6 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
John Darwin's global history of the rise of European world power — arguing that European dominance was a relatively brief and contingent episode in a world otherwise dominated by great Eurasian empires.
Janet Abu-Lughod's 1989 world-systems analysis of the 13th century global trading network — centered on the Islamic Middle East and connecting China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Europe through overlapping trading circuits.
Angus Maddison's 2007 reconstruction of world economic history from 1 AD to 2030 — providing the most comprehensive database of historical GDP estimates — demonstrating that the West's economic superiority is a relatively recent development (post-1500) and that China and India dominated the world economy for most of history.
William McNeill's 1963 magnum opus — winner of the National Book Award — arguing that Western civilization's rise to global dominance was the result of its unique position at the intersection of multiple civilizational influences (Near Eastern, Greek, Roman, Germanic) and its subsequent openness to borrowing from other cultures.
American historian at Chicago who wrote The Rise of the West and Plagues and Peoples — arguing that world history must be understood in terms of interaction between civilizations (diffusionism) rather than the independent development of separate societies, and that infectious disease has been as decisive as warfare in determining historical outcomes.
The historiographical approach that treats world history as a history of cross-cultural interactions — biological exchange, cultural diffusion, trade networks — rather than a parade of separate civilizations.