Global history emerged in the late 1990s as a challenge to ‘methodological nationalism’ in historical writing. What sorts of history does it enable, and what new sorts of questions does it encourage us to explore? Now that the concept of 'the global’ has become ubiquitous across many historical fields what do you think its problems are and where does it future lie? To what extent was this a concept of Western academia? What ways might we find to address this accusation? Ultimately, what does global history offer to your own research?

Key Reading:

Please read at least two of the following

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincialising Europe (new edition 2009), Preface, Introduction and Chap.4

Sachsenmaier, Dominic. “Global History and Critiques of Western Perspectives.” Comparative Education, vol. 42, no. 3, Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 2006, pp. 451–70, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29727795

Jeremy Adelman ‘What is Global History Now?' https://aeon.co/essays/is-global-history-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment

Francesca Trivellato, “Is there a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?,” California Italian Studies 2 (1) (2011), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0z94n9hq (accessed 2nd April 2021).

Further Reading

David Bell, “Questioning the Global Turn: The Case of the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies, 37 (2014): 1-21.

Richard Drayton and David Motadel, “Discussion: the Futures of Global History,” Journal of Global History, 13 (2018): 1-21; 17; also see David Bell, “Words from David Bell,” in same issue.

Amy Stanley, “Maidservants’ Tales: Narrating Domestic and global History in Eurasia, 1600-1900,” American Historical Review, 121 (2016): 437-460, 460.