The ancient and medieval worlds 135,000 BP-1449 -- The roots of civilization: river-valley civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Indus and the Nile -- India and Hinduism: the invention of a country -- The classical world: Polis and republic in Greece and Rome -- Bureaucracy and intelligence: the rise of China -- The rise of Islam: an Arab revolution -- Castle and cathedral: Europe's middle ages and the idea of a Christian civilization -- The early modern world 1450-1799 -- Europe's drama: renaissance and reformation -- Turkic power: the Ottoman challenge to the west -- Colonial collisions: the European push into Asia, the Americas and Africa -- The sense of the new: the enlightenment and the French Revolution -- The nineteenth-century world 1800-1899 -- Nationalism and capitalism: the dynamic order of the 19th century -- Hierarchies in collision: China and Japan in the 19th century -- An American civilization: unity, power and race in the new world -- The modern world 1900-2004 -- A continent divided: Europe from Armageddon to reconstruction, 1914-89 -- Old empires and new beginnings: decolonization and the fall of Europe -- American hegemony: the victories, dilemmas and fears of a 21st-century colossus -- Towards one world.