Until recently, historians viewed the past through the tools of the nineteenth century. However, globalization has fundamentally changed our ways of understanding, making it no longer possible to study nations in isolation or to perceive world history as emanating from the West. This book demonstrates why the discipline of global history has emerged as the most dynamic and innovative field of historical science—one that takes the interconnectedness of the world as its starting point and poses a fundamental challenge to the premises and methods of history as we know it. What is Global History? offers a comprehensive overview of this exciting new approach to history. The book addresses some of the biggest questions that the discipline will face in the twenty-first century.