Issues in World History

This blog will discuss a range of issues for research and discussion for scholars and students of World History.

You are welcome to comment or cite to this blog which I intend as a supplement to my courses in World History and various regional history survey courses that I teach.

Studies and attempts at a survey of known world history may be seen in the Ancient 5th century BC Greek historian, Herodotus, and in the late 14th to early 15th century writings of the Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun.  The rise of history as a profession followed the rise of philosophy and history in the German academies and universities from the late 18th and into the 19th century.

The first modern philosopher of World History in Europe was Georg Hegel.  Hegel had an enormous impact on subsequent approaches to history and in this blog page I examine the problem of Hegel's assumptions about the underdevelopment of the non-West and his reification of Greek and subsequent European or Western Civilization.  This page will focus on Hegel's upholding of Greek and European Western Civilization as what he assumed were superior models for development.  In other pages on this blog I examine Hegel's Orientalism and his assumptions of African racial inferiority and lack of history and development.

In another page I provide a review of Susan Buck-Morss' Hegel, Haiti and Universal History (2009) an important study of Hegel's serious misjudgment about Haiti.