Journal of World History
This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Journal of World History | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Title | Journal of World History |
| Discipline | History |
| Language | English |
| Abbreviation | J. World Hist. |
| Publisher | University of Hawaiʻi Press |
| Country | United States |
| History | 1990–present |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| Issn | 1045-6007 |
Journal of World History is a peer-reviewed academic periodical established to promote comparative and transnational scholarship on historical processes across Eurasia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. It emphasizes longue durée connections among regions such as China, India, Europe, Africa, Mesoamerica, and Southeast Asia and engages debates associated with scholars from Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein to Yuval Noah Harari and Jared Diamond. The journal has intersected with major historiographical trends linked to World-systems theory, Annales School, Globalization (history), Postcolonialism, and research shaped by archives in Ottoman Empire, Ming dynasty, British Empire, Spanish Empire, and Russian Empire.
History
The journal was founded in 1990 under the imprint of the University of Hawaiʻi Press during a period of growing interest following conferences like those at Hawaii and programs at institutions such as University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Harvard University, University of Chicago, Stanford University, and University of Cambridge. Early editorial alliances connected scholars who studied the Silk Road, Indian Ocean, Trans-Saharan trade, and the Columbian Exchange, drawing contributions from historians versed in sources from Tang dynasty, Song dynasty, Mughal Empire, Safavid Empire, and Aztec Empire. Over successive editorial terms the journal responded to paradigm shifts prompted by publications such as The Modern World-System and conferences at Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association and World History Association gatherings.
Scope and Editorial Focus
The journal prioritizes comparative, connected, and global approaches to histories of regions including East Asia, South Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and Eastern Europe. It solicits work on themes that cross traditional boundaries, such as migrations like the Bantu expansion and Atlantic slave trade, environmental histories involving Little Ice Age and Dust Bowl (United States), and technological circulations exemplified by the diffusion of the printing press, compass, gunpowder, and steam engine. Contributors often engage primary sources from archives in Vatican Apostolic Archive, National Archives (United Kingdom), Bibliothèque nationale de France, and National Archives and Records Administration. The editorial remit has embraced interdisciplinary intersections with scholars influenced by Fernand Braudel, Eric Hobsbawm, Jürgen Osterhammel, and Sven Beckert.
Publication and Editorial Board
Published quarterly by the University of Hawaiʻi Press, the journal has featured editors and board members drawn from universities such as Princeton University, Columbia University, Yale University, University of California, Berkeley, Australian National University, National University of Singapore, and Peking University. Advisory and editorial boards have included specialists in premodern and modern worlds connected to research on Byzantine Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Tokugawa shogunate, Qing dynasty, Ottoman Empire, Hapsburg Monarchy, and Maya civilization. Peer review adheres to standards common to journals indexed alongside titles like The Journal of Asian Studies, American Historical Review, Past & Present, and Comparative Studies in Society and History.
Abstracting and Indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in major bibliographic services that collect scholarship alongside Scopus, Web of Science, Project MUSE, JSTOR, and EBSCOhost. Its articles appear in citation databases used by scholars working with metrics from Clarivate Analytics and repositories curated by institutions such as Library of Congress and Bibliothèque nationale de France. Coverage facilitates discoverability for research on events like the Industrial Revolution, Age of Exploration, Great Divergence, and historiographies tied to the Cold War and Decolonization.
Reception and Impact
Scholars in global and comparative history communities—participants at meetings of the World History Association, American Historical Association, and Royal Historical Society—frequently cite the journal for articles that reshape debates on connectivity, empire, and cross-cultural exchange. Reviews in venues such as Reviews in History and citations in monographs published by presses like Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Harvard University Press, and Princeton University Press indicate its influence on curricular syllabi and doctoral research. The journal has informed public-facing syntheses found in works discussing globalization, narratives of the Anthropocene, and reinterpretations of events like the Black Death and Columbian Exchange.
Notable Articles and Special Issues
Notable contributions have addressed comparative topics including syncretism in the Atlantic World, merchant networks of the Indian Ocean, state formation in the Ming dynasty and Safavid Empire, and environmental transformations linked to the Little Ice Age and Industrial Revolution. Special issues have concentrated on themes such as the Silk Road, diasporic communities including the Chinese diaspora and African diaspora, and methodological debates prompted by the works of Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein. Articles cited in landmark bibliographies engage cases like the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Mongol Empire expansions, and comparative slave systems across Caribbean and Atlantic World.
Access and Format
The journal appears in print and electronic formats distributed by the University of Hawaiʻi Press and aggregated by platforms comparable to Project MUSE and JSTOR. Libraries with holdings in collections at institutions such as the British Library, Library of Congress, Bodleian Library, and National Library of China provide subscription access, while individual subscribers and members of scholarly societies like the World History Association and American Historical Association may obtain personal subscriptions. Archival indexing ensures continuity for researchers tracing citations across repositories managed by ProQuest, EBSCO, and national archives.
Category:Academic journals Category:History journals Category:Quarterly journals