I have realised that the “world history” that I studied in Romania is very eurocentric. I’m not talking about specialized studies, but rather about the general knowledge given by highschool.
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Basically, the other continents are mentioned a lot less, and usually through the eyes of the Europeans that made contact with them (e.g. trade with Italian city states, colonised by European powers, etc.).
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The best examples are old and rich cultures, like China and India. I don’t remember them appearing in our text books before the 14th or 15th century. I realise this is when the Europeans of the time learnt about them. But \*we\* are now aware that they thrived long long long before that… 🙂
The US might be the exception, with a few pages for each important event.
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Don’t get me wrong, Europeans aren’t indiscriminately portrayed like the good guys.
But this creates a very warped feeling that nothing of note happened in the world, outside of Europe.
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In Germany, we don’t strictly distinguish between world history and national history.
But what you describe is absolutely true, other continents are mainly covered when they got in contact with the Europeans.
I guess the idea behin it was to discuss developments that really influenced European societies to understand how we became what we are today.
But I agree, it would be nice to learn more about non-European societies even if it’s not directly related to Europe.
We don’t distinguish between Dutch history and world history here but yeah, when i went to school the history of (western) Europe received a lot more attention than that of the rest of the world. I understand why though, covering the history of the whole world in sufficient detail would take up way too much time so we have to stick with what was relevant for the Netherlands. But the choice of what was included and what wasn’t was sometimes pretty arbitrary, for example when it came to Middle Eastern history we learnt about the rise of islam and the Arab caliphates, but the Ottoman Empire received barely any attention.
Edit: minor spelling mistakes
We start history classes in 5th grade, start with cavemen, then go in chronological order from there (kinda), of course, ancient societies and such are just one or two chapters, europen history is a lot more detailed, especially hungarian history, but we do lear a tiny bit about most major events even outside of europe. The problem is, we reset in 9th grade and learn the same things again in highschool that we did in elementary, so it’s not very effective. History lessons end at the end of WW2, there is some material on history after that, but there is just not enough time to cover it.
Actually, most chapters are not fully covered in class, there is way too many. It sucks.
We didn’t have a “world history” class, just history. And yes, it was mainly European history, with a clear focus on Italian history particularly. Some historical events about other countries in Europe were disccused in depth, other just mentioned. Mostly regarding nowadays Spain/Portugal/France/Germany/UK.
As for world history, sometimes we had classes “during the same years in China/India/… this and that happened”, but just enough to cover the basics. A bit more about about American history, but not much, I remember that the independence war was covered in maybe a couple of classes, but as a way to indroduce (among other things) the French Revolution. American Civil war was really a side note, and I guess it is normal because happened in the same years Italy was undergoing its unification, which was deemed more important. Even the 20th century history was Italian-centric, but the focus was necessarly broader.
We haven’t learned much about world history, just the local history. From ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia to the end of WWI and the founding of the Turkish Republic. We were taught pretty much nothing else. There were brief mentions of the discovery of the new world by the Europeans and some other events but nothing too detailed.
Practically nothing. At least in my memory (>25 years ago). Practically all history subjects were on Dutch and western-European history, except for maybe some 2nd half 20th century stuff like Vietnam. Considering the limited time available and sheer amount of subjects to chose from, I can understand it to some extend, but it’s just mindblowing how little we learned about the Chinese dynasties.
We just had a class called “history” in secondary school. For some reason we learned A LOT about France.
1st year: prehistory, Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt and things like that
2nd year: Old Greeks and Romans and a bit about the Celts in our area
3rd year: Middle Ages, mainly about Western Europe and especially France, renaissance, a bit about the Islamic Golden Age, Black Death
4th year: Age of Discovery, colonisation of the Americas, 80-Years War, Dutch Golden Age, spice and slave trades
5th year: French Revolution, Belgian Revolution, a bit about the American Revolution, Industrial Revolution, WW1, Interbellum, and we wanted to do the Russian Revolution but there wasn’t enough time
6th year: WW2, Cold War including the Korean and Vietnam War, evolution of the EU, fall of communism, Post-industrial Revolution