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"This collection of essays by leading global historians sheds light on the field's conceptual foundations and analytical instruments. Readers are guided to question implicit assumptions, critically assess the extant literature and reflect on the implications of history going global. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core"--
List of contents
Acknowledgements; List of illustrations; 1. Introduction: rethinking history, globally Stefanie Gänger and Jürgen Osterhammel; Part I. Forms of Inquiry and Argumentation: 2. Explanation: the limits of narrativism in global history Jürgen Osterhammel; 3. Comparison: its use and misuse in social and economic history Alessandro Stanziani; 4. Time: temporality in global history Christina Brauner; 5. Quantification: measuring connections and comparative development in global history Pim De Zwart; Part II. Concepts and Metaphors: 6. The global and the earthy: taking the planet seriously as a global historian Sujit Sivasundaram; 7. Openness and closure: spheres and other metaphors of boundedness in global history Valeska Huber; 8. Scales: from shipworms to the globe and back Daniel Margócsy; Part III. Configurations and Telos: 9. Tacit directionality: processes, teleology, and contingency in global history Jan C. Jansen; 10. Distance: a problem in global history Jeremy Adelman; 11. Materiality: global history and the material world Stefanie Gänger; 12. Centrisms: questions of privilege and perspective in global historical scholarship Dominic Sachsenmaier.
About the author
Stefanie Gänger is Professor of Modern History at the Heidelberg University. She is the author of A Singular Remedy. Cinchona Across the Atlantic World, 1751–1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Relics of the Past. The Collecting and Study of pre-Columbian Antiquities in Peru and Chile, 1837–1911 (Oxford University Press, 2014).Jürgen Osterhammel is Professor Emeritus of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Konstanz. His books in English include The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 2014). With Akira Iriye, he is the general editor of A History of the World (6 vols., Harvard University Press, 2012–24).
Summary
This collection of essays by leading global historians sheds light on the field's conceptual foundations and analytical instruments. Readers are guided to question implicit assumptions, critically assess the extant literature and reflect on the implications of history going global. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Foreword
This reassessment of global history's conceptual foundations and analytical instruments takes stock of the field and looks to its future.
