History's contribution to anthropology
What does a historical perspective do for the anthropologist? For the fieldworker, not much, especially since Malinowski tried to banish the historical dimension as a mode of explanation for social facts.
However, today it is generally felt that this rejection should apply to what Radcliffe-Brown called ‘pseudo-history', that is, dynamic sequences constructed from static data for which there is little or no evidence. It is apparent that in the explanation of much observational work historical data should take a subordinate place. But world history has its place if only to give a dynamic context to static observations. For example, when I saw a friend's arm being gravely damaged in West Africa because of an exploding barrel of a gun being fired at a funeral, it is helpful to note that the smelting technology could not produce enough heat for the welding of ordinary barrels, so people had to rely on patched up imports, possibly from Europe. It was also true of the porcelain fragments decorating the doorways of merchants' houses: oven heat was insufficient to make stoneware and only easily soluble earthenware was possible before the eighteenth century either in Europe or in Africa. So ‘China', high-fired pottery, was a valued import that could not be made locally; even fragments were prized. Like cast iron this was a luxury product to be brought in from the outside. These material and spiritual differences in cultures have to be understood in world historical terms, as does the absence of literacy except where Abrahamistic religions had penetrated. The penetration of those religions, and their goods and their technologies, including those of the intellect, were part of a long-term process that was affecting Africa just as it had earlier in other parts of the world, including Europe.There have of course been attempts at world history in the past.
Most of the ‘world states' or ‘world religions' had some view of the other inhabitants, as with the Islamic history of Rashid al-Din, or the Chinese dynastic histories, but these were made very much from the point of view of the country or the religions and were the equivalent of the ‘primitive' history of tribes such as the Nuer who adopted a ‘we, the people' standpoint.Today what draws the fieldworker to world history? In my case it was partly watching people at work. You can't help being struck by the relative paucity of those in African villages compared with Indian or Eurasian ones, paucity and the absence of some complexity. A town in Africa was a village in India. And this was clearly related to the process of production, to the absence of the horse and cart (because no wheel) as well as that of the plough and of any animal traction. This was not an individual or societal difference but one that affected whole regions, indeed continents, and demanded an explanation, and that effectively was not forthcoming within the Weberian or Marxist frame.
World history is human history, that is to say, it is the history of humanity. It involves the emergence of our species from other animals, which means taking account of stages of physical evolution and that includes not only going back to the beginning but also going wider into human development.