MO3351 Doing and Practicing Transnational and Global History

My father, for as long as I can remember, has subscribed to the Economist. He will read each issue cover to cover, folding over the articles he thinks I should read (now he forwards them to me because, the internet) but this is the age before the iPad. He would religiously pour over Bagehot and Bartleby, but there was only one article I would read week in, week out. I always turn to the last page of the weekly edition and read the Obituary. In fear of sounding dreadfully morbid, I find it deeply fascinating to read about how one person can condense another person’s life to simply one page. The same can be said about writing biographies, or what this week’s reading focused on, calling it all kind of names, my favourite being life writing. It reminded me of life drawing, and has similar connotations. Writing biographies, or micro histories is simple one person’s perspective on another person’s life, just as a life-drawing class sees everyone drawing the same figure, but each sketch will look radically different from the next.

Biographies as a form of historical writing surely widens the canon, and allow for different a greater number of interests to be considered, both inside and outside academia. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that it ties so well to transnational themes. Microhistories, like the collection of perspectives, narratives and stories we read about this week are just a few examples of how public history is being more popular and accessible. Biographies are how a lot of children are first taught history, and are often categorized separately in bookstores to the rest of historical writing. Although there is more writing about some figures over others, the popularity of the ‘untold story’ in recent demonstrates the power of transnational lives but also of those who do not fit within the traditional ‘great man’ blueprint that a lot of the history section in Waterstones seems to focus on. One of the Christmas bestsellers this past year was Anne Glennconner’s Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown. Perhaps its popularity stemmed from the recent release of the third series of The Crown on Netflix, and the focus on Princess Margaret and the breakdown of her marriage to Lord Snowdon. It is a subversion of the way in which royal history has typically been approached, as some of these figures are still alive and therefore an intrusion into their personal lives is exacerbated within the media. Yet the autobiography clearly illustrates her perspective. It is not seen as absolute truth, merely a single opinion. It sparks the age old conversation around the British monarchy, about whether it should exist and the remits to which still remains relevant in today’s society.

This is a much larger question than one for simply the British public. The Queen’s links to the Commonwealth and a deeply colonial past is a global question, and one I think The Crown shows admirable attempts in addressing. The way in which events like the Suez Crisis are shown within the show are indicative that there are inherent dangers to the single story. The links to postcolonial scholarship and even this week’s reading Subaltern Lives is evident. Only after the period of decolonisation are we starting to learn about people who were considered previously subordinate. The complicated question is how we unpack this, due to the speed of globalisation and modernisation making it difficult to define terms. In the Transnational Lives introduction chapter it says that ‘global history is no freer than national history from limiting categorizations’. Historians are still bound by the same desire to create labels, terms, isms today as they were during the Enlightenment. Yet the awareness of everyone and everything else that is happening makes this process incredibly hard, almost like trying to catch a particular fish as the whole school migrates past. It is hard to keep track of ideas as they constantly evolve, but this is a change that should be welcomed within the discipline.  

It therefore seems natural to me, that global/transnational history follow along the same veins as life writing. Biographies and obituaries are often written by people who knew the person well, because they had some personal connection or understanding. Why are connections like these not made in all historical writing? People tend to have interest in what they study because of their backgrounds and upbringing, as this is what exposes them to different styles of education and opportunities. This social and cultural focus surrounds global history, and surely is something to be celebrated.

History is scattered with marginal figures and overlooked characters. Clare Anderson in ‘Subaltern Lives’ sees it as her mission to rescue some of these figures from the shadows, focusing on colonial subjects and attempting to shed light on the broader colonial trends reflected in their lives. Chapter 4 examines Narain Singh, a Sikh soldier incarcerated for his actions in the Anglo-Sikh wars of 1848-49 – a turbulent period during which Britain struggled to establish control over a restless Bengal. Singh was transported from prison to prison, condemned then acquitted for his role in instigating a mutiny onboard the Kaleegunga, then finally released, having reformed his views and pledged to support the British. Anderson pieces together fragments of guard testimonies, court evidence and correspondence to revive this figure, whose revelatory involvement in processes of intra-colonial transportation and class distinction had been left unexploited by historians of the field.

Singh’s treatment as a prisoner was heavily influenced by his rank and class. His Brahmin identity gave him benefits denied to regular lower-ranking thugs and ‘dacoits’. The fact that the death sentence for his implication in the Kaleegunga mutiny, which resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers, was revoked can be accredited to the degrading conditions in which a man of his rank was kept, triggering a reckless response. Evidence of Singh’s involvement in the mutiny was even given a heroic shine due to his status as a Brahmin warrior. Class also played a role in the conditions of his transportation, in defining the types of forced labour he was ascribed, and in facilitating his eventual release. I was intrigued by this hierarchy of colonial lawlessness that Anderson was alluding too. Even in prison, which I would have assumed to be the ultimate societal leveller, class distinctions thrived. In an attempt to connect this case study to transnational history, it is perhaps useful to consider the way concepts of class travel across national and cultural borders. Narain Singh’s preferential treatment is a perfect example of a hierarchy being imposed by an external legal agent (the British). Singh’s reference to his rank in the letters he sends to the British authorities exemplifies his realisation of the leverage he could gain from his Brahmin status. Processes of inter-cultural contact – the particularly intimate contact characteristic of political dissidence and punishment – clearly resulted in a communication of hierarchical values across the cultural border of Anglo-Bengali relations.

Such hierarchies, once transferred, did not stay fixed. The British tendency to move convicts away from their homelands with the purpose of isolating them from the cultures to which they belonged, resulted in mass movements of prisoners across the Indian mainland. The unintended result was the creation of new networks and routes of circulation that Anderson termed a ‘borderless penal cosmopolitanism’. ‘Networks’ and ‘circulation’ ring familiar bells in the context of transnational studies. These words suggest the beginnings of an interconnected Empire, a Raj linked by more than simply a centralised administration. The subjects themselves were in motion, and with that motion came the mixing of ideas. The transportation of political convicts across the subcontinent brought the most radical and subversive ideas into contact. I wonder how much of a leap it would be to associate intra-colonial convict transportation with the birth of Indian nationalism. This may seem ironic; flows and movements, typically associated with transnational phenomena, may in this case have contributed to a greater sense of Indian national unity in opposition to the British colonial aggressors.

Locating the transnational themes reflected in the life of Narain Singh was an interesting exercise. Armed with a competent knowledge of the tools and methods of transnational historical study, gained from the previous weeks’ readings, it was useful to tackle a text in which the connections were less explicit. This invited me to make the leaps myself, and to realise how the theory can be applied to tangible examples such as the life of a 19th century Sikh convict.

It is easy to think about transnationalism as a system of concepts. Ideological, cultural, psychological concepts all move across the globe, are changed in turn as they move and interact with other concepts, and so on. But to view transnationalism in this way is to make a simple but costly mistake. It is to forget about the vectors of these ideas, transnational people and their lives. It is they who carry these concepts with them as they travel, being changed and changing in turn as they do.

It is these figures whose lives, some of them at least, are documented in Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity. It offers many fine points, such as the way in which a transnational approach to biographical history can rescue the “captive nations” subsumed by colonialism. Meanwhile the joint biography of Cliff Richard and Engelbert Humperdink, stressing their shared colonial upbringing. The contrast between their cultural role as paragons of uncomplicated “Englishness” and their more complicated actual origins sheds light on the cultural amnesia that separates the first and second halves of the twentieth century in modern Britain. However, the article which I found most interesting, and which led indirectly to the topic of this blogpost, was by Carroll Pursell, about Herbert Hoover, the 31^st President of the United States of America.

Before his ascension to the presidency, and before even the career in philanthropy that made his name, Hoover was an engineer. In this career he travelled all over the world, particularly to Asia and Oceania. This career, shaped as it was by both the colonialist and masculine mores of its day, played a large role in shaping Hoover as a man and ultimately as a president. Further, by investigating Hoover as an engineer, the broader subject of engineers as transnational subjects can be investigated. The American engineer in general is treated as a transnational subject, filling the ranks of empires across the globe. Pursell ties this into the American national idea, claiming that the imperial positions these engineers occupied represented an “imagined frontier”, to replace the subjugated American West.

So, what does this have to do with Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot, both named in this posts title? I would argue that it is interesting to consider both these leaders as transnational figures, just as it is with Hoover. However, while Hoover was a colonial figure interacting with the colonized world, both Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot were colonised figures. Both are remembered mainly as national figures, but it is a mistake to consider them only as that.

Going by the popular image of Ho Chi Minh, it might be thought that his status as a transnational figure would be best explored through his relationship with America. And he did author one of the most strikingly transnational political documents of the modern age, the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, in part with America in mind. Famously he began by quoting the American declaration of independence, that “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. This alone helps us to understand the hegemonic nature of American rhetoric and ideology. That the speech was written with the assistance of a Major in the OSS only compounds this. However just as important to our understanding of the transnational nature of Ho Chi Minh should be his relationship with France. Beyond the expected relationship between colonial power and first colonized subject and then revolutionary, Ho Ci Minh lived for many years in Paris, and was present for one of the first great transnational events of the twentieth century, the Versailles conference. To view him as a merely national figure is to ignore this important period in his life.

Similarly to Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot status as a merely national figure should be challenged. Like Ho Chi Minh he spent a considerable period in the imperial metropole. However, unlike Ho Chi Minh, who washed dishes and wrote articles in Paris, Saloth Sar as he was then known was a student at the Sorbonne. This multi-national environment being the place where he was exposed to the books that informed much of his politics, such as the works of Stalin and Kropotkin. It has also been suggested that the style of writing and thinking which the Sorbonne inculcated in its students stayed with Pol Pot for the rest of his life. It has been said of many of his slogans, such as the infamous “To keep you is no gain, to lose you is no loss”, carried the ring of this education in them. So again, we see that these nationalist figures have far more transnational features to them than might be thought.

A particularly brave man, or one struggling to meet their word count, might continue this blogpost with a discussion about whether the SAS training camps which trained fighters in the coalition Pol Pot formed against Vietnam were in fact transnational spaces. However I am neither, and so will end this post here.

In our seminar earlier this week, Milinda made a point about the importance of considering the social relations that underlie the issues that we will encounter throughout our study of transnational and global history, and how considering different perspectives including the Marxist, the environmental, the postcolonial and the feminist can help with this.

This point particularly stuck with me, and one that I definitely thought warranted further exploration. Lucky for me, then, when a discussion of such practices appeared in this week’s readings. In the introduction to Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700 – Present, Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Woollacott suggest that the book ‘is inspired by feminist theory in its determination to show the public dimensions of the supposedly ‘private’, and how the family, sexuality and intimacy have lain at the core of social structures’ (p. 6).

In this collection, the authors, taking a microhistory approach, use individual case studies in order to illuminate a wider issue – one particular example of this that stood out to me was Martha Hodes’ chapter about Eunice Richardson Stone Connolly, and how an analysis of her life, through a feminist, intersectional lens, reveals more about the differences in the construction of race and racial hierarchies between North America and the West Indies. Marriage to a ‘man of colour’ may have damaged her reputation in New England, but within the context of the West Indies, such a marriage into a ‘well-to-do coloured family’ elevated her to a higher social standing than she could ever have achieved in North America. Indeed, as Hodes writes, ‘Unstable and malleable racial categories do not diminish the power of race; rather, combined with geographical mobility, that instability and malleability only transfer power from certain people to certain other people. Within one national border, Eunice’s status diminished; within another, she rose in rank’ (p. 25).

The feminist framework, with its focus on the ‘private’ and, more generally, on women, particularly those usually excluded from the historical narrative, therefore enables the transnational historian to consider a wider cultural history and more ‘connectors’ that extend outside of the boundaries of the nation-state, providing an essential methodological tool to the field.

My introduction to the wider field of gender history through both HI2001 and the ‘Women and Men in Europe, 1500-1800’ module I took last semester has shown me the importance of this perspective to achieve a fuller understanding of any given historical narrative, particularly in how we understand the gendered nature of all historical actors, particularly men who often exist in the discourse as genderless beings. The role for the feminist approach in transnational history, as outlined by Deacon, Russell & Woollacott, has shown me the possibilities that exist within this field to explore such areas of gender history, and these are lessons that I aim to carry forward with me into my further research in this module.

Last week, we established that transnational history was a broad methodology that could be practiced and applied in a multitude of ways. This week’s readings sought to narrow down this definition by providing us with two specific examples of transnational history, Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700-Present and Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790-1920. These books introduced us to an application of transnational ideas to imperial history. Although both books were interesting, I latched onto one of Transnational Lives’ analytical framework. When we take specific people(s) as our case study, and analyse their lives through the use of a transnational framework, we see that boundaries defining their citizenship and identity are constantly being drawn and redrawn across other people’s lives and territories. [1] A single person’s body can thus becomes a product of transnationalism. Inspired by the anthropologist, George Marcus, this analysis seeks to ‘follow the people’, ‘follow the thing’, and/or ‘follow the story’ to produce a ‘multi-sided ethnography’ that captures the entanglements one person’s life has with another person. [2] In turn, these entanglements are picked up on by historians and linked back to a big claim about how transnationalism has impacted a historical agent’s sense of identity.

This is the kind of analytic framework that I hope to use in my project. La Caridad 78 is a Chinese-Cuban restaurant in New York City. It is the site of three converging cultures and identities: Cuban, Chinese, and American. I wish I could say that I discovered it serendipitously whilst wandering around NYC, but the truth is less glamorous – I’ve never been to NYC. Instead, I found it on YouTube when I should have been working. Aside from serving up fusion food, like ‘lo mein de la casa with chuletas fritas’, the waiters there speak a combination of Cantonese, English, and Spanish. [3] How did a bunch of Chinese people end up in Cuba, before finally settling in America? Chinese people originally settled in Cuba in the mid-1800s to work on sugar plantations alongside African-Americans. These same workers then went on to fight alongside the Cubans in the wars of Cuban Independence, before finally leaving Cuba after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. [4] Although I’ve still got a long, long way to go with research, my current thought is that the movement of these Chinese-Cuban migrants cannot be disentangled from the Cold War. By choosing to either stay in Cuba or leave to America, identities within this community were split along ideological lines and were, perhaps, influenced by feelings of animosity and friendship between China and Cuba on the one hand, and Cuba and America on the other hand. [5] Overall, this case study of a restaurant in New York lends itself to the transnational approach articulated above. Even if my current thoughts end up being wrong, I hope that using this analytic framework more will help me uncover entanglements in places that I wouldn’t expect.

Citations:

[1] Deacon Desley, Penny Russell, and Angela Woollacott (eds.), Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700-Present (2010), p. 5

[2] George E. Marcus, ‘Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sided Ethnography’ in Annual Review Anthropology, Vol. 24 (1995)

[3] Lok Siu, ‘Chino Latino Restaurants: Converging Communities, Identities, and Cultures’ in William Luis, Afro-Hispanic Review, Vol. 27, No. 1, Afro-Asia (Spring 2008), p. 161

[4] Ibid, pp. 163-165

[5] Ibid, p. 165

While musing over this week’s core readings I have found myself distracted and reflecting on some of the current implications of a transnational or global approach to history. Interactions between countries, nations, and cultures shape who we are and how we view ourselves today more than ever. The easy access of the internet means that not only those lucky enough to travel are able to experience and learn of other cultures, and thus going forward their views are influenced by another culture through something as trivial as a YouTube video. Now, more than ever, this is leading to the influence of different cultures on the progress of our social developments. Celebrities and media, charities and politics are constantly creating points of contact between our culture and society and others. While it may be more apparent in our media than ever, this streams from a long history of international and global interactions between countries and cultures.

Jan Rüger’s article uses the primary example of the development of OXO cubes to discuss approaching history with this transnational mindset. OXO was, and continues to be, a meat stock cube of German invention made in South America by a London-based company. From the promising invention of Justus Liebig in Munich, the product was invested in and a company created in London, subsequentially manufactured in Uruguay and sold through out Europe. This global company grew rapidly after much advertising and endorsements. While a trivial example, the article indicates how it became a product connecting different actors divided by nation and culture and yet reliant and influenced by each other’s fortunes and actions. The success of this product, still a go to for most households (in the UK at least) relied on the economic, social and trade networks, pathways and connections of all the countries involved.

This interconnectedness and co-dependency exemplified by this company indicated the points of connection between nations, thus breaking down the boarders, literal and metaphoric, between the states and cultures. We can see not only the key event that divide us, but the areas where we come together and are not so different. In doing this, there is some concern acknowledged by Ruger that the important differences and characteristics of the nation that defined and differentiated from others and influenced a nation’s history become lost. However, highlighting these areas of connectedness indicates the importance of questioning the position of the nation state within a transnational and global context. If anything, I believe they can show us the true difference between two states. By studying the networks, we can see the similarities, just as important to understand as the differences, and we can see the areas of divergence. The areas where maybe culture or politics meant that the path was blocked and from here, we may investigate and ask questions. OXO again provides an example in the British image it fostered during the First World War, effective losing the German side of this Anglo-German story.

After some procrastination ‘googling’ it appears that since their conception in the late 19^th Century, OXO have expanded their farmland and herds from Uruguay to Argentina, Paraguay, Rhodesia, Kenya and South Africa. Furthermore, OXO facilitated the first trade of beef products from South America for consumption and opened the doors of the South American beef industry – an industry with a complex network of international networks, relationships and influences of many, many different kinds. So many of our daily lives are influenced by small transnational and global interaction such as these. Tea, that hourly requirement by most Brits is another fine example. Without acknowledging and attempting to understand these interactions how can we expect to understand our economic, political and social developments that have led to the global world we are living in?

The first thing of note in comparing Clavin and Subrahmanyam’s two monographs is the difference in time between the two. Clavin published Defining Transnationalism in 2005, a full eight years after Subrahmanyam’s own Connected Histories, published in 1997. That debates over matters of definition went on for eight years, and in fact remains open, shows how divided this young field is. Both Clavin and Subrahmanyam begin their monograph with a discussion of another expert in the field of international relations, however it is there that the similarity ends. Subrahmanyam is directly responding to Victor Lieberman’s then recent exercise in comparative history, using what he views as the deficiencies of Lieberman’s argument to help define his own. Meanwhile Clavin briefly sketches the life of Julius Moritz Bonn, an interwar figure who played an important role in international relations. Clavin uses Bonn’s life to illustrate her point that transnational history should not concern itself solely with “the transfer or movement of money and goods” and instead focus on people. It is also interesting to note the differences in terminology used by the two authors. Subrahmanyam does not use the word “transnational” once in his monograph, instead preferring to stick to describing things in a global sense. One the other hand Clavin uses the term “transnational” freely. Part of this may come down to the fact that in the intervening eight years the field became more established and the terminology more agreed upon. However, it also speaks to a difference in approach between the two theorists. Subrahmanyam broadly approaches transnational and global history from a more traditional lens than Clavin. Subrahmanyam focusses on the way in which the divergent movements that defined the “early modern” period were linked by a flow of elites, both in person and their ideas. Ideology is seen as a vital part of the motivation for historic events. On the other hand Clavin is more concerned with transnational institutions, such as the League of Nations. These are already well known institutions which can be studied in a way that is in line with transnationalism. Rather than just movement across borders, Clavin is studying elements of history which supersede borders. These differences speak to the pairs different interpretations of what the field of transnational and global history is.

“If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”

I’m reminded of the above quote, penned by late author Michael Crichton, in my attempts to process what I think and feel about transnational history. As a novel, emerging approach to an ancient field, transnational history is difficult for me to conceive. Perhaps I’m too invested in the idea of the nation or nation-state as a historical starting point, but I find the idea of rooting history in “links and flows,” as put by Konrad Lawson, an incredibly difficult task. This post, however incomprehensible as it may end up being, is my attempt to organize my thoughts on transnational history.

I took a course with Konrad last semester titled “Decolonizing Asia,” and in it he always emphasized the “so what?” question when talking to my class about our essays. Essentially, the “so what” question was this: “why does this history / argument matter?” I suppose a good way of thinking about transnational history is considering why it matters.

History has always been a means by which humankind understands the present and attempts to guide its future. In this increasingly globalized, interconnected world, its important that historians can reference a history that speaks to the needs of humanity. In my personal view (in this I’ve been heavily influenced by Professor Gerard DeGroot), historical work must be able to justify its existence on the basis of its relevance to the public. In my understanding, transnational history matters because it is a new history for a new age: it allows us to comprehend the past in a way that complements our understanding of the present.

Today’s issues demand the analytic approaches of transnational history, as do certain historical topics themselves. For instance, how can we even conceive of contemporary issues such as migration, disease, and climate change without thinking transnationally? How can we think about historical concepts like “empire” or even “culture” or “commerce” without thinking transnationally?

It’s like what Crichton said: it’s essential to understand the bigger picture. Studying historical connections will only help us better understand our interconnected world. History is a discipline that must always justify itself to the world; it must matter. In doing and practicing history, we must not lose the forest for the trees, nor the honeycomb for the hive as Clavin might put it. The practice of transnational history will help us stay conscious of this fact. We need to write history that is relevant and comprehensible.

Even at first glance, major overlaps can be identified between the topic of transnational history and comparative literature – the other subject comprising my joint honours degree. Both are concerned with challenging traditional national categorisations, refusing to remain constrained by borders. Both seek to investigate the manifestation of certain trends in various spatial settings, and how those trends travel, interact, influence one another and take on new shapes as a result. Thus, comparative literature and transnational history share the characteristic of being centred around the idea of motion. Flows are at the heart of both disciplines. This very movement may explain the slipperiness of their definitions, with much ink spilled over the respective terms.

Take comparative literature, for example. The word comparative begs the question: what is being compared? Who chooses which books are worthy of being analysed, placed under critical scrutiny? Much like national histories, the idea of “national literatures” has a deep-set foundation making it difficult to displace as the go-to category of identification. Jane Austen is profoundly English, Gustave Flaubert indubitably French; most would agree that the works of such authors reflect a national spirit. And, to an extent, this is a perfectly correct assumption. On the other hand, this lens can also exclude the characteristics of texts that expand beyond the bounded realms of the nation. Comparative literature teases out these connections by placing texts from different regions into a sort of dialogue (technically termed a contrapuntal method of analysis), revealing their similarities and discrepancies.

The idea of transnational spaces, of in-betweens in which exchanges occur between marginal communities, also brought to mind connections with comparative literature. Homi Bhaba’s text on cultural translation is a perfect example of the fertility of the cultural interstice, in which contact between various groups spawns new understandings, transfers, alterations through mistranslations and the development of hybrid forms. The in-between remains nestled between nations, failing to qualify for their simple categorisations, residing in a vibrant limbo. These under-studied spaces are where comparatists thrive. Their dynamic, ever-shifting nature makes them both fascinating and frustratingly difficult to pin down.

A practical link between the two discipline is their reliance on written sources. Despite the differences in the nature of these sources, both literary and historical studies depend on them as fuel to feed their methodological analyses. Texts can be used to reconstruct flows and networks. They are valuable marks on the slate of the past, left un-wiped by time. Yet they need to be understood in order for their secrets to be unlocked, which is where language comes into play. It’s all well and good talking about crossing borders and expanding scope, but the language barrier can be a formidable one in both disciplines. In comparative literature, translation can act as both a solution to the sheer, unmasterable quantity of global languages, and a fascinating area of study in its own right. It is a great example of texts travelling from one cultural sphere to another, perhaps losing certain linguistic specificities, perhaps gaining new associations, changes birthed by the crucial transnational encounter that ensured their accessibility.

Moving into this semester, I’ve hopefully set myself up, through the process of writing this post, to be more attentive to the inter-relatedness of my classes. Putting what they have been teaching me into practise, I should recognise the permeability of their disciplinary borders and remain open to the potentially fruitful in-betweens that may reveal themselves.

Taking MO3351 has been the most unusual and unique academic experience I’ve had at St. Andrews. While I enjoy historiography, I didn’t know much about transnational and global history as a topic and field. So the terminology used was entirely new to me, as were many of the concepts we were working with. It took some time and a good amount of work in order to get my head around things.

Leaving aside the transnational part of the course, I think the most interesting aspect of M)3351 has been the ‘work experience’. I really like the idea (and implementation of that idea) that students should go through the motions of researching and preparing a paper in a similar way to actual working historians. Just as law students learn about the actual practice of law and not just legislation and judicial precedent, history students can and should learn about the working life of historians.

Even if you’re not aiming to go into academia, I think it’s a good framework through which we have learned a lot. I don’t think it would be possible to write a 5000 word project without the sort of guidance we’ve had in MO3351. Having these checkpoints (both the presentations and the blog postings) has, for me at least, been extremely useful. They’ve kept me on track in terms of getting work done as well as provide a platform for reconsidering my approach to my own work.

The blog system has also meant that this was one of my most interconnected courses. Sometimes, especially in courses with little discussion, it can feel like you’re in a bubble working on your individual assignments with the other students not being a consideration. Both the class format and the blog system have meant I’ve gotten loads of interaction with my classmates, which I think has sharpened my thoughts and just made the course much more enjoyable. Overall it’s been a great time and I’d recommend MO3351 to almost any history student!

As was probably quite telling from my presentation, my project has gone through a bit of a rollercoaster over the past week and as I didn’t really have enough time to explain it then, I thought it would be worth talking about in my final blog post of the semester.

It all started when I visited Bernhard’s office hours last week on Thursday. Blissfully ignorant, I was in the midst of a statistics and coding deadline (I know numbers – gross), which was also due on Tuesday. Given my general preference of words over numbers and relative lack of skill with computers, let alone statistical coding, I had been rather preoccupied most of last week, only doing limited research ‘as a break’ throughout the week. So when I approached Bernhard on Thursday afternoon I had a lot of ideas but very little in the way of structure. And if I were going to be honest, I’d basically come to him with a long list of my favourite beauty queens and a few overarching themes. After I had presented everything I had researched in a quick 15 minutes spiel that essentially consisted of the random connections between readings I had made in my mind and the rabbit holes I’d fallen down on the internet during my research, he sort of looked at me and said something along the lines of, “have you considered a dissertation?” Because as we started ascribing arbitrary word counts to the different sections, e.g. 1000 words for the introduction, 1500 for the first section on transnational actors etc., I started to realise I would only really be able to talk about 2, maybe 3 at the most, beauty queens in the 5,000 words we have for this essay.

This made me deeply, deeply upset.

I had about 6-8 favourite queens I wanted to talk about and those were only the ones who had made the shortlist. I was also being difficult as I had my mind set on writing an essay and was quite opposed to anything else. A dissertation also wasn’t really an option for me, as I have to write a dissertation for Geography in the second semester and I think two dissertations in one semester would quite possibly been the end of me. But above all else, I really didn’t want to give up my beauty queens at the end of this semester.

So I went to speak to the oracle of module choices, Mr Derek Patrick. He made me aware of the possibility of doing a ‘History Project’, which consists of an 8,000-word essay (75%) and a presentation (25%) in the first semester, (which sounds an awful lot like a dissertation considering my geography one will only be 7,000 words but who am I to say). Ergo, here I am today about to embark on my final year where I will write two (sort of) dissertations in my final year. Yay.

But all in all I managed to solve the problem I had about too few words this semester, by essentially delaying this problem into next semester, where I’ll probably find myself in the same situation come November and end up deciding to write a PHD and dedicating my life to the Miss World beauty pageant all because of this one module I took in my third year of my undergraduate degree.

Future aside, what this means for me now in the next few weeks is that I need to write another project proposal that gives me enough scope for further research next semester but also is detailed enough to land me a decent mark this semester, whilst constantly keeping in the back of my mind the looming danger of self-plagiarism and the perils of the ominous TGAP. Easy.

I’m often frustrated by the lack of module description provided by the School of History when I’m picking my modules for the forthcoming year, so this week I’ve decided to give a run-down of MO3351 for the prospective ‘next-gen’. Fingers crossed they might stumble across this post then.  

The module is 100% coursework. For us, that consisted of compiling 8 blog posts across the semester – like this – (two of which were peer-review comments) worth 20%, one ‘project proposal’ worth 10%, one ‘short essay’ worth 20%, one presentation worth 10%, and one 5,000-word project essay worth 40%. 

Like all history modules, tutorials for MO3351 were structured around readings that provided useful information on the discipline’s various ‘sub-topics’. For transnational history, those could include ‘microhistory’, ‘global history’, ‘Actor-Network Theory’ and ‘Decolonization’ for example. MO3351’s differences, however, were in its provision of tutorial ‘skill sessions’ – ‘working with sources’ and ‘collaborative blog writing’. These were very useful, and have no doubt readied me more for my dissertation next academic year. Most tutorials involved elements of peer collaboration actually, and this was usually achieved via the medium of a google-drive. 

One tutorial session, the ‘unconference’, was also dedicated to developing presentation skills that would come in handy for the marked presentation later in the semester. That too, was valuable: a nice way to ease into the practice of presenting information to peers in a concise and effective manner. 

The biggest challenge provided by MO3351 (for me as it I expect has been for everyone else) has undoubtedly been the individual projects that we’ve been charged with writing. In total, what that involved, was choosing a topic to study in a ‘transnational’ perspective, researching that topic, and compiling a 5,000-word essay on it. As I write now, I’m still in the research phase. I would definitely argue that (as daunting as its been) this type of assessment has been very liberating, however. Never before at St. Andrews have I been afforded the opportunity to pick any topic of my choosing to study in a module. 

As the semester finishes, so does one of the more academically challenging modules I’ve taken and I have a few thoughts still left over. At various points throughout, I have been fascinated, frustrated and confused by transnationalism and its methodology and practicality. Whilst the topic has been a very enjoyable enjoyable one, I admit to a degree of cynicism and frustration which has waxed and waned throughout the semester. One comment is that transnational historians can spend far too much time discussing and defining what it means to be a transnational historian. The paragraph to page introduction that are dedicated to this purpose which accompany many of the articles in my reading for the course have frequently left me feeling somewhat frustrated with the discipline. This admittedly might partly be because of my own more practical persuasion when it comes to doing history, I prefer to crack on with the topic at hand rather than debating methodology. Naturally, historiography is important, we must understand why and how we make the choices we do when writing history, however transnational history’s novelty as a distinct subsection of history I feel has often resulted in to greater focus on this.
I also feel that occasionally some of the readings from the course have been far too quick to compartmentalise transnational history from other historical practices. Certainly even back as far as the AHR conversation, there was discussion of postcolonial, global and transnational history as separate entities and boxes within history. I feel that to an extent, there is merely good and bad history. Whilst placing transnational subjects at the centre of projects and focus is certainly a novelty that has come with the new discipline, transnationalism has also always been unavoidable in some historical subjects. For example, Gandhi and Nehru are essential parts of the story of Indian Independence. Both these men led undoubtedly transnational lives, being being educated abroad and Gandhi in particular was famously inspired by a racist conductor in South Africa. Drain theory is also an integral part of the argument for independence, involving the international movement of goods and capital between the Raj and Britain, theorised in 1867 by Dadabhai Naoroji. Similarly the fight against Apartheid, relevant to my project, saw the Desmond Tutu act transnationally, traversing the globe to inspire an international movement, whilst the ANC crossing southern Africa whilst exiled from their homeland. I would argue that if historian of either of these topics were to exclude these details they would be writing bad histories. In world which sees linkages and the international movement of people, goods and ideas surely it is the historians responsibility to reflect this. A good history should take into account all relevant disciplines of history, for example, transnational, economic, social, etc. In defining transnationalism as something so radically new and different, I feel there is a danger that it will limit its application across other histories rather than placing it as another tool in the toolbox of all historians. I would carefully suggest that transnationlists could be more inclusive and open in their definition of their discipline, drawing hopefully more historians into the fold.
However these are merely a couple of issues which I have personally found frustrating in what is overall a fascinating topic and discipline. Transnational history is a fantastic tool for highlighting those actors, flows and ideas that did not consign or limit themselves to national boundaries, an area that can sometimes fade into the background in a historiographical tradition dominated by the nation state. Furthermore, this is becoming evermore relevant in globalised world. Transnational history has definitely grown on me over the semester. It is a brilliant lens through which to examine history, and it is undoubted that in the past, it has been severely neglected. I will certainly be sure in future to keep the transnational in mind during all my writing. The module has been a great experience and I overall I have throughly enjoyed both the discussions in class and the new way of looking at history.