The World's History

The World's History, 5th edition, Howard Spodek.

Why History?

The professional historian and the student of an introductory course often seem to pass each other on different tracks. For the professional, nothing is more fascinating than history. For the student, particularly one in a compulsory course, the whole enterprise often seems a bore. The introductory text is designed to help the student to understand and share the fascination of the historian. It will also remind professors of their original attraction to history, before they began the specialization that has almost certainly marked their later careers. Furthermore, it encourages student and professor to explore together the history of the world and the significance of this study.

Professional historians love their field for many reasons. History offers perspective and guidance in forming a personal view of human development. It teaches the necessity of seeing many sides of issues. It explores the complexity and interrelationship of events and makes possible the search for patterns and meaning in human life.

Historians love to debate - the challenge of demonstrating that their interpretations of the pattern and significance of events are the most accurate and the most satisfying in their fit between the available data and theory. Historians also love the detective work of the profession, whether it is searching through old archives, uncovering and using new sources of information, or reinterpreting long-ignored sources. In recent years historians have turned, for example, to oral history, old church records, files of photographs, cave paintings, individual census records, and reinterpretation of mythology.

Historical records are not simply lists of events, however. They are the means by which historians develop their interpretation of those events. Because interpretation differs, there is no single historical record, but various narrations of events each told from a different perspective. Therefore the study of history is intimately linked to the study of values, the values of the historical actors, of the historians who have written about them, and of the students engaged in learning about them.

Professional historians consider history to be the king of disciplines. Synthesizing the concepts of fellow social scientists in economics, politics, anthropology, sociology, and geography, historians create a more integrated and comprehensive interpretation of the past. Joining with their colleagues in the humanities, historians delight in hearing and telling exciting stories that recall heroes and villains, the low-born and the high, the wisdom and the folly of days gone by. Increasingly, history also includes the history of science - its discoveries, its methods, and its implications for philosophy, technology, and human life. This fusion of the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences gives the study of history its range, depth, significance, and pleasure. Training in historical thinking provides an excellent introduction to understanding change and continuity in our own day as well as in the past.

Why World History?

Why specifically world history? Why should we teach and study world history, and what should be the content of such a course?

First, world history is a good place to begin for it is new field for professor and student alike. Neither its content nor its pedagogy is yet fixed. Many of existing textbooks on the market still have their origins in the study of Western Europe, with segments added to cover the rest of the world. World History as the study of the interrelationships of all regions of the world, seen from the many perspectives of the different peoples of the earth, is till virgin territory.

• pedagogy: the study of the methods and activities of teaching. 教学法，教育学。

Second, for citizens of multicultural, multiethnic nations such as the United States, Canada, South Africa, and India, and of many other countries, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and most nations of the European Union, which are moving in that direction, a world history course offers the opportunity to gain an appreciation of the national and cultural origins of all their diverse fellow citizens. In this way, the study of world history may help to strengthen the bonds of national citizenship.

Third, as the entire world becomes a single unit for interaction, it becomes an increasingly appropriate subject for historical study. The new reality of global interaction in communication, business, politics, religion, culture, and ecology has helped to generate the new academic subject of world history.

Organization and Approach

The text, like the year-long course, links chronology, themes, and geography in eight units, or Parts, of study. The Parts move progressively along a time line from the emergence of early humans to the present day. Each Part emphasizes a single theme - for example, urbanization or religion or migration - and students learn to use them all to analyze historical events and to develop a grasp of the chronology of human development. The final chapter employs all the themes developed in the first seven Parts and adds an additional one, identity - personal, group, national, and global - as tools for understanding the history of our own times.

• chronology: the order in which a series of events happened, or a list or explanation of these events in the order in which they happened. 按事件发生的年代排列的顺序；（大事）年表。

New to the Fifth Edition

Each chapter of the book has been reviewed and revised for this new edition, to accommodate new scholarship and in response to reviewer comments. The final two chapters, dealing with the contemporary world, have been extensively revised.

The pedagogical features have been carefully examined, and a completely new design makes it easy for students to find special features, such as the How Do We Know? boxes. The Turning Point boxes and Part openers have been revised, rewritten, and combined into one for all Parts.

• pedagogical: relating to the methods and theory of teaching. 教学法的，教育学的。

Content Changes

Within each Part, material has been updated, revised, and added. Examples of some of the more notable changes and additions include: Substantial additions to the discussion of the DNA genetic record; additional material on the Aryans and the Indus valley settlers; discussion of recent archaeological discoveries in China; expanded coverage of agricultural villages; new material on Theodora, wife of the emperor Justinian; updated scholarship on the history of the Jewish people; new scholarship on the slave trade to the Americas; consideration of Russian migration to the west coast of the New World, via the Bering Straits and Alaska.

• Aryan: belonging or relating to a group of white people with pale hair and blue eyes, believed by Nazis to be better than other groups.（尤指浅色头发、蓝眼睛、被纳粹认为是最优等人种的）雅利安人的，北欧日耳曼人的。
• Indus valley: 印度河谷。

In updating the book to cover the events of contemporary history, we have added new materials to reflect new developments. These include: Breakthroughs in genetically modified crops; new ideas about the morality of using animals, especially chimpanzees, in research; coverage of the world economic collapse of 2008 and the nature of the recovery that began about 2012/13; discussion of the so-called Arab Spring; information on the Naxalite revolts in the tribal areas of India; material on globalization; updates in ecological technology and reliance on petrofuels; material on WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden; the public humanitarian activism of rock stars such as Bono; and the significance of the early influence of Pope Francis I on Roman Catholic Church.

• chimpanzee: a small, very intelligent African ape with black or brown fur. 黑猩猩。
• activism: the use of direct and noticeable action to achieve a result, usually a political or social one.（通常指为达到政治或社会目的而采取各种手段的）激进主义，行动主义。

Chapter-by-Chapter Revisions

Chapter One, on human origins, substantially modifies and adds to the discussion of the DNA genetic record.

Chapter Two expands coverage of agricultural villages. Material has been added on family life, village life, treatment of graves, and the role of women. The discussion of Hammurabi's Code has been enhanced.

Chapter Three adds material on recent archaeological discoveries at Huanbei and in the Anyang region of China. Coverage has been added on Eurasian immigrants to the New World and on the peoples in and urbanization of the Andes Mountains. A new excerpt from the Popol Vuh has been included.

Chapter Six includes new information on Theodora, wife of Emperor Justinian.

Chapter Ten includes updated scholarship on the history of the Jewish people material on early Christian attitudes to sexuality, beginning with Jesus' early follower Paul, and leading to the later ban on priests marrying.

Chapter Eleven's section on the Crusades has been expanded and updated to reflect recent scholarship.

• Crusades: one of the religious wars (= crusades) fought by Christians, mostly against Muslims in Palestine, in the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 17th centuries. 十字军东征。

Chapter Twelve has been reorganized chronologically and geographically, and now moves from the general introduction to the specifics of trade in the Indian Ocean and Asia, then to Africa, and finally to the Americas. The section on the Mongol Empire has been revised and expanded, and indicates the reasons that many historians now call the Mongol Empire, and its trade routes, the marker of the beginning of the modern world.

Chapter Fourteen adds material on the inflation caused by the tans-Pacific silver trade. A new section discusses the Thirty Years War. Coverage has been added of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and Cardinal Richelieu. Material has been added on the rule and achievements of Catherine the Great. The section on the Ottoman Empire has been expanded, and material has been added on the millet system.

• millet: a plant that is similar to grass, or the small seeds from this plant that can be eaten. 黍，稷；小米，粟。

... other changes ...

Special Features

• Learning Objectives now appear at the beginning of each chapter, and are repeated in question from under the relevant section headings and in tabs down the side of each page as reminders, before being answered at the end of each chapter, to encourage students to consider their own reading of the chapter.
• The Introduction to the book describes the key themes of the text and the methods historians use to practice their craft.
• The introductions to each of the eight Parts now include more specific key references to the chapters that follow.
• MyHistoryLab links, to primary sources, videos, images, and maps, appear throughout the chapters.
• Key Terms are listed at the each chapter for easy reference, and collected in the Glossary at the end of the book.
• Turning Point essays, some completely new for this edition, illustrate visually the connections between one Part and the next. In some cases, the Turning Points tell their own story as well, notably in the bridge into hte twenty-first century that uses the modern Olympic Games to illustrate and introduce many of the issues that are to follow. Turning Point Questions ask students to consider the material that has been presented.
• The How Do We Know? features help the student to understand how historians use evidence, both textual and visual, to interpret the past.
• This edition also continues the emphasis on the use of primary sources, for this is the kind of material from which the historical record is argued and fashioned. Most chapters have tow or more Source boxes, which have been colored purple in this edition to stand out.
• The Suggested Readings for each chapter have been thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded to reflect current scholarship. Films, videos, and online assets have been added. Each item in the bibliography is annotated to direct students with their reading.
• Each chapter text ends with a discussion of legacies to the future, namely, What Difference Does It Make?
• Each chapter concludes with a Chapter Review, where the reader is given answers to the Learning Objectives, essentially a summary of the most important material covered in each main heading.

New Layout and Design

Readers will notice cleaner design of box features. The format has reverted to the original taller page size so that the text and pictures have a little more room to breathe.

Maps and Illustrations

To aid the student, extensive, clear, and informative charts and maps represent information graphically and geographically. A wide range of illustrations, most in color, supplements the written word. For the fifth edition we have added more than 50 new illustrations.