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The second volume in the American Historical Association's global history series introduces readers to the cross-cultural study of ancient and classical civilizations. The opening essay by Jerry Bentley surveys methodologies and critical interpretations that have been essential to the development of comparative historical analysis. These include contributions from the fields of sociology, archaeology, linguistics, and  anthropology, and recent investigative practices that honor previously neglected groups and validate testimony passed down through oral traditions. The first set of essays highlight predominant themes in global history by examining the ongoing interactions between ancient agrarian and  nomadic societies as well as the impact of these exchanges on economic development and cross-cultural adaptation. The essays in the second section focus on regional patterns in the dissemination of ideas, institutions, and material culture.

By highlighting key historical transitions and recurring cultural patterns, this book provides an engaging introduction to the complexities of human development. Written by leading scholars in the field, the historiographic essays in Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History offer students and teachers a comprehensive overview of the arguments, applications, and resources that inform comparative global history.

In the sub-field of world history, there has been a surprising paucity of thinking and writing about how to approach and conceptualize the long twentieth century from the 1870s through the early 2000s. The historiographic essays collected in Essays on Twentieth Century History will go a long way to filling that lacuna.

Each contribution covers a key theme and one or more critical sub-fields in twentieth century global history. Chapters address migration patterns, the impact of world wars, transformations in gender and urbanization, as well as environmental transitions. All are written by leading historians in each of the sub-fields represented, and each is intended to provide an introduction to the literature, key themes, and debates that have proliferated around the more recent historical experience of humanity.

In the decades following its annexation to the Indian Empire in 1852, Lower Burma (the Irrawaddy-Sittang delta region) was transformed from an underdeveloped and sparsely populated backwater of the Konbaung Empire into the world’s largest exporter of rice. This seminal and far-reaching work focuses on two major aspects of that transformation: the growth of the agrarian sector of the rice industry of Lower Burma and the history of the plural society that evolved largely in response to rapid economic expansion.