A World History: A New Perspective

Product Description

Conventional accounts of world history tend to focus on the rise of Western civilisation & concentrate on the story of ancient Greece, the Roman empire & the expansion of Europe. The histories of the great civilisations of China, India & Japan, & therefore the experience of the majority of the world's people, have been relegated to a minor place. World History adopts a radically different approach. Starting from the assumption that the human story has to be seen in the round, it examines the evolution of humans, their lives as hunters & gatherers & their eventual adoption of agriculture, before looking at the emergence of civilisation across the globe; in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, Mesoamerica & Peru. It goes on to tell the story of the earliest empires, emphasising not just their differences but also their similarities. It explains how contacts were established between them & how technologies, ideas & the world's great religions travelled from one to another. It describes the great empires of Islam, of China & of the Mongols. Only towards the end of the story does Europe come slowly to dominate the world, against the background of technical innovations & social & economic change.