All of us engaged in the study of world history describe global changes, make global comparisons, assess connections among distant peoples, and explain, as best we can, and sometimes amid intense controversy, why things turned out as they did. But to put it mildly, these are not easy tasks, and the entire enterprise is subject to various challenges and to some outright limitations. One challenge derives from the limitations of our sources. We simply lack information about much that we would like to uncover. Who wouldn’t like to know more about the thinking of our distant ancestors, the life of the Buddha or Jesus, or what was in the mind of Stalin during the upheavals of the 1930s? When written records are not available, scholars depend largely on material remains as they seek to reconstruct the past. Even when written sources are more plentiful, these materials often reflect the narrow experience of elites, leaving few sources available to assist in understanding the lives of women, peasants, slaves, and other marginalized groups.

Another challenge for students of world history lies in the particularities of time and place. In seeking to understand the past, we all start from somewhere specific—our own time and our own culture. Whether we are insiders or outsiders to the societies we explore, all of us operate within a set of assumptions and values that shape our understanding of the past. Views of Columbus in 1992, the 500th anniversary of his arrival in the Americas, differed greatly from what they had been a century earlier. Many in his Italian homeland no doubt view him differently than do Native Americans. The absence of women, until quite recently, from many historical accounts owes something to the fact that most writers of history were men. In these differences of time, place, gender, and position in society lies the source of much of the controversy that attends the study of history. It makes finality and objectivity difficult to achieve.

A further limitation derives from the unalterable “otherness” of every person. This is not so much a matter of ignorance as of mystery. Most of us have some difficulty understanding ourselves and those with whom we are on intimate terms in any full and final fashion. It is not so much that we lack information, but that we run up against what Elizabeth Cady Stanton famously called the “solitude of the self,” which “no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced.” This profound individuality, this essential singularity, of every person makes it difficult to penetrate the inner recesses of human motivation, which are among the major drivers of the historical process.

Despite the challenges and limitations, as historians and students of history, we persist in the task, seeking what knowledge we can achieve, what insights we can gain, what perspective on our own lives we can generate. In doing so, historians have pioneered creative techniques for obtaining data—from DNA analysis to critical reading of ancient texts. We also make concerted efforts to identify our own assumptions and outlooks and, so far as is humanly possible, to set them aside as we seek to grasp the worlds of other times and places. We have at our disposal the marvelous human capacity of informed imagination: the ability to empathize with others based on our common humanity and our knowledge of their particular circumstances.

But historical understanding is always incomplete, relative, and subject to change. Nonetheless, the achievements of the historical enterprise are impressive and enormously enriching. Our subject—world history—makes us witnesses to the broad contours of the human journey and provides a context in which our individual lives can find a place and, perhaps, a measure of meaning. It serves to open us to and inform us about the wider world that shapes our daily experience. If we base our understanding of life only on what we personally experience in our own lives, we render ourselves both impoverished and ineffective.

World history opens a marvelous window into the unfamiliar. It confronts us with the “ways of the world,” the whole panorama of human achievement, tragedy, and sensibility. It allows us some modest entry into the lives of people far removed from us in time and place. And it offers us company for the journey of our own lives. Pondering the global past with a receptive heart and an open mind can assist us in enlarging and deepening our sense of self. In exposing us to the wider experience of “all under Heaven,” as the Chinese put it, world history can aid us in becoming wiser and more mature persons. That is among the many gifts that the study of the global past, despite its various challenges and limitations, offers to us all.