Studying change in the course of human history, in different places, through the lens of a diverse set of core themes, World History for International Studies offers readers a set of windows into different debates historians have been conducting. Key themes, such as communication, trade, order, slavery, religion, war, identity, modernity, norms and ecology, are linked to specific world regions, which tell a story about how local ideas and individual contacts developed, started to overlap and became globally understood and used by ever larger groups of people. These themes are brought to life by a diverse set of key primary sources, such as a book, a letter, a medal, a temple and an epic, to showcase how historians have used sources to tell these stories and conduct debates. The book provides an introductory resource into the study of history and includes detailed suggestions for further study.

Isabelle Duyvesteyn is Professor and the new programme chair of International Studies at the Institute of History at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She completed her PhD in War Studies at King’s College London on military theory. She worked as a teaching assistant at King’s College, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for International Affairs, and a lecturer at the Netherlands Defence Academy and Utrecht University. Before joining the Leiden History Institute, she held a special chair in Strategic Studies at the Institute of Political Science at Leiden. She has been a member of the Netherlands National Advisory Council for International Affairs and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Netherlands Defence Academy. Her research interest include contemporary history and theory of war, peace and security.

Anne Marieke van der Wal is an Assistant Professor of African History and International Studies at Leiden University. She completed her PhD at the Institute of History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands with a thesis entitled ‘Singing of Slavery, Performing the Past. Folk songs of the Cape Coloured Community as Cultural Memory of the South African Slave Past, 1652-present’. She has worked as a junior lecturer at Utrecht University and a Guest Researcher at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her main research interest include the history of South Africa, Indian Ocean Slavery, Slave Trade, Memory and Subaltern history and her work has contributed to the fields of memory and slavery studies, postcolonial critique and debates on modernity/counter-modernity.

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Foreword
Guide to Reading
About the Contributors
Introduction; What is World History?
Isabelle Duyvesteyn
Introduction Part I: The Pre-Modern World > 1800 CE
Communication; The Writing Revolution
Anne Marieke van der Wal
Trade: The Ancient Silk Roads
Richard Griffiths
Political Order: From Coercion to Constitution
Brian Shaev
Slavery: Capitalism & Racism
Joris van den Tol and Anne Marieke van der Wal
Religion; Perspective and Practice
Jochem van den Boogert
Introduction Part II: The Modern World < 1800 CE
War; Disordering and Ordering
Isaac Scarborough
Identity; From Traditional to Transnational
Arnout van Ree
Modernity; Being Modern in a Changing World
Gina van Ling
Human Rights; Norms and Policy
Mike Schmidli
Ecology; From Local Resistance to Global Concern
Elisa Da Via, Judith Naeff and Anne Marieke van der Wal
Conclusion; World History Today
Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Helen Steele
Illustration credits
Index