This overview of world history since AD 1500, with its underlying theme of shifting global power, tells in short compass how the modern world has come to be what it is.
In emphasizing the study of humanity as a whole, this volume continues the work I began in Impact of Western Man in 1966. It was then that the words of the English poet John Donne, 'No man is an island entire of itself, every man is part of the main', came to have special significance for me. In seeking to understand the totality, complexity and diversity of the past, my focus shifted from the parts to the whole, from the trees to the forest. My concern became the relation between states rather than within states. While not denying the uniqueness of national or regional history, or the sub-specialisms that have proliferated these past fifty years, I felt that the growing communality and interdependence of nations justified my taking the wider, more pluralistic view. To sharpen the focus of this ecumenical study, I have also adopted a topical as well as a chronological approach.
To provide insights into five hundred years of world history and put them into compact form has not been easy. No matter how much one tries to avoid it, some items will invariably be given more, some less, attention than they deserve; the tendency will be to present history as much more unidirectional and continuous than events in the real world confirm. In sifting the wheat from the chaff, I have followed the maxim of Voltaire: 'Les details qui ne menent a rien sont dans l'histoire ce que sont les bagages dans une armee, impedimenta; il faut voir les choses en grand.' (Meaningless details in history are like the baggage of an army: impedimenta; one must take the wider view.) Details are not ends in themselves.
The greatest hazard confronting a writer engaged in a task of this kind lies not in the breadth of the subject, or in its complexity, but in the point of view from which he tells his tale. I know of no historical writing of lasting value that does not reveal the man behind the pen. Of necessity, my views are personal, temporal and locational.
Whatever the approach, it is only in historical terms that we can ever hope to understand the metamorphosis of the modern world. Only by using the past to cast light on the present can we hope to know how the world has come to be what it is and where it might be headed. We are the only species who can learn from the past; we are threatened with extinction if we fail to do so.
In placing history in a global setting, I have been helped by scholars in many parts of the world. My debt to others in knowledge and inspiration (as the acknowledgements in the first edition of this work and the footnotes and bibliography of this book make abundantly clear) is considerable.
World History
