British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Writing the History of the Global
British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1
21-22 May 2009
Narratives in Global History
Linda Colley (Princeton University)
It is possible that speakers in this Conference will be addressing overwhelmingly the converted: namely scholars who are already persuaded of the virtues and practicability of writing trans-national and trans-continental history of some kind. Yet these modes of history-writing easily provoke resistance and skepticism. Some of the resistance comes from specialists who view trans-national/global approaches as a challenge to, and even as an implicit criticism of their own more restricted fields of study. Others remain dubious about how far any individual scholar, however gifted or determined, can plausibly and usefully attempt writing the history of the global. But perhaps the deepest criticism leveled at global history-writing is that it threatens some of the marked historiographical advances of recent decades. That a new, voguish focus on longue duree “big-scale” history-writing will result in the intricate and competing and archivally-challenging stories of various minorities and long-time disadvantaged groupings and regions – be it the very poor, women, non-whites, and some non-western societies – once again being overwhelmed or relegated to the margins. In this talk, Linda Colley discusses how far approaching the global through biography can serve to address some of these concerns.