Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times

Hard to follow but was packed full of good information.

:)

Thanks

I purchased used one, but it was very clean and nice!

Great

the book is in good condition for being used. i got it for my history class and it came fast

One of the growing fields in the History profession is World History. Many colleges have begun to offer undergrad and even graduate degrees in this field. But a nagging question is how can a true world history be taught and is it even possible? Old World Encounters attempts to answer this question and does a good job of it. It avoids the biggest challenge of teaching the history of such vast areas and disparate cultures by following the theme of cultural exchange in this way the book goes smoothly from place to place without seeming choppy and disjointed. The author focuses on the point at which different cultures meet and what occurs when they do. As another reviewer pointed out what happens is not a "clash of civilizations" but rather an interesting cultural blending that allows the author to explore the different power dynamics at play in the different regions a good example of this is the comparison of the spread of Islam in southeast Asia to the lack of spread of Christianity in China and the reason the two situations played out so differently. It is through these comparisons that Bentley delves into the particulars of many different cultures much deeper than one would expect in such a slim volume on World/Cultural History. Now some would argue that this is still just a regional history (albeit a very large region) and that the Americas and Oceania are not included and the author acknowledges this in the last chapter. But I believe that that is why he chose the pre-modern time period to do this history because it does allow you to exclude certain parts of the world and still credibly call it a world history. This being said the story of contact and exchange in the Americas had been told many times and it was refreshing to see how the contact and cultural exchange was nothing new in the Old World. So can a truly world history be written about effectively? I think that Bentley proves that it can at least be well written about the Old World!

At least until recent times major civilizations gradually shared, adapted, borrowed, and sometimes transfromed material elements of civilization and even ideas. A wonderful overview of history before European colonialism introduces eaxamples and processes for a valuable perspective that should be read by area specialists and others tending to see things from the view of a single nation, faith, or culture. The pace and shock of change increased with modern communications and powerful force producing perhaps a different story from the period after that so well reviewed in this book. One might start with Phillip Curtin and Wolf's "peoples without history' for this later period.