6+Themes+of+World+History


 * Themes**

World History highlights six overarching themes that should receive approximately equal attention throughout the course:

1. The dynamics of change and continuity across the world history periods covered in this course, and the causes and processes involved in major changes of these dynamics

2. Patterns and effects of interaction among societies and regions: trade, war, diplomacy, and international organizations

3. The effects of technology, economics, and demography on people and the environment (population growth and decline, disease, labor systems, manufacturing, migrations, agriculture, weaponry)

4. Systems of social structure and gender structure (comparing major features within and among societies, and assessing change and continuity)

5. Cultural, intellectual, and religious developments, including interactions among and within societies

6. Changes in functions and structures of states and in attitudes toward states and political identities (political culture), including the emergence of the nation-state (types of political organization)

The themes serve throughout the course as unifying threads, helping students to put what is particular about each period or society into a larger framework. The themes also provide ways to make comparisons over time. The interaction of themes and periodization encourage cross-period questions such as “To what extent have civilizations maintained their cultural and political distinctiveness over the time periods the course covers?”; “Compare the justification of social inequality in 1450 with that at the end of the twentieth century”; or “Discuss the changes in international trading systems between 1300 and 1600.”