Global History and Culture Centre Blog

In 2022, Warwick’s Global History and Culture Centre celebrated its 15th anniversary. Founded in 2007 by Professor Maxine Berg, GHCC was the first research centre dedicated to the field of global history to be established in the UK, and quickly took on a leading role in developing the methodology and practice of this sub-discipline. In this first blog post of 2023, GHCC Director Guido van Meersbergen looks back on some of the principal recent developments in the Centre's activities, and ahead towards key initiatives planned for the coming year.

The Golden Rhinoceros by François-Xavier Fauvelle is a leading work in the field of medieval African history, exploring this ‘golden age’ through archaeological evidence and accessible narratives. Packed with engaging material and a conversational tone, the book appeals to a wide readership, from established academics to those new to the topic. In this review, Lisa Taberner discusses the strengths of Fauvelle’s approach to this traditionally neglected branch of history, as well as weaknesses of the wider field.

Benjamin T. Smith reports on a recent research trip to Mexico, supported by Global History and Culture Centre funding, in which he conducted archival work into the life of La Nacha, one of the most significant women in the Mexican drug trade.

Collaborative Doctoral Projects offer a PhD candidate the opportunity to work with an external partner on a project devised jointly by the organisation and the university. In this blog, Hannah Dennett highlights her experience of curating an exhibition with the Foundling Museum, as part of her PhD project to uncover the lives of African and Asian children taken into London’s Foundling Hospital during the long eighteenth century.

From a Ghanaian emphasis on respect for state leaders and Soviet-style patriotism to an Israeli interest on agricultural production and a scout-like enthusiasm for bushcraft, the creators of the Malawi Young Pioneers drew inspiration from a range of different places. In this blog, Emma Orchardson traces the origins of Malawi's agricultural-turned-paramilitary youth organisation and explores some of its foreign influences in the 1960s. In doing so it reveals the effect these had on the organisation’s early construction and development, as well as highlighting some of the wider international connections Malawi forged in the initial years of independence.

Like many of us, I’ve been preparing my teaching for the coming academic year. I’m planning on giving a lecture on early modern science as part of our Galleons and Caravans: Global Connections, 1500–1800 module. I was thinking about how to present these debates on Newton, particularly to a group of students who may have no previous experience in the history of science, but are certainly interested in global history.

Recalling a brief former stint as a computer scienceLink opens in a new window student, I spent a few days putting together an interactive map that is now available online. I hope it will be a useful resource, not just for my students, but for anyone teaching the history of science, or indeed global history.

You can check it out here: https://isaacnewton.world/Link opens in a new window

From the Indian cottons that were traded around Asia and Africa in the Middle Ages, to the global dominance of the blue-and-white pottery of Jingdezhen, and new approaches to the global history of science, in this blog the founding director of the GHCC, Professor Maxine Berg, speaks to Benedict King about five books that transformed our understanding of the past millennium and stand as significant milestones in the development of the vibrant field of global history.

In the last ten years or so historians of science have done much to challenge the existing Eurocentric historiography, yet such works are only just starting to make its way onto core reading lists and into the mainstream of the discipline. In this blog post James Poskett surveys the most exciting new scholarship in the field and makes a case for five books he thinks every historian of science should read. These are books that, whilst often focusing on particular regions or periods, nonetheless speak to the bigger concerns of the discipline. And in fact, for anyone more broadly interested in the history of science, who wants to know where the field is headed, these books are a great place to start.