A History of the World in Seven Themes

Volume One: to 1600

Author Stewart Gordon

The narrative focuses on seven problems that every society - historical or contemporary - must face, regardless of religion, political structure, ethnicity, language, or geographical location.
Thematic approach helps the reader to discern common rituals, problems, and patterns that do not stop at a territorial boundary.
Encourages the reader to consider big questions that matter across the whole of human experience--including loyalty, slavery, technology, and trade.
Presents broad societal problems through the experiences of guides, that is, actual historical figures who were deeply affected by the chapter's theme.
Each chapter features a different way of understanding the past, modeling for students the process of historical inquiry and showing them that history is not simply something one reads about but something one does.
Each chapter opens with The Big Picture, a section that connects the theme's context across broad historical periods and brings the theme into wide geographic regions. The Bigger Picture ends the chapter with the important implications and questions of the theme for our world today.

A History of the World in Seven Themes

Volume One: to 1600

Author Stewart Gordon

Description

We study world history to discern common rituals, problems, and patterns that do not stop at a territorial boundary. A history that accurately reflects the past must recognize that wars, battles, and empires barely touch how lives were lived, whether as an artisan, slave, trader, soldier, pilgrim, or doctor. World history is not about merely analyzing documents and amassing or memorizing facts. It is about learning to consider big questions that matter across the whole of human experience. Such themes do not stay in the past. They are the very stuff of our present and make us aware of our responsibilities to the future. In A History of the World in Seven Themes Stewart Gordon invites students and teachers to analyze, debate, and consider a broad range of questions.

A History of the World in Seven Themes

Volume One: to 1600

Author Stewart Gordon

List of Maps
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Foreword

Chapter 1. People and Plants: On the Move
The Big Picture: Searching for Food
Hominids and Humans
Plants on the Move
Plants, Wild and Domesticated
Successful Food Domestication
Three Foods: Rice, Wheat, and Corn
Rice Cultivation in Asia
All the Wheat in Rome
Managing Maize in Mexico
The Case of the Banana
Food Movement and Empires
The Bigger Picture: Does Movement of Plants Matter?
Challenging the Neolithic Wave: A New Model

Chapter 2. Honor and Loyalty: Blood, Robes, and Salt
The Big Picture: Inspiring Loyalty
Barbur: Loyalty and Power
The Unreliable Bonds of Blood Kinship
Bending the Knee
Robes: A Language of Loyalty and Service
Babur: Loyalty in Bad Times and Good
The Code of Salt
Babur in India
The Decline of the Blood-Robes-Salt World
The Bigger Picture: Loyalty Across Time and Place

Chapter 3. Bonds of Slavery
The Big Picture: Beyond Hollywood
The Paleolithic Era and Slavery Throughout Time and Place
Guides: The Enslavement of Richard Haselton and Malik Ambar
Islam and Military Slavery
Haselton, Slavery, and the Inquisition
Malik Ambar Rises in the Ranks
The Larger World of Slavery
The End of Haselton's Story
The Bigger Picture: The Legacy of Slavery
Interpretation of Slavery
Disappearance of Slavery
State Slavery
A New Form of Slavery

Chapter 4. Sex, Gender, and Patriarchy
The Big Picture: Boys to Men, Girls to Women
The Rise of Patriarchy
Gendered Behavior: The Nonconformists
Abelard
Heloise
Heloise and Abelard
Love and Punishment
Castration in the Service of Patriarchy
Why Eunuchs?
Heloise and Abelard: The End of the Story
The Bigger Picture: Thinking about Gender
Modern Comparisons
The Future of Patriarchy

Chapter 5. Pilgrimage: The Journey of Purpose
The Big Picture: Spiritual Benefits
Chaco Canyon
Pilgrimage on the Silk Road
The Sacred Route o Santiago de Compostela
Ibn Battuta on the Road to Mecca
In the Presence of Buddhist Relics
Bound for Compostela
Ibn Battuta: Back on the Road to Mecca
Faxian Reaches His Goal
In the Presence of Saint James
The Bigger Picture: Common Features of Pilgrimage

Chapter 6. The Human Side of Trade
The Big Picture: Long-Term, Long-Distance Trade
A Young Man Sets Out
Riches of the Geniza
Aden and Spices
A Commenda in Malabar
Risk Management
Contours of a Moral Trading Community
A Slave Girl and Love
A Slave Named Bama
Abraham and Metallurgy
Varieties of Slavery in a Moral Trading World
Family Tragedy
The Bigger Picture: New Ways to Think about Global Trade

Chapter 7. Technology: Glass and Iron
The Big Picture: Technology, Driver of History?
Faience: A Near-Glass
Rulers and Glass
Iron: The Bloomery Method
African Iron: Evidence and Questions
Egypt: The Uses of Glass
Glassmaking in China
Iron Objects in Africa
Amarna: A Mediterranean Glass Center
Technology: Transfer and Nontransfer
The Roman Connection: Empire and Technology
Byzantium: A New Market for Glass
The Bigger Picture: Incremental Experimentation
Technology Was always Local
Environment Matters
Knockoffs Appear
Knowledge Is Fragile
The Trickle-Down Effect

Afterword
Notes
Credits
Index