The concept of networks in transnational history is potentially a very powerful one; they can elucidate exactly why certain phenomena developed, and why in specific spaces, both socially and geographically. Human connections have often connected geographically independent regions or individuals in the globe, and it can be easy to carelessly label these ‘global’ networks. However, we must be vigilant to be specific in discussion of networks, circulations, and the transmission of knowledge in order to create a nuanced image that can truly enhance the analysis of historical phenomena.
James Secord’s concept of “knowledge in transit” is particularly useful in this sense when reflecting on the potentials of networks and their use in a transnational project, since it questions how time is used: “we need to stop using time unreflectively” (Secord, 663). Through thinking about networks, and constructing an alternative conduit through which to guide historical analysis, transnational historians should be aware that “what” is being said “can be answered only through a simultaneous understanding of “how,” “where,” “when,” and “for whom”.” (Secord, 663-4). Indeed, in their examination of networks during the scientific revolution, Lux and Cook identify “social prestige” as establishing the credibility of matters of fact. (Lux & Cook, 179). It was not necessarily the content (the “what”), but rather how well that person was connected that mattered, since this was what determined credibility. If personal meetings, correspondence, and frequent travel were the best way to build networks through the creation of “multiple weak ties”, and networks are seen as a way of connecting history, then agency is brought back into the picture.
Grand meta-narratives of globalisation have too often written human agency out of history. However, the reaction against this has already begun to put individual agency back into the picture, especially in the experimentation using different scales to show how the local was the global. In this sense, the reflection on networks, and more specifically, human agency, is part of a new way of approaching our recent past. Ulrike Lindner’s study on the transnational movements between colonial empires in South Africa highlights that however much the Germans tried to demarcate a national style of colonial rule, they were still at the mercy of business interests, and international considerations. A population shortage in the German South West African colony meant that migrant workers were encouraged from the British Cape Colony. As such, a British consulate was established in the mining town of Lüderitzbucht. The consul here was sympathetic to the grievances of the African workers, and represented a third institution between the workers and the German administration. This opened up a space for the workers to manoeuvre ‘between the colonies’, an opportunity that could be used to strengthen their claims and to fight for their rights.
It is the exposure of these types of networks that can help us to uncover forces that have hitherto been disregarded in historical analysis. Networks of ‘soft power’ that are very important in international relations are key, but the challenge is how to measure or locate these in the diffuse setting of a transnational network.
Readings:
Lindner, Ulrike. “Transnational Movements between Colonial Empires: Migrant Workers from the British Cape Colony in the German Diamond Town of Lüderitzbucht.” European Review of History: Revue Europeenne D’histoire 16, no. 5 (2009): 679–95.
David S. Lux and Harold J. Cook, ‘Closed Circles or Open Networks? Communicating at a distance during the scientific revolution’, History of Science 36 (1998): 179-211.
James Secord, ‘Knowledge in Transit’, Isis 95 (2004): 654-672
Rodogno, Davide, Bernhard Struck, and Jakob Vogel, eds. Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014. (Introduction)