In 1990, the inaugural edition of the Journal of World History was published. The articles within included William H. McNeill’s reflection on his 1963 magnum opus The Rise of the West: a history of the human community. Both a self-critique and a call to action, in this article McNeill acknowledged the implicit eurocentrism of his original text, particularly emphasising its insufficient treatment of the historical interconnectedness of sub-Saharan Africa and its underrepresentation of China’s significance in world history. McNeill’s initial work reflected a millennia-spanning human desire to write world-spanning histories, which includes the work of Herodotus (c. 484–424 BCE), Sima Qian (c.145–86 BCE), Mustafa Ali (1541–1600) and Edward Gibbon (1737–1794). McNeill’s reflection in 1990, however, represented a new shift in thinking and scholarship that saw global history become an increasingly popular approach to historical research...