Global Practice In World History

This volume presents the thinking and the activities of some of the most serious and successful practitioners of world history. The 15 contributors are experienced historians from ten countries dispersed across five continents. Their essays confirm the existence of an emerging worldwide discourse on the past of our planet, but they also reveal the distinctive conditions and local innovations of global historians in different parts of the world.They give particular attention to the emergence of formal institutions for study of world history. University departments, research institutions, international conferences, and the leaders of museums are now demonstrably involved in full-scale study of the human past at a global level. Work in these institutions will surely reveal new patterns, dispel some old beliefs, provoke debates, and demonstrate the need for still more research. The book begins with the official report of the 2006 World History Research Agenda Symposium. This unusual conference, held in Boston, launched the formal discussion of priorities in world history research. In seven further chapters, the authors describe university-level study of the world at undergraduate and especially graduate levels, conveying some remarkable advances in conceptualization of the global past and explaining the curricula they have implemented for directing students in world historical research. The final four chapters turn to the other institutions that support the development of advanced studies in world history: journals, museums, and research institutes. Here the authors document the organizational innovations that have brought discussion of world history issues to wider audiences. This is the second volume in the series on research in world history, produced by the World History Network, Inc. The previous volume, World History: Global and Local Interactions (Markus Wiener, 2005) displayed the accomplishments of Ph.D. students and graduates whose research focuses on topics in world history.

In recent years historians in many different parts of the world have sought to transnationalize and globalize their perspectives on the past. Despite all these efforts to gain new global historical visions, however, the debates surrounding this movement have remained rather provincial in scope. Global History, Globally addresses this lacuna by surveying the state of global history in different world regions. Divided into three distinct but tightly interweaved sections, the book's chapters provide regional surveys of the practice of global history on all continents, review some of the research in four core fields of global history and consider a number of problems that global historians have contended with in their work. The authors hail from various world regions and are themselves leading global historians. Collectively, they provide an unprecedented survey of what today is the most dynamic field in the discipline of history. As one of the first books to systematically discuss the international dimensions of global historical scholarship and address a wealth of questions emanating from them, Global History, Globally is a must-read book for all students and scholars of global history.

Considering the ways in which the ‘global turn’ is changing the theory and practice of historical disciplines, Explorations in History and Globalization engages with the concept and methodology of globalization, challenging traditional divisions of space and time to offer a range of perspectives on how globalization has affected social, economic, political and cultural history. Each chapter covers a specific theme, discussing how globalization has shaped these themes and how they have contributed to globalization throughout history. Including topics such as ecological exchanges, trade, exchanges of knowledge, migration, empire and urbanization, this volume both explains historical trajectories through a global analytical framework and provides tools that students can employ when posing their own research questions about historical globalization. Containing suggestions for further reading and guidance on the ways in which primary source material can be used as a basis for global historical studies, this is the ideal volume for all students interested in the global exchanges between people throughout history.

The century from 1750 to 1850 was a period of dramatic transformations in world history, fostering several types of revolutionary change beyond the political landscape. Independence movements in Europe, the Americas, and other parts of the world were catalysts for radical economic, social, and cultural reform. And it was during this age of revolutions—an era of rapidly expanding scientific investigation—that profound changes in scientific knowledge and practice also took place. In this volume, an esteemed group of international historians examines key elements of science in societies across Spanish America, Europe, West Africa, India, and Asia as they overlapped each other increasingly. Chapters focus on the range of participants in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century science, their concentrated effort in description and taxonomy, and advancements in techniques for sharing knowledge. Together, contributors highlight the role of scientific change and development in tightening global and imperial connections, encouraging a deeper conversation among historians of science and world historians and shedding new light on a pivotal moment in history for both fields.

When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta" was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India. Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, and examines the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzon in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history of the modern state. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Where do ideas fit into historical accounts that take an expansive, global view of human movements and events? Teaching scholars of intellectual history to incorporate transnational perspectives into their work, while also recommending how to confront the challenges and controversies that may arise, this original resource explains the concepts, concerns, practice, and promise of "global intellectual history," featuring essays by leading scholars on various approaches that are taking shape across the discipline. The contributors to Global Intellectual History explore the different ways in which one can think about the production, dissemination, and circulation of "global" ideas and ask whether global intellectual history can indeed produce legitimate narratives. They discuss how intellectuals and ideas fit within current conceptions of global frames and processes of globalization and proto-globalization, and they distinguish between ideas of the global and those of the transnational, identifying what each contributes to intellectual history. A crucial guide, this collection sets conceptual coordinates for readers eager to map an emerging area of study.

Over recent decades, almost every area of historical study has seen its global turn – from consumption to finance, from politics to migration, from social order to cultural patterns. This volume reflects the vibrant state of global history scholarship in Europe and examines to what extent global history is practiced and conceptualised distinctively within Europe. Drawing together contributions from scholars from France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK, the book offers a sweeping overview of the state of the field. In particular, the contributors look at histories of colonialism and imperial expansion, knowledge circulation and mobility across borders. This book reflects the diversity of current scholarship on global and transnational history and will offer important insights for anyone interested in understanding the cutting edge of research in this area.