later European power:

^{The] Latin westƒ was emerging from the economic and cultural shadow of its Islamic neighbors andƒboldly setting out to extend its dominion. Some common elements promoted the Latin West's remarkable resurgence: competition, the pursuit of success, and the effective use of borrowed technology and learning.¹⁰}

Later, writing of the Qing dynasty's fortunes, Bulliet and his colleagues write that 17^th and 18^th century Chinese workshops manufactured goods specifically for European markets; that Qing emperors lowered taxes and interest rates, repaired infrastructure, and resettled war-torn regions to "foster economic and demographic recovery;" and that the Qing, particularly Emperor Kangxi, demonstrated "openness to new ideas and technologies." And yet the Qing faced ruin, victims of environmental and demographic crisis. The"Qing government ƒ was not up to controlling its vast empire," for the "government's dependence on working alliances with local elites ƒ led to widespread corruption." ¹¹

Bulliet's explanations for west European and Chinese recoveries are similar; both regions encouraged competition, pursuit of success, and technological adaptation. Like Landes, Bulliet argues that attributes of late medieval Europe presaged Europe's 19^th century triumphs. Like Kenneth Pomeranz, Bulliet argues that 17^th-18^th century China was far more dynamic than was once believed. The effort to put both views into the same narrative raises more questions than it answers. Why should the European 14^th century presage the European 19^th? Why not, say, the disastrous 17^th? Why shouldn't Chinese achievements of the 17^th century reveal the promise of China's 21^st century rather than the calamities of its 19^th?

John P. McKay and his colleagues, also organizing their text around the concept of global interaction, make the same error. In a chapter on "Continuity and Change in East Asia, ca 1400-1800", McKay and his associates conclude that the Qing declined because they maintained "the traditional Chinese position towards foreign 'barbarians' and [refused] to trade with Westerners and to adopt Western technologyƒ"¹²

Yet in an earlier chapter, "The Acceleration of Global Contact," they writ e that during the 15^th-17^th century:

the center of early modern trade was not Europe, but China. The silver market drove world trade, with the Americas and Japan being the mainstays on the supply side and China dominating the demand sideƒ. In China the lure of international trade encouraged the development of the porcelain and silk industries.¹³

How could the Chinese be at the "center of early modern trade" and simultaneously suffer from a "traditional [refusal] to trade with Westerners"? The solution is simple enough. The earlier statement relies on Flynn and Giràldez's recent work on the trans-Pacific silver trade, while the latter depends on an earlier generation of China scholarship. Like most texts, World Societies mines scholarship solely for information, tossing theory onto the slag-heap. This makes for great story-telling but poor history.

By finessing the historical debate, textbooks give students a false sense of historical certainty and encourage students to construct internally inconsistent models of historical change. If textbooks engage historical debate directly, they can both avoid such difficulties and promote more critical habits of mind.

II Civilizations

Before the "human web," there were "civilizations." Though Arnold Toynbee was not the first to enumerate the world's civilizations, he certainly popularized the idea. Like Cold War era "area studies", civilizationists emphasize the distinctive history and character of each world region.¹⁴

Fueled by September 11, civilizationism is a now a growth industry. Neo-Toynbeeist Carroll Quigley remains a favorite at the conservative Liberty Fund, and Bernard Lewis has earned the Wall Street Journal's admiration as the intellect behind the Bush Administration's Middle East thinking. Meanwhile, Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations, having ostensibly predicted 9/11, remains among the top 500 books Amazon sells.¹⁵

There are few world historians who gladly welcome Toynbee's ghost. To argue that civilization "traditionally" carry particular cultural baggage risks an intellectual transgression known as "essentialism". Under the guise of "orientalism", this manner of thinking stands accused of abetting European racism and imperialism.¹⁶

Not surprisingly, curricular materials in history frequently betray a certain ambivalence towards the idea of "civilization". ". While Bulliet cautions students that "civilization" is fraught with "ambiguity," the AP World History guidelines ask that students consider "the issues involved in using 'civilization' as an organizing principle in world history." Needless to say, the guidelines do not ask that students analyze such concepts as "web" or "network¹⁷

Alas, setting aside a concept as useful as "civilization" is not easy. Rather than write of civilizations, Jerry Bentley and Herbert F. Ziegler discuss "societies" (Mediterranean society, Christian society, Neolithic urban society, and so on). Just what does "society" mean? A chapter on "States and Societies of Sub-Saharan Africa" draws a line between state and society, while "A Survivor Society: Byzantium" conflates the two. "Industrial Society" encompasses everything from technological innovation to the international division of labor. "Society" ends up meaning everything and, therefore, means nothing.¹⁸

The AP guidelines suffer from a different problem. Having asked students to question the concept of rigidly regional "civilizations," the guidelines ask students to compare rigidly defined religions and regions. These comparisons invite the essentialism they hope to discourage. One question, for instance, asks that students assess the "role of women in different belief systems„Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, and Hinduism." Another asks that students contrast the Indian "caste system to other systems of social inequality devised by early and classical civilizations, including slavery." These questions discourage students from imagining diversity both religious systems and social structures.¹⁹

While Traditions and Encounters and the AP guidelines struggle with conceptual clarity, two other textbooks do not. The first, Robert Tignor, et al., Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, categorically rejects civilizationism. The text, declare its authors, features "no freestanding [chapters devoted to ] China, the Middle East, or Africa, as is the case in most other works."²⁰ They are true to their word: every chapter is organized around an interregional concept (i.e., commerce, state power, industrialization) rather than a specific region. The other text, World Civilizations, unapoligetically embraces the concept of civilizations. Chapter titles tell the story: "Classical Civilization: China"; "Classical Civilization: India", "Civilization in the Mediterranean: Greece and Rome", "A New Civilization Emerges in Europe," and so on.²¹

Tignor and Stearns are admirably consistent, but they write as though the controversy over "civilization" doesn't exist. Why refuse to focus chapters on particular regions? Conversely, why focus chapters on civilizations rather than employ some other unit of analysis?

While textbooks take very different approaches to the problems posed by civilizationism, all would benefit from acknowledgement of debate and dissent. As for students, they too would benefit from an invitation to participate in that discussion.

III World-Systems

World-systems theory asserts that between the 16^th and late 18^th centuries, European states developed a global capitalist structure which ultimately exported low-wage primary production and extracting profit for the existing capitalist core from the new capitalist periphery. In short, it claims that the North is rich because it exploits and impoverishes the South. Closely related is dependency theory, which remains influential among many Latin Americanists and Africanists.

Scholars identified with world-systems research have generated important studies on an impressive number of issues„17^th-early 20^th century European expansionism, the development of world markets, the "Atlantic World" and slavery, colonial administration, and much else besides.²² These studies have, in turn, provoked robust and fruitful debate. From Walt Rostow's Stages of Growth to Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital, those who would champion free markets have been compelled defend their views more vigorously and imaginatively than they might otherwise have done.²³

World history texts have tried to accomplish the impossible, welding a single narrative from the arguments of both world systems scholars and their opponents. For instance, Bulliet's discussion of 20^th century Argentinian and Brazilian development is perfectly consistent with dependency theory.²⁴ Yet, Bulliet credits the industrial growth of East Asia and Southeast Asia on "disciplined and hard-working labor forces," heavy investment education, impressive consumer savings, and adaptation to new technologies. If dependency is right for Latin America, why doesn't it apply to East Asia?²⁵

Jackson Spielvogel's World History: The Human Odyssey does the same. Spielvogel's chapter "Latin American Economy and the United States" enumerates the region's woes, among them periodic US intervention, frequent dictatorship, and chronic poverty.²⁶ And what accounts for East Asian economic success? According to Spielvogel, the "Japanese quickly adapted to ƒ new conditions;" South Korean businesses took "advantage of low wages and a high rate of savings;" Taiwan benefited from "protection by American military forces" and instituted sweeping land reform, while Singapore's "authoritarian political systemƒcreated a stable environment for economic growth."²⁷

A careful reader of World History: The Human Odyssey might conclude that low wages, U.S. military intervention and authoritarianism explain both Latin America poverty and Asian prosperity.

Again: the point here is not that these texts support or oppose world systems theory. The point is that you can't just mix and match the scholarship. Such treatments will merely confirm the views students already bring into their world history classes: that Latin America is inherently poor, corrupt and violent while East Asia, by its nature, hard-working, smart, and prosperous.

Neither textbook authors nor teachers want this result. But, absent explicit discussion of the central questions in history„and the theories which try to answer those questions„that's what they get.

IV. Ideas, Heroes, Ethics

Let us briefly consider three other paradigms.

Ideas in History: Do ideas make history? A typical answer comes from Jackson Speilvogel's World History: The Human Odyssey. A chapter on the 16^th-18^th century "intellectual revolution in the West" argues that ideas were at the center of early modern European history; a subsequent chapter on the 19^th century makes "mass society" a central storyline.²⁸ There is nothing inherently wrong with this scheme. Unspoken, however, is a fundamental question: does economy or ideology more likely to change history? Instead of inviting students to answer such a question, the text gives them an arbitrary (and wholly conventional) answer.

Textbook answers to the ideas-in-history question differ not only by period, but by place. John P. McKay et. al, A History of World Societies distinguishes between an "Islamic World" and "African Societies."²⁹ Did religion play a less central role in the lives of non-Islamic Africans than it did in the lives of African Muslims? Most textbooks discuss Europe in the Renaissance and Reformation but do not grapple with "China in the Era of Neo-Confucianism" or "Islam in the Age of Itjihad."

In short, texts reproduce entirely conventional notions about the relationship between historical change and intellectual movements. Students largely take these conventions for granted. Unexamined, their faith in what they take to be scholarly consensus leads them to reach wholly erroneous conclusions.

Heroism: Textbooks would be deadly dull if they expunged individual human stories. Even the most concept-driven texts offer biographical vignettes. The best example of this is Tignor, et al., Worlds Together, Worlds Apart. The text's central theme is "interconnection and divergence." Tignor promises to explore both global trends and each region's "particular movements for handling or resisting connections and change." Tignor and his colleagues have done a good job identifying individuals who can represent both global and regional histories.³⁰

Do Tignor's historical actors make history, or do they respond to it? To get at these, I read a number of the vignettes, identified all individuals whose names appeared four or more times in the text, and counted all personal portraits of individuals named in in the text. One can quibble over the proper category for particular individuals or whether a single off-hand mention is worth counting. That said, the results are clear. Europeans far outnumber all other individuals, both in the number of text mentions and in portraits.

This data is not as clear-cut as it might appear. The text devotes considerable space to Asian, Latin American, and African organizations and mass movements. Thus Tignor embeds brief mention of Mayan leaders Jacinto Pat and Cecilio Chi in a larger discussion of the Caste War that racked Yucatan in the latter half of the 19^th century. Tignor also delivers an extensive discussion of the organizations contributing to the Boxer Rebellion, an account which mentions no leaders at all because, Tignor writes, the leadership was local and diffuse.³¹

Students might not notice all this, but I believe that it will confirm a view they already hold: that heroes make history in the United States and Europe, while crowds, mobs, and conspiracies make it everywhere else.

Challenging that view requires that raising the whole issue of heroes in history, not to fill in a list of such heroes worldwide but to assess whether individual human agency matters.

Morality and History. St. Thomas Aquinas classified history as a branch of ethics. He was not alone; historical writing was, from its earliest origins, a study in moral reasoning Only in the 19^th century did conservative Positivists and radical Socialists systematically sequester History from the Idea of the Good. History, Ranke announced, is a science.

Textbooks are most likely to yoke history to morality after 1940. Bulliet characterizes Nazis as "murderers" and the Stalin regime as "ruthless" and "brutal."³² In the same vein, Bentley and Ziegler tote up German and Japanese "atrocities."³³ Yet for previous periods, texts assume an air of detachment. Bentley and Ziegler report, for example, that, facing criticism from 460 scholars, emperor Shi Huangdi buried them alive. Bentley and Ziegler comment that "the First Emperor took his policy seriously and enforced it earnestly."³⁴ To be sure.

Granted, good historians must cultivate a certain moral myopia. A scholar puffed up with "temporal superiority," judges the distant past long before understanding it. Historians call this "presentism," and rightly warn against it.³⁵ However, historical distance insulates long-dead butchers from our moral outrage, it is not much of a leap to conclude that cultural distance should confer a similar immunity upon those who are living. This is not a lesson most of us would want to teach.

V. So What?

We want students to know something about world history. Every textbook on the market will accomplish this goal, and far more effectively than those of twenty or more years ago.

Still, pretending that historians agree, that the biggest questions have been settled, is to falsify current scholarship and idealize the way history actually gets written. While the resulting narratives read well and seem cohesive, they are in fact inconsistent and contradictory.

Teaching historical theory to high school and college students is no easy task. Still, there are approaches which, added to our repertoires, can make a difference.

Rewrite the textbooks and courses. This, of course, is a long-term labor. Still, there exist a few examples which show that the task is achievable. One is Howard Spodek, The World's History. In one early chapter, Spodek compares opinions on the Mesopotamian social structure, citing Lewis Mumford, Karl Marx, and Gerda Lerner. Later, to get at the significance of interregional commerce, he describes the works of Karl Polanyi, Philip Curtin, and Janet Abu-Lughod. The World's History is well within the intellectual reach of Advanced Placement and college students.
Encourage historical debate. Many teachers require scholarly readers organized around controversial issues in history; students are assigned essays or debates based on the contending scholarship. One anthology that encourages this approach is Mitchell and Mitchell, Taking Sides: World History (2002). Chapters begin with a question„did same-sex unions exist in medieval Europe? Was Zen Buddhism the primary shaper of the warrior code of the Japanese samurai? Was China's worldview responsible for its failure to continue its commercial and maritime efforts during the Ming dynasty? A brief introductory essay and two opposing responses address the question.
Focus Students on the Big Questions. Do heroes make history? Is dependency theory accurate? Such questions, posted on the wall, printed on assignment sheets and added to examinations can focus discussions throughout the year.
Teaching the Textbook. Classes can scour textbooks and supplements to determine each author's own responses to the Big Questions. Discovering that textbooks make arguments provides students an important approach to reading and analysis.
Put In a Good Word for Bias. Advanced Placement World History courses require that students analyze "bias or point of view" in original source documents.³⁶ I have found that as students become proficient in ferreting out bias, they also become contemptuous of works where they find it. Many students believe that the only "real" history is "objective" history„i.e., a textbook. Attention to Big Questions can remind students that while historians may broadly agree about what happened in the past, disagreements about meaning are inescapable.

Once we agree that we should not keep historians' debates a secret from our students, we make it possible for those students to examine their own "biases". As they learn to test their perspectives against new evidence and rival interpretations, they will learn to think historically in ways that go far beyond analysis of documentary sources. Textbooks can contribute to that.

Sources Cited

Textbooks and Curricula

College Board, 2003. Advanced Placement Course Description: World History: May 2004, May 2005. Princeton, New Jersey.

Bentley, Jerry H. and Herbert F. Ziegler. 2000. Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Boston: McGraw Hill.

Bulliet, Richard et al. 2005. The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

McKay, John P. et al. 2000. A History of World Societies. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Mitchell, Joseph R. and Helen Buss Mitchell. 2002. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in World History. 2 vols. Guilford, Connecticut: McGraw Hill/Dushkin.

Spielvogel, Jackson. 1999. World History: The Human Odyssey. Agoura Hills: West Publishing Company.

Spodek, Howard. 2001. The World's History. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Stearns, Peter et al. 2003. World Civilizations: The Global Experience. 3^rd Advanced Placement edition. New York: Addison-Wesley.'

Tignor, Robert et al. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart. 2002. New York: W. W. Norton.

Other sources

Abu-Lughod, Janet. Before European Hegemony. 1989. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ayittey, George B. N. Africa Betrayed. 1999. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Baran, Paul. 1957. The Political Economy of Growth. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Barendse, R. J. 2003, December. "The Feudal Mutation: Military and Economic Transformations of the Ethnosphere in the Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries." Journal of World History 14:4, 503-529.

Bentley, Jerry. 1995. The Shapes of World History. Washington: American Historical Association.

------. 1993. Old World Encounters.

Blaut, James M. 1993. The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York: Guilford Press

------. 2000. Eight Eurocentric Historians. New York: Guilford Press.

Bray, Francesca. 1999. Technology and Society in Ming China. Washington, D. C.: American Historical Association.

Bulliet, Richard. 1990. The Camel and the Wheel. New York: Columbia University Press.

Burns, E. Bradford. 1980. A History of Brazil, 2^nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press.

Butterfield, Herbert. 1931. Whig Interpretation of History. reprint edition. New York: AMS Press.

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique and Enzo Faletto. 1979. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Castells, Manuel. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. 3 vols. New York: Blackwell.

Chase-Dunn, Christopher. 1998. Global Formation: Structures of the World Economy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Christian, David. 2004. Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Crosby, Alfred W. 1993. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe. reissue edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

-------. 1996. The Measure of Reality: Quantification in European History, 1250-1600.

Davis, Mike. 2001. Late Victorian Holocausts. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

De Soto, Hernando. 2003. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. New York: Basic Books.

Diamond, Jared. 1997. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton

Eisenstadt, S. N. (ed.) 1986. The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations. New York: State University of New York Press.

Frank, Andre Gunder. 1967. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press.

-------. 1989. Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment. New York: Monthly Review Press.

-------. 1998. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

------- and David Landes. 1998 December 2. "The Frank-Landes Debate: ReOrient vs. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Transcript at http://www.whc.neu.edu. To find the transcript, select "events" and go to "public lectures."

Galeano, Eduardo H. 1998. The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. 25^th anniversary edition. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Hodgson, G. S. 1993. Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History. Edmund Burke III ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hunt, Lynn. 2004. "Against Presentism." American Historical Associaton Perspectives, online at http://www.historians.org/Perspectives.

Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Touchstone

Headrick, Daniel R. 1981. The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hugill, Peter J. 1993. World Trade Since 1431: Geography, Technology, and Capitalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Jones, Eric L. 1981. The European Miracle. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Landes, David S. 1998. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Others So Poor. New York: W. W. Norton.

Landes, David S. and Andre Gunder Frank. 1998 December 2. Debate, World History Center, Northeastern University. Formerly available from C-SPAN, but appears to be out of print.

Lewis, Martin W. and Karen E. Wigen. 1997. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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

McNeill, John R. and William H. McNeill. 2003. The Human Web: A Bird's Eye View of Human History. New York: W. W. Norton.

McNeill, William H. 1963. The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mokyr, Joel. 1990. Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pomeranz, Kenneth. 2000. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Quigley, Carroll. 1979. The Evolution of Civilizations. Reprint edition, originally published 1961. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Redman, Charles L. 1999. Human Impact on Ancient Environments. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press.

Rodney, Walter. 1981. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Revised edition, originally published 1972. Washington D.C.: Howard University Press.

Rostow, Walt. 1960. The Stages of Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. London: Cambridge University Press.

Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage.

Waldman, Peter. 2004 February 3. "A Historian's Take on Islam Steers U.S. In Terrorism Fight" Wall Street Journal.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1980. The Modern World-System. 3 vols. Reprint edition, originally published 1974-1980. San Diego: Academic Press.

Notes

¹ Stay tuned: a World History Connected issue devoted to textbook reviews issue is coming in Fall 2005.

² McNeil and McNeil, 2003; Castells 1996; Wallerstein, 1974.

³ College Board 2003, 4.

⁴ Longman online catalogue, at http://www.ablongman.com/catalog/academic/product/0,4096,0321164253,00.html.

⁵ Bulliet et al., 2005, xxiii. Like new car models, textbook publication dates anticipate the coming year; this text appeared in April 2004.

⁶ See, for example, Rostow 1960, Landes 1998, and Jones 1981.

⁷ See, for example, Hodgson 1991 and Blaut 1993 and 2000.

⁸ For China, see Frank 1998 or Pomeranz 2000. Many world histories consider Eurasia or Afro-Eurasia as a single unit; see Hodgson 1991 for its origins. Hodgson uses "ekumene"; Barendse borrows the term "ethnosphere" from Russian historian L. N. Gumilev.

⁹ Frank and Landes 1998.

¹⁰ Bulliet et al. 2005, 350.

¹¹ Bulliet et al. 2005, 518-523

¹² McKay et al. 2000, 709.

¹³ McKay et al. 2000, 521.

¹⁴ Toynbee 1933-1961. For a critical comparison of some leading civilizational models, see Lewis and Wigen 1997.

¹⁵ Quigley 1957, Waldman 2004, Huntington, 1992.

¹⁶ See Said, 1978.

¹⁷ Bulliet et al. 2005, 5, College Board 2001 9.

¹⁸ Bentley and Ziegler 2000.

¹⁹ College Board 2003, 11.

²⁰ Tignor 2002, xxvi.

²¹ Stearns et al. 2003.

²² For early examples of Dependency theory, see Baran 1957 and Frank 1966 and 1969, and Cardoso and Faletto 1979. The same theme is developed in the more popular„and angrier„works of Eduardo Galleano and Walter Rodney (Galeano 1998 and Rodney 1981). The most recent iteration of dependency is Davis 2001.

²³ Rostow 1960; De Soto 2003.

²⁴ Bulliet 2005, 811-814. Two of the texts Bulliet cites are Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith, Modern Latin America, 3^rd ed. (1992) and E. Bradford Burns, A History of Brazil, 3^rd ed. (1993).

²⁵ Bulliet 2005, 856-857.

²⁶ Spielvogel 1999, 890-892.

²⁷ Spielvogel 1999, 1100-1106.

²⁸ Spielvogel 1999, chps. 19 and 22.

²⁹ McKay 2000, chps 9 and 10.

³⁰ Tignor 2002, xxvii.

³¹ Tignor 2002, 261-262 and 315-317.

³² Bulliet 2005, 788 and 768.

³³ Bentley and Ziegler 2000, 960.

³⁴ Bentley and Ziegler 2000, 164.

³⁵ Hunt 2004.

³⁶ College Board 2003, 34.

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