From the Author to the Reader
Each age writes its own history. Not because the earlier history is wrong, but because each age faces new problems, asks new questions, and seeks new answers. This precept is self-evident today when the tempo of change is increasing exponentially, creating a correspondingly urgent need for new history posing new questions and offering new answers.
Our own generation, for example, was brought up on West-oriented history, and naturally so, in a West-dominated world. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were an era of Western hegemony in politics, in economics, and in culture. But the two World Wars and the ensuing colonial revolutions quickly ended that hegemony, as evidenced by the disappearance of the great European empires from the maps of the world. The names and the colors on the maps changed radically, reflecting the new world that had emerged by the mid-twentieth century.
Slowly and reluctantly we recognized that our traditional West-oriented history was irrelevant and misleading in this world. A new global perspective was needed to make sense of the altered circumstances. The transition from the old to the new was achieved, albeit with much soul searching and acrimony. By the 1960s the reality of the shift was evident in the emergence of the World History Association, in the appearance of the Journal of World History, and in the publication of the first edition of this text.
This brings us back to our original question: Why publish a new edition for the twentieth-first century, only a few decades after the first edition? The answer is the same as the answer given to justify the first edition: a new world requires a correspondingly new historical approach. The postcolonial world of the 1960s necessitated a new global history. Today the equally new world of the 1990s, and of the twentieth-first century, requires an equally new historical approach. The new world of the 1960s was in large part the product of the colonial revolutions. The new world of the 1990s , as Pope Pius VI noted, is the product of the “magic influence of science and technology”. The pervasiveness of this influence is evident in the “gigantic problems” it has created in all aspects of our lives. For example, students of the late twentieth century doubtless remember their daily prostration under their wooden desks, probably wondering what protection those flimsy structures could offer against nuclear bombs.
The generation of students had to face up to not only new dangers to human life, but also to unprecedented peril to the mother Earth which had given birth to that life. Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau has warmed: Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the twentieth century than in all previous human history. Likewise the environmental organization Worldwatch Institute concluded in 1989: By the end of the next decade the die will pretty well be cast. As the world enters the twentieth-first century, the community of nations either will have rallied and turned back the threatening trends, or environmental deterioration and social disintegration will be feeding on each other.
英国当代历史学家杰弗里·巴勒克拉夫(Geoffrey Barraclough)对美国当代历史学家斯塔夫里阿诺斯所著《全球通史》的评价是:“近年来,在用全球观点或包含全球内容重新进行世界史写作的尝试中,最有推动作用的那些著作恰恰是由历史学家个人单独完成的,其中以斯塔夫里阿诺斯的《...
评分Google有个地图功能,让人可以从外太空例如在月球上的方向,来观看我们这个蔚蓝的星球。并且可以如同坐在从外太空高速飞回或飞走的宇宙飞船上一般,快速地缩小或是拉大。有时候会陶醉于这种美,从外太空看见的美:世界变得如此之小视野变得如此广阔。 看这本书,也宛如通过...
评分1欧亚大陆上的文明也是多种多样的,它们的独特性取决于各自的所在地与中东最早的文明中心地相隔之远近。中国与中东之间相隔一片辽阔的、荒漠的地区,并有大山作屏障,因此,从古代最早时候起直至今天,中国文明一直与欧亚大陆的其他文明彼此相异。 —— 全球通史 2中国人的...
评分开始我也不知道选择读哪个版本,也不知道两个版本有什么不同,于是这两个版本的书我对照的读了几个章节,发现一些区别。 北大的比上海社科院的文字内容要少,北大的那版成段的删除了很多描述性文字,我建议有时间或者想细读的话,选择上海社科院出版的。 但北大的图片及地图的...
啃。 读完了~
评分原来,所谓的唯物史观,竟掌握在资产阶级历史学家手中!在全球化的背景下,如何将破碎的地区史整合成全球史,将逐渐成为一个重要的难题。斯塔夫里阿诺斯为我们开了一个好头。
评分啃。 读完了~
评分啃。 读完了~
评分这个一定要看原版的好。北大出版的中译本错误太多。要看中译本还是上海社科的好,不过貌似绝版了。。。
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