Global History: a Short Overview

225 Pages·2013·2.125 MB·English

by  Cowen, Noel

GLOBAL HISTORY

GLOBAL HISTORY
A Short Overview
Noel Cowen
Polity
Copyright © Noel Cowen 2001
The right of Noel Cowen to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
First published in 2001 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell
Publishers Ltd
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ISBN 0-7456-2805-2
ISBN 0-7456-2806-0 (pbk)
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Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books, Bodmin, Cornwall
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
THE CLASSICAL ERA
Part I The Primary Concern 17
1 Global Odyssey: Searching for Subsistence 19
2 Civilized Centres: Settlements Become Permanent 28
3 Rulers and Myths: Preconditions of Stability 35
Part II The Political Prospect 45
4 Hostile Encounters: the Threat from Outside 47
5 Communication Network: Paths to Coexistence 55
6 Global Response: the Spreading of the Empires 61
Part III The Religious Factor 73
7 Creeds of Empire: Conformity and Allegiance 75
8 Crossing Frontiers: Faiths and Universalism 81
9 Division and Decline: Propaganda for Salvation 89
From Classical to Modern 97
THE MODERN ERA
Part IV New Beginnings 105
10 Movement of Peoples: Nomads and New Settlers 107
11 Economic Breakthrough: New Bases of Subsistence 114
12 Church and State: Twin Pillars of Stability 122
vi Contents
Part V Wider Identities 135
13 Centuries of Empire: Global Impulse Renewed 137
14 Tools of Empire: Technology of Expansion 148
15 Creeds of Empire: Ideologies on the Move 155
Part VI Global Tendencies 165
16 The World Economy: From Crisis to Growth 167
17 Hostile Encounters: Civilizations at War 175
18 Communication Network: Search for Coexistence 184
Conclusion 194
Bibliography 198
Index 208
Acknowledgements
My first and heartfelt acknowledgement is to my son Robin
whose belief in this project has been constant for twenty-five
years. From the international sixth-form Atlantic College in
Wales he won a Fairbridge scholarship to the University of
Western Australia to study philosophy, politics and history.
Searching through the current literature on the philosophy
of history, Robin felt bound to report: ‘The central goal to
afford a total explanatory account of the past is now very
unsympathetically regarded.’ But he added his opinion
that my theory was ‘eminently plausible’. His subsequent
commitment was to the foundation of sound education in
primary schools in Australia and England. But his interest in
my plausible enterprise never wavered, and in correspond-
ence and recorded discussion he injected something of the
intellectual rigour of his M.A. thesis in philosophy into the
narrative I was piecing together.
Born in the naval and military town of Chatham during
one of the worst episodes of the Great War, as I grew to
manhood I learned with mounting horror of the sheer
wickedness of the Battle of the Somme. In my last years at
school and as a young newspaper reporter I was increasingly
aware of the new chapters of wickedness that threatened a
return to global conflict. I registered as a conscientious objec-
tor at the onset of the Second World War, and in its after-
math I was recruited to a small team at the Ministry of
Economic Affairs to help explain our economic plight. When
viii Acknowledgements
the Ministry was merged into the Treasury I worked on prob-
lems of reconstruction in an emerging global context. I learnt
about the stern economics of recurrent crisis and our depend-
ence for survival on international political cooperation and
the definition of common goals for war-ravaged nations.
Stimulated by Toynbee’s A Study of History, but unconvinced
by its core arguments, I sent him some criticisms and some
thoughts of my own. In his reply he said ‘the more of us have
a go at it the better.’
With this encouragement I began an extensive programme
of reading which has never really ended. My plan was to
eschew theory for the time being and search the works of
specialist historians for detailed factual accounts of particu-
lar civilizations. My debt to them is enormous, not only for
the knowledge and insight they have given me but also for
the pleasures of wandering in their enchanted garden. The
City of Westminster library responded with zeal to my
growing lists of books, which they bought or borrowed when
they were not available on their shelves. I welcomed the
opportunity to move to the Ministry of Education and to
profit, thereby, from the scholarly wisdom of H.M. Inspec-
tors, one of whom in particular was seeking to arouse an
interest in world history in the secondary schools. Teddy
(E.E.Y.) Hales had published a number of historical works
and was currently working on curricular ideas based on dis-
cussions with international educationists. We discussed the
relevance of this background to my studies.
In an article I published around that time I first spelt out
the global dimensions of my work, referring to ‘the global
view’ which was discernible in ‘the unfolding of the regional
sequences’. After discussing ‘the ends pursued in turn by man
the wanderer, man the settler, man the conqueror and man
the worshipper’, I turned to ‘the global situation’ taking
shape and asked if there were any signs of a common direc-
tion emerging. In discussions with Robin I undertook several
reworkings of my material and in the 1980s I concluded a
comparative treatment of classical and modern civilizations
with a summary of increasing global trends against the back-