Rethinking Global History

doi:10.1017/9781009444002

Despite three decades of rapid expansion and public success, global history's theoretical and methodological foundations remain under-conceptualised, even to those using them. In this collection of essays, leading historians provide a reassessment of global history's most common analytical instruments, metaphors and conceptual foundations. Rethinking Global History prompts historians to pause and think about the methodology and premises underpinning their work. The volume reflects on the structure and direction of history, its relation to our present and the ways in which historians should best explain, contextualise and represent events and circumstances in the past. In chapters on fundamental concepts such as scale, comparison, temporality and teleology, this collection will guide readers to assess the extant literature critically and write theoretically informed global histories. Taken together, these essays provide a unique and much-needed assessment of the implications of history going global. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

‘In this book a group of well-known practitioners provide a multifaceted analysis of the concepts, methods, and issues that will define future scholarship in Global History. If this branch of history is here to stay, then historians should embrace the full conceptual rearmament here discussed to write histories worthy of the problems affecting today's world.’

Giorgio Riello - European University Institute and the University of Warwick

‘What a timely intervention! As global history is coming of age, and as the world around us changes, our methods and approaches will have to develop as well. As the talk of de-globalization proliferates, Jürgen Osterhammel and Stefanie Gänger have assembled a group of first-class historians to rethink global history for our times. Fresh, insightful, stimulating.’

Sebastian Conrad - Professor of Global History, Freie Universität Berlin

‘… a superb collection examining global history as a subfield within the historical profession.… Recommended.’

S. Morillo Source: CHOICE

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Contents

Rethinking Global History
pp i-ii
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Rethinking Global History - Title page
pp iii-iii
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Copyright page
pp iv-iv
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Contents
pp v-vi
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Figures
pp vii-vii
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Contributors
pp viii-viii
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Acknowledgements
pp ix-x
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Introduction
pp 1-20
Rethinking History, Globally
- By Stefanie Gänger, Jürgen Osterhammel
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Part I - Forms of Inquiry and Argumentation
pp 21-114
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1 - Explanation
pp 23-46
The Limits of Narrativism in Global History
- By Jürgen Osterhammel
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2 - Comparison
pp 47-69
Its Use and Misuse in Social and Economic History
- By Alessandro Stanziani
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3 - Time
pp 70-91
Temporality in Global History
- By Christina Brauner
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4 - Quantification
pp 92-114
Measuring Connections and Comparative Development in Global History
- By Pim de Zwart
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Part II - Concepts and Metaphors
pp 115-182
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5 - The Global and the Earthy
pp 117-138
Taking the Planet Seriously as a Global Historian
- By Sujit Sivasundaram
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6 - Openness and Closure
pp 139-160
Spheres and Other Metaphors of Boundedness in Global History
- By Valeska Huber
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7 - Scales
pp 161-182
From Shipworms to the Globe and Back
- By Dániel Margócsy
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Part III - Configurations and Telos
pp 183-273
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8 - Tacit Directionality
pp 185-209
Processes, Teleology and Contingency in Global History*
- By Jan C. Jansen
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9 - Distance
pp 210-234
A Problem in Global History
- By Jeremy Adelman
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10 - Materiality
pp 235-253
Global History and the Material World*
- By Stefanie Gänger
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11 - Centrisms
pp 254-273
Questions of Privilege and Perspective in Global Historical Scholarship
- By Dominic Sachsenmaier
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Index
pp 274-280
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Rethinking Global History

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