Jerry Bentley On The Global History Of Exploration Theory And Practice

Global history is a new developing schools, lots of historians were devoted themselves to the research of the global history, such as William H. McNeill, Philip Curtin, Alfred W. Crosby, Jerry H. Bentley and so on. As the representative historian of the third generation of global history research, Jerry Bentley pay his main attention to the process of cross-cultural exchange and interaction, and he also give huge impetus to the development of global history research.In order to deepen our konwledge and research of global history, we learn and evaluate Bentley's global history research via his series of books and thesises. This thesis consist of his first global history book named Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times which he pointed out that cross-cultural exchange is the main impetus of development of world history, his thesises which reflect his global history view get further maturity, such as Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship, The New World History, Globalizing History and Historicizing Globalization, Early Modern Europe and the Early Modern World, and the book named Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past which used his periodization to compile the world history.In the first chapter, it will introduce Bentley's first book of global history which named Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times. In this book, cultural exchange, religion broadcast and long-distant trade are three themes which Bentley researched in pre-modern times, and he also think the cultural exchange is the main impetus of the development of world history.In the second chapter, it will introduce the main global thesises of Bentley, such as Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship, The New World History, Globalizing History and Historicizing Globalization, Early Modern Europe and the Early Modern World and so on. Make a intensive research of these thesises we can find out that Bentley's global history view is becoming more and more maturity.In the third chapter, it will introduce the world history periodization of Bentley and world history book he compiled according to this periodization. Bentley put cultural interaction which cross-social and cultural boundaries as the basic point to periodize the world history into six parts, then on the basis of this, he published the world history book which named Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past.