Papers by David Christian
The American Historical Review, 2005
World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures, 2019
This series seeks to promote understanding of large-scale and long-term processes of social chang... more This series seeks to promote understanding of large-scale and long-term processes of social change, in particular the many facets and implications of globalization. It critically explores the factors that affect the historical formation and current evolution of social systems, on both the regional and global level. Processes and factors that are examined include economies, technologies, geopolitics, institutions, conflicts, demographic trends, climate change, global culture, social movements, global inequalities, etc. Building on world-systems analysis, the series addresses topics such as globalization from historical and comparative perspectives, trends in global inequalities, core-periphery relations and the rise and fall of hegemonic core states, transnational institutions, and the long-term energy transition. This ambitious interdisciplinary and international series presents cutting-edge research by social scientists who study whole human systems and is relevant for all readers interested in systems approaches to the emerging world society, especially historians, political scientists, economists, sociologists, geographers and anthropologists.
Big history surveys the past on all scales up to those of cosmology. It answers questions explore... more Big history surveys the past on all scales up to those of cosmology. It answers questions explored in traditional creation stories and universal histories, but it does so with the methods and the evidence of modern scientific scholarship. Though still marginal within historical scholarship, big history is attracting increasing interest and holds out the promise of a fruitful unification of different disciplines that study the past at many different scales. This paper discusses the emergence of big history and its current status and role within historical scholarship.
Contents Preface Introduction: What Is Big History and How Do We Study It? Seeing the Big Picture... more Contents Preface Introduction: What Is Big History and How Do We Study It? Seeing the Big Picture Seeing the Whole of the Past What Is Big History? The Basic Shape of the Story: Increasing Complexity A Framework: Eight Major Thresholds of Big History A Note on Chronological Systems and Dates Summary Chapter 1 The First Three Thresholds: The Universe, Stars, and New Chemical Elements Seeing the Big Picture Threshold 1: Big Bang Cosmology and the Origin of the Universe Threshold 2: The Origin of Galaxies and Stars Threshold 3: The Creation of New Chemical Elements Summary Chapter 2 The Fourth Threshold: The Emergence of the Sun, the Solar System, and the Earth Threshold 4: The Emergence of the Sun and Solar System The Early Earth-a Short History Shaping of Earth's Surface Summary Chapter 3 The Fifth Threshold: The Emergence of Life Seeing the Big Picture How Life Changes through Natural Selection Threshold 5: The Emergence of Life on Earth A Brief History of Life on Earth Summary ...
Journal of Big History, 2018
Como se equivocan, quienes estudian los mapas de las regiones antes de haber aprendido con precis... more Como se equivocan, quienes estudian los mapas de las regiones antes de haber aprendido con precisión la relación del universo entero y sus partes separadas y comparadas entre sí y con el todo, así como no están menos equivocados los que piensan que pueden entender historias particulares antes de tener un juicio de orden y secuencia de toda la historia universal y de todos los tiempos, expuesta por así decirlo en una tabla. 1 La Gran Historia representa un intento de lo que E.O. Wilson ha llamado "Consiliencia", un retorno al objetivo de una comprensión unificada de la realidad, en lugar de las visiones fragmentadas que dominan la educación moderna y la erudición. 2 Aunque parezca nuevo, el objetivo de la consiliencia es muy antiguo. E incluso en sus formas modernas, la Gran Historia ha existido por lo menos durante un cuarto de siglo. Por lo tanto, la publicación del primer número de The Journal of Big History ofrece la oportunidad ideal para realizar un inventario. Este artículo es una cuenta personal en este campo.
Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution, 2011
This is an extremely interesting book about some of the large patterns of European and world hist... more This is an extremely interesting book about some of the large patterns of European and world history. And I say that even though I'm not sure its central arguments fully work. Axel Kristinsson is an independent Icelandic historian. He began his career as a specialist in medieval Icelandic history but eventually reacted against what he came to see as an excessively insular historiographical tradition. Instead, he began to think "about larger patterns in human history-something historians rarely do. I became a macro-historian, someone not just concerned with telling stories or explaining specific events but rather engaged in discovering general rules and patterns of human history-the laws of history, if you like" (p. vii). These interests led him to think about the relevance to human history of fields such as complexity theory or group selection. His book deliberately and systematically explores the possibilities of convergence between such scientific paradigms and aspects of human history. History, he insists, is biology, so why should historians not seek the sort of large patterns or 'laws' that scientists habitually look for? Of course, such laws are not crudely deterministic. In fact, they cannot be. Historical laws, like many interesting scientific laws, will appear at the border between order and chaos for the very good reason that complex things must have structure, but if they are to evolve they also need a dash of chaos, just enough to allow for some unpredictable variations. Kristinsson cites the complexity theorist, Stuart Kauffmann, who puts it beautifully: "How can life be contingent, unpredictable, and accidental while obeying general laws? The same question arises when we think about history. … viewed on the most general level, living systems-cells, organisms, economies, societies-may all exhibit lawlike properties, yet be graced with a lacework of historical filigree, those wonderful details that could easily have been otherwise, whose very unlikelihood elicits our awed admiration" (p. 33, citing Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The
Journal of Big History, 2019
harles Darwin: From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whate... more harles Darwin: From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observedthat is, to group all facts under some general laws. [Autobiography] Erwin Schrödinger: We have inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge. The very name given to the highest institutions of learning reminds us, that from antiquity and throughout many centuries the universal aspect has been the only one to be given full credit. 4 [What is Life?] Introduction: The epigraphs capture the central claim of this essay: that good education and research depend on a balance between detail and generality, between sharply-focused research, and the unifying intellectual frameworks that help us make sense of, and find meaning in, detailed research. When Darwin wrote, the need for such a balance was well understood, and his own career offers a spectacular example of the extraordinary synergies that can be generated by connecting detailed research to deep, unifying ideas. Schrödinger wrote just after World War II, when scholars in most fields had
Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution, 2011
In our own generation we have been able to visualize our past as human beings in the context of g... more In our own generation we have been able to visualize our past as human beings in the context of geological time and the prehistoric basis of our recorded history" [1, p.124] 1 Parts of this paper are based on an earlier paper about the chronometric revolution: "Historia, complejidad y revolución cronométrica" ["History, Complexity and the Chronometric Revolution"] [2].
The Asian review of World Histories, 2013
(Paperback). Recently, another historical discipline, geology, has thrown up an alternative conce... more (Paperback). Recently, another historical discipline, geology, has thrown up an alternative conceptual scheme that could re-invigorate his
I use the label 'macrohistory' for study of the past on very large scales. Macrohistory includes ... more I use the label 'macrohistory' for study of the past on very large scales. Macrohistory includes the scales of world history and historical sociology, as well as the even larger scales of 'big history', which embrace geological and even cosmological time. Macrohistory is interdisciplinary, because it crosses the boundaries between the humanities and the sciences. One of its main themes is what Jacques Revel has called 'the play of scales', the way in which our sense of significance, agency and causality can shift when we view the past on different scales and through different frames. This paper explores the current state of macrohistory and suggests how it may evolve as a teaching and research field. As a teaching field, macrohistory can enrich students' sense of their own identity and place in the larger scheme of things. As a research field, the methodology of macrohistory will be closer to that of historical sociology than to that of archival historical research. It will probably be dominated, at first, by scholarly raids into other disciplines that can help historians raise new questions and see old questions in new ways. The paper offers examples of macrohistorical research on different scales and includes a sample bibliography of macrohistorical scholarship.
Sydney Studies in Society and Culture, Sep 26, 2013
I use the label 'macrohistory' for study of the past on very large scales. Macrohistory includes ... more I use the label 'macrohistory' for study of the past on very large scales. Macrohistory includes the scales of world history and historical sociology, as well as the even larger scales of 'big history', which embrace geological and even cosmological time. Macrohistory is interdisciplinary, because it crosses the boundaries between the humanities and the sciences. One of its main themes is what Jacques Revel has called 'the play of scales', the way in which our sense of significance, agency and causality can shift when we view the past on different scales and through different frames. This paper explores the current state of macrohistory and suggests how it may evolve as a teaching and research field. As a teaching field, macrohistory can enrich students' sense of their own identity and place in the larger scheme of things. As a research field, the methodology of macrohistory will be closer to that of historical sociology than to that of archival historical research. It will probably be dominated, at first, by scholarly raids into other disciplines that can help historians raise new questions and see old questions in new ways. The paper offers examples of macrohistorical research on different scales and includes a sample bibliography of macrohistorical scholarship.
State of the World 2013, 2013
Journal of World History, 2003
History is all about context. As Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and HMargaret Jacob have written, "wha... more History is all about context. As Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and HMargaret Jacob have written, "what historians do best is to make connections with the past in order to illuminate the problems of the present and the potential of the future." 1 That is why historians so often complain about fields such as international relations that focus almost exclusively on current events and issues. However, historians haven't always been so good at putting their own discipline in context. Oddly enough, this applies even to world history. One of the virtues of world history is that it can help us see more specialized historical scholarship in its global context. But what is the context of world history itself? This is a question that has not been sufficiently explored by world historians. 2 Yet it should be, for all the reasons that historians understand so well when we criticize other disciplines for neglecting context.
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 2011
Journal of Global History, 2011
nations. One of the big questions is that regarding the resilience of forced labour regimes into ... more nations. One of the big questions is that regarding the resilience of forced labour regimes into the twentieth century, well after formal abolition of slavery. The role of the state in modifying and enforcing forced labour regimes is crucial. Six case studies in four chapters deal with the early twentieth century and the Second World War, arguing that forms of bondage were retained and modified in each case, prompting the continuation of older forms of resistance alongside emerging collective protests. Chapters from the other volumes mentioned at the beginning of this review would extend the comparative case studies of this crucial period. This volume can be productively read alone and provides an essential contribution to IOW slavery studies, comparative slavery, and world history. Together, however, the series constitutes a foundation of collective and collaborative scholarship that has provided a new foundation for analysing bondage in the Indian Ocean that not only present numerous case studies across the entire region but also suggest avenues for further research.
The Journal of Asian Studies, 2000
The American Historical Review, 2006
Journal of World History, 2000
M odern historiography has not fully appreciated the ecological complexity of the Silk Roads. As ... more M odern historiography has not fully appreciated the ecological complexity of the Silk Roads. As a result, it has failed to understand their antiquity, or to grasp their full importance in Eurasian history. The role played by the Silk Roads in exchanging goods, technologies, and ideas between regions of agrarian civilization is well understood. Less well understood is the trans-ecological role of the Silk Roads-the fact that they also exchanged goods and ideas between the pastoralist and agrarian worlds. The second of these systems of exchange, though less well known, predated the more familiar "transcivilizational" exchanges, and was equally integral to the functioning of the entire system. A clear awareness of this system of trans-ecological exchanges should force us to revise our understanding of the age, the significance, and the geography of the Silk Roads. Further, an appreciation of the double role of the Silk Roads affects our understanding of the history of the entire Afro-Eurasian region. The many trans-ecological exchanges mediated by the Silk Roads linked all regions of the Afro-Eurasian landmass, from its agrarian civilizations to its many stateless communities of woodland foragers and steppe pastoralists, into a single system of exchanges that is several millennia old. As a result, despite its great diversity, the history of Afro-Eurasia has always preserved an underlying unity, which was expressed in common technologies, styles, cultures, and religions, even disease patterns. The extent of this unity can best be appreciated by contrasting the history of Afro-Eurasia with that of pre-Columbian America. World historians are becoming increasingly aware of the underlying unity of Afro-Eurasian history. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry
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Papers by David Christian