ABSTRACT
World history as a genre has surged at several points during the 20th century, and since the mid-1980s has been gaining ground again as an orientation for historical synthesis and for teaching at both secondary and university levels. World history, as the name implies, covers historical developments on a global basis, rather than focusing on single regions, nati1ons, or civilizations. It seeks to develop a framework for understanding the major developments in all areas of the world from the emergence of agricultural societies (or even before) to the present. World historians like Arnold Toynbee used a rise and fall of civilizations approach, seeking common patterns in the emergence of new, vigorous societies, their maturation, and their ultimate decline. More recent world historians have been less sanguine about uncovering general laws; rather, they have emphasized contacts among civilizations, using world history to trace the diffusion of technologies, ideas, artistic styles, even diseases. The leading interpretive issue in world history today involves balancing the importance of separate civilizations or regional cultures, which have their own historical dynamic, with growing interest in large-scale, multicivilizational contacts and parallels. World history periodization is increasingly determined by changes in the nature and intensity of contacts among a number of otherwise different societies, as in the spread of world religions after the 3rd century AD or the growth of commercial links among Asia, Africa, and Europe after about AD 1000.
