John E. Wills's The World from 1450 to 1700 is a fascinating read. Part of the New Oxford World History, the book aims to offer readers an “informed, lively and up-to-date” (p. xi) new world history. Three goals are to be achieved: first, to offer a comprehensive world history, covering all regions of the world and investigating the total human experience—even those living far from the great civilizations; second, to demonstrate the “connectedness and interactions of all kinds—cultural, economic, political religious, and social—involving peoples, places, and processes” (p. xii); and third, to present local histories in a global context and provide an overview of world events from the eyes of ordinary people. Wills certainly is to be commended for achieving all three goals successfully.
Wills kicks off the book by telling a riveting story of six hundred Spaniards who traveled from southern Spain to the New World, drawing on the account of one Spanish survivor, Cabeza de Vaca. Having arrived near Tampa Bay in April 1528, the Spaniards strove hard to feed themselves; yet by February 1529, only fifteen were alive. The local Native American peoples took the newcomers into their settlements, shared food with them, and insisted that the Spaniards share their work of gathering and hunting. Wills purposefully starts here to tell us about the world because he wants us to remember the people who were far off on the margins of the big changes. As Wills puts it, “History is made by the changes and choices of the most ordinary, even obscure, people, not just great men and women” (p. 6).
Chapter 1 concerns the expansion of the world of Islam from 1450 to 1490. Starting from the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman forces, the chapter moves to other Muslim gunpowder empires, the Safavid in Iran and the Mughal in India. Then it covers the activities of merchants in expanding Islam in Southeast Asia. The author shows that the Islamic strategies for living among other people yet, at the same time, maintaining their own integrity contributed much to link peoples of the vast Islamic world together.
Chapter 2 focuses on a different kind of connection, the connection between Europe and the rest of the world, which was mainly achieved by the Spanish and Portugal maritime voyages from 1490 to 1530. The Spanish conquered major pieces of North and South America, while the Portuguese sailed around Africa and across the Indian Ocean and got their foothold in South America. Columbus and Vasco da Gama were catalysts of big processes that linked the continents; brought silver, spices, and sugar to Europe; and opened up a world in which Italian Jesuits and Chinese scholars could learn from each other.
Chapter 3 addresses the transformations of religious and moral life around world from 1530 to 1570. Many people were dissatisfied with the religious and moral life around them. Europeans wanted a renaissance of ancient Greece and Rome, a purification of Christianity. Asians sought a personal vision of the god Krishna or a pure way to become sages themselves, like the ancient teacher Confucius and the sage kings he revered. All of these movements were the creation of men who were well educated in their great textual traditions, yet at the same time, they all struggled to free themselves from simply accumulating erudition and to focus on an individual understanding of the classics.
Chapter 4 lays out the new shapes of power taking place from 1570 to 1610. The idea that profit and power could support each other gained precedence during this time. From Japan, to England, from the Low Countries in modern Belgium to the Dutch independent states, from Vietnam to Venice and Genoa, commercial elites were gaining increasing power while state-sponsored trades flourished. Trade and armed struggle reinforced each other and gradually changed the power configuration of many states.
Chapter 5 deals with settlers and diasporas in the world from 1610 to 1640 and shows that settler societies, diaspora communities, Creole societies speaking Spanish and Portuguese, and Muslim communities all faced the common challenge of keeping the old ways, the old faith, the old language, in new and alien worlds.
In chapter 6, Wills writes on the troubled period from 1640 to 1670, when several parts of the world that had been loosely interconnected with each other all suffered through years of war, rebellion, and plague. Ming China faced large-scale rebellions, Europe suffered from the Thirty Years' War, Great Britain witnessed the execution of the king, and Russia fettled with Cossack revolts.
Chapter 7 shows that peace came after chaos and the world moved toward its early modern stage. By 1700, the lives of the majority of people in the world had been drastically changed by the web of interaction and exchange. The new connections opened up people's minds, new technologies and ideas floated around the globe, changing people's values and their understanding of the world.
This reviewer believes that Wills has achieved admirably in The World from 1450 to 1700 by delivering an “informed, lively and up-to-date” new world history. All three goals that the New Oxford World History series aims at are accomplished. In each chapter, Wills offers a comprehensive world history and pays particular attention to those living far from the great civilizations. In each chapter, he makes comparisons and finds similarities, always using a common theme to encompass various countries and regions. In each chapter, he tells lively local stories yet always provides the global context for his stories. All of these broaden and deepen our historical understanding of the world as a whole.
The organization is well thought-out. The World from 1450 to 1700 is both chronologically and thematically organized, and Wills uses one theme to cover a time span of about forty years. Again, the reason that Wills chooses to organize a chapter thematically is to help bring all different places together and allow readers to make comparisons. Without saying, the theme is very difficult to choose because it conceptualizes what was happening in that forty years across the globe. For almost all of the chapters, Wills's organization works well because his themes conceptualize the history of that forty years across the globe well. However, for chapter 6, the theme “Time of Troubles” feels like an artificial thesis. The troubles experienced by different peoples in different areas were rather disparate, and it is hard to make a real in-depth comparison using “Time of Troubles” as a theme. Chapter 6 reminds this reviewer of a somewhat “old world history,” that is, talking about different places and peoples separately without really addressing their connections. Of course, one can only imagine how hard it must be to come up with an organizing framework for world history. And this reviewer strongly believes that Wills has done a fabulous job in terms of organization.
The book contains a number of maps, a much-needed chronology, useful information on further readings and websites, and a very good index. If some navigation maps could be added to chapter 2, it would be a plus. In sum, historian John Wills has delivered a fascinating book, and it is definitely recommended for teaching world history.
