I have been interested in transnational and global history after taking a class last year on Middle Eastern History. I used one of the essays in this class to look at the spread of radicalism in 19th century Egypt and the Levant. Clavin highlights that one of the key motivations of transnational history is to allow for historical study at “sub or supra-state level”. I think this is a fascinating lens through which we can examine events and ideas. The history we teach in the UK revolves around great events and state boundaries. This means that much of what we are taught ends up seeming like isolated events which occur in a vacuum. We often neglect the impact events and ideas have across the world. This links to the idea that history is Eurocentric, which Clavin highlights by citing Chakrabarty’s famous call to ‘provincialise Europe’. I am very interested in postcolonialism and believe, as many scholars do, that a transnational approach is the best way to address the impact of colonialism. Europe not only drew the borders of the world but also set out the way we study history. The best way to truly understand the world is to approach it with a transnational lens to see beyond arbitrary borders.
Jan Rugers’ piece was particularly illuminating. The OXO cube is a brilliant example to use to show how even the most mundane of items can help us show how interconnected global history is. I found the political distortion of the OXO cube (its use as propaganda) very interesting. This illustration also importantly illustrated how the sources we use as historians can be distorted by those we are studying.
Finally, something which intrigued me in both the seminar and the readings is how individualistic transnational history is. When encountering terms like transnational and global, one instantly thinks that historians in this area focus on large-scale trends and global phenomena. What struck me about the use of transnational history is how concerned it is with the individual. It seems to restore the historical agency of many of those it studies. Especially those who have been historically marginalised or forgotten because their actions did not sit neatly within national boundaries. I am very much looking forward to getting to know much more about transnational history and beginning my project.