Abstract
In this book, the authors propose to traverse the field of world history and 'to know how the world got to be the way it is' through the theory of webs of exchanges and communication. Schematically a web is 'a set of connections that link people to one another' and is characterized by a wide variety of practices – basically oscillating between cooperation and competition – that are exerted. These webs are based on networks of information and of transfers of technologies and their evolution has gone through several stages in human history since 6,000 BCE. During the world-wide web phase, unoccupied places severely outnumbered the size of the population. Then with the development of urbanization and the creation of cities as attracting poles for diverse trades of goods and for the diffusion of innovations, what is called a metropolitan web emerged.
Because of the specialization of labor which triggered the production of diversified goods and the accumulation of wealth, these cities depended on hinterlands for food supply essentially. The McNeills think the relationships both within and between webs in terms of cooperation-competition which means that the webs' positions in the struggle for power and survival is partly determined by the course of innovations in the communication field. Lastly, the cosmopolitan web developed by itself thanks to the electric revolution and the subsequent acceleration in communication and exchanges. Ultimately the general trend is that webs grew through human history, have encompassed more and more countries – the whole globe in the end - and have become denser and more sophisticated.
As being only a piece in a larger organic device constitutive of our ecosystem, human communities have the capacity to influence the balancing mechanisms which confer its stability to the system through their actions. In the early times of human development – that is the hunters-gatherers societies – the McNeills show how human beings have progressively altered their lifestyle by a process of apprenticeship. Firstly, they had to deal with climate fluctuations and the resulting challenges they had to face either to preserve or to modify their way of life in a more sustainable way. Thanks to tools and fire they were able to reshape their relations towards food ; they also developed a new range of clothes allowing them better support in harsh climate conditions. At first, early nomadic human communities have probably crossed each other's way accidentally and thus planted the first seeds for an eventual culture of exchange.
