Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T11:23:26.333Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Long-term and decentred trajectories of doing history from a global perspective: institutionalization, postcolonial critique, and empiricist approaches, before and after the 1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2019

Katja Naumann
Katja Naumann*
Affiliation:
Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Reichsstrasse 4–6, D-04109 Leipzig, Germany
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Notions of the ‘global’ in historiography have a long tradition, and yet they appear to be a novelty. This article shows how older understandings of world history, imbued with Eurocentric presuppositions and universalist metaphysical reasoning, were questioned and revised in a long-term process. Recent criticism of Eurocentrism, linked with postcolonial scholarship, and the development of source-based approaches to study global connections and comparisons are usually recognized as innovations that took shape since the 1970s. In fact, they are rooted in profound conceptual revisions and academic institutionalization, which began much earlier. Based on the development of the field of world history in the United States, this article argues that concepts for a multipolar, interactive, and transcultural history developed from a dialectical and critical move away from older narratives. Historians and area specialists have wrestled for at least half a century with questions and problems that were rediscovered in the global turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, the example shows that the field developed in specific trajectories, reflecting local and national institutional academic circumstances, as well as specific socio-political contexts.

Keywords

anthropologyarea studiesEurocentrismglobal historyhigher education in the USAhistoriography
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 14 , Special Issue 3: Historicizing the global: an interdisciplinary perspective , November 2019 , pp. 335 - 354
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I would like to thank everybody who made this research possible, in particular Matthias Middell, Michael Geyer, the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, and the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library. I also want to thank Marnie Hughes-Warrington and Geert Castryck for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

1 Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, ‘Writing world history’, in Christian, David ed., The Cambridge world history, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See the debate between Drayton, Richard, Motadel, David, Adelman, Jeremy, and Bell, Daniel : ‘Discussion: the futures of global history’, Journal of Global History, 13, 1, 2018, pp. 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Mazlish, Bruce, ‘Terms’, in Marnie Hughes Warrington, Palgrave advances in world history, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 18–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See, among others, volumes of The Cambridge world history, general editor Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015 Google Scholar; A history of the world, general editors Iriye, Akira and Osterhammel, Jürgen, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and C. H. Beck, 2012–18 Google Scholar; Epple, Angelika, Kaltmeier, Olaf, and Lindner, Ulrike, eds., ‘Entangled histories: reflecting on concepts of coloniality and postcoloniality’, Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, special issue, 21, 1, 2011 Google Scholar; Vanhaute, Eric, World history: an introduction, London: Routledge, 2012 Google Scholar; Herren, Madeleine, Rüesch, Martin, and Sibille, Christiane, eds., Transcultural history: theories, methods, sources, Berlin: Springer, 2012 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berg, Maxine, ed., Writing the history of the global: challenges for the twenty-first century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 O’Brien, Patrick, ‘Historiographical traditions and modern imperatives for the restoration of global history’, Journal of Global History 1, 1, 2006, pp. 3–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The article is an enlarged version of his opening speech in the section ‘Perspectives on global history: concepts and methodologies’ at the International Historical Congress in Oslo in 2000, which foregrounded global history as a major theme in the discipline. The second part of the section was opened by Jerry Bentley, one of the founders of the World History Association and the founder and long-time editor of the Journal of World History: see Proceedings: reports, abstracts and round table introductions, 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Oslo: University of Oslo, 2000.

6 Osterhammel, Jürgen, ‘World history’, in Schneider, Axel and Woolf, Daniel, eds., Oxford history of historical writing, vol. 5, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 93.Google Scholar

7 Jerry H. Bentley, ‘The task of world history’, in Schneider and Woolf, Oxford handbook of world history, p. 2; Sachsenmaier, Dominic, ‘The evolution of world histories’, in Christian, David ed., The Cambridge world history, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 73ff.Google Scholar

8 Manning, Patrick and McNeill, William H., ‘Lucretius and Moses in world history’, History and Theory, 46, 3, 2007, pp. 428–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Conrad, Sebastian, What is global history?, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016 pp. 162 and 205.Google Scholar On the political ties of world history writing, see Bentley, Jerry H., ‘Myths, wagers, and some moral implications of world history’, Journal of World History, 16, 1, 2005, pp. 51–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hughes-Warrington, Marnie and Tregenza, Ian, ‘State and civilization in Australian New Idealism, 1890–1950’, History of Political Thought, 29, 1, 2008, pp. 89–108 Google Scholar; more generally, Dirlik, Arif, ‘Performing the world: reality and representation in the making of world histor(ies)’, Comparativ, 16, 1, 2006, pp. 21–35.Google Scholar

10 Engel, Ulf and Middell, Matthias Matthias, ‘Bruchzonen der Globalisierung, globale Krisen und Territorialitätsregimes: Kategorien einer Globalgeschichtsschreibung’, Comparativ, 15, 5–6, 2005, pp. 5–38.Google Scholar

11 Geyer, Michael, ‘Multiculturalism and the politics of general education’, Critical Inquiry, 19, 3, 1993, pp. 499–533 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Naumann, Katja, Laboratorien der Globalisierung: Forschung und Lehre an den Universitäten Chicago, Columbia und Harvard, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018.Google Scholar

12 In a similar way, Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel’s contribution in this issue underlines broader sociological and institutional contexts for the global turn in art history and shows a century-long trajectory. See Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, ‘Art history and the global: deconstructing the latest canonical narrative’.

13 See Osterhammel, ‘World history’, pp. 93–112, for a detailed discussion of the recurrent phases of self-reflection and conceptual renewal. See also Middell, Matthias and Naumann, Katja, ‘The writing of world history in Europe from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present: conceptual renewal and challenge to national histories’, in Middell, Matthias and Aulinas, L. Roura y, eds., Transnational challenges to national history writing in Europe, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 54–139.Google Scholar

14 Hughes-Warrington, ‘Writing world history’; Sachsenmaier, ‘Evolution of world histories’. Woolf, Daniel R., A global history of historiography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, addresses world history as a continuous aspect of his broad analysis.Google Scholar

15 For the argument that the secularization of world history in the seventeenth century reduced the role of non-European cultures compared to the Christian narrative of human history, see Griggs, Tamara, ‘Universal history from Counter-Reformation to Enlightenment’, Modern Intellectual History, 4, 2, 2007, pp. 219–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen , ed., Das Europa der Aufklärung und die außereuropäische koloniale Welt, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006 Google Scholar; Bandau, Anja, Dorigny, Marcel, and Mallinckrodt, Rebekka von, eds., Les mondes coloniaux à Paris au XVIIIe siècle: circulation et enchevêtrement des savoirs, Paris: Karthala, 2010.Google Scholar

17 Erich Bödeker, Bender, Philippe University of Illinois Press, and Espagne, Michel, eds., Göttingen vers 1800: l’Europe des sciences de l’homme, Paris: Cerf, 2010.Google Scholar

18 Berger, Stefan, ed., Writing the nation: a global perspective, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Middell, Matthias and Naumann, Katja, ‘Historians and international organization(s): the International Committee of Historical Sciences (CISH)’, in Laqua, Daniel, Verbruggen, Christophe, and Acker, Wouter Van, eds., International organizations and global civil society: histories of the Union of International Associations, London: Bloomsbury 2019, pp. 133–51.Google Scholar

20 Osterhammel, Jürgen, ‘“Höherer Wahnsinn”: universalhistorische Denkstile im 20. Jahrhundert’, in Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des Nationalstaats: Studien zu Beziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisationsvergleich, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001, pp. 170–82.Google Scholar

21 Allardyce, Gilbert, ‘The rise and fall of the Western civilization course’, American Historical Review, 87, 3, 1982, pp. 695–725 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the debates on the public school curriculum in the 1990s, see Nash, Gary B., Crabtree, Charlotte A., and Dunn, Ross, History on trial: culture wars and the teaching of the past, New York: Knopf, 1997 Google Scholar.

22 Bender, Thomas, Katz, Philip. M., Palmer, Colin, and the Committee on Graduate Education of the American Historical Association, The education of historians for the twenty-first century, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004, p. 7 Google Scholar; Kuehl, Warren F., Dissertations in history: an index to dissertations completed in history departments of the US and Canadian universities, 1873–1960, Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1965 Google Scholar.

23 Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, MA, UA V. 454.172, Report of the Committee on Placement, p. 18.

24 In this section, I draw on my analysis of the course catalogues and staff lists of the history departments of Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard from 1918 to 1968 and on the theses completed during this period: Naumann, Laboratorien der Globalisierung, pp. 201–363.

25 Goody, Basingstoke, ‘What does anthropology contribute to world history?’, in Christian, David, ed., Cambridge world history, vol. 1, pp. 261–76Google Scholar.

26 Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library (henceforth SCRC, UC), President’s Papers 1920–80 (henceforth PP 1920–80), Box 14, Fd 1, ‘The study of civilization: objectives and relations to the division of the social sciences and the university generally’; SCRC, UC, Committee on Social Thought Papers (henceforth CST), Box 1, Fd CST I, Founding of, ‘History of the Committee on Social Thought’, undated.

27 SCRC, UC, PP 1920–1980, Box 14, Fd 1, John U. Nef to Executive Committee, 9 March 1944. For today’s debates see Go, Julian and Lawson, George, eds., Global historical sociology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the global turn in sociology, see Romain Lecler in this issue, ‘What makes globalization really new? Sociological views on our current globalization’.

28 SCRC, UC, CST, Box 1, Fd correspondence (study of civilization), 1941–42, Robert Redfield to Nef, Hutchins, and Knight, 17 August 1942; SCRC, UC, PP, Addenda, 1910–66, Box 4, Fd 9, Harley F. MacNair to Nef, 13 June 1942.

29 SCRC, UC, Robert Redfield Papers, Box 35, Fd 2, Fay-Cooper Cole to Tyler, 10 February 1945; Wilcox, Clifford, Robert Redfield and the development of American anthropology, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004, pp. 114ff Google Scholar.

30 SCRC, UC, PP 1950–55, Box 1, Fd. 1, Thorkild Jacobsen, preliminary outline of a proposed institute of cultures, 9 May 1949.

31 SCRC, UC, Robert Redfield Papers, Box 5, Fd 10, Hutchins to Dollard (Carnegie Corporation), 23 November 1949; Hutchins to Chester Barnard (Rockefeller Foundation), 1 December 1949.

32 SCRC, UC, Robert Redfield Papers, Ford Foundation Cultural Studies (henceforth FFCS), Box 5, Fd 10, Redfield to Hutchins, 16 January 1953; Hoffmann to Redfield, 1 August 1951; Ford Foundation to Redfield, 21 April 1952; Gaither to Redfield, 30 April 1953.

33 Stocking, George W., Anthropology at Chicago: tradition, discipline, department, Chicago, IL: Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, 1979 Google Scholar; Stocking, George W., The ethnographer’s magic and other essays in the history of anthropology, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992, pp. 276–341 Google Scholar; Cohn, Bernhard S., An anthropologist among the historians, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987 Google Scholar.

34 SCRC, UC, Robert Redfield Papers, FFCS, Box 3, Fd 3, ‘Comparative studies of culture and civilization: a new monograph series’, 22 July 1953; ‘Monograph series’, April 1955.

35 Ford Foundation Archive, New York (henceforth FF), Grant File 57–L150, Harris to Sutton, 16 October 1956.

36 SCRC, UC, Robert Redfield Papers, FFCS, Box 3, Fd 6, Singer to Redfield, 13 July 1953; Box 8, Fd 1, Hodgson to Lewis, 14 July 1954. SCRC, UC, Marshall Hodgson Papers (henceforth Hodgson Papers), Box 12, Fd Interrelations-Seminar, ‘Development and interrelations of the Eurasian civilization’ outline, Autumn 1957.

37 Hodgson, Marshall, ‘The objectivity of large-scale historical inquiry’, in Burke, Edmund, ed., Rethinking world history: essays on Europe, Islam and world history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 255ff and 278 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Hodgson, Marshall, ‘Hemispheric interregional history as an approach to world history’, Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale, 1, 1954, pp. 715–23Google Scholar. The article was republished in revised and expanded form as: ‘The interrelations of societies in history’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5, 2, 1963, pp. 227–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 For other drafts on the group debates, see SCRC, UC, Hodgson Papers, Box 12, Fd Interrelations-Seminar, Hodgson to study group, 3 December 1957.

40 McNeill, William, ‘The rise of the West after twenty-five years’, Journal of World History, 1, 1, 1990, pp. 1–21 Google Scholar.

41 SCRC, UC, Dean of the College Records, Box 8, Fd 8, Announcement of the three new non-Western civilization courses, 28 March 1956; see also description of the courses by Weiner, Myron, Creel, Herrlee G., and Hodgson, Marshall respectively, Journal of General Education 12, 1, 1959, pp. 24–8, 29–38, and 39–49Google Scholar.

42 Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York, Carnegie Corporation of New York Records (henceforth CU, CC), III. A.2.C, Grant Files, Box 484, Fd 6, Report of the activities made possible by the grant from the Carnegie Corporation, 1956–57, and Report of activities, Simpson to Gardner, 29 April 1960.

43 UC, CC, III. A. Grant Files, Box 753, Fd Northwestern University, ‘New courses in world history’, handwritten notice on a conversation between Frederick Mosher and Leften Stavrianos, 8 June 1965; Northwestern University Archive, Evanston, IL, Stavrianos Faculty Biographical File, Leften Stavrianos, ‘Plan for new course, Department of History’ 1954–55.

44 Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Sleepy Hollow, NY, Record Group 3.1, Series 911, Box 3, Fd 18, ‘Humanities program and related foundation interest in history’, 1950–60, pp. 10, 14; Mazlish, Bruce and Buultjens, Ralp, eds., Conceptualizing global history, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993 Google Scholar.

45 Křížová, Markéta, ‘Josef Polišenský and the founding of Ibero-American studies in Czechoslovakia’, in Naumann, Katja et al., eds., In search of other worlds: essays towards a cross-regional history of area studies, Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2018, pp. 129–66Google Scholar.

46 Bohn, Thomas M., ‘Writing world history in Tsarist Russia and in the Soviet Union’, in Stuchtey, Benedikt and Fuchs, Eckhardt, eds., Writing world history 1800–2000, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 197–212.Google Scholar

47 Brenner, Neil, ‘Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies’, Theory and Society, 28, 1999, p. 40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Döring, Jörg and Thielmann, Tristan, eds., Spatial turn: das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2008 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warf, Barney and Arias, Santa, eds., The spatial turn: interdisciplinary perspectives, London: Routledge, 2008 Google Scholar.

48 See, among others, Young, Robert J. C., Postcolonialism: a historical introduction, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Castryck, Geert, ed., ‘Colonialism and post-colonial studies’, in Middell, Matthias, ed., Routledge handbook of transregional studies, London: Routledge, 2019, pp. 91–146 Google Scholar; Esherik, Joseph W., Kayali, Hasan, and Young, Eric van, eds., Empire to nation: historical perspectives on the making of the modern world, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.Google Scholar

49 Espagne, Michel, ‘La notion de transfert culturel’, Revue Sciences/Lettres, 1, 2013, http://journals.openedition.org/rsl/219 (consulted 28 October 2018)Google Scholar; Werner, Michael and Zimmermann, Bénédicte, ‘Beyond comparison: histoire croisée and the challenge of reflexivity’, History and Theory, 45, 2006, pp. 30–50 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Revel, Jacques, Jeux d’échelles: la micro-analyse à l’expérience, Paris: Editions de l’EHESS/Gallimard/Seuil, 1996 Google Scholar; Antje Dietze and Matthias Middell, ‘Methods in transregional studies: intercultural transfers’, in Middell, Routledge handbook of transregional studies, pp. 58–66.

50 One of many examples is Eve-Darian-Smith, and McCarthy, Philip C., The global turn: theories, research designs, and the methods for global studies, Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017 Google Scholar.

51 Sachsenmaier, Dominic, Global perspectives on global history: theories and approaches in a connected world, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beckert, Sven and Sachsenmaier, Dominic, eds., Global history, globally: research and practice around the world, London: Bloomsbury 2018 Google Scholar. See also the chapters on African, Latin American, and Islamic approaches by Simo, David, Devés-Valdés, Eduardo, and Islamoğlu, Huri in Northrop, Douglas, ed., A companion to world history, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, pp. 433–77Google Scholar.