Product Description

Conventional accounts of world history tend to focus on the rise of Western civilisation and concentrate on the story of ancient Greece, the Roman empire and the expansion of Europe. The histories of the great civilisations of China, India and Japan, and therefore the experience of the majority of the world's people, have been relegated to a minor place. World History adopts a radically different approach. Starting from the assumption that the human story has to be seen in the round, it examines the evolution of humans, their lives as hunters and gatherers and their eventual adoption of agriculture, before looking at the emergence of civilisation across the globe; in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, Mesoamerica and Peru. It goes on to tell the story of the earliest empires, emphasising not just their differences but also their similarities. It explains how contacts were established between them and how technologies, ideas and the world's great religions travelled from one to another. It describes the great empires of Islam, of China and of the Mongols. Only towards the end of the story does Europe come slowly to dominate the world, against the background of technical innovations and social and economic change.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106400 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 943 pages

From the Publisher
'Large, ambitious and often enthralling, it is a successful attempt to look at the unfolding of world history from an entirely new perspective.' Literary Review

About the Author
Clive Ponting is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wales, Swansea. His Green History of the World was a bestseller in many countries.

Customer Reviews

Rewriting History
Traditional world histories to a lay audience take the following format: Primitive man, agriculture, the first civilisations i.e., Sumeria, Egypt, then China, India; then possibly something about Greece and Rome, something about religions and their origins, the dark ages in Europe, the renaissance, the age of exploration, the industrial revolution and then the British Empire, modern science and the present world order.

Clive Ponting on the other hand, starts on broadly similar lines, but rather than Rome, Greece and the thread of European history as forming a backbone to the rest of world history, prefers to dwell on India, India, India, China, China, China, China, China plus Africa, Pacific Islands, South America as well as bits from the Eurasian periphery, AKA Europe. He dismisses Europe as an unnatural continent and prefers to refer to Eurasia.

In focusing on the achievements of China and India, he places in perspective European claims to civilisation and exposes how Europe remained quite backwards well into the 18th century before catching up with the trading networks and empires in the east through the help of plunder from the Americas and slavery.

He reveals that all the great scientific and technological innovations that lead to the European naval expansion arose in the Middle East or China including paper, gunpowder, mathematics and advanced trading systems. He also makes clear that Eastern relgions were subtler and superior to the thraldom of the Judaeo-Christian hegemony, which was subsequently imposed on the world by Europeans.

He indicates how the Americas paid the price in hundreds of millions of lives lost, and the only thing that the East wanted from the West was gold and silver as the West had nothing better to offer in terms of quality goods or spices. The precious metals the Europeans eventually found in S. America which they ransacked to the hilt, representing a jackpot of plantation land and wealth of untold proportions. It is the plantation system and the wealth discovered that enabled an economic conquest of the East which eventually established Occidental domination.

The book is controversial and has strong views but is a useful redress to decades of assumption as to any inherent superiority in any one culture. It is an indictement of some of the wrongs that Europe represented. The book is very weak on historical characters and figures and is thus somewhat marxist.

However, the book is filled with details of the rise and fall of Chinese dynasties which other books would never mention as well as comprehensive enough histories of India and "The South". It excels in details on technology, religion and economics that other books would fail on. It is also strong on environmental perspectives.

I think this is an important reference book.

A great insight into world history
If you are interested in a truly 'world' approach - without the usual pre-eminence of Europe - this is the book for you. Starting with the origins of man, it covers everything in a concise and easy to read style. Thoroughly recommended.

World History, Clive Ponting
A history book with a new perspective, a book that makes you think beyond the traditional way of seeing history. Pontings approach is much more global and the perspective makes, atleast me, see the history in an other way.