Until a few months ago, I had never heard of William McNeill, a historian who died in 2016 at the age of 98. In my class in world history, I came across his book The Rise of the West, an 828-page volume published in 1963.[1] Not only did it receive the prestigious National Book Award in 1964, but it was extremely successful—even a popular Christmas gift. For historians, its significance is that it expanded thinking about world history away from a narrow view based on Europe and the United States.
That accomplishment is ironic because the book itself, a wonderful treasure trove of information about the entire world, looks somewhat old-fashioned and out of date now. But it’s still fascinating.
The title would never fly today. The Rise of the West sounds like just what McNeill was combating: Eurocentrism. His narrative starts with the origins of humans in the African savannahs and ends in the year 1917 with the Russian Revolution). It unabashedly celebrates the “era of Western dominance,” which began around 1500 and hadn’t ended by the book’s conclusion (or, for that matter, by the end of McNeill’s life).
