• Introduction to Global Historical Thinking: Olstein's book offers a blueprint for incorporating a global perspective into historical studies, challenging readers to think beyond traditional boundaries and adopt a more inclusive approach to history.

• Four Strategies for Global History: Olstein introduces four strategies for thinking globally about history: comparing, connecting, conceptualizing, and contextualizing, which help in synthesizing data from various historical fields.

• Twelve Areas of Historical Study: The book identifies 12 branches of history that exemplify these strategies, including Comparative History, Relational History, New International History, and others, to construct truly global histories.

• Case Study: Perón's Regime: Olstein uses the rule of Colonel Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina as a case study to demonstrate how these fields can provide a more comprehensive historical analysis compared to traditional nation-state methodologies.

• Application of Global History Strategies: The book applies the four strategies to various historical events and fields, such as the First World War, to show how a global perspective can offer deeper insights and understanding.

• Comparative and Connective Methods: Olstein explains the importance of comparing and connecting historical events to transcend political boundaries and achieve a global understanding of history.

• Final Thoughts: Olstein concludes that thinking history globally provides a solid foundation for understanding our global present, encouraging a more inclusive and interdisciplinary approach to historical analysis.

In the September 2015 issue of Journal of World History, we read many articles working and refining ideas in the work of historical analysis, striving to tell a more comprehensive story of ‘us’.  Patrick Manning, a well-regarded world historian, writes an essay on the relative absence of black people and black narratives from the worldwide diaspora in world-historical analysis.  His article, “Locating Africans on the World Stage: A Problem in World History” is joined by two others in the same issue, “Cholera, Colonialism, and Pilgrimage: Exploring Global/Local Exchange in the Central Egyptian Delta, 1848-1907” by Stephanie Anne Boyle and “Female Rule in the Indian Ocean World (1300-1900)’ by Stefan Amirell.  Boyle introduces us to turn of the century colonial rule in the Egyptian delta, and to the trade and migration that influenced the spread of cholera, while prejudice and a nascent public health infrastructure on the part of British colonizers hampered broad understanding of the disease.  Amirell, exploring his original research, shines a light on the abundance of female rulers in Southeast Asia, while noting how the rise of Islam reduced the number of female rulers over time in the northern region of the Indian Ocean World.  Read together, these articles introduce the reader to the ever-expanding field of world history and show in practice how integrating women’s and cultural studies into the practice of world history enriches our understanding of the world and the story of ‘us’.

To begin, Manning defines the study of world history as one that interprets the past and connects to our global present. Manning examines his fellow scholars’ treatment of the experiences of black people and their voices across the disciplinary landscape – he “observe[s] that people of Africa and the African diaspora appear only scantily in world-historical interpretations and ask why this should be so.” He then proposes that terms including ‘race’ and the concept of the ‘diaspora’ have evolved into “the social construction of identities,” and also, that this language does a disservice to the connections, voices, and stories of a nuanced and robust black lived experience. Finally, he states that he will conclude with a section on how this information might be included in the study of world history.

Manning argues that connections between issues are the most important part of the study of world history.  The idea of a “world stage is the representation, on the pages of a book or article, of successive portions of the world,” and is the place where a multiplicity of perspectives on historical issues can be placed for debate. A global history of health has emerged using this method, for example.  Nevertheless, Africa and the African diaspora remain underrepresented, due to the way that world historians practice the analysis of subject matter.  This “suggests that elite and civilizational bias may be limiting the breadth of world-historical analysis” thereby restricting which resource materials and subjects go unread or unheard, or which communities are or are not represented in world-historical analysis.

By analyzing events such as the Slave Trade and, before that, imperial dominance of African people through the lens of their own experiences and synthesizing these stories, artifacts, and voices with historical analyses can world historians add more breadth to their work.  Manning notes that “Greater attention to social mobility and social interaction, both vertical and horizontal, will enable historians to locate the most interesting areas of communication and change in historical patterns.” Some other articles from the same edition illustrate Manning’s approach.

In “Cholera, Colonialism, and Pilgrimage” Boyle takes a page out of Manning’s books and analyzes the spread of cholera in Tanta, Egypt from a global perspective.  Tanta held a fair, called a mulid, which rivaled the Hajj for attendance.  The British had colonized this area of Egypt and maintained that cholera was endemic to Tanta.  However, it was the movement of populations that contributed enormously to the cholera epidemic of the Eastern world in the mid-19th century.  Tanta was on trade and pilgrimage routes, and gained a reputation for ill health, as a hot spot for cholera, spreading the disease to Europe and the Ottoman Empire and Russia.  The Suez Canal was being constructed, and Britain had trade network that they did not want disrupted.  By painting the cholera cluster in Tanta as a local problem, where sanitation and custom dictated the prevalence of the disease, Britain was protecting its trade route from quarantine, as recommended by the American and French doctors that analyzed the disease’s patterns.  The British termed this condition of Tanta a ‘miasma’, and that “conceding that the disease moved as a result of some unknown contagion would subvert the lucrative trade endeavor if word reached the international community.” This racist and conspiratorial position allowed the British to remain in control of the Delta until 1894.  Her study “makes a radical departure from standard perspectives in world history by uprooting Western European elites from the core and foundation of world history.” Boyle asks the reader to consider narratives other than those brought forth by the powerful to understand alternative world historical analyses that incorporate new or unheard perspectives.

Amirell in “Female Rule” infuses the history of rulership with a gendered reading of the source material and statistics surrounding queens’ regnant in the Indian Ocean World from 1300-1600 CE.  Amirell notes of his study that “the current state- of-the-art regarding female sovereignty in the Indian Ocean World reflects the general neglect of gender in world historical scholarship,” echoing Manning’s essay on the lack of African and African diaspora voices in black history.  Only two parts of the world exhibited female rule as a practice, Europe, and the wider Indian Ocean World, which stretches from Madagascar, up to the coast of India, and east to Indonesia.  Amirell is interested in the frequency of female rule and identifies four key factors in analyzing this relative frequency - religion, trade, political stability, and gender relations.  Identifying 277 female rulers in the Indian Ocean World from 1300-1600, Amirell introduces the reader to some of the exotic people and places that make up his study, weaving these factors into his narrative.  The rise of Islam greatly impacted the distribution and frequency of queens in this region during this period, reducing their numbers in the northern area of the Indian Ocean World, while on the other hand the notion that women rulers brought peace and stability saw their use flourish in Southeast Asian cultures.  Amirell ask the reader to consider that gendered viewpoints add context, perspective, and depth to historical analyses.

As a field of study, world history analyzes an almost innumerable number of threads, from disciplines including the humanities, health, and economics, just to name a few.  Taken together, these three articles introduce the reader to the practice of doing world history – learning the fundamentals of how to think critically about social mobility and interactions then applying these skills by writing and discussing world history from the point of view of these often-unheard voices.  Incorporating these ideas, and learning from examples like Boyle and Amirell, students and practitioners of world history will be better equipped to tell a broader story of ‘us’.

References

Amirell, Stefan. “Female Rule in the Indian Ocean World (1300-1900).” Journal of World History 26, no. 3 (2015): 443–89.

Boyle, Stephanie Anne. “Cholera, Colonialism, and Pilgrimage: Exploring Global/Local  Exchange in the Central Egyptian Delta, 1848-1907.” Journal of World History 26, no. 3 (2015): 581–604.

Manning, Patrick. “Locating Africans on the World Stage: A Problem in World History.” Journal of World History 26, no. 3 (2015): 605–37.