Given the level of social transformation and the extent of European rule, anyone theorising about historical patterns from about 1840 to about 1970 was likely to be very impressed by the rise of the West. The subsequent retreat from Empire and Asian economic surge is likely to make one more sanguine. There is quite a scholarly debate currently ( Read more... )

I have been trying to get a feel for the larger patterns in history. Am currently reading Frank's Re-Orient:Global Economy in the Asian Age which overstates its main thesis but is full of fascinating information about the operation of the global economy from 1400 to 1800 ( Read more... )

There has been quite a wave of revisionist scholarship pointing out that Europe’s rise to global dominance was somewhat later, and owed much more to non-European influences, than is often realised. Scholars such as R. Bin Wong, Janet Abu Lughod, Kenneth Pomeranz have produced notable works in this field.

It is a reaction against scholarly ( Read more... )

The late Eric Wolf produced (including a revised edition before his death) a notable study on the response and interaction of non-European peoples to the rise of European dominance, Europe and the People Without History. It is a fine piece of global historical anthropology (if a little dated in some aspects due to the way understanding of global ( Read more... )

Roger Collins’ Early Medieval Europe, 300-1000 is a fine narrative history of the transition from late antiquity to the medieval. I enjoyed the intelligent scepticism about the available written sources and the way Collins analysed historical actors in terms of the problems actually facing them (rather than some teleological notion of how they “ ( Read more... )

That knightly Europe can be usefully understood by comparison with samurai Japan is a view I have expressed more than once. Recently finished a work which suggests that Europe can be usefully understood in comparison with China, not least to as a barrier against inappropriate generalisation from European experience.

R Bin Wong’s China ( Read more... )

Modern global economic history generates two great puzzles. First, why and how did the NW Europe and Anglo-America achieve such unparallelled economic take-off (and why was Japan the non-Western society who was most easily able to emulate, and some ways surpass, that achievement)? Second, was the Industrial Revolution the crucial change and why ( Read more... )