Page 42 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

a long march xlvii

through several significant areas of debate. Our core We also rejected the “peoples and cultures” scheme of
group was here, with the exception of Jerry Bentley. We organizing the content by region (Africa, Europe, etc.),
were also joined by Judith Zinsser, whose expertise in as we felt that approach was neither faithful to world
women’s world history made her a valuable member of history nor helpful to users, as many of our planned
our editorial group, by Ralph Crozier (the president of entries (such as, for example, “Trade Patterns—Indian
the World History Association), and by historian Al Ocean” or “British Empire”) cross not only regions but
Andrea from the University of Vermont. also eras and topics.
We had a detailed agenda and were agreeably sur- We finally decided on a combination of the alphabet-
prised by how hard everyone worked, and delighted that ical approach—the usual and best scheme for an ency-
they seemed to enjoy the chance to discuss world history clopedia—and a topical approach. By arranging the
in big terms as much as we did. The personal interac- content alphabetically, we make it very easy to find
tions, and the connections we developed as we talked, entries, and there are ample cross references and blind
argued, and ate and drank together, was vital to the devel- entries to help create the sense of movement and con-
opment of the project. nection that David Christian had identified as vital to our
project. We also created thirty-four categories (such as
Addressing the Issues Arts and Literature, Health and Disease, and Technology
There were several things we had to hammer out before and Science), and allowed each article to be assigned to
we began. How would we organize the encyclopedia? as many of those categories as was appropriate.This way
How many volumes would it be? How would we tackle we were able to highlight and reinforce the intercon-
the many potential topics? nected nature of world history concepts.

Organization Size
The question of how to organize the encyclopedia was The size of the encyclopedia was also an issue. It started
among the more difficult to answer.We felt a strong need at only four volumes and became five when the cuts were
to be faithful to the core beliefs of world history, but we just too painful. Even so, we asked ourselves whether we
also wanted the content to be easily accessible to readers. could cover the history of humankind in only five vol-
We discussed this problem at our first planning session, umes, especially since we had taken six volumes for the
where David Christian worried that it would be difficult Encyclopedia of Modern Asia.
to organize in book format a body of knowledge that at But we were conscious that there was great demand
its core is about movement, interaction, and change. for world history at the high school level, and it was
Of the possible organizational schemes, we rejected important to us to make this vital information available
the traditional chronological approach that delineates at a price high schools could afford. We also knew that
several eras in world history and then organizes articles this was only the beginning of our work in world history,
in that time sequence. We felt it was unsuitable because and that we would expand the core set with volumes on
there is no general agreement among world historians specific topics. So we compromised with an initial five-
about how to divide up the history of the world into eras; volume, 2,500-page work that provides the foundation
eras simply do not begin or end at one point in time, and of what will become the Berkshire World History
their start and end dates vary widely across regions. Fur- Library. We plan to publish a series of related, smaller
thermore, a straight chronological approach would have titles starting early in 2006 and the works together—
been at odds with our definition of world history, which fully integrated and enhanced with large archives of
stresses movements and connections and transforma- additional content—will become an online Berkshire
tions across eras. Knowledge Center.