Here are some ideas that your contribution triggered and that I would like to pick up on during the workshop:

1) Following your comment on “how information changed with movement and use” in space. Both space and time matter for us as historians. But looking at our discipline we are so imbued and used to writing our stories along chronological dynamics and change that spatial aspects, spatial dynamics and the impact of space and location (of knowledge in your case) are (relatively) neglected. The importance of bringing space in, is of course not new. Pointing at David Livingstone or Michel de Certeau on the importance of location and institution for scientific knowledge and the historiographical operation respectively may suffice here. But how to bring space in? Giving a preference to space rather than time and chronology, what would the consequences be for the way we write our (hi)stories?

To some extent comparative history does bring in a more complex spatial setting (more complex compared to a perhaps more traditional, singly country, single location study). At least in a sense that a comparative framework acknowledges not only difference and change over time but across space (most often practiced along the nation-state, at least the kind of comparative studies I am aware of). However, comparative history (alone) cannot be the solution to your research and that of our group – that is me saying as someone who sees more merits than disadvantages in comparative history. For good or bad reasons comparative history has been accused of a) pre-selecting space and entities and giving preference to the nation-state, b) it is thus not dealing with spatial interactions such as cross-border flows, c) it is “freezing its objects in time” as being essentially a-historical operation, i.e. choosing the objects to compare (across space: say social formations in different national cases) and freezing these in moment A in time, in order to compare them or make them comparable. Where does this leave us: Do we either have to give preference to space (as comparison does, to some extent) OR give preference to time and chronology? How to combine both? Combining both in your project or ours (here again I would point towards Alexander or Tom) the combination of both strikes me as crucial in order to enhance our histories on objects such as knowledge, commodities such as tobacco (Alex) or individuals (missionaries, Tom). If we do find ways of bringing space into these research topics or even give preference to location and space, what would the consequences be for our writing?

You also raise the concern of maps and mapping, as you are partly working with historical maps and are looking for ways to make your “21st century map” of your knowledge(s), flows and connections. As fun and fascinating as historical maps are, the crucial question of the workshop will be what and how to map our analysis and histories that essentially focus on dynamic process across spaces. Simple single (sheet) maps tend towards evoking a sense of fixed, static space. There are of course great examples how to get beyond the single map, as the Republic of Letters project at Stanford, that demonstrates the spatial dynamics of Enlightenment Europe along correspondence and exchange. But then it stops where your question comes in: the effect that place and location have on knowledge and how information changes with movement and use in different locations.

This brings me to a last point, your ideas or questions on whether or not we should adopt a sense of multiple spaces – in the plural rather than the singular use of one space, most often in history a territorially defined space by boundaries or a historical region defined by certain structures (social, geographical). Rather than writing histories in pre-defined territorial spaces, or absolute physical space, I see the potential in both transnational and global history with their emphasis on people, objects and commodities and these interact across space and (with a loose reference to Henri Lefebvre’s “espace vécu”) create spaces through these interactions, flows and connections. But yes, it remains a challenge how to bring this in: in terms of mapping, visualising and, eventually, writing.