When examining history in the context of nation-states interacting with nation-states, it is often easy, and sometimes inevitable, that we lose sight of the role of individuals. Even if individuals are considered, it is difficult to imagine them as individual actors, and easy to picture them as either a resource, or something that history simply happens to.
In transnational history, examining interactions across national, territorial or, as is the case in Ulrike Lindner’s article on the German diamond town of Luderitzbucht, colonial boundaries often requires that historians study interactions and migrations at the individual level. By doing so, it reminds us of the agency that the individual actor has throughout history. Lindner writes that the “term ‘transnational history’ is used pragmatically in order to focus on connections and constellations that transcend borders and people who cross borders.” Lindner describes Luderitzbucht as a ‘transnational space,’ highlighting the transnational nature of the interactions between the German colonial administration, the Southwest African workers, the British consulate and the workers from the Cape. Specific attention is also given to the fact that the African migrant workers in South and Southwest Africa had much more individual agency than is often ascribed to them, and that this comes to light by examining their migrations and working conditions. The backing given to the workers from the Cape colony in Luderitzbucht by the British consulate, and the influence this gave them over their working conditions is only understandable when examining the transnational context that the events took place in. Examining transnational networks also highlights individual agency. In David S. Cox and Harold J. Cook’s article on scientific networks, the importance of individual visits between scientific communities is made abundantly clear. The dependence on oral contact and visible demonstrations between networks meant that individual links were what made up much wider networks.
Examining individual interactions across borders, therefore, brings attention to the agency and mobility that individual actors, and networks of individuals have in history, and how these are often divorced from their national identities.