1. ENGLAND, EMPIRE AND THE WORLD
SLICING UP TIME
ENGLAND, EMPIRE AND THE WORLD

2. Periodization How do historians slice up time?
What makes a ‘period’ of history?
What defines the break between periods?
And how easily does periodization travel?
Not even all European nations share the same periodization of the history of their continent
Slicing up time is subjective, and depends upon perspectives and approaches to history
If we view history from a different place, how does the periodization change?

3. Is World History just the story of European (or American) domination?
The Eurocentric World
What is the conventional Eurocentric chronology of World History?
Monarchs, dynasties, empires
Exploration, ‘discovery’ and ‘expansion’
Conquest, colonisation and imperialism
Technology, science, knowledge
Trade and economic development
Political systems & the ‘rise of the West’
Is World History just the story of European (or American) domination?

4. Beyond Europe Is a non-European periodization necessarily any better?
Chinese?
Ottoman?
Mughal?
How might we achieve a ‘cross cultural’ periodization?
Bentley: interactions suggest a global periodization that transcends individual societies or regions
Northrup: sweeping global trends mark different eras, of ‘convergence’ and ‘divergence’

5. Whose history is ‘Big History’?
Can we draw together a global history that cuts across spatial and temporal boundaries? (David Christian)
How do we incorporate the ‘local’ into the global?
What breaks might we chose to define periods and changes?
What defines a ‘global change’?
Whose history is ‘Big History’?

6. Alternatives
Global exchange, commodities, trade (Flynn & Giraldez) - silk, spices, silver …..
The rise of global Networks, eg from the 13th century (Abu-Lughod)
Alternative ‘explorations’ – Ethiopia’s discovery of Europe ( ) (Salvadore)
Ocean histories – the Atlantic world, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean

7. Thinking about the past – an African example
Maasai age-sets
Named sets for each cohort
Linear, progressive
‘a ladder that you climb down into the past’
Kalenjin age-sets
eight cyclical sets, repetitive, based on notion of reincarnation
History only has the depth of one complete cycle of the eight sets: there is only the history of the living
How do we think about time?

8. - and the Cold War The Eurocentric Cold War The Global Cold War
conventional history of international relations
The Global Cold War
Actors, events, watersheds all different
An African periodization
The Age of Illusions,
The Age of Plunder,
The Age of Atonement, 1995-c.2012 (?)