Short Introduction to the Field of Global History

During my stay at the ZZF, I will be working on a short introduction to the field of global history, and to the relevant agendas, issues, and theoretical concerns. The project will include reflections on what it means to think globally today, and how global history differs from earlier ways to think the world. I will discuss the role of competing approaches and delineate the features of global history as it is practiced today. An emphasis will then be on a series of larger methodological issues and challenges, including the quest for alternative spaces and the issue of scale, the role of synchronicity and continuity in global history; the tension between comparison, connections, and global integration; the impact of Eurocentrism and the proliferation of other centrisms more recently; the tension between global history as a historical process, and as and approach and perspective; and the question how global the “global” actually is in global history.