The Cambridge World History: Volume 5, Expanding Webs of Exchange and Conflict, 500CE–1500CE

The Cambridge World History: Volume 5, Expanding Webs of Exchange and Conflict, 500CE–1500CE
Author: Benjamin Z. Kedar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 749
Release: 2015-04-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316297756

Volume 5 of the Cambridge World History series uncovers the cross-cultural exchange and conquest, and the accompanying growth of regional and trans-regional states, religions, and economic systems, during the period 500 to 1500 CE. The volume begins by outlining a series of core issues and processes across the world, including human relations with nature, gender and family, social hierarchies, education, and warfare. Further essays examine maritime and land-based networks of long-distance trade and migration in agricultural and nomadic societies, and the transmission and exchange of cultural forms, scientific knowledge, technologies, and text-based religious systems that accompanied these. The final section surveys the development of centralized regional states and empires in both the eastern and western hemispheres. Together these essays by an international team of leading authors show how processes furthering cultural, commercial, and political integration within and between various regions of the world made this millennium a 'proto-global' era.

The Cambridge World History

The Cambridge World History
Author: Benjamin Z. Kedar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 750
Release: 2014
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9780511667480

Volume 5 of the Cambridge World History series uncovers the cross-cultural exchange and conquest, and the accompanying growth of regional and trans-regional states, religions, and economic systems, during the period 500 to 1500. The volume begins by outlining a series of core issues and processes across the world, including human relations with nature, gender and family, social hierarchies, education, and warfare. Further essays examine maritime and land-based networks of long-distance trade and migration in agricultural and nomadic societies, and the transmission and exchange of cultural forms, scientific knowledge, technologies, and text-based religious systems that accompanied these. The final section surveys the development of centralized regional states and empires in both the eastern and western hemispheres. Together these essays by an international team of leading authors show how processes furthering cultural, commercial, and political integration within and between various regions of the world made this millennium a 'proto-global' era.

The Cambridge World History

The Cambridge World History
Author: Jerry H. Bentley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-04-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521761628

The era from 1400 to 1800 saw intense biological, commercial, and cultural exchanges, and the creation of global connections on an unprecedented scale. Divided into two books, Volume 6 of the Cambridge World History series considers these critical transformations. The first book examines the material and political foundations of the era, including global considerations of the environment, disease, technology, and cities, along with regional studies of empires in the eastern and western hemispheres, crossroads areas such as the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, and the Caribbean, and sites of competition and conflict, including Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean. The second book focuses on patterns of change, examining the expansion of Christianity and Islam, migrations, warfare, and other topics on a global scale, and offering insightful detailed analyses of the Columbian exchange, slavery, silver, trade, entrepreneurs, Asian religions, legal encounters, plantation economies, early industrialism, and the writing of history.

A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Volume II

A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Volume II
Author: David Christian
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 740
Release: 2018-01-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1119446740

Provides an all-encompassing look at the history of Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia Beginning with the breakup of the Mongol Empire in the mid-thirteenth century, Volume II of this comprehensive work covers the remarkable history of “Inner Eurasia,” from 1260 up to modern times, completing the story begun in Volume I. Volume II describes how agriculture spread through Inner Eurasia, providing the foundations for new agricultural states, including the Russian Empire. It focuses on the idea of “mobilization”—the distinctive ways in which elite groups mobilized resources from their populations, and how those methods were shaped by the region’s distinctive ecology, which differed greatly from that of “Outer Eurasia,” the southern half of Eurasia and the part of Eurasia most studied by historians. This work also examines how fossil fuels created a bonanza of energy that helped shape the history of the Communist world during much of the twentieth century. Filled with figures, maps, and tables to help give readers a fuller understanding of what has transpired over 750 years in this distinctive world region, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia: Volume II: Inner Eurasia from the Mongol Empire to Today, 1260-2000 is a magisterial but accessible account of this area’s past, that will offer readers new insights into the history of an often misunderstood part of the world. Situates the histories of Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia within the larger narrative of world history Concentrates on the idea of Inner Eurasia as a coherent ecological and geographical zone Focuses on the powerful ways in which the region’s geography shaped its history Places great emphasis on how “mobilization” played a major part in the development of the regions Offers a distinctive interpretation of modernity that highlights the importance of fossil fuels Offers new ways of understanding the Soviet era A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia: Volume II is an ideal book for general audiences and for use in undergraduate and graduate courses in world history. The Blackwell History of the World Series The goal of this ambitious series is to provide an accessible source of knowledge about the entire human past, for every curious person in every part of the world. It will comprise some two dozen volumes, of which some provide synoptic views of the history of particular regions while others consider the world as a whole during a particular period of time. The volumes are narrative in form, giving balanced attention to social and cultural history (in the broadest sense) as well as to institutional development and political change. Each provides a systematic account of a very large subject, but they are also both imaginative and interpretative. The Series is intended to be accessible to the widest possible readership, and the accessibility of its volumes is matched by the style of presentation and production.

Hammer and Anvil

Hammer and Anvil
Author: Pamela Kyle Crossley
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2019-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442214457

This groundbreaking book examines the role of rulers with nomadic roots in transforming the great societies of Eurasia, especially from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. Distinguished historian Pamela Kyle Crossley, drawing on the long history of nomadic confrontation with Eurasia’s densely populated civilizations, argues that the distinctive changes we associate with modernity were founded on vernacular literature and arts, rising literacy, mercantile and financial economies, religious dissidence, independent learning, and self-legitimating rulership. Crossley finds that political traditions of Central Asia insulated rulers from established religious authority and promoted the objectification of cultural identities marked by language and faith, which created a mutual encouragement of cultural and political change. As religious and social hierarchies weakened, political centralization and militarization advanced. But in the spheres of religion and philosophy, iconoclasm enjoyed a new life. The changes cumulatively defined a threshold of the modern world, beyond which lay early nationalism, imperialism, and the novel divisions of Eurasia into “East” and “West.” Synthesizing new interpretive approaches and grand themes of world history from 1000 to 1500, Crossley reveals the unique importance of Turkic and Mongol regimes in shaping Eurasia’s economic, technological, and political evolution toward our modern world.

Knowledge in Translation

Knowledge in Translation
Author: Patrick Manning
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2018-09-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0822986272

In the second millennium CE, long before English became the language of science in the twentieth century, the act of translation was crucial for understanding and disseminating knowledge and information across linguistic and geographic boundaries. This volume considers the complexities of knowledge exchange through the practice of translation over the course of a millennium, across fields of knowledge—cartography, health and medicine, material construction, astronomy—and a wide geographical range, from Eurasia to Africa and the Americas. Contributors literate in Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Minnan, Ottoman, and Persian explore the history of science in the context of world and global history, investigating global patterns and implications in a multilingual and increasingly interconnected world. Chapters reveal cosmopolitan networks of shared practice and knowledge about the natural world from 1000 to 1800 CE, emphasizing both evolving scientific exchange and the emergence of innovative science. By unraveling the role of translation in cross-cultural communication, Knowledge in Translation highlights key moments of transmission, insight, and critical interpretation across linguistic and faith communities.

The Limits of Universal Rule

The Limits of Universal Rule
Author: Yuri Pines
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2021-01-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108808743

All major continental empires proclaimed their desire to rule 'the entire world', investing considerable human and material resources in expanding their territory. Each, however, eventually had to stop expansion and come to terms with a shift to defensive strategy. This volume explores the factors that facilitated Eurasian empires' expansion and contraction: from ideology to ecology, economic and military considerations to changing composition of the imperial elites. Built around a common set of questions, a team of leading specialists systematically compare a broad set of Eurasian empires - from Achaemenid Iran, the Romans, Qin and Han China, via the Caliphate, the Byzantines and the Mongols to the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, Russians, and Ming and Qing China. The result is a state-of-the art analysis of the major imperial enterprises in Eurasian history from antiquity to the early modern that discerns both commonalities and differences in the empires' spatial trajectories.

Emerging Powers in Eurasian Comparison, 200–1100

Emerging Powers in Eurasian Comparison, 200–1100
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2022-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004519912

This book looks at the fall and persistence of empires from the perspective of the powers that replaced them, and compares several cases between China and the West in the first millennium CE with surprisingly similar beginnings and different outcomes.

A Concise History of the World

A Concise History of the World
Author: Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2015-09-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316412091

This book tells the story of humankind as producers and reproducers from the Paleolithic to the present. Renowned social and cultural historian Merry 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.