Chris Harman, A people’s history of the world, Bookmarks Publications, London, Chicago & Sydney, 1999.
© Copyright Bookmarks Publications.
Republished by Verso, London & New York, 2009.
Note by MIA: Since this book has been only recently been republished, we are publishing only an extract here.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive (November 2009).
Chronology
Prologue: Before class
Chapter 1. The neolithic ‘revolution’
Chapter 2. The first civilisations
Chapter 3. The first class divisions
Chapter 4. Women’s oppression
Chapter 5. The first ‘Dark Ages’
Chronology
Chapter 1. Iron and empires
Chapter 2. Ancient India
Chapter 3. The first Chinese empires
Chapter 4. The Greek city states
Chapter 5. Rome’s rise and fall
Chapter 6. The rise of Christianity
Chronology
Chapter 1. The centuries of chaos
Chapter 2. China: the rebirth of the empire
Chapter 3. Byzantium: the living fossil
Chapter 4. The Islamic revolutions
Chapter 5. The African civilisations
Chapter 6. European feudalism
Chronology
Chapter 1. The conquest of the New Spain
Chapter 2. Renaissance to Reformation
Chapter 3. The birth pangs of a new order
Chapter 4. The last flowering of Asia’s empires
Chronology
Chapter 1. A time of social peace
Chapter 2. From superstition to science
Chapter 3. The Enlightenment
Chapter 4. Slavery and wage slavery
Chapter 5. Slavery and racism
Chapter 6. The economics of ‘free labour’
Chronology
Chapter 1. American prologue
Chapter 2. The French Revolution
Chapter 3. Jacobinism outside France
Chapter 4. The retreat of reason
Chapter 5. The industrial revolution
Chapter 6. The birth of Marxism
Chapter 7. 1848
Chapter 8. The American Civil War
Chapter 9. The conquest of the East
Chapter 10. The Japanese exception
Chapter 11. Storming heaven: The Paris Commune
Chronology
Chapter 1. The world of capital
Chapter 2. World war and world revolution
Chapter 3. Europe in turmoil
Chapter 4. Revolt in the colonial world
Chapter 5. The ‘Golden Twenties’
Chapter 6. The great slump
Chapter 7. Strangled hope: 1934-36
Chapter 8. Midnight in the century
Chapter 9. The Cold War
Chapter 10. The new world disorder
Last updated on 26 January 2010