MO3351 Doing and Practicing Transnational and Global History

During our discussion in week two I struggled with reconciling or understanding the parameters and definitions of ‘nation’ under which transnational history operates under. This weeks reading helped me understand the development of nations and why they exist he way they do, in particular in Sebastian Conrad’s book Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany. Conrad asserts that through their inspiration of the Grande Nation, western Europe transformed itself from a patchwork of minor states into a landscape of nations. The late nineteenth century was an era of worldwide interaction and exchange. It was generally assumed that nations developed into modern nation states, then they would gradually enter into contact with each other, begin to become international, and start to engage in global trade and world politics.

            “The family became the clan; a combination of clans become the state and the nations, and finally, the close links between nations developed into intersectionality,’ August Babel asserts. First the nation, then the interconnections: this is called the paradigm of consecutively, a odel of stages of global development. While the readings this week helped me with understanding the place ‘nation’ had in transnational history it is because I understood the creation of nation states. The model that Babel introduces is what was applied to the world, it is a western model. Nations do not and cannot all ‘develop’ or ‘progress’ in a linear and categorical way. It is the same as categorizing countries as ‘first world’ or ‘third world.’ You are making places adhere to a system that they did not create nor ideologically believe in or stand by. Why is one countries idea of development the correct one? Why are we working towards the ‘goal’ of a developed country modeled by the west? What would have happened if these communities had been given voices and autonomy to develop and advance their societies in whichever way they choose to even if its deemed as ‘under developed’ or ‘behind.’

            It is my belief that ‘nation’ in transnational history is there to break the ideas and conceptions of what a nation is. Looking at the ebbs and flows between different cultures. Looking at ‘internal nations’ if you will, we can track the ‘development’ and ‘advancement’ of nations outside of the prescribed theories we have been taught and exposed to throughout our academic life.

Reading Clare Anderson’s piece this week has inspired me to return to a novel which I began reading earlier this year: Peter Carey’s True history of the Kelly Gang. Having little knowledge of Irish-Australian history, it was not transnational motivations which inspired the selection of this book, rather it was the Booker prize it was awarded in 2001.

Having been told many times to stop reading novels when they are not enjoyable, I put the book down after managing to reach about the halfway point. I found the rhythm of colloquial language and ridiculously long run-on sentence styling tiresome to navigate, on top of the confusing narrative; Ned directly addressing the reader, who is his baby daughter reading his letters to her in the future. Having read Anderson’s article on convict transportation, however, I feel inspired to give Carey’s novel another go. 

Centring around Ned Kelly, an Australian murderer and member of the infamous Kelly Gang, the novel follows our protagonist from youth to the death of his Irish convict father, and his own execution in 1880. Though a work of fiction, Carey saw it his duty to explore his Australian heritage, writing an account which would expose the history of his home soil, and further the image of Ned Kelly as an Australian icon. Despite the wrongs he committed, Ned is revered, and was placed on centre stage at the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. He is seen as a champion of the oppressed, suffering at the hands of British Colonialism from birth, and forced to rebel as a reaction to a thoroughly corrupt justice system, police persecution, and continuous threat of eviction. 

The novel addresses the lives of the transported Irish convicts and their communities, while Ned’s narrative makes clear the difficulties of navigating this treacherous landscape;

“Your grandfather [Ned’s Irish convict father] were a quiet and secret man he had been ripped from his home in Tipperary and transported to the prisons of Van Diemen’s Land I do not know what was done to him he never spoke of it. When they had finished with their tortures they set him free and he crossed the sea to the colony of Victoria. He were by this time 30 yr. of age red headed and freckled with his eyes always slitted against the sun. My da had sworn an oath to evermore avoid the attentions of the law so when he saw the streets of Melbourne was crawling with policemen worse than flies he walked 28 mi. to the township of Donnybrook and then or soon thereafter he seen my mother. Ellen Quinn were 18 yr. old she were dark haired and slender the prettiest figure on a horse he ever saw but your grandma was like a snare laid out by God for Red Kelly. She were a Quinn and the police would never leave the Quinns alone.”

Peter Carey, True history of the Kelly Gang, (brisbane, 2000)

While Carey’s work does not explore in depth the transnational nature of convict transportation, it provides a personalised access to Ned’s family’s, and the families in their communities’, persecution, as they fight to avoid the authorities who are determined to convict them of one crime or another. The Irish are seen as merely, “a notch below the cattle” by colonial officials. Despite Ned’s father’s, and his own, attempts to avoid crime, they find that their place as Irishmen in Australia means they cannot escape the label of ‘criminal’. Hence we see Ned resort to crime as a means to rebel. 

While we might expect to have contempt towards Ned for the wrongs he commits, Carey uses him as a symbol for the rising up of the oppressed against their oppressors. Against his will, he is apprenticed to an outlaw, Harry Power, and as a boy he recognises the wrong in the crimes they commit. However, as he grows to understand the nature of his oppression, and the importance of countering it, despite the increasing malicious nature of his character, the audience cannot help by wish he survives. Kelly hopes that his gang has;

“showed the world what convict blood could do. We proved there were no taint we was of true bone blood and beauty born” 

Peter Carey, true history of the Kelly Gang, (brisbane, 2000).

When I read Anderson’s article, I was enthralled by the extraordinary rich picture painted of the network of transportation taking place in the 19th century, and the political and social motivations lurking behind the journeys and lives of the convicts. By focusing on individuals like George Morgan, or the few young women transported from Mauritius to the Australian colonies, Anderson was able to pick apart the relation between race and the broader identifications of religion, class, behaviour, and education. I hope that, by re-reading Carey’s work, and supplementing with historical material, I can gain a better picture of Irish community life in Australia, and its place as a fine thread in the large tapestry of racial, political, and social transnational interaction during colonial rule. 

Following the introduction to this module, the readings for this week’s tutorial have been very useful in witnessing transnational history ‘in action’. I had read in broader articles on transnational history about the significance of Sugata Bose’s work in the field and so it was a great insight to read a work that is widely revered by historians, setting the standard for the employment of methodological processes and perspectives in this discipline.

Bose’s focus on the circular migration of Indian labour provided an interesting perspective that was not specific to either migration or emigration, but on the wider effects of Indian labour movement throughout Asia. As Bose highlights, the historical precedence has been to centralise European and American capitalists within the process of economic globalisation, neglecting the multitude of Asian capitalists with global ambitions. The combination of evaluating both Indian labour movements and its place within the greater Indian Ocean area allows Bose to present a wholly rounded text that exemplifies the benefits of transnational history. This text has taught me how transnational history, unlike global history, does not require a perspective of the whole world, but rather a focus on the movements and connections of a particular subject across a selected area. The weaving together of Jewish mercantilism, the discovery of oil, the Japanese economic activities and Zanzibar’s clove trade is a perfect display of Bose’s understanding of the possibilities that transnational history allows.

Similarly, Clare Anderson’s use of the specific studies regarding penal activities within the British Empire to address the wider topic of race. Through examining the case study of George Morgan, Anderson presents a well-rounded interpretation of the issue of race within the British Empire in the early 19^th century. As Anderson shows, transnational history allows for the intricacies of a topic, such as the understanding of race, to be contextualised within a wider sphere so as to uncover the issue of generalisation and dependency on selected evidence.

Overall, this week’s readings have allowed me to understand how the theory of transnational history works within a historical text. Anderson and Bose exemplify the benefits of transnational practice through their use of local examples to present an evidential and rounded assessment of that topic in a wider context. Essentially, these key texts have given me the confidence to go off and create my own transnationally historical work without the over-complication of theoretical and historiographical focus.

The readings from this week really helped clarify to me the meaning of transnational history approaches in practice. Particularly, what that means for the role of the individual lived experience. Generally, using personal accounts in history can accent the narrative with detail and perspective otherwise missed on a grander scale. Both Boga and Conrad refer to individuals or use quotations from them in their respective chapters.

Using the individual as a rhetoric device or research tool is very effective in understanding the lived experience as opposed to a far-removed sometimes spectator-ish recounts of flows of migration and economic commerce. Boga uses personal examples from people who themselves migrated with the trade flows that he analyses.  By beginning each of his sections with a personal account from an individual, it made his spatial division of the Indian Ocean arena both more valid and easy to follow. Not to say that it otherwise would not have been valid, but rather that it made it more apparent why Boga was approaching them as three different systems of commerce with overlapping features rather than one grand narrative.

Boga comments on this himself, and the necessity of a balancing act between the personal accounts and the global data/approach to inform or depict transnational history. To overbalance one is to lose valuable and interesting insight. In his own writing, the balance was a mixture of first-hand accounts illustrating social and cultural elements following Indian migration with commerce, supported by statistical data of ownership and financial records. Whilst personally I find the financial statistics somewhat cumbersome, I would agree that it acted nicely as the thread to follow in a cohesive manner and added invaluable information of transnational trade routes that developed and how they were interlinked.

Conrad in his telling, used the individuals (and quotes from them) and what party they participated in to illustrate predominant attitudes towards Poles and Germanisation. For example, he quoted Alfred Hugenberg, who was a member of the Pan-German League, to show the attitude of political figure to illustrate the divisions and ethnic tensions that were prevalent. This was very effective, and to me a very interesting and colourful way of exploring transnational history without getting too involved in the details of the individual’s life.

Personally, I found these readings and the image of the individual in transnational history as a tool of rhetoric and as resource to be highly useful. Both in expanding my understanding of what transnational and global history is, and in different approaches to telling it and what I found most engaging. It has definitely clarified to me that my interests are in social and intellectual history, as I really enjoyed Boga’s insight into the tensions working Indian migrants faced in different regions, as well as the use of individual information by Conrad to illustrate the cultural/ethnic tensions rising around Prussian and Polish nationalism.

I also liked that the nation state became not the focus, but not removed either. I understand the desire to move away from the hegemony they hold over narratives in history and spatial borders imposed by that, however the role of national sentiments and the impact of those tensions is of critical interest to the flow of information, people and ideas in later centuries. Not to the detriment of other factors, but I feel it would be a mistake to avoid discussing a nation to the extent to pretend national identity sentiments and compulsions did not exist.

Where to start with this week’s readings? There was something just so exciting about the overturning of some teleological perceptions which we have about Empire. Firstly, George Morgan, what an absolute badass (except for the part where he stole from a street musician), and also what a fantastic illustration of race-formation. By looking at George Morgan’s story, we see the thought-process of those who were grappling with the question of “what is race?” in the 19^th Century. Before biological determinism had taken control of the debate, a man of a non-white ethnicity was able to convince a British judge to legally classify his “race” as “European”, not solely because he was a Christian, but because he could also present his argument and his character before the court in a “European” manner. What is fantastic about this article is that Clare Anderson is able to analyse a transnational actor’s history as an introduction to broader transnational forces, which the other two articles also do quite well. The transition which Anderson maps from George Morgan being able to convince Europeans that he is a European, while simultaneously taking pride in his allusions to Jim Crow, to the place in time where Jim Crow and blackface cabaret shows became an attempt at subjugation and race-formation and how this occurred on the periphery of Empire, with its origins being rooted in the economic and security concerns surrounding multicultural convict labour, is interesting. The homogeneities of “Empire” and “Imperial racism” are seen to be much more layered, with different mentalities surrounding both “Empire” and “race” resulting from the varying geographical locals, the targeted groups, and the oppressive group’s perceptions of these groups across the Empire. One question this article leaves me with is this: if the concept of race is constantly in flux, then at what point can we say that a mentality of racism in Empire became systematised enough that “race” becomes a “thing”?

                        The Sugata Bose article was my favourite for it potentially (if my definitions are anything to go by) provided the perfect argument for transnational approaches being more reflective of the historical reality than global approaches. When it comes to Empire, the typical line of analysis in global history is to analyse the relationship between the metropole and its colonial periphery. What this avoids, but Bose highlights, is that within a single Empire there may be multiple poles. The conquest of political sovereignty does not mean that a nation’s economic and cultural influence suddenly disappears transnationally. What Bose shows is that there were incredibly rich and deep transnational linkages across the entire Indian Ocean which were totally Indian and were formed fundamentally independent from British oversight. Indian financiers provided the capital to establish businesses on different continents, and these enterprises would bring Indian business culture overseas, as well as skilled labourers, well-connected merchants, and Indian communities and customs. It is a refreshing argument to read that perhaps British political control and economic manipulation did not completely sever the links which had formed across the Indian Ocean hundreds of years before the British ever arrived. However, this leads me to my question in regard to this reading: was the relative decline of Indian communities and capital on the rim of the Indian Ocean after independence due to nationalism in post-colonial states on the Ocean’s periphery, or was it also due to a reorganisation of Indian capital towards domestic issues once the British had left?

                        Finally, the Conrad article was another refreshing, albeit rather grim, re-evaluation of what “Empire” and “race” meant historically. Conrad traces some of the origins of anti-Slavic and anti-Semitic racism in Germany in the late-19^th/early-20^th Centuries and its rather worrying how non-mythical it was. Essentially, increased immigration from Eastern Europe worried some Germans, because they threatened their economic stability and also because they seemed to be more impoverished than their German counterparts. Correspondingly, it was believed that they were less clean and therefore threatened the physical wellbeing of Germans by simply existing in the same space since they were seen to bring disease. The discourse surrounding these two concerns (that Eastern European migrants were economic and health threats) found roots in earlier Teutonic discourse and worked circularly with new biological and global conceptions of race to present the “Pole” as a race to be feared by Germans. The question of whether there was actually anything of issue with “Polish culture” is answered by the fact that the central government routinely failed to construct a solid legal definition of what a “Pole” was and by the subsequent inability of border guards to then identify said “Poles”. The racism against Poles (and Jewish Eastern Europeans) arose because they were the transnational migrants who arrived, and worked, in Germany. It is unlikely that if the Ruthenians had been the first to work in Prussia, and not the Poles, that the Prussian landowners would have been happy with these workers. Instead, a similar process of racialisation may have occurred painting the migrant labourers as “bad” while other “races” would be classified as “allies” in the fight against this “bad race”, just as had occurred with the Poles. I suppose this article leaves me with lots of depressing questions regarding the origins of Nazi racial theory, but I should also focus on the historiography of the article: despite heavily using primary sources of German national political rhetoric, does the focus on international migration make this article “transnational” enough to make it a transnational history?

Apologies for the rather unattractive looking blocks of text, but just thought I’d try preparing a question regarding each reading going into this week, which subsequently involved me just doing a lil analysis of each article. I have a couple ideas floating about for essay titles so maybe I might explore that next week.

After doing the readings from week one and two I thought that the discipline of transnational history was starting to become a bit clearer. However, after doing this week’s readings (Conrad in particular) I’ve come to realise that whilst historians of transnational history (such as Bayly) have argued that the purpose of the discipline is to shift focus from the state centric approach to historiography, the nation state still has an important role to play. The seed of this idea was sown towards the end of last week’s seminar where Bernhard mentioned that a potential starting point of investigation could be in the ‘national’. This of course does depend on what you are aiming to investigate, but nevertheless the nation state can still be front and centre when using a transnational approach. 

Conrad’s chapters (and book for that matter) uses Germany as the focal point of his investigation. However, what makes it ‘transnational’ is the fact that he uses the example of German reactions to ‘Polonisation’ in comparison to German actions in their colonial settings, and the similarities and differences in their approaches at on the continent and in German colonies. What is striking to me is that Chapter 3 is quite ‘Eurocentric’ as its focus is on the movement of Polish seasonal workers into Germany. But, in a transnational context we see the other nationalities of workers that the German’s wanted to attract to replace the Polish, who they believed to be a threat to German culture. 

To some extent the Bose text also emphasises the links between India and the places such as the Middle East, East Africa and South East Asia. Thus, removing the prior assumption I had that nations had a limited role to play in transnational history. Of course, they must be used to enhance our study of transnational flows but are acceptable areas of investigation to the transnational historian. 

For me this is quite an exciting prospect regarding the potential directions I could take my project as being in a Scottish University I don’t often get the chance to study Welsh history and what better way than to put it in a transnational context. Recently, I watched a brief four-part BBC documentary on called ‘Wales and the History of the World’, and it sparked some ideas about where I could take my project. And I hope to use Wales as a starting point in planning my larger project. Whether my focus will be on a Welsh individual, an area, mobility of populations or something else is undecided but am looking forward to seeing where I end up. 

I’m interested to see what others thought about the readings and how they the think the role of the nation fits into transnational history. 

When reading our key texts last week, I was surprised to see how important individual people were to understanding transnational history.  The oxo article demonstrated the significance of individuals as connectors who connected places to allow the oxo brand to be a success throughout Europe.  Although, these individuals were from a more privileged class, the article on connected histories of empire and especially, this week’s reading on George Morgan, gave a more in depth look into the lives of those from varied backgrounds, which cut across the boundaries of class, gender, religion, culture and education.   

I found the Morgan article in particular very interesting, through its diversity of individuals that cut across these boundaries.  It also demonstrated connections not just of Britain and the colonies, but also intercolonial transportation of convicts.  The article gives a great deal of information on how different cultures were treated in very distinct ways, how each of the colonies also had its variations and the individuals that connected them.  We see a change in social identities for many with the changing of their name to Anglican names such as John and William.  Some also converted and were baptized, whilst others learned English.  I wonder if this was to allow them to be treated more like Europeans, which in turn, may have changed the colonial authorities minds and allow them to have a more sympathetic view towards the convicts.  Clare Anderson stated in her article that “‘Europeanness’ was clearly a question of religion, education, association, ‘habits’ and ‘manners’, and not simply birthplace or colour”, which she believed many of the colonial authorities stood by.[1]  I would agree that many individuals such as Morgan were treated differently due to this, not the first time around, but the second time around when he was able to make a plea for his case.

This article was very interesting and I look forward to delving deeper into the module to see how lives and cultures are shaped, not just by actors, but also through commodities and ideas.   

[1] Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives. Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790-1920 (Cambridge, 2012) pp. 56-92, p. 68.

In his article ‘Global History, Imperial History and Connected Histories of Empire’ S.J. Potter speaks of a ‘fruitful cross-fertilization’ that can be achieved between Imperial and Global histories in order to bring together Imperial histories ‘top-down’ approach and Global histories ‘bottom-up’ approach. He emphasizes that in order for this cross-fertilization to be successful historians need to employ new methods like ‘connected histories’ top get a complete picture. ‘Imperial historians should devote more attention to links within and between different Empires and within and between different colonies.’ Potter asserts this offers to associated benefits. It can help us correct the Anglophone bias that continues to mark much of supposedly ‘Global’ history—often, in fact, a dialogue among English-speaking historians, built on English-language parts of the world.

            Chris Bayly points out that beginning in the late 1960s, shifts in historical discourse emerged in response to concerns about ethnocentrism. Wendy Kozol furthers this point noting that critiques of U.S. and European imperialism and racism, as well as challenges to gender inequalities and heteronormativity, have also been extremely influential in the development of transnational history. Anticolonial and nationalist movements, along with feminist, civil rights, and LGBT movements, have compelled reconsiderations of how historians understand migrations, state formations, and globalization.

            Transnational histories rooting in breaking out of monolithic National or Imperial history and studying dialogues between a diverse set of factors is what most intrigues me about transnational history. It feels unbounded. Isabel Hofmeyr notes that ‘movements, flows, and circulations’ are defining characteristics of transnationalism. In my eyes, transnational history is studying inner intricacies, patterns, and seeming semantics on a global scale. By allowing ourselves to compare and learn from different entities around the world and how the work, or don’t, together seems like what history should be. We should be learning from each other and each others cultures, finding similarities or contrasting two countries, spaces, empires, or regions together give us an invaluable amount of educational wealth.

            Like how transnational feminist activist confront the limitations of global feminism and articulate social justice claims through their understanding of the inequalities between First and Third World women’s experiences and resources, I would like to do the same with postcolonial studies. Transnational feminist historians reexamine how processes and institutions such as colonization, modernization, and feminist movements have sustained critical divisions that have differentially privileged or harmed groups through gender, racial and/or sexual frameworks. Much of these critiques are what lay at the heart of postcolonial theory.

            The ‘Mestizaje Americano’ is one of the greatest cultural hybridizations that the world has ever seen and we can learn much from this through the lens transnational historians use. Why are people disinclined to identify as ‘Mestizo/a’? Are indigenous cultures being honored and protected? What racial frameworks evolved or were exploited out of the great mestizaje? How has Latin America accepted or rejected indigenous gender or sexual frameworks? Latin America is made up of some distinctly Spanish things, some distinctly Indigenous things, but most things present are an indivisible mixture of both. Looking at this from both a ‘top-down’ and a ‘bottom-down’ way, as Potter spoke of, and studying the movements of these people will shed light on the topic.

When I first glanced at the readings for Week 1, I was perhaps even more perplexed than when I knew nothing about the course at all… However, after persevering and delving into the text, the notion of transnational and global history began to dawn on me.

Conrad’s initial quoting of C.A. Bayly’s broad remark – “All historians are world historians now” (Conrad, ‘What is Global History?’, 2016) – again perhaps posed more questions than it answered. As I continued to read, I began to see that Conrad presents Transnational History as a solution, an antidote to the toxic bias of purely national histories. The deeply Eurocentric nature of the modern academic disciplines, coupled with the attachment of social sciences and humanities to the nation, set early modern historical practice on a course to divide, rather than unite, the peoples of the past. A key word that is used by Conrad, “compartmentalisation”, is the limiting factor on connection-making, something that transnational history serves to overcome through the placement of circulation, mobility and exchange at the epicentre of historical studies.

The existence of global history as a process and a perspective, a subject matter and a methodology, indicates the true expanse of connections and interactions that are possible within this field of history. Subrahmanyam’s argument that supra-local connections tend to be focused on the flow of money and weapons, neglecting the transfer of ideas and mental constructs, suggests that there is so much more in the study of connections to be uncovered. Subrahmanyam reveals to us how the link-making of connected histories overcomes the vices of nationalism and historical ethnography, disciplines that serve an important purpose but can be dangerous when used to excess… The expression of similar ideas and notions all over the globe allows us historians to connect peoples that were thousands of miles apart, affirming the idea of global history that we are all connected much more intrinsically than we realise.

Indeed, to be undertaking MO3351 in 2021, when the world is fluctuating on the acceptance and appliance of globalisation, is a unique opportunity. The connections made throughout history, if properly understood, allow us to see how connected we are in the here and now; a realisation central to the ideals of social responsibility and collective stewardship. Felipe Fernández – Armesto and Benjamin Sacks declared, “Global history is the history of what happens worldwide” (Conrad, ‘What is Global History?’, 2016), an affirmation that gives value and meaning to the study of everything historical. The omniverous perspective that this leaves us with, coupled with the focus on link-making and connections of Subrahmanyam, sets up a very exciting semester of enquiry and exploration ahead…

Despite what the title might first suggest, with my still limited experience of practising transnational history, I did not feel I could construct said history for someone who’s transnational story is limited to one childhood migration across the Scottish border. However, I thought that a good first approach to this new method would be to consider how I have previously studied history, and how a transactional approach could be applied to this.

A transnational history

My experience studying history at school, like many British students I suppose, was one almost exclusively revolving around the first and second world wars. Here the events of the past were discussed in strictly national terms. To twelve year old me, it was the case that Germany chose to invade Belgium, and then Britain and the US heroically intervened later on. It was not only as if these nations were agents in themselves, but that these national relations were sufficient to understanding the wars.  While we spent some time considering the impact of individuals through primary sources, there was no discussion around the nuanced causes and effects of the wars, and how they were felt among differing communities. It was also an extremely inevitable reading of history. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure that it was a hefty task to keep thirty children engaged in the first place. Perhaps more thematically discussed was the months spent discussing the Russian revolutions, though their impact across the globe was rarely touched upon, let alone in a way which managed to consider more than purely national terms. 

A transnational approach? Wow!

So, while my intrigue into historical events was born in school and thus the reason why I am in St. Andrews studying history, I am grateful that my experiences in school have not hampered my recognition of the importance of studying transnational history (which must be proven by my module choices this semester!).

However, reading Jan Rüger’s piece on the relationship between transnational and ‘traditional’ historical approaches, it was interesting to note that he appreciates the importance of the old models of studying history which I have been damning. For him, these histories play an important foundation in the understanding of wider historical trends, especially for younger students.

“In the traditional undergraduate survey courses, the nation state reigns more or less supreme. Called ‘Europe Since 1800’, ‘European History 1890 to the Present’ and the like, they focus on the Continent’s revolutions, wars and dictators”.

Jan Rüger, ‘OXO: Or, the Challenges of Transnational history’, European History Quarterly, 40(4) (2010), pp. 656-668.

This sounds oddly familiar! I must admit that many history modules I took in first year were astonishing in scope, to the point where I struggled to keep up. However, they provided an enjoyable background to allowing me to specialise in honours modules. It is of course not the case that national borders simply do not exist, nor do we deny that they play an instrumental role in International relations. However, I agree with Rüger in that these should not be the strict limits to all historical study.

An overwhelming method?

While it seems slightly formidable to realise that history can and must be looked at from so many varying perspectives, which also challenges most of how I have done history until this year, it is important that we do make strong efforts to integrate transnational study into our routine.  Studying HI2001 in second year stirred in me an interest in historical approach (despite the mild horror stories about the module I had been told by friends in the year above!). ‘Wow, history is more than nations doing things which effect other nations!’ I thought. I was able to further this intrigue when studying ‘MO3052: The Library, A Fragile History’. While a history of the library seems rather insignificant when considering subject areas such as the French Revolution, or British colonialism, for example, the approach we took to study the development and transmission of ideas through books and libraries was eye-opening. Here a focus was put on the creation of libraries by individuals, families, and institutions, which allowed for a study of the transmission of ideas through communities; from novels within the 18th century upper classes, to 20th century readership in mechanics institutes. 

At the time I did not linger on the transnational aspect of this history, and thus I wish to spend some time over the coming weeks glancing back to consider how a more transnational spin could be taken. After all, as it is noted by Sven Beckert, transnational history should be a “way of seeing”. This comforts me, proving that, just because my historical approach in school was perhaps not the most all-encompassing, it does not prevent me from looking back and re-writing these wrongs. Over the coming weeks, in addition to developing a knowledge of what it means to do history transnationally, I hope to develop a new and improved transnational knowledge of the 20th century world wars, or of the creation of libraries and dispersion of books in the last millennium.

The positive journey ahead!

Looking ahead to the next semester of work and discovery, I will leave with Rüger’s comment that the only university seminars which consider transnational and global historical approaches he has found are usually limited to postgraduate students. He is saddened by the fact that there has so far been little effort to connect this area of teaching, with the still important basis of national approaches. Well, challenge accepted! 

The issue raised here is perhaps not one which is exclusive to transnational history, but it is perhaps important to recognise due to the focus which transnational history places on “transcultural” and “transnational” actors.

‘The conceptual toolbox of the social sciences and humanities abstracted European history to create a model of universal development. Ostensibly analytical terms like “nation,” “revolution,” “society,” and “progress” transformed concrete European experience into a (universalistic) language of theory that presumably applied everywhere. Methodologically speaking, then, by imposing categories particular to Europe on everybody else’s past, the modern disciplines rendered all other societies colonies of Europe.’[1]

                        By understanding, as Sebastian Conrad does above, that the definitions of terms are constructed, we realise that there is a need to not simply construct a picture of universality when conducting studies of regions, but that we must also examine the changing mentalities of nations within a region as concepts travel and disseminate transnationally. It could be rather Postmodernist to say that we all have our own individual experiences surrounding certain concepts which result in us all having totally different understandings of those concepts, but when applying this idea of separation in understanding to a national level, this idea becomes less of a philosophical conundrum and more of a philosophical foundation to our analysis. We all may have, as individuals, differing understandings of concepts, but when applying this to a national level we can identify the roles which a cultural environment plays in shaping our understandings of these concepts. Thus, by analysing the historical changes in people’s mentalities which occur when ideas and certain conceptualisations of certain terms bleed from one nation into others, we can start to decentralise the role which European academic language plays in our histories.

                        The solution, therefore, is to simultaneously ascend as well as fragment intellectual history from its current national, regional, and civilisational dimensions, to a potentially limitless in scope transnational area of linkages which allows us to identify the peculiarities and differences of individual nations while also capturing the avenues of connections and similarities between nations. For instance, “revolution” could mean one thing to the 19^th Century German, and a totally different thing to the 19^th Century Han. It could be the propensity for such an act, or it could be the conceptualisation of what the end goal of a “revolution” is which could differ: could it be to reconfigure the societal structures of the nation for economic purposes, or could it be about a spiritual-actualisation through political violence against a spiritual leader? In any case, the mentality surrounding the word “revolution” differs, but is there then convergence in these mentalities when the circulation of Marxist literature begins to occur amongst Chinese students? Does the victory of Mao Tse-tung correspond with an alignment in China to a Western conception of what “revolution” means? The never-ending semiological scrutiny which we can place these questions under can be overwhelming, but that should not deter us from employing intellectual history within transnational history.

                        Indeed, there are plenty of examples of such a transnational twist to intellectual history. Perhaps the most applicable example could be the Cambridge School of intellectual history. Quite aptly to this end, adherents to this school such as John Dunn or David Runciman have explored the changing mentalities surrounding such concepts as “democracy” across epochs. However, for identifying the changing mentalities surrounding concepts as they cross national boundaries it could be more beneficial to look at Quentin Skinner or J. G. A. Pocock. These historians are considered neither purely externalist nor entirely text-centred within the realm of intellectual history, but rather root the language surrounding ideas within its historical environment. They identify the economic and political structures and events which alter the perceptions of such ideas, and they investigate all types of texts within this period to understand how intellectuals understood such concepts, rather than simply prioritising the intellectual treatise which they wrote which would be similar to trying to understand Don Quixote without reading the chivalric novels it was satirising or analysing the American Declaration of Independence without reading the letters exchanged between its writers and their connections within Britain.

                        Ultimately, transnational history is an attempt at moving away from viewing the human experience as solely within the boundaries of a single culture, but it is not an attempt at universalising the human experience. Rather, transnational history is the celebration of our diversity while highlighting our connections and relationships to one another. Therefore, we should have a methodology which reflects this, and the analysis of language as it changes transculturally could give us an indication of the mentalities held by those which came before us and the connections, in similarities as well as dissimilarities, that these mentalities held with other mentalities.

[1] Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History? (Princeton, 2016), <https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc779r7> [accessed: 31/01/2021], p. 4.

According to Simon Potter and Jonathan Saha, with his 1997 essay entitled “Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia”, Sanjay Subrahmanyam largely introduces the term “connected histories” into the academic field (Potter and Saha, ‘Global History’, p. 4.). In this seminal essay, Subrahmanyan proposes the use of “connected histories” in order to shed light on those historical processes which had previously been obscured by the work of historians who utilized “comparative histories”. As evidence for one of his sub-arguments – that even in the early modern world, “ideas and mental constructs… flowed across political boundaries” (Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected Histories’, p. 748.) – Subrahmanyam notes that Columbus was motivated on his voyage of discovery by “millenarian aspirations” and “Franciscan apocalyptic thought” (Ibid., p. 749.). Upon reading this I stopped in my tracks, so to speak. I was shocked to learn something new and completely at odds with what I had learned about Columbus, a figure who played a central role throughout my schooling in the United States. There are of course practical concerns which might explain this disjuncture. For example, Subrahmanyam notes that this information about Columbus was only found by research completed in recent years, and perhaps this is why it never made it into the material I learned between 2008-2018. Nevertheless, it got me wondering, how many other facts was I missing? Did my teachers simply omit pieces of information which did not conform to the dominant narrative pursued by the academic institution they were a part of? I wonder if my teachers had taken a more transnational or global approach, might they have been less likely to omit such an interesting detail? It seems to me the answer is yes. This may seem to be an incredibly trivial realization. However, as someone who has very little experience in global or transnational history and has just switched into the class last minute, these are very exciting thoughts. I look forward to learning things this semester which challenge my existing knowledge, and allow me to make connections which had previously not occurred to me. Hopefully by the semester’s conclusion, I will be able to expand on and express this thought much more eloquently! 

What is transnational history? And, how does it differ from global history? 

Transnational and global histories are on the rise and offer an alternative way of doing history. An increased emphasis on the movement flows which transcend the rigid borders of the nation state, define this emerging field. Hence, as Bayly notes, taking a global and transnational perspective moves historians away from a state and Eurocentric view of the past. Instead, it helps us to understand how the flows of people, knowledge and materials (just to name a few focus areas) have impacted and shaped the world around us. Hence, offering a fresh and unique perspective on the past which moves towards a focus on non-state actors.

So, how do global and transnational approaches differ, and which one is more suited for investigating the past? For me, ‘global history’ infers that the whole world is the object of study and that there the historian is attempting to cover the entire history of the world. However, I don’t believe that applying a grand sweeping narrative to the history of the world really captures the nuance and complexity of global flows. Hence, I much prefer the term ‘transnational history’ as the object of study is not limited to a planetary scale viewed from a ‘cosmic crow’s nest’. 

Rather, a transnational approach isn’t limited to a macro perspective and can be done on the micro level, by narrowing in on an individual or a place and observing the effects of their transnational movements and flows. Therefore, transnational history does not limit itself to following ‘global’ flows and narratives as not all flows are truly global, and we shouldn’t force ourselves to make connections that are not there. The transnational approach, therefore, balances the scale of our investigations, allowing us to zoom in to the micro level of analysis and zoom out to see the larger trends and flows. 

This is an exciting idea as you can look at a town, an individual or even a building and then pull back to see how they fitted into larger transnational flows. This marks a divergence from seeing nation states as the main actors in history to highlighting the impact of non-state actors and breaking away from more traditional historiographical methods.