Global History, Studies in

Contours

Since the 1990s, the term global history has spread across many different world regions and languages. For instance, in Chinese the recently coined term quanqiu lishi has become more common, and the same has been the case with the Japanese gurobaru reikishi or the German Globalgeschichte. The growing significance of this term indicates an important development. In most branches of historiography, there has been a sharp increase in research, which seeks to reach beyond disciplinary boundaries and apply translocal and border-crossing perspectives to the study of the past.

Until the early 1990s, the term global history played a relatively minor role in the Anglophone world. Here the journeys of the word global into the world of historiography were slower than in many other academic fields, especially the social sciences and economics. Yet in the face of its rapidly growing significance, expressions such as global history invite curiosity about their shapes, contours, and qualities. As the popularity of the term global history grew during the early 1990s, there were first attempts to narrow down its meaning to a clearly designated disciplinary agenda. For example, in the eyes of scholars like Bruce Mazlish, the term demarcated a new research field focusing on processes of globalization (as well as on their historical antecedents) after the end of World War II, particularly from the 1970s onward. Yet there is no consensus about the time periods the field is supposed to cover: Although some scholars would be opposed to the period before World War II, other works titled “global history” cover the 19th century or even earlier periods. Furthermore, unlike in the case of intellectual movements such as subaltern studies or world-systems theory, it is also impossible to define global history through a core political agenda or its relations with specific forms of societal interventions. In the literature operating with the concept global history, the range of worldviews, opinions, and positions is wide. Whereas some historians apply the concept of global history for large-scale interpretations, developmental visions, or universal typologies in history, many others have come to distance themselves from any kind of nomothetic ambition and attempts to generate shared narratives at a global level. Given such a plurality of visions, it would not be correct to state that global history as an unfolding research landscape endorses a positive or a negative interpretation of globalization.

...