Textbook Review - World History

Roya Hakakian’s fascinating Journey From the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran is both a history and a highly personal memoir. It was assigned in HIST 565: Comparative Revolutions, but would also work well as a text in a literature or women's studies course. The author, Roya Hakakian, currently lives and works as a journalist in the United States. In this book, she uses her journalistic skills to examine her own past as a young woman growing up in Iran during the 1979 revolution. Hakakian describes her early life as a member of Tehran’s large Jewish community prior to 1979, the initial excitement of the revolution, and the increasingly exclusionary measures taken against both women and Jewish Iranians. Using her family’s experiences, she paints an effective picture of the Islamic Revolution as it was lived by a middle-class Tehran family. The greatest strength of Hakakian’s book is its refusal to accept simplistic black and white ideas of Iran and the Islamic Revolution. At its core, her book is about the crushing disappointment of realizing that neither women nor members of the Jewish community would be included in the revolutionary project. Yet even while discussing acts of oppression by the Ayatollah’s forces, Hakakian is careful not to romanticize life under the Shah. Both sides are depicted as corrupt and exploitative, and Hakakian does not shy away from describing the atrocities committed by each group.   Journey From the Land of No has great relevance both as a historical work and as background to current events in Iran. Hakakian states in her introduction that she was inspired to write this book by recent student uprisings and demonstrations in Tehran. In addition, she wanted to dispel some common misconceptions about the political situation in Iran. In that respect, she succeeds brilliantly. This is an excellent book on every level and is highly recommended to students from all disciplines.

JM Blaut’s purpose with The Colonizer’s Model of the World, assigned in Dr Darling’s world history seminar, is to refute the long-held theory that Europeans industrialized first and became the dominant global power because of some inherent environmental or cultural superiority. This theory, known as “European diffusionism,” held that the European physical environment and culture led to more industrious and scientific societies than those of Asia or Africa. European cultural norms and scientific beliefs then spread through diffusion to the rest of the world. Until the 1970s, European diffusionism was widely accepted and taught in American and European schools. Blaut’s argument obliterates European diffusionism by providing evidence of multiple areas in which Europeans were behind the rest of the world until 1492. Until then, Blaut contends, European agriculture, medicine, and science lagged far behind that of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It was only the colonization of the New World, made possible by European diseases that wiped out the indigenous population, that gave Europeans the resources to industrialize and develop better technology. Had African or Asian explorers reached the New World first, they would have been the ones to develop overseas colonies and start the Industrial Revolution. Blaut’s argument, while forceful, seems dated. Historians have long since discarded any arguments that Europeans were somehow fated to rule the world. The colonization of the New World by Europeans rather than Asians or Africans is universally recognized as an accident of geography and timing rather than destiny. As a result, readers are likely to agree with almost every point Blaut makes but wonder why writing the book was even necessary.

Before his death in 1999, George Mosse produced several groundbreaking works on the connections between fascism, sexuality, and anti-Semitism in Germany. Perhaps the most well-known of these books is Nationalism and Sexuality, which links the rise of modern nationalism to bourgeois morals and ideas of respectability. In Germany, Mosse argues, the alliance between nationalism and bourgeois respectability eventually led to the Third Reich. This book is required reading for Dr Vejdani’s seminar on comparative revolutions, but it would be equally appropriate for a history of sexuality course. The major strength of Mosse’s work is in his ability to link topics usually considered unrelated. He makes a strong case that sexuality and moral codes are in fact influential factors in politics and nation-building. He makes particularly good arguments about the role of masculinity in the development of fascism. In addition, he does strong comparative work by explaining why bourgeois nationalism had different results in Germany and Britain. One weakness of this book is that it is too focused on masculinity. Female sexuality is touched on only briefly, and even then it is discussed only in comparison to male sexuality. Mosse could have made some kind of case for why male sexuality was more important to nationalism, but here it is simply an unspoken assumption. Another issue is his tendency to refer to events that actually took place a century apart and present them as part of an unbroken trend. For example, he argues for a steady trend of sexual repression from the nineteenth century to 1933, ignoring the fact that sexual norms were relatively permissive during the 1920s. Despite these problems, there is no doubt that Mosse broke new ground when he published Nationalism and Sexuality. Since that time, numerous historians have expanded upon and refined the ideas developed by Mosse. This book may be problematic and frustrating, but it is necessary reading for all historians.

World Civilizations: The Global Experience, edited by Peter Stearns, is used as the major textbook for Dr Ortiz’s Individuals and Societies 103: World History. INDV 103 is a first-year general education course designed to introduce freshmen college students to the social sciences and humanities. In Dr Ortiz’s course, students use the textbook to learn about the major events and people of world history while Dr Ortiz goes into greater depth and detail in lecture. World Civilizations is written in a very simple style suitable for high school students. It includes helpful keywords and highlighted terms designed to help students develop study guides. Each chapter focuses on a particular region or country and attempts to give as much information as possible about the major events in that area. The textbook is accompanied by a reader of primary sources related to each of the chapters. Unfortunately, Peter Stearns continues the Eurocentric approach to history by giving Europe and the United States far more time and attention than the rest of the world. While a world history textbook necessarily leaves out many events and movements, some of Stearns’ choices are questionable. For example, women and the feminist movement feature only briefly and almost as an aside. Some major social movements of the twentieth century, such as the struggle for LGBT rights, are barely mentioned. While the textbook is weak, the accompanying reader is an invaluable teaching tool. The primary sources selected range from letters to maps to paintings. Students usually find the primary sources more engaging and informative than the textbook. In addition, primary source analysis is an important part of any introductory history course. Instructors are recommended to keep the reader and discard the textbook for something more up-to-date.

The theories of Michel Foucault provide the foundation for much of the work being done in history today. All of Foucault’s writings are essentially about power and how it is distributed in the modern nation-state. Each of his works has a slightly different focus, but all include ideas of surveillance and control manifesting through institutions like hospitals, schools, and prisons. Discipline and Punish traces the development of the modern prison system. Foucault argues that in the eighteenth century there was a decisive shift away from public executions and torture and toward imprisonment. This was, like regulation of sexuality and public health, part of a larger social program of surveillance and control in which the populace was complicit without even realizing it. Discipline and Punish, like all of Foucault’s work, is a fascinating but difficult read. Foucault is not a very structured writer; one is often unsure of why he is discussing a particular point. He is uninterested in clearly stating his argument, preferring to lay out his case and let the reader infer what he is getting at. At the end of the book, one may find that they have an intuitive understanding of Foucault’s argument, even if they cannot quite articulate it. Reading other works by Foucault like The History of Sexuality may help to clarify matters; Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality are ultimately about the same social trend, although that trend is analyzed through different phenomena in each book. This book was assigned as part of the reading list for HIST 695 Historiography. No contemporary historiography course would be complete without some of Foucault’s work, and Discipline and Punish is probably the best introduction.

Clive Ponting’s A New Green History of the World is an updated version of his Green History of the World, initially published in 1991. Ponting tells the story of humanity’s interaction with our environment and the damage that interaction has caused. In addition to being a history, this is a warning about the consequences of continuing to allow unchecked growth and production. The revised version of Ponting’s book is more pessimistic than the original edition and he has little good to say about efforts to curb carbon emissions and other forms of pollution. A New Green History is on the reading list for Dr Darling’s graduate world history seminar. Like many of the books assigned in that course, it uses a theme (in this case, environmental damage) to study history on a global scale. This book is more successful than some others assigned in the course because human interaction with the environment is something that truly can be studied for any point in our history. Ponting begins with the story of how Easter Island’s environment was destroyed through deforestation. This cautionary tale is referenced again and again throughout the text; Ponting believes that it is possible for the same mistake to occur around the world. Ponting is correct in most of his analysis of current problems. Some of his predictions are, however, questionable because they rely on consumption and production continuing at current levels. Some major developments, such as China’s recent massive investments into green energy technology, are omitted entirely.  This is a frightening book and should be read as a guide to current problems and possible future disasters. Readers should, however, be aware that conflicting predictions exist.

Edward Said’s Orientalism is an extraordinarily influential book in the field of history. It is a critique of Orientalist approaches to the study of the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa. Orientalism, a school of thought popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, attributed non-Europeans with a number of qualities identified as “Oriental.” These qualities included laziness, sexual excess, and exotic beauty. “Orientals” were portrayed as the opposite of Europeans in every way; Caucasians were therefore seen as industrious, sexually controlled, and sophisticated. Orientalist thought can be found in paintings, histories, and popular culture. Said’s book is a call for “the East to represent itself.” It argues for historical work by and for people outside of Europe and North America. More importantly, Orientalism demands that studies of areas outside of Europe stop treating them as a single “Oriental” block. Orientalism is on the reading list for most graduate historiography courses, including the one offered by the University of Arizona. It is an important book that has inspired an enormous amount of work in postcolonial and subaltern studies. While necessary background for historians, the book is somewhat dull and difficult to get through. Said essentially makes his case in the introduction; the rest of the book is the same point and similar evidence over and over again. In addition, he often uses an example of a problem in one field, like art, and then extends that critique to historians without showing that they use similar methods. Orientalism is a difficult and irritating book to get through, but it would be impossible to understand developments in postcolonial history without having Said as background.

Rites of Spring sounds both fascinating and infinitely frustrating. I'm obsessed with anything relating to World War I. There's so much more information about World War II, naturally, because it was a much larger, longer, and more involved war, but there's something so deeply tragic and interesting about WWI that draws me in every time. So anytime I see a new book about it, I have to have it. Given my background in English as well as history, this sounds like it would be exactly the kind of thing I'd love.  Only problem is that I'm not at all sure how modernism is more to blame for WWI than complicated political alliances and schemes. Modernism influenced certain attitudes immediately prior to the war, certainly, particularly the belief that scientific progress automatically led to cultural and social progress, but that wasn't enough to touch off a war. It was nationalism and national determination above all else that caused the hostility, and convoluted political treaties that turned it from an isolated war between Austria and the Bulkan states into a world war. 

            “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” So begins the first chapter of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, unarguably one of the most influential documents written in the nineteenth century.  So, too, is lain bare in that sentence Marx’s ultimate definition of history as he sees it: since the first humans began to walk the earth, society has been split into oppressor and oppressed in various but fundamentally identical capacities (slaves and their masters, lords and serfs, and guild-masters and journeymen, to name but a few).  The mid-nineteenth century in which Marx lived at the time of the Manifesto’s development was no different.  Although the modern bourgeoisie was made possible only by having first gone through a feudal system, it was still a perpetrator of the old forms of oppressive classes.  Worse still, for Marx, is that the bourgeoisie not only emerged from an oppressive system to itself become the oppressor, but also destroyed the traditional bonds of “loyalty” owed to one’s social superiors in favor of pure self-interest.             If Marxism presented only one “scientific” truth in its ideology, it was that history was predictable on a grand scale.  The whole history of the world had been the struggle between one class and another, constantly at odds due to diametrically opposed aims and viewpoints.  Marx’s hypothesis was that, sooner or later, there would only be one class, which would subsume all others and thereby eliminate the ordeal of class struggle altogether; he believed, furthermore, that this class would have to be the proletariat, as the largest segment of the population and that which had the most to gain.  In short, if one subscribes to Marx’s theory, the age of the bourgeoisie was doomed to a finite existence; just as class struggles had toppled every other oppressor-oppressed societal relationship in the past, so too would communism eventually triumph over capitalism, thus ushering in a classless society which in fact had no need for a state at all.

            The story of global historiography as told by Georg G. Iggers and Q. Edward Wang in A Global History of Modern Historiography in many ways parallels the general story of narrowing gaps between various cultures.  Just as the West deeply influenced much of the rest of the world through technology and science, so too has historical writing seemed to take on an increasingly westernized slant.  As the world at large eventually began rejecting the standards and often political control imposed on it by the West, historiography in most major cultures reflected a similar (if not always conscious) decision to focus on a given area’s particular literary heritage rather than rely on a strictly Western or westernized perspective.  The overall trend of historiography since approximately the late eighteenth-century to the present has shifted relatively slowly from acceptance to rejection of the Western model, while in the West itself historical writing has gradually come to incorporate non-Western scholarship to augment the Eurocentric conception of history and to finally approach something like a global historical narrative.             Broadly speaking, the major regions Iggers and Wang discuss at length (Europe and the West in general, the Islamic world, India, and East Asia) share several characteristics that have determined the way history is recorded in each area.  All have a historical tradition rooted in antiquity, from Greek historians and Hellenic philosophers in the West and the Middle East, to Confucius in the East.  Religion plays an important role in the development (even establishment, in some cases) of historical writing, as does the eventual secularization of the field; the West relied on Christianity and the Bible, the Middle East on Islam and the Quran, India on the Veda, and East Asia on shamanism and later Buddhism. The religious component of historical writing in the late medieval and early modern eras warrants a more in-depth discussion.  While not necessarily as much of an issue in the West, historiography at least in the Middle East and East Asia reflects spiritual and didactic qualities. In both areas, the writing of history took place in a primarily bureaucratic context meant to record a ruler's deeds for both guidance and warning to those who followed.  Historiography also served as a mirror to hold up to current rulers, one by which they could assess how they were governing in accordance to tradition.  Chinese historians relied on the teachings of Confucius to pass judgment while the Islamic world used the Quran to record and maintain the Muslim tradition, particularly when questions of rightful government emerged along with Persian and Ottoman rule.  Where this morally inclined historiography began to break down was in the West.  Signs could be seen as early as the Italian Renaissance and the advent of humanism, but permanent and widespread shifts in popular belief in general and historical writing specifically did not truly arrive until the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment of the mid- to late-eighteenth-century.  Scientific, technological, and industrial advances led historians away from the more accepting opinion they had more or less maintained since the age of exploration in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-centuries, namely that Europe was but one civilization among many.  Instead, they began attempting to explain how Europeans were seemingly at the height of human civilization while other areas of the world lagged behind.  They found a convenient explanation in the simultaneous rise of nationalism, whereby nationality itself became more than a geographical expression and became a unifying cultural identity.  A Frenchman, in other words, was French not merely because he lived in a region called France, but because he spoke the French language, had French heritage, followed French customs, et cetera.  Germany is often credited with the jumpstarting the nationalist movement throughout Europe due to the German states' relatively cohesive response to Napoleon's reign in the early-nineteenth-century, but similar developments were taking place throughout the world around the same time.  In the Islamic states, despite having begun to accept the more "scientific" Western approach to historical writing, Islamic historians increasingly turned toward nationalistic writing to maintain their distinctive cultural identity in the face of Ottoman and Western influence.  Whereas earlier there had not been serious distinctions between various parts of the Islamic world as far as historical writing was concerned (with Egypt being the notable exception), to counteract the growing threat of assimilation or outright domination Islamic historians began to focus much more on the histories of specific areas like Lebanon and Afghanistan.  Meanwhile, Muslim influence during Persian control of India led Indian historians to adopt the Islamic administrative and scholarly methods of the ruling culture, resulting in a more definitive structure and a deeper reliance on verifiable facts as opposed to the theological history upon which India had traditionally relied.  Although India, as a central hub of trade, was certainly familiar with intellectual trends in all three of the other regions discussed here, the last major driving force needed to establish a solid Indian historiographical process was, ironically enough, British colonialism.  Because the British colonialists saw the various Indian states as not sharing a common language or culture as was the case in Germany and Italy at the time, and because there were few written records, they insisted that India actually had no history until the British, i.e. the West, introduced it.  To impose a linear history on India (which was in turn, of course, necessary to demonstrate how India had failed to industrialize and modernize and thus was somehow "inferior"), the British divided Indian history into three distinct phases: the predominantly Hindu ancient past of Aryan origins, the Islamic ruled India beginning in the thirteenth century, and finally British colonialism beginning in the nineteenth century.  Indian scholars would later keep the periodization but reject the conclusions the British drew about Indian history.              By the late nineteenth-century, the trend of bucking Western models of historical writing finally came full circle to influence Western historiography itself.  The scientific, professional conception of history as advocated by von Ranke and practiced for decades came under attack for excluding social and cultural history in order to focus on an outdated political and national history that held little relevance in a modern industrial society.  Along with a failed attempt to introduce sociology into German historiography and the growing influence of Marxist theory, another manifestation of social history appeared in the guise of "New History" in the United States.  Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis," in which he claimed the American people were unique in their constant drive into the unknown western territories and consequent state of perpetual reinvention and ingenuity, served as the unofficial beginning of the Progressive history era.  Turner was a particularly optimistic historian even among a group known for believing in democracy and nominal social equality, but other followers of the Progressive Movement such as Charles Beard sought to deconstruct popular American myths through a fusion of social and economic history meant to highlight the very inequalities Progressives denied. Pessimism along the lines of Charles Beard had already begun to take shape after the detrimental effects of massive industrialization became apparent, but it took the devastation of World War I to severely damage the Western modernization ideal.  If technology represented the height of human civilization, after all, what did it say about the supposed leaders of that civilization when all their technology brought about a horrific war on a scale never before seen, in which millions of people died and which no one could quite explain the causes of in the first place?  If a lesson was indeed learned, it was not actually applied until after World War II, a far more destructive war that not only finalized the disintegration of Europe's old empires but signaled the end of traditional colonialism worldwide.  In Europe, owing in large part to the French Annales School, social history finally began gaining ground, perhaps as a mechanism by which to come to terms with the most physically and humanly destructive period in recorded history.  Likewise, the Islamic world, only recently freed from Ottoman control with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, now embarked on a vigorous campaign of national history to ward off Western powers that would attempt to exert undue influence after World War II.  The United States, emerging from the war and the Great Depression victorious and as the undisputed global superpower, made an understandable regression toward the idealistic history of the Progressives.  Scholars in the consensus history school took the nation's newly received superpower status to heart and set about much as the Progressives had to make the American narrative one of a steady trek toward democracy and social justice.  The reality, of course, fell far short of the fantasy, and this schism soon came to the forefront of American historiography in response to widespread social unrest during the Civil Rights movement.  Unease over the implications of America's use of the atomic bombing of Japan, displeasure about the escalating conflict in Vietnam, and long-simmering anger brought about by deep social divisions exploded in the 1960s and 1970s and took the form of cultural history in the intellectual world.  Ethnic minorities (especially African-Americans), women, homosexuals, and other huge sections of the population that had previously been marginalized began asserting themselves as active agents rather than merely passive recipients of historical change.   Sown from these seeds of discontent, European historiography (and quickly thereafter Western historiography as a whole) introduced postmodernism as a way to comprehend a world in which nothing seemed to make sense; or, more accurately, postmodernists aimed to demonstrate that such a world could not actually be comprehended in any meaningful way.  Historical writing, then, according to postmodernists, is no different from the early Islamic tradition of prosaic, often imaginative literature. Over approximately the last thirty years, modern historiography has retained this disillusionment with the idea of progress but has nevertheless pushed for increasingly social and increasingly specialized writing.  While nationalist history remains the dominant trend in East Asia, the West has finally started to demonstrate a sincere interest in global historiography, not only in acknowledgment of the growing interconnectedness of modern society but to understand where and how the West itself fits into the picture.  It is not the only piece of the puzzle, but in working toward a global conceptualization of history, perhaps it can find a comfortable fit for itself in the world mosaic of historical writing. I can't recommend this book highly enough for serious history students. Yes, historiography can be tedious at times, but this really is a fascinating exploration of how different cultures have approached chronicling their own histories and how these trends have interacted with one another over the centuries. It's highly engaging, very readable, and will give you a good, solid grounding in historiographical studies.

 Hi Bandella,  I don't think you have to really agree with Eksteins' conclusions about modernism to get a lot out of Rites of Spring. I'm not entirely sure about his analysis myself. Even if you disagree with his ideas about the start of the war, he makes some fascinating points about the cultural impact of it and the leadup to WWII. In fact, I think slightly more of the book is devoted to post-WWI than the period before it.  If you enjoy studying WWI, I really can't recommend it highly enough. Even if you arrive at a totally different conclusion, it will force to to take a second look at your ideas about it.

The Romans   This is just about as standard textbook-ish as you can probably get. It's softcover, but the book is still pretty large. Litterally the entire history of ancient Rome is crammed into one textbook with very little left out. Despite this, it isn't that difficult of a read, some sections even reading like stories. Of course, it's possible that was just me since I love history and often veiw it as a story anyway.  The one thing about this book is that it really is all words. Besides a few maps, some battle maps, and a few other images there is almost nothing except for chapter headings to break up the vast blocks of text page after page. Though the textbook is very readable, there is only so long you can read like that without at least breaking up the monotony with some highlighting. If you do need to read this textbook I suggest reading in chunks so your eyes won't start seeing double after a while.  All in all, it is a pretty good textbook that has some good information. The author does try to break up text with headings and subheadings at the very least. The textbook has also been out for a while so try and find it used somewhere to save a few extra dollars. 

A Modern History of Modern Japan 2nd Edition by Andrew Gordon looks at Japan, from Tokugawa period all the way to modern day, today. I really enjoyed this text because unlike most world history books I've had to come across, this text is quite, quite detailed. And by detailed I mean  talking about the cultural, educational, and class changes during the 'interwar period of Japan', to name an example of detail. Andrew makes sure to sift through Modern Japan with great care. The book is very good for any Japanese history class looking at Tokugawa period, and or just wanting to look at how Japan came through the  modern world. 

Patterns in Western Civilization is one of the best textbooks I have used so far. If you have to take Western Civilization during your college career, it’s hard to go wrong with this textbook. They have a clear list of texts that you need to focus on during the semester, and gear the book towards understanding those texts. The authors provide the necessary historical background so you can put the text you are reading in context, and use engaging language not always found in textbooks. Even if you have little background in Western civilization, the book should be clear and easy to understand. The textbook also breaks down the actual texts that you read in your Western Civ. class, which is really helpful. Most of the class involves these texts and since some of them are very old, they can be difficult for most students to understand. The textbook hits all of the major points that the book has to offer, and uses actual evidence from the book itself to illustrate their point. The textbook is not a replacement for reading the actual text, but it is an incredibly helpful supplement. If you are really crunched for time, you might be able to get away just reading the textbook, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I would, however, recommend this textbook for any Western Civilization class.