Both Saunier and Christopher et al. agree in broad strokes that ‘transnational history’ is an as-yet unfixed and somewhat fluid methodology, and is better described as a point of view, or method of relational history, that can then be applied to almost any historical context.
Saunier, by virtue of being the only author of the work, provides a far more compact and programmatic definition of transnational history as a concept. He defines it in three ‘big issues’: historicising contacts between communities, polities, and societies; assessing how ‘foreign’ groups contribute to ‘domestic’ features, and vice versa; and recovering actors and processes that operate between, across, and through self-contained entities. However, he repeatedly makes it clear that the landscape around transnational history is in constant flux, meaning his definition is not be all end all, and may itself be subject to revision. Similar to global history, he centres transnational history in the ‘age of territoriality,’ defined by Charles Maier as beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, though Saunier generally has the last 200–250 years in view.
The AHR ’roundtable’ meanwhile is comparatively ‘messy’ but provides a far deeper insight into how different historians may emphasise certain aspects of transnational history (diaspora, ethnic-rights movements, migration, etc.). Several contributors also argue that transnational history is closely connected to fields such as postcolonial studies, feminism, and human-rights scholarship, suggesting that a focus on circulation and networks can avoid some of the pitfalls of ‘global’ approaches that risk greatly simplifying on-the-ground differences between societies.
Most of Saunier’s writing focuses on distinguishing transnational history from global history, with world history receiving less attention. However, he does provide a simple differentiation between the three based primarily on the time scale they focus on and their ambition. He argues that world history generally spans around 5,000 years and is the ‘most ambitious’ for this reason; global history focuses on the last 500 years and on how the planet integrated and began to merge over that period; and transnational history has the shortest range of the last 200–250 years, resting on Maier’s age of territoriality. He also groups world history alongside a multitude of other ‘relational’ methods of analysing history under the same broad umbrella, arguing that all place a ‘common emphasis’ on how relations impact history.
The AHR roundtable provides the best, or at least the most, perspectives on the delineation between transnational history, global history, and world history. In broad strokes, the contributors argue that transnational history involves an emphasis on the ‘movement,’ ‘circulation,’ or ‘interpenetration’ of everything from people and goods to more immaterial things such as institutions and ideas. Several of them even suggest that these three methodologies are best seen as overlapping frames for approaching history, rather than rival paradigms, and that they should be chosen pragmatically rather than applied as blanket interpretive frameworks.
With this in mind, it is useful to employ Saunier and the AHR roundtable to answer two different questions on the topic of transnational history:
Saunier, to answer ‘what is transnational history?’
The AHR roundtable to answer how a transnational lens differs from other pre-existing world-history surveys and globalisation-focused history.