ARTICLE
48 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 25 number 1 2020
World history is not a
subject; it is all subjects. As
soon as the world historian
starts asking questions
about why peoples in dif-
ferent geographic regions
developed differently, she
will find herself asking
questions about the moti-
vations of individuals, the
actions of groups, the pat-
terns of disease, climate,
geography, and even the
historical effects of conti-
nental drift; this pursuit
necessitates an under-
standing of psychology, so-
ciology, biology, geography,
climate science, and geol-
ogy. World historical questions have no respect for dis-
ciplinary boundaries, which is why the field attracts
polymaths.
However, because world history is so big of a
topic that it defies specialization, the topic fits uneasily
in the academy, where specialization is the norm and
where “history” usually works with clear research
questions that are defined within the parameters of
specific geographical regions and historical eras. This
uneasiness is why world history developed, first, out-
side of universities and it also explains why the field
has developed so many varied approaches and has be-
come so popular. My fascination with world history
and its development led me to write the newly com-
pleted two-volume work titled To Explain it All: Every-
thing You Wanted to Know About the Popularity of World
History Today. World history is a big topic, but a few
key points can be made about the field’s foundations,
its purpose, and its importance.
The two volumes of To Explain it Allanalyze the
various approaches to world history. Those include thesingle-volume approach,
the multi-volume ap-
proach, a children’s his-
tory of the world, a
humorous approach, a
commodity-based his-
tory of the world, and
histories that try to tell
the narrative of world
history through Islamic,
non-western, and Marx-
ist points of view, and
even through the per-
spective of a political sci-
entist. After reviewing
the literature, here are
some general principles
I distilled about world
history:
I. The Greek historian Polybius (264-146 BCE)
once wrote that the traditional historical
method “omits events in parallel,” and thus a
more universalist approach is sometimes
needed.For example, a traditional historian
might ask why legal slavery ended in the United
States. This question would lead to a reference
of Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation
and the 13th Amendment that was ratified in- This form of analysis, however, misses that
fact that Czar Alexander II freed the Russian
serfs on February 19, 1861, during the first year
of the American Civil War. That both the United
States and Russia had legal slavery in 1860 but
that neither had it by 1865 leads to a broader
question: why was slavery almost entirely eradi-
cated in the northern hemisphere over the
course of just five years?
World history also allows for broadscale ana-
logical analysis. Comparing, say, the outbreak of
World War I with the Cuban Missile Crisis yields
Can We Ever
Explain It All?
Eight Key Points from World Histor y
BY CH RIS ED WARD S