No abstract

Baumard's new explanation of the Industrial Revolution shows that Life History Theory holds great potential. Here, I suggest two related hypotheses for examination. One is that there are long-term roots of slow life traits and preferences. The other is that Life History Theory can explain other aspects of economic modernity such as the Scientific Revolution and bureaucratic states. If so, then Life History Theory offers a way to reconcile several bodies of evidence and lines of explanation into a coherent general account of economic modernity.

Over the last two decades, a trend of multiculturalism in world history has enjoyed a largely uncontested rise to prominence. Its main aim has been to challenge Eurocentrism. Its main achievement is to have issued a corrective in early modern economic history: prior to the industrial revolution, there were numerous economic parallels between Europe and Asia, particularly China. But multicultural world history is now under greater scrutiny and challenge for marginalizing the West and downplaying numerous non-economic divergences of the West. In response, a post-multicultural world history is now emerging. Its most important work so far is Ricardo Duchesne's The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (2011). The main achievement of post-multicultural world history is to have established that there were numerous critical noneconomic divergences between Europe and other regions. The West was both peculiar and inventive across many domains.

No abstract

Discontinuism is an approach to thinking about macrohistory and large-scale change. This essay analyses and evaluates it, the first sustained investigation of discontinuism. Two forms or models of discontinuism are distinguished: a strong and a moderate version. It is proposed that the strong discontinuist model of history emphasizes the recency, shallow-roots, sudden appearance, distinctness, and likely impersistence of core features of the contemporary world. Examples of strong discontinuism are discussed in classical thought as well in relation to recent thinking about the macrohistory of nations, territoriality, the great divergence or rise of the West, and the international system. It is argued that strong discontinuism is flawed and untenable but moderate discontinuism is viable.