What are some books that will give me a general overview of recorded human history? Is pic related worth reading for such a purpose?

File: 246 KB, 956x1500, 81n3b6i-SVL._SL1500_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:25:44 2014 No.5098948 [DELETED]

What are some books that will give me a general overview of recorded human history? Is pic related worth reading for such a purpose?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:27:51 2014 No.5098956 Yes. Also read Chris Harman's A People's History of the World

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:28:03 2014 No.5098957 Milner, Greg, "Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music"

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:28:46 2014 No.5098960 >>5098948 Guns, Germs and Steel has a shaky reputation.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:29:49 2014 No.5098964 >>5098960 Why is that?

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:33:31 2014 No.5098976

>>5098964
Because Jared Diamond has been repeatedly exposed as a pseudo-intellectual fraud.

For example:
http://www.imediaethics.org/News/149/Jared_diamonds_factual_collapse__.php

Also bare in mind that his academic background is in ornithology, not anthropology, or even history.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:34:58 2014 No.5098983

>>5098948
>What are some books that will give me a general overview of recorded human history?

None. This is a sign you have no idea what "history" is.

>Is pic related worth reading for such a purpose?

Not at all.

>>5098964
>Why is that?

He was reviewed as wrong in evidence by field specific historians, and wrong in conclusions by more.

Honestly: start with the cartoon history of the universe parts 1-3 and then read something like Zinn's _People's History_ before something real like Lefebvre _The French Revolution_

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:35:21 2014 No.5098988 >>5098976 Interesting, I may just pass that one over. >>5098956 This looks pretty promising, thanks anon.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:37:51 2014 No.5098998 >>5098983 When I ask for a general overview I mean information regarding movement, artistic trends, etc. I don't mean an in depth explanation of every culture's history.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:38:10 2014 No.5099001

>>5098964
Not who your responded to, but this from Wikipedia:

In a review of Guns, Germs, and Steel that ultimately commended the book, historian Tom Tomlinson wrote that, "Given the magnitude of the task he has set himself, it is inevitable that Professor Diamond uses very broad brush-strokes to fill in his argument." Another historian, professor J. R. McNeill, was on the whole complimentary but thought Diamond oversold geography as an explanation for history and underemphasized cultural autonomy. In his last book published in 2000, the anthropologist and geographer James Morris Blaut criticized Guns, Germs, and Steel for reviving the theory of environmental determinism, and described Diamond as an example of a modern Eurocentric historian. Blaut criticizes Diamond's loose use of the terms "Eurasia" and "innovative", which he believes misleads the reader into presuming that Western Europe is responsible for technological inventions that arose in the Middle East and Asia.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:54:11 2014 No.5099043

>>5098998
>movement
Nice reductionism. Are you sure movements actually empirically "exist?"

>artistic trends
Art history is a separate discipline to history. The relationship between art and culture is covered by cultural history, and isn't conducted at the scale you've requested.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:55:13 2014 No.5099047 >>5098948 mein kampf

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:56:11 2014 No.5099050 >>5099043 I meant movement of people you hypercritical fuck.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 18:59:12 2014 No.5099064

>>5099050
>movement of people
There are a very limited number of scatoliths.

If you're implying that modern nationalities predated the late 18th century, then you're tinfoil.

>people
Nice reductionism. Are you sure "people" as in the plural body acting in concert without other social orderings such as states (which leave records) villages (which leave records) or institutions (which leave records) existed?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:03:27 2014 No.5099075 >>5099064 >Complaining about reductionism on fucking 4chan Seriously man, I know I'm being baited but come on.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:06:14 2014 No.5099085

>>5099075
>Seriously man, I know I'm being baited but come on.
I'm sorry, I didn't realise you were asking for nationalist fantasies, because you seemed to ask for "history." You ask for history on /lit/, you fucking get it. Your attempts to produce imaginary movements of peoples in the past is sickening fiction. If you want sickening fiction then start a Gor thread.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:08:55 2014 No.5099095 File: 11 KB, 327x388, 1270947155728.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5099064 >>5098983 >Such a douche You know what OP meant, no need to fag it up arguing over epistemology

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:10:11 2014 No.5099104

>>5099075
I'm not the anon you're arguing with (and to be fair he's being a little flippant), but what you're asking is almost impossible due to the scope of what is understood to mean "history" (and even that understanding is under contention), unless by "history" you mean (like many people still do) a timeline of events in Europe. If this is the case, try E.H. Gombrich's "A Little History of the World." It's a nice, concise overview of major events in the European theater ("World" in the title is a bit of a misnomer, just as the term "a general overview of recorded human history" is much broader in scope than what you can tackle in one book).

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:10:35 2014 No.5099106 >>5098948 The day the universe changed -book on scientific theory throughout history

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:10:50 2014 No.5099108 >>5099085 no one is talking about nationalities but you. >doesn't understand that identity doesn't have to be national

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:11:58 2014 No.5099113 >>5099104 This is exactly what I'm looking for, I'll look into that anon ty.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:11:59 2014 No.5099114 >>5099095 >You know what OP meant, no need to fag it up arguing over epistemology Yes, he meant, "Please validate my racist imaginary." And OP can fuck off or start to learn history.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:14:32 2014 No.5099126

Several history professors I've had claim that Diamond stole* much of his thesis from the book Ecological Imperialism, by Alfred Crosby (who is an actual professional historian, as opposed to Diamond, who's a biologist).
*"stole" in the academic sense is trickier than plagiarism as it's understood in high school or in journalism, as it hews closer to the theft of ideas rather than copy-pasting blocks of text.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:19:42 2014 No.5099145

>>5099114
I understand where you're coming from, but many people possess OP's notion of "history" simply because they were brought up to think that way and haven't encountered any alternative perspectives yet. If you encounter people like OP who seem willing to learn, maybe you should treat them with less hostility and more guidance on how to view the subject with a less-hierarchical (or at least differently-hierarchical) framework.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:20:00 2014 No.5099148 >>5099085 I'd say it is a lot more racist to believe that people don't move and that populations are autochthonous. And yes I only bothered to reply in order to use that word.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:52:26 2014 No.5099229 >>5099085 >Your attempts to produce imaginary movements of peoples in the past is sickening fiction. Are you seriously implying historical human migrations have never happened?

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:56:56 2014 No.5099247

OP, there is no great story, no great "parable", a great over-aching discourse people would like to see in history. Only messy, unrelated events.

All attempts to give a great unified narrative with a sense of purpose to history are basically scams. Sorry

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 19:57:05 2014 No.5099248 >History is racist Sure is Tumblr on here

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:14:06 2014 No.5099301 >>5098948 The author is kinda dubious. He often writes that races don't exist and they are illusions. Then he writes how important DNA testing will be to verify Jewish ancestry for Israeli citizens...

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:18:47 2014 No.5099317 File: 195 KB, 510x680, {C23AB03D-3C9F-4746-873D-49C75FCE5549}Img100[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5098948

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:21:20 2014 No.5099323

>>5098964
He says the European climate and geography was most favorable to civilization because, if you look at it from the top down, it would appear to be easy to move around and give access to a lot of resources. He completely disregards the large mountain ranges and other natural barriers found in Europe, its very unforgiving climate for primitive people, and Africa's own abundance of natural resources. He basically does almost everything he can to run away from any substantial genetic variance in the population.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:22:33 2014 No.5099326 Fredy Perlman's Against His-story, Against Leviathan!

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:28:34 2014 No.5099346 Will Durant, The Story of Civilization It's ideas will not make you popular with your radical friends, though. It claims history is cyclical, not a inexorable march of Progress.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:29:38 2014 No.5099349 >>5099346 Do people still believe that history is a unrelenting march of progress? I thought Stalinism/Leninism/Nazism showed that that idea isn't particularly supported by reality

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:30:36 2014 No.5099354 >>5099349 Killing millions of people to make your pipe dream a reality is the greatest sign of progress.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:34:03 2014 No.5099365 >>5099349 The fact that "Stalinism/Leninism/Nazism" lost in the end somehow reinforced this belief. It is the cornerstone of modern American liberalism and progressivism, after all.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:36:27 2014 No.5099371 >>5099323 I don't think you read the book.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:36:57 2014 No.5099373 >>5099323 I thought it had more to due with agriculture and climate including the domesticated animals that originated from the fertile crescent, as opposed to Africa?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:55:14 2014 No.5099425 >>5099346 >It claims history is cyclical, not a inexorable march of Progress. But that's equally retarded.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:58:09 2014 No.5099435 >>5099425 its less retarded than linear history, being close to non-euclidian spiral history.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 20:59:05 2014 No.5099438 >>5099425 It's something in between. It's more like: >Two steps forward, one step back. We wouldn't choose to live if we didn't think there was a point, or an end.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:07:23 2014 No.5099473 >>5099435 pushaw, everybody knows that history is an n-dimensional hyperplane, slithering through its ambient space, separating the poor from the ruling class

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:08:49 2014 No.5099481 >>5099108 >>doesn't understand that identity doesn't have to be national I think you don't understand English if you think "people" doesn't have a clear national association when talking about "movements of people."

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:12:39 2014 No.5099497

>>5099145
This thread is posted every day by yet another dumb fuck.

>>5099148
I'm challenging OP to substantiate the empirical existence of "people" as a collective separate from relations and institutions. "People" don't appear in history until 1776 in nationalism.

>>5099229
>Are you seriously implying historical human migrations have never happened?

As I have repeatedly said, show me empirical evidence of "people." You're not allowed to project your categories onto them. I expect you'll rapidly come to terms with institutions, such as kingdoms, religious organisations or classes, rather than discovering "people" moving.

>>5099435
Reread the whig theory of history. Historiography abandoned "intentionality" ages ago.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:17:53 2014 No.5099518 File: 29 KB, 344x500, 1153149.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:18:29 2014 No.5099522 >>5099497 You must be fun at parties.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:21:31 2014 No.5099534

>>5099323
>the large mountain ranges and other natural barriers found in Europe, its very unforgiving climate for primitive people, and Africa's own abundance of natural resources

A simple thought experiment seems to support the notion of colder climate driving IQ. How is it that Africa − with a several million year head start − did not become the seat of all human achievement? The Egyptians seemed to hold out promise for this but were unable to maintain a consistent rate of innovation or growth.

It stands to reason how the warm African climate, with its abundant food supplies, would necessarily facilitate rapid evolution and that such comfortable surroundings could make it more convenient to develop technology. Yet, it seems that the exact opposite it true. It would appear as though the rigors and challenges posed by survival in harsh environmental conditions spurred problem solving and the development of survival skills to new heights.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:23:28 2014 No.5099547 >>5099534 Maritime culture

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:24:16 2014 No.5099550 >>5099497 >"People don't exist" Tumblr pls go

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:27:04 2014 No.5099566

>>5099365
But totalitarian ideologies are as strong as ever. Some countries have become more open to progressive ideas such as the South Americans but at the same time many countries in asia/middle east have become even more authorian than they were 20 years ago. Only because Nazism/Stalinism failed doest mean that totalitarian ideologies disappeared from the political landscape. Its just that the modern influential totalitarian ideologies dont fall into the standard classification. Islamist extremism for example.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:27:05 2014 No.5099567 >>5099522 Welcome to 4chan, now fuck off.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:28:12 2014 No.5099578 >>5099550 I'm sorry you've got major problems with reading comprehension. Feel free to show me documentary evidence of a people acting as a people without mediating institutions prior to the american revolutionary process.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:28:33 2014 No.5099582 >>5099534 >with its abundant food supplies You do know that Africa had practically none of the modern agricultural staple foods (cows, maize, wheat, sheep, etc.), thereby making settling harder? Also >implying rapid evolution is a thing

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:29:26 2014 No.5099588 >>5098948 No. Go read Study of History by Toynbee an actual historian, not some jew geographer.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:30:07 2014 No.5099593 >>5099566 Totalitarianism was made up so the western bloc countries would have a label to slap on the ussr to compare it with Hitler

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:31:16 2014 No.5099599 >>5099566 Asiatic despotism never changed, ever.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:34:09 2014 No.5099612 >>5099550 >Tumblr King Edward III of England was the son of Edward II and Philippa of Hainault. Although images of him after his death usually depict him with a fairer complexion than is seen here, it is overwhelmingly probably he was a man of color.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:40:40 2014 No.5099661 File: 43 KB, 720x960, Raiden Teenager Years.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5099567 Actually, if you're clearly the one who is out of place by being a humorless faggot. 4chan is notoriously flippant and juvenile, not stuck up.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:44:22 2014 No.5099680 File: 107 KB, 418x455, 1169907518002.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5099661 >if you're clearly Noice. >out of place by being a humorless faggot >>>/lit/

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 21:46:01 2014 No.5099688 >ctrl + f >no Decline of the West by Spengler anons, you're missing out if you want a general overview of history entwined with a top-notch philosophy of culture

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:25:11 2014 No.5099857

>>5099588
>Toynbee
>>5099688
>Spengler
OP, these two historians wrote their works in the early half of the twentieth century, so their views are unsurprisingly contain religious and eurocentric biases.

It's strange I've seen three other world history threads over the last week. I'll recommend you what I did to those other posters:

William McNeill- Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community
(written in 1960s in response to Toynbee)
William McNeill- Plague and Peoples
(relationship between movement of peoples and disease since beginning of human history, this would probably appeal to you)
Fernand Braudel- The Mediterranean
(very very detailed history of the sea, its economies, movements of ppl, civilizations, from roughly 1000 b.c. to 1450)
and again...
William Mcneill: Venice: the Hinge of Europe, 1081-1797
(Views history of venice within the framework of europe, the eastern mediterranean, russia and balkans. argues that venice was the 'hinge' of the premodern geopolitical and economic system)

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:31:50 2014 No.5099880 File: 255 KB, 1064x1600, Scan10123.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] This is pretty good if you are interested in human genetic history

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:36:23 2014 No.5099915 >>5099880 I made a 10,000 year explosion on your mom's face.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:39:19 2014 No.5099929 File: 152 KB, 478x359, 1270947239908.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5099915

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:44:11 2014 No.5099961 no. diamond has an anthropological sensibility forever approaching 0 try out Will (& Ariel) Durant's project: "The Story of Civilization", in eleven volumes

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:46:22 2014 No.5099975 >>5099857 >so their views are unsurprisingly contain religious and eurocentric biases. That doesn't make them wrong.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:47:48 2014 No.5099978

>>5099497
While West and Middle Francia contained "the traditional Frankish 'heartlands'", the East consisted mostly of lands only annexed to the Frankish empire in the eighth century.[6] These included the duchies of Alemannia, Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia, as well as the northern and eastern marches with the Danes and Slavs. The contemporary chronicler Regino of Prüm wrote that the "different people" (diversae nationes populorum) of East Francia, mostly Germanic- and Slavic-speaking, could be "distinguished from each other by race, customs, language and laws" (genere moribus lingua legibus).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Francia

>inb4 you and some other iconoclastic SJW twats rally to get this shit removed and Regino of Prum expunged from the historical record

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:51:02 2014 No.5099990 >>5099857 It's better to have religious and eurocentric biases than being a Marxist doctrinaire hoping to instill the global proletariat to revolution through his historical work or whatever.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:51:44 2014 No.5099996 >>5099990 why

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:52:24 2014 No.5100006 >>5099996 Because communism would be a boring ass lifestyle, m8

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:53:43 2014 No.5100013 File: 87 KB, 640x480, fun.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5099996 Because it's more fun. The Annales school took the fun out of history.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:55:05 2014 No.5100021

>>5099857
Reading Spengler shook my perspective on history and the way I view the world in general. You see not only past events, but the present, including our current political and social trends, in a different light after reading and comprehending what Spengler wrote.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:55:53 2014 No.5100024 >>5100006 >posted on 4chan yeah.......

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:56:56 2014 No.5100031

>>5100006
>living in a society free of alienation, poverty, emotional and physical distraught caused by artificial class division and exploitation is "boring"
>being a healthy, happy, fulfilled person in a society of healthy, happy, fulfilled persons is "boring"
I'll take boring.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:59:24 2014 No.5100047 >>5100031 I'll take fighting with Hezbollah in the hills of Qusair under the banner of Hassan Nasrallah.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 22:59:25 2014 No.5100048 File: 282 KB, 973x1285, marc54.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5099612 Any real source on this or is it Nation of Islam crap?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:02:33 2014 No.5100062 >>5100031 More like replacing >work, buy, consume, die with >work, FREE STUFF, consume, die

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:03:55 2014 No.5100075

>>5100048
It's crap, Philippa of Hainault was Edward III's wife, not his mother, and she was French. Bishop Stapledon said she looked brown (maybe tan?), so the Black Cultural Archives said she was African, even though her (mostly French) family tree is out there in the open.

>tfw you google black cultural archives and they have a tumblr page

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:05:52 2014 No.5100084 File: 592 KB, 802x602, lilly_and_hisao.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5100031 Would communism makes 2D real? I can't imagine myself being a healthy, happy and fulfilled person otherwise.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:05:58 2014 No.5100086 >>5100075 Just having a tumblr page isn't a sin, m80-o http://shirtsforwolves.tumblr.com/ Black nationalists > white communists, but fudging history at all is a cardinal sin imo

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:06:02 2014 No.5100087 >>5100048 It's Tumblr being ignorant as usual, since Philippa of Hainault was Edward III's wife, not his mother. Plus his son didn't earn the nickname 'Black Prince' because of the color of his skin.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:07:53 2014 No.5100097 >>5100087 >tumblr being ignorant I think you mean "some leftist being deliberately deceptive" There are people like this all over academia, m8.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:08:30 2014 No.5100101 >>5100031 >Going into mourning for a year because someone misgendered you. no thanks.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:10:53 2014 No.5100117 >>5100084 That's because capitalism has made you sick.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:14:23 2014 No.5100127 File: 23 KB, 158x357, communist waifu.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5100117 The private ownership of the means of production has led me to prefer 2D? How? And what if my waifu is communist?

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:15:17 2014 No.5100131

>>5099975
>>5099990
>>5100021
Point taken. Notice though, that I didn't make any dismissive remarks about Toynbee or Spengler, I just wanted to tell the OP to watch out for their work's potential downsides. But still, what's the point of Toynbee's 12 volume "A study of history" when he can read Mcneill's 800 pages? Also from wikipedia:

>Toynbee's work lost favor among both the general public and scholars by the 1960s, due to the religious and spiritual outlook that permeates the largest part of his work. His work is considered today controversial and is seldom read or cited."

To be fair, Mcneill has also been criticized Eurobentric bias too, but he's recognized as an even more important contributor to the field of World History than Toynbee.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:18:41 2014 No.5100144

>>5100131
>Toynbee's work lost favor among both the general public and scholars by the 1960s, due to the religious and spiritual outlook that permeates the largest part of his work. His work is considered today controversial and is seldom read or cited."

A work having lost favor among scholars since the 1960s (aka since scholarship became marxist indoctrination) can only mean good things.

That was also the time when World history ceased to be, well, world history, and became a method used by guys like Wallerstein to enlist the Third World as a new "proletariat" (just like Marcuse was doing with gays, blacks and females).

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:19:11 2014 No.5100149

>>5100131
On a separate note:
For a history of the last 500 years read:
Rober Marks: The Making of Modern Europe: A Global and Ecological History
Immanuel Wallerstein- World Systems Analysis
if you also want to understand the modern period its important to study Atlantic history (which started with Columbus obviously):

Pagden, Anthony. Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain, and France, c. 1500–c. 1800.
(an intellectual history of the atlantic world)
Elliott, J. H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830. New Haven
(comparative approach to the settlement of the Spanish and British Americas)
Benjamin, Thomas. The Atlantic World: Europeans, Africans, Indians, and Their Shared History, 1400–1900 (2009)
(First single-author textbook on Atlantic history. Well illustrated and well balanced. Major theme is Atlantic history as multiple cross-cultural connections and conflicts)

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:19:27 2014 No.5100152 >>5100021 >tfw Spengler was right https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSwAd2T41-o

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:21:35 2014 No.5100163 >>5100127 Fucking kill yourself, so utterly pathetic

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:27:58 2014 No.5100186 >>5100144 >marxist indoctrination That's not true. Marxism was only one of many new branches of history that appeared after World War 2. It never dominated the academia to the extent you think it did.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:28:20 2014 No.5100190 >>5100163 >"communism will make everyone happy." >"what if my happiness is not defined in the same terms as yours?" >"lol, kill yourself." Ladies and gentlemen: This is communism.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:29:29 2014 No.5100196 >>5100127 >>5100117 One of these anons has an unhealthy obsession with a fantasy concept that is completely divorced from material reality. The other is a waifufag.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:30:51 2014 No.5100200

>>5100186
Marxists have a warped view on domination.

If they don't control every single chair and purge everyone else, it's not enough, so we have the current situation where 80% of professors are marxist, 90% of the terms used in social sciences are derived from marxism, the entire framework is based in marxism, but "marxism doesn't dominates the academia, because it's not 100%!"

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:31:32 2014 No.5100203 >>5100186 Also Wallerstein and his world system theory was always in the small minority. A lot of people criticized it at the time, but Waller always managed to maintain a devoted following.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:34:00 2014 No.5100215 >>5100200 anon pls, i'm not even a marxist

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:35:39 2014 No.5100220 >>5100215 What are you then? And don't say you don't fit any molds because that's wrong

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:39:14 2014 No.5100231

>>5100149
Also, the Indian Ocean is becoming increasingly important in the study of World History:

-Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
-Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean: A History of People and the Sea (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993)
-Richard Hall, Empires of the Monsoon: A History of the Indian Ocean and Its Invaders (London: HarperCollins,1996)
-R. J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century
(Armonk, N.Y.: East Gate Books, 2002)
-Milo Kearney, The Indian Ocean in World History (New York: Routledge, 2004)
-Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:41:51 2014 No.5100241

>>5100220
They're not molds. political categories are not something we are put in to, but constructs superimposed on top of reality. I believe in a three tier social structure, with proportional representation and hard socialism at the bottom, and capitalism at the very top; with progression from the bottom to the top being done exclusively on IQ. Everyone is born in tier 3, has equal education and opportunities, and everyone has the chance to reach the top 7% of the population in tier 1. tier 2 is for politicians.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:42:22 2014 No.5100245 >>5100200 80% of the professors aren't Marxists, and even where they are the majority, such as in sociology, they aren't in the most powerful fields.

Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:48:42 2014 No.5100263 [DELETED]

>>5100241
I don't like that idea at all!
I think there should be a world-government ruled as a confederation of states which are built around racial, religious and ideological categories (as well as a special few states based on dumb shit like LGBT culture so they'll have a place they can be shipped), and that they should be free to war or cooperate within the confines of the world state

I think you probably feel more affinity for leftists than right-wingers, tho, you just happen to think that command economy is shit. Everybody's got a word you can throw at them, I call myself a fascist/Nazi because why the fk not

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:52:22 2014 No.5100272 >>5100245 They're fuckin leftists

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:55:11 2014 No.5100277 File: 26 KB, 400x249, History-ebay-books.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5099346 mah nigga. I have 5/11. I will forever kick myself for failing to buy a copy of Age of Reason.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:55:12 2014 No.5100278 >>5100263 >I think you probably feel more affinity for leftists than right-wingers, Really? The bottom 90% of society aren't allowed to own companies and have to work for the top 7%. that's a left-wing system to you?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:57:12 2014 No.5100283 >>5100013 The Annales school was made up of Social Historians, but weren't Marxist at all

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:58:18 2014 No.5100287 >>5100278 Sounds USSR tier to me

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 5 23:59:59 2014 No.5100297 >>5100272 Who cares, what you were arguing before is that Marxists dominate the academic. That most professors are left-leaning is a whole different story.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 00:03:34 2014 No.5100308 >>5100297 I'm a different guy :---)))) "Leftists dominate the academic" seems more fitting than "most professors are left-leaning", tho

Anonymous Sun Jul 6 00:13:27 2014 No.5100335

>>5100308
True, I can sense it at my own college. When I took a French revolution class and we got to the Terror, my professor glossed over the atrocities of the jacobins and praised Robespierre nonstop.

And sadly, all of the tenured professors at my department are women, who all have a background in women studies or marxist crap. The best history professors I've had were men because they didn't bring their personal politics into the classroom.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 00:19:12 2014 No.5100350 >>5100335 That's fucking true. Even male far-leftists and communists generally seem they're actually capable of just teaching a damn class, even though they have a tendency to throw in off-handed comments and jokes about things

Anonymous Sun Jul 6 00:56:42 2014 No.5100436
File: 54 KB, 700x800, peter_watson_high_res__full.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>5098948
if you're looking for a fully-comprehensive view of recorded history, peter watson's "ideas" is one of the most well-researched and well-written tomes out there. it takes the perspective of an "intellectual historian", so it is less describing people and places (although it does do that), but more about the concepts that were ruling in their days.

in terms of conventionally-documented history, [>>5099961, >>5099346] are absolutely correct.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 02:57:30 2014 No.5100723 >>5099114 gutless cunt

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 02:58:33 2014 No.5100728 >>5099567 you don't even belong here, shithead

Anonymous Sun Jul 6 03:04:56 2014 No.5100740

>>5099582
>Africa had practically none of the modern agricultural staple foods
>implying cold climates had it better or even equally rigorous

>implying rapid evolution is a thing
you do realize that evolution can be both slow and steady AND quick and jumpy at the same time

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 03:12:21 2014 No.5100753 >>5100031 another american princess

Anonymous Sun Jul 6 05:25:18 2014 No.5100992

>>5098948
a history of the world in 100 objects by neil macGregor

it is really awesome. The author is the head of the british museum an has piked 100 (surprise) objects to represent the human history. it is divided in 20 chapters. each representing a stage, better a certain period in humans history. for each chapter there are 5 Objects from all over the world. It is really worth reading. Also because it helps to not see human history as the history of the west.

Look at it. Sadly with my bad english skills i am not really able to describe it as well as it deserves to be described.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 05:33:20 2014 No.5101002 File: 38 KB, 575x306, zebras-harnessed.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5098964 This is why.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 05:36:45 2014 No.5101006 >>5099857 >their views are unsurprisingly contain religious and eurocentric biases. Is OP going to become a Muslim in Saudi Arabia? Why wouldn't he want a western perspective that he can relate to?

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 05:39:30 2014 No.5101010 >>5099582 >is a thing Why do leftists always talk like such faggots? >wow just wow >is that a thing? >did you REALLY just... >...really? >words have meaning! >this is not okay! >here's why this is a problem

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 05:42:14 2014 No.5101014 >>5101002 I still wonder how they did that, zebras are "tame-able" but are always extremely aggressive. Everyone was probably well-advised to stay away from these carriage zebras. Riding them is still impossible.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 05:43:15 2014 No.5101015 >>5101010 >using the word "leftists" seriously Is that a thing?

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 05:48:45 2014 No.5101022 >>5101015 It's a catch-all term for a number of ideologies favored by oversensitive faggots who try their best to imitate women. Imperfect, but accurate enough to hurt your feelings.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 05:48:51 2014 No.5101023 >>5101002 Zebras have never been domesticated just 'broken' all the attempts at domesticating them have been utter failures.

Anonymous Sun Jul 6 08:32:16 2014 No.5101346

>>5101014
>>5101023
It's because they haven't bred them to become less agressive as people in Europe and ME did with the horses.

That takes a couple of generations. If you capture enough Zebras, sort out the most passive let them breed take their children, sort out the most passive and keep doing that it'll be fine.

Anonymous Sun Jul 6 08:45:59 2014 No.5101366

>>5101006
It's not only a matter of perspective. Whenever you write a history with a particular viewpoint in mind, you tend to unconsciously skew the historical narrative.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Since its conception as an academic discipline in the early 19th century, history has always been written to satisfy national, racial, ideological and imperial demands. History was a useful way to instill loyalty to modern state. And on a personal level, it's fulfilling to read something that confirms the supremacy of your civilization, and give you a sense of progress and continuity.

However, if you believe that the aim of historians is to create as accurate a representation of the past as possible, then you have to at least dislodge some of the Eurocentric biases that historians included in the historical narrative.

Here is just one example of Eurocentric bias that has been overturned in the past decades:

-Since the 19th century, the historians of the Ottoman Empire have placed the state in a framework of rise, golden age (Suleiman the magnificent), and then a centuries-long decline.

This model was influenced by ideas of Orientalism propagated by the first anthropologists sent to non-European world in the 19th century. In contrasting their homelands, which were going unprecedented industrialization, with the Ottoman, Mughal and Chinese empires, they concluded that those civilizations had once been great, but had 'stagnated' due to their 'decadence,' tyranny and obedience to authority. But in fact, a lot of what they were seeing on the ground had been coincidentally caused by the impact of several catastrophic el ninos in the 19th century, (which the British exacerbated in India by continuing to export tea and grain abroad just like in Ireland). Such reports from abroad gave the newly industrialized European states what they felt was a license to carve up the old land-based empires of the east.

So from a European perspective up until the 1970s, the decline of the Ottoman empire seemed inevitable from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

But in fact, when historians began to challenge their older, Eurocentric assumptions, they found that the the Ottoman Empire had ongoing viability well beyond 1600 in political, economic, military, and institutional arenas. And once this idea of inevitable decline was overturned, historians realized that Ottoman Empire did not only contain a narrative of political decline, but a range of topics related to the social structures and functioning of the empire, the connection of art and architecture to imperial power, and the standing of religious minorities in an Islamic state.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 08:46:09 2014 No.5101367 >>5101346 Yet we still don't have domesticated zebras despite the fact that attempts at doing so began over hundred years ago so obviously zebra don't have the desirable traits to be exploited for domestication and aren't worth the effort.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 08:53:03 2014 No.5101377 >>5101367 100 years is like, the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. It takes far longer than that to completely 'domesticate' an animal.

Anonymous Sun Jul 6 08:55:04 2014 No.5101380

>>5101367
Because there is no need for the domestication of Zebras. Horses for all intents and purposes are better animals and was already domesticated when the Europeans came to Africa. Thus it was far easier and cheaper to introduce horses to Africa than the opposite.

All the dogs that exists in the world come from the wolf as an ancestor, and humans created all these sub-species through selective breeding. Think about that for a while.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 10:27:38 2014 No.5101647 >>5101022 #rekt

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 10:46:49 2014 No.5101699 File: 4 KB, 303x243, 1344183607553.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5101022 so the fantasy dichotomy you subscribe to is those who behave in an effeminate manner versus those who behave in a masculine manner awesome

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 18:27:23 2014 No.5103184 >>5099126 How can you steal an idea? All modern thought is based of previous thoughts anyways.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 6 23:07:18 2014 No.5104151 >>5098948 A Brief History of the World HG Wells

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 00:04:07 2014 No.5104265 >>5098948 Perhaps a bit off topic, but what are some good definitive volumes on the American Revolution and/or the Seven Year's War?

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 02:50:13 2014 No.5104664 >>5098948 Hegel and his Philosophy of History is your best bet OP.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 02:56:58 2014 No.5104679 >>5099247 >the great overreaching discourse is that there are only messy, unrelated events

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 02:59:10 2014 No.5104686 >>5104679 the only truth of the world is that there is no truth!

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 03:05:45 2014 No.5104699 >>5099990 But the CPGB Marxist historians group and Annales were demonstrably less wrong than nationalist fucktards engaging in western mythics.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 03:07:18 2014 No.5104701 >>5100127 >The private ownership of the means of production has led me to prefer 2D? How? You could always just read Database Animals and understand the process of waifuism as late capitalist ideology.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 03:08:31 2014 No.5104702 >>5100196 >not wanting to have marx as your waifu

Anonymous Mon Jul 7 03:12:23 2014 No.5104714

>>5100335
>>5100350

Academics are meant to bring their professional politics into the classroom. Compare Thompson's _Making_ which conducts a bottom up history of English working class consciousness from primary sources—no mention of the NDP or (Old) New Left there. Similarly, reading Hill, you can't taste Stalin at all.

An academic should bring their scholarly politics into the room, while acknowledging and demonstrating other techniques to undergraduates.

Also, if you don't have a solid critique expressed in academic language of why the personal isn't the political you're really not apt to comment here. (A solid critique would react to Selma James' on domestic reproduction, for example.)

Anonymous Mon Jul 7 03:12:26 2014 No.5104715

I've always been apprehensive about picking up one of these grand history books; dealing with such broad time periods and topics is bound to cause more problems than it solves, won't it? Reading many works on specific cultures or periods seems far wiser.

Anonymous Mon Jul 7 03:15:16 2014 No.5104723

>>5104715
>I've always been apprehensive about picking up one of these grand history books; dealing with such broad time periods and topics is bound to cause more problems than it solves, won't it?

Yes.

>Reading many works on specific cultures or periods seems far wiser.

Yes. And the works you read are more justifiable in terms of historiographical epistemology.

Anonymous Mon Jul 7 03:39:02 2014 No.5104776

>>5104714
>if you don't hold the stamped piece of paper, you can't critique those that do

Academia is a closed feedback loop that incentives radicals that would fail in the real world to nest themselves in a government mandated and protected field. Those that enter will predominately agree with the current academic climate. Those that disagree will be both impeded by those currently in academia and feel no real drive to join a conversation they know they will be shouted out of to begin with. Telling academics to bring their personal politics into the classroom only further incentives them to act unnecessarily elitist and bring even more subjectivity into their grading system. Students are then incentivized to regurgitate their opinions back to them, insuring that no real wisdom is gained by anyone.The professor collects his pay check, feels he shaped the minds of young adults without even budging them, and the cycle continues.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 03:43:17 2014 No.5104789 >>5104776 so what you're saying is that the students have to teach the teach

Anonymous Mon Jul 7 04:01:18 2014 No.5104845

>>5104776
>>if you don't hold the stamped piece of paper, you can't critique those that do
Please don't shove words into my mouth you disgusting little shit. It reduces the quality of your argument.

>Academia is a closed feedback loop

Not really, its open at a whole bunch of steps. Poor choice of metaphor.

>that incentives radicals that would fail in the real world

Strange that, physics works in the same way as historiography in terms of being an academic discipline, and physics isn't dominated by historical materialists. Your facts are poor quality.

>to nest themselves in a government mandated and protected field.

Yes.

>Those that enter will predominately agree with the current academic climate. Those that disagree will be both impeded by those currently in academia and feel no real drive to join a conversation they know they will be shouted out of to begin with.

Yes. And? That's how we get disciplinarity in the first place. I know plenty of credible right wing historians, they're some of my favourite colleagues, others aren't. They're doing good work on complex identities, civilian's role in war, commemoration as public history.

>Telling academics to bring their personal politics into the classroom only further incentives them to act unnecessarily elitist and bring even more subjectivity into their grading system.

You do realise that the humanities are defined by the role of the subject in reception and production of discourses? As the example I gave with Thompson, there are ways to bring politics into a discipline: methodological critique, problem selection. And there are ways not to bring politics into a discipline: yelling at fatuous undergraduates on moral topics.

>Students are then incentivized to regurgitate their opinions back to them, insuring that no real wisdom is gained by anyone.

I've never marked papers in this manner. I've seen the same spread of poor papers amongst centrists, and rightists (both liberal and conservative). Weirdly enough reactionaries and marxists tend to produce higher quality papers, usually because the entry costs tend to be high: cogent marxist arguments can't be made without extensive background reading, similarly with reactionaries.

>The professor collects his pay check, feels he shaped the minds of young adults without even budging them, and the cycle continues.

You surmise we care about undergraduates at all. You surmise poorly.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 04:05:01 2014 No.5104851 >>5104265 the definitive book on the seven years war is Julian corbetts history. American revolution has a bunch of great volumes.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jul 7 04:11:40 2014 No.5104864 File: 387 KB, 556x595, 1399456115323.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5104845 BTFO response

Anonymous Mon Jul 7 04:39:41 2014 No.5104899

>>5104789
What I am saying is that there needs to be both teaching of factual nature (yes, there are facts in humanities) and a conversation over the professors own particular interests/opinion/theories.

>>5104845
And you only go on to prove my point by completely missing it in the first place.

>Strange that, physics works in the same way as historiography in terms of being an academic discipline, and physics isn't dominated by historical materialists. Your facts are poor quality.

Your argument is poor quality. The debate undertaken by physicists is passing conversation while people experiment to empirically show what is the correct theory over the specifically tested phenomena. The incorrect theory will then be reworked, more experiments are undertaken, and the conversation continues while we wait for the results. Such a process does not take place in the humanities, and indeed if the same did not take place in physics, we would be met with the glaring problem of academic theory not aligning with observed reality.

You point to "right wing historians" like an exposed racist points to his "black friends" to say he is inclusive. Academia is incentivized to give whoever funds them what they wants, and the administrative network surrounding education is much quicker to embrace Marxist ideas over reactionary, using your two examples. Professors also have little disincentive to push these ideas onto students as they go about teaching their course, these students being the most likely pool of applicants for new positions in academia. I think the closed feedback loop has some application.

>I've never marked papers in this manner.
I would hope not but people do. Its inescapable that it, at the very least, registers in your mind and in some way affects your judgment on your grading.

>You surmise we care about undergraduates at all. You surmise poorly.
In the context of teaching in the classroom, I would hope the undergraduates were considered. You might enjoy the little bubble your field has cultivated for itself, but ideas need to leave it if they are to have any sort of utility.

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/lit/ - Literature