MO3351 Doing and Practicing Transnational and Global History

The focus of this week’s reading on Prussia is something really interesting to reflect on. When we think of eighteenth-century maritime economy and colonial ventures, it is usually Britain, France, and Spain that strike as the most prominent actors, with Prussia relatively marginalised, if not straightly ignored. On top of this, as both Schui and Struck mentioned in their writing, the common perception of Prussian political economy as inflexible and “dogmatically mercantilist” further discouraged historians from thinking about Prussian presence and ambition beyond Central Europe. And it is precisely this assumption that has been very well challenged by readings. Schui’s article on the 1750 establishment of the Prussian Asiatic Trade Company showed that, even though the project was to be deemed a failure, the notions of Prussian segregation from maritime economy as well as its inflexible economic policies are to be revised. The company, in fact, was a genuine bid “to increase the participation in oceanic commerce rather than an attempt to limit it” and was perceived as a genuine menace by other powers such as Britain and the Netherlands, worrying that Prussia might rise to become a prominent maritime power. Far from settling with a manufacture-centred, rural economy isolated from commercial ventures, even if the company had not survived the turbulence of the Seven Years’ War, with the impotence of Prussian naval power a crucial factor, its failure had not erased the concern with maritime trade from the minds of Prussian rulers. As Struck has shown, Prussia framed the 1772 Partition of Poland as far more than gaining lands to bridge East and West Prussia — the annexed Polish-Lithuanian territories were very much seen as an immediate colony, only that there was no Atlantic to cross or hurricanes to be weathered. One letter written by Frederick II in 1775, where he described these lands as Prussia’s Canada, directly betrayed this colonial paradigm by which they conceptualised the annexation. Therefore, Prussia had very much envisioned and made the attempt to develop a more sophisticated economy with an eye on overseas trade — and, indeed, the contemporaries were also sure that they had the potential to achieve this.

The reading also tackled the aforementioned conventional wisdom from another dimension — namely the historiographical compartmentalisation between East-Central Europe and the Atlantic. As Steffen and Weber had shown, despite their geographical distance from a maritime economy, the Central European textile industry was very much connected with not only the North Sea but also the broader colonial market. Lusatia was joined with Hamburg through the Elbe, while Silesia was connected with North Sea trade through a canal linking the Spree and the Oder. Remarkably, as the reading had pointed out, there was a deep favour for Central European linen in African and American colonial markets, with them taking up as much as two-thirds of British linen exports in the early eighteenth century. Struck in his essay on the 1772 Partition of Poland also brought under the light the Atlantic context of this annexation which took place in East Europe. Apart from the aforementioned Prussian ambition in breaking into the maritime trade market, the economic and political disruption from colonial investment failures by other major imperial powers (e.g. France and Kourou, Spain and Havana) was a major factor why Poland was hung out to dry in the event, with her call for support receiving few responses across Europe. Hence, there is a very legitimate need for us to reincorporate East-Central Europe into the history of the Atlantic, and perhaps also our conceptual understanding of the history of globalisation in general.

I love how strong and thought out this proposal is, especially with the mapping of the historiography before moving into your own intervention. The explanation describing the shift from nationally bounded studies of second wave feminism to more transnational approaches is super effective! I like how “Third World feminism’s” role is highlighted in recentering Western narratives. That alone already shows a clear awareness of how the field might’ve changed, which also makes the project feel very well grounded.

I believe one of the biggest strengths of the proposal is the focus on circulation, and especially the absence of it. This is a really productive angle and one that connects well to everything we’ve been discussing and learning in class about transnational history—not just about connections, but also about the limits, barriers, and uneven exchanges. This also carries into this week’s readings and how they’re pushing us to think about hidden or somewhat uneven networks, where ideas and influence don’t have as much freedom to travel as we might assume. This project is positioned in a way that gives it the ability to explore those kinds of tensions within feminist movements.

The incorporation of intersectionality is additionally a major strength. The point about how some feminist movements reproduced other forms of exclusion is incredibly important and something that adds a crucial layer within the project that prevents it from becoming too celebratory or overly unified. This fits nicely with the broader argument that there wasn’t a single second wave, but rather sometimes conflicting “mini” waves.

In terms of additional development to think about, one thing could be the scope and specificity. Currently, the project is very ambitious in terms of geography (Western and non-Western contexts) and themes (circulation, absence, intersectionality, etc.). It could help to consider narrowing to a few case studies, networks, or specific exchanges that could be analyzed more in depth. This would, in turn, make the primary sources, such as journals and conference papers, even more focused and effective for the project.

Related to that, it could be useful to clarify what “absence of circulation” means in this context. Is it more about political barriers, language differences, or unequal power dynamics? I think defining this more clearly will help even further strengthen the core argument.

Overall, this is a very compelling proposal that I believe holds much importance! It’s historiographically aware, methodologically ambitious, and very obviously engaged meaningfully with the transnational approaches we have discussed. Awesome job! Super excited to read the finished project 🙂

This week’s readings were particularly interesting in how they offered alternative ways of thinking about the spatialization and temporality of the slave economy through a transnational and global perspective. Indeed, such perspective allowed the authors to highlight connexions between slave trade in the Atlantic, of which the study had often been limited to coastal areas and actors, and Central Europe as well as the importance of the hinterlands in this commerce. The readings offer a large overview of those varied connections which depended on economical, financial, political but also environmental contexts. For instance, Steffen and Weber’s text highlights how the specific political and economical context in Silesia, in which the feudal system , low salaries because of a surplus in workforce and intensification of labour in order for the poorer part of the population to be able to afford food, led to the global decrease of prices in the slave Atlantic market. Such phenomenon was due to the importance of the region as a linen exporter in the coastal areas involved in the slave trade and its competition with Indian producers in the textile market which exploited slaves. 

Similarly, Atlantic experiences also influenced Central European contexts. In that sense, Struck’s article highlights the correlation between Western Europeans’ struggle to administrate and control overseas territories between the 1760s and 1770s, aggravated by the frequency of hurricanes in the Caribbean, and Prussia’s main focus on expanding its territories in Central Europe and developing the production and economy there rather than engaging in oversea projects. Such article allows us to rethink the spatialization and the integration of Central Europe in the global history of the period. Moreover, linking that article to Schui’s article on the Prussian Asiatic Trade Company project of the 1750s allows us to think about issues of temporality and entanglements. Indeed, Prussia’s failed attempt to join overseas commerce and become a competing force can also be seen as an event which later shaped Prussia’s focus on eastern territories and perhaps interacted with its perceptions of Western European countries own overseas enterprises. 

Finally, Raphael-Hernandez and Wiegmink’s article highlights temporal entanglements going much further in time. Indeed, they explore how discourses developed in Germany on slave trade as well as its experiences in slave trade later influenced German colonial discourses and enterprises starting the end of the 19th century. They highlight how German involvement in the slave trade was already downplayed at the end of 19th century in order to guarantee a coherence in Germany’s colonial narrative, which emphasized its humanitarian role to justify colonialism. The authors argue that such erasing of German involvement in the slave trade can be linked back to Germany’s current “colonial amnesia”, thus highlighting how the reconceptualization of temporality and the acknowledgment of historical entanglements are necessary to understand current contexts but also further develop historiography on the Atlantic slave trade.

This topic is fascinating in both subject matter and its methodological approach. The opening line impressively frames the fundamental goal of the project by highlighting the simple fact that oceans “resist political boundaries,” while foregrounding how a transnational historical approach can investigate the consequences of this fact. From what I understand, this project will examine how salmon fishing is regulated between profit-driven entities, legal boundaries, and Native Alaskan fishing traditions and seek to identify who has the right to manage salmon in Alaska.

The reckoning between native tradition and practices, and contemporary commercial establishments and practices is, from what I have observed, a topic still underexplored. However, it seems vital for not only understanding the impact of imperialism on Indigenous activity in a postcolonial context, but also for understanding how these complicated relationships continue to occur. By exploring transnational exchanges across the North Pacific and tying it to international relations, labour history, and resource governance, this topic fills a notable gap in scholarship concerning the relationship between commercial and Indigenous rights to fishing.

The range of sources, especially primary sources, is commendable. I also think the examination of other sources concerning Indigenous resource rights elsewhere will, as this proposal mentions, provide a helpful broader analysis by identifying patterns in these practices that are perhaps also transnational in nature. Additionally, I would suggest potentially looking into historiographical shifts concerning Indigenous fishing rights and the relationship between commercial drivers and Indigenous practices. I believe this could provide a wider contextual analysis of the historiographical patterns related to this subject and better emphasize the relevance of the project, especially relating to how it foregrounds Indigenous agency as opposed to just victimization, as well as its emphasis on how ecological commodities shape transnational political and economic systems.

In September of 1939, Hitler violated the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934 through his invasion of the Polish state and thus began World War II. Hitler’s expansionist ambitions and strong belief in German Nationalism motivated him in his quest to conquer most of Europe in a series of ‘Blitzkriegs’, or lightning war campaigns. In September of 1940, Hitler began his Blitz on the city of London, resulting in the deaths of around 30,000 civilians. However, even through smoke, death, and devastation, the people of London were motivated to keep pushing against the Nazis. This attitude of resilience came to be known as the ‘Blitz spirit’, a phenomenon wherein the civilians of London banded together as volunteer workers, firefighters, and patriots to defend their city. Research surrounding the Blitz often emphasizes this Blitz spirit, yet its vision of a unified London can overlook underprivileged minority communities, specifically Jewish Londoners. This project will ask: to what extent was Jewish resilience during the Blitz distinct from the broader narrative of the ‘Blitz spirit’?

In the 19th century, a large wave of Ashkenazi Jews fleeing Eastern European pogroms transformed the East End of London into a dense community; however, despite this strong presence, Jewish communities were subject to discrimination even before the outbreak of World War II, which continued into the wartime period. Yet, through established synagogues, strong community networks, and shared cultural practices, they supported one another through the continued impairments of London’s antisemitism. This prejudice alongside strong communal structures carried into the Blitz. This project argues that Jewish resilience was shaped not only by wartime conditions, but by pre-existing antisemitism and a strong communal network. When this holds true, it highlights an overlooked narrative of the Blitz experience.

To research this project, I will be utilizing spatial, social, and transnational approaches to challenge the dominant narrative of the Blitz. I will integrate localized focus on the East End and the lived experiences of Jewish communities within it, while also situating these experiences within the broader context of World War II. I will be using a mix of primary and secondary sources to provide a well-rounded context for my project. This includes Jewish-led newspapers based in London, personal testimonies, diaries, and letters, as well as bombing records and additional support from historians such as Angus Calder, Richard Overy, and Juliet Gardiner, to bolster my analysis.  

One of my primary challenges as I begin this project is how specifically to define resilience—would it be visible in the likes of community organization, or something more subtle and everyday? I may treat this as a flexible definition as I go through the project, or perhaps as a broad definition to encompass a wider array of experiences. Another concern is the scale of my project—am I too focused on this specific community, or would it be too broad given its size and diversity? Moving forward, I hope to balance a focus on this community with the broader context of the Blitz in a way that is effective and supports my argument. In doing so, this project aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of resilience, challenging the homogenized narrative of the Blitz and highlighting how it operated unevenly across social and ethnic lines. 

Wimmer and Schiller’s analysis on Methodological Nationalism provided a very interesting read, and I was interested in the role the social sciences played in developing this methodological nationalism, and the effects it had on the way migration was understood and viewed.

The differentiation between the differing periods of migration and the nation state – from 1870 all the way to the Cold War and post Cold War period were very intriguing. The way migration, and the existence of migrants in these developing ‘nation states,’ changed throughout the late 19^th and early 20^th century was surprising. E.G Ravenstein’s analysis on migration in the late 19^th century showed that at this point many didn’t differentiate between internal and international migration. Due to there being less emphasis on the power of the nation state at this point, the movement of people into new territories was not defined by borders, but simply by movements to new areas. I feel this holds relevance to the modern day, where any form of migration is simply defined by the borderland, and less by culture. There is so much emphasis on people moving beyond ‘nation states’ – a philosophy that we ourselves created. Whilst an individual moving from London, to Shetland, would not be seen as a migrant, they would be moving into a totally different culture, yet wouldn’t be viewed as a migrant.

Moreover, it was eye opening how quickly the world forgot about the free labour systems pre–World War 1, and that the further development and entrenchment of nation states globally meant the world of free movement was quickly forgotten. Immigrants went from being valuable to cyclical employment, to perceived as a threat, in a world where suddenly everybody had to belong to ‘somewhere.’ The very cultures that had been developed by the transnationality of the past, were now threatened by it.

To me, one of the most fascinating and engaging aspects of studying history is its cooperation with a multitude of different disciplines. Anthropological, sociological, political, economic, linguistic and other writings are thus right up my alley. It is also what interested me about this history course: it is based in the study of a methodology rather than content like a specific region or time period or theme. As recommended for this week, I started off with Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller’s essay, ‘Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration’ (2003). Written by an anthropologist and sociologist, some of the jargon was unfamiliar. I regularly find myself having to look up definitions and concepts while reading articles, but I can sometimes feel a bit over my head when even the search engine summaries cannot guide me. Yet, despite its considerably theoretical discussion of the origin and modus of the social sciences and migration studies over the past two hundred years, this article was honestly a pleasure to read. It is magnificently signposted, allowing me to seamlessly organize my notes to mirror the structure of the essay’s argument while reading. 

In ‘Methodological Nationalism’, Wimmer and Schiller confront the social sciences’ conceptual tendency to naturalize the unit of the nation-state in an epistemic structure in which variants of methodological nationalism intersect and reinforce each other, perpetuating a static analytical approach in postwar migration studies. They outline isomorphisms between the citizenry, the sovereign, the solidary group, and the nation in nation-states and examine how migrants’ disruption of these isomorphisms led to their control, supervision, limitation, and exclusion by nation-states. Postwar theories of immigration presupposed a dynamic in which a nation-state society and its incoming immigrants were diametrically opposed: one on the inside, and one on the outside. Not only has this epistemic approach alienated migrants, invalidated migrant experiences, and even villainized entire immigrant communities, it also largely ignores migrations within nation-states. This creates a problematic double standard for who is allowed to claim national affiliation and for who is classified as a migrant and subsequently treated as a foe. The institutionalization of immigration control in the interwar period generated an erasure of historical memories of the transnational and global processes by which nation-states formed and the role of migration in those processes. By the Cold War era, patriotism had become a social necessity for human belonging. However, parallel to this was the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the US, which validated diasporic identities and cultural pluralism. 

The emergence of the transnational paradigm made serious headway for the historical acknowledgement of diasporic identities and long-distance nationalism, but residue of methodological nationalism still persists. As an avid linguistic learner, I especially appreciated the example of the semantic breakdown of ‘transnational’: ‘national’ counterproductively reproduces a view of the world as divided into nations by referring to the ‘nation’ as the entity that is crossed or superseded. Equally important, just as ‘internal’ migration was overlooked, migrant communities united by forms of identification other than national constructions – e.g. religion, cultural connections, languages – are only now beginning to be examined with migration studies. Through a classic mythological reference to Charybdis and Scylla, Wimmer and Schiller advise transnational historians, scholars of migrant studies, and social scientists alike to distance themselves from the bounds of nationalist thought, but to not stray into to the realm of extreme fluidism. “While it is important to push aside blinders of methodological nationalism, it is just as important to remember the continued potency of nationalism”. 

This discussion of migration, sovereignty, and belonging resonated with my project on maritime resource allocation, Native sovereignty, and international commerce in Alaska in many ways. Returning to Wimmer and Schiller’s point on the dynamic betweem a nation-state society and its incoming immigrants being diametrically opposed, Alaska employs a diametrically opposed dynamic between a nation-state society and its Native population.  It is a place in which those with the most essential sense of belonging to the land, Alaska Natives, have had to fight the hardest for patriotic recognition. Meanwhile, from the Russian-American company to the United States, immigrants to Alaska have held militaristic, legislative, and economic power over Native populations. In their discussion of nation-states and patriotic belonging, Wimmer and Schiller have made the methodological choice to examine only two players. I wonder how their analysis might have tackled the introduction of a third player, Indigenous groups. 

This week’s readings on migration highlight how the field has been reshaped by broader historiographical shifts towards transnational and global history. Circling back to our first weeks and Clavin’s argument, she says that transnational history is less a fixed methodology than an approach that foregrounds connections and transfers across boundaries and opens up new ways of thinking about historical processes. Migration history, perhaps more than any other field, demonstrates the value of this perspective, as it inherently challenges the assumption that societies can be understood within the confines of nation-states. Similarly, Suanier emphasises that histroians must move beyond methodological nationalism by focusing on relations between, across and through societies. Migration provides a clear example of why this shift is necessary. Traditional approaches often treated migration as a linear movement from one national context to another, focusing on immigration policies or patterns of settlement within a single country. However, the readings for this week instead conceptualise migration as a multidirectional and ongoing process embedded in glocal systems of labour and state formation.

Wimme and Glick Schiller’s critique of methodological nationalism is particularly useful in this regard. They argue that migration studies have too often reproduced national frameworks by taking the nation-state as a given unit of analysis. Contrastingly, they propose a transnational approach that examines the networks, practices, identities, and movement that extend across borders. Their perspective is reflected in Reinecke’s analysis of migration in modern Europe, which situates mobility within broader processes of state-building and global economic change. Migration is thus shaped by transnational labour markets and political structures that link different regions.

Van de Laar’s focus on cities further reinforces the shift away from the nation as the primary unit of analysis. By examining urban spaces as places of global migration, he highlights how local experiences are embedded in wider transnational networks. Similarly, Casmiscioli’s work demonstrates how migration was central to the construction of national identities, particularly through discourses of race and gender. These readings show that migration actively reshapes national boundaries.

The AHR ‘conversation on Transnational History’ reinforces this point by noting that transnational approaches encourage historians to examine both the origins and destinations of migration, as well as the movements in between. This more relational perspective allows for a deeper understanding of how migration connects different societies and challenges fixed notions of belonging.

This week’s readings demonstrate that migration history is a key site for the development of transnational approaches. By foreground movement and exchange, migration studies reveal the limitations of nation-centred frameworks and offer a more dynamic understanding of historical change. In this sense, migration history exemplifies the broader historiographical shift identified by Clavin and Saunier, showing how historians can move beyond the nation-state to better capture the complexities of the modern world.

Wimmer and Schiller’s article acts as a critique of how social sciences have traditionally framed, and progressively begun to frame, migration. Their central claim is that much of twentieth century historiography operated under a belief in ‘methodological nationalism’, treating the nation-state as the natural, and in some cases sole, unit of analysis, and to equate society itself with the nation-state. This then assumes that political and social life can be easily and neatly contained within national borders, which fails to treat nationalism as its own living historical force, naturalises the nation-state by treating it as a purely self-evident object of study, and territorially limits analysis by confining it to state borders. For Wimmer and Schiller, this flawed framework has had a great impact on disciplines from sociology to economics, and has produced a ‘container model’ of society where culture, solidarity, and polity are all neatly aligned within a national space when the actual reality of the situation is never that simple. In such a model, migrants become simple, inhuman, ‘anomalies’, they disrupt this supposed neat order and as such are treated as a problem that must be solved. This ‘problem solving’ can be seen in how postwar migration studies often focused on assimilation, integration, loyalty, perceived welfare dependence, etc. rather than taking a step back and rethinking the frame being used. They also argue that the nation-states themselves were not particularly self-contained, that instead modern states emerged through transborder processes, such as imperialism and colonialism, that are often obscured, deliberately or overwise, by a purely national approach to history.

However, they also warn that a rejection of methodological nationalism must also refrain from endless mobility or borderlessness for their own sake. In this, Wimmer and Schiller tackle something that has become very common in many works on the subject of refugees in the modern world. While socially progressive circles have begun to shift away from the narrative of victimising and removing agency from refugees, and reassert that they are neither burdens on the nation-state that accepts them nor something that should be pressured to ‘assimilate’ into this new nation-state, these currents often fall into the very generalisations and denial of agency common amongst socially regressive circles. Their ‘methodological fluidism’ often placing too much weight on one singular material fact, the fact that they are refugees, and losing sight of the many more surrounding pressures. Where an ethnonationalist would label these refugees as agents of destabilisation for the country, and a social progressive of the type covered previously would blanket them as agents of liberation, Wimmer and Schiller instead argue that their politics are not determined solely by their status as refugees. They argue Instead that the simple act of being a refugee tells us very little about the actual beliefs and social framework of a refugee, for such things are the product of conditions that run far deeper and older than any modern day conflict or humanitarian crisis. Refugees are diverse, even refugees that come from the same country, ascribing to different religions, coming from different cultures, ethnicities, and believing in different political ideologies.

In summary, Wimmer and Schiller have provided a much-needed criticism of a purely cosmopolitan interpretation of refugees that itself emerged to combat the nationalist framing of refugees. Where methodological nationalism has long been the target of post-modern criticism and attempts to excise its influence from historiography the reactionary cosmopolitanism it triggered has been analysed to a far lesser degree. Works such as these are, in my opinion, of great importance in exposing the similarity between a purely cosmopolitan and purely nationalist approach to migration, where one labels refugees as inherently transgressive in a negative manner, the other uses it in a positive one.

Crisis often always reveal how nations define belonging and this week’s readings show that policy surrounding immigration in the early 20th century was not just about control but also who counted as part of the nation.

Reinecke argues that WWI did not suddenly produce immigration systems that were restricted but rather accelerated already existing trends. Britain had already begun to limit their immigration with the 1905 Aliens Act, and expand their state’s power and control dramatically. The government was able to find new ways to monitor and control “aliens” both at the border and within the country itself through the use of registrations, identifying documents, and increased surveillance. By the 1920s, even liberal states like Britain had built a strong bureaucratic system of immigration control that was strict and heavily enforced. 

Elisa Camiscioli wrote on France and highlighted a different but related shift. After the demographic crisis that arose after World War I, French policymakers decided that immigrants were not just workers but had the potential to be reproducers of the nation. Beliefs surrounding immigrants began to be tied to race, gender, and national survival, with certain groups seen as “assimilable” and others excluded. Immigration policy, in this sense, became about shaping a future population, not just managing labour. 

Both of these readings show that crisis intensified concerns about identity which led the states to more actively define and regulate belonging within their respective nations. This is relevant for my research project on Jewish resilience during the Blitz. While the Blitz is oftentimes remembered as a unified experience (sometimes referred to as “Blitz spirit”), this narrative can overlook minority experiences. Jewish communities had long been established in Britain and many had been shaped by earlier migration and restrictive policies. Despite them still being part of the national resilience, they also existed within systems that continued to categorize and monitor them. 

Reinecke’s focus on bureaucratic control is especially useful here. Systems that were developed during World War I did not simply disappear but shaped how populations and people were understood during World War II. This raises questions surrounding the experience of Jewish Londoners: Where they apart of the unified national community, or within a framework that still marked them as different, or both?

Ultimately, these readings suggest that belonging is never a fixed idea within a nation. In times of national crisis, it is often reconstructed and often unevenly experienced. 

Camiscioli’s article on the French pro-natalist movement was incredibly interesting, as it showcases how the nation-state, as an organizational unit, is more fluid and unstable than our social sciences often describe. As Wimmer and Schiller discussed, narratives of the nation-state are ignored or perceived as natural, and formalize a perception of the groups within the territory as constant and unchanging. Camiscioli shows how citizenship and belonging change as interests shift. France reimagined belonging from the previous era’s Enlightenment universalism (dictating that every individual could assimilate into the nation) to focus on reproduction, the maintenance of white hegemony and colonial power, and a shift to civic duties. Various elements prompted this change: a frustration with modernity, colonial concerns, the rising influence of various Asian countries, and challenges to gender roles and dynamics. Additionally, scholarship and the sciences, such as ideologies of racial hygiene and civilization (both in Malthusian and linear progression of modernity), informed these understandings of belonging.

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I am not fully on board with the idea that Enlightenment Universalism fully informed the nation-states’ understanding of belonging. Certainly, the language from the Enlightenment helped articulate the liberal and democratic ideals of the era; however, these foundations were still racialized, despite the fluid mobility across borders. Although, admittedly, my understanding of this topic is informed by American migration history. I find Camiscioli’s article to be somewhat congruent with Barbara Welke’s book, Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long Nineteenth Century United States. Welke discusses how the concept of the borders of belonging is a conceptual tool suited to describe the consequences that states attach to identities such as gender, race, and ability. She argues that belonging for some groups is often achieved through the subordination of others and entails this constant negotiation of what it means to belong in a nation-state. This idea applies to Camiscioi’s work, as the criteria for belonging changed in France. The “organic” cultural groups of the nation-state expanded to allow  Spanish, Italian, and Polish immigrants to integrate into French society and defined who couldn’t belong. This process might have expanded the borders of belonging for French society, yet drew harsh boundaries— turning Asian and African colonial subjects completely unassimilable and incompatible with “white culture”.

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While reading this article, I also noticed some similarities with my project on the Far Right. Although this reading is before the periods I am studying, it articulates earlier ideas and debates that shaped the development of the New Right thirty years later. Most significantly, this article echoes the New Right’s tension with the aftereffects of modernization and its role in the civilizational narrative. Modernization was considered crucial for maintaining white hegemony and economic dominance. However, conservatives also longed for this (somewhat mythical) shared cultural past that deteriorated due to the changes spurred by globalization and modernization (this is evidenced in concepts of biological determinism, ideas of “natural and innate’ gender differences, fertility, and rural life). It showcases this ongoing debate to define their relationship with a changing world– and leads to ignoring nationalism when imagining the past– and drawing from a history that wasn’t perfectly aligned with the ideal of the nation state of their time. However, despite this desire to return to this idealized harmony of the history, where the “organic” culture was aligned with the mores and norms in society, the goals of this pro-natalist movement are still deeply aligned with modernization and the nation state, as concerns over Frances’ dwindling population are shaped by fears over their decline of colonial power, lack of industrial workers, and dwindling miliary force.

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This project investigates how Ulster unionists cultivated international support and connection during the Troubles. Transnational history has only recently gained traction in the historiography of modern Ireland. Much theoretical groundwork for the application of transnationalism was laid only in the 2010s by scholars like Enda Delaney and Niall Whelehan, who criticised the field’s methodological solipsism while highlighting the transnational dynamics underlying such themes as nationalism and migration. This inspires the project to place the Troubles under a transnational perspective. For all the communal strife and sectarian violence, Northern Ireland during this period remained closely connected to the wider world through media coverage, flows of arms and funds, and an internationally-mediated peace process. A transnational scrutiny of the Troubles, therefore, has the potential to shed new light on our understanding of a transnational modern Ireland.

The focus on Ulster unionism addresses another historiographical gap. Associated with colonialism and sectarianism, unionism has long been monolithically portrayed as always parochial and rejectionist. Regarding external connections, it is frequently assumed to have been unwilling — and unable — to defend itself and seek support beyond Ulster. This perception contrasts sharply with the ready incorporation of Irish nationalism and republicanism into transnational histories, exemplified by a recent volume on the global resonance of the Easter Uprising. By comparison, Ulster unionism remains one of the most cut-off subjects within an already insular historiography. Few studies address transnational Ulster unionism during the Troubles. Notable exceptions, such as Andrew Wilson’s works on unionism in the United States, offered only broad surveys rather than an in-depth dissection of how unionists cultivated international support, namely the tactics of persuasion they might have employed in different cultural and political contexts. As a result, the transnational dimensions of Ulster unionism during the Troubles remain underexplored, reinforcing the enduring image of unionism as inward-looking and disconnected from wider transnational networks.

By analysing the rhetoric and tactics Ulster unionists used to cultivate a more benign international image, this research seeks to offer a more nuanced reading of unionism beyond the one-dimensional, and arguably over-simplistic image of parochial rejectionism, while situating modern Ireland more firmly in a transnational context. The study focuses primarily on the actions and rhetoric of unionist politicians, examining how they fashioned and legitimated their cause to external world through speeches, broadcast appearances, and foreign tours. Here, official records from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the National Archives of Ireland provide key sources for this analysis. Meanwhile, the research considers developments at the grassroots level — namely the popular outreach of unionism and public reception thereof — by drawing on newspaper archives as well as historic pamphlets. One that might be particularly interesting to look at is Ulster: The Facts, a pamphlet circulated by unionists during their 1982 North America tour. Visual culture offers another possible perspective. Murals in Northern Ireland are public display of communal identity and political claims, which might function as an additional channel of unionist self-articulation to the outer world. Overall, a rich possibility of sources exists for this very much under-explored field. Preliminary research suggests that unionists were able to deploy quite adaptive rhetoric, drawing on Ulster-American connections as well as charges of communism and terrorism to appeal to foreign audiences in the postwar context. Therefore, this project hopes to show that unionists were more engaged with international opinion than their reputation suggests. In so doing, it aims both to challenge the enduring image of unionism as invariably insular and to foster a more transnational understanding of modern Irish history.