Now that global history has become an established genre, it is high time that historiography itself should be analysed from a global perspective. Reference works by many hands provide a useful point of departure, but the work under review is the first coherent global synthesis of history-writing. Georg Iggers is a leading and long-standing authority on the Western historical tradition; Q. Edward Wang and Supriya Mukherjee contribute their expertise on China and South Asia respectively. The resulting narrative is seamless and well organized. The initial survey of non-Western history-writing, extending from the dynastic histories of China and Japan to the imperial historiography of the Ottoman empire, is masterly. By emphasizing the evidential modes of learning already established within these societies before their exposure to the influence of European historiography, the authors give an intelligible account of the intellectual syncretism that characterized the Eastern development of the historical profession. However, the book is harder going than it might have been. Little impression can be gained of the character of the many historiographies described because hardly any passages of actual history-writing (as opposed to programmatic statements) are reproduced: a few well-chosen extracts would have brought vitality to the somewhat lifeless summaries of national schools of historiography. But this is a formidable work of scholarship, whose bibliography and references are an achievement in themselves. It is to be welcomed as a genuine attempt to see historiography in a global perspective.

The authors conclude by characterizing the theme of their book as the ‘globalization of history’. It is a question-begging phrase. Is ‘the globalization of history’ anything more than an acceptable way of referring to Western intellectual hegemony, just as globalization in an economic context denotes the global reach of Western capitalism? At one level this book is the record of the uneven but unstoppable dissemination of Western modes of historical thinking to the rest of the world. Japan’s invitation of the Rankean scholar Ludwig Riess to inaugurate the history department of Tokyo University in 1887 might be regarded as the emblematic moment in this story. The growing global reach of nationalism, Marxism, history from below, the cultural turn, and postmodernism is documented in a varied range of sites. Women’s and gender history has made progress in some unlikely quarters, notably the Middle East. Iggers, Wang, and Mukherjee demonstrate that Western historical paradigms were mediated though local conditions that modified their character in significant ways. But the structure of the book – in which paradigms are first analysed in their Western countries of origin and then followed through to the periphery – makes plain the derivative status of historiography in societies as sophisticated (and politicized) as China and Japan. In the case of China, the authors’ account concludes with the recent ascendancy of historians indebted to postmodernism and postcolonialism. Regardless of the merits of these perspectives, it is hard to avoid regret that, on the showing of this account, Chinese historians have not developed a more original perspective.

At the same time, the authors assert that their book is a response to the call for a history of history-writing that recognizes that the dynamics for its development have ‘emerged from various corners of the world’; they join in challenging the ‘too readily accepted notion that the Western model remains at the centre of historical studies’ (p. 394). On the showing of this text, little progress has been made in the direction of a global, as distinct from a Western, historiography. This is partly evident in the geographical imbalance of the book: while the core societies of the West – Germany, France, Britain, and the USA – are fully covered, Latin America receives only six pages, sub-Saharan Africa five pages, and Indonesia none at all. China, Japan, India, Egypt, and Turkey have clearly earned their high profile because of the vigour of their traditional modes of history-writing. But even here the governing theme is the reception of Western schools of historiography.

Where in this account is the reverse flow of ideas from periphery to metropole? The authors have much more to say about radical perspectives within the Western tradition than about global contributions by other parts of the world. During the nineteenth century, world histories were written by Wei Yuan (in China) and Okamato Kansuke (in Japan), but they remained unread by scholars of other countries. Within the Western tradition, the subversive potential of the repeated reinventions of Marxism is duly recognized, as is the strand of postcolonialism stemming from the work of Edward Said. Only two instances of reverse flow are described: the dependencia school of historians in Latin America, and Subaltern Studies in India. Even here the shadow of the metropole is unmistakable: André Gunder Frank was of German origin, while the journal Subaltern Studies was hatched in the University of Sussex. Probably the most radical critique to emerge from the developing world is Dipesh Chakrabarty’s call for the ‘provincializing’ of Europe. By this he meant that the master concepts of Western history – nationhood and citizenship – must no longer be allowed to determine the content of Indian history, and the ‘repressive strategies’ of academic history must be uncovered. Chakrabarty’s programme is reported here in the spirit of representing the ideological drift of Subaltern Studies. What is missing is a strategic evaluation of its merits and its prospects.

This is a book in which the master narrative of global intellectual dissemination is ably documented for every continent. It will be invaluable to scholars of both globalization and historiography. No disrespect is intended to the authors in suggesting that there is more to the history of history-writing than this. They have provided the indispensable and long-overdue first step, from which subsequent scholars in this field can only profit.