COLOURING OUTSIDE THE LINES: METHODS FOR A GLOBAL HISTORY OF EASTERN EURASIA 600–1350

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 27-63
Author(s):  
Naomi Standen
Keyword(s):  
Nation State ◽  
Global History ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
The North ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Liao Dynasty ◽  
Neoliberal Economics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alternative Techniques ◽  
Working Out

ABSTRACTWe are still working out how to do global history, especially for pre-modern periods. How do we achieve the necessary shift in scale without falling back on standard definitions of categories like states, ethnicity, religion, urbanisation, when these are increasingly challenged at the specialist level? This article sets out an approach that could help pre-modern historians ‘going global’ to challenge claims that ‘there is no alternative’ to modern frameworks such as neoliberal economics, and especially the nation-state. Useful alternative techniques include thinking in layers rather than blocks, not seeking narrative arcs, and not using words like ‘China’. These methods are illustrated with analysis of three Liao dynasty (907–1125) cities and three comparators from neighbouring states to the north, south and east of the Liao. The intention is to disrupt the re-emergence in the new venue of global history of essentially national narratives, using the opportunities presented by pre-modern worlds before nation-states to free us from teleological concepts. This article argues that there is indeed an alternative to the putative precursors of modern nation-states, and offers a framework for doing without them.

The Transnational Consensus: Fascism and Nazism in Current Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-252
Author(s):  
Ángel Alcalde
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Comparative History ◽  
Global History ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of

Transnational History emerged in the 1990s as a methodological perspective aiming to transcend the nation state as a prevalent unit of analysis. Akin to comparative history, transnational history focuses on transfers between countries and nations, cross-border exchanges and circulation of people and ideas, thus changing our understanding of modern historical phenomena and contributing to the development of global history. Today there is probably no modern historical subfield that has not heeded the new transnational insights. This review article argues that the history of fascism and national socialism have benefitted considerably from this epistemological advancement, and that this renewal has revolutionised our understanding of these ideologies, movements and regimes. Previously historians believed that fascism had emerged as a solution to the interwar crisis in different European nation states; ‘native’, ‘home-grown’ fascist movements, unique ultranationalist revolutionaries, spontaneously reacted to endogenous national problems and attempted a counterrevolution or national rebirth with different degrees of success. After the transnational turn, historians instead see fascism as a single transnational and global phenomenon that violently expanded throughout Europe and beyond by processes of transfer, mutual inspiration, hybridisation, interaction, entanglement and cross-border exchange.

Authoritarianism in Modern Germany History

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-95
Author(s):  
Michael Meng
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
German History ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Global History ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of

Why study the history of modern German-speaking Central Europe? If pressed to answer this question fifty years ago, a Germanist would likely have said something to the effect that one studies modern German history to trace the “German” origins of Nazism, with the broader aim of understanding authoritarianism. While the problem of authoritarianism clearly remains relevant to this day, the nation-state-centered approach to understanding it has waned, especially in light of the recent shift toward transnational and global history. The following essay focuses on the issue of authoritarianism, asking whether the study of German history is still relevant to authoritarianism. It begins with a review of two conventional approaches to understanding authoritarianism in modern German history, and then thinks about it in a different way through G. W. F. Hegel in an effort to demonstrate the vibrancy of German intellectual history for exploring significant and global issues such as authoritarianism.

scholarly journals Straddling the Border: A Marginal History of Guerrilla Warfare and ‘Counter-Insurgency’ in the Indonesian Borderlands, 1960s–1970s

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1423-1463 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL EILENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Nation State ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
West Kalimantan ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Nation ◽  
International Border

AbstractPost-independence ethnic minorities inhabiting the Southeast Asian borderlands were willingly or unwillingly pulled into the macro politics of territoriality and state formation. The rugged and hilly borderlands delimiting the new nation-states became battlefronts of state-making and spaces of confrontation between divergent political ideologies. In the majority of the Southeast Asian borderlands, this implied violent disruption in the lives of local borderlanders that came to affect their relationship to their nation-state. A case in point is the ethnic Iban population living along the international border between the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan and the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. Based on local narratives, the aim of this paper is to unravel the little known history of how the Iban segment of the border population in West Kalimantan became entangled in the highly militarized international disputes with neighbouring Malaysia in the early 1960s, and in subsequent military co-operative ‘anti-communist’ ‘counter-insurgency’ efforts by the two states in the late 1960–1970s. This paper brings together facets of national belonging and citizenship within a borderland context with the aim of understanding the historical incentives behind the often ambivalent, shifting and unruly relationship between marginal citizens like the Iban borderlanders and their nation-state.

Debating the South in Unified Italy

2020 ◽  
pp. 186-214
Author(s):  
Stefan Nygård
Keyword(s):  
Nation State ◽  
The South ◽  
National Politics ◽  
The North ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
History Of ◽  
South Axis ◽  
Nation State Formation ◽  
North And South

The history of modern Italy is an illustrative example of the different social and spatial layers of the North–South divide. Since unification in 1861, Italy has struggled to overcome regional imbalances, mainly although not exclusively along a North–South axis. With an emphasis on the period following unification, when North-South was placed at the centre of national politics, this chapter surveys the lingering debates on Italy’s so-called Southern question and the dynamics of nation-state formation in which it is embedded. The contested history of this process includes debates over economic and moral debts caused by the uneven distribution of gains and sacrifices between North and South as a result of unification. Socio-economically, two North–South divides developed in parallel after unification; the more significant one between Italy and transalpine Europe, and the initially minor but eventually growing divergence between the northern and southern regions within Italy. The ideas of development, catching-up and “Europeanization” were recurring themes in the intellectual and political debates discussed in the chapter. The contested issue was whether the North was developing the South, or vice versa.

The Old Story: Sovereign Nation-States and Myths of National Identity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Nadeau
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Catholic Churches

When members of a society coordinate their activities based on a broadly disseminated and reinforced set of dogmatic beliefs in their mythological or religious traditions, anthropologists refer to these beliefs as useful myths. The aim of this chapter is to reveal that the dogmatic beliefs associated with the construct of the sovereign nation-state are useful myths that can no longer be viewed as useful because they are effectively undermining efforts to resolve the environmental crisis. This situation is greatly complicated by the fact that the sovereign nation-state is a normative construct, or a construct that is assumed to be a taken-for-granted and indelible aspect of geopolitical reality. The large problem here is that this normative construct constitutes one of the greatest conceptual barriers to resolving the environment crisis. This brief account of the origins and transformations of the construct of the sovereign nation-state is intended to accomplish four objectives. The first is to demonstrate that the construct of the sovereign nation-state emerged in Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries in a series of narratives that transferred the God-given power and authority of sovereign monarchs to the states governed by these monarchs. The second is to reveal that the narratives about nationalism and national identity that emerged during and after the Protestant Reformation abused the truths of religion in an effort to convince core populations living within the borders of particular nation-states that they were a chosen people possessing superior cultural values and personal qualities. The third is to show that the dogmatic beliefs legitimated and perpetuated by these narratives eventually resulted in the creation of churches of state with sacred symbols, rites, and rituals similar to those in Protestant and Catholic churches. And the fourth objective is to provide a basis for understanding how these dogmatic beliefs eventually became foundational to a system of international government, the United Nations, predicated on the construct of the sovereign nation-state. The history of this construct is much more complex and far more detailed than the brief account in this chapter suggests.

Obstacles and opportunities for women linguists in Scandinavia

2020 ◽  
pp. 245-278
Author(s):  
Tove Bull ◽  
Carol Henriksen ◽  
Toril Swan
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Private Education ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Faroe Islands ◽  
The North ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of Linguistics ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Languages

This chapter concerns the role played by women in the history of linguistics in the Nordic countries: Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Our main focus is on the period from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century, a period that began with the gradual emergence of the nation states of the North and the need for the codification of common national languages. Gradually, education became more widespread, and although the first schools were for boys, private education was given in upper-class homes and was thus also accessible for girls. The first grammarians were all men, so early on it is mostly behind the scenes that we find women involved in the study of language. Once women were allowed to participate in higher education, some of them made significant contributions to linguistics. In order to understand the role played by women, it is clearly necessary to view their contributions in the context of the age and society in which they lived.

The Middle Eastern Shift and Provincializing Zionism

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orit Bashkin
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle East Studies

Scholars working on Jewish communities in the Middle East are in the midst of an important historiographical moment, in which the major categories, historical narratives, and key assumptions within the field are undergoing radical changes. A cluster of books and articles written by scholars trained in history, anthropology, and area studies departments, and published in Middle East studies rather than Jewish studies book series and journals, suggests that the study of Middle Eastern Jewish communities in the American academy is undergoing a change which might be termed “the Middle Eastern turn.” For such scholars, the history of Jews in Muslim lands, as modern subjects and citizens, is typified by a multiplicity of categories related to their identities—Ottoman, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Arab-Jewish, and local-patriotic—which they explore by looking at the political organizations and social and cultural institutions that enabled the integration of modern Jews into new imperial and national frameworks. This new scholarly wave is transnational, as it illustrates the importance of Jewish networks and Jewish languages in the Middle East, and likewise seeks to draw comparisons between Jews and other transregional and religious minorities, such as Armenians and Greek Orthodox Christians. It is interdisciplinary, as it attempts to incorporate the insights of sociologists, anthropologists, and literary scholars. Finally, it is postcolonial, in its critiques of national elites, national narratives, and nationalist histories. These new accounts uncover how processes which affected the entire Middle East, like Ottoman and Egyptian reform politics and the rise of nation-states, shaped modern Jewish lives.

scholarly journals Archaeology and Ethnicity

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-149
Author(s):  
Staša Babić
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethnic Affiliation ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of

The paper examines the history of archaeological investigation into collective identities in the past. Culture-historical approachis fully based upon the concept of cultural group , deeply influenced by the modern understanding of nation-states – unity of territory, material culture, language and ethnic affiliation. The application of this concept led to devastating political abuses of archaeology, most notoriously in the case of Gustaf Kossinna in the Nazi Germany. The realisation that the very essence of thus conceived group identity in the past inevidably leads into the projection of the modern model of nation-state, resulted in thorough reconsideration. Over the last decades, archaeologists are investigating other possible paths of research into the group and individual identities in the past, informed by the constructivist approach.

World History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Osterhammel
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Global History ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Migration ◽  
Second World

This chapter examines different approaches to global history. Modern world history differs from older universal-historical constructions in that it presupposes an empirical idea of geography and of both the unity and plurality of humanity’s historical experience. After the Second World War, historians paid more attention to the interaction of the nation-state (the local) and the world (the global). The newer global history, while it does not negate the nation-state, strives to understand the reasons for the success of the West, without however reverting to a Eurocentric and essentializing perspective. Aware of the constructedness of history, it nonetheless pays attention to agency in the past, and to the plurality of perspectives and divergent historical paths. It does so by focusing on topics such as the history of migration, the environment, and economic globalization.

Visual Regimes of Juche Ideology in North Korea’s The Country I Saw

2019 ◽  
pp. 588-608
Author(s):  
Travis Workman
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Colonialism ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The North ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
The Media ◽  
Juche Ideology ◽  
Visual Regimes ◽  
Korean Film

This article discusses the North Korean film series The Country I Saw, focusing on transformations in the function of the Japanese colonial gaze in post–Cold War North Korean media. By comparing and contrasting the representation of fact-based empiricist journalism in Part One (1988) with the expression of a mediated sovereign exceptionality in the sequels (2009–2010), the essay shows how the series gives aesthetic form to North Korean juche ideology and spectacles of a realized communist utopia in the decolonized DPRK only through the repetition of generally modern visual regimes that are integrally tied to the history of Japanese colonialism and US neocolonialism. It asks us to rethink the history of communist visual cultures, particularly in formerly colonized countries, in relation to this kind of repetition and appropriation of colonial ways of seeing within the media of communist, postcolonial nation-states.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document