MO3351 Doing and Practicing Transnational and Global History

Antje Dietze and Katja Naumann talked about how historians must look at space and spatial perspectives through a transnational lens. They talk about how space itself is a socially constructed concept, explaining that “the predominance of the national space has long been a core assumption in many historiographies.” (417) The notion of the nation-state continues to take precedent when discussing spatial histories. However, this then ignores the understanding of the connection of lands beyond border limits, and how space allows for the interaction of people outside of a single community. There is a stress on the need for historians to not only look at the changes that happen over time, but also the changing spatial understanding and how this influenced various cultures. Ángel Alcalde discusses the historical tendency to focus on the “temporal over the spatial dimensions of history,” with historians willing to offer variations of periodization rather than different configurations of historical space.(553) With both these readings, it becomes obvious that a variety of spatial understandings is possible within history, but often neglected. Transnational history is able to help mediate this need to show variety within spatial understanding, following actors through their cross-border interactions, but also showing the importance of these actors within their own communities. These transnational networks begin to show how countries interacted, but also how this interaction is brought home and compared to one’s own cultures. 

While thinking about the “predominance of national space,” I also became curious about how historians compare the differences among regions within a nation-state. How do historians differentiate with regional differences, while still examining the state as a whole? Could there be an attempt at transnational history within one country? There are several countries that could be a subject of this study, but I am particularly interested in Spain and the interaction between the Central Spanish Government and the regions that have been demanding independence or more autonomous control, specifically the Basque Country, Catalonia, and Galicia. Since the late eighteenth century, Spain went through the challenges of creating a united and centralized state, and after each region has gone through varying degrees of independence. Although these regions have come together and been governed by one Spanish state for over two centuries, there is still an important regional tradition around Spain, with distinct languages that are still spoken. While considered one country to the people outside of Spain, the distinct difference between each region is clear to the Spanish people. I have been thinking about how this can be examined through a transnational lens, specifically concerning memory and how Franco’s dictatorship is commemorated within these different regions of Spain. During the era of Franco’s dictatorship, the government was focused on centralization of the Spanish nation, allowing for little ideas of independence among the regions. Galicia, Catalonia, and the Basque Country are a part of Spain, but they still have their own cultures, traditions, and languages that are unique to them. How do their own histories fit into the greater history of Spain, especially after a repressive time that only reinforced their individual cultures rather than weakened them?

I was born exactly fifteen years after the Chernobyl nuclear explosion happened in 1986, and so it is always something that has intrigued me. Why did it take several days for the USSR to announce the explosion? How did people in Western Europe react differently to those in Eastern Europe and within the USSR?

My interest made me look into doing my long-essay on transnational environmentalism of some kind. If possible, I could look at these different reactions to Chernobyl. This week I read a chapter by Julia Ault in her book Saving Nature Under Socialism: Transnational Environmentalism in East Germany, 1968 – 1990. The chapter was titled Coming Out from behind the cloud: Environmentalism after Chernobyl. It made me realise that, I knew nothing about environmental movements outside of the UK. In fact, I knew all about the Greenham Common Women’s Protests, but nothing about wider movements, or the movement of information between Eastern and Western Europe about environmentalism.

What I found most intriguing about this chapter, which took a transnational stance by considering Eastern Germany and Poland together, was that it shed light on how many people found out about the incident. They found out through western European media…about an issue that occurred in Eastern Europe! 

On the scale Ault uses – the local, Eastern German – Chernobyl had extremely significant impacts. The explosion, alongside SED’s terrible response to it, motivated East Germans to join existing environmental groups, but more importantly establish new ones. In fact, by 1988, ‘the KHF estimated that fifty-eight environmental groups with an average of ten to thirty individuals existed in the GDR, though specific events could mobilize larger crowds.’

So, if East Germans joined existing environmentalist groups after Chernobyl, despite there not being a very large environmental, or, more specifically, antinuclear sentiments, where did these existing environmentalist groups come from? Did they reform and change after Chernobyl? 

As well, it was interesting to read about the underground environmentalist newspaper Umweltblätter. Ault states that, ‘thanks to the Umweltblätter, western news, and other venues, fears of nuclear disaster from civilian sources such as power stations skyrocketed after Chernobyl.’ I have never considered writing about how environmental news and ideas spread from Western Europe to Eastern Europe, but reading about these underground newspapers was interesting.

So, I want to read more into transnational Environmentalism. More importantly, the spread of information between West and East in Europe, especially after Chernobyl. Will this niche end up being what my long essay is about? God only knows. But, I know I find this topic extremely interesting, and intend to look deeper into it to find more questions I would like to answer.

I still haven’t nailed down what I want to do my project on, let alone articulated a theoretical base or identified my key source material. I was of half a mind to continue the theme I began in last week’s blog (ranting) in this one, except this time complain about the myriad of difficulties in selecting a project. In the end I decided that would be boring (in an academic sense) and pointless. So instead, I have decided to focus on one of the possible avenues I have explored in the search for a project with transnational potential. That is, the concept of ‘sovereignty’.

Any IR scholar worth their salt will have come across sovereignty. It’s a claim by one state over a certain area, peoples, identity or a myriad of other variables. This can have a basis in history or simply reflect who has the bigger guns. However, sovereignty is a term that carries weight beyond the state-centric assertions of nationalist politicians. It’s meaning can be filled with nuance and can be scaled to apply to historical actors, large and small. It is the study of this nuanced meaning of sovereignty that interests me.

My introduction to this more nuanced conception of Sovereignty came over a year ago when I read our own Dr Banerjee’s ‘The Mortal God: Imagining the Sovereign in Colonial India’. I will not describe this book here, suffice to say that it illustrates two things: 1) if I were to choose a topic related to sovereignty, I would have an excellent source to ask for advice, and 2) work on sovereignty requires a (perhaps prohibitively for a project such as mine) large number of sources.

My attention was brought back to this topic recently when I read an article by Akhil Reed Amar, who suggested that the citizens of the American colonies began to re-imagine the British conception of sovereignty in response to their political aspirations. Amar highlights how understandings of ‘sovereignty’ between the empire and its colony gradually separated, which he suggests has consequences for contemporary jurisprudence. Fascinating actors such as the bankrupt farmers of Shays rebellion enter the story tangentially.

If this module has taught me anything it is that the change Amar identified was likely not purely a ‘national’ one. I think a potentially fruitful path of research would be to examine how this new concept of sovereignty came to develop, examining multiple levels of connection between the transnational nodes involved in colonisation and the revolutionary war. An alternative project could examine how and why concepts of sovereignty develop in de-colonial movements. I am inclined to believe a project of such scope would not be possible within the given time frame, so were I to pursue this, I would undoubtedly have to narrow the range of actors I discussed.

Looking at transnational history through individual actors allows categories, such as space, which have often been defined by existing areas of historical research and often based on the nation, to be defined by the subject. Through this one can study space in a more complex way: different scales and hierarchies (eg. local and global) of space and how transnational actors create them, relate to them, and use them, and also how they relate to the transnational spaces which make up so much of the focus of transnational historians. This sort of complexity will help historians avoid seeing the spaces they discuss as fixed or homogeneous and they will be able to appreciate transnational actors not simply in connection to circulations, but also embedded in their local contexts. It is important to note that these spaces do not have to be territorial, but can be social networks, although the historian may still gain from mapping such networks.

These sorts of issues raise a number of questions in relation to the case of Esperanto at the turn of the twentieth century. The users of Esperanto at this time could be thought of as transnational actors forming a border crossing network. One could look at how this transnational space related to other ideas of space at the time, either networks or territorial areas. The users of Esperanto saw it as existing connected to other networks and spaces: commercial and scientific networks, the organizational network for promoting it, national, international, civilisation and humanity. The transnational actors who used Esperanto seemed to have viewed the connection of the language to these spaces in various ways. For some interested its promotion, as attested by the Simon article of 1908 on Esperanto in Germany and the report from the Barcelona Congress of 1909, Esperanto was an international effort whose success could be measured on a national level and could even be a source of national pride. This was partly of course a matter of the teaching of Esperanto needing to operate through existing languages which would often be national ones and also the promotion of it as a part of national curriculums. The Hailman article from 1909 concerns the scientific network which already had an international framework, but which Esperanto could work with and improve the efficiency of. Esperanto could be seen as reinforcing and managing international relations while some also discussed in connection to civilisation and humanity in which it could work alongside the nation, reinforcing it through the international sphere or break it down, which, as Simon mentions, was an argument used by some of its promoters as well as its detractors. Through looking at the transnational actors who used Esperanto one could further investigate the differences of how the language was viewed in connection to other networks and spaces and the reasons behind these views. One would also have to look at the contexts in which these views were formed including at the national level, which it is evident some of the actors at least took into consideration, and how the actors connected their views to other networks such as the commercial, scientific, and political.

A thought occurred to me, a striking and unsuspectingly creeping notion, about my subject. This idea had begun to hit the edges of my mind when, as a part of my research into Rapa Nui, I routinely looked at modern photographs of the island, with and without its famous heads or moai. These were all striking photographs of course, with the natural beauty of this treeless, rocky, and grassy island, but their main import did not truly reveal itself to me until my discussion. In almost every single image of the famed Easter Island Heads there is one important detail lacking: people. 

Now this needs some context as images exist online, and I imagine in some vacationer’s camera rolls, of tourists and various travelers posing next to the heads. What remains absent, however, are any people native Indigenous islanders. As discussed with Sigi, who I hope won’t mind being used as firsthand example, and coming from my own memories this encourages the image that the people who made these heads are long gone and buried, like the makers of Stonehenge of old. In reality, the heads were most likely crafted in a period spanning 1200-1700 and the makers, the Rapa Nui themselves, still very much live and survive on the island. To this day, trying to revive their culture which came incredibly close to extinction. 

When dealing with a project such as mine, which is going to in large part focus on the desolation of culture and the people who make up said tapestry, an empty photograph becomes poignantly loud. In the emptying of the photograph of all Rapa Nui, and in the connected encouragement of an “empty island,” the people of the land are pushed aside and made irrelevant in their own story. The very land itself becomes barren and virgin, waiting for outsiders to place their assumptions. The history, and the continuing life, of the people who live and make the tapestry of the island thus become, in effect, irrelevant to what this narrative would be. They are gone, and always will be. This idea then, and ideas like it, are what I must grapple with if I am to truly speak on Rapa Nui. For any true history to be made an actual picture, not just a frame, must be attempted for any worthy endeavor. 

One attraction of microhistory, as mentioned by Tonio Andrade is the way its narrative element is engaging for readers. This would certainly be useful for global history where one concern is the worry of finding a wide readership for works which do not fit into familiar, traditional categories such as national history. The interest on the level of experience which microhistory brings may also be relevant to global history and provide a different angle given that global history is often driven by an interest in the large processes involved. As Gerritsen and De Vito say in their introduction such an approach would allow the definition of ‘categories, spatial units, and periodisations by historical subjects themselves’, echoing Marcel Van der Linden’s encouragement of this approach which would allow the historian to ‘follow the traces’ in the source material. This certainly ties in well with the motivations behind global and transnational history as many of these categories which historians use have been established based on eurocentric or national outlooks. This said there is the question of how historians will chose their sources, which in the case of microhistories will be very few and they will likely be chosen by their relation to a specific large process or on a category the historian is studying, but then again microhistory, with its reliance on primary sources and interest in specific cases is still the most likely area for these categories to be challenged.

Kreuder-Sonnen’s discussion of late nineteenth early twentieth century medical experts raises previously explored themes of globalisation and connections existing alongside fragmentation, in this case international institutions and ties reinforcing the national. The article in its description of the career of Bujwid is an example of how microhistory can be used to show the perceptions of interconnectedness. It is also suggested by De Vito and Gerritsen that such studies could form the basis for comparative histories. More broadly the article is also reminder for the importance of history writing that truly transcend the nation. The nation must be put into its context of being constructed though circulations rather than existing unchanged through them. It would be possible to write histories which were connected but did not do this and which was international rather than transnational. The nation is reinforced by connections as the existence of other nations is presumed and provides affirmation of the concept. Nationalism has from its first been international, and while internationalism may in some cases be a challenge to nationalism it is not always so and in fact upholds the nation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My reflection is based on two elements.

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

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

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

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

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

There are several avenues on which that could take me:

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

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

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

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

From there, my main questions would be:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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