MO3351 Doing and Practicing Transnational and Global History

The first thing that came to mind when doing this week’s readings was the idea of scale. When thinking about microhistory versus global history, they seemed to me like opposite ends of a scale – one put a magnifying glass over the reading of history, the other aimed to capture the vastness of the field, the interconnectedness of expanses of time and space. However, the readings provided a refreshing take on how global history and microhistory can join forces and as De Vito and Gerrisen postulated: “Combin[e] the global historical perspective with micro-analysis.” I do think that this concept holds a lot of merit – by putting global history on a human scale, we can counteract this reputation of global history as being focused on grand-narratives and structural forces and ‘breathe the life’ back into historical writing.  

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Andrade’s nail-biting tale about the Chinese farmer – how such a seemingly insignificant player in history could have been connected to a series of important decisions was an incredibly interesting perspective. However, I did find that a lot of Andrade’s commentary seemed to me incredibly speculative: what if the Dutch had listened to Sait, what if Sait had waited rather than (presumably) killing himself…  And I can’t help but wonder if perhaps this is the biggest set-back of combining micro-history with global history and attempting to draw broader conclusions – can we ever really know what someone was thinking? 

On the other hand, I did think that Kreuder-Sonnen was more successful in her attempt to tie together one individual’s story with the concept of the transnational and national. Through her analysis of one man’s memoirs and his attitude towards bacteriology and the ‘use’ of scientific discovery I was provided insight into how the national was conceived by Polish scientists. However, here again I thought there was limitations to how useful this narrative was in explaining a larger phenomenon – the growth of national sentiment in Poland. Bujwid was certainly an anomaly in his attitude and treatment of scientific exchange – he disregarded any sense of patriotism and used imperial structures to gain what he needed to advance his own scientific agenda. However, Kreuder-Sonnen makes clear that this was unusual – it was possible to forego the national cause as Bujwid however this did not mean that many others felt the way he did – therefore how useful is his narrative to us really? However, I am stuck again with whether we can see this as a limitation – is microhistory meant to explain wider phenomenon? I assume that is its purpose for global history, but if we are simply using examples to prove a bigger point then are we reducing these personal stories of human courage and struggling to mere case studies? Beyond this, who gets to decide if a story is exceptional enough to be included as such an example?  

I’m not sure if microhistory is meant to be aggregated to macro-level analysis – however I think that it can provide extremely interesting viewpoints and add depth to our understanding of attitudes and behaviours at a given time – without Bujwid’s story we would never have known that ‘pure’ science free of national impetus was indeed the intent of some scientists. Microhistory is an extremely compelling if not temperamental perspective to use when attempting global and transnational historical writing, and I think used wisely it could give back some human agency to a seemingly limitless field.  

I struggled a bit to come up with a blog post for this week as I was torn between two very different fundamental ideas. On the one hand I wished to write and put more words down into pen about my idea pertaining to my likely topic project, that of Rapa Nui’s interaction with the Spanish empire, but at the same time I wished to write down my thoughts of the island itself, whose uniqueness and isolation generate difficulty in description and thus warrant extensive thoughts. In the end, mostly to satisfy myself, I think I’ll try to do a bit of both. In doing so I am going to give my concise version of the history of the island, with some transnational themes included, so that I may more clearly see the feasibility of my project. 

I’ll begin with the isle of my focus in Rapa Nui or, as it’s more commonly referred to by Western sources, Easter Island. Nestled in a relative empty corner of the Pacific, and today part of the country of Chile, the island was first settled by Polynesians, who share the same name as the island as The Rapa Nui, most likely around the year 1200 CE. While more famous for mo’ai, or massive face statues, that were built during this period of Polynesian control the island also boasted a relatively stable, if small and threatened by concerns of deforestation, population of 2 to 3 thousand people by the time of the first European contacts in the early 18^th century. The island, so isolated, suffered a common occurrence in the Americas with the introduction of European diseases, devastating their population, and eventually slave raids by Peruvian in the 1860’s, which resulted in the capture of most of the native Rapa Nui people. The island then wallowed in a general depopulation until repatriation attempts in the late 19^th century helped restore some of its citizens. Even then the country would remain relatively rightless under Chilean sovereignty throughout the 20^th century until seminal events in 1966, the granting of Chilean citizenship to the Rapa Nui, and 2007, when the island was designated as special territory. 

Now I’ve taken whoever’s read this on a long goose chase of reading a brief history of the island, which unfortunately this blog space does not provide much room for its totality, and you may be wondering what the point of this all is. Unfortunately, that is where I am out of luck, as this a just a piece in my continual attempts to really wrap my head around this oh-so-small island with yet so much history. An effort which I hope shall bear fruit as time wears on, and a proper, full history is made. 

This week’s readings have triggered a lot of questions and reflexions, which I look forwards to discussing tomorrow.

I have however decided to dedicate this post to my first thoughts on my project, which has taken a significant step forwards these last few days: I have abandoned my plan A, which consisted in looking at coastal societies as very dynamic spaces of exchanges, and developed a plan B.

This plan B was inspired by MO3214: Travel Cultures in Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries which I took last semester and for which I wrote an essay about natural history and scientific explorations in the South Pacific in the late eighteenth century.

Looking back on this essay, and in the light of our discussions during these past few weeks, I notice that most of the literature I used was very Eurocentric and focused on national scientific institutions such as the Royal Society or on great figures of explorers and scientists, such as James Cook and Joseph Bank, considered as protagonists of British empire-building.

However, I believe that there is a much more transnational and complex story to tell about the creation and circulation of natural history knowledge at this time.

My reflection is based on two elements.

• Firstly, historical geography literature such as David Livingstone’s Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge highlights the importance of place when investigating the history of science: whereas scientific knowledge is often considered universal, its creation and dissemination in fact took place in numerous local sites (the field, the laboratory, the museum, …) which influenced its nature and content.   

• Secondly, I understood after a brief encounter with Bruno Latour’s Science in Action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society that scientific knowledge is created and processed through international systems of scientific centres which create the necessary conditions to transform numerous disparate elements collected in peripheries into a standardized knowledge legible in metropolitan centres.

A common practice among natural historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was to collect plant specimens and bring them back (alive or dried) in European collections in which they were ordered. Once incorporated into collections, these specimens could be used as types against which other specimens could be compared, thus contributing to the establishment of a systematised knowledge of the natural world.

My initial idea for my project would be to take as a starting point a given botanical collection and to retrace the itinerary of the specimens composing it from their extraction from their natural environment to Europe. I could maybe also look at their circulation between collections.

The study could take the form of a series of focuses on different sites and actors involved in the plants’ journey. This could potentially enable me to both understand local realities of knowledge production and how these realities were connected to wider scale networks. 

There are several avenues on which that could take me:

• Inspired from Kozol’s comment in the ARH Conversation – “the most effective transnational historical studies are those that examine how cultural practices and ideologies shape, constrain, or enable the economic, social and political conditions in which people and goods circulate within local, regional and global locale” – I could look at how transnational phenomena shaped those scientific networks and enabled a plant to circulate.

• Moreover, the importance of scientific centres was dependent on their political, social, economic and cultural capital and relations: this wide scientific network was therefore heavily dominated by European metropolitan centres which determined agendas and practices.  Looking at intermediaries and more peripheral centres would enable me to ‘decentre’ Europe and to explore the necessary power relations embedded within this knowledge system.

• I could also be interested in looking at interactions between local indigenous knowledge systems and the European knowledge system. On the one hand, local knowledge was exploited, appropriated and integrated into European knowledge system. On the other hand, these interactions were far from being one way and local and European knowledge were influencing each other.  

• Lastly, although, and maybe because, natural history endeavours were strongly linked to empire-building processes and rivalries between empires, it would be interesting to look at the cosmopolitan elements of scientific exchanges across national and imperial boundaries.

From there, my main questions would be:

• How do I choose and refine my topic?
• How can I find and choose a specific collection?
• How can I trace an object? Where do I find the sources?
• How do I ensure that my perspective is transnational?
• What could be a useful topic for the historiographical essay?

Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen’s “From Transnationalism to Olympic Internationalism”  was my favorite text for this week not only because of its micro-historical approach but also because of my personal connections with the content. When I first read the abstract, and then read how Odo Bujwid was working in his flat on Ulica Wilcza, I instantly thought of Marcel Koschek, a Ph.D. student in the transnational history department who helped me navigate QGIS mapping software over the summer for my Esperanto research project. His work as a Ph.D. candidate includes mapping locations of Warsaw doctors who used Esperanto and belonged to various international organizations to communicate before the Great War. 

Perhaps as I am also an English major, I loved the story-telling tone of this micro-history paper. Details like “Nevertheless, the Mianowski Foundation consented to give him a further grant to furnish his own laboratory. He accommodated it in the kitchen of his private apartment on Wilcza Street in Warsaw. Above his door he proudly hung a sign reading ‘Bacteriological Laboratory’ (Pracownia bakteriologiczna)” (213) truly reinforces the quaintness of the described historical actor. Sometimes such actors are glamorized in our telling of their historical experiences, but these careful details portray Odo as an ordinary but talented person foremostly fascinated with and dedicated to his field of study. Similarly, the dialogue that unfolds in the paper and details about vaccinating himself to prove his allegiance (look to page 214) brings this rivalry between Kochian and ‘Pasteurian’ medical spheres of thought to life. As seen in Sonnen’s citing of sources written by Bujwid himself, this micro-historical narrative is achievable perhaps mostly because of Sonnen’s chosen sources. 

Bujwid’s wife Kazimiera Klimontowicz-Bujwidowa who was involved in socialist and feminist organizing in Kracow in addition to helping her husband with vaccine production reminded me of a Scottish woman I came across in my summer research. Isabella Mears was a Scottish doctor and Esperantist who married another aspiring doctor she met at medical school in Ireland. Together, they created Woodburn Sanatorium, an open-air treatment center for tuberculosis in Edinburgh that opened in 1899. Her use of open-air treatment opposed many previous medical treatment methods of tuberculosis. Mears was involved in the Red Cross, missionary work and wrote about her work in Esperanto. I find it interesting how Mears seems so similar to Kazimiera in their professional work relationships with their husbands, various academic and social interests, and their work to cure people of deadly diseases. I think these sorts of connections prove the value of transnational microhistory as we can zoom in on historical actors to connect the bigger picture on how various phenomena happen across national boundaries. 

I found the Andrade article ‘Toward a Global Microhistory’ particularly thought-provoking. His narratival and biographical approach to recounting the Dutch-Chinese conflict of 1661 in Taiwan made this article a very enjoyable and casual read. Andrade begins with introducing a major international conflict or event and then shifts to the perspective of a seemingly small or insignificant actor, such as Sait.
Through my studies thus far, I feel as though I have been encouraged to stray from this type of historiographic approach – therefore I am a bit skeptical of Andrade’s confidence in portraying the inner thoughts of major actors like Coyet and Cauw. Primary sources such as letters and personal diaries inform Andrade’s characterization of these actors. While these types of sources are likely the most ideal for creating these personalities, I am still suspicious of the author’s ability to accurately convey the personal opinions and sentiments of Dutchmen in such a detailed manner. The issues associated with translating primary Chinese and Dutch sources into English along with the dynamic of creating a narrative claiming to have insight of what these characters are thinking, together, is a bit troubling. Not to be a pessimistic postmodernist, but the instability of language and reception poses the largest threat to this work in my opinion.
Although, by prefacing his introduction of Sait, the two African boys, Koxinga, and others within their respective historical context, Andrade was able to justify some of the gaps in the information available regarding these actors. Through this entry point, these diaries and letters piece together a narrative that has a much higher degree of historical relevance. The story of Sait and the two African boys do not appear to be very useful or relevant in isolation, but together, add colour to the dynamic between the Chinese, Dutch and African slaves during this historical period. While this narratival style has its limits, Andrade’s approach provokes new questions and subsequently, produces new hypotheses in examining the dynamics of seemingly unambiguous events in history. I am left with this question: How do we exploit the benefits of this narratival/biographical style of writing a more personal global history without incorporating too much ‘imagination’?

My previous engagement with microhistory was primarily in HI2001 when looking at The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The readings this week were no different. I found Andrade’s article particularly engaging and enjoyable, which perhaps I attribute to its descriptive style and almost storytelling nature.

Something that was new to me this week was the concept of “global microhistory”, which Andrade and Linden particularly engaged with. Reading these texts, I was intrigued by what first appeared to me as a bit of an oxymoron. However, I now see and understand how global microhistory can be of great use and contribute to both our understanding of events, themes, and the overall discipline. While microhistorians have tended to focus on individuals or communities confined to certain places or small regions, global microhistory looks at following them around the world, across whatever boundaries, territories, or frontiers they may cross. This then allows us “to identify the big picture in small details”, as noted by Linden. The individual perspectives, journeys and experiences can contribute to larger historiographical topics and issues, and our understanding of them.

The texts this week also helped spark some inspiration for ideas for my project. After taking a module last semester on postcolonial Europe and the legacies of empire, I have found themes of colonialism, postcolonialism, as well as the gendered aspects within them very interesting and thought-provoking. Subsequently, a possible idea for my project could be to look at such themes from a global microhistory approach. This could consist of, for example, following an immigrant’s journey from the colonies to the metropole, and using this to understand their experience, struggles, and integration into a former colonial power. It could also highlight wider issues and themes in both the metropole society and immigrant communities, such as those of race, integration, and nationality.

Another aspect that drew my interest was made in Linden’s reading, when she highlights that it was not only the flow of people that stretched across the world, but that also ideas, institutions, and objects travelled and had significant influence on large areas. She talks about the example of the abolition of the slave trade, and how the British effort and campaign for abolition at the start of the nineteenth century in turn had significant effects on labour relations and slavery on other continents. Following a similar style, I would perhaps be interested in looking at how, for example, women’s suffrage activism and movements across the globe influenced each other. Having looked at the topic in both school and university but from a primarily British national history focus, I think it would be very insightful to explore these transnational flows and influences.

With the project proposal a few weeks away, I am looking forward to exploring these ideas further, as well as any others that may arise, and discovering their potential and suitability for my research project.

In my mind, a key purpose of these blogs is to engage with the historiographical debates which have relevance to transnational methodologies, even tangential relevance. It is for this reason which I have decided to focus my contribution for week four on the development of ‘narrative’ and ‘narrative voice’ within micro-historical literature.

From my understanding, narrative is not essential to microhistory. However, that does not stop talented academics, such as Natalie Zemon Davis or Tonio Andrade, from dabbling in it. I can see why. Having not left my room for the last week, stories of Chinese spies and prickly French scientists make macro trends such as transnational movements of labour and capital, or narratives of racial/cultural intersectionality and cooperation (read Chinese and Dutch emigration to Taiwan and the shifting allegiance of native Taiwanese groups) come alive. They impart excitement and make a normally cynical and recalcitrant reader (me) hungry to devour more of the fascinating historical details within.

However, upon closing my laptop and reaching across to pick up Sarah Dunant’s ‘Blood and Beauty’ (a well-researched, but entirely fictional, novel on the Borgia family) a feeling of unease began to creep through me… this story, if one were to pretend it were historically accurate, could very easily be used to highlight phenomena such as the transnational reach of syphilis and it’s stereotyping in Italy as a French phenomenon, or the importance of mercenary flows across the European continent.  

Worried, I returned to Andrade’s work to seek out the individual level history within it. Instead, I found a story. Extrapolated from several primary documents to be sure, but then again… so was Dunant’s book. Andrade’s use of Braudel (who was, to my [admittedly very fallible] memory a critic of the term microhistory) to make an impassioned plea to “imagination” is very good and all. But when you use this ‘imagination’ to buttress an argument about how the disparate treatment of defectors led to a German helping Koxinga to end the Fort Zeelandia siege, you had better have a source to back that up.

As a matter of fact, Andrade doesn’t have a citation for that. Perhaps that is because Hans Jurgen Radis, the ‘defector’, appears in the defeated governor Frederick Coyett’s account of the siege? An account, notably, written by Coyett to absolve himself of accusations from the VOC, which held him responsible for the loss of Taiwan. Wikipedia suggested that a Swiss soldier who was present during the siege also mentioned this betrayal. However, it provided no reference and none of the articles I engaged with mentioned this text, let alone corroborated its existence.  Other accounts of the battle and Taiwan at the time (notably Vittorio Ricci’s, a Dominican friar who acted as an emissary and advisor for Koxinga, but who despised him enough to write upon his death that: he cheered “the merciful Lord” for “properly killing, with his sovereign hand, that wicked tyrant in the prime of his life”) do not mention Hans Jurgen Radis or any defector at all, despite having little reason not to.

This is the problem I have with narrative depictions of history, and why Braudel can keep his imagination to himself. Whilst bringing stories to life is essential to engage with audiences, especially those who are not historically trained, that does not give us license to become fiction writers, especially if what we write appears ahistorical when put to scrutiny. Whilst using the individual level or a narrative voice to vivify macro level trends is undoubtably beneficial, we cannot sacrifice the rigor of our historical methods on the altar of a good story.

I fear many of those who engage with narrative histories forget this in the satisfying rush that comes with writing a great story. I suppose you can probably tell, I’m not planning on ‘imagining’ the history of any individuals in my essays.

Micro, macro, global, transnational, and spatial. All of these terms relate to our approaches to regions and scale in history. Up to this week, I rarely considered that micro-history, centered in small-scale stories of individuals, could be applied to the seemingly broad scope of global and transnational history. Boy was I wrong!

From the reading list, I really enjoyed the micro-approaches and story-telling aspect of Andrade’s and Kreuder-Sonnen’s articles. While it felt like a series of personal stories, both historians were connecting to a broader theme of wide global interactions and transnational connections amidst their micro-stories. The recovery of these historical actors’ relations, actions, and often disastrous demise brings to life the complexity of human interaction in contested spaces, as in seventeenth-century Taiwan or among late-nineteenth-century ‘Polish’ medical experts.

From Kreuder-Sonnen’s article, I was intrigued by the differing outcomes of transnational and cross-cultural interactions depending on the period. In the late-nineteenth century, an individual without strong national identities, namely Odo Bujwid, was able to navigate between two nationalized medical styles and transcended both by combining them. The same cannot be said of Polish bacteriologists in the interwar year, demonstrating the growing importance of nationalized identities into the twentieth century. Still, as we have mentioned in previous classes, it was because of the cross-border interactions and comparisons that nationalistic categorizations and pride developed.  

For Andrade, I found his push to recover these individual stories in an interconnected world extremely compelling. Just from the title, I began asking myself, why are these people here, what are they doing, and what are their presence and actions indicative of? For the Chinese farmer, two African boys, and a warlord in Dutch-controlled Taiwan, the answer is responding to a hostile globally interconnected situation utilizing their unique background and skills. From here I began contemplating how I could highlight the experiences of individuals within my research and connect them to wider transnational themes. Looking at shipping records from nineteenth-century Río de la Plata, there is a wealth of knowledge and stories to glean from the sources. From privateers (pirates with papers), enslaved Africans, wealthy merchants, and enlightenment thinkers, the possibilities are plentiful. The only problem I have now is where to start…

The chapters from Bose’s A Hundred Horizons and from Conrad’s Globalisation and the nation in Imperial Germany emphasise the need for transnational history. Bose looks beyond a specific nation or empire and instead looks at the networks of the Indian Ocean in the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries and the circulations of Indian migration and the trade in the region. This focus on a specific network allows Bose to highlight the continuation of connections existing prior to the colonial era and also to draw together cases from different empires which might otherwise be studied in relation the empire with which they were associated. Bose’s focus on migrants, occasionally at the level of individuals, allows for a history of experience. Conrad’s work like more traditional histories relates to a specific nation: Germany but is transnational in the way that its narrative emphasises the importance of circulations beyond the level of the national. The work contributes to the understanding of nationalism. While discussions on the origins of nationalism have prioritised external factors, discussions on the course of nationalism have often resembled national histories through using narratives of ‘internal trajectories’. Instead Conrad describes how migration was an important factor in shaping German nationalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Conrad’s ideas are interesting in their relation to concepts of globalization which is often a driving force behind the writing of global and transnational histories. Firstly, while Conrad notes the importance of globalization and it application to the period he discusses as well as the contemporary, he does not situate the events he describes on a linear narrative of increasing globalization but, instead sees them as relevant to the current period because both are episodes of intense globalization. Secondly Conrad describes events which exemplify how globalization and processes associated with it such as ‘mass mobility’ can in fact lead to fragmentation with more definite ideas of nationality and stronger national borders.

I haven’t done much with nationalism prior to this course. ‘Globalisation’ is thrown around in pretty much every International Relations course in this university, but most of my personal research regarding globalisation focuses on the areas outside of Europe. I was intrigued to read Conrad’s adamant statement that nationalisation and nationalism are the product of globalisation and not a ‘prerequisite’. Once I read this it of course made sense; the penetration of the ‘other’ into the workforce and culture of an established nation-state would absolutely be seen as a threat to national identity, resulting of course in the increase of national rehortic. Yet, I had never really given much thought to this. I found Conrad’s writing particularly interesting for this reason.

He talked about mass mobility, the rise of eugenics, and education all as agents of the rising nationalistic discourse in European states. He explains in his introduction that with globalisation came a fear of the ‘homogenisation’ of Europe and the various states and cultures within it. It was interesting to read about the recruitment of Polish agricultural workers for seasonal farm work in Germany with this fear in mind. Polish workers were seen as a convenient way to bolster the labour force in the agricultural industry, which many Germans considered “a symbol of the fatherland and a nursery of national strength and energy.”

There is a sort of irony in recruiting outsiders to help maintain and grow the nation’s main source of strength and pride. As more Polish workers came to Germany the fear of losing national identity grew. The result of this fear was displayed through the introduction of guarded border crossing, the segregation of nationalities, and the construction of a colonial difference between Germans, Poles, and Ruthenes. These tools were used to create a political difference between the groups, explains Conrad. Homogenisation as a result of globalisation did not scare nation-states regarding the loss of their culture to the melting pot. Rather, it seems, the fear was about becoming more like the ‘other’ that was truly frightening. This right-wing nationalism increased at the end of the nineteenth century as nationalistic rhetoric transitioned to talk of protecting themselves from ‘enemies of the state’. This sort of thinking lends itself quite obviously to the racialisation of nationalistic discourse. Conrad mentions the rise of eugenics in the 1900s and how this racialised discourse quickly lead to the radicalisation of nationalistic sentiment. I found the connections Conrad made between shifts in national opinion and nationalist rhetoric as a result of globalisation enlightening.

‘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 of people – from bourgeoisie grockles to working migrants – caused the idea of ‘nation’ to emerge as a ‘need for particularity.’ His argument is of course convincing – in a globalising world, how does one cling onto their identity established in a certain space? How does one feel superior to others if everyone is interconnected?

Indeed, superiority complexes ruled nationalisation movements. Conrad mentions that, In Germany, Polish immigrants became a sub-class below the German working class, which the bourgeoisie hoped would ‘elevate German workers to a higher level of civilisation’. In other words, the bourgeoisie promoted xenophobia in the German working class to promote tension between them and migrant workers, and to promote a sense of German superiority among the German working class. Ultimately, this system aimed to make Germans feel “better” than other people, promoting nationalism.

And it wasn’t just in Germany, or in the nineteenth century that this manipulation of the working class occurred. I am reminded of an essay I wrote asking why socio-economic background impacted racial bias towards colonial immigrants in Post-was Europe, primarily Britain. I concluded that, because socio-economic background impacted and forged a person’s relationship to the national economy, in turn affecting the way you perceived new workers. The working class in Britain were told that the influx of new workers from the Commonwealth would make them less economically secure, fuelling racism out of fear of unemployment. Thus, the British working class saw themselves as separate to this new workforce, forging a sense of nationalism. Conrad explains that, in Germany, there was a close connection between the economy and nationalist ideas, and my essay showed how this trend was not just German. 

Similarly, this nationalism as a result of transnationalism – as per Conrad’s explanation – links to last week’s article by Ruger, which discusses the German and British origins of OXO stock cubes. It concludes that the practice of ‘national’ history is still important; it should influence and complement transnational historical methods. I think Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany does exactly that! Conrad argues that the nation did not become obsolete, but became quite the opposite during nineteenth century globalising movements. Together, these publications remind the historian to steer clear of post-national histories, as we have not yet reached a post-national global society.

Overall, then, Conrad’s publication can remind us how nationalism relies on transnationalism. It feeds on superiority complexes, xenophobia, and racism. Of course, I would take a cynical approach to defining nationalism (if you couldn’t tell by now), but still fully enjoyed and recommend the work done by Conrad on German nationalism.

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 transnational labour flows (or the perception of such increases) had a strong correlation with the hardening of national boundaries in Germany (and those areas which labour was originating from) is a fascinating one. I found the massive undertaking that was his chapter on Chinese emigration to be particularly informative in this regard. Additionally, reading a review by Andrew Bonnell which mentioned Conrad’s theoretical use of ‘biopolitics’ also provided a really interesting lens through which to look at state boarder formulation and the treatment of workers. One cases in which I saw elements of this theoretical lens was in Conrad’s discussion of the German association of Polish agricultural workers with diseases, leading to the deployment of doctors along the Polish border to ‘check’ incoming workers, regulating and controlling them.

However, despite being enamoured with Conrad’s work, it was reading chapter 4 which suddenly caused me to realise quite how difficult it is to write a fully cohesive transnational history. Take, for example, a minor comment by Conrad’s on page 224, where he suggested that the popular spectre of ‘yellow peril’ after the Boxer rebellion (1899-1901) and Russian defeat to Japan (1905) allowed for the construction of the German naval fleet from 1900 onwards. Whilst this assertion is referenced and is no doubt valid at some degree, I fear it falls into the trap which Rüger identified in his work on OXO wherein histories of transnational interconnection sometimes miss important points. In this case, a massive body of research indicating that German naval development was almost certainly tailored to engage with British dominance over commerce, and not a Japanese invasion of Europe (a personal interest of mine which I wrote on last semester).

The purpose of this admittedly unreasonably nit-picky argument, is to illustrate how hard it is to engage with every relevant ‘node’ of transnational connection when writing history. I feel that the interconnectedness of the historical and contemporary worlds makes writing any history which fully describes every component of an event, concept or period from a transnational perspective very challenging. This is something I would like to discuss further in seminars or office hours because I think it will be important when it comes to planning the scope, structure and topics of my upcoming essays.

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 mass mobility also brings into question the idea of nationalism within one country, and how globalization brought about a new sense of pride in one’s home country. 

Within this time of globalization and mass mobility, nationalism was on the rise, even with a large part of populations emigrating to the United States or other parts of Europe, as well as the increase in international trade. In my view, the increase in nationalism can be seen because, with the flow of, for example, German made products to places outside of Germany, it raises the importance of  Germany within the international world. Countries now depend on Germany for these specific products, causing citizens to build a sense of pride in their countries goods, and henceforth with their country. 

This rise of national pride was also seen within the country, as Germans began to fear the erasure of German culture within their own communities. This is exceptionally clear with Sebastian Conrad’s discussion of Germany and the want to bring in Polish workers into the country. There was a fear among the German people that bringing in Polish workers would lead to a “Polandization” of the German lands, stripping the communities of the Germanic culture and replacing it with Polish influences. This fear caused the implications of immigration laws within Germany, creating a period of “forced return” where Polish workers were required to return home for a certain period of time. These immigration laws were unique to Germany, created with the fear that foreign workers could remove the German culture, replacing it with a community of mixed, foreign cultures. However, they were also created with the knowledge that foreign workers were needed within the agricultural setting of their own country, because of the increase in migration from the rural to urban centers and then emigration out of Germany. The rise of nationalism also created a new fear of the other, as countries campaigned to protect their cultures against the foreign worker.

Moving away from the ideas of nationalism, I am curious about the increase in mobility among Europe. Alongside this, I wonder how much of this movement is for leisure. While the reading mainly focuses on trade and the movement of laborers into and out of a country, I am curious about how the increase in movement affected the want to travel beyond one’s country for leisure, with the goal of a shorterm adventure and no real intention to stay away from one’s homeland. Last semester I took a module on travel cultures of Europe, and we discussed the increased availability of travel among lower classes during the nineteenth century. Being able to see other countries could also lead to the growth of nationalism, as one can leave and see a new setting and culture, but in returning to one’s homeland there is an appreciation for what is familiar. I am curious how the travel literature of this time period reflects the rise of nationalism, if it does at all, and the comparisons writers would have made between their own countries and the one’s they visited.

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 external factors of influence. At a time when parts of the world were trying to create their own unique brand came synchronously with a period of global exploration and migration. At the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century, two seemingly opposite ideologies were emerging – nationalisation and globalisation. However, as Conrad argues, they were not two stages of consecutive process of development but were rather dependent on each other.  

Conrad includes two different but incredibly interesting examples of how the increasing mobility of the labour force led to nationalist sentiment in Germany and in the nations of those who were a part of this new migratory community. From these examples, it is clear that German nationalism and the idea of what it means for something or someone to be ‘German’ was a characteristic built on the comparison of the German nation with foreigners. This exposure with the Polish in the form of seasonal workers catalysed the process of protecting German nationhood from the threat of ‘foreignness’ – a discourse that even found place in ongoing research about disease and bacteria. In terms of China, the difference in attitude towards Chinese versus Polish workers proved that race had a place to play in how ‘foreign’ one was perceived to be. As such, the intersectionality of nationalism as a phenomenon has become clear to me – it is multidimensional, interlinking with colonialism, race, gender and science.  

One of the most interesting parts of this discussion on nationalism as being a reaction to globalisation is that in colonial relations the concept of the nation state was the result of cultural transfers. For many colonised lands, the nation was an imported idea from European colonisers, which transformed the way in which local people had initially organised themselves in terms of identity and social belonging. The concept of building the nation-state struck me personally as something that I had witnessed. Living in post-colonial country – Kenya – I have always been acutely aware of how multi-ethnic the country was. Peers would often describe the very distinctive qualities of the Kikuyu people versus the Luhya and so on. Politics in Kenya is still very much influenced by these ethnic divisions. Despite being a united nation, Kenyans still strongly identify with their specific ethnic group above being a Kenyan citizen. This proved to me how imported this idea of nationhood was – the British established the Kenya Colony in 1920 – setting and defining boundaries that had never existed in such a way before. Thus, nationalisation was also very much intertwined with concepts of modernisation and civilisation. Due to the transportation of ideas and people that occurred during colonisation, parts of the world such as Kenya reshaped how they viewed themselves. Part of this came from the need to organise a national force in the mid 20^th century when the Kenyan independence movement gained traction, which grew out of the desire to defeat a shared enemy – colonial power. Here again, nationalism was a reactionary force but this time for Kenyan people to gain back control over their land, using nationalist rhetoric influenced greatly by their colonisers.  

It seems to me that the national and the transnational are completely dependent on each other – nationalism in its present-day form could not exist without transnational links – the very study of national identity is founded on how a nation both views itself and wants to be viewed on the global stage. I can’t help but wonder if we’ve almost been studying transnational history without realising it – or if in the past we just haven’t grasped how transnational national histories can be. 

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 that evaluating their tone and form was extremely helpful. I admired how both chapters presented agendas and explained the way in which Bose and Conrad will prove the transnational phenomena they researched. Bose’s definition of his work as a “series of microhistories” that create “‘slices’ of histories” which ultimately allow: “bringing together the histories of mobile peoples and some of the commodities with which their fortunes were linked, the larger history will be more richly, and truly, narrated” (79) intrigued me. The specific examples he employs such as indentured servitude, pearls, oil, cloves, and trade locations like Zanzibar compellingly humanized large (sometimes overwhelming) topics like trade, economics, and capital. This altogether worked to create the desired narrative, demonstrate the effects of twentieth-century economic depression, and prove the capitalist nature of the East. This style made me think about how I could use micro-histories I research to highlight a larger narrative in my final essay. 

Conrad employed a similar vocabulary to Bose related to labor with the use of “alienation” and focusing on human migration, class, and economy. This careful employment of specialized terms that aligned with the theme of the work demonstrated to me how you can direct the reader closer to the narrative you want to push as a historian and writer by using informative, thematic terms. I also admired how Conrad outlined in the introduction that each chapter will work with different locations, and this includes places outside of Germany like South America (22), and that he is not afraid to say what the work is not. By declaring that the book does not demonstrate a “subaltern perspective” (22) in the introduction, readers are not left to speculate over what the work has to offer. I hope in my essay/project I can articulate this clarity of purpose to my audience. Additionally, I would love to explore molding my project sections by different micro-histories at various locations to create my narrative of research. I also enjoyed the explanation of encompassing “vectorial factors” like routes and roots (22). 

On another note, I am wondering if anyone else who took AP U.S History before university learned about German migration to the United States that Conrad mentions from a U.S perspective? By stating the facts that Conrad outlines, “Between 1880 and 1893, almost 2 million people left Germany for the Americas” our teacher explained why people with Germanic origins make up the largest demographic of U.S citizens in the U.S to this day! Because of this, I was eager to learn the effects of this back in Germany. I was intrigued by the complexity of emigration when Conrad explained that this emigration period “led to an intense debate about the consequences and dangers of demographic decline, about the loss of national energy, and the effects of centrifugal mobilities. At the same time, the overseas diasporas were championed as idealized outposts of Germaness, unaffected by the detrimental effects of industrialization and class conflicts” (25).

Overall, by reading these key works, I was inspired to think about how I want to do and write transnational history. By analyzing their form, tone, and content, I understand why it is important to look to key texts in the field you will write about before writing.