Overview
Regional history examines the past through geography. It studies how societies developed within particular environments while also tracing migration, trade, warfare, diplomacy, cultural exchange, religion, technology, political expansion, and economic relationships across regional boundaries.
Malone Global University organizes regional history into six broad geographic areas: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. Each regional section can be subdivided into smaller geographic areas, countries, states, civilizations, peoples, and historically significant places.
Regional boundaries are organizational tools rather than permanent historical divisions. Political borders change over time, populations migrate, empires cross continents, and cultural and economic networks frequently connect societies assigned to different regions. Regional history should therefore be studied together with chronology, historical subjects, and historical objects.
Africa
African history encompasses the development of human societies across the continent where the earliest known hominins and modern humans originated. African societies created diverse political systems, languages, religions, economic networks, cities, kingdoms, empires, and intellectual traditions.
Regional study includes North Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southern Africa. Major historical themes include ancient civilizations, trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean trade, African kingdoms and empires, Islam and Christianity, Atlantic slavery, colonialism, anticolonial resistance, independence, state-building, migration, and modern economic and political development.
Americas
The history of the Americas includes Indigenous civilizations and societies that developed long before European contact, as well as the profound transformations produced by conquest, colonization, migration, slavery, independence movements, industrialization, and modern state formation.
Regional study includes North America, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. Major historical themes include Indigenous civilizations, European colonization, the Columbian Exchange, Atlantic slavery, colonial societies, independence movements, territorial expansion, immigration, industrialization, political reform, revolution, and relations among the states of the Western Hemisphere.
Asia
Asian history encompasses an enormous range of civilizations, states, peoples, religions, languages, and economic systems extending from East Asia through South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and northern Eurasia.
Major historical developments include early agricultural societies, large imperial states, long-distance trade networks, religious and philosophical traditions, technological innovation, nomadic empires, maritime commerce, colonialism, nationalist movements, industrialization, revolution, independence, and the rise of major modern economies.
The Middle East is treated as a separate top-level region within the MGU History Department because of its extensive internal historical development and its position connecting Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean world.
Europe
European history examines the societies of western Eurasia from prehistoric settlement through ancient Mediterranean civilizations, medieval kingdoms, early modern states, industrialization, imperial expansion, political revolutions, world wars, regional integration, and the contemporary era.
Regional study may include Northern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Southeastern Europe. Major themes include Greece and Rome, Christianity, medieval political systems, Renaissance and Reformation, state formation, maritime expansion, Enlightenment, industrialization, nationalism, imperialism, socialism, fascism, the world wars, the Cold War, and European integration.
Middle East
Middle Eastern history examines the societies located at the crossroads of Africa, Asia, Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean. The region includes some of the world's earliest urban civilizations and has remained a major center of political, religious, intellectual, commercial, and military history.
Major historical themes include Mesopotamia, ancient Persia, the eastern Mediterranean, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, caliphates, Persian and Turkish empires, the Ottoman Empire, trade networks, European intervention, nationalism, colonial mandates, oil, state formation, regional conflict, and contemporary geopolitics.
Oceania
Oceania includes Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and the many island societies of the Pacific. Its history includes ancient migrations, maritime navigation, Indigenous political and cultural systems, long-distance exchange, European exploration, colonization, missionary activity, warfare, migration, independence movements, and modern regional relations.
Pacific peoples developed sophisticated navigational systems and maintained extensive cultural and commercial connections across vast ocean distances. European expansion later transformed political authority, land ownership, demography, economic systems, and international relationships throughout the region.
Regional Interaction
No region developed in complete isolation. Migration, trade, warfare, imperial expansion, diplomacy, religious movements, environmental change, and technological exchange repeatedly connected distant societies.
The Mediterranean linked Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The Indian Ocean connected East Africa, Arabia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. The Silk Roads joined societies across Eurasia. Atlantic networks later connected Africa, Europe, and the Americas, while Pacific navigation linked island societies across Oceania.
Regional history therefore studies both internal development and relationships across geographic boundaries.
Changing Borders and Geographic Categories
Modern geographic categories should not automatically be projected backward onto historical societies. Contemporary national borders often did not exist during earlier historical periods, and many states, empires, peoples, and trade networks crossed boundaries now treated as separate regions.
Historical pages should identify the geography appropriate to the period being studied. A civilization may therefore be discussed through its historical territory rather than through the modern countries occupying that territory today.
Regional Periodization
Each region may use its own historical periods in addition to the general MGU chronology. These regional systems provide greater precision when political, cultural, dynastic, archaeological, or economic developments do not align neatly with the department's global chronological divisions.
Examples include dynastic periodization in China and Egypt, the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages in Europe, pre-Columbian periods in the Americas, caliphal and dynastic periodization in Islamic history, and locally appropriate archaeological or political frameworks within African history.
Studying Regional History
Regional history should examine more than political borders or lists of rulers. A complete regional history considers the interaction of geography, population, political authority, economic systems, religion, culture, warfare, migration, technology, environment, and external relationships.
Regional pages should also distinguish between internal historical developments and events imposed or influenced from outside the region. This helps explain both local historical agency and larger systems of international interaction.
Regional Structure
- Africa — North, West, Central, East, Horn, and Southern African histories.
- Americas — North America, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America.
- Asia — East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and northern Eurasian connections.
- Europe — Northern, Western, Central, Southern, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.
- Middle East — Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Levant, Arabia, Iran, and adjacent historical regions.
- Oceania — Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and Pacific island societies.
Historical Connections
Summary
Regional history organizes the human past geographically while recognizing that geographic boundaries change and that societies repeatedly interact across them. Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania provide broad organizational frameworks within which more detailed subregional, national, local, and civilizational histories can be studied.
Used together with chronology, historical subjects, and historical objects, regional history makes it possible to examine both the distinctive development of individual societies and the connections that have linked human communities throughout history.