For a global history of ideas

The processes of globalization lead to a certain degree of uniformity. But it is easy to overestimate the extent of this uniformity, and hence the extent of the control that any one entity can exercise over the human world. Some theorists of world or global history propose histories that aspire to introduce us to a past that we all share. In the present paper, however, it is proposed that a more important task of large-scale history (and perhaps also of small-scale history) is to lead the consumers of that history to the recognition (although almost certainly not to a full understanding) of differences.