Page 164 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

afro-eurasia 49

In the more recent book The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye that have occurred in the world, historians interested in
View of World History, William and John McNeill have comparative and large-scale change have in recent years
consistently used OldWorld as their term of choice for the taken a more situational and fluid approach to geo-
Afro-Eurasian landmass,even though many scholars have graphical contexts, shaping them to the specific histori-
rejected this phrase as Eurocentric,that is,as one implying cal problem at hand.These spatial reorientations include
that the Americas were a new world whose history began conceptions of the Atlantic basin, the Pacific basin, the
when Europeans discovered them. Indian Ocean rim, the Mediterranean-Black Sea rim, and
Philip Curtin, another world history leader, has also Inner Eurasia as zones of interaction different from and
described “the gradual formation and spread of a series sometimes historically more serviceable than the con-
of intercommunicating zones, beginning from small ventional conceptions of civilizations and continents.
points in the river valleys and spreading gradually to Afro-Eurasia is simply one among several useful geo-
larger and larger parts of the Afro-Eurasian land mass” graphical categories, one that should not replace Europe,
(Curtin 1995, 47). In ReOrient: Global Economy in the Africa, and Asia as named areas on the world map, but
Asian Age, Andre Gunder Frank contends that in large- rather be put to work as a useful tool in the historian’s
scale investigation of the development of the world econ- methodological kit.
omy between 1400 and 1800,Afro-Eurasia is a far more
Ross E. Dunn
relevant geographical unit than Europe, Asia, Africa, or
even Eurasia. Arnold Toynbee recognized the climatic, See also Geographic Constructions; Human Evolution—
ecological, and historical contiguity of the Sahara and Overview
Arabian deserts by coining the term Afrasian steppes, an
expression that transformed the Red Sea from a conti-
nental partition to a long, narrow lake within the Afro- Further Reading
Eurasian arid zone. The historian Michael Pearson has Curtin, P., Feierman, S.,Thompson, L., & Vansina, J. (1995). African his-
tory: From earliest times to independence (2nd ed.). New York:
suggested that Afrasian Sea might well replace Arabian Longman.
Sea in order to acknowledge the long historical associa- Diamond, J. (1993). Guns, germs, and steel:The fates of human societies.
New York: W.W. Norton.
tions among peoples of the East African coast, Arabia,
Dunn, R. E. (Ed.). (2000). The New World History: A Teacher’s Compan-
Persia, and India. Indeed Pearson, Frank, and Ross Dunn ion. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s.
have proposed the term Afrasia as an alternative to Afro- Dunn, R. E. (1992). Multiculturalism and world history. World History
Bulletin, 8(Spring–Summer), 3–8.
Eurasia in order to award the land mass a more distinc- Frank, A. G. (1998). ReOrient: Global economy in the Asian Age. Berke-
tive name and to erase the hyphenation (Pearson 1998, ley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Hodgson, M. (1954). Hemispheric interregional history as an approach
36; Frank 1998, 2-3; Dunn 1992, 7). However, this inno-
to world history. Journal of World History/Cahier d’Histoire Mondiale,
vation, which conceptually embraces Europe but omits 1(3), 715–723.
the combining form Eur-, has so far attracted few aca- Hodgson, M. G. S. (1974). The venture of Islam: Conscience and history
in a world civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
demic buyers. Hodgson, M. G. S. (1993). Rethinking world history: Essays on Europe,
As the literature of transnational, interregional, and Islam, and world history. (W. Burke III, Ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge University Press.
global history has accrued, both scholars and teachers
Kroeber,A. L. (1944). Configurations of culture growth. Berkeley and Los
have recognized the liabilities of accepting conventional Angeles: University of California Press.
geographical expressions as natural, fixed, or timeless, Lewis, M.W., & Wigen, K. E. (1997). The myth of continents: A critique
of metageography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
because these presumed entities may impose arbitrary Press.
and distracting barriers to investigating historical phe- McNeill, J. R., & McNeill, W. H. (2003). The human web: A bird’s eye
view of world history. New York: W.W. Norton.
nomena in their totality.Thus, in order to formulate com-
McNeill,W. H. (1963). The rise of the West: A history of the human com-
parative and large-scale questions about developments munity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.