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
Revolutions in Global History
Jan de Vries (University of California at Berkeley)
Definitions of global history and world history remain in some flux, but it is now common to view world history as a non-Eurocentric comparative history of civilizations and states, while global history suggests something transcending nation states. Instead of being a process, or method, it points to an outcome. To the extent that I have been engaged in the history of the global, it has been as part of a long interest in using non-national scales of historical analysis.
In my experience in studies of European agricultural, demographic, urban and consumer history, regional and supra-national scales of historical study do not lead one readily toward the global. They lead instead to barriers (of our own making?). Trade history does lead toward a global perspective, but this raises a series of questions about the larger project of global history.
Among the questions I will explore: Does global history replace on “centrism” with another? Much of global history is a varient of Eurasian history. Is “the global” another word for the modern? Globalization loosens some of the intellectual constraints of modernization, but they remain entangled with each other. Is it possible for professional historians – as opposed to social scientists, journalists, etc – to produce history on a global scale? And, finally, at a global scale of analysis there appears to be little room for revolutions. The phenomena we chose to elevate to that status largely determine the meta narrative we impose on global history.