Establishing Themes
Overview
Introduction
Modern World History is the study of how human beings arrived in the present. The goal of Modern World History is understanding the complicated process of how people moved around the world, and created political, social, and economic systems. By understanding these developments, we can explain the important question—how did we get here? Our goal in writing this book was to tackle humankind’s developments over the past six-hundred years to show how those achievements and actions have directly impacted today’s world.
There are many different themes and points to the discussion of Modern World History. These include: colonization, imperialism, industrialization, slavery, indigenous identity, exploration, war, oppression, and technological powers. Each of these powerful themes has helped weave together the complex tapestry of the human experience throughout the 15th to 21st centuries. The biggest goal of this textbook is to provide a true global history text that is approachable for students.. Each of these threads individually are important, but together they create a complex image of our global community.
As with any textbook, there are challenges to writing in a way that is thorough and coherent. We came together to put forward a plan for how to describe and evaluate World History. With the goal in mind of creating a textbook that would give students the “big picture” of World History, we decided that it would be best to present information thematically to show and share ideas with our audience.
Thematic textbooks are coherent, but our team went a step further. We want to also make this book engaging for both students and teachers. We decided that the best approach would be to focus our attention on a few key types of thematic ideas, specifically environmental and social. While these might seem unconventional, it is important to remember how big of a role that society and the environment have in global society. For example, in the Middle Ages there was an environmental catastrophe known as the Little Ice Age, where global temperatures dropped on average about 1-2 degrees Celsius (3-5 degrees Fahrenheit). While this might not sound like a big temperature difference, in the 1300s there were years that 1/3 of Europeans either starved or froze to death. The Little Ice Age impacted not just Europe, but also the rise of the Mongols. The Mongols rose in power in the 13th century, during the warmer part of the Little Ice Age. As the climate became colder in the late 13th to early 14th centuries, crops began to fail and populations became unhappy. These two factors in China were the key reason that the Mongols had such a short period of power. The environment plays a critical role in political and economic history of our world.
What is “Modern?” Our team explored that question when we discussed how and, at what point, to begin and conclude the textbook. We decided that because this text was designed for a course for the State of Tennessee Dual Credit with curriculum focused specifically on materials starting at the end of the 14th century, we needed to give some background for context with the world. The early chapters of this textbook focus specifically on the role of understanding the shifts of the late 12th century with the rise of the Mongols, the importance of Islam, and touching on the rise of economics of Africa with leaders such as Mansa Musa. While these technically happened before the timing of the curriculum of the course, these events and people had direct impacts on lives of the early 15th century. The early periods of our text are going to focus on the importance of these individuals and put this into a broader thematic story that will be later developed.
The textbook is divided into four units. Each of these highlights different aspects in chapters and lessons. These chapters and lessons focus on specific parts of the historical development of the time. As a reader, it is imperative that you focus on the lines connecting ideas from each of these lessons and draw conclusions about how these impact one another. Our goal in writing was to show the importance of events and how they impacted the world overall.
Most of all, our team worked hard to create a truly global picture of the world for the past six hundred years. Perhaps, in its pages, our audiences will discover something of themselves, and connect their pasts to their futures.
Attributions
Title Image
Fluffy nns at Japanese Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons