Ending World History in 1763? | Hacker News Reader

Ending World History in 1763?

ageofrevolutions.com

19 pointsnonoobs11 comments

As an engineer, I'd divide history into pre-1830 and post-1830. In 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened. There were railroads before then, but they were experimental and niche systems. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the first real inter-city railway. All steam locomotives, no horses. Double track. Passengers and freight. Tickets and timetables. That was the moment the Industrial Revolution got out of beta.

Suddenly change sped up. Way up. For centuries before 1830, life looked about the same. Most people never traveled further than 50 miles from where they were born. Then, over the course of a lifetime, everything changed.

I'd say 1828 instead of 1830, just because that's the starting year of the England map for the original Railroad Tycoon [0].

[0]: https://railroad-tycoon.fandom.com/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Railro...

Or 1815, on the theory that Waterloo was a cusp that ended the Napoleonic wars, and freed enormous resources for infrastructure ... like rolling out the steam technology that was in vibrant development by Waterloo.

The decade or so after the Napoleonic wars was that great for Britain.

Unemployment was rising and food prices were so high that many people were on the verge of starvation (almost entirely due to political reasons). According to some Britain was close a French style revolution and the authorities cracked down very harshly on anyone advocating reform (see the Peterloo massacre and its aftermath).

Maybe the actual class is not like this, but in the writeup he comes across as so worried about not being too Eurocentric that he completely ignores it except as it relates to colonialism, slavery, racism, etc.

For example the entirety of the history of the US (according to the writeup anyway) is slavery, Jim Crow, and native Americans.

Fayetteville State has some pretty unique regional and demographic considerations to take into account, and specific issues concerning student engagement with this course matter.

Paragraphs 2-5 of the article are worth reading in this regard, e.g.

> Our students will be largely taking this course online, half of our students are over the age of 25, many are veterans or military-affiliated, many are from rural communities, and we are a regional public Historically Black University focused on improving student access to a college education.

and

> I started teaching World History to 1600 in Spring 2019 as a provost-led intervention in the core curriculum and gateway classes that had high rates of students receiving final grades of D or F or withdrawing from the course.

The article is a case study in local curriculum engineering, not a doctrinal proclamation.

cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years'_War#Outcomes

This seems to have odd auto-scrolling behavior which makes it impossible to read.

Also, of course, the title chosen ("Ending World History in 1763?") is deeply misleading and should be changed.

The source article title is quite appropriate in the context of the blog it appears in; presumably it's the HN-specific clickbait paraphrase that's being objected to...

I concur, and suggest "History Curriculum: Ending World History Part One in…1763?".

Yes, but... Why 1763 specifically?

It’s the end of the Seven Years’ War, and also the end of the textbook he’s using. I suspect the exact year isn’t all that important, but once you get to the American Revolution you’ve slipped into a beginning rather than an end.

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