A First Global Geo-History Textbook for Students across Europe

This innovative textbook of Global History is written for 13-19 year old secondary school students and their teachers. It provides an innovative historic perspective that goes beyond nationalism and Eurocentrism. At the same time it “strengthens the construction of a cohesive and supportive Europe in relation to the rest of the world.” 

Many history textbooks focus on “the national citizen” and their homeland. Students are often not given tools to understand and take action on major global issues. Instead, this book explores the “profound interconnectedness that characterizes … the current historical context.” In addition to emphasising the interconnections between local and global, the authors highlight the links between economic, political and cultural factors, as well as between present, past and future.

Rather than focusing on names and dates - the textbooks explain global relationships, processes and changes that have influenced local events. It provides the sweep of world history in just three volumes:

1. Expanding Frontiers: from Foragers to Empires (70,000 BCE - 1000 CE)
2. Connecting Frontiers: from Empires to a Capitalist World Economy (1000 to 1870 CE)
3. Intensifying Frontiers: from a World of Nations to Global Capitalism (1870 - 21st century)

All volumes follow four themes-lenses, with which to view historical events, and ask “What great dynamics have driven the evolution of inequalities, migrations, and the relationship of humans with climatic-environmental changes?”   

1. Humans Change Nature (climate change)
2. Humans on the Move (migration)
3. Social Organisations and Inequalities
4. Worldviews (including religion)

Last but not least, the book(s) offer teaching strategies and tools from global citizenship education. The didactic tools include written documents, images, graphics and diagrams, and activities that entail changing perspectives and critical thinking. The geo-historical maps, which highlight the relationship between time and space, include exercises for collective, group or individual class or remote work. They can be used as an introduction or conclusion of learning units, or as a deepening tool to reflect on the various subjects of the textbooks.   

This theoretical-practical guide brings the themes and approaches of global citizenship into everyday teaching. The main authors are Eric Vanhaute, Professor of Global History at Ghent University in Belgium, and Claudia Bernardi, Professor at Roma Tre University in Italy. 

The Italian NGO CISP is the lead partner of the EU DEAR-funded projects, “It’s Global Education Time”, and its predecessor “Get Up and Goals”, which produced the books in 2021. 

Individual geo-history maps include:

1. Maps from 70,000 BCE - 1000 CE:

• Migration
• Birth of Capitalist Economy
• Matriarchal Societies

2. Maps from 1000 to 1870 CE:

• Environmental Exchange between the Old and New Worlds
• Euro-Afro-Asian Trade Systems
• Current biggest Cities and their Populations in the 19th century
• Colonisation of Africa

3. Maps from 1870 to the 21st century:

• Climate Migrants
• Plastic Soup
• Global production of Raw Materials: the case of Nutella
• European Oversea Migration (1846 - 1932)
• Global Consumption of Fuel Energy (19th CENTURY - 2016)

To view all the 30+ geo-historical maps, download the three volumes of maps.

Click the “It’s Global Education Time” pages below, for versions of the textbook(s) and maps in the following additional ten languages: