• Importance of African Contributions: Dr. Molefi Kete Asante emphasizes the significant contributions of African civilizations to world history, such as geometry, medicine, and farming, and argues for the inclusion of African perspectives in historical narratives.

• Challenges in Defining World History: The development of world history has faced challenges due to politics, nationalism, and differing opinions among scholars, as noted by Gilbert Allardyce.

• Pioneers of World History: Louis Gottschalk, Leften Stavrianos, and William H. McNeill are highlighted as pioneers in the field of world history, each contributing significantly despite facing various obstacles.

• Expanding Curricula: Raymond Grew discusses the need to expand historical curricula to include global awareness, ecology, and non-Eurocentric narratives, as exemplified by works like Jarred Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel".

• Global History and World History: Grew suggests that global history and world history are merging fields, with globalization processes enriching the narratives of world history.

• Concept of Globalization: Bruce Mazlish explores the relationship between world history and globalization, emphasizing that global history transcends national boundaries and complements the study of world history.

• Dr. Asante's Contributions: Dr. Asante's work in African American scholarship and his efforts to integrate African influences into mainstream history are highlighted as crucial to broadening historical perspectives.

Dr. Molefi Kete Asante is Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Temple University.  An influential author, professor, and scholar, he noted that “civilization began in the Nile Valley and that Ethiopia, Nubia, and Kemet taught the world geometry, physiology, philosophy, medicine, and farming[.]”[1] For 225,000 years, Africans were the only people living on Earth. They have literally shaped our world, their descendants’ contributions ranging across a spectrum of inventions, for example, from algebra, cotton, and writing to the elevator, potato chip, and the lightbulb.[2] As we consider our past, and our future, it’s incumbent on us to consider the rich contributions that African people have made to world history.  World history incorporates ideas and expands the historical narrative via inputs from many varied experiences and lifeways.  The Eurocentric ideation of history that many American children have learned only tells the story of ‘us’ through a few, select narratives.  Instead, cultural insights and global awareness infused into our historicity is world history.

The development of world history isn’t new, but it is also still a work in progress.  Politics, nationalism, and a degree of uncertainty among educators and academics around the world have tended to cloud the field of world history.  In his article Toward World History: American Historians and the Coming of the World History Course, author Gilbert Allardyce notes that “...the struggle to define world history is also a struggle for turf. One [World History Association] member, for example, dismissed another's textbook on international history as ‘too political’ for use in world history instruction.”[3]  In retrospect, it may have been too ambitious an undertaking for early pioneers of world history to attempt the wholesale-style rework of historical studies as they intended, but they set out, nonetheless, to redefine our conception of history as all-encompassing, incorporating area-studies, economics, and ecology, to name a few disciples, into the traditional, Eurocentric practice of the teaching and scholarship of history.   

Allardyce began his journal article with a broad history of world history, featuring several contributors to the field. One of his example pioneers, Louis Gottschalk, working with UNESCO in the mid-20th century, was debilitated developing a project dedicated to the formal inception of world history, volume 4 of History of Mankind.[4]  As he completed this manuscript, he nearly collapsed from a heart attack.[5]  The inputs he received from his colleagues left him with the feeling that his work was incomplete, and that he could never please all his colleagues all the time.  Allardyce’s other example pioneers, including Leften Stavrianos and William H. McNeill faced similar hardships and successes in their own rights.  Stavrianos, working to further the precepts of world history in secondary and college education, was confounded by events such as the launch of Sputnik, which served to further entrench educators and the American public in a nationalistic historicity.  William H. McNeill, one of the foremost authorities on world history lived well into the 21st century and reinvigorated the field with his widely accepted theory that contact between human cultures has been the driving force behind history.  McNeill’s work made history into a field of study that “makes historians and their craft seem important to life.”[6] Indeed, the infusion of different points of view, foreign cultures, and the global economy enhances our appreciation for history today.

Commenting on Robert B. Marks’s The Origins of the Modern World, Raymond Grew, in Expanding Worlds of World History, notes that the book “shows the impact of environmental and social history as well as of the literature on world-capitalist systems and third-world dependency.”[7]  Grew is articulating the notion that for too long, “military dominance and ruthless trading”[8] established a baseline for projecting world history, but that these Eurocentric narratives eclipsed the ecological features, cultures, and economies of nations in Asia and other parts of the globe, which often had narratives that were far older and as consequential to history as their European counterparts. A structure for expanding curricula, such as a structure dealing with the four subject areas mentioned by Grew elsewhere in his article - global awareness, ecology, correcting Eurocentrism, and globalization – continues to gain purchase in the history classroom.  Another way this sentiment is conveyed by Grew is to highlight the extraordinary scientist Jarred Diamond, author of the seminal work Guns, Germs, and Steel.[9]  There is perhaps no better modern, popular work that captures the essence of what it means to apply new paradigms to the study of history than Diamond’s life-altering work.  Working from the idea that geography, disease, and the conquest of less-developed nations has had a more substantial impact than regional histories on the rise of empires, Diamond was able to transform how world history is considered and debated.  In closing his journal article, Grew treats global history and world history as two fields of study slowly merging, with global history’s “processes of globalization”[10] mixing with the rich narratives evolving from world history.  These threads, as Grew writes, are brought together by authors William H. McNeill and J.R. McNeill in their book The Human Web.  We met William H. McNeill earlier in this essay, known for being one of the world’s foremost proponents and scholars of world history.  Grew views this work as synthesizing the two disciplines into a web of interconnected global citizenry, communicating their thoughts and expressive selves to generate an ever expanding and changing global, world history.  These ideas culminate in a new type of history, for which many historians might be “grateful… [and who] seek to see the world whole.”[11]

In Comparing Global History to World History by Bruce Mazlish we see a new synthesis of world history and globalization in practice and learn that the word ‘world’ in world history is conceptualized as “worlds constructed by trade and culture”[12] and not the traditional meaning of the word.   For Mazlish, globalization is a field that necessarily lends itself to the study of global history, which he refers to as “the processes that transcend the nation-state framework.”[13]  He is interested in the study of globalization, and how there exists a tension between world historians and scholars of global history.  Through this comparative essay, he seeks to frame global history and the processes of globalization as complementary to the study of world history.  World history, focused on the narratives and details of cultures, therefore is informed by global history and by the histories specific to civilizations and, today, nation-states.  Thinking back to Dr. Asante, we can then view his conceptualization, and even his life’s work as not only a masterclass in African American scholarship, but also as one thread of the rich tapestry that binds world history into a discipline, research field, and academic pursuit.  As a philosopher and academic, he has contributed to the fields of political science and social work, authored numerous articles, books, and speeches, and even been raised to the status of chief in the country of Ghana, all in service to expanding people’s world view and incorporate the influence of Africa and African cultures into mainstream academic history.  Inspired by his efforts and armed with more knowledge of world history, we are all better served by expanding on our traditional notions of Eurocentric history and embracing a connected and ever-expanding human experience.

Bibliography

Allardyce, Gilbert, “Toward World History: American Historians and the Coming of the World   History Course.” Journal of World History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1990): pp. 23-76, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078456.

Asante, Molefi Kete, “I Am Afrocentric and Pan-African: A Response to Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha on Scholarship in South Africa,” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 51, No. 3 (2020): pp. 203–212,

https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/0021934720901602.

Coard, Michael, “Black History Month is World History Every Day,” The Philadelphia Tribune,  January 29, 2022, https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/michaelcoard/black- history-month-is-world-history-every-day/article_7988b402- 27a5-50ccafe6-4a668661e453.html.

Grew, Raymond, “Expanding Worlds of World History,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 78, No. 4 (December 2006): pp. 878-898, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/511205.

Mazlish, Bruce, “Comparing Global History to World History,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Winter, 1998), pp. 385-395, https://www.jstor.org/stable/205420.

 Footnotes

 [1] Asante, Molefi Kete, “I Am Afrocentric and Pan-African: A Response to Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha on Scholarship in South Africa,” Journal of Black Studies, 2020, Vol. 51, No. 3 (2020): p. 210, https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/0021934720901602.

[2] Coard, Michael, “Black History Month is World History Every Day,” The Philadelphia Tribune, January 29, 2022, https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/michaelcoard/black-history-month-is-world-history-every-day/article_7988b402-27a5-50cc-afe6-4a668661e453.html.

[3] Allardyce, Gilbert, “Toward World History: American Historians and the Coming of the World History Course.” Journal of World History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1990): pp. 23-76, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078456.

[4] Allardyce, “Toward World History,” p. 28.

[5] Allardyce, “Toward World History,” p. 31.

[6] Allardyce, “Toward World History,” p. 72.

[7] Grew, Raymond, “Expanding Worlds of World History,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 78, No. 4 (December 2006): pp. 878-898, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/511205.

[8] Grew, “Expanding Worlds,” p. 884.

[9] Grew, “Expanding Worlds,” p. 885.

[10] Grew, “Expanding Worlds,” p. 890.

[11] Grew, “Expanding Worlds,” p. 898.

[12] Mazlish, Bruce, “Comparing Global History to World History,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Winter, 1998), pp. 385-395, https://www.jstor.org/stable/205420.

[13] Mazlish, “Comparing Global History,” p. 393.