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The first textbook to present world history via social history, drawing on social science methods and research. This interdisciplinary, comprehensive and comparative textbook is authored by distinguished scholars and experienced teachers, and offers expert scholarship on global history that is ideal for undergraduate students. Volume 1 takes us from the origin of hominids to ancient civilizations, the rise of empires, and the Middle Ages. The book pays particular attention to the ways in which ordinary people lived through the great changes of their times, and how everyday experience connects to great political events and the commercial exchanges of an interconnected world. With 65 maps, 45 illustrations, timelines, boxes, and primary source extracts, the book moves students easily from particular historical incidents to broader perspectives, enabling them to use historical material and social science methodologies to analyze the events of the past, present and future.

Inequality, institutions and economic growth in Latin AmericaThis essay examines three recent historical approaches to the political economy of Latin America's relative economic backwardness. All three locate the origins of contemporary underdevelopment in defective colonial institutions linked to inequality. The contrasting view offered here affirms the significance of institutional constraints, but argues that they did not arise from colonial inequalities, but from the adaptation of Iberian practices to the American colonies under conditions of imperial weakness. Colonial inequality varied across the Americas; while it was not correlated with colonial economic performance, it mattered because it determined the extent of elite resistance to institutional modernization after independence. The onset of economic growth in the mid to late nineteenth century brought economic elites to political power, but excluding majorities as inequality increased restrained the region's twentieth-century growth rates and prevented convergence ; En el presente ensayo se examinan tres enfoques históricos recientes sobre la economía política del atraso económico relativo de América Latina. Los tres enfoques sitúan el origen del subdesarrollo contemporáneo en instituciones coloniales defectuosas ligadas a la desigualdad. La visión contrastante que se ofrece aquí reafirma la importancia de las limitaciones institucionales, pero argumenta que estas no surgieron de las desigualdades coloniales, sino de la adaptación de las prácticas ibéricas a las colonias americanas bajo condiciones de debilidad imperial. La desigualdad colonial variaba en las Américas; no obstante, no estuvo correlacionada con el desempeño económico y fue significativa porque determinó la extensión de la resistencia de las elites a la modernización institucional de la Independencia. El comienzo del crecimiento económico desde la mitad y hasta fines del siglo XIX llevó a las elites económicas al poder político, pero al excluir a las mayorías, a la par que la desigualdad se incrementaba, restringió las tasas de crecimiento económico de la región durante el siglo XX e impidió la convergencia.

AbstractThis essay examines three recent historical approaches to the political economy of Latin America's relative economic backwardness. All three locate the origins of contemporary underdevelopment in defective colonial institutions linked to inequality. The contrasting view offered here affirms the significance of institutional constraints, but argues that they did not arise from colonial inequalities, but from the adaptation of Iberian practices to the American colonies under conditions of imperial weakness. Colonial inequality varied across the Americas; while it was not correlated with colonial economic performance, it mattered because it determined the extent of elite resistance to institutional modernisation after independence. The onset of economic growth in the mid to late nineteenth century brought economic elites to political power, but excluding majorities as inequality increased restrained the region's twentieth-century growth rates and prevented convergence.

This 2006 conference paper examines the history of successful U.S. efforts to overturn incumbent governments in the Western Hemisphere between 1898 to 2004.

The trend toward increasing public and governmental support for human rights norms and institutions in much of the world, including most of Latin America, contrasts with the current drift of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. If current trends continue, human rights could become a significant arena of contention between the United States and its neighbors.

A discussion of the causes of, and challenges presented by, high levels of endemic violence in Colombia.