This course surveys the increasing interaction between communities, as the barrier of distance succumbed to both curiosity and new transport technologies. It explores Western Europe and the United States' rise to world dominance, as well as the great divergence in material, political, and technological development between Western Europe and East Asia post–1750, and its impact on the rest of the world. It examines a series of evolving relationships, including human beings and their physical environment; religious and political systems; and sub-groups within communities, sorted by race, class, and gender. It introduces historical and other interpretive methodologies using both primary and secondary source materials.

This is a remixed version of World History: Culture, States, and Societies to 1500 by Berger, et al. It's a textbook suitable for the World History survey. I have reorganized the text in order to provide a more globally integrated narrative. Each chapter invites students to compare and contrast developments across regions during a period of time.

This version of the book retains the text of the original but with updated references to chapters. I verified and, if necessary, updated links to online resources. In cases where the exact illustration used in the original version was not available, I have substituted equivalent ones. I also created and edited segues and other “connective tissue” as well to (hopefully) ensure that this version of the book reads as smoothly as the original.

Additional changes include:

More concise lists of “key terms” in each chapter
Expanded coverage of the Persian Empire
Expanded coverage of the end of the Yuan Dynasty
Added brief overview of the early Ming Dynasty including the voyages of Zheng He
Work on this adaption was generously sponsored by a grant from Michigan Colleges Online, a project of the Michigan Community College Association.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Asia has 365 million elderly people, and this population is expected to reach 520 million by 2030 Asian countries also had the highest rates of dementia in the 2015 World Alzheimer Report Because the risks of dementia and hypertension - which are related - increase with age, Asia is facing a troubling trend in its aging population The HOPE Asia Network conducted a much-needed review of hypertension and dementia in Asia They found that Asians had low awareness of hypertension as a major risk factor for brain damage and compared to developed countries, Asian countries had poorer hypertension management The HOPE Network emphasized the importance of controlling blood pressure variability to preserve cognitive functions by reducing vascular dementia risk and global stroke burden and suggested that Asia must focus on detecting hypertension and lowering blood pressure in midlife to protect against later-life cognitive decline in its growing elderly population Turana et al..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.