World History Research Articles

Global Perspectives on Women’s Empowerment: Challenges, Policies, and Case Studies

Enhancing women's social, economic, political, and legal authority to guarantee equal rights and opportunities in all areas of life is the goal of the multifaceted notion of women empowerment. This overview examines the global history, present state, and potential futures of women's empowerment. It explores the historical background, tracking the movement's origins and emphasising significant turning points in the path to gender equality. The review highlights important obstacles that impede the advancement of women's empowerment, including cultural norms, economic impediments, and political resistance, by examining worldwide trends and regional variances. It also covers how international institutions and policies—like the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations—affect the advancement of gender equality. Additionally, case studies of effective empowerment programmes are included in the study to show how focused interventions can result in profound transformation. This analysis concludes by highlighting the significance of a comprehensive and inclusive strategy for women's empowerment and by promoting ongoing efforts at the individual, group, and institutional levels to build a more just and equitable society for all.

Secularity, Sociology, and the Contemporary History of Islam

This essay proposes to reframe the twentieth-century history of Islam by rethinking the relationship of that history to some dominant categories of twentieth-century sociology, especially the secularization thesis. The global history of Islam since the late nineteenth century has been shaped by an apparent paradox between its two most significant features. The first of these has consisted of persistent calls for Muslim revival, reform, and unity across the world, tending toward a unification or transcendence of the older forms of variation within the tradition. The second, countervailing tendency has been an increasing fragmentation of structures of authority within the tradition, a proliferation of the meanings attributed to it and of the forms of practice taken to embody it, and a renewed acuity of internal sectarian conflict. This is a paradox that only an understanding of Islam as social practice embedded in the forms of secularity characteristic of modern societies—and emphatically not one of Islam as “medievally” religious and uniquely “secularization-resistant”—can apprehend.

A protocol for linking participants’ retailer ‘loyalty card’ records into the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)

Longitudinal population studies (LPS) have a long history of providing insights into how individual consumption patterns and other lifestyle choices affect health and socio-economic outcomes. LPS typically operate as research databanks, integrating rich and deep phenotypic data - covering diverse aspects of individual, family and household status - with genomic data and linked records on health and socio-economic outcomes. However, individual consumption and behavioural choices are traditionally studied solely using self-report methods which are prone to known biases. We propose to enrich LPS databanks with a new form of digital footprint data – individual shopping history records. These are collected by supermarkets through “loyalty” card schemes and can provide a new perspective on real world behaviours and history of consumption. However, as a novel class of data in the context of longitudinal research, our ability to assess the quality and completeness of the data is unknown, as is our ability to effectively triangulate between self-reported and linked data. This paper describes a protocol for linking individual level shopping history data into a LPS using Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) as a testbed. The protocol covers the process of establishing participant fair processing, an ethical and legal basis for the linkage framework itself, and how these data will be integrated into the ALSPAC databank. It does not cover the subsequent research use of these data. The protocol was built on an extensive participant engagement and acceptability work and has been approved by the ALSPAC Law and Ethics committee.

Myths about Stalin in Georgian Politics and Georgian History School Textbooks

Abstract The theoretical framework of the paper is established through the concept of political myths. The research delves into the diverse viewpoints presented in the scientific literature concerning this matter, and depending on the chosen topic, great attention is paid to the phenomenon of historical myths. The paper employs the method of content analysis to examine history textbooks. The research discusses two textbooks from the Soviet period and 14 textbooks covering Georgian and world history that were published after the Soviet era. Considering that history is currently taught in schools using textbooks published in 2012 and onward, the paper includes a table that specifically shows the facts related to Stalin in these textbooks.

Disrupting the Neoliberal Capitalist Media Agenda in South Africa:

Neoliberalism has been described as the most successful ideology in world history (Anders-son 2000). This has, in turn, impacted the modern media by dumbing down its public interest role, through cultivating concentrated media ownership patterns, which has produced hyper-commercial and elitist-driven content. This paper has the broad aim of provoking discussions and debates both for the Global South and Global North geospatial locations grappling with these neoliberal consequences, by considering what systemic alternative(s) to capitalist me-dia can be considered. It specifically explores the return of the anti-capitalist alternative media to South Africa’s print media terrain to function in a developmental role. With the aim to dilute the neoliberal capitalist nature of its media that has effectively perpetuated the dominance of the elite class at the expense of citizen-oriented and public interest imperatives (Govenden 2022). It furthers this argument by also comparatively drawing on two BRICS country case studies from Asia i.e. China and India.

Climate change and international history: negotiating science, global change, and environmental justice

Climate change and international history: negotiating science, global change, and environmental justice

How might a planet between mars and jupiter influence the inner solar system? effects on orbital motion, obliquity, and eccentricity

The Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey have discovered a wide diversity of exoplanetary system architectures. In comparison to exoplanet systems, one peculiarity in the solar system is the distinct lack of a super-Earth analog, a planet archetype prevalent in the exoplanet population. Models suggest however, that the formation of an Earth-to-Super-Earth mass planet could have readily occurred in the inner regions of the solar system (<3 AU) without the migration of the Jovian worlds. In this study, we test the consequences of such a hypothesis using a three-dimensional (3D) N-Rigid-Body integrator. Previous work employed numerical models that assumed planets and interacting bodies as point-mass particles and neglected changes in spin evolution and obliquity. These neglects of one-dimensional models may be problematic when attempting to accurately track the orbital motion of a planet. With a 3D model in which the planet is modeled as a rigid body to account for its finite size and rotation, we investigate three inner terrestrial planets over 2 Myr periods and found that an additional super-Earth sized planet between 2 and 3.5 AU would have (i) destabilized Earth’s orbit over timescales of 1 Myr, (ii) increased Mars’s obliquity by ∼55°, and (iii) perturbed the eccentricity of Venus by up to e∼0.4. Our study explores an “alternate fate” of the terrestrial planets and our results suggest that if a super-Earth had formed in the inner solar system, orbital evolution histories of many terrestrial worlds would have looked very different.

역사 교사의 학습과 성장을 지원하는 교육과정 자료의 현황과 특징: 미국 4개 역사 교육과정 자료를 중심으로

This study analyzed the current status and characteristics of history educative curriculum materials, highlighting the importance of these materials in supporting teacher learning and professional growth. For this purpose, we examined four widely used history education curricular materials in the United States: Reading Like a Historian, Read.Inquire.Write., World History Project, and Teaching History, Learning Citizenship. The analysis revealed the various educative features designed to enhance teachers’ learning and growth in planning, implementing, and reflecting on lessons. The characteristic of history educative curriculum materials stood out in the structural components and the roles that these educative features played. This study discusses the implications of these educative curricular materials for history education in Korea and suggests directions for developing curricular materials that enhance teachers’ professional expertise and instructional capacity.

African historical studies: challenges and opportunities of source studies. Rec. ad. op.: Sources on the history of Africa: problems, trends, prospects for study and application / col. monograph under the general note by A.S. Balezin. Moscow: Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2023. 339 p.

African historical studies: challenges and opportunities of source studies. Rec. ad. op.: Sources on the history of Africa: problems, trends, prospects for study and application / col. monograph under the general note by A.S. Balezin. Moscow: Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2023. 339 p.

World War I and World War II: Their Effects on the Islamic World and Afghanistan

The tremendous effects that World War I and World War II had on the Islamic world are investigated in this research, with a particular focus on Afghanistan. The aftermath of World War I resulted in the breakup of empires, most notably the Ottoman Empire, as well as the restructuring of political boundaries. The study aims to explore and analyze the far-reaching impacts of World War I and World War II on the Islamic world, with a particular focus on Afghanistan. The study seeks to examine how these global conflicts reshaped political, social, and economic dynamics in Muslim-majority regions, leading to the disintegration of empires, the rise of nationalism, and the realignment of power structures. The significance of this study lies in the fact that it shades light on a relatively unexplored facet of world history, namely the manner in which the Islamic world, and Afghanistan in particular, was impacted by the two World Wars. Specifically, it sheds light on the growth of nationalism, decolonization, and geopolitical competition, all of which played a role in shaping the position of Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Middle East within the global system. This work employs the doctrinal research methodology along with descriptive, explanatory, and analytical research approaches. It is worth mentioning that this research study is entirely based on library sources. Most of the sources are reputable and trustworthy textbooks, scholarly published and unpublished journal articles, law reports, and online websites related to the research area. One of the main findings is Both World Wars accelerated the disintegration of Islamic empires, notably the Ottoman Empire, and paved the way for European colonial powers to carve out new territories in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Afghanistan’s strategic position made it vulnerable to foreign influence, particularly from Britain and Russia. After World War I, Afghanistan gained greater autonomy, but it became a battleground for influence between the Soviet Union and the West following World War II, especially during the Cold War. It is recommended that further research and documents are needed the Islamic world’s experience during both World Wars, which has often been overlooked in global history. Incorporating these perspectives into academic curricula could help reshape understanding of global conflicts from a non-Western perspective.

Global invasion history with climate-related allele frequency shifts in the invasive Mediterranean fruit fly (Diptera, Tephritidae: Ceratitis capitata)

The Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata) is a globally invasive species and an economically significant pest of fruit crops. Understanding the evolutionary history and local climatic adaptation of this species is crucial for developing effective pest management strategies. We conducted a comprehensive investigation using whole genome sequencing to explore (i) the invasion history of C. capitata with an emphasis on historical admixture and (ii) local climatic adaptation across African, European, Central, and South American populations of C. capitata. Our results suggest a stepwise colonization of C. capitata in Europe and Latin America in which Mediterranean and Central American populations share an ancestral lineage. Conversely, South American invasion history is more complex, and our results partly suggest an old secondary invasion into South America from Europe or a colonization of South America directly from Africa, followed by admixture with an European lineage. Throughout its invasive range, C. capitata is challenged with diverse climatic regimes. A genome wide association study identified a relationship between allele frequency changes and specific bioclimatic variables. Notably, we observed a significant allele frequency shift related to adaptation to cold stress (BIO6), highlighting the species’ ability to rapidly adapt to seasonal variations in colder climates.

Причины войн и их роль в социальной эволюции: обобщение современных концепций

The article presents a systemic and historical view of wars taking into account the generalization of modern concepts about their nature and causes. The generalization is produced on the basis of a political and sociological apparatus with such basic concepts as: "concerns" of different types (including "interests", "motives", "goals", "values"), an extension of the challenge-response scheme (A. Toynbee), positive and negative "reinforcement" (Thorndike-Skinner), and "support structures" (A. Stinchcombe). All the concerns related to wars are based on the social universals of M. Weber and M. Mann: power-security, power-dominance, prestige-dignity-legitimacy, and wealth-resources-access to resources. Geopolitical concerns (regarding control over territories), symbolic stakes, and concerns with maintaining the international order are considered. The prioritization of relevant concerns changes in both the long run of social evolution and the short run of dynamics of interactions. The article considers spiral dynamics as a dynamic model of the cause of unintended wars "that no one wanted." Relevant decisions and actions of rulers and elites related to war are analyzed in the context of fast and slow thinking according to D. Kahneman. The general principles of social interaction and social evolution allow us to judge the conditions that increase and decrease the probability of new wars, as well as the regularities of the dynamics and termination of wars. Empirical generalizations of the characteristics of wars in world history made by modern specialists (S. Van Evera, G. Cashman, etc.) are discussed. It is shown what role wars play in the co-evolution of social, mental, and techno-natural orders, as well as in social evolution in general.

The City, the Neighborhood, and the Street: Toward a Global Urban Labor History?

Abstract Labor scholars have increasingly recognized the need to look beyond the workplace and explore where and how workers lived, socialized, shopped, or protested. The six books reviewed in this essay contribute to understanding how modern cities shaped the process of working-class formation as well as workers’ identity, experiences, and economic and material conditions. From different standpoints, these urban and labor histories of Paris, Mexico City, Miami, Port Said, Montevideo, and Santiago, Chile, demonstrate the impact of urban modernization, industrial capitalism, and migration on working families. By bringing together books from different regions and historiographical traditions, this essay also reflects on the possibilities and challenges of writing a global labor urban history.

The Bureaucratic Origins of Political Theory: Administrative Labor in the “Other Half” of the History of Political Thought

The earliest works of political theory precede Athenian democracy—the traditional starting point of Anglophone histories of political thought—by over two millennia. More time passed between the first written accounts of government in Mesopotamia and the birth of Plato than has passed between Plato’s life and ours. And yet this “other half” of the history of political thought has barely registered in the academic field of political theory. This article seeks to “reset” the starting point of the field back to its earliest origins in ancient Sumer. Beginning then and there opens a new vista on the history of political thought by restoring questions of public administration to the foreground of the field. For while the ancient Athenians enslaved their bureaucrats and wrote almost nothing about them, the analogous actors were free and highly valued in ancient Mesopotamian political culture. It was these scribal administrators who invented the world’s first literature and written political thought. In their writings, they valorized their own administrative labor and the public goods that it alone could produce as objects of wonder and enchantment. From this vantage point, the article calls for a new research agenda that will expand political theory’s recent “rediscovery” of bureaucracy by recovering public administration as a major thematic throughline in the five-thousand-year global history of human political ideas. Understanding public administration as an integral part of large-scale human societies from the very beginning may help to counter oligarchic claims in contemporary democracies that bureaucracy is a recent alien imposition.

Paper and Textile Encounters in the Pacific

Abstract This essay focuses on an eighteenth-century book, A Catalogue of the Different Specimens of Cloth Collected in the Three Voyages of Captain Cook to the Southern Hemisphere, which opens up alternative histories of paper in the early modern world. The work consists of a letterpress pamphlet describing the production of bark cloth (tapa), bound with samples of tapa, which were acquired from one of Captain Cook’s naval officers. In placing paper and bark cloth into relationship with one another, the work offers another vantage point from which to theorise not only the material history of paper but also the ways in which paper was dependent on an ability to ‘invisibly occupy’. Paper’s material invisibility is both part of its strength while also demonstrating the intellectual blind spots that can occur in attending solely to material histories of paper worlds.

Depo-Provera, Class, Race, and the Domiciliary Family Planning Services in Glasgow and Haringey, 1970–1983

Abstract In 1976, the Committee of Safety of Medicines (CSM) in Britain authorized the contraceptive injectable Depo-Provera (DP) for short-term use and for two main reasons only: if a woman had received a rubella vaccine or if her partner had just undergone a vasectomy. Although officially authorized on restricted grounds only, the drug appears to have been widely prescribed by doctors of the Domiciliary Family Planning Services (DFPS). This article takes the prescription of DP in the DFPS of Haringey, a multiracial neighbourhood in London, and Glasgow as a comparative case-study to explore the intersections of medical authority, race, and class. Drawing on the archives of the Wellcome Collection, London, and the NHS Archives of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, we show that the DFPS offered the ideal setting to test and prescribe Depo-Provera widely. In the hands of the medical profession, the drug at times became a tool of violence towards women from disadvantaged backgrounds. In doing so, we contribute to the wider, global history of DP, and illustrate how racist, classist, and ableist prejudices could shape family planning services in the British context.

An Evolutionary Perspective on Dog Behavioral Genetics.

Dogs have played an outsized role in the field of behavioral genetics since its earliest days. Their unique evolutionary history and ubiquity in the modern world make them a potentially powerful model system for discovering how genetic changes lead to changes in behavior. Genomic technology has supercharged this potential by enabling scientists to sequence the DNA of thousands of dogs and test for correlations with behavioral traits. However, fractures in the early history of animal behavior between biological and psychological subfields may be impeding progress. In addition, canine behavioral genetics has included almost exclusively dogs from modern breeds, who represent just a small fraction of all dog diversity. By expanding the scope of dog behavior studies, and incorporating an evolutionary perspective on canine behavioral genetics, we can move beyond associations to understanding the complex interactions between genes and environment that lead to dog behavior.

Civilian Internment During the First World War: A European and Global History, 1914–1920

Civilian Internment During the First World War: A European and Global History, 1914–1920

НЮРНБЕРГСКИЙ ПРОЦЕСС – СУД БЕЗ СРОКА ДАВНОСТИ

The Nuremberg trial (November 1945 – October 1946) was the first trial in world history in which the first persons of the Nazi state accused of committing war crimes and genocide during second World war were convicted. The results of the Nuremberg trials are considered in the context of the modern geopolitical situation; the problem of distortion of the results of both the Nuremberg trials and the Second World War as a whole is raised; examples of some facts of the past and present are presented, emphasizing the relevance of the results of the Nuremberg tribunal in our time.

Differences in perspectives on the Christian revolution of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in China

In terms of civilian casualties directly and indirectly caused by the war, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement was the largest war in world history in the second half of the nineteenth century and had a strong East Asian Christian background. This article adopts the ‘historical contextualism’ approach of the Cambridge School in the history of political thought, and through a comparison of the relevant views of Karl Marx, Max Weber and Kang Youwei, it reveals that this intentional omission comes from a specific combination of modernisation routes and modernisation political construction choices. In contemporary China, the study of Christian theory and the practice of church organisation still need to answer the question of the general public as to whether Christianity can bring about a better life, both materially and spiritually.Contribution: This article pointed out that three contemporaries, Marx, Weber and Kang, all evaluated the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement as a revolution of Christianity in China from the standpoint of ‘China’s need for modernisation’, but differed in their evaluation of the position and role of the religious reform factor in the process of modernisation in China. However, they differed in their assessment of the position and role of the Reformation factor in the process of modernisation in China. The article reveals that for Protestant Christianity in contemporary China, it is still necessary to carefully handle its relationship with the government and to satisfy the people’s real needs for a modernised material and spiritual life. Meanwhile, it sheds light on the issue of ‘heterocultural adaptability’ brought about by the expansion and spread of Protestant Christianity in East Asia, as well as on the question of whether Protestantism and Confucianism in the process of modern conversion can achieve peaceful coexistence.