Page 37 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

Preface

orld history is both very new and very old: new dynasties from their beginnings, including their relations
Wbecause it entered high school and college class- with a wide circle of adjacent barbarians. Faint traces of
rooms only in the last fifty years, and old because it contact between the Chinese and Mediterranean worlds
dates back to the first historians’ attempts to answer an have been detected in Herodotus’s remarks about myth-
age-old question,“How did the world get to be the way ical peoples living somewhere beyond Scythia, but for all
it is?” in a different, more adequate way.The most obvi- practical purposes the historiographical traditions of
ous answer was a creation story, and creation stories China, Greece, and the Biblical scriptures remained
were probably universal among our remotest ancestors independent of one another for many centuries.
since they sufficed to explain everything—as long as By the fifth century CE St. Augustine (354–430) and
people believed that the world continued as it began, others gave the Christian version of world history an
with only seasonal and other cyclical repetitions, such enduring form, building on Jewish precedent, modified
as birth and death. by faith in human redemption through Jesus Christ’s
But in the second half of the first millennium BCE,in sacrifice and anticipating a Day of Judgment when
three different parts of the world, social and political God would bring the world to an end. This remained
changes became so swift and unmistakable that a few standard among Christians through succeeding cen-
individuals in Israel, Greece, and China pioneered what turies and soon was matched by a Muslim version of
we call historical writing.The historical books of the Jew- the same story, starting with creation and ending in the
ish scriptures, as edited after the return from exile in Day of Judgment as freshly set forth in Muhammad’s
Babylonia (subsequent to 539 BCE) recorded God’s uni- revelations.
versal jurisdiction over history in some detail from the In China the structuring of world history around the
time of Abraham—and more generally from the moment rise and fall of imperial dynasties, pioneered by Sima
of creation in the Garden of Eden. Soon afterward, the Qian, remained unchallenged among Confucian schol-
Greek historian Herodotus (484–425 BCE) set out to ars until the twentieth century. But in the Western world
award “a due meed of glory” to the deeds of Greeks and religious narratives, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim,
barbarians within a wide circle extending from Egypt in began to compete with revived interest in ancient and
the south to Scythia (modem Ukraine) in the north, pagan Persian, Greek, and Roman historians as early as
touching on India to the east, and extending throughout the fourteenth century. Accelerating social change that
the Mediterranean coastlands to the west. About did not fit easily with religious expectations also dis-
three centuries later, the Chinese historian Sima Qian turbed older ideas.This provoked a handful of thinkers
(c. 145–85 BCE) brought Chinese historical records, to propose new views of world history. Among Mus-
already voluminous, into comprehensible order by writ- lims, Ibn Khaldûn (1332–1406) stands preeminent; he
ing a comparably far-ranging account of China’s ruling developed a thoroughly secular, cyclical, and strikingly

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