A Concise History of the World Read online

  A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

  This book tells the story of humankind as producers and reproducers from the Paleolithic to the present. Renowned social and cultural historian Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks brings a new perspective to world history by examining social and cultural developments across the globe, including families and kin groups, social and gender hierarchies, sexuality, race and ethnicity, labor, religion, consumption, and material culture. She examines how these structures and activities changed over time through local processes and interactions with other cultures, highlighting key developments that defined particular eras, such as the growth of cities or the creation of a global trading network. Incorporating foragers, farmers, and factory workers along with shamans, scribes, and secretaries, the book widens and lengthens human history. It makes comparisons and generalizations, but also notes diversities and particularities, as it examines the social and cultural matters that are at the heart of big questions in world history today.

  Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks is Distinguished Professor and Chair of the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author or editor of twenty books, including editor-in-chief of the multi-volume Cambridge World History (2015), Early Modern Europe 1450–1789 (Cambridge, 2nd edn. 2013), Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 3rd edn. 2008), Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice and Gender in History: Global Perspectives. She has also written a number of innovative source books for use in the college classroom, including Discovering the Global Past: A Look at the Evidence, a book for young adults, An Age of Voyages, 1350–1600, and a book for general readers, The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and their Worlds.

  Cambridge Concise Histories

  This is a series of illustrated “concise histories” of selected individual countries, intended both as university and college textbooks and as general historical introductions for general readers, travellers, and members of the business community.

  A full list of titles in the series can be found at:

  www.cambridge.org/concisehistories

  A Concise History of the World

  Merry E.Wiesner-Hanks

  University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

  University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom

  Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

  It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

  www.cambridge.org

  Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107028371

  © Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks 2015

  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

  First published 2015

  Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall

  A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

  Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

  Wiesner, Merry E., 1952–

  A concise history of the world / Merry Wiesner-Hanks, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-107-02837-1 (Hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-107-69453-8 (Paperback : alk. paper) 1. World history–Textbooks. I. Title.

  D21.W64 2015

  909–dc23 2015020010

  ISBN 978-1-107-02837-1 Hardback

  ISBN 978-1-107-69453-8 Paperback

  Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  Contents

  List of figures

  List of maps

  Introduction

  Social and cultural world history

  The plan

  1

  Foraging and farming families (to 3000 BCE)

  Society and culture among other hominids

  Thinking humans

  Foraging lifeways

  Family, kinship, and ethnicity

  Rituals

  Sedentism and domestication

  Plow agriculture and food processing

  Social and gender hierarchies

  Monuments and mentalities

  Prehistoric patterns

  2

  Cities and classical societies (3000 BCE–500 CE)

  Paths of urbanization

  Writing and other information technologies

  States and lineages

  Marriages and families in cities and states

  Family patterns in kin-based societies

  Social hierarchies and caste

  Slavery and slave societies

  Text-based religions and cultural interactions

  The end of a classical world?

  3

  Expanding networks of interaction, 500 CE–1500 CE

  The development of Islam

  Conflict, diversity, and blending in the Muslim world

  Soldiers, slaves, and social mobility

  Courts and courtly culture

  Codes of behavior and tales of romance

  Agricultural expansion and village society

  Nomadic pastoratists

  City life

  Zones of cultural and religious exchange

  Shifting and lengthening trade routes

  A middle millennium

  4

  A new world of connections, 1500 CE–1800 CE

  The spread of disease

  Colonization, empires, and trade

  Warfare

  Transferring food crops

  The trade in animals, alive and dead

  Drug foods and the commercialization of leisure

  Sugar and the slave trade

  Religious transformations and their consequences

  The expansion and creolization of Christianity

  Families and race in the colonial world

  Social protests, revolts, and revolutions

  The early modern and the truly modern

  5

  Industrialization, imperialism, and inequality, 1800 CE–2015 CE

  Cotton, slaves, and coal

  The expansion and transformation of industry

  Class, gender, race, and labor in industrial societies

  Movements for social change

  Population growth and migration

  The new imperialism

  Total war and modern culture

  Decolonization and the Cold War

  Liberation and liberalization

  Religious fundamentalism and diversity

  Post-industry and poverty

  Into the third millennium

  Index

  Figures

  1.1

  Hand prints from the Cueva de las Manos, Argentina. (© Hubert Stadler/Corbis)

  1.2

  Sculpted model of a female Neanderthal, based on anatomy from fossils and DNA evidence. (© Mark Thiessen/National Geographic Creative/Corbis)

  1.3

  The Venus of Brassempouy. (© Walter Geiersperger/Corbis)

  1.4

  Paleolithic rock art from Tanzania shows shamans somersaulting over animals. (Werner Forman Archive/Bridgeman Images)

  1.5

  A predator eyes a boar on one of the huge limestone pillars at Göbekli Tepe. (© Vincent J. Musi/National Geographic
Creative/Corbis)

  1.6

  Clay and wood model from Middle Kingdom Egypt. (© Gianni Dagli Orti/Corbis)

  2.1

  Sumerian clay tablet with cuneiform characters from the ancient city of Girsu. (© Gianni Dagli Orti/Corbis)

  2.2

  Page from the Maya book known as the Madrid Codex. (Werner Forman Archive/Bridgeman Images)

  2.3

  Lacquered basket from the Han dynasty. (Werner Forman Archive/Bridgeman Images)

  2.4

  Krater used to mix wine and water, made in fifth-century BCE Athens. (De Agostini Picture Library/G. Dagli Orti/ Bridgeman Images)

  2.5

  Pottery effigy jar of a mother and child, from the Moche culture. (© Burstein Collection/Corbis)

  2.6

  First-century CE Roman wall fresco. (© Corbis)

  2.7

  Relief sculpture showing the Buddha surrounded by devotees, from Mathura. (© Burstein Collection/Corbis)

  3.1

  Thirteenth-century ‘Abbasid illuminated astrological manuscript. (Pictures from History/Bridgeman Images)

  3.2

  Later copy of a painting on silk by the Chinese court painter Zhang Xuan (712–756). (Pictures from History/Bridgeman Images)

  3.3

  Inca men and women harvest potatoes, in an illustration from The First New Chronicle and Good Government. (© Corbis)

  3.4

  Chinggis Khan’s youngest son Tolui Khan and his wife Sorghaghtani Beki with courtiers and court ladies. (Pictures from History/Bridgeman Images)

  3.5

  Customers order shoes, inspect cloth, and purchase tableware in this market scene from a fifteenth-century French illuminated manuscript. (© Leemage/Corbis)

  3.6

  Punishments and chores of Mexica children of different ages, as depicted in the Codex Mendoza. (Bodleian Library, Oxford/Bridgeman Images)

  3.7

  Wooden figure of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion who helps all sentient beings, from eleventh- to twelfth-century Tibet. (Private Collection/Paul Freeman/Bridgeman Images)

  4.1

  Aztec people die of smallpox, in an illustration from the General History of the Things of New Spain. (Private Collection/Peter Newark American Pictures/Bridgeman Images)

  4.2

  Detail from a Chinese porcelain bowl showing a somewhat romanticized view of the manufacturing process of porcelain. (Private Collection/Paul Freeman/Bridgeman Images)

  4.3

  Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. (© Burstein Collection/Corbis)

  4.4

  Ink painting by the Japanese artist Ike no Taiga (1723–76) showing a hefty man eating roasted sweet potatoes. (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, PA/Purchased with funds contributed by Mrs John C. Atwood, Jr., 1969/Bridgeman Images)

  4.5

  Sixteenth-century miniature of an Ottoman coffeehouse. (Pictures from History/Bridgeman Images)

  4.6

  Enslaved workers carry out various steps of sugar processing. (© Corbis)

  4.7

  Scholars from many faiths, including Jesuit priests dressed in black, gather at Akbar’s court. (Private Collection/De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images)

  4.8

  The Mexican artist Luis de Mena combines a still life, casta painting, and devotional image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on a single canvas, painted about 1750. (Museo de America, Madrid, Spain/Index/Bridgeman Images)

  5.1

  Women reel silk using large machines in a Japanese silk mill, 1921. (© Keystone View Company/National Geographic Creative/Corbis)

  5.2

  Breaker boys in the Kohinore Coal Mine, Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, 1891. (© Corbis)

  5.3

  A woman dominates her tiny (and drunken) husband in this anti-suffrage postcard from early twentieth-century England. (Private Collection/© Look and Learn/Elgar Collection/Bridgeman Images)

  5.4

  Better Baby Contest, sponsored by the Kallpolis Grotto Masonic Lodge, Washington, DC, 1931. (© Underwood & Underwood/Corbis)

  5.5

  Indentured plantation workers from India arrive in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1891. (Royal Commonwealth Society, London/Bridgeman Images)

  5.6

  Poster for the French bicycle company De Dion-Bouton, 1921. (© Swim Ink 2, LLC/Corbis)

  5.7

  In a scene staged for the photographer, young men read Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung while waiting for transport during the Cultural Revolution, 1968. (Pictures from History/Bridgeman Images)

  5.8

  Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo protest against the 1986 “law of full stop.” (Punto Final). (© Eduardo Longoni/Corbis)

  5.9

  A small group of Ugandans take part in the 3rd Annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride celebration in Entebbe, Uganda, in August 2014. (© Rebecca Vassie/AP/Corbis)

  Maps

  1.1

  Homo ergaster/Homo erectus migrations

  1.2

  DNA evidence of global Homo sapiens migration

  1.3

  Plant and animal domestication

  2.1

  Ancient cities mentioned in the chapter

  2.2

  The world in about 400 CE

  3.1

  The spread of Islam

  3.2

  The Americas before 1492

  3.3

  Settlement of the Pacific

  3.4

  Trading networks, major cities, and religions in the eastern hemisphere, 500–1500

  4.1

  World map 1500

  4.2

  World map 1783

  5.1

  Industrial development in England and Wales

  5.2

  Major overseas empires, 1914

  5.3

  Global distribution of wealth, 2010

  Introduction

  There are many ways to tell the history of the world. Oral histories that were later written down, including the Book of Genesis, the Rig Veda, and the Popul Vuh, focused especially on the actions of gods and on human/divine interactions. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus drew on such oral traditions along with eyewitness testimony to provide deep background for his story of the war between the Persians and the Greeks, setting this within the context of the world as he knew it. The ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian told history through an encyclopedic presentation of events, activities, and biographies of emperors, officials, and other important people, beginning with the semi-mythical first sage rulers of China. The tenth-century Muslim historian Abu Ja’far al-Tabari began before the creation of Adam and Eve, and used biblical, Greek, Roman, Persian, and Byzantine sources to present history as a long and unbroken process of cultural transmission. Dynastic chroniclers in medieval Europe and Mughal India often began their accounts with the creation of the world to devise “universal histories,” then moved quickly through the millennia, slowing down as they neared the present to focus on political developments in their own locale. Histories that had a broad scope were among the flood of books produced after the development of printing technology in the fifteenth century, most written by highly learned male scholars, but some by poets, nuns, physicians, obscure officials, former slaves, and others. With the expansion of literacy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, authors wrote world histories full of moral lessons, some of them designed specifically for children or female readers.

  Throughout much of the twentieth century scholarly history focused on nations, but world history did not disappear. For example, right after the devastation of World War I, and in part as a response to the slaughter, H.G. Wells wrote The Outline of History, which told the history of the world as a story of human efforts to “conceive a common purpose in relation to which all men may live happily.” Readers could buy this in cheap bi-weekly installments, just as they had Wells’ earlier novel The War of the Worlds, and millions
did. By the last quarter of the twentieth century, the increasing integration of world regions into a single system through globalization led to a re-emergence of scholarly history conceptualized on a global scale, and the intensifying flows and interactions of people, goods, and ideas across national borders inspired histories that focused on those flows and interactions themselves. So today there are imperial histories, transnational and borderlands histories, postcolonial histories, histories of migrations and diasporas, and global histories of individual commodities such as salt, silver, or porcelain.

  Social and cultural world history

  This book thus draws on long traditions and recent developments. Like all world histories, it highlights certain things and leaves many others out, for there is no way to tell the whole story within the pages of a book that could be read (to say nothing of written) within one lifetime. It tells the story of humans as producers and reproducers, understanding these terms in a social and cultural as well as material sense. My notion of humans as “producers” incorporates not only foragers, farmers, and factory workers, but also shamans, scribes, and secretaries. Discussions of family and kin structures, sexuality, demography, and other issues that are often seen as “reproduction” examine the ways these are socially determined and change with interactions between cultures. The book also underlines the constant connections between production and reproduction throughout human history, as changes in the modes or meaning of one led to changes in the other. It does not ignore political and military developments, but examines the way these shaped and were shaped by social and cultural factors. Doing this provides a fuller and more accurate picture of both politics and war than does analyzing these more traditional topics as somehow divorced from society.