This essay begins by discussing the emergence of world history and efforts to theorize the global past. It then turns to recent scholarship on several themes that are especially important for global historical analysis – cross-cultural trade, biological diffusions and exchanges, cultural encounters and exchanges, imperialism and colonialism, and migrations and diasporas – focusing special attention on efforts to subject large-scale processes to historical analysis and to reconsider Eurocentric understandings of the past. The essay concludes by raising some critical questions about the larger world history project.