The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History

The Anthropocene refers to an age of history in which the scale of human activity has substantially altered Earth’s surface, atmosphere, oceans, and nutrient cycling. Some scholars place its origins in the period when human agriculture began, while a growing group of scholars agree that it began in the 1950s. This text uses the term in the Introduction, identifying the Anthropocene as a “new era of earth history [...] in which our actions are the most important factor in biological evolution, and in several of the planet’s biogeochemical flows and geological processes” (7-8). Though the phrase most important suggests that the authors fall within the latter group of scholars, they discuss human impact on the environment beginning in the Paleolithic Era.

A policy of economic independence or self-reliance, autarky is the focus of Part 7, which describes economic disintegration in the 20th century. Numerous countries, including the USSR, Italy, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Japan, adopted autarkic policies in response to the economic stresses brought on by World War I. Autarky related to the rise of nationalism and expansionism in the 20th century and thus played a precipitating role in World War II.

The text introduces the term cosmopolitan web in the Introduction when outlining the types of webs that emerged over human history. The term refers to the network connecting peoples, polities, economies, and cultures around the globe. It began forming in the 15th century when oceanic navigation connected the Old World and the American Web. The cosmopolitan web is the focus of Part 6, which discusses the human web between 1450 and 1800. The cosmopolitan web was initially characterized by European dominance in the global order, but the balance of power shifted after World War II when the US became a global superpower.

In the context of The Human Web, decolonization refers to the creation of new nation-states as people within certain borders established political independence from imperial powers. In Part 8, the text identifies three bursts of decolonization during the 20th century that created more than 100 new nation-states and ended the Age of Empire. The authors position decolonization as a consequence of world wars, growing nationalism, and diffusion of information through the cosmopolitan web. In addition, they note its role in transforming global power dynamics where weaker, newly independent nation-states become increasingly subordinate to older, more powerful nation-states.

Nonrenewable energy sources, such as coal, coal products, natural gas, and petroleum, fossil fuels were formed in the geological past from the remains of plants and animals. Fossil fuels are a point of discussion in Part 7, which highlights the Industrial Revolution, the use of coal, and humans’ transformation into a high-energy society. Part 8 emphasizes the 20th century and humans’ transition to big oil usage. Fossil fuel usage is one of the primary ways that humans have significantly impacted the environment.

The process of interaction, integration, and interdependence of people, businesses, and governments worldwide, globalization involves relaxing barriers to the flow of people, goods, information, capital, businesses, and services across national borders. Because globalization is essentially the process that expansion and tightening of webs enables, it is the overarching theme of the text. While parts 1-5 detail the development of smaller webs that eventually merged to create the global web, Part 6 examines how globalization took shape and defined the power dynamics that continue today. Parts 7 and 8 describe the acceleration of the globalization process via new energy sources and political currents.

The term imperialism refers to a political system in which nations maintain and extend power over other countries via military and/or diplomatic means. Imperialism also refers to rule by an emperor. The term appears in Part 3 in describing the emergence of Chinese civilization and the development of bureaucracy in response to constant political-military upheavals. Imperialism characterized many governments up to the 20th century when World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and decolonization movements ended the Age of Empire and ushered in new forms of political inequality between strong and weak nations.

The text refers to metropolitan webs as “interactions connecting cities to agricultural and pastoral hinterlands, and to one another” (4). Metropolitan webs are the focus of Part 3, which describes the rise of cities and civilizations in Sumer, Egypt, India, China, Greece, and Rome. In the Introduction, the authors highlight the tendency of metropolitan webs to grow and attribute this tendency to their advantages for participants, pursuit of self-interests by leaders, and improved communication and transport technologies. The authors support these assertions in parts 4 and 5 by illustrating how different metropolitan webs merged into the Old World Web.

Referring to “the sense of solidarity among people who believe themselves a nation” (227), the term nationalism is a focus of Part 6 and 7. Nationalism played a key role in altering the global political order because it prompted the emergence of the nation-state as the basic unit of global politics and conferred greater sovereignty to states that effectively solidified their populations under a national identity. Nationalism was integral to the period of global disintegration because it provided the underlying basis for world wars and autarkic policies that greatly hindered the flow of trade, people, ideas, and information across national borders.