On 4 June 2016, Jürgen Osterhammel of the University of Konstanz and
Geoffrey Parker of Ohio State University gave an all-day workshop on global
history for graduate students and junior and senior scholars of the Universities
of Dundee and St. Andrews in Scotland. The workshop consisted of three
discussion sessions, each with a different theme, namely the
conceptualization(s), parameters, and possible future(s) of global history. The
central question was to what extent this fast-changing field required
adjustments of “normal” historiographical methodologies and
epistemologies. The workshop participants agreed that global history focuses in
particular on connections across large spaces or long timespans, or both. Yet
reconstructing these webs of connections should not obscure global inequalities.
In the case of empires, many of the exchanges across space and time have been
ordered in a hierarchical fashion—metropoles profiting from peripheral
spaces, for example—and imposed by certain groups of people on others,
resulting in, for example, the enslavement or extermination of indigenous
peoples. As historians, we should also ask ourselves what we do about peoples or
areas that were or remain unconnected, local, and remote. Where does
globalization end?