Encyclopedia Britannica
Search Britannica
Search Britannica...
Ask the ChatbotGames & QuizzesHistory & SocietyScience & TechBiographiesAnimals &
NatureGeography & TravelArts & CultureProConMoneyVideos
Giambattista Vico
Giambattista Vico
world history
historiography
Written by
Fact-checked by
Article History
Related Topics: history subaltern history
world history, branch of history concerned with the study of historical phenomena
that transcend national, regional, or cultural boundaries or distinctions between
peoples or with the study of history from a global, comparative, or cross-cultural
perspective.
Although the academic study of world history is relatively new, having been
initiated in the 1970s by historians who wished to move beyond national and
regional approaches, it has roots in remote antiquity. The great world religions
that originated in the Middle East—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—insisted on the
unity of humanity, a theme encapsulated in the story of Adam and Eve. Buddhism also
presumed an ecumenical view of humankind. The universal histories that
characterized medieval chronicles proposed a single story line for the human race,
governed by divine providence, and these persisted, in far more sophisticated form,
in the speculative philosophies of history of Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) and
G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831). Marxism too, although it saw no divine hand in history,
nevertheless held out a teleological vision in which all humanity would eventually
overcome the miseries arising from class conflict and leave the kingdom of
necessity for the kingdom of plenty.
These philosophies have left their mark on world history, yet few historians
(except for orthodox Marxists) now accept any of these master narratives. This
fact, however, leads to a conceptual dilemma: if there is no single story in which
all of humanity finds a part, how can there be any coherence in world history? What
prevents it from simply being a congeries of national—or at most regional—
histories?
Histoire de la Nouvelle France
More From Britannica
historiography: World history
Modernization theory
Modernization theorists have embraced one horn of this dilemma. There is, after
all, a single story, they argue; it is worldwide Westernization. Acknowledging the
worth of non-Western cultures and the great non-European empires of the past, they
nevertheless see the lure of Western consumer goods—and the power of multinational
corporations—as irresistible. This triumphalist view of Western economic and
political institutions drew great new strength from the downfall of the managed
economies of Russia and eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War and the emergence
in China of blatant state capitalism. It is easier to claim worldwide success for
capitalism than for democracy, since capitalism has been perfectly compatible with
the existence of autocratic governments in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
elsewhere, but history does suggest that eventually capitalist institutions will
give rise to some species of democratic institutions, even though multinational
corporations are among the most secretive and hierarchical institutions in Western
society.
Modernization theory has been propounded much more enthusiastically by sociologists
and political scientists than by historians. Its purest expression was The Dynamics
of Modernization (1966), by the American historian Cyril Edwin Black (1915–89),
which made its case by studying social indexes of modernization, such as literacy
or family limitation over time, in developing countries. Extending this argument in
a somewhat Hegelian fashion, the American historian Francis Fukuyama provocatively
suggested, in The End of History and the Last Man (1992), that history itself, as
traditionally conceived, had ceased. This, of course, meant not that there would be
no more events but that the major issues of state formation and economic
organization had now been decisively settled in favour of capitalism and democracy.
Fukuyama later acknowledged, however, that the world was experiencing a “democratic
recession,” which was especially apparent after the election of Donald Trump as
U.S. president and the United Kingdom’s decision to withdraw from the European
Union (“Brexit”), both of which occurred in 2016.
A much grimmer aspect of modernization was highlighted by the American historian
Theodore H. Von Laue (1916–2000) in The World Revolution of Westernization (1987).
Von Laue focused on the stresses imposed on the rest of the world by
Westernization, which he saw as the root cause of communism, Nazism, dictatorships
in developing countries, and terrorism. He declined to forecast whether these
strains would continue indefinitely.
The stock objection to modernization theory is that it is Eurocentric. So it is,
but this is hardly a refutation of it. That European states (including Russia) and
the United States have been the dominant world powers since the 19th century is
just as much a fact as that Europe was a somewhat insignificant peninsula of Asia
in the 12th century. Some modernization theorists have caused offense by making it
clear that they think European dominance is good for everybody, but it is
noteworthy how many share the disillusioned view of the German sociologist Max
Weber (1864–1920), who compared the rational bureaucracies that increasingly
dominated European society to an “iron cage.” More-valid criticisms point to the
simplistic character of modernization theory and to the persistence and even
rejuvenation of ostensibly “premodern” features of society—notably religious
fundamentalism.
Get Unlimited Access
Try Britannica Premium for free and discover more.
World-systems theory
A considerably more complex scheme of analysis, world-systems theory, was developed
by the American sociologist and historian Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) in The
Modern World System (1974). Whereas modernization theory holds that economic
development will eventually percolate throughout the world, Wallerstein believed
that the most economically active areas largely enriched themselves at the expense
of their peripheries. This was an adaptation of an idea of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
(1870–1924), the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), that the struggle
between classes in capitalist Europe had been to some degree displaced into the
international economy, so that Russia and China filled the role of proletarian
countries. Wallerstein’s work was centred on the period when European capitalism
first extended itself to Africa and the Americas, but he emphasized that world-
systems theory could be applied to earlier systems that Europeans did not dominate.
Consistently with Wallerstein’s view, the German-born American economist André
Gunder Frank (1929–2005) argued for an ancient world system and therefore an early
tension between core and periphery. He also pioneered the application of world-
systems theory to the 20th century, holding that “underdevelopment” was not merely
a form of lagging behind but resulted from the exploitative economic power of
industrialized countries. This “development of underdevelopment,” or “dependency
theory,” supplied a plot for world history, but it was one without a happy ending
for the majority of humanity.
Like modernization theory, world-systems theory has been criticized as Eurocentric.
More seriously, the evidence for it has been questioned by many economists, and,
while it has been fertile in suggesting questions, its answers have been
controversial.
A true world history requires that there be connections between different areas of
the world, and trade relations constitute one such connection. Historians and
sociologists have revealed the early importance of African trade (Christopher
Columbus visited the west coast of Africa before his voyages to the Americas, and
he already saw the possibilities of the slave trade). They have also illuminated
the 13th-century trading system centring on the Indian Ocean, to which Europe was
peripheral.
Humans encounter people from far away more often in commercial relationships than
in any other, but they exchange more than goods. The Canadian-American historian
William H. McNeill (1917–2016), an eminent world historian, saw these exchanges as
the central motif of world history. Technological information is usually coveted by
the less adept, and it can often be stolen when it is not offered. Religious ideas
can also be objects of exchange. In later work McNeill investigated the
communication of infectious diseases as an important part of the story of the human
species. In this he contributed to an increasingly lively field of historical
studies that might loosely be called ecological history.
Ecological approaches
Focusing on the biological substrate of history can sometimes capture a vital
element of common humanity. This was an early topic for Annales historians (those
associated with the French academic journal founded in 1929 as Annales d’histoire
économique et sociale), who were often trained in geography. The French historian
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie grounded his great history of the peasants of Languedoc in
the soil and climate of that part of France, showing how the human population of
the ancien régime was limited by the carrying capacity of the land. He went on to
write a history of the climate since the year 1000.
Even more influential were the magisterial works of Fernand Braudel (1902–85),
perhaps the greatest historian of the 20th century. Braudel’s La Méditerranée et le
monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (1949; The Mediterranean and the
Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II) had a political component, but it
seemed almost an afterthought. Although it was not a world history, its
comprehensive treatment of an entire region comprising Muslim and Christian realms
along the fringes of three continents succeeded in showing how they shared a
similar environment. The environment assumed an even greater role in Braudel’s
Civilisation matérielle et capitalisme, XVe–XVIIIe siècle (vol. 1, 1967; vol. 2–3,
1979; Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century). Although some of its claims
seemed designed to shock conventional historical sensibilities—the introduction of
forks into Europe, he wrote, was more important than the Reformation—no historical
work has done more to explore the entire material base on which civilizations
arise.
One of the most important links between ecological history and world history is the
so-called Columbian exchange, through which pathogens from the Americas entered
Europe and those from Europe devastated the Indigenous populations of the Americas.
The Indigenous Americans got much the worse of this exchange; the population of
Mexico suffered catastrophic losses, and that of some Caribbean islands was totally
destroyed. The effect on Europeans was much less severe. It is now thought that
syphilis entered Europe from Asia, not the Americas.
Overt moralizing in historiography tends to attract professional criticism, and
historians in Europe and the United States, where nation-states have long been
established, no longer feel the moral obligation that their 19th-century
predecessors did to exalt nationalism. They can therefore respond to global
concerns, such as the clear-cutting of rainforests and global warming. It has been
obvious for some time that the world is a single ecosystem, and this may require
and eventually evoke a corresponding world history.
Subaltern history
There is, however, a powerful countertendency: subaltern history. The term
subaltern is used in Great Britain to designate a subordinate or junior military
officer, and “subaltern studies” was coined by Indian scholars to describe a
variety of approaches to the situation of South Asia, particularly during the
colonial and postcolonial eras (see postcolonialism). A common feature of these
approaches is the claim that, though colonialism ended with the granting of
independence to the former colonies of Britain, France, the United States, and
other empires, imperialism did not. Instead, the imperial powers continued to exert
so much cultural and economic hegemony that the independence of the former colonies
was more notional than real. Insisting on free trade (unlimited access to the
domestic markets of the former colonies) and anticommunism (usually enforced by
autocratic governments), the old empires, as the subaltern theorists saw it, had
reverted to the sort of indirect rule that the British had exerted over Argentina
and other countries in the 19th century.
The other belief that united subaltern theorists is that this hegemony should be
challenged. Orientalism (1978), by the Palestinian-American literary critic Edward
Said (1935–2003), announced many of the themes of subaltern studies. The “Orient”
that Said discussed was basically the Middle East, and “Orientalism” was the body
of fact, opinion, and prejudice accumulated by western European scholars in their
encounter with that region. Said stressed the enormous appetite for this lore,
which influenced painting, literature, and anthropology no less than history. It
was, of course, heavily coloured by racism, but perhaps the most insidious aspect
of it, in Said’s view, was that Western categories not only informed the production
of knowledge but also were accepted by the colonized countries (or those nominally
independent but culturally subordinate). The result has been described rather
luridly as “epistemological rape,” in that the whole cultural stock of colonized
peoples came to be discredited.
Although originally and most thoroughly applied to the Middle East and South Asia,
subaltern history is capable of extension to any subordinated population, and it
has been influential in histories of women and of African Americans. Its main
challenge to world history is that most subaltern theorists deny the possibility of
any single master narrative that could form a plot for world history. This entails
at least a partial break with Marxism, which is exactly such a narrative. Instead,
most see a postmodern developing world with a congeries of national or tribal
histories, without closures or conventional narratives, whose unity, if it has one
at all, was imposed by the imperialist power.
The project of bringing the experience of subordinated people into history has been
common in historiography since the mid-20th century, often in the form of
emphasizing their contributions to activities usually associated with elites. Such
an effort does not challenge—indeed relies on—ordinary categories of historical
understanding and the valuation placed on these activities by society. This has
seemed to some subaltern theorists to implicate the historian in the very
oppressive system that ought to be combated. The most extreme partisans of this
combative stance claim that, in order to resist the hegemonic powers, the way that
history is done has to be changed. Some feminists, for example, complain that the
dominant system of logic was invented by men and violates the categories of thought
most congenial to women. This has been one of the reasons for the influence of
postmodernist and postcolonialist thought. It licenses accounts of the past that
call themselves histories but that may deviate wildly from conventional historical
practice.
Such histories have been particularly associated with a “nativist” school of
subaltern studies that rejects as “Western” the knowledge accumulated under the
auspices of imperialism. An instructive example was the effort by Afrocentric
historians to emphasize the possible Egyptian and Phoenician origins of classical
Greek thought. The British historian Martin Bernal (1937–2013), for example, tried
to show in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (3 vols.,
1987–2006) that the racist and anti-Semitic Orientalist discourse of the late 19th
century (particularly but not exclusively in Germany) obscured the borrowings of
the classical Greeks from their Semitic and African neighbours. That there were
borrowings, and that Orientalist discourse was racist and anti-Semitic, is beyond
doubt, but these are findings made through ordinary historical investigation—whose
conventions Bernal did not violate, despite the speculative character of some of
his conclusions. How much distortion there was would also seem to be an ordinary,
though difficult, historical question (made more difficult by the claim that the
Egyptians had an esoteric and unwritten philosophical tradition that has left no
documentary traces but that may have been imparted to Greek thinkers).
The nativist subaltern historians deserve credit at least for raising the issue of
the integrity of imperialist historiography. However, the price to be paid by their
approach is high: if there are no logical categories that are not culture-bound,
then people from different cultures cannot have a meaningful argument—or agreement—
because these require at least some mutual acceptance of what will count as
evidence and how reasoning is to be done. Despite the logical vulnerabilities of
their approach, nativist subaltern historians have exerted a powerful influence on
the historiography of Asia and Africa as well as that of Europe and even the United
States.
Richard T. Vann
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Visual Arts
Architecture
calendar section of Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry
calendar section of Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry Illustration from the
calendar section of Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, a “book of hours”
containing prayers to be recited. It was painted by the Limbourg brothers,
Barthélemy van Eyck and Jean Colombe, about 1416 and is now in the collection of
the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.
Middle Ages
historical era
Also known as: le moyen âge, media tempora, medieval period, medium aevium
Written and fact-checked by
Last Updated: Mar 18, 2025 • Article History
Quick Facts
Date: 500 - 1500
Location: Europe
Context: humanism
Major Events: Migration period
Key People: Arthur M. Sackler
Top Questions
When did the Middle Ages begin?
What was the role of Christendom?
How long did the Migration Period last?
Middle Ages, the period in European history from the collapse of Roman civilization
in the 5th century ce to the period of the Renaissance (variously interpreted as
beginning in the 13th, 14th, or 15th century, depending on the region of Europe and
other factors).
A brief treatment of the Middle Ages follows. For full treatment, see Europe,
history of: The Middle Ages.
Petrarch
PetrarchPetrarch, engraving.
The term and its conventional meaning were introduced by Italian humanists with
invidious intent. The humanists were engaged in a revival of Classical learning and
culture, and the notion of a thousand-year period of darkness and ignorance
separating them from the ancient Greek and Roman world served to highlight the
humanists’ own work and ideals. It would seem unnecessary to observe that the men
and women who lived during the thousand years or so preceding the Renaissance were
not conscious of living in the Middle Ages. A few—Petrarch was the most conspicuous
among them—felt that their lot was cast in a dark time, which had begun with the
decline of the Roman Empire. Indeed, Petrarch would provide something of a founding
statement for the humanists when he wrote, “For who can doubt that Rome would rise
again instantly if she began to know herself?”
Temple ruins of columns and statures at Karnak, Egypt (Egyptian architecture;
Egyptian archaelogy; Egyptian history)
Britannica Quiz
History Buff Quiz
In a sense, the humanists invented the Middle Ages in order to distinguish
themselves from it. They were making a gesture of their sense of freedom, and yet,
at the same time, they were implicitly accepting the medieval conception of history
as a series of well-defined ages within a limited framework of time. They did not
speak of Augustine’s Six Ages of the World or believe in the chronology of
Joachimite prophecy, but they nevertheless inherited a philosophy of history that
began with the Garden of Eden and would end with the Second Coming of Christ. In
such a scheme, the thousand years from the 5th to the 15th century might well be
regarded as a distinct respectable period of history, which would stand out clearly
in the providential pattern. Throughout European history, however, there has never
been a complete breach with medieval institutions or modes of thought.
The sack of Rome by Alaric the Visigoth in 410 ce had enormous impact on the
political structure and social climate of the Western world, for the Roman Empire
had provided the basis of social cohesion for most of Europe. Although the Germanic
tribes that forcibly migrated into southern and western Europe in the 5th century
were ultimately converted to Christianity, they retained many of their customs and
ways of life. The changes in forms of social organization they introduced rendered
centralized government and cultural unity impossible. Many of the improvements in
the quality of life introduced during the Roman Empire, such as a relatively
efficient agriculture, extensive road networks, water-supply systems, and shipping
routes, decayed substantially, as did artistic and scholarly endeavours.
This decline persisted throughout the Migration period, a historical period
sometimes called the Dark Ages, Late Antiquity, or the Early Middle Ages. The
Migration period lasted from the fall of Rome to about the year 1000, with a brief
hiatus during the flowering of the Carolingian court established by Charlemagne.
Apart from that interlude, no large political structure arose in Europe to provide
stability. Two great kingdoms, Germany and Italy, began to lose their political
unity almost as soon as they had acquired it; they had to wait until the 19th
century before they found it again. The only force capable of providing a basis for
social unity was the Roman Catholic Church. The Middle Ages therefore present the
confusing and often contradictory picture of a society attempting to structure
itself politically on a spiritual basis. This attempt came to a definitive end with
the rise of artistic, commercial, and other activities anchored firmly in the
secular world in the period just preceding the Renaissance.
The origin of the expression walk to Canossa
The origin of the expression walk to CanossaLearn about the power struggle between
Pope Gregory VII and King Henry IV of Germany, including the king's walk to
Canossa.
See all videos for this article
After the dissolution of the Roman Empire, the idea arose of Europe as one large
church-state, called Christendom. Christendom was thought to consist of two
distinct groups of functionaries: the sacerdotium, or ecclesiastical hierarchy, and
the imperium, or secular leaders. In theory, these two groups complemented each
other, attending to people’s spiritual and temporal needs, respectively. Supreme
authority was wielded by the pope in the first of these areas and by the emperor in
the second. In practice, the two institutions were constantly sparring,
disagreeing, or openly warring with each other. The emperors often tried to
regulate church activities by claiming the right to appoint church officials and to
intervene in doctrinal matters. The church, in turn, not only owned cities and
armies but often attempted to regulate affairs of state. This tension would reach a
breaking point in the late 11th and early 12th centuries during the clash between
Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII over the question of lay investiture.
Get Unlimited Access
Try Britannica Premium for free and discover more.
Illustration for the month of September from Les Très Riches Heures du duc de
Berry, manuscript illuminated by the Limburg brothers, c. 1416; in the Musée Condé,
Chantilly, France.
Illustration for the month of September from Les Très Riches Heures du duc de
Berry, manuscript illuminated by the Limburg brothers, c. 1416; in the Musée Condé,
Chantilly, France.
During the 12th century a cultural and economic revival took place; many historians
trace the origins of the Renaissance to this time. The balance of economic power
slowly began to shift from the region of the eastern Mediterranean to western
Europe. The Gothic style developed in art and architecture. Towns began to
flourish, travel and communication became faster, safer, and easier, and merchant
classes began to develop. Agricultural developments were one reason for these
developments; during the 12th century the cultivation of beans made a balanced diet
available to all social classes for the first time in history. The population
therefore rapidly expanded, a factor that eventually led to the breakup of the old
feudal structures.
Chartres Cathedral
Chartres CathedralChartres Cathedral, Chartres, France, completed mid-13th century.
The 13th century was the apex of medieval civilization. The classic formulations of
Gothic architecture and sculpture were achieved. Many different kinds of social
units proliferated, including guilds, associations, civic councils, and monastic
chapters, each eager to obtain some measure of autonomy. The crucial legal concept
of representation developed, resulting in the political assembly whose members had
plena potestas—full power—to make decisions binding upon the communities that had
selected them. Intellectual life, dominated by the Roman Catholic Church,
culminated in the philosophical method of Scholasticism, whose preeminent exponent,
St. Thomas Aquinas, achieved in his writings on Aristotle and the Church Fathers
one of the greatest syntheses in Western intellectual history.
Christianity and superstition in the Middle Ages
Christianity and superstition in the Middle AgesLearn about religion in the Middle
Ages.
See all videos for this article
The breakup of feudal structures, the strengthening of city-states in Italy, and
the emergence of national monarchies in Spain, France, and England, as well as such
cultural developments as the rise of secular education, culminated in the birth of
a self-consciously new age with a new spirit, one that looked all the way back to
Classical learning for its inspiration and that came to be known as the
Renaissance.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
