Customer Reviews

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

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The insights into how and why certain developments took place in history that are presented in this book make it fascinating. It spans the early civilizations of the Middle East to modern times and the rise of Communism and totalitarianism, dealing with topics like art, literature, political systems, and religion, and how all these things tied together to shape history. One of the best aspects of the book is the way it provides insights into how developments in one civilization affected others. The way it shifts views from one major civilization to another and spans thousands of years gives the reader a sense of perspective and a realization of the depth and complexity of history. Besides the high scholarly value of the book, the writing style is excellent and easy to read. I luckily ran into it and read it purely by chance, only to learn later that it is considered a history classic.

This is an excellent Eurocentric history. McNeill acknowledges his Eurocentrism in his retrospective introduction and provides an excellent critique of his own book: he underplays the significance of Chinese and other civilizations east of the Oxus.

Regardless, McNeill expounds a sound theory that civilizations didn't evolve in isolation, but that the interplay of different cultures enabled their progress. McNeill weaves migrations, conquests, international trade, and technological innovations into a riveting story on how modern civilization rose from the fields of the fertile crescent. The book reads like an epic novel -- albeit with lots of footnotes -- in that it weaves over 5,000 years of history into a single story.

This has been the most fascinating history book I have ever read.

To the reader criticizing the "Eurocentrism" of this book, with a title like "Rise of the West" what did you expect? The past 500 years has basically been the story of the Western European nations and later America surpassing overall the other historic civilizations of the world in all aspects of culture, society, political organization, science, technology, art, music, etc. Thats not something for some to brag about or feel superior about but neither is it something to bemoan or deny; rather its there to understand the how and the why it happened.

The modern world we live in (and personally I dislike much of it) was shaped in the West and whether you like it or not understanding who we are--we being the entire world which is either part of the West, becoming or already is "westernized", or is feeling the pressure to do so--requires a knowledge of history that is centered on the West. Thats not to deny other civilizations and their contributions to the world their due respect, but there are reasons for keeping a larger focus on the ancient mediteranean civilizations (Greek, Roman and others) and western Europe from the Renaisance onward; its what made the world we live in and should be expected in a book titled "the Rise of the West."

As far as McNeils book goes its actually far less Eurocentric then you might think from the title, and a central theme of the book is how various cultures have interacted and McNeil does give plenty of attention to Islam, India, and China. Its only in the last half of the book that it gets Eurocentric, and not because it "ignores" other cultures/civilizations but deals with "the rise of the west" in those chapters, like any grand narrative history dealing with the past 500 years would. While not perfect it deals with its subject in a readable narrative.

McNeill belongs to that category of historians who not only bring an enormous treasure chest of knowledge, but who present it in a writing style so direct and compelling that the reader cannot help but admire their work. "The Rise of the West" is a monumental book. McNeill's knowledge of histroy, of facts, his erudition--all leave the reader in a kind of suspense and disbelief. Can one man know this much? Apparently he can. McNeill's vast lore is a proof of commitment to scholarship and historical discovery. Whether or not the West has a special status and a claim to a special place in human civilization (as I believe it does) is something that is for you, the reader, to decide. McNeill makes his arguments and then reasses them years later in this new edition; and he is less upbeat about the special position of the West. But that is theory, perspective, possibility, interpretation. Whatever interpretation you embrace, you won't regret reading this book for its facts, its comprehensive narrative, and its gift of widening historical perspectives and imagination.

This epic magesterial volume deserves no less than to be required reading for all citizens of the Western World. McNeill employs deft understanding and sensitivity equal to the herculean task. The author is no Western apologist, but shows how global civilization is developing into a mosaic largely driven by Western ideas.

Beginning just before the dawn of the agrarian transormation and spanning its eventual blossomings (and fadings) into civilization, McNeill takes the reader on a journey that answers questions you never knew you had. The Western way eventually remade the world, and McNeill shows why and how and when. Using evidence from art, archaeology, anthropology, politics, commerce, science, and religion he paints confident, broad strokes that nevertheless are rich in detail. It is a masterpiece of staggering scope, rendered in a noble voice.

The only important criticism is an undeniable Eurocentric bias (readily admitted by the author). But this becomes understandable and quite forgiveable as the reader follows the author wrestling enormous epics of civilization into a readable form. Regardless of this necessary perspective Rise of the West can certainly stand as comparable, perhaps even superior to similar works by Spengler, Toynbee, Braudel, or Diamond.

The Rise of the West - McNeill
Bibliographical Essay

Author's Note: This is a work in progress that may help you further your work. Please feel free to expand on the ideas and insights that you may find in this work.

Bibliographical Essay (Reworked December 7, 2004) by Colin McNaull

Abstract

McNeill's version of world history, to me, is one of continual human interaction. Though there are times when the paths have closed, the interchange begins again once the old road or new roads are discovered. At his core, McNeill has a simple message; humans learn by seeing, doing, and adopting. A corollary of this is that those furthest from "civilization" have a better chance of creating a more effective civilization, not necessarily one with greater morality. They can then pass their newer ideas back to the civilized centers, which helped them create their more effective society in the first place. Resources helped, but being on the edge, helped the West, and to a lesser degree, the Japanese, to become the predominant powers in their areas.

One noted historian's review helps to confirm my view of McNeill's work.

McNeill does not believe that civilizations have an internal rhythm. He is not a "cyclical" historian. He is too far sophisticated for that. Essentially he believes in economic organization and in "diffusion." "The history of civilization," he writes is a history of the expansion of particularly attractive cultural and social patterns through the conversion of barbarians to modes of life they found superior to their own." Yet, of course, there are moments of greater or lesser receptivity; to every pressure there are alternative reactions. If everything is conditioned, nothing is foreordained; (my emphasis) ... the past only offers alternative answers.

The Rise of the West; A History of the Human Community by William Hardy McNeill, University of Chicago Press, 1963

From "In the beginning human history is a great darkness." McNeill grabs his reader immediately to begin the voyage into `The Rise of the West' to its conclusion:

Life in Demosthenes' Athens, in Confucius' China, and Mohammed's Arabia was
violent, risky, and uncertain; hopes struggled with fears; greatness teetered perilously
on the brim of disaster. We belong in this high company and should count ourselves
fortunate to live in one of the great ages of the world.

McNeill spreads the history of man across the ages in a masterful, extremely well written narrative that should be the basic building block of any serious study of history. McNeill gives you the broad base from which an historian can find his or own particular field of interest. This reader enjoyed the trip, as others will.

The "effort to construct as single grand narrative of world history seemed self-defeating" to many historians. This task of getting from the very beginning of history to 1950 A.D. is one that McNeill accomplishes with aplomb. McNeill outlines his organizing concept as:

The writing of history requires organizing concepts. This is true at every scale, from the smallest monograph to the lengthiest history of the world. Organizing concepts are needed to focus attention on the important aspects of a situation. They allow historians to know what to exclude from their history. Without such a principle, intelligibility disappears. So many things happen simultaneously, and at different levels of organization, that efforts at completely recording the past are futile, even if sources allowed it. Instead, selectivity permits intelligibility; and selectivity, to be coherent, requires organizing concepts.

World history provides insight and facts that are still with us today but can be submerged when you go to different levels of analysis, especially in non-Western areas. These insights still apply as in Dufar today. "A farming folk's enlarged dominion over nature, and liberation from earlier limits upon food supply, meant also an unremitting enslavement to seed, soil, and season."

As I began reading the book, I focused on items that were new to me or that gave the West latent advantages for future and faster development. "The preoccupation of the earliest Middle Eastern farmers with time measurement (knowing when to plant) may well have imparted a fundamental cast to Western and Moslem minds." is but one of many examples. Another is "the democratization of learning implicit in simplified scripts must be counted as one of the major turning points in the history of civilization."

"The warrior ethos of the Bronze Age gave European society a distinctive and enduring bias. Europeans came to be warlike, valuing individual prowess ... stemming ultimately from the style of life befitting warrior-herdsmen of the western steppes."

I found McNeill's explanation for the rise and success of the caste system in India to be both enlightening and informative. The caste system, even if you were at the bottom, with no caste at all, was comforting in giving individuals a sense of place and order.

His overview on the rise of the Greeks, Sparta, Athens, and the Peleopnnesean War, should be included as a primer for all who study these subjects. It gives the reader a firm base to deal with the other issues involved in this field of study. "The most fundamental peculiarity of European society - the absolute primacy of the territorial state offer all competing principles of social cohesion¬¬-had its origin in the Greek polis."

It may or may not be credible gender history by today's standards but the illustration showing man's (human) shift from men hunters and women gatherers, women involved in hoe agriculture while the men still hunted, to plow agriculture with the men plowing and the women working in other areas, is an excellent way of reinforcing a well written narrative. It is unfortunate that the black and white photographs just are not clear enough to do full justice to the applicable text.

500 B.C. was chosen as an organizational breakpoint because "after about that time, the cultural leadership of the Middle East became a thing of the past; the dominance of Europe lay still far in the future; for two thousand years between, the four major civilizations of Eurasia pursued their separate ways, often affected by what transpired beyond their frontier, sometimes borrowing cultural elements from one another, and repeatedly afflicted by nomad attacks."

Historiography had an early beginning, "As a man of letters, more interested in a good turn of phrase and an effective moral that in the stubborn complexity of human affairs, Xenophon presaged the subsequent degeneration of historical writing into a branch of rhetoric."
In China, "the work of Ssu-ma Ch'ien combined Herodotus' scope with Thucydides' exactness (in intention if not always in fact); and his example fixed the mold for subsequent Chinese historiography."

One of the benefits of the world history approach is that it attempts and delivers on the waves that are driving history that the "actors" have no or little control over. My own theory on the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and subsequently in the East, is that there was never a system that allowed for the peaceful transfer of power at the time of a ruler's death that resulted in the squandering of limited resources that would have been better used in securing the continuity of the state. (A properly functioning democracy solves this problem.) McNeill points out that "Pestilential disease, resulting directly from the closure of the ecumene may therefore be held partially responsible for the radical decay of population which became a persistent problem in Roman imperial times and assumed catastrophic proportions in the third century A.D." This and wars of succession made it impossible to keep the barbarians out of the empire.

Another benefit of the world history approach is to reconfirm the importance of the agricultural farmer that provided the food used to sustain the various civilizations and how little their lives changed over time. Except for times when they were directly in the path of the invaders, they kept on doing what they were doing; only the tax collectors changed. Even in those times there was the lure of the cities, which today continues at a still increasing pace.

As in India, "village life went on much as before, modified only by the growth of royal authority in matters such as taxation and corvee."

McNeill's world history approach shows that it is not Eurocentric by showing how much the West used other cultures for its survival and growth. "Only after Latin Christendom (ninth century A. D.) adopted the Iranian type of heavy calvary could the civilized or semi-civilized peoples of the Far West halt the barbarian tide and begin a contrary movement of expansion (tenth-eleventh centuries A. D.)"

Another response to the barbarian invasions was "the rise of religion to a central place in personal and public affairs gave a radically new character to the high cultural traditions of both Rome and Persia."

The world history approach helps to break down stereotypes as well as helping the Western reader to understand how much of his/her culture comes from other peoples, either directly or indirectly as in the case of feudal society which may be viewed as a human response to certain circumstances where various civilizations developed a system for armed protection from outsiders in return for paying for the armed protection.

"The Parthians were the first to solve this problem in the "feudal" manner, which in time became normal in all western Eurasia. The essence of the system linked particular agricultural villages to particular warriors, who thereby acquired sufficient income and leisure to equip and train themselves and perhaps a few followers as heavy armored cavalry, ready at a moment's notice for local self-defense and able, when an effective central administration existed, to gather into larger bodies for major operations."

McNeill does an excellent job in dealing with religiosity (most humans now, and especially before secularism has become rampant in our day, wanted something deeper for guidance and to give their lives meaning) and the various religions that have arisen during the course of human history and how they still are affecting our history today.

"Individuals and communities either accepted Islam or rejected it in toto. There was no halfway house, no liberty to pick and choose elements from the Islamic tradition and adapt them to local cultural styles. The reason, clearly, was the central and absolutely basic place which organized religion occupied, not only in Islamic civilization, but also in the civilizations of Islam's principal neighbors, Christendom and Hindustan."

One of the particular things about McNeill is the way he proposes and suggests his ideas. He is not absolute in his suggestion that there are patterns of history such as the way various religious doctrines spread around the ecumene. He observed that a newly emerging state, when it had the chance, chose a different religion from the neighbor whose civilization they were emulating, "thereby asserting their independence of the adjacent civilized communities and yet gaining the advantages of civilized religion, i.e., literacy and principles of political legitimacy that supplemented and went far beyond tribal practice."

One thing about a good world historian is that he gives credit where credit is due as shown by McNeill in his accurate praise and acknowledgement of Mohammed and Islam.

Never before or since has a prophet won success so quickly; nor has the work of a single man (my emphasis) so rapidly and radically transformed the course of world history. Through his inspired utterances, his personal example, and the organizational framework he established for Islam, Mohammed laid the basis for a distinctive new style of life, which within the space of two centuries attracted the allegiance of a major fraction of the human race and today commands the loyalty of about one-seventh of mankind.

People often tritely say, "Wars never solve anything" which is simply not true. If the Moslems had taken Constantinople between 673 and 680 or in 717-18, European Christendom would not have "survived as a geographically and culturally significant rival to Islam."

McNeill advances an idea on which it would be good to have a Marxian review, that the success of Western European traders was due to the transformation of piratical trade to regular, even if aggressive, trading and trading practices that gave the West an edge over the other ecumenes of the time. "When it was no longer safe to seize valuables by main force, trade offered an alternative way of getting possession of foreign goods formerly acquired by piracy."

Another of McNeill's maxims is that the further you get from the centers of Eurasian civilization, the better chance you have of adopting what you want and then to use it to your advantage. This is why he is always talking about the far reaches of Western Europe (France and England) and often, Japan in the Far East. "Only in the Far West of Eurasia, where Latin Christendom had not yet established a fixed and hallowed pattern of life, were the men malleable enough psychologically to incorporate techniques derived from distant China with the more massive borrowings from their Moslem and Byzantine neighbors and make the amalgam fundamental to their expanding civilization." The sternpost rudder on their ships helped as well.

My narrative of the book now starts to highlight both the things that made the West more successful (in addition to its natural resources) than the rest of the world while addressing the questions as to why the Islamic Civilization lost ground to the West. McNeill quite often uses Bernard Lewis as a source. I did not notice any reference to Edward Said. I find it interesting that McNeill gives a much more cogent explanation of why Islam did not maintain its momentum when compared to Lewis's latest book on this subject.

"Moslem thought froze into a fixed mold just at the time when intellectual curiosity was awakening in western Europe¬¬¬-the twelfth and thirteenth centuries A. D. The rote memorization and congregational recitation of authoritative texts which prevailed in Moslem institutions of higher learning, the madrasas, presented a remarkable contrast of the intellectual tumult of the universities of western Europe. ... merely fastened the dead hand of authority more securely on Moslem minds." "It is clear that just at the time when western Europe was beginning its greatest adventure, Islam found itself imprisoned in twin mausoleums-the official structure of the sacred law with its ancillary disciplines and the para-official Sufi tradition. The Islamic world thus missed out on the stress and benefits of the Renaissance and the Reformation. It would be the same for the Industrial Revolution and the Democratic Revolution as well.

The "concessions" that were to lay the seeds for the Ottoman collapse were actually laid long before they took Constantinople.

In exchange for Venetian naval help against the invading Normans, the Byzantine emperors in 1802 granted Venetian merchants far-reaching commercial privileges, including exemptions from tolls.

As the world entered the 16th century, McNeill sees Western Europe having two unique characteristics:

1. from the eleventh century onward, western Europeans entered upon the inheritance of the classical, Moslem, and Byzantine worlds relatively uninhibited by their own past. (my emphasis).
2. popular participation in economic, cultural, and political life was far greater in western Europe than in the other civilizations of the world.

McNeill himself realizes that from 1500 on, it becomes more challenging to continue with the format of the first two sections of the book. "Nevertheless, an attempt must be made to treat European and world history with the same broad brush employed hitherto in this book, if the artistic proportions of the entire essay are not to be lost. ... Compensation for the inherent awkwardness of such a scheme may perhaps be found in the manner in which it emphasizes the central dynamic of modern history."

I could not find McNeill's singular "central dynamic". I have found six in this section of the book. The first three deal with the western Europeans exploring the world and the resulting consequences. Success in this area was due to "(1) a deep-rooted pugnacity and recklessness operating by means of (2) a complex military technology, most notably in naval matters; and (3) a population inured to a variety of diseases which had long been endemic throughout the Old World ecumene." The others were the Industrial and Democratic Revolutions and the Globalization that is now upon us.

It is also important to mention that western Europe had larger supplies for the metal needed in shipbuilding and ship defense. Cultural differences, if not flattering, also helped the western Europeans.

Europe was more often the receiver than the giver, for its people were inspired by a lively curiosity, insatiable greed, and a reckless spirit of adventure that contrasted sharply with the smug conservatism of Chinese, Moslem, and Hindu cultural leaders.

"The growingly intricate market economy of Europe, supported by cheap water carriage of bulk commodities, constituted a potent lever for raising European power and wealth far above the levels attained elsewhere."

"It was the failure of Europeans to agree upon the truths of religion, within as well as across state boundaries, that opened the door to secularism and modern science." People were free to think and do in ways not possible in other parts of the ecumene.

"The period of 1700-1850 is ... a middle stage in the rise of the West, when Europeans began to dominate the bodies, but had not yet made much impression upon the minds, of most of the inhabitants of the globe." "This expanded Europe became the center of a vast political-economic power system, engulfing most of the Moslem and Hindu worlds and lapping round the edges of the Far Eastern citadel itself. Europe, in short, became the West."

World history can be amazingly succinct, accurate, and trammel upon national sensibilities, all at the same time as McNeill shows in his description of how the United States of America gained its independence.

After many vicissitudes, the revolutionary cause triumphed in 1783, more because of bitterly divided counsels in the British government and the intervention of the French (who declared war on Great Britain in 1778) than because of the victories won by George Washington's tattered armies.

Thus the American Revolution achieved its fruition within the nexus of European power politics and war, while the American revolutionary leaders justified their actions by drawing upon the stock of radical political ideas which had recently become current in Europe. The same radical ideas, tempered by experience, inspired the men who drew up the Constitution of the United States.

Americans had taken European ideas and showed the way in how the Old Regime of Europe could be challenged by having "wiped the slate clean of outmoded institutions in order to construct a rational system of government."

The challenge of writing world history becomes increasingly clear as your narrative approaches the time that you are writing in. It is like a novel that has been going on and now needs to be finished, and it is difficult to get to the end. In trying to meet all his goals, McNeill does an excellent job and really lets the reader sift through the final years of history, at the readers own pace and interest level. In this way, WWI, WWII, and the aftermath of both wars are blended into Cosmopolitan whole, with the hope that the two remaining superpowers will find a way to accommodate their mutual desires.

The cosmopolitanism of the future will surely bear a Western imprint. At least in its initial stages, any world state will be an empire of the West. This would be the case even if non-Westerners should happen to hold the supreme controls of world-wide political-military authority, for they could only do so by utilizing such originally Western traits as industrialism, science, and the public palliation of power through advocacy of one or other of the democratic political faiths. Hence "The Rise of the West" may serve as a shorthand description of the upshot of the history of the human community to date.

I find it interesting that McNeill's positivism overcame the potential for nuclear annihilation. His positivism is on a human basis, not nationalistic, by believing that the United States and Western Europe do not have to be the winner/leader of the New World ecumene. His positivism is his belief that humanity will continue to evolve so even if the Soviets had "won", and when he was writing, you could make the case that they might be able to accomplish this, the victory would have been for an evolving Westernized Russia to eventually come to the fore of the total ecumene of man.

McNeill's positivism helped to define future problems/opportunities in a way that also foretold the "End of History". Trevor-Roper pointed out some other alternatives to McNeill's exuberance and optimism as he brought his book to a close.

Perhaps we can now expect the stabilization of the world; but if so, let us not be too complacent. It is the "drastic instability" which, throughout history that has distinguished the West from other the other great civilizations of the world, and made it supreme. (The West of the Mind, my interpretation) If the West now stabilizes its victory, as ... Han China stabilized theirs, may not humanity lose its dynamic quality? ... It is ironical that the new advocates of instability should be the hitherto "immobile" Chinese; but perhaps their present "instability" has a meaning which historians, thanks to Mr. McNeill, can now better understand.

McNeill might say that the current China, no longer "Red China", is or will soon become part of the West.

McNeill's 1963 comments and observations concerning the Islamic world were prescient and are still applicable today. Islam is still awaiting its needed version of the Renaissance and Reformation and its continuing instability may yet generate a synthesis with the West/Modernity that is productive for both Islam and humanity.

World history also differs from other forms of history, at least in the way that McNeill writes it, in that it is basically amoral. There are no "good" or "bad" guys in the normal sense as when the writer winds up favoring one side/idea or another, and then casts aspersions towards those who are on the "wrong" side which is often the case when history is written about shorter time spans or from a political agenda. McNeill views warfare the way you come to accept that there are predator and prey animals in the natural world and this is the way it is. He also sees it as a force for change and innovation as he states below:

Chronic warfare arising from persistent political multiplicity has long been one of the painful, but powerful mainsprings of the West's vitality.


At the end of his book, where McNeill moves from history to philosophy, his hope is that a new, global, one-world ecumene will eliminate war and that the lion will indeed lie down with the lamb.

Other thoughts on World History and McNeill's place in this field

In all the reading that I have done so far, the only attempt at world history that I am not in sympathy with is the UNESCO `History of Mankind'. By nature, I question "feel good" projects and "political correctness" in all forms, as well as blatant attempts at indoctrination. At a more erudite level, "Some UNESCO critics complained of mistakes in Gottschalk's analysis, others complained that his work lacked analysis altogether ... To avoid comparing cultures ... Gottschalk avoided interpreting history." One thing learned from the UNESCO project was a general "advance toward a course that is neither global history in pure form nor western civilization in world dimension."

I would agree with Mousnier, world history "required such concentration; it required priorities and a system of "hierarchies" in order to establish the relative importance of peoples and civilizations in time. ... History of all peoples is no history at all." The UNESCO approach ignores Thucydides' triad concerning the causes of war being fear, honor, and interest. "Peace education and international understanding could neither explain the causes of war in the past nor remove them from the future." This is what McNeill does so well.

McNeill's book, or just one of its sections, could possibly have been used by Foucault to write a history by filling in all of its omissions.

"World history was at once the oldest history course in the public high schools and the most despised by teachers and students alike." I could not follow the arguments pro and con or why high school teachers should be in conflict with academia. Historians seem to have mammoth egos and very thin skins, not a very collegial atmosphere to produce knowledge and progress.

"The rise of world history as a movement and as a field of study ... is due to William H. McNeill" McNeill's comments concerning "the crisis of history teaching ...the reign of specialization; the primacy of empirical research of historical synthesis, the breakdown of the introductory course, the failure to educate youth for public duties of citizenship, and the irrelevance of much of the old Eurocentric subject matter." , in its gaps, speaks of the problems of historian academia.

I think that McNeill was too hard on himself in a 25 year retrospective, in saying he could have done a better job, "residual Eurocentrism" may not be a virtue but it is certainly not a vice, and as it was pointed out in class, after "political correctness" was discounted, world history from 1500 to the end of World War II, with the exception of the rise of Japan, was a history of the West, and it could be argued that Japan was itself an extension of the West because of its ability to learn and prosper from the West without losing its independence. I also think that McNeill may have been having a bad day after constant criticism from some quarters because of the impact of his book, when he seemed to apologize by saying,

`The Rise of the West' is built upon the notion that the principal factor in promoting historically significant social change is contact with strangers possessing new and unfamiliar skills (i.e., civilizations) tend to upset their neighbors by exposing them to attractive novelties. Less skilled peoples round about are then impelled to make those novelties their own so as to attain for themselves the wealth, power, truth, and beauty that civilized skills confer on their possessors."

You only have to look at the situation in the Mid-East today to see that his corollary was correct then and is extremely prescient today. If you are able to see McNeill's waves and ripples of history, you may have a chance to have a better outcome when the wave starts to wash up on your shore.

Islamic Jihadism is the corollary shown below:

Such efforts provoke a painful ambivalence between the drive to imitate and an equally fervent desire to preserve the customs and institutions that distinguish the would-be borrowers from the corruptions and injustices that also inhere to in civilized (possibly Western ethnocentrism) life.

McNeill used three periods when he organized his work, namely, from the beginning to 500 B.C., 500 B.C. to 1500 A.D., and 1500 A.D. to the present day. This reflects the way that he thought would work the best for his narrative. McNeill, in my opinion, would not be bothered by other forms of periodization, such as, "for the present, an eclectic periodization of four epochs divided at (mankind's history to 1000 B.C.E.), 1000 B.C.E., 400-600 C.E., and circa 1492" should be used.

The use of B.C., versus B.C.E., reflects what I would call "political correctness" and or as others would say is a more sensitive way of dating history. This small point is just one of many where people can see both the political and ideological ways in which history is written.

As McNeill would say, "It is so obvious that the personality and particular experiences of a given historian enter into the sort of history he writes."

McNeill's time spent on a farm prepared him to see the intimate nature of farming and the raising of animals that has been the foundation of a large part of our history and how it fitted into his thoughts of history and how it should be written. This "helped me as an historian because most of our ancestors lived by flexing human and animal muscles ... slight introduction to what it life was like for most people, most of the time in the deeper past."

Historiography is more than just the study of history and how it is developed. Its goal is to give the individual the reference points of others in order to enable a better rationale for his/her, as Collingwood would say, the "Idea of History". The "philosophy of history", as Collingwood says "is reflective, ... thought about thought."

One criticism of the world history approach is "that undergraduates ought to study Western rather than world cultures because the study of world cultures would either be unmanageable or be taught in a simplistic fashion and because the "ways of the West have become and will continue to be ... the ways of the world." My answer is one that I think McNeill would agree to, that world history should be a required course for all students over two semesters. This course would either expand or confirm the student's knowledge obtained in high school and general education while giving the student the background on where the West stood in relationship to the major civilizations from which the West came and those that influenced its development. Alfred J. Andrea's and James H. Overfield's `The Human Record: The Sources of Global History' could be used in conjunction with this course. (I found it odd that I could not find a reference to McNeill in this book.)

Other historians, such as Alfred Crosby's "Ecological Imperialism" have followed McNeill's lead by expanding at length and in greater detail ideas and facts contained in McNeill's book(s). "The spread of crops, of domesticated animals, and of unwanted pests and infestations is another side of ecological history about which historians are as yet quite ill informed. Yet these clearly impinged on economic and political history in much the same way that epidemic diseases did, by allowing some populations to flourish while penalizing or even destroying others."

To some, maybe most, current historians may consider world history to be "outside the professional mainstream. To some extent they continued the providential perspective in historiography. They also wanted to contribute to understanding the processes of modernization on a global scale. ... Yet world history now is not what it was for these earlier writers as it undergoes the effects of knowledge explosion." I for one, feel that these historians have done great service to historiography and that they and their ideas are still relevant today. "As more non-Western scholars write on these issues (world history in its fullest form), they will bring additional perspectives to world history." I am particularly looking forward to the work of either an Islamic or Chinese scholar, since this is where we might glean knowledge needed for the world today.

McNeill, it should be noted, was the first contemporary North American historian to write world history in the light of anthropological, epidemiological, and technological ideas. His "The Rise of the West" has been judged to be among the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. "McNeill is also the foremost advocate of world history in the Anglo-American scholarly world. His research reflects the admirable breadth and unique courage of his scholarly interests. In an age of increasing scholarly specialization, McNeill stands out for his marvelous ability to synthesize large bodies of data and to focus his work on questions and issues that cut across national and disciplinary boundaries." McNeill writes so well that his footnotes c

For those interested in world civilization, "The Rise of the West" is a concise, enjoyable work written in 1963 that reflects the views and available scholarship of a erudite historian. McNeill's subsequent contemplations 25 years after his original manuscript are worthy in itself; that of a scholar influenced by Post-WW2 optimism of the West, but seeing inadequacies in his work because of such past exposure. McNeill is a thoughtful academic that does examine new evidence and modifies earlier theories to match contemporary findings.

In McNeill's own words of 1988, parts of the text are obsolete. Indeed, the original edition is even more outdated for 2005. His overall points regarding the influence of Western civilization in modern affairs still are salient, if not also interesting, notably in the breadth and structure of European expansion.

Some of the books topics are sure to run into opposition. McNeill's thesis regarding the Sumerian diffusion of civilization has been thoroughly challenged (though there are still champions of this view). The belief of outside invaders militarily conquering India and especially China for the formation of civilization is certainly far more in dispute today than in McNeill's time. The Aryan Invasion Theory is certainly no longer in vogue. Evidence for the uniqueness of China's Bronze Age is quite strong, and any outside civilizing influences are fairly negligible in Shang bronze development.

Histories of civilization do reflect the mindset of that particular generation. While one can leap into judgement that this text is Eurocentric, it does not compare in this regard with other books like James Henry Breasted's (also from the University of Chicago) "Ancient Times, A History of the Early World, 1916, second ed. 1935".

Other deserving books along the same lines are Fernand Braudel, "A History of Civilizations", Jared Diamond, "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, "Civilizations".

There are already several good reviews on this book, so, on the vexing question of why Western countries have dominated the world during the last few centuries (the very way the question is posed is controversial!), I would suggest reading the following books in addition to McNeill's: 1) "Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium" by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke; 2)"The Great Divergence", by Kennetz Pomeranz; 3 - 4): "The world economy. A millennial perspective" (2001) plus "The world economy: Historical Statistics" (2003) by Angus Maddison (a combined edition of these two volumes appeared on December 2007); and 5) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation by John M. Hobson.

And for those looking for a broad framework to understand the past, I would add the following works, whose scope is amazingly global: A. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; B. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; C. Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; D. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and E. War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat.

The Rise of the West by W.H. McNeill did more than inform my understanding of history, it largely formed it. The scope, scale, and depth of the work makes it essential reading, ever now after more than forty years since its authorship.

It seems to me that McNeill's central thesis is that civilizations don't rise and fall so much as evolve, wax or wane, especially during period of open communication and trade between them. McNeill comprehensively deals with the technology, politics, warfare, culture, and religions of each civilization -- the book is a tour de force of historic exposition.

The book is a little dated here and there in the details, and in particular is sparse and dated after WWII, however this is a very minor shortcoming given the hugeness of its span & scope.

I agree that Wm. McNeill is far more contemporary and balanced than I might have expected for a 1963 book subtitled "A History of the Human Community". McNeill makes it clear that culture and civilization are not the exclusive attributes of any one people - that promising starts falter, unlikely ideas take hold, cultures borrow from each other, civilizations flourish only to fade, ideas are tried and many fail from nascent democracies to enlightened social views, only to re-emerge in another era.

I think the subtitle is a bit unfortunate nowadays; it suggests that the Rise of the West, particularly the last 500 years, is "THE Human Community" and perhaps non-Westerners might feel their experience is marginalized. Frankly, I think this is a non-issue because McNeill's point-of-view would be that other cultures are clearly a valuable part of the our world culture, history, and civilization BUT outside the scope of his book. I base this on the reading McNeill's work and he's clearly a historian trying to be balanced, unbiased and honest. If the last 500 years of the book do shift into European focus, it's not because McNeill believes that history was always leading to a "natural" European prominence but because of the accumulation of centuries of cultural fermentation that just happened to sprout and thrive there because of centuries of struggle and hard-work.

It might not have been, Mr McNeill would probably agree.