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Internet Global History Sourcebook

Editor: Paul Halsall


The Internet Global History Sourcebook is dedicated to exploration of interaction between world cultures. It does not, then, look "world history" as the history of the various separate cultures (for that see the linked pages, which do take that approach), but at ways in which the "world" has a history in its own right.

Specifically this means looking at:

  • The ways in which cultures contact each other
  • The ways they influence each other
  • The ways new cultural forms emerge.

Trade

Societies interact through trade.

War

Movement of soldiers; occupation; admiration of conqueror's culture,

Religion

Religion is of special importance.

Migration

Migration can be due to nomadism, forced dispersal, attraction to a new land, or due to enslavement. It can take the form of group movements, or be done by individuals and families.

Empire

Since Sargon of Akkad, empires have been a repeated phenonemon in global history.

Art and Music

Art and music also circulate through world cultures, carried by wars, loot, religion, trade, and more recently broadcast technology

This page is a subset of texts derived from the  online Sourcebooks listed below. For more specific  information about each world cultural area check out these web sites.

Notes: In addition to direct links to documents, links are made to a number of other web resources.
2ND
 Link to a secondary article, review or discussion on a given topic.
WEB
 Link to a website focused on a specific issue.. These are not links to every site on a given topic, but to sites of serious educational value.

Contents

General

General

World Systems Theories

Back to Index

Ancient Cultures: The World Until c.100 CE

Travel in ancient societies was extremely difficult, and a result, interaction between cultures occured slowly.

General

Comparative Development

Certain human social and cultural phenomena seem to have recurrent and distinct origins, without any direct influence or transmission, in different parts of the world

  • Agriculture
  • Nomadism
  • Kingship
  • Towns/Cities
    • Mesopotamia
    • Egypt
    • China
    • India
    • Americas
  • Slavery
  • Writing Systems
    • Sumeria
    • Egypt
    • Phoenicia
    • Harrapa
    • China
    • Mesosmerican

Trade

Religion

  • Wikipedia: Axial Age 8th-3rd Centuries BCE
    • Confucius
    • Upanishads
    • Buddha
    • Zoroaster
    • Hebrew Prophets
    • Greek Philsoophers

Migration

  • The Aryans: into India
    • 2ND Richard Hooker: The Arayans [Was At WSU, now Internet Archive]
      Much more reliable account that the nationalist arguments below.
    • 2ND David Frawley: Myth of Aryan Invasion of India [Was At India Forum, now Internet Archive], a complete book, and  Myth of Aryan Invasion of India [At Hindunet] [Internet Archive version here] an article-length discussion.
      Frawley attacks 19th-century scholars such as Max Muller for bias, but seems unaware of his own problematic position.
    • 2ND Siddhartha Jaiswal: Aryan Invasion Theory: Revising History to Change the Future [Was At Stanford, now Internet Archive]
      A freshman college paper explaining why the theory is wrong. The  full title and the text are worth considering, though. The author objected to the theory because it "undermined my belief in my culture". This sort of solipsistic "history" seems to motivate much of the discussion about the "Aryan Invasion".
  • The Greek Migrations
    • Wikipedia: Greek Colonisation
    • Map: Greek Colonies 6th Cent BC
    • Wikipedia: Pytheas of Massalia
      born c. 350 BC, fl. c. 320–306 BC) was a Greek geographer, explorer and astronomer from the Greek colony of Massalia (modern-day Marseill. He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe in about 325 BC, but his account of it, known widely in antiquity, has not survived and is now known only through the writings of others.
  • The Jews: Between Mesopotamia and Egypt

Empire

Art and Music

Back to Index

Medieval World Systems: Trade and Faith 100-1500 CE

Missionary religion brought an important new aspect to global interaction after circa. 100 CE. That is roughly the point when both Christianity and Buddhism began to spread rapidly, both creating their own worlds - Christendom, and although the word is a neologism, Buddhadom.  A late entrant. circa 640 CE. was the religion of Islam which created a Muslim world [called "Islamdom" by Marshall Hodges], which stretched from Spain to India, and eventuall the Philippines. These three were the most successful missonary religions, but were by no means the only ones: Manichaenism, a modified form of Persian dualism also persued a missionary strategy.

General

  • Ibn Khaldun: The Muqaddimah full text, trans. by Franz Rosenthal [At Muslim Philosophy] [interent Archive version here]
  • International Peoples
    • Greeks
    • Jews
    • Gypsies
    • Armenians

Trade

Religion

Migration

Empire

Art and Music

  • Syrian Music in Christianity

Back to Index

The Creation of a United World System 1500-1800 CE

General

Trade

War

Religion

Migration

  • Bantu-speaking peoples
  • Polynesian expansion across Pacific
  • Han Chinese to South China
  • Muslim Expansion into India
  • Europeans to South Africa
  • Europeans to North America
  • Europeans to Australia
  • Europeans to Siberia
  • Africans to the Americas (via Enslavement)

Empire

Art and Music

  • Baroque Music in Mexico

Back to Index

The Western Hegemony 1800-1918

General

Trade

Religion

Migration

Empire

Art and Music

Back to Index

The Twentieth Century?

General

Trade

Religion

Migration

Urban Migrations

  • Lisbon: Fado
  • Athens: Remetika
  • Buenas Aires: Tango
  • Rio: Samba
  • Dakar
  • Kinshasha
  • Algeria: Rai
  • Israel: Mizrahi Music

Empire

  • Interaction among Subaltern Groups
    • Cuba in the Congo

Art and Music

Back to Index

Globalization?

General

General

Trade

Religion

Migration

  • US Immigration
  • Germany
    • Guest Workers
  • France
  • Britain
    • Windrush
  • South Africa

Empire

Art and Music

Back to Index

Further Resources on Global History

  • Web Guides
    • WEB
  • Academic History/Culture Sites
    • WEB
  • Nationalist History/Culture Sites
    • WEB

Other Resources

© This text is copyright. The specific electronic form, and any notes and questions are copyright. Permission is granted to copy the text, and to print out copies for personal and educational use. No permission is granted for commercial use.

If any copyright has been infringed, this was unintentional. The possibility of a site such as this, as with other collections of electronic texts, depends on the large availability of public domain material from texts translated before 1923. [In the US, all texts issued before 1923 are now in the public domain. Texts published before 1964 may be in the public domain if copyright was not renewed after 28 years. This site seeks to abide by US copyright law: the copyright status of texts here outside the US may be different.] Efforts have been made to ascertain the copyright status of all texts here, although, occasionally, this has not been possible where older or non-US publishers seem to have ceased existence. Some of the recently translated texts here are copyright to the translators indicated in each document. These translators have in every case given permission for non-commercial reproduction. No representation is made about the copyright status of texts linked off-site. This site is intended for educational use. Notification of copyright infringement will result in the immediate removal of a text until its status is resolved.

NOTES:

The Global History Sourcebook is part of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project. The date of inception was 1998. Links to files at other site are indicated by [At some indication of the site name or location]. WEB indicates a link to one of small number of high quality web sites which provide either more texts or an especially valuable overview.


The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is located at the History Department of  Fordham University, New York. The Internet Medieval Sourcebook, and other medieval components of the project, are located at the Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies.The IHSP recognizes the contribution of Fordham University, the Fordham University History Department, and the Fordham Center for Medieval Studies in providing web space and server support for the project. The IHSP is a project independent of Fordham University.  Although the IHSP seeks to follow all applicable copyright law, Fordham University is not the institutional owner, and is not liable as the result of any legal action.

© Site Concept and Design: Paul Halsall created 26 Jan 1996: latest revision 5 June 2023 [CV]