MO3351 Doing and Practicing Transnational and Global History

Project Idea: What actually is the European Union?

Over break, I had the privilege of interning at the EU office in Washington D.C.  With the future of the EU up in the air; Brexit and the EU elections coming throwing curve balls left and right, the continent is sailing into uncharted political waters. With Britain most likely leaving the EU, member states have been forced to ask the question, “what are we actually doing?” Does being European stand for merely a geographic connection or is it a more substantial cultural and economic link? While interning at the EU, it was particularly interesting to see the diversity in the office, with the staff composed of Italians, French, Portuguese, British, and Czech colleagues all working together towards a shared goal. However, I began to wonder what this goal actually was. When the EU was officially created in 1993 (acknowledging the different European community organisations prior to it in the 1950s), the ambition was to form a shared economic and legal community in which laws and borders could be applied uniformly to all member states. While the EU accomplished this, it seems a larger entity was born from these member state alliances: a European identity.

Though some would argue they are more partial to their national ties than European origins, the case can be appropriately made that the European identity as of 2019 is in jeopardy. With Britain leaving individuals have been forced to question whether they are  for example, German or European? Noting that one can be both German and European, my point is that before Brexit, many people did not take issue or even think about the title “European.” If one lives in Germany, they are part of an EU member state and therefore European. However, now with the world changing at a fast pace these political decisions pose more personal dilemmas.  What does it mean to be European? Is it merely living in the territory? Is it cultural link? An attitude? An atheistic questions becomes a more cogent issue as the questions continually generate from each other.

My hope in this class is to do my final project on the EU identity. I think it would be really interesting and prove a beneficial exercise to trace the genealogy of the EU from its early ties in the 1950s to its more recent trials and tribulations with Brexit and even Turkey attempting to join a few years back. Why is it that Britain wanted to leave? Why were the member states so opposed to having Turkey join? Was it purely economic reasons or were their more subtle cultural qualms involved in the decisions? These questions have been weighing on me since my internships and I would really enjoy the chance to explore them further, bouncing ideas off the class through discussions and posts.

I plan to completely embrace the irony of an all American girl writing about European politics and identity.  While some will say I am out of my league and need stay in my lane, I think that studying Europe as an outsider might give me an advantage. For example, a European writing about the concept of European identity might have a better grasp of one’s personal connection to the alliance, but, they will unavoidably be harbouring a bias. Whether the individual is a supporter of the EU or sceptical of it, they will inevitably have opinions regarding what it means to be European. While I may still have opinions or inklings as to how others feel, at the end of the day I’m American and am not a member of the EU. Therefore, though I may have a bias within the realm of American identity issues, my bias cannot really extend into the realm of the European identity. So, this in mind, I think my quest to dive into the history of the European identity is one that is seasoned with optimism and potential.

My three main question I would want to focus on:

• The genealogy of the EU from 1950s ties to the present
• The different cultural, economic, and political factors that contribute to the European identity (what they are and why they matter)
• How the outcome of the current EU elections will affect the future of the global European identity.  

I am eager to hear everyone’s thoughts and look forwarding to learning about all the different projects going on.

The Institute for Transnational History (ITSH) will be running a number of events this semester including reading groups and workshops. We also have two QGIS sessions for basic map making and data visualisation running: dates are 25 February and 4 March, 3-5pm, Old Seminar Room (St John’s House, South Street).

As mentioned in class our www.transnationalhistory.net/mapping is a good starting point. For first hand-on practical advice, please do come along.

As an example what you may wish to do: Plotting Esperanto Congress Participants on a simple GQIS baselayer (here Cambridge Congress, 1907).

You can, to my mind, apply a transnational lens to practically anything. I remember jotting down a series of notes in the first seminar upon which I subsequently mused and wrote at length: of the possibility of historical axioms; of the contiguity of flow and networks; of the mental construction, Benedict Anderson-like, of nations and other anthropological entities. Patricia Clavin’s ‘glocalities’ supported these ideas early on, and reading Jan Ruger’s passing analysis of pre-1914 networks of Anglo-German relationships went some way towards confirming it. It appears that you can find such connections, and such vital relationships of contingency, between quite far-flung and, at first glance, seemingly discrete events, places, and people.

Take, for instance, the story of the phoenix. It was on my mind following the failure of CPR upon my previous topic: the idea of a new thing springing out of the ashes of the old is, I hope, one that will be exemplified as I resume my research. The area into which I was previously delving –the transnationality of human trafficking networks— was and is, as I said in the ‘post-mortem’ presentation, perfect for the transnational historian (laying aside the absence of sources and convincing scholarship). But really, what isn’t? Lux and Cook, whose essay on correspondence networks we read earlier in the semester, focused upon one man –Henry Oldenburg— and the way in which he remained stationary but nonetheless connected to thinkers across Europe. The ideas, in this case, were what were ‘in flow’: the conduits through which they moved, to use somewhat fanciful language, were the human nodes within an information network running on letters.

The ‘story of the story of the phoenix’ might be something similar; a brief glance at the Wikipedia page directs me to R. Van den Broek’s book The Myth of the Phoenix, a sprawling and densely-footnoted work that maps the appearance of the story as it surfaces in Greece, Egypt, Italy, France, Britain, and across the globe, seeming at times to die out but, fittingly, always returning. United within the umbrella of this research are such diverse thinkers as Herodotus, Dante, Isidore of Seville and Pope Clement I. This is not a history that calls itself ‘transnational’ –in 1972, the term wasn’t yet bandied about with such enthusiasm— but it nonetheless is one, or at least shares a large number of characteristics with other works of proudly self-identified transnationalism.

In these two examples –of Lux and Cook, and Van den Broek’s 487-page tome— we see instances of, respectively, a transnational history of intended, ‘formal’ networks of idea exchange, and of an ‘informal’ network of flash-points unified by a shared exposure to a single idea. The first spans a short period of time; the latter spans over a thousand years.

The great thing, however, is that ideas are by no means the only things that can ‘flow’, or which can ‘flash’. That’s been one of the major take-away points for me this semester. The interconnectedness of history has been striking, and has struck me more the more I consider it.

Where do I go from here? The question is doubly pertinent: firstly, where do I go for the rest of the semester –there are still five thousand words to be written— and secondly, where do I go with the ideas that I have gained in this semester, as I return to ‘conventional history’? The answer to the first question is still with the jury, who remain out. As I said above, I am of the opinion that practically anything can be viewed through a transnational lens, and I am tempted, for instance, by the idea of taking a single actor –as J-P.A. Ghobrial did with Elias of Babylon, or Jonathan Hyslop did with Gandhi— and examining their lives in such a lens, looking both at how they were affected by the networks in which they found themselves, and how they caused ‘flashes’ transnationally, by either their movements or the dissemination of their ideas. The 20^th-century Russian dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn is a possibility.

And secondly, how do I apply the ideas that I have been taught in this module to the areas that I will go on to study? It’s worth saying that this module has taught me a huge amount. It is easy to proceed with history according to a set of quite basic assumptions –that ‘different’ areas can be easily compared; that we can, at least for narratorial purposes, differentiate without too much difficulty between one place and another— but this module, and the thoughts that it generated, have gone far in causing me to question such premises. The interconnectedness of seemingly ‘different’ aspects and occurrences, where useful, is something upon which I will try to focus moving forward— alongside, of course, an elimination of those lazy assumptions and shorthands that have, as I have come to notice them more, increasingly bugged me.

In summary, looking back, I can say with confidence that I have greatly appreciated the module and the way in which it stretched me. I would, will, and already have, recommend(ed) it.

History in St Andrews had taught me a lot… Or so I thought. Transnational history is not a class that attempts to destroy or even discredit certain historiographical schools of thought and widely-acknowledged conceptions of history writing. However, Dr. Struck and Dr. Girardin made sure that I would never be able to look at well-established theories on historical writing in the same way again. Throughout this semester, I have grappled with the issue of networks and how agency is employed throughout these transnational routes between localities, nation-states, and across the world. Eventually, I came to understand actor-network (with help from Andy) as being a method for explaining the intricate nature in which actors create the network and the network creates the actors. This somewhat mutually-inclusive relationship helped me form the basis of my final project (with my focus on knowledge’s agency) – as you might know. However, when I first started to comprehend this theory in its entirety, I envisaged a different dynamic (quite separate to that of Andy’s seatbelt).

As I approached the topic of actor-network theory, I was struck by the ability of non-human actors to influence and even create transnational links between two places/regions. When I started to conceive of examples to illustrate this interaction in transnational terms, I placed non-human actors in a light of unwanted interaction. Now, I am not saying that Andy ignored the ability of un-wanted or un-intended consequences of non-human actors in transnational networks. Rather, my initial conception of non-human actors was that they were self-directing and did not ‘act’ at the behest of the human actors in these networks. Of course, this was an extremely limiting (and wrong!) view to hold. Nevertheless, my focus on the ability of non-human actors to contribute negatively to transnational actor-networks differed considerably to Andy’s image of the ‘desired intervention by  seatbelt alarms. Thus, I produced a completely different image to conceptualise actor-network theory as it pertains to non-human actors (i.e. of a merchant vessel encircled by blood-thirsty sharks on its way across the Caribbean).

In my scenario, sharks were seen to be hindering the advance of the small, unarmed merchant vessel across their overseas route. As previously stated, I initially envisaged the relationship between these non-human actors (the sharks) and human-actors (merchants) as a self-deprecating dynamic in this particular overseas transnational network. As sharks were seen to be part of the actor-network (although unwanted), I placed sharks at centre of the causes for the decline in prominency of network between two Caribbean islands. However, as I started to really analyse the potential effects of these sharks, it became apparent that this relationship was not self-deprecating but ‘self-enhancing’. In order to explain this view, it is imperative to think of any potential benefits that these sharks might have on this Caribbean actor-network. To name a few: 1) improved defences for the ship following this attack. 2) potential food source once they are well-equipped to deal with this issue. 3)greater knowledge of potential shark feeding grounds. 4)necessitated improvements to the ship itself (i.e. strenghtening hull, more provisions for blockades – bait for sharks).

All these factors would have had the positive effect of increasing the networks’ and, thus, the actors’ own security, self-reliance, and knowledge/understanding of the waters that they traverse. My initial conceptualisation of non-human actors in this dynamic  likened unwanted effects on actor-networks to something detrimental to the network. However, as I have shown, my thought process was flawed insofar as I excluded the true impact that knowledge of this danger could have on the survival and prominence of this actor-network. Of course, this line of thinking has arisen hand in hand with the progress I have made on my final project. I believe it will not only be helpful to include this in my analysis, but also it will be imperative to my final conclusions as well.

It feels like just yesterday that I was sitting in MO3351 for the first time, somewhat apprehensive about the semester. I’ll be completely honest and say that the reason I was wary of the module had nothing to do with how it was taught or the workload, but rather the subject material of the weekly reading. I dislike historiography (HI2001 was a dark time in my life), something I think stems from three semesters of studying almost exclusively theoretical approaches to the other part of my degree, International Relations (IR). My history modules were always sort of my escape from the endless talk of paradigms and epistemology and relativism that seemed to haunt every aspect of IR. Trying to do the early readings in this course, therefore, was an unpleasant awakening. I remember going home after the first seminar determined to switch modules – I felt out of my depth and like I was in the wrong module completely.

Of course, I realize that my aversion to theory is a personal problem. I know that historiography is a serious and in fact vital part of studying history. History is a subjective field and as a result, in order to represent the past accurately we must understand how we approach its study. My boredom and annoyance with academic theory is my own issue – just because writing a historiography essay feels like pulling teeth does not mean that it is unimportant, merely that it is definitely not my forte.

However, just because I complained a lot about transnational historiography does not mean that I did not learn a great deal from or enjoy this module. Like Ollie mentioned in his previous blog post, I feel that I have come away from this module with an actual (if not perfect) understanding of what transnational history actually is. Before, I had simply assumed it meant history that had occurred outside of the borders of a specific country – any history of World War I would thus be automatically transnational, because WWI was global in scope. I did not connect the ‘transnational’ element as referring to a movement of actors, goods, and ideas across borders, nor did I understand the importance of networks in transnational history (Andy’s blog post on Actor-Network Theory was particularly helpful in this).

I also noted a definite improvement – or at least acknowledgement – of my work habits through this semester. Having to write down exactly how many coffees I will go to in order to avoid work was truly sobering. I found our pair-writing exercises far more effective than I thought they would be, and even the day I was most dreading – our Saturday seminar, of course – to be beneficial. While I don’t think I’ll ever be one of those people that plans their assignments out months in advance or finishes them weeks ahead of time, our repeated check-ins on our respective progress certainly made me more aware of and proactive towards deadlines.

Finally, despite my earlier melodramatic complaints about historiography, I genuinely enjoyed this module. My semester-long (and ongoing) project on the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 is the longest amount of time I have spent focusing on one specific topic, and instead of becoming bored with the flu, I’ve only become more interested. I’ve particularly appreciated the format of the class, and I feel like the discussion and collaboration helped me both in terms of my project and also in understanding transnational history. After years of sitting in lectures or classes in which the students did all of the listening and none of the speaking, I felt more like an adult and less of a high school student in our discussions. This module may not have been what I expected, but I think the tools I gained from it and the new understanding I have of transnational history made it very much worthwhile.  

There’s a lot to say about this module as it comes to an end. When I registered for it, I really hadn’t grasped just how new of an experience this would turn out to be for me. It really wasn’t what I thought it would be (honestly I don’t know what I thought it would be). I can’t deny that transnational history was a somewhat difficult topic to navigate in the beginning. This was probably due to several misconceptions I’d had about transnational history, the most notable of which being that transnational history was the same thing as international history. This is an idea which has certainly been corrected, but which I also had a hard time letting go of for probably the first 2 or 3 classes of this module. Nevertheless, I arrived in this module excited to do international history and I ended up with something totally different.

Transnational history wasn’t necessarily in my comfort zone of scholarship. Half the time I didn’t really think what I was doing even counted as transnational history. It wasn’t until I was getting ready to present my final project that I actually thought that I had something that was viable and that I could work with. You can’t imagine how many times I went back to Patricia Clavin because I was pretty sure I’d gotten myself off track again. In retrospect, I’m really grateful for the hurdles that I worked to jump. I think they made me a better history student. I’m glad that instead of writing essays about Nazi occupation–something that has been done more times than I can count–I was writing blog posts and project proposals about things that I had hand-picked because I felt they were historically fascinating and important to learn.

Without this module, I would never have known that Mexicali was built by a Chinese diaspora community. The border between the United States and Mexico was never an area that I associated with migration from third-party nations. This may sound bad, but I’d honestly figured the borderlands were a place few people ever wanted to live, especially since the militarization of the border on behalf of the United States. Looking at the borderlands for transnational elements was something I’d decided to do because it sounded more possible than connecting the entire Chicano community to transnationalism–evidence for this kind of exists, but not to an extent that I could write 5,000 words on it. It ended up turning out that all I really had to do to find what I wasn’t even necessarily looking for was turn to the 19th century global economy and read into how this facilitated migration. It turned out that these lines that demarcate territory can actually inspire the unique growth of civilizations. The rest came together like a puzzle, which is really the most satisfying way to do history at the end of the day and something that truly rarely happens to me.

The thing that I loved the absolute most about this class was that it wasn’t a scramble for evidence that backed up some sort of thesis that really wasn’t amazingly original. It’s not always the most easy thing to come up with original ideas in a modern history class. I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but modern history is REALLY popular nowadays and has been for decades. This class was more of a test in just how much history we can uncover for ourselves when it’s not readily available to us in a secondary source. I’ve had classes kind of like this before, but I rarely ever felt like I had actually succeeded in what I’d set out to do. This time, I felt like I really got into what I was trying to accomplish. Every time I found something new I was like oh, cool! It was really this class that gave me the feeling that made me understand why historians really love to do what they do.

Now that we have finished a full semester of transnational history, I am firmly convinced that traditional history is in some way lacking if it does not incorporate a transnational perspective. I also am somewhat amazed that my exposure to this way of analyzing history has come so late in my academic career. What is more, it is incredible to think that most history graduates will have gone through their entire university career without gaining any exposure to the topics that we discussed. This is something which we discussed at the unconference earlier in the semester (and disagreed about a lot!) and which I would like to explore further now. The question I wish to raise is whether transnational history should be taught as an integral part of the history curriculum, including at primary and secondary school level?

Let’s face it, our history education before coming to St Andrews was based almost entirely around the nation state. At A-Level, I studied a history of the Soviet Union, the history of post-unification Germany and Italian unification. All three of these topics are heavily ‘un-Transnational’. Take, for instance, Italian unification, which focused almost entirely on how a nation was built and how it interacted with other nations (for example, Austria, France and Britain). What is interesting is that within this, there would be countless networks that you could use to analyze the Risorgimento. Of course, there is some focus on the network of Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi, but there were also lots of freemason networks and other kinds of networks that could be included in this. However, I am not trying to say that we should not include nation-centred analyses, but rather that a national and transnational approach can be intertwined together. History curriculums could, say, examine the history of the nation state and its macro political and international history whilst also examining the individual actors and networks which comprise these broader processes.

Of course, if you were to include a transnational history curriculum in primary school, you would have to significantly modify the content in this course. Indeed, primary students may end up being put off history altogether if the teacher started talking about the complexities of Actor-Network Theory, strong and weak ties, and even Patricia Clavin’s ideas. One way in which you would have to modify the course to suit a much younger age range would be to have less of a theoretical approach to understanding transnational history and more of a practical, case-study focused approach. A class of primary school students would be much more interested in learning about postwar German guestworkers, the Singapore Mutiny and Lüderitzbucht than, say, Bruno Latour or Mark Granovetter. Another thing would be to bring out the micro and anecdotal aspect of transnational history into the curriculum by trying to introduce interesting transnational stories. The reading that comes to mind is Tonio Andrade’s piece which we read earlier in the semester. History could have more of a case-study focus which brings history to life in the imagination, something which I certainly felt when reading Andrade, perhaps my favourite piece of academic literature I have read during my whole time at St Andrews. We could also teach them about A Croatian Electrician, Two Army Officers, and a French Tennis Legend in order to help bring history alive!

Another important part of our transnational history course this semester that could be brought into school education could be all the different types of alternative learning which we experimented with this semester. I found the unconference idea to be a wonderful one and I think pair-writing could definitely be something that could be introduced in high schools (though I think getting them to meet on a Saturday like we did might be a bit of a stretch!). Another thing that could be introduced into the school system could be the blog post idea. What I found particularly useful about this was that it encouraged me to get into the habit of writing, whereas I previously tend to massively overthink things before I put pen to paper, I now feel more confident in just writing without even thinking about it. Why not also bring mapping and databasing into the school curriculum? History as a subject can very easily be criticized for not teaching students many practical skills. But, mapping and databasing goes hand-in-hand with transnational history and could really encourage students to pursue history beyond school. Moreover, if schools taught transnational history, I think they should also adopt the project idea which we are doing this semester. Many of my high school history classes involved just listening to teachers try and explain history to a class. I definitely think there needs to be more of getting students out there to research a part of history which they are actually interested in, rather than sticking to a set school curriculum. This kind of inquiry-based teaching would definitely help make primary and secondary school students more curious and develop personal interests in history.

So, what’s been the purpose of this post? It is partly to say that the primary and secondary school system should incorporate transnational history alongside national history. But, it is also to say how grateful I am that I have been exposed to transnational history (albeit maybe slightly too late in my academic career for my liking). It has encouraged me to think differently about how we as historians may wish to think about how we go about doing history and challenge our previous ideas about how history has to be focused around the nation. In many ways, I wish I had been encouraged to think in these terms earlier, even at primary school level, as it would have promoted my interest in history much more. So, yes, history at all levels should have a transnational focus.

My original idea for my big project proposal, way back in February, was to focus on pirates. I love reading about them, despite the fact that had I been on a ship under attack by them in their heyday (1630-1730, roughly) I probably would have been killed off fairly quickly, and I refused to see Captain Philips because I was convinced it would give me nightmares. Still, historic pirates are undeniably fascinating: groups of people from different nations and cultures, moving in borderless seas, living by their own codes and laws. They are, in my opinion at the very least, one of the most interesting groups of transnational actors in modern history.

I’m going to focus on a specific affiliation of pirates in this post. The historiography on pirates is slim, largely due to a sheer lack of sources: pirates were not usually the sort of people to become writers later in life, and even if they did, the successful amongst them (i.e. those who were not killed or jailed before the age of forty) would not be as stupid as to record their crimes for the world and authorities to see. However, the literature that does exist reveals the stereotypical examples of pirates acting as independent, free-willed actors (most notably the Barbary corsairs of the Mediterranean, or the Chinese pirates who plied the Pacific and Indian Oceans), alongside those who were allied through loose groups such as the Brethren of the Coast, a fraternity of sorts formed in the West Indies and united under a general desire for wealth and a dislike of Spain. The Brethren’s home base became the Bahama Islands, selected for their position in the shipping lanes between the New World and Europe. What has become Nassau today was once New Providence, a lawless city of transients. First brought under European control by a French-Spanish force before moving under English ‘control,’ New Providence was already an international town with a history of brutal violence.

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries presented a perfect storm for piracy in the West Indies. A number of transnational forces all played a hand in its rise. A highly unsteady situation across Europe (including the aftermath of religious wars in France, civil war in Britain, a war of independence in the Netherlands) had left the various powers struggling for wealth and power, and searching for it in new colonies abroad. Imperialism played an important role: without the colonies sprouting up across the Atlantic, there would be no ships sailing between North and Central America and the western European coast. Wherever the resulting new trade networks formed, pirates followed. The competition along these trade routes between various European powers allowed and even encouraged the Brethren. Piracy, illegal under all European powers’ laws, was legal if the pirate became a ‘privateer,’ or an armed vessel licensed to attack the vessels of a hostile country. By using privateers, France, England, Spain, and the Netherlands could attack each other via private contractors and thus circumvent the cost associated with maintaining a large navy. 

The Brethren was not only formed by a transnational network, it was composed of highly mobile and transnational actors. Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach, for example, was born in Bristol, began his life at sea in Jamaica, and despite spending much of his career based in the West Indies, his name has been found among the public records of early Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas (he died in North Carolina while under attack by the Royal Navy). Pirate captain William Kidd was born in Scotland, moved to New York City immediately after it changed hands from Dutch to English, became a privateer in the Caribbean, married an English woman living in the colony of New York, and was executed by the English government following his return from the Indian Ocean. His international crew was led by his first mate Hendrick van der Heul, a man reportedly of African descent. Pirates were often indiscriminate in the nationalities of the ships they attacked, and were often hunted by more than one European power at a time.

Most of what we know about pirates has been heavily shaped by literature and pop culture: treasure maps, black ships, and ‘walking the plank’ all are inventions of Robert Louis Stevenson, for example. However I think they deserve a good deal more serious scholarly recognition than they currently receive. Pirates were both transnational in their targets and in those who targeted them – they were an unforgettable part of the trade networks that sprang up between Old and New Worlds, and were arguably the world’s first and most significant international criminals.

__________

Cordingly, David. Life Among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality

Latimer, Jon. Buccaneers of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire. 

Lee, Robert Earl. Blackbeard the Pirate. 

A whole semester doing and practicing transnational history means that we’re bound to learn some things. I mean, that would be the hope, right? I’ve decided to make a note of the top 5 things that I think I’ve learnt over the course of this module – and to be honest, the range is much broader than I would have expected.

1. What is transnational history?

On a basic level, this module does what it says on the tin – I feel like I’ve learnt a lot about what the discipline of transnational history means, and also why it might be interesting or important. Historically, I think that we tend to focus on nations as a basic building block, and to construct discussions or arguments around them. That means that the spaces between nations (and the people that inhabit those spaces) can be easily overlooked. At a basic level, transnational history focuses on networks and exchanges of ideas across traditionally defined borders and boundaries to create a far wider scope for analysis.

2. What is transnationalism?

Those ideas apply beyond history as well – this module taught me that transnationalism isn’t just a historical concept, but can be found in many different academic fields, and even  in everyday life. Essentially, it encourages people to look beyond traditional ideas of nations or borders when viewing a problem. Instead, it emphasises the primacy of exchanges and dialogue across those borders, and the effects that they have. I really like this approach because it seems incredibly positive, emphasising that differences between people are largely created  by borders, rather than the other way around.

3. A different angle of analysis.

I think transnationalism is quite a drastic re-think in terms of how we approach history or any academic discipline. As a result, I think this module has also demonstrated the value of approaching problems from new and inventive angles. By re-framing a question with new or different units of analysis, information that was previously unimaginable can come to light. In terms of transnationalism, I think that this is particularly relevant to emphasising the actual human experience in the writing of history.

4. Evaluate your progress.

The fact that a requirement for this module was to blog regularly has been a blessing in disguise. On the one hand, yes, it is a hassle to have to try and blog every week. But on the other hand, it has meant that I have been constantly thinking about how I’ve been progressing in the module, and evaluating my ideas as I go. In the future, I want to maintain this habit by keeping a journal or a diary for any project that I work it. It will allow me to keep developing my ideas, while also meaning that I can look back on an ideas I had in the past as reference points.

5. Study what you care about.

Something that I’ve found really hard about studying at university has been the disconnect between the two things on which I spend most of my time – theatre, and academia. I have to clearly delineate between when I’m doing which one, and I’m having to switch between the two a lot. Which means I often don’t get to enjoy either. The fact that this module has allowed me to combine them both has meant that I’ve been working on two things that I’m incredibly passionate about in one project. I hope to continue this overlap with my dissertation, that will explore the presentation of history on stage.

Overall, I think that I’ve really taken a lot out of this module, and I’ll be giving it a solid recommendation to anyone that asks. And probable some people that don’t, if I’m honest.

Over the past couple weeks the direction of my project has taken a pretty significant shift in a new direction. As I began to narrow my geographical scope, I found that there is a lot of historical richness to be found in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands themselves. If you zoom in here, it’s easier to make assessments about the border and how people interact with and experience it. Not only this, but many of these histories can be placed into an interesting transnational framework. Take for example Tijuana.

A quick Google search can tell you that the city of Tijuana (Baja California, Mexico) was founded in 1889. What Google probably won’t as easily tell you is that Tijuana’s birth can be largely attributed to United States mining interests. Lawrence D. Taylor’s essay, titled ‘The Mining Boom in Baja California from 1850 to 1890 and the Emergence of Tijuana as a Border Community’ has been a valuable contributor to my research. Perhaps unbeknownst to Taylor, he has actually written a bit of a transnational history about Tijuana. This doesn’t seem to be his main intention, however, so I have taken it upon myself to draw on some of his work with my own ideas (which will perhaps further my understanding of how important transnational exchanges and flows were to shaping the borderland communities we know today).

In the three decades leading up to 1889, gold and silver veins were being discovered throughout the land that straddled the international border, resulting in a nearly constant gold rush of sorts throughout the area.[1] People began settling in the Tijuana River valley as early as the 1860s; note that, just as the valley itself spans both sides of the border, these agriculturally-driven settlers did as well.[2]

In addition to agricultural settlements, the valley was an important transit route for people moving between mining areas.[3] It wasn’t long before the Tijuana River valley was attracting so much cross-border movement that the Mexican government established a customs house to stimulate the accumulation of revenue from people crossing the border.[4] What Taylor has been getting at thus far, and what he does not explicitly voice, is that Tijuana’s initial social and economic development—developments which would arguably push it toward becoming a standalone city in the future—was formed as culmination of agricultural interests from both sides of the border, as well as flows of people throughout the area and across the border (I’m thinking about economic transnational activities in which goods and/or profit are obtained in Mexico and brought back into the United States).

In the 1880s, an international firm called The International Company of Mexico began selling pieces of the available land to people who wished to inhabit the Tijuana area.[5] I tried to research further into this company, but found it difficult to find much information without advanced resources. Taylor describes the company as a U.S.-Mexico firm.[6] Some further research revealed that it was an American company based in Connecticut.[7] Regardless, its interest in the land and the grant of land it received marks the beginning of a multitude of foreign countries obtaining and reselling the land to settlers. This is because all of this was occurring, of course, during a period when Mexican policy sought to develop Mexico further by encouraging foreign investment. Pieces of the land that would constitute many of the border communities toward the West (including Tijuana) were soon in the hands of American companies, and companies originating in England, France, and Germany.[8] 

It wouldn’t be long before the exoticism presented by Tijuana’s proximity to San Diego would stimulate a massive tourism boom to Tijuana–even if just to look at it. What ended up being my most important takeaway from researching Tijuana is how factors that pull people and interest toward the border can shape the formation of the borderlands and dictate how people experience living on the border. I’m hoping this will add a useful perspective to my project as I continue to work on it further.

[1] Lawrence D. Taylor, ‘The Mining Boom in Baja California from 1850 to 1890 and the Emergence of Tijuana as a Border Community’ in Andrew Grant Wood (ed.), On the Border: Society and Culture Between the United States and Mexico (Oxford, 2001), pp. 5-13.

[2] Ibid., pp. 14-15

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., p. 16.

[7] Robert R. Alvarez, Jr., Familia: Migration and Adaptation in Baja and Alta California, 1800-1975 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford, 1987), p. 30.

[8] Ibid., p. 29.

In Syracuse, the tyrant Hieron bribed Astylos, a successful Olympic athlete, to compete in the 480 and 484 BC Olympic Games under the national banner of Syracuse. Astylos accepted this offer and the bribe. In Croton (where Astylos was from), the city was outraged that Astylos would desert them for Syracuse, and so the people of Croton elected to expel him from the city state and also demolished the statue in honour of him there. The people of Hieron went further by turning his house into a prison as a sign of their disrespect for him and his family even renounced him.

Now, an interesting question that I want to raise from all this is whether we should see Astylos as being a state actor because he went from competing for Croton to then competing for Syracuse? Or, alternatively, should we see Astylos as a transnational free agent? In other words, he was an individual competitor who had no loyalty to a single city state and wanted to compete by his own individual initiative. This raises a broader question which I wish to investigate in this blog post, namely to what extent were the Olympic Games in the Ancient world a transnational occasion? Can we even talk about transnationalism in the Ancient period? These questions have been debated by historians.

On the one hand, historians who argue the state-centric approach believe that the ancient Olympics were used by individual Greek city states for their own personal prestige. City states such as Athens, Sparta and Croton used sports in order to train their own soldiers for warfare, and sport was something that was almost entirely directed by the city states. Indeed, states wanted to promote training for sport and the Olympics because it was a way in which they could gain prestige over other city states. They offered large financial incentives for their athletes who brought victory to the city states. Much like today, victory in the Olympic Games was a matter of national pride!

The second interpretation I wish to offer is a transnational perspective. According to this approach, athletes were free to enter the Olympic Games on their own accord and athletes did not have to go through a rigorous process in order to apply for the Olympics. Moreover, the main purpose of the state was just to attend to the ritual sacrifices at the Games and not to compete with other city states. For us historians interested in transnational history, let me present the case for this second interpretation.

The spectators for the Olympics travelled to the Games without the encouragement of the state. There was no transport organized by the state and spectators had to organize their own transport and find their own accommodation nearby. Interestingly, it seems that a lot of Greeks went to see the Games because it was part of an ideal aesthetic that they had for it. Solon believed that the spectators went to the Games in order to see ‘manly perfection, physical beauty, wonderful condition, mighty skill, irresistible strength, daring, rivalry’ (Anacharsis 12 Loeb). Similarly, Isocrates praised the athletes and festivals of the Games because they brought people together from across Greece in a single place (Panegyricus 43-4). By having such a magnificent spectacle, it meant that spectators were attracted to the Olympics every four years and it created a form of travel that was stateless, borderless and transnational. The reason why the spectators travelled to the Games was because they wanted to see the spectacle of the games and not because they felt any national pride.

If we take poets, artists and philosophers, we can see that the reason why they travelled to the Games was so that they could display their talent. For example, Herodotus tells us that he presented himself to an Olympic crowd of important men who were interested in his work (Lucian, Herodotus, 1-7). Moreover, we know of Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Isocrates and Thucydides also attending for a similar purpose, in order to present their work to people from across city states in a single location. This was a truly transnational moment because these intellectuals came from across the Greek world and displayed their works to spectators who came from all kinds of city states.

Moving onto the athletes themselves, the point I wish to emphasize is that the city state (or polis) took very little interest in the athletes themselves, until they were actually successful in the games. Moreover, the city states did not require a rigorous selection procedure to be admitted into the games, as we have in the modern Olympics, but rather athletes tended to enter themselves without the direct support of the city state. At home, the city states tended to have facilities such as gymnasiums and other athletic capital that was available for the athletes. The states generally provided these facilities so that soldiers could train and be ready for warfare when needed, but athletes also used them to train themselves for the Olympics too. Thus, we can now see how the agency lies with the athlete to train and enter himself into the Games and not with the state.

The state only took an interest in the athlete when he gained a victory because then the state wanted to use the athlete as a source of national pride. When Eleans of Dispontium won the quadriga (four-horsed chariot race) in 672, his home city made a big deal of this both immediately after the Games and also at the next Olympics. These bragging rights were important in Greece at the time because the city states were extremely competitive with each other.

At times, the city state would back the athlete with extreme force, as in the case when Kallippos of Athens was removed from the Games due to bribery (much like match-fixing nowadays, though that is a conversation for another time!). In this instance, Athens threatened to boycott the Games unless Kallippos was to be acquitted from this accusation. In addition, states would also greatly reward successful athletes and the athletes would sometimes be bribed by another city state to bring glory to them in the next Olympic Games. This merely made the athlete a ‘free agent’ who competed across national borders and paid little attention to the city state he was competing for. Even when city states tried to assert national pride through the Olympics, it seems that spectators, intellectuals and athletes cared very little for this.

In recent weeks, I’ve been doing some research into China’s 1911 revolution, led by Sun-Yat Sen. The revolution started in Wuhan in the Hubei Province with an army mutiny and a battle between rebels and Qing loyalists. The Qing dynasty, run by the Manchus, had been in trouble for a while. By supporting the Boxers (during the Boxer Rebellion) in 1900, the Manchus had made a desperate, failed attempt to expel foreigners from China, causing further military and political humiliation. Serious repercussions, such as a 333 million USD indemnity was added to the government’s fiscal issues. These were, of course, not the only issues, but I would argue that China’s inability to look west for inspiration was what led to a decline in their administration, while Japan was truly able to prosper through their Meiji Reformation, making them one of the most powerful Asian countries till World War 2. 

The Meiji Restoration: Unlike China’s desire to stay eastward and not focus on the west, Japan’s administration made a blatant effort to look at countries like Germany and Britain. Their goal for modernisation was to absorb both Western and traditional learning, which culminated in the Iwakura Mission. In this journey, students were sent abroad to study, and came back to Japan, thus assimilating Western traditions into those of China. After a while, western-style clothing grew mandatory, western-style barber shops were opened. Beef that was previously denied by Buddhist ideologies suddenly became not only acceptable, but fashionable. The Rokumeikan became a symbol of Westernisation in the 19th century. It was designed in a western style, entertained foreign missionaries with balls, tea parties, dances, waltzes (and other western dances). This was primarily to suggest that Japan was a modern country. The libration of women was also taken up in the 1870s by a number of Japanese intellectuals, influenced by Western writers. A number of female activists publicly took part in politics, but these movements did wane in the 1880s. All women were allowed to be educated. There was an introduction of a telegraph service in 1869, a postal service in 1871 to improve communications with the West. As a result of such modernity, Japan was able to secure a victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War in the 1890s despite their barbarian status (in China) and were able to gain a strong political foothold in Asia. 

The Qing Dynasty: The Qing dynasty went through numerous reforms. China wanted to remain closed to the Western powers for a lot of their history. China’s loss in the Opium Wars primarily came from their ignorance of Western military power, leading to significant consequences in the Treaty of Nanjing of 1842. It was due to these humiliating treaties that the Chinese people developed a mistrust of the West.  Until the late 1800s, large areas of China remained free from Western contact and influence. As a result of this, China went through reform programs such as the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Late Qing Reforms, and more. For the purpose of this blog post, we can compare the Self-Strengthening Movement to the Meiji Restoration.

China was unwilling to modernise due to Confucian and Traditionalist beliefs. Fengshui made them believe that coalmines and railways were disruptions to the spirit of ancestors. China and Britain were seen as so radically different from the other that each country believed that the other was a barbarian. Japan, on the other hand, was more accepting of change. Japan was able to learn from the mistakes of China. As China had, Japan did not want to suffer from the unequal treaties, and they viewed the foreigners as superior. Japan sent people abroad, and people such as Ito Hirobumi came back with a vast knowledge of the west. Japan believed in “wakon yosai”, which referred to Japanese spirit, western techniques”. Looking at all the evidence presented above, it can be suggested that China’s inability to look Westward, and Japan’s desire to take inspiration from countries such as Britain and Germany directly led to the failures and successes of their respective reformation programs. It is important to consider the fact that Japan’s reformation came from their desire to be transnationally powerful, to mingle with the West and grow into a significant power, while China was unwilling to look at change until the 1911 revolution by Sun-Yat Sen.

For Asians (and expats in Asia), this has caused decades of arguments as to which is a better place to live, to work, and to play. Apart from the obvious – that Hong Kong is clearly better – a transnational history of these two ‘autonomous’ city-states might provide an ideal platform to definitively answer this age-old debate. In fact, I believe that if you analyze the importance of these two cities by their histories as nodes of transportation and, thus, communication (specifically during the period of a British-dominated Indian Ocean) you will discover the primacy of Hong Kong over Singapore as transnational centres in SE Asia.

Of course, this could be an essay topic in of itself so to attempt to answer this question in this blog post would be simply too much. However, what has become clear to me, through readings on the 1915 Singapore Mutiny and case-study analyses on 20th century Hong Kong government (under British rule), is that these two city-states are microcosms of the transnational world that they engage with and interact with through inter-regional networks. So, the essential backbone of my argument will be the progression of the two centres of transnational trade and movements from their 19th century usage by the British to the late-20th century. Additionally, a focus on the two centres in relation to the British Empire (and their actual importance to the British economy and rule – both in contemporaries’ and modern historians’ views) would be the second major point of analysis. Admittedly, the second point of this pro-HK argument will be more difficult to prove than the first. As such, I won’t even attempt to explain how I would go about proving this point; yet, I will note of the increasing importance being placed by historians on the British Empire’s usage of Singapore as a node of migration networks. Likewise, I would refer to Hong Kong’s rapid development from fishing village to centre of administration for British officials during their colonial-style domination of Chinese society and economy.

Relating back to the grander narrater of my argument – that is, the overall development of Singapore and Hong Kong within a set time frame (longue durée in a similar fashion to Hoerder) – I believe that focusing from the 1830s, which was more or less the decade of British colonisation for both city-states, it will be possible to denote the comparative importance that HK and Singapore held in the modern, globalised world. Initially, it would appear that Singapore was the more significant node of communication and trade, with the island becoming a global centre for rubber trade. However, as my argument evolves, I would highlight the reversal of roles in the global economy that occurred at the turn of the century. During the 1900s, the British saw a gradual rise in the use of Hong Kong as a global port and cosmopolitan city-state economy. Following the Second World War, Hong Kong became the definitive centre of British administration in the SE Asian region. It is not just that Hong Kong was the first of the Four Asian Tiger Economies to undergo rapid industrialisation; it is also the fact that control over Singapore weakened as British consolidation of power was threatened by natives and non-Singaporeans. Perhaps, Hong Kong can thank a more secure form of administration for its hyper-paced economical growth. Or perhaps, I have merely distorted facts to support my own conclusion – IT wouldn’t be surprising given the fact that I think Hong Kong is the greatest city [really a country :)] in the world.

 View of Suzdal’ from the Kamenka River, 1912

For once I am not sitting down to write about the Spanish flu. This week, while working on another essay (this one on Russia) I started thinking about one of my favorite photographers, and one who I consider to be a transnational actor: Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, born in Russia in 1863, spent his life photographing the people of the Russian Empire (mostly in color). Perhaps his most easily-recognizable work is that of that of the great novelist Leo Tolstoy, but what I think is far more interesting is the lengthy series of color photographs he took, on assignment from Tsar Nicholas II, of the various peoples of the late Russian Empire.

The photographs are all beautiful and the rich colors make the people in them seem far more real than any woodcut or grainy daguerreotype we are used to seeing in books. The real reason I want to discuss them, however, is because they address something which we have touched upon in our readings and seminars: empire and transnational history. Some of the literature we’ve read argues that imperial history cannot be considered transnational (Jurgen Osterhammel, for example, claims that ‘imperial history in a transnational perspective tends to dissolve into forms of global history’), and other scholars fall along similar lines.

Late imperial Russia, while an empire, cannot be stripped of its transnationality (at least not in my opinion). In the twilight of the Romanovs’ reign, Russia possessed over 150 million inhabitants, of only roughly half of which were ethnically Russian. The 1897 census, commissioned by Nicholas II, shows over eighty different ethnic groups, of which only a minority actually spoke Russian. If we take these ethnic groups as ‘nations,’ then Gorsky’s travels would indeed be considered transnational. If we were to view ‘transnational history’ as only applicable when physical borders are put into place, then this implies that the Russian annexation of Manchuria in 1900, for example, negates the distinct national consciousness of the Chinese people living there.

It is difficult, in fact, when viewing even a limited number of Gorsky’s vast collection of photographs, not to see strong elements of distinct national identities amongst the peoples of the Russian empire:

I realize that this may appear to be just an excuse for me to post a selection of photos that I find interesting. This is partly true. But I legitimately do think Gorsky’s work serves two very real purposes today. The first is a reminder of how important I think photographs can be in studying history. Especially in a society like late imperial Russia – in which a majority of the wider population was illiterate and in which representative government was in its early, stilted stages – it can be very difficult to perceive how the individual peoples of the empire would have in turn perceived themselves. These photos show how the people of the Russian empire dressed, what they did for a living, the roles of women, etc, in a society that might not otherwise record such details.

More importantly, I think, Gorsky’s photos prove what I would argue is his ability to be deemed a transnational actor. Despite the fact that he did in fact stay within Imperial Russia’s physical borders, Gorsky’s photos show an extremely diverse collection of societies and peoples. Scholars of nationalism usually name a shared culture as one of the most significant qualities of a nation. Without analyzing data, language, or even the specific geographic locations of the subjects of these photos, it can still be logically assumed that that the cultures of the respective people shown differ by significant degrees. They thus illustrate the transnational aspect to the late Russian empire. 

N.b. Another very interesting collection of photographs to view is banker Albert Kahn’s project Les Archives de la Planète, in which Kahn sent photographers around the globe from 1909 to 1922 to capture human societies: https://www.afar.com/magazine/a-trip-through-time

Since I’ve been lacking in motivation as to what to write for my blog post, and did not want to delve into yet another piece on my long project, I decided to think about the transnationalism of a topic that’s interested me for numerous years: Disney.

Disney has produced and created so many timeless movies, movies that children and adults love and cherish. However, I couldn’t help but think about how, over the last sixty or seventy years, the company has grown ever-more transnational in its approach. This blog post will consider what the development of Disney as a transnational corporation, and the benefits transnational cinema from different parts of the world could have on a person, especially children who tend to watch these films. Of course, I’m not thinking of Marvel or considering our favourite Wakandan king, partly because that would lead to an 8000 word dissertation. 

In the older days of Disney, movies such as Snow White [a German classic based on a story by the Grimm Brothers] didn’t seem to be based in a particular location. These movies were rather ambiguous in nature, and appeared to take part in an almost make-believe universe. Most Disney movies have been based off old stories and folklore from around the world. The Lion King is based off Hamlet by William Shakespeare (but is based in Kenya), while The Sleeping Beauty is based off a French classic by Charles Perrault in 1697. The Jungle Book is based in India, written in a novel by Rudyard Kipling, while Mulan came from an old ballad from the Song Dynasty titled ‘An Ode to Mulan’. What truly makes this corporation transnational is the implementation of classics and stories from all around the world in a set of movies that have grown vitally universal over the past few decades. I would suggest that the diversity of such Disney films explains an ultimate increase in transnationalism through its popularity and ability to appeal to people of all ages around the world.

While the more modern Disney (after the death of Walt Disney) did still combat issues of orientalism and cultural misappropriation (particularly with Aladdin’s portrayal of the Middle East and Pocahantas’ relationship with John Smith), the corporation grew increasingly more transnational with the introduction of their first African American Princess in the Princess and the Frog, and with Moana from Polynesia. What Disney has truly managed to succeed in through all these years is use an increasing level of globalisation to make way for new actors and networks. Walt Disney himself was known to be xenophobic. After his death, there were numerous movies (particularly during the 90s), where movies based in Asian and African countries were released (The Lion King and Mulan being the most famed). This brings me back to Bayly’s arguments who focused on the sense of global history which came about during an era of globalisation in the 90s, in the AHR Conversation. This suggests that Disney was able to use the globalising environment of the 1990s to benefit their own company, only growing more popular as time went on.

Disney was able to use a change in markets and ideologies to create newer movies that were more popular from the last. They also managed to use the transnationalism of their corporation to evoke a strong emotional response in their children, thus helping to create a huge part of their identity as they grew up. This sums it up perfectly: “Although Disney cartoons can seem mushy and rather superficial for adults, there is a strong case for arguing that they create forceful memorial emotions for their first spectators, children. As an example, one of the interviewees mentions that his son ‘cries every time Simba’s father dies in the Lion King.’ On this point, several children-oriented studies confirm the identification and adoption processes at work through Disney activities.”

While Disney has attempted to create a universal make-shift world with numerous movies, particularly the older ones, the newer movies such as Moana or Mulan not only display the strength of their female characters, but also spend a lot more time explaining the cultural atmosphere in each region at the time, thus educating children as well as keeping them engaged in a fantasy, animated world.  Of course, Disney has now proceeded to acquire Marvel, another very transnational company, but that’s a story for a different day.