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Global history and the spatial turn: from the impact of area studies to the study of critical junctures of globalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2010

Matthias Middell  and
Katja Naumann
Matthias Middell
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig, Global and European Studies Institute, Emil-Fuchs-Strasse 1, D-04105 Leipzig, Germany E-mail: [email protected]
Katja Naumann
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig, Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe (GWZO), Luppenstrasse 1b, D-04177 Leipzig, Germany E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Globalization can be interpreted as a dialectical process of de- and re-territorialization. The challenges to existing borders that limit economic, socio-cultural, and political activities, and the establishment of new borders as the result of such activities, bring about certain consolidated structures of spatiality, while at the same time societies develop regulatory regimes to use these structures for purposes of dominance and integration. Global history in our understanding investigates the historical roots of those global conditions that have led to modern globalization and should therefore focus on the historicity of regimes of territorialization and their permanent renegotiation over time. There is, at present, a massive insecurity about patterns of spatiality and appropriate regulatory mechanisms. This article begins with a sketch of this current uncertainty and of two further characteristics of contemporary globalization. The second part examines discussions in the field of global history with regard to processes of de- and re-territorialization. In the third part, we suggest three categories that can serve both as a research agenda and as a perspective according to which a history of globalization can be constructed and narrated.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 149 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

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10 We should be conscious that the academic disciplines of the human sciences were formed and institutionalized in an epoch when methodological nationalism in academia reflected the predominance of the national in politics. The nation-state was at the top of a hierarchy of spatial references, just as Europe was seen as being at the top of the hierarchy of world regions. It is obvious that Eurocentric positions and the pitfalls of methodological nationalism deserve criticism, but we should not forget that we live in the old building, whose floor plan and interior were produced in a time when the nation and the ‘West’ were regarded as the best form in which modern globalization could be grappled with.

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15 Michel Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, Diacritics, 16, 1986, p. 22.

16 We refer to a multitude of theories dealing with space, among others the empirical research and conceptual debates of the ‘new political geography’: John A. Agnew, ‘The territorial trap: the geographical assumptions of international relations theory’, Review of International Political Economy, 1, 1, 1994, pp. 53–80; Arjun Appadurai, ‘Sovereignty without territoriality: notes for a postnational geography’, in Setha M. Low and Denise Lawrence-Zúniga, eds., The anthropology of space and place: locating culture, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, pp. 337–49; Gearóid Ó. Tuathail and Simon Dalby, eds., Rethinking geopolitics, London: Routledge, 1998; Peter J. Taylor, ‘Embedded statism and the social sciences 2: geographies (and metageographies) in globalization’, Environment and Planning A, 32, 6, 2000, pp. 1105–14; Neil Brenner, ‘Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies’, Theory and Society, 28, 1999, pp. 39–78; Saskia Sassen, ‘Spatialities and temporalities of the global: elements for a theorization’, Public Culture 12, 1, 2000, pp. 215–32.

17 Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Die Wiederkehr des Raumes: Geopolitik, Geohistorie und historische Geographie’, Neue Politische Literatur, 43, 3, 1998, pp. 374–97.

18 Matthias Middell, ‘Universalgeschichte, Weltgeschichte, Globalgeschichte, Geschichte der Globalisierung – ein Streit um Worte?’, in Margarete Grandner, Dietmar Rothermund, and Wolfgang Schwentker, eds., Globalisierung und Globalgeschichte, Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2005, pp. 60–82.

19 Harry Liebersohn, The travelers’ world: Europe to the Pacific, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

20 This is evident in the emergence of the noun ‘civilization’, which soon embraced the idea of a single, coherent, human entity and its plurality in the form of autonomous provinces: see Lucien Febvre, ‘Civilisation: évolution d’un mot et d’un groupe d’idées’, in Civilisation: le mot et l’idée, Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1930, pp. 1–55.

21 Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Transkulturell vergleichende Geschichtswissenschaft’, in Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des Nationalstaates: Studien zur Beziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisationsvergleich, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001, pp. 11–45.

22 Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen, The myth of continents: a critique of metageography, Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1997.

23 Prasenjit Duara, ‘The discourse of civilization and decolonization’, Journal of World History 15, 1, 2004, pp. 1–6; Boris Barth and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Zivilisierungsmissionen: imperiale Weltverbesserung seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2005.

24 For Germany, see Sabine Mangold, Eine ‘weltbürgerliche Wissenschaft’: die deutsche Orientalistik im 19. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2004; Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn, L’archive des origines: Sanskrit, philologie, anthropologie dans l’Allemagne du XIXe siecle, Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2008.

25 Arif Dirlik, ‘Confounding metaphors, inventions of the world: what is world history for?’, in Benedikt Stuchtey and Eckhardt Fuchs, eds., Writing world history, 1800–2000, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 91–133; Jack Goody, The theft of history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. As always there are exceptions to the rule: Fernand Braudel’s idea of the ‘économies-mondes’ as regional production, accumulation, and consumption regimes; Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system theory, which emphasized the interrelations of centres and peripheries; and Marshall Hodgson’s concept of Afro-Eurasia as a hemispheric zone of human interaction.

26 For earlier criticism, see Edward W. Said, Orientalism, Harmondsworth: Random House Inc., 1985; and Eric Wolf, Europe and the peoples without history, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982.

27 Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘The unintended consequences of Cold War area studies’, in Noam Chomsky, ed., The Cold War & the university: toward an intellectual history of the postwar years, New York: New Press, 1997, pp. 195–231.

28 H. D. Harootunian, ‘Postcoloniality’s unconsciousness / area studies’ desire’, in Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian, eds., Learning places: the afterlives of area studies, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, p. 151.

29 See the summary on recent debates in the field of transnational history by Michael Geyer: ‘The new Consensus’, in Matthias Middell, ed., Transnationale Geschichte als transnationale Praxis, Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2009.

30 Angelika Epple and Dorothee Wierling, eds., Globale Waren, Essen: Klartextverlag, 2007; Gwyn Campbell, The structure of slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, London: Routledge, 2004; Adam McKeown, ‘Global migration, 1846–1940’, Journal of World History 15, 2, 2004, pp. 155–89; Richard H. Grove, Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600–1868, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

31 Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditeranéen à l’epoque de Philippe II, Paris: Armand Colin, 1949; Gheorghe Bratianu, La Mer Noire, des origines à la conquête ottomane, Monachii: Societas Academiaca Dacoromana, 1969; K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and civilization in the Indian Ocean: an economic history from the rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

32 Descriptions of the state of research on the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Pacific have been published in ‘Oceans of history’, American Historical Review 111, 3, 2006, pp. 717–780; Paul Gilroy, Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992; Bernhard Bailyn, Atlantic history: concept and contours, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005; and Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Kären Wigen, eds., Seascapes: maritime histories, littoral cultures, and transoceanic exchanges, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.

33 R. Bin Wong, China transformed: historical change and the limits of European experience, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997; Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000; Andre Gunder Frank, Reorient: global economy in the Asian age, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998; Kaoru Sugihara and Gareth Austin, eds., Labour-intensive industrialization in global history, London: Routledge, forthcoming 2010; Peer Vries, Via Peking back to Manchester: Britain, the Industrial Revolution, and China, Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2003; R. Bin Wong, ‘Entre monde et nation: les régions braudéliennes en Asie’, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 56, 1, 2001, pp. 5–41.

34 Klaus Kiran Patel, ‘Überlegungen zu einer transnationalen Geschichte’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 52, 2004, pp. 626–45.

35 Carolyn Cartier, ‘Cosmopolitics and the maritime world city’, Geographical Review, 89, 2, 1999, pp. 278–89; Malte Fuhrmann and Lars Amenda, eds., ‘Hafenstädte: Mobilität, Migration, Globalisierung’ = Comparativ, 17, 2, 2007; Saskia Sassen, Cities in a world economy, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2006.

36 Ludger Pries, ed., New transnational social spaces: international migration and transnational companies in the early twenty-first century, London: Routledge, 2001.

37 Ulrike Freitag, ‘Translokalität als ein Zugang zur Geschichte globaler Verflechtungen’, geschichte.transnational, 2005, http://geschichte-transnational.clio-online.net/transnat.asp?type=diskussionen&id=879&view=pdf&pn=forum (consulted 1 December 2009).

38 Thomas Bender, A nation among nations: America’s place in world history, New York: Hill and Wang, 2006; Ian Tyrrell, Transnational nation: United States history in global perspective since 1789, Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; Sebastian Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im deutschen Kaiserreich, Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2006; Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Kaiserreich transnational: Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2004.

39 Michael Espagne, Katharina Middell, and Matthias Middell, eds., Transferts culturels et région: l’exemple de la Saxe, Lyon: Université Lumière, 1995; Christophe Charle, La crise des sociétés imperiales: Allemagne, France, Grande-Bretagne, 1900–1940: essai d’histoire comparée, Paris: Edition du Seuil, 2001.

40 Eckart Conze, Ulrich Lappenküper, and Guido Müller, eds., Geschichte der internationalen Beziehungen. Erneuerung und Erweiterung einer historischen Disziplin, Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004, Akira Iriye, Global community: the role of international organizations in the making of the contemporary world, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002; Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann, eds., The mechanics of internationalism: culture, society, and politics from the 1840s to the First World War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

41 Michel Espagne, Les transferts culturels franco-allemands, Paris: Presses Universitaire de France, 1999.

42 See, as a convincing example that combines local and global aspects, Robin Law, Ouidah: the social history of a West African slaving port, 1727–1892, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2004; Addressing the portal functions in the financial sector, see Youssef Cassis, Capitals of capital: a history of international financial centres, 1780–2005, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. For an example of the functional shift of those portals of globalization from port cities to capitals of influential empires, see Jonathan Schneer, London 1900: the imperial metropolis, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999; Felix Driver and David Gilbert, eds., Imperial cities: landscape, display and identity, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. For a comparative perspective, see Peter Geoffrey Hall, Cities in civilization: culture, innovation, and urban order, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998.

43 In this regard, the category helps to enlarge the historical background of concepts such as global cities developed by sociologists: Saskia Sassen, Global networks, linked cities, London: Routledge, 2002.

44 Maier published his arguments in three articles, and each represents a refined version: ‘Secolo corto o epoca lunga? L’unità storica dell’età industriale e le trasformazioni della territorialità’, in Claudio Pavone, ed., ’900: i tempi della storia, Rome, 1997, pp. 29–56; ‘Consigning the twentieth century to history: alternative narratives for the modern era’, American Historical Review, 105, 3, 2000, pp. 807–31; and ‘Transformations of territoriality, 1600–2000’, in Gunilla Budde, Sebastian Conrad, and Oliver Janz, eds., Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006, pp. 32–56.

45 Maier, ‘Transformations’, pp. 33, 34, and 35.

46 Maier, ‘Consigning’, p. 807.

47 Ibid., p. 816.

48 Maier, ‘Transformations’, p. 37.

49 New studies on piracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries suggest that the assertiveness of the state was not as effective as the image of powerful empires would make one expect.

50 For the persistence of imperial patterns in western and central Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, see Charle, La crise.

51 Hagen Schulze, Staat und Nation in der europäischen Geschichte, Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1994.

52 Raymond Th. Buve and John R. Fisher, eds., Handbuch der Geschichte Lateinamerikas, Band 2: Lateinamerika von 1760 bis 1900, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1992.

53 This is shown convincingly by Ian Tyrrell in Transnational nation.

54 The term is borrowed from Jacques Revel, Jeux d’échelles: la micro-analyse à l’expérience, Paris: Gallimard, 1996.

55 See Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, ‘For a unified history of the world in the twentieth century’, Radical History Review, 39, 1987, pp. 69–91; and id. ‘Global violence and nationalizing wars in Eurasia and America: the geopolitics of war in the mid-nineteenth century’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 38, 4, 1996, pp. 619–57.

56 Michael Adas, ‘High’ imperialism and the ‘new’ history, Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1993.

57 For an interesting comparative view, see Charle, La crise.

58 Erez Manela, The Wilsonian moment: self-determination and the international origins of anticolonial nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

59 Maier, ‘Consigning’, p. 814; idem, ‘Transformations’, p. 44. Changes included strengthening ‘central government institutions at the expense of regional or confederal authority’; requiring that ‘internal as well as external military capacity be continually mobilized as a resource for governance’; the cooptation of ‘new leaders of finance and industry, science, and professional attainment into a ruling cartel alongside the … the landed elite’; and the development of ‘an industrial infrastructure based on the technologies of coal and iron as applied to long-distance transportation of goods and people, and the mass output of industrial products assembled by a factory labor force’.

60 Charles Bright and Michael Geyer, ‘Weltgeschichte als Globalgeschichte: Überlegungen zur einer Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts’, Comparativ, 4, 5 1994, pp. 13–45.

61 Christopher A. Bayly, The birth of the modern world, 1780–1914: global connections and comparisons, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.

62 Ibid., pp. 90ff.; see also Bailey Stone, Reinterpreting the French Revolution: a global-historical perspective, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2002. For the discussion of a trans-Atlantic cycle of revolutions, see Matthias Middell, ‘Revolutionsgeschichte und Globalgeschichte: transatlantische Interaktionen in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Margarete Grandner and Andrea Komlosy, eds., Vom Weltgeist beseelt: Globalgeschichte 1700–1815, Vienna: Promedia Verlag, 2004, pp. 135–59.

63 Bayly, Birth, p. 7.

64 Ibid., p. 20.

65 Other empires, such as the Qing and the Ottoman, mounted a more effective resistance, and Russia first began its ascent under Peter I. Thus, the ‘world crisis’ of the long eighteenth century was not the final crisis of all imperial structures. Obviously, it is insufficient to analyse the years between 1720 and 1820 in terms of the gradual emergence of the nation-state on one hand and the gradual decline of empires on the other.

66 Dietmar Willoweit, Rechtsgrundlagen der Territorialgewalt: Landesobrigkeit, Herrschaftsrechte und Territorium in der Rechtswissenschaft der Neuzeit, Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1975.

67 Matthias Middell, Michel Espagne and Edoardo Tortarolo, eds., The 18th century in a global perspective, Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2009.

68 See similar arguments made by Saskia Sassen in Globalization and its discontents: essays on the new mobility of people and money, New York: New Press, 1998.

69 Benno Werlen, Sozialgeographie alltäglicher Regionalisierungen, 3 vols., Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995–2007.