Book excerpt: Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History explores cultural contact as an agent of change. It takes an encounters approach to world history since 1500, rather than a political one, to reveal different perspectives and experiences as well as key patterns and transformations. It studies the spaces between cultures historically to help us transcend human differences today in a rapidly globalizing world. The text focuses on first encounters that suggest long-term developments and particularly significant encounters that have changed the direction of world history. Because of the complexities of these encounters, the author takes a user-friendly approach to keep the text accessible to students with varying backgrounds in history.