My homeschooler wife is hoping to find world history written not by colonisers (forgive the politicized shorthand). But she's having a hard time googling. I'm wondering if you guys could help us figure out the best search terms to find this sort of stuff. Thanks!
I suppose some of it depends on what age/level the book is for?
I don't think it entirely addresses what you are looking for, but I still use "Traditions and Encounters" when I use a textbook at all. The two original authors were western academics, but I would hazard that their location in Hawai'i and the history of the World History program there lends itself to a much broader and diverse portrayal of World History than what you might find in a textbook that is really just Western Civ repackaged as World History (which I'm guessing is what you are trying to avoid?). As a textbook it is very much focused on the idea of encounter and interconnectivity between peoples and locations as drivers of historical change. Reflecting the work of the original authors, a lot of that is centered around bodies of water and trade routes. Additionally, the expanded reading sections at the end of chapter provides a good place to look for further information. It's not a perfect textbook-- I'm not even sure such a thing exists-- but it is useful scaffolding around which to organize a course.
Ultimately, if you don't have to do World History, I would focus on local history. I find it is easiest to build from the local to the global, so even if you do have to do World History always look for ways to tie things back to what is around you. History is more meaningful when you can observe it, or its effects on society, culture or the landscape and environment around you. So when I organize my World History courses I am very conscious of making sure that students can find themselves in the story and that whenever possible we tie ideas, philosophies, architecture, etc. to our local community and things that students see outside of the classroom.
If you want to go further into the weeds of world history, here are some suggestions of places to look which explain both the history of subject and non-western challenges to it. Accessing some of these might be trickier without an institutional library, so YMMV. They might also not be useful if you are just looking to construct a very basic course, some of them are geared very much toward the philosophy of history, how world history can be/is constructed, and whether its worth having it at all.
Allardyce explains lays out the genealogy for modern World History, this can be useful for understanding how the subject has changed and shifted over the last century. Though his piece is 30 years old, it provides a useful window into some of the larger questions and concerns of the subject, including issues of 'progressive/western" bias in World History (ie; that world history is the story of progress and centered on the western world as the source of progress), as well as the movement away from simply focusing on "civilizations" as separate units, to more inclusive approaches that focus on ideas, technologies, philosophies, cross-cultural contact as more meaningful and important.
The lead author to the textbook I mentioned, the late Bentley argued strongly that World History was most useful when it focused on the sea and the ocean as a means to organize topics. So for example, if you want to understand Rome, its useful, especially on a macro scale, to place it in the Mediterranean and understand interactions across the entire aquatic world. So rather than cutting places up by continents and organizing by landmasses, you organize your study around the Indian Ocean as a whole, or the Red Sea, or Mediterranean, etc.
Effectively Kebede argues that History is a bundle of Eurocentric conventions as to how the past is viewed and understood. In particular lines of study that focus on European nations as somehow normative and grade everything else based on how much it looks like Europe, as well as lines of historical construction that focus on the idea of progress and therefore mark some societies as "not progressing" or even regressing. To an extent, his argument is very much that history is best when it is locally constructed and not imposed from outside-- to that end, the article very much argues against the very idea of World History as it will always be, no matter who writes it, a history imposed by the outside on someone.
An interesting piece that argues for alternative genealogies of World History, effectively arguing that in the 16th century there were individuals writing and thinking about the history of the world outside of Europe. Indeed, Subrahmanyan argues counter to the last reading I mentioned that World history is not a western exercise or an analytical tool gifted from the west-- or imposed by it-- rather world history is a universal exercise and one that has been developing across the world for centuries.
This piece argues that a unified history of the world is not possible-- it will always be exclusionary. World History requires universal categories even as the creation of categories blurs out the differences between things in the category that are important for understanding the diversity of historical trajectories. Yet, because there are no truly universal categories that can be used to meaningfully divide up world history, there can be no single unified story or point of view.