After surveying the development of world-historical views, the author sketches his own current understanding of the best approach to the subject. Competing terms exists: “interactive zone”, “world system”, and “ecumene”, but none is completely satisfactory or generally accepted by world historians. Nonetheless, the author thinks that a perceptible drift towards recognizing the reality and centrality of this large structure in the human past has begun to show up among practicing world historians; and the balance of the essay sketches how key alterations in patters of Eurasian communication mark the principal stages in the expansion and intensification of interaction within the Eurasian ecumene.
