ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, world history was described as a different way of looking, thinking and doing. World history strives to capture the big picture, but the big picture is not the entire story. So, how big is this picture? How big is this world? We speak about our own world, about the world of children, of music, the business world, lost world(s), the civilized world, or simply ‘the world’. Since the concept ‘world’ can include almost every sphere of human interaction, it sometimes refers to the planet earth, the globe and to ‘global’. Global means worldwide as well as complete, total. This semantic discussion points out the need to delineate the concept ‘world’ in world history. That world is not a constant; it is bound by human activity. The ‘world’ refers to social change that can only be understood in specific contexts of space and time. For that reason, no single delineation can be absolute. On the contrary, choosing a space and time perspective (‘where’ and ‘when’) is linked to an intrinsic, substantive choice (which social change?). Consequently, world history does not apply exclusive frameworks of space and time; it does not draw fixed boundaries. We speak of scales. These scales overlap from small to large so they do not exclude each other. We also speak of zones of contact and interaction. This is where different social systems come together. Scales and contact zones or frontiers are central concepts of analysis in contemporary world history.
