Human Rights in World History (Themes in World History)

While Enlightenment philosophers suggest a secular social contract between the rulers and the ruled, ancient traditions derived similar conclusions from notions of divine law , and, in Hellenistic philosophy , natural law.

The reforms of Urukagina of Lagash , the earliest known legal code ca. Professor Norman Yoffee wrote that after Igor M. Diakonoff "most interpreters consider that Urukagina, himself not of the ruling dynasty at Lagash, was no reformer at all. Indeed, by attempting to curb the encroachment of a secular authority at the expense of temple prerogatives, he was, if a modern term must be applied, a reactionary.

Several other sets of laws were also issued in Mesopotamia , including the Code of Hammurabi ca.

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It shows rules, and punishments if those rules are broken, on a variety of matters, including women's rights , men's rights , children's rights and slave rights. The Northeast African civilization of Ancient Egypt [5] supported basic human rights. Some historians suggest that the Achaemenid Persian Empire of ancient Iran established unprecedented principles of human rights in the 6th century BC under Cyrus the Great. After his conquest of Babylon in BC, the king issued the Cyrus cylinder , discovered in and seen by some today as the first human rights document.

In opposition to the above viewpoint, the interpretation of the Cylinder as a " charter of human rights" has been dismissed by other historians and characterized by some others as political propaganda devised by the Pahlavi regime. Daniel has described such an interpretation as "rather anachronistic " and tendentious. Many thinkers point to the concept of citizenship beginning in the early poleis of ancient Greece, where all free citizens had the right to speak and vote in the political assembly. The Twelve Tables Law established the principle "Privilegia ne irroganto", which literally means "privileges shall not be imposed".

A declaration for religious tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the Edicts of Ashoka , which emphasize the importance of tolerance in public policy by the government. The slaughter or capture of prisoners of war was also condemned by Ashoka. In ancient Rome a ius or jus was a right which a citizen was due simply by dint of his citizenship. The concept of a Roman ius is a precursor to a right as conceived in the Western European tradition. The word " justice " is derived from ius.

Historians generally agree that Muhammad preached against what he saw as the social evils of his day, [18] and that Islamic social reforms in areas such as social security , family structure, slavery , and the rights of women and ethnic minorities were intended to improve on what was present in existing Arab society at the time. It constituted a formal agreement between Muhammad and all of the significant tribes and families of Yathrib later known as Medina , including Muslims , Jews , and pagans.

To this effect it instituted a number of rights and responsibilities for the Muslim, Jewish and pagan communities of Medina bringing them within the fold of one community-the Ummah. If the prisoners were in the custody of a person, then the responsibility was on the individual. The position of the Arabian slave was "enormously improved": Esposito states that reforms in women's rights affected marriage , divorce and inheritance.

Sociologist Robert Bellah Beyond belief argues that Islam in its 7th-century origins was, for its time and place, "remarkably modern Dale Eickelman writes that Bellah suggests "the early Islamic community placed a particular value on individuals, as opposed to collective or group responsibility. Magna Carta is an English charter originally issued in which influenced the development of the common law and many later constitutional documents, such as the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Magna Carta required the King to renounce certain rights, respect certain legal procedures and accept that his will could be bound by the law.

It explicitly protected certain rights of the King's subjects, whether free or fettered—most notably the writ of habeas corpus , allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment. For modern times, the most enduring legacy of Magna Carta is considered the right of habeas corpus. This right arises from what are now known as clauses 36, 38, 39, and 40 of the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta also included the right to due process:. The conquest of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries by Spain, during the Age of Discovery , resulted in vigorous debate about human rights in Colonial Spanish America.

It is believed that reports from the Dominicans in Hispaniola motivated the Spanish Crown to act.

What is World History?

Several 17th- and 18th-century European philosophers, most notably John Locke , developed the concept of natural rights , the notion that people are naturally free and equal. Lockean natural rights did not rely on citizenship nor any law of the state, nor were they necessarily limited to one particular ethnic, cultural or religious group. Around the same time, in , the English Bill of Rights was created which asserted some basic human rights, most famously freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

In the s, the novel became a popular form of entertainment. Popular novels, such as Julie, or the New Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson , laid a foundation for popular acceptance of human rights by making readers empathize with characters unlike themselves. Two major revolutions occurred during the 18th century in the United States and in France The Virginia Declaration of Rights of sets up a number of fundamental rights and freedoms.

Not just goods, but also ideas and diseases accompanied traders, missionaries, and armies as they travelled these routes. A look at the Silk Road might take you to a specific caravan in Central Asia, where you might look at how Buddhist religious beliefs traveled, changed, and spread. World history involves thinking on different scales--zooming in and zooming out--and shifting focus. The questions of World History. Historians try to understand what happened in the past by asking questions. More specifically, historians ask particular kinds of questions:.

Type of historical question Example Contextualization What was the historical context for a specific historical development or process? How might the content of a historical document or artifact be affected by the circumstances in which it was created? Comparison How similiar were certain things? What differences existed between certain things?

Causation Why did something happen? What were the effects of something? Continuity and change What has stayed the same over time? How did something change over time? World historians ask these same kinds of questions—usually just on a broader scale!

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However, the different focus of each historian will lead them to ask questions about the Industrial Revolution on different scales. Data from Paul Bairoch "International industrialization levels from to An example of data cross countries and time periods to inform a world history question about industrialization. Both are perfectly good historical questions. The answers to these questions might even influence one another. But, only the latter question is world historical because it focuses on how the Industrial Revolution affected multiple regions over an extended period of time.

Studying the past in the present. Whatever type of historical study we are doing, it is important to remember that people who lived in the past faced different circumstances and had different values than you do. Historical questions are not about determining whether we today are better or worse than people who lived in the past. However, differences in values or behaviors between the past and present can spark historical inquiries.

For example, you might look at an event that seems surprising or controversial from our contemporary perspective. Henry Home, Lord Kames was a philosopher during the Enlightenment and contributed to the study or world history.

World history

Then, in order to form larger groups, humans transitioned into the second stage when they began to domesticate animals. The third stage was the development of agriculture. This new technology established trade and higher levels of cooperation amongst sizable groups of people. With the gathering of people into agricultural villages, laws and social obligations needed to be developed so a form of order could be maintained. The fourth, and final stage, involved humans moving into market towns and seaports where agriculture was not the focus. Instead, commerce and other forms of labor arouse in a society.

By defining the stages of human history, Homes influenced his successors. He also contributed to the development of other studies such as sociology and anthropology. World history became a popular genre in the 20th century with universal history. Influential writers who have reached wide audiences include H.

Wells , Oswald Spengler , Arnold J. Spengler's Decline of the West 2 vol — compared nine organic cultures: His book was a smashing success among intellectuals worldwide as it predicted the disintegration of European and American civilization after a violent "age of Caesarism," arguing by detailed analogies with other civilizations. It deepened the post-World War I pessimism in Europe, and was warmly received by intellectuals in China, India, and Latin America who hoped his predictions of the collapse of European empires would soon come true.

In —, Toynbee's ten-volume A Study of History came out in three separate installments. He followed Spengler in taking a comparative topical approach to independent civilizations.

Toynbee said they displayed striking parallels in their origin, growth, and decay. Toynbee rejected Spengler's biological model of civilizations as organisms with a typical life span of 1, years. Like Sima Qian , Toynbee explained decline as due to their moral failure. Many readers rejoiced in his implication in vols. Volumes 7—10, published in , abandoned the religious message, and his popular audience slipped away, while scholars picked apart his mistakes.

McNeill wrote The Rise of the West to improve upon Toynbee by showing how the separate civilizations of Eurasia interacted from the very beginning of their history, borrowing critical skills from one another, and thus precipitating still further change as adjustment between traditional old and borrowed new knowledge and practice became necessary. McNeill took a broad approach organized around the interactions of peoples across the Earth.

Such interactions have become both more numerous and more continual and substantial in recent times. Before about , the network of communication between cultures was that of Eurasia. The term for these areas of interaction differ from one world historian to another and include world-system and ecumene. Whatever it is called, the importance of these intercultural contacts has begun to be recognized by many scholars. Walter Wallbank and Alastair M.

World history - Wikipedia

With additional authors, this very successful work went through numerous editions up to the first decade of the twenty-first century. It attempted to include all the elements of history — social, economic, political, religious, aesthetic, legal, and technological. Dunn at San Diego State are leaders in promoting innovative teaching methods. In schools of architecture in the U. This reflects a decade-long effort to move past the standard Euro-centric approach that had dominated the field. In recent years, the relationship between African and world history has shifted rapidly from one of antipathy to one of engagement and synthesis.

Reynolds surveys the relationship between African and world histories, with an emphasis on the tension between the area studies paradigm and the growing world-history emphasis on connections and exchange across regional boundaries. A closer examination of recent exchanges and debates over the merits of this exchange is also featured.

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Reynolds sees the relationship between African and world history as a measure of the changing nature of historical inquiry over the past century. The theory divides the history of the world into the following periods: Regna Darnell and Frederic Gleach argue that, in the Soviet Union, the Marxian theory of history was the only accepted orthodoxy, and stifled research into other schools of thought on history.

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This article is about the academic field. For a global overview of historical events, see History of the world. For the album by Mad at the World, see World History album.