The world (2nd ed )

The Worldinterweaves two stories-of our interactions with nature and with each other. The environment-centered story is about humans distancing themselves from the rest of nature and searching for a relationship that strikes a balance between constructive and destructive exploitation. The culture-centered story is of how human cultures have become mutually influential and yet mutually differentiating. Both stories have been going on for thousands of years. We do not know whether they will end in triumph or disaster.

There is no prospect of covering all of world history in one book. Rather, the fabric of this book is woven from selected strands. Readers will see these at every turn, twisted together into yarn, stretched into stories. Human-focused historical ecology-the environmental theme-will drive readers back, again and again, to the same concepts: sustenance, shelter, disease, energy, technology, art. (The last is a vital category for historians, not only because it is part of our interface with the rest of the world, but also because it forms a record of how we see reality and of how the way we see it changes.) In the global story of human interactions-the cultural theme-we return constantly to the ways people make contact with each another: migration, trade, war, imperialism, pilgrimage, gift exchange, diplomacy, travel-and to their social frameworks: the economic and political arenas, the human groups and groupings, the states and civilizations, the sexes and generations, the classes and clusters of identity.

Part 8: Global Enlightenments, 1700-1800

Chapter 20

Driven by Growth: The Global Economy in the Eighteenth Century

Population Trends

• Urbanization
• Explanations
• Medicine
• The Ecology of Disease

Economic Trends: China, India, and the Ottoman Empire

• China
• India
• The Ottoman Empire and Its Environs

The West's Productivity Leap

• The Scientific Background
• The British Example

The Expansion of Resources

• The Global Gardening

In Perspective: New Europes, New Departures

Chapter 21

The Age of Global Interaction: Expansion and Intersection of Eighteenth-Century Empires

Asian Imperialism in Arrest or Decline: China, Persia, and the Ottomans

• China
• The Asian Context
• Persia and the Ottoman Empire

Imperial Reversal in India: Mughal Eclipse and British Rise to Power

The Dutch East Indies

The Black Atlantic: Africa, the Americas, and the Slave Trade

Land Empires of the New World

• The Araucanos and the Sioux
• Portugal in Brazil
• Spanish America
• Creole Mentalities
• Toward Independence

In Perspective: The Rims of Empires

Chapter 22

The Exchange of Enlightenments: Eighteenth-Century Thought

The Character of the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment in Global Context

• The Chinese Example
• Japan
• India
• The Islamic World

The Enlightenment's Effects in Asia

• The Enlightenment and China
• Western Science in Japan
• Korea and Southeast Asia
• The Ottomans
• The Enlightenment in Europe
• The Belief in Progress
• New Economic Thought
• Social Equality
• Anticlericalism

The Crisis of the Enlightenment: Religion and Romanticism

• Religious Revival
• The Cult of Nature and Romanticism
• Rousseau and the General Will
• Pacific Discoveries
• Wild Children
• The Huron and Noble Savage

The French Revolution and Napoleon

• Background to the Revolution
• Revolutionary Radicalism
• Napoleon

In Perspective: The Afterglow of Enlightenment

Part 9: The Frustrations to Progress to ca. 1900

Chapter 23

Replacing Muscle: The Energy Revolutions

Global Demographics: The World's Population Rises

Food: Transition to Abundance

Energy for Power: Militarization and Industrialization

• Militarization
• Industrialization

Industrializing Europe

Industry in the Americas

JapanIndustrializes

Chinaand Industrialization

Indiaand Egypt

In Perspective: Why the West?

Chapter 2