ABSTRACT
This essay focuses on two interrelated challenges in teaching and conceptualizing world history during a crucial half-millennium: first, how to deal with the time period itself as anything besides a grab bag of facts or a waiting room between dramatic developments like the rise of Islam and the rise of the West. And second, how to maintain a geographical balance that will retain appropriate, though in no sense disproportionate, focus on the civilization of Asia during this time. It is unquestionably easy, particularly for world history teachers reluctantly lured away from a Western civilization tradition, to dismiss China after its classical age with a fleeting more-of-the-same tag, while neglecting India altogether—leaving India’s history disconnected—between its formative centuries through the Guptas and the return of “coherence” under British domination. Ultimately, geographical balance and thematic emphasis must intertwine to create a picture of the period in which Asian civilizations, and connections among them, receive both due emphasis and essential continuity.
