Cultural Exchanges in World History

Abstract

Since the 1960s, when world history gradually began to emerge as a distinct field of professional historical scholarship, world historians have focused their attention and their analyses mostly on political, social, economic, demographic, and environmental issues with strong material dimensions. One of the most fundamental assumptions of this contemporary world history is the notion that historical development does not take place exclusively within the boundary lines of individual societies or cultural regions. However, this article argues that cross-cultural interactions and exchanges have influenced the development of all or almost all peoples and societies throughout the world's history, looking at cultural exchanges in pre-modern and modern times. If this point is true, it stands to reason that there have likely been cultural as well as political, social, economic, demographic, and environmental implications of cross-cultural interactions and exchanges.