Periodization in Global History: The Productive Power of Comparing

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Angelika Epple
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Global History ◽  
Drivers Of Change ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Postcolonial Criticism ◽  
Fundamental Challenge ◽  
Time Concepts ◽  
New Perspective

This chapter develops a new perspective on fundamental problems of periodization and goes beyond postcolonial criticism. It argues that Eurocentrism is a symptom of a fundamental challenge in periodization as it relies on comparisons. It also elaborates that comparisons, even if they reject a 'telos' of history, depend on narrative objectives to distinguish important from less important historical movements and to identify directions, velocities, and standstills in these movements. The chapter demonstrates how history is cut up into epochs that show the heyday of Eurocentrism in nineteenth-century historicism up to the current global and world history writing based on comparing different velocities and drivers of change that vary in narrative objectives. It points out that Eurocentrism is caused not only by universalized time concepts, but also by justifications of periodization.

From Universal History to Transregional Perspectives: The Challenge of the Cultural and Spatial Turn to World and Global History in the 1970s and Today

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-264
Author(s):  
Matthias Middell
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
World History ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Global History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Universal History ◽  
The Social

The article reconstructs the development of global history since the crisis of universal history in the 1970s, which under the weight of poststructuralist arguments had almost brought world history writing to a standstill. In contrast, the new approach, now labelled global history, which had taken up many of the suggestions of the cultural and spatial turn and coincided with the social interest in global connectivity, developed into an extraordinarily attractive form of historiography. Since the mid-2010s, however, criticism has been on the rise again, pointing to an inherent ideological globalism and a problematic narrowing towards an Anglo-Saxon model of globalization. However, this is countered by new approaches that once again recall the fruitful dialogue with cultural history, political geography, and area studies.

scholarly journals The Years of Jesuit Suppression, 1773–1814: Survival, Setbacks, and Transformation

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-117
Author(s):  
Paul Shore
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Library Science ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
New Research

Abstract The forty-one years between the Society of Jesus’s papal suppression in 1773 and its eventual restoration in 1814 remain controversial, with new research and interpretations continually appearing. Shore’s narrative approaches these years, and the period preceding the suppression, from a new perspective that covers individuals not usually discussed in works dealing with this topic. As well as examining the contributions of former Jesuits to fields as diverse as ethnology—a term and concept pioneered by an ex-Jesuit—and library science, where Jesuits and ex-Jesuits laid the groundwork for the great advances of the nineteenth century, the essay also explores the period the exiled Society spent in the Russian Empire. It concludes with a discussion of the Society’s restoration in the broader context of world history.

TERRAQUEOUS HISTORIES

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALISON BASHFORD
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Global History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Inaugural Lecture ◽  
Naval History ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Many

ABSTRACTIn her Inaugural Lecture, Alison Bashford, Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, introduces the concept of ‘terraqueous histories’. Maritime historians often stake large claims on world history, and it is indeed the case that the connections and distinctions between land and sea are everywhere in the many traditions of world history-writing. Collapsing the land/sea couplet is useful and ‘terraqueous’ history serves world historians well. The term returns the ‘globe’ to global history, it signals sea as well as land as claimable territory, and in its compound construction foregrounds the history and historiography of meeting places. If the Vere Harmsworth Chair of Imperial and Naval History has recently turned from ‘imperial’ into ‘world’ history, so might its ‘naval’ element become terraqueous history in the twenty-first century.

National aspirations on a global stage: concepts of world/global history in contemporary China

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Spakowski
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
First Century ◽  
Open Door ◽  
Global History ◽  
Open Door Policy ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Global View ◽  
Specific Orientation

AbstractSince the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has witnessed a surge in world history research and a reorientation towards what is called a ‘global view on history’. This article will demonstrate, however, that the ‘global’ in these discussions is not regarded as the substance of the historical process but merely as the context for the development of the nation-state as the uncontested historical unit. This specific orientation is caused by a persistent nationalism, discursive traditions, and alliances of world history writing with contemporary political discourse. Three major concepts will be discussed: integration/interaction as a response to China's ‘open door’ policy and in connection with discourse on globalization; ‘modernization’ in its relation to the Four Modernizations of state ideology; and the ‘rise of the great powers’ as related to discussions of ‘China's rise’. Particular attention will be given to the problem of Eurocentrism in Chinese world history writing.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Ben Prestel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

The introduction shows that the historical parallels between cities in Europe and the Middle East during the nineteenth century are an underresearched topic in history, demonstrating that Eurocentric tendencies have led to a separation between historical studies on cities in these two regions. It shows how a comparison between Berlin and Cairo contributes to the study of potential parallels between cities in Europe and the Middle East. It is in this context that the history of emotions opens up a new perspective. While older comparative studies have focused on the origins of urban change, the introduction argues that a history of emotions shifts the focus towards the study of how contemporaries negotiated urban change. In this way, the history of emotions helps to overcome Eurocentric pitfalls and offers the possibility of a more global urban history, in which the histories of Berlin and Cairo begin to speak to each other.

Critical Contexts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Williams
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Postcolonial Criticism ◽  
Modernist Fiction

This concluding chapter argues that the critical contexts of the literary texts dealt with in this volume cannot be so confined inside the period before 1950, not merely for writers whose works have maintained or increased their esteem, but also for the bulk of that work belonging to the large categories of colonial, Victorian, and even nationalist writing that exhibits the values and attitudes of empire. Much of the postcolonial criticism of colonial fiction treats it as symptomatic of imperial views on race, nature, gender, or progress rather than as literature Criticism in this volume means something distinct from that applied to nineteenth-century English literature or American modernist fiction where the specifically literary qualities and values of the writing remain central concerns of its criticism, even where the values and ideology of modernism, for example, have been sharply contested.

scholarly journals Latin America in Global History: An Historiographic Overview

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (60) ◽  
pp. 253-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Olstein
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
World History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Global History ◽  
The World ◽  
Last Ice Age ◽  
Great Divergence

Abstract World history can be arranged into three major regional divergences: the 'Greatest Divergence' starting at the end of the last Ice Age (ca. 15,000 years ago) and isolating the Old and the New Worlds from one another till 1500; the 'Great Divergence' bifurcating the paths of Europe and Afro-Asia since 1500; and the 'American Divergence' which divided the fortunes of New World societies from 1500 onwards. Accordingly, all world regions have confronted two divergences: one disassociating the fates of the Old and New Worlds, and the other within either the Old or the New World. Latin America is in the uneasy position that in both divergences it ended up on the 'losing side.' As a result, a contentious historiography of Latin America evolved from the very moment that it was incorporated into the wider world. Three basic attitudes toward the place of Latin America in global history have since emerged and developed: admiration for the major impact that the emergence on Latin America on the world scene imprinted on global history; hostility and disdain over Latin America since it entered the world scene; direct rejection of and head on confrontation in reaction the former. This paper examines each of these three attitudes in five periods: the 'long sixteenth century' (1492-1650); the 'age of crisis' (1650-1780); 'the long nineteenth century' (1780-1914); 'the short twentieth century' (1914-1991); and 'contemporary globalization' (1991 onwards).

scholarly journals Historical understanding and rethinking the foundations

2007 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jurie Le Roux
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The University ◽  
Point Of Departure

This article contributes to the fundamental rethinking of New Testament scholarship being undertaken by New Testament scholars attached to the University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria, South Africa. The thrust of the article holds that the historical Jesus research is of the utmost importance and it puts the emphasis on the individuality of an event and the contribution of nineteenth century reflection on history. As point of departure and further elaboration it accentuates the notion that history writing must be a form of homecoming.

scholarly journals Zemskii Sobor: Historiographies and Mythologies of a Russian “Parliament”

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Sablin ◽  
Kuzma Kukushkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Russian Civil War ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Modern Russian

Focusing on the term zemskii sobor, this study explored the historiographies of the early modern Russian assemblies, which the term denoted, as well as the autocratic and democratic mythologies connected to it. Historians have discussed whether the individual assemblies in the sixteenth and seventeenth century could be seen as a consistent institution, what constituencies were represented there, what role they played in the relations of the Tsar with his subjects, and if they were similar to the early modern assemblies elsewhere. The growing historiographic consensus does not see the early modern Russian assemblies as an institution. In the nineteenth–early twentieth century, history writing and myth-making integrated the zemskii sobor into the argumentations of both the opponents and the proponents of parliamentarism in Russia. The autocratic mythology, perpetuated by the Slavophiles in the second half of the nineteenth century, proved more coherent yet did not achieve the recognition from the Tsars. The democratic mythology was more heterogeneous and, despite occasionally fading to the background of the debates, lasted for some hundred years between the 1820s and the 1920s. Initially, the autocratic approach to the zemskii sobor was idealistic, but it became more practical at the summit of its popularity during the Revolution of 1905–1907, when the zemskii sobor was discussed by the government as a way to avoid bigger concessions. Regionalist approaches to Russia’s past and future became formative for the democratic mythology of the zemskii sobor, which persisted as part of the romantic nationalist imagery well into the Russian Civil War of 1918–1922. The zemskii sobor came to represent a Russian constituent assembly, destined to mend the post-imperial crisis. The two mythologies converged in the Priamur Zemskii Sobor, which assembled in Vladivostok in 1922 and became the first assembly to include the term into its official name.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document