Month: January 2022

‘German nationalism has, from its beginnings, […] always been a transnational nationalism’. Conrad makes this statement in the introduction of his iconic monograph Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany (p.20). He justifies his claim by describing how the mobilisation of groups

I would like to preface my comments on this week by saying that I found Sebastian Conrad’s chapters engaging enough to work through even whilst running a fever, which says a lot for their quality.   Conrad’s suggestion that increasing

One important notion of the nineteenth century that connects each of the readings for this week is the idea of mass mobility, and the increase in the movement of people both in and out of a country. This idea of

In this week’s readings, the idea of nationalism as a reactionary force, rather than an internal process was an emergent thesis for me. Nation building and all that came with it – identity, tradition, culture was reliant on both internal and

Sugata Bose’s A Hundred Horizons chapter and Sebastian Conrad’s introduction chapter in Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany were both extremely helpful to ground me in the early stages of my brainstorming for the final essay/project topic. I found

As I did the readings for this week, one theme particularly stood out to me throughout Conrad’s chapters: that of the nation and national identity. Focusing on Germany, he emphasises that German history and national identity were not made purely

This week’s readings have revealed the tension on which the world studied by transnational historians is built: that of the necessary coexistence between openness and closedness, fluidity and reification of categories. Indeed, both Conrad and Sugata show that labour mobility

The rise of nations and nationalism from the nineteenth into the twentieth century seems to be the opposition to transnational and global history. Many historians in the advent of transnational history point to the popular isolated study of nations to

In the 2006 AHR Conversation there seemed to be general agreement that transnational history meets the need to go beyond a narrative determined by politically defined territories, which, particularly in the shape of the nation, has been the focus of

Reading through the AHR conversation on transnational and global history I was initially struck by how constrained much of this debate is by the need for definitions. To start first with transnational history, broadly understood as concerning the movement of peoples, ideas, technologies and institutions across national boundaries, Chris Bayly makes a

The new field of “global and imperial history” has attracted many to research centres and postgraduate programmes. It bears revitalised views on traditional ideas of empire. In fact, British imperial history has become particularly entangled in this new global phenomenon,

When Bernhard and Milinda asked us what prompted each of us to join this course I was immediately transported to my AP United States History classroom. We were learning about the Civil War, again. This time my knowledge about American

Throughout the ACR Conversation some of the various historians, in this case Seed, Kozol, and Connelly, brought up the idea of the study of migrations and the subsequent interactions of the movements of people as a fundamental component of transnational history. I must admit that this

The articles this week proved the challenges of defining transnational history. I also became aware of the difficulties of separating the various different terms that are connected to transnational history, such as international, world, global, and comparative history, as discussed

This week, I had similar inquiries to Jemma as I questioned the importance of forming a precise definition for transnational history. Beckert’s quote about transnational history presenting “a new way of seeing” for those that study it also really resonated