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Reflections on the transnational turn in United States history: theory and practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2009

Ian Tyrrell
Ian Tyrrell
Affiliation:
The University of New South Wales, School of History and Philosophy, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article situates the idea of ‘transnational history’ within the recent historiography of the United States, as both a reaction against and accommodation to the nation-state focus of that historiography. It explains transnational history's specific American development as a broad project of research to contextualize US history and decentre the nation; it explores the conditions of American historical practice that influenced the genesis and growth of this version of transnational history; and it compares the concept with competitor terms such as international history, comparative history, global history, histoire croisée, and trans-border. In the United States, transnational history came to be considered complementary to these concepts in its commitment to render American historiography less parochial, yet, because of its origins, the concept has remained limited in application by period and spatial scope. While the concept retains utility because of its specific research programme to denaturalize the nation, transnational history understood as an exploration of ‘transnational spaces’ opens possibilities for an approach of more general historiographical relevance.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , November 2009 , pp. 453 - 474
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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