This is the attempt to secure a minimum. A daring attempt, because what in the history of the world is a minimum? This account places the emphasis on politics, on events, on intellectual culture and on what makes humans human. It divides the history of the world into an older and a more recent period: the epoch of autonomous world cultures, of Europe’s predecessors and contemporaries, and the epoch of Europe’s rise and international standing from around 1500. Europe was and is no better (including morally) than other cultures, but also no worse. And of course before 1500 not everything led to its rise; this rise was not inevitable, nor is it the last word in history. But Europe’s was undoubtedly the most influential culture in the last half millennium. Europe initiated globalisation, which is the dominant tendency of today’s world. And in the end the question remains: why not China or India, for example, why Europe?weiterlesen