I would like to know more about world history and how it helped shape the world today. I was blissfully unaware about the historical events of this world and quite frankly believed they were unimportant. Long story short, I have realised how much of a neanderthal I was. I know now how much fo the history taught to me at highschool was as much on the surface as it was largely unreliable, I,personally want to learn about key events which led to the birth of racism,fascism, slavery , terrorism, police brutality, totalitarian governments,corruption etc.
I have already viewed the following thread and have learned alot
However, I have two questions :
The commenters in the aforementioned thread advised on reading journals, but what exactly should I search for ? What should my search terms look like ?
To what degree is this sub's resource list helpful to get me off to a good and accurate start ?
Any form of help will be massively appreciated.
to be honest, as a fan of history I start with a mainstream published work and work my way through its citations, repeat the process for the works I like and move topics as I see fit.
My areas of interest are
post Nixon china Assyrian dynasties native American migration patterns, language development & trade
Don't call yourself a neanderthal! That's selling yourself short!
I,personally want to learn about key events which led to the birth of racism,fascism, slavery , terrorism, police brutality, totalitarian governments,corruption etc.
The first thing that I would think about is that there are not necessarily specific events that led to these things coming about. Rather, they are the result of long-term processes that slowly develop and interact.
Honestly, though, if you don't know that much about world history at the moment, buy yourself a college world history textbook covering the period since 1500 (most world history classes are divided between 1500 and the present and everything before 1500, which is a little ridiculous, but that's neither here nor there). I have assigned both Worlds together Worlds Apart and Ways of the World. They're both good, I personally like the former a bit more. Yes, these textbooks can be dry, but they are comprehensive and the speak in terms of processes. From there, you can explore other topics by looking at more specific articles. You could buy an older edition on the cheap.
If you have access to a public university (or a private one for that matter, but public universities tend to be more accessible to the general population), go and check out the Cambridge World History. They're pretty heavy reference works and are thus expensive, but any research institution should have them. They may only have online access, but that means you may be able to print off chapters. They have more thematic chapters (which is different from other Cambridge Histories, but they're all good), like slavery and colonization, communism and fascism as radical political ideologies. In all honesty, you are always better off by actually going into a university library and using the internet less (despite what many of my students assume :/). Yeah, there is some nice content out there, the Crash Course videos come to mind, but go a university library; many will be abandoned this time of year as students will be gone for the holidays.