MO3351 Doing and Practicing Transnational and Global History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘German nationalism has, from its beginnings, […] always been a transnational nationalism’. Conrad makes this statement in the introduction of his iconic monograph Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany (p.20). He justifies his claim by describing how the mobilisation of groups of people – from bourgeoisie grockles to working migrants – caused the idea of ‘nation’ to emerge as a ‘need for particularity.’ His argument is of course convincing – in a globalising world, how does one cling onto their identity established in a certain space? How does one feel superior to others if everyone is interconnected?

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

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

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

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

I would like to preface my comments on this week by saying that I found Sebastian Conrad’s chapters engaging enough to work through even whilst running a fever, which says a lot for their quality.  

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

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

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

One important notion of the nineteenth century that connects each of the readings for this week is the idea of mass mobility, and the increase in the movement of people both in and out of a country. This idea of mass mobility also brings into question the idea of nationalism within one country, and how globalization brought about a new sense of pride in one’s home country. 

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

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

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

In this week’s readings, the idea of nationalism as a reactionary force, rather than an internal process was an emergent thesis for me. Nation building and all that came with it – identity, tradition, culture was reliant on both internal and external factors of influence. At a time when parts of the world were trying to create their own unique brand came synchronously with a period of global exploration and migration. At the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century, two seemingly opposite ideologies were emerging – nationalisation and globalisation. However, as Conrad argues, they were not two stages of consecutive process of development but were rather dependent on each other.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As I did the readings for this week, one theme particularly stood out to me throughout Conrad’s chapters: that of the nation and national identity. Focusing on Germany, he emphasises that German history and national identity were not made purely within the state, but greatly influenced by external factors, foreign events and transnational flows. By looking at Polish and Chinese labour movements and flows, he demonstrates how they were not only viewed as a threat to German national identity, but how they impacted the nation and the way it was perceived. Conrad adds an interesting and important perspective regarding the dynamics of nationalism and national history. He places it in a global context and recognises the transnational aspects and influences which I do not think are recognised enough.

The ideas of the nation and national identity hold a lot of power. Demonstrated through the chapters on the reception and impact of the Polish and Chinese workers, it is evident that they are very important and highly valued. The presence of these foreign people and cultures immediately was seen to threaten and plague German national identity and the nation. Subsequently, policies of ‘Germanisation’ were undertaken, particularly towards the Poles: everyone had to be moulded to fit what was viewed as ‘German’, and lose their former nationality and culture.

But what exactly is ‘German’? It is becoming increasingly clear to me just how connected nations and cultures are, and how they are all influenced and shaped by each other. Therefore, what is viewed as ‘German’ and as part of German national identity is more of a compound of many foreign influences and transnational connections. These connections and ties are what build up and shape something in to what it is. It is almost paradoxical to seek to transform these Polish or Chinese workers, when they themselves contributed to consolidating German national identity. Although their presence led to stronger borders, immigration control, and strengthening of both German and their own identity, they too are part of and influence the German nation.

Drawing on Benedict Anderson, Conrad highlights how the nation is a product of relationships, a social construct and an imagined community. The loyalty to the nation and strength of this bond throughout late modern history has been remarkably strong. This theme (and the often accompanying racism) still runs strongly today. Much of the Brexit campaign built upon the ‘threat’ of immigrants including in taking British jobs, and the era of Trump’s Presidency in the U.S. was laden with anti-immigrant policies and racism, and slogans such as ‘Make America Great Again’. Even in such diverse and geographically expansive countries, there tends to be a singular, strong, national identity formed.

I will end this blog post with a few further questions. Namely, why are the nation and national identity so important to people? Does their strength do more harm than good? And why has it always remained so highly valued in a world that is increasingly connected?

This week’s readings have revealed the tension on which the world studied by transnational historians is built: that of the necessary coexistence between openness and closedness, fluidity and reification of categories. Indeed, both Conrad and Sugata show that labour mobility and the presence of minorities in a region or state trigger strong movements of rejection, discriminatory politics and hardening of national boundaries.

Reading these chapters, I could not help but draw parallels with the present. While the end of the Cold War briefly offered the prospect of a borderless and integrated world, we are today witnessing a hyper-securitisation of borders and a rise of nationalisms in the face, to take Europe’s example, of influxes of migrants. Today like in the 19^th century, identity always builds itself against a threatening Other. Globalisation carries within itself the causes of its own limits.

This has made me reflect about what I thought practicing transnational history meant. The discussions and readings of the previous weeks have tended to make me dismiss the nation state as a relevant framework of study, and to consider it as an unnatural and simplifying construction imposed on a complex world. I naively fell into the excess that both Conrad and Ruger in his OXO article denounce. However simplifying the discourses creating imagined communities may be, nation states are both a physical and discursive reality arising from complex processes. As shown by Conrad who still takes the German state as his reference, the task of the transnational historian is therefore to find a middle ground and to make sense of history at the crossroads between the “destruction” and the “acknowledgement” of the state category. Easier said than done…

Finally, Conrad’s chapter on Polish labour mobility aroused my interest in the notion of borders: while they are often seen as edges located far from the centre and therefore of marginal interest, their very status of “in-between” spaces makes them a relevant topic for transnational history. Indeed, they are both barriers and porous spaces that facilitate movements and exchanges. In addition, a focus on borders would perhaps address the tension mentioned above as it acknowledges both the importance of the state and territorialisation processes and the presence of populations and historical phenomena that cannot be accounted for from a state perspective.

The rise of nations and nationalism from the nineteenth into the twentieth century seems to be the opposition to transnational and global history. Many historians in the advent of transnational history point to the popular isolated study of nations to advocate for a more global and interconnected approach. Yet, as this week’s readings teach us, the nation and nationalism did not develop in isolation but rather were dependent on globalization and transnational connections. Interestingly, as raised in the Bose and Conrad chapters, dynamics of nationhood were a product of transnational and trans-imperial trade and (specifically labor) migration. Individual nationalism and national identity, as Conrad eloquently states, is a product of “cross-border circulation.” (Conrad 4). In a sense, the ‘national’ rarely exists without influence from the ‘transnational.’

I found this week’s readings exceedingly interesting and very relevant to previous research I have done. Conrad’s emphasis on labor and migration as the driving force for this transnational ‘circulation’ is situated expertly within the growing importance of commercialism and industrialization in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century. While reading about the Polish-Prussian and German situation, I was reminded of Dr. Banerjee’s discussion last week on ‘circulation’ and the unequal exchange involved in the process. In this case, Polish migrant workers received opportunities for work and Germans received workers, a seemingly even exchange. Yet in the process, Polish cultures were assimilated and often erased as German nationalism evolved in contrast to a perceived ‘backward’ Polish cultural and ethnic identity. This unequal exchange interestingly mirrors the colonial model of ‘Othering’ and dehumanization typically found between white colonizers and the non-white colonized populations.

After absorbing the readings, my American brain, filled with often contentious and problematic U.S. history, began connecting this example to another uneven ‘circulation’ in the ‘New World.’ Much like with their German counterparts, British colonists and later American industrialists required physical labor and instituted systems of varying consent to acquire it. Indentured servitude, the most consensual form of forced labor, failed to meet demands and later gave way to convict labor and both eventually were replaced by the commodification and exploitation of enslaved Africans. While both indentured servants and convict laborers received an uneven exchange for their labor, popular thought and legal determinations on race made it easier for them to assimilate into (white) American culture into the nineteenth century. In contrast, the American national identity became rooted in notions of civil freedoms built from the labor of ‘racially inferior’ individuals. Labor and (unequal) immigration thus became a catalyst for the rise of the American nation and nationalism.

In the 2006 AHR Conversation there seemed to be general agreement that transnational history meets the need to go beyond a narrative determined by politically defined territories, which, particularly in the shape of the nation, has been the focus of traditional history writing. Another driving factor behind transnational history and the related field of global history is the belief in globalization as an important feature of the contemporary world and a transnational approach seems particularly relevant to an age where states are challenged by international organisations. This connection to the recent past is the source Bayly’s reservations about the term at the start of the discussion given that ‘transnational’ assumes a world dominated by nations and as Connelly says it is meaningless for most of world history. The advantage ‘transnational’ has over ‘global’ history is that few historians actually work on a global scale which may in any case result in oversimplifying. While the term transnational history implies that it deals with nations, and Seed discusses the benefits of taking this contemporary concept as the basis for comparisons with the past, the approach can also be used in studies transcending other political units such as empires. The consensus is that transnational history is concerned with circulations of any sort: migration, ideas, commodities, etc., and as such may be based in the study of a specific network or a geographical area associated with such networks such as oceans and borderlands. The focus on circulation allows actors to be treated independently from the state to which they may ‘belong’ and the interest suggested by Hofmeyr in viewing these circulations as central to the historical process would raise issues obscured by national histories. A study of networks might also allow a better understanding of how interactions were perceived and experienced than a broader approach would but participants in the conversation still stressed the importance of engaging with grand narratives as a provocation to further debate and useful in writing connected histories.

The extent to which transnational history is a method may depend on the individual historian, but there is not such a large gap between the view expressed by Hofmeyr that it is a method, in which circulations are central to creating historical processes and the view of Beckert, that it is a ‘way of seeing,’ aiming to transcend politically defined spaces. That it does the latter is a central achievement of transnational history, but following from this, even though compatible with different methodologies must be a belief in the productive force of circulations, or otherwise more traditional narratives prioritising nations would serve.  

Reading through the AHR conversation on transnational and global history I was initially struck by how constrained much of this debate is by the need for definitions. To start first with transnational history, broadly understood as concerning the movement of peoples, ideas, technologies and institutions across national boundaries, Chris Bayly makes a fair point when he considers how “transnational” as a term is restrictive – does using the word “nation” (ethnocentric in itself) limit our ability to study the connections, prior to the existence of nations, as we now know them? Patricia Seed echoes this by stating that we use words from the present to define the past. However, I would not consider it a limitation necessarily – the fact is that transnationalism in itself seems to be at least partly reliant on the nation as a physical construction, for in order to understand how these borders are permeated you must them establish in the first place.  Indeed, though it is concerned with the nation, transnational history to me seems a way to challenge the exceptionalism of national histories on a multitude of levels – using comparison as a means to show how local phenomena on a national level – whether this be political, social or cultural – can be considered on a larger scale. As such, as Patricia Clavin put it transnational history has the “roominess of a loose-fitting garment” – it can be worn in many different ways.  

If transnational is in some ways restrictive however, it could be countered that global history is altogether too broad. Global history is intrinsically linked to globalisation – as such its connections with the world we live in today are immense. In order to explain how we live in such an interconnected world in the present, we must understand how these connections between people, places, commodities were made in the past. Global history in principle has incredible potential – allowing us to understand how the world has been integrated on a multitude of levels – from political movements to economic crises and environmental issues. But its enormity seems to me like it could be a limitation, particularly in understanding what is meant by “global.” 

Global history is an idea that originated primarily in Western Europe, the US and the U.K., and historians that consider it are usually from these places. This led me to wonder, can we really write a truly “global” history? Or is it inevitable that in all findings some players will simply be more prominent than others, especially considering the origins of the field? In the U.K. the idea of the British Empire allowed for a broader consideration of Asian and African history, in the U.S. this was brought to light partly by immigration and the demands of a more diverse demographic. Perhaps then it is nations that most benefitted from the process of globalisation that are dominating the very study of its history.   

This struck me in particular, because as someone who grew up in East Africa and South-East Asia studying in international schools, much of the history taught to me always held the disclaimer that it was “global” or international in its nature.  However, in retrospect I feel keenly aware that including a chapter on the Cold War in Asia or comparing the Russian revolution to that of China does not really constitute as a “global” history perspective. What I was studying was rather a way of focusing on how European or Western concepts had found their way into the so-called ‘Third World’ in an attempt to be inclusive. To an extent, understanding how revolutions and ideological rivalries that began in the West spread to other parts of the globe is indeed a part of a more “global” outlook on history – but confining it to a Eurocentric power dynamic – in which the West is an imposing force, and the rest of the world are simply receivers of its influence is incredibly restrictive and certainly only skimming the surface of what “global” could and should encompass. Instead, taking such a “global” perspective silences narratives of places already marginalised. Perhaps that is why terms like transnational are preferred or more easily understood than global history. However, I do believe global history can bring to light connections that have since been concealed or at the very least, its leverage as something of a buzzword in current historical discourse can be used as a call to arms for the need to widen where we look for these connections in the first place – something I am very much looking forward to doing over the semester.