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Themes in Global History

History 1130-106 Spring 2015

Spring 2015 Appalachian State University Introductions Rene’ Horst, Professor BH

214 Fhorstrh@appstate.edu 262-6007

Office Hours: M 8-12, 2-3; W 11-12, 2-3; or by appointment

Themes in Global History1130-106

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How do we understand history and culture?

History and Minority Peoples in our world

Electrical Power distribution

Wealth GDP Increase 2010-2015

World in Trillion $ Chunks

Dawn of Humans Population and Resources Physical Earth Political Earth

What is Culture?

Non-instinctive, learned behaviors (such as language, technology, religion, art, music, medicine...) that characterize humans and distinguish one human "culture" from another."

Culture

Incredible Moments in Recent History Introductions Attendance: write your name and what

you expect from this course How have we gotten here?

Welcome to His 1130-106Themes in Global HistorySpring 2015

What will your life be like? Better? Worse?

Excellent Teaching and Excellent Learning!

Course Introduction and Themes, ASULEARN

Requirements, Syllabus & Schedule, Assignments

More Introductions

This course studies the last 500 years of global history with a focus in different groups of people. Specifically we examine the interaction between indigenous peoples and colonizers of native lands.

This is a difficult job, as we survey hundreds of years of human histories and many different cultures in one semester.  To do so students examine important themes rather than trying to learn everything everyone has done or how everyone has lived throughout history. 

Our focus will be the role that indigenous people have played in global history. Why native people?

What are civilizations? (Next for Group work)

Course Themes

Small Group and Definition

Class Definitions of Civilization

—Those forms of social organization in which sedentary agriculture produces a surplus that allows for urban settlement and social, economic and political differentiation.  Students contextualize these civilizations and study their relations with each other centers and with peripheral peoples outside the civilizations who interacted with and helped shape life within the civilizations.

At the same time, students examine what the idea of “civilization” might obscure. 

What are Civilizations?

First, “civilizations” do not exist in isolation, but rather in interaction with one another.  This study must therefore focus on processes and relationships both within and between groups of people, as well on those particular cultures and civilizations. 

What does “civilization” obscure?

Second, different civilizations at times realized “achievements” and great reported “accomplishments” at a great human cost.  While we marvel at religious, scientific, architectural, political, literary and artistic milestones, we must pay attention to the lives of ordinary people.  In every society these groups are the majority and in whose perspective the acclaimed “spectacular” achievements may appear quite differently. 

Themes, continued

Third, the course will question some of our own cultural assumptions about human progress and bring into clearer focus the relationship between the rest of the world and that area we now call “the West”. 

Third Theme:

Fourth, human civilizations have out of necessity interacted with the natural environment in which they live. Many times this relationship has been detrimental to the long-term health of natural environments.  At the beginning of new millennium it is appropriate to reflect on the sustainability and the environmental cost of human societies.  World history provides a medium for these foci.

Fourth Theme

Changing human cultures 1500-2012 Indigenous peoples and their cultures Empires and the cultures they create Inequalities in Societies and Cultures

The most Important historical themes for our course will therefore be:

Examine broad themes in a comparative context.  Explore and contrast how people experienced life in

different historical situations.  Gain experience with the basic tools of historical

studies:  an awareness of how the modern world emerged, geographic and political changes, critical thinking and analysis, clear prose and writing, and the ability to express and debate ideas orally. 

The ability to contrast and compare historical events within a global context helps students understand the world and prepares them for the workplace and life in a multicultural environment. How can we get all this done?

“History must account for the ways in which the social system of the modern world came into being…  We need to search out the causes of the present in the past…  Such an analytical history could not be developed out of the study of a single culture or nation, a single culture area, or even a single continent at one period in time…  Human populations construct their cultures in interaction with one another, and not in isolation…  Such rethinking must transcend the customary ways of depicting Western history, and must take into account of the conjoint participation of Western and non-Western peoples in this worldwide process.  Most of the groups studied by anthropologists have long been caught up in the changes wrought by European expansion, and they have contributed to these changes.  We can no longer be content with writing only the history of victorious elites, or with detailing the subjugation of dominated ethnic groups.  Social historians and historical sociologists have shown that the common people were as much agents in the historical process as they were its victims and silent witnesses.  We thus need to uncover the history of the ‘people without history’-the active histories of ‘primitives,’ peasantries, laborers, immigrants, and besieged minorities”

(Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History).   Whose history do we tell?

  Repeat the rules together out loud without stopping Keep your eyes closed throughout entire exercise

Rules:  If tapped once, repeat the rules If tapped twice, stand up, but keep repeating the rules If tapped three times, you can do whatever you want

What did this exercise teach us about human culture? 

7. Tapped into Civilization and Culture

What does this activity teach us? How does it relate to indigenous history? What did you learn today? What will you prepare for Thursday?

Review and Assignments