A Research scheme for a world history of the world

Abstract

We propose a research scheme for a “world history of the world.” Our method provides the means of analyzing the networks, on a global scale if desired, that connected places and people in the context of the multiple political, legal and institutional regimes, local cultural environments, and disruptive events through which the connecting social networks passed. We propose the use of the computational advances of the artificial intelligence (AI) age. However, this article presents these advances in an introductory form designed for novices. In particular, we explain how historians can compensate for the lack of information needed to explain self-organization and emergence in the social networks of the planetary complex, nonlinear, human world-system of the First Global Age, 1400-1800. To fill the information lacunae, we propose the use agent-based modeling (ABM), a type of computational artificial intelligence (AI), to simulate needed data, extending what we know from the available sources. We employ Intentionally-Linked Entities (ILE), a revolutionary database management system (DBMS), to model and visualize information about the influences that shaped human connections and their changes. Further, our method supplies a basis for the work of multidisciplinary teams, which are often favored by funding institutions.