This collection of essays argues for a pre-history of transnational historical culture and science, asserting that history writing mirrored the global context of its time while also responding to the nationalization of the societies that produced it.
Contributions to this volume summarize and discuss the theoretical foundations of the Collaborative Research Centre at Leipzig University which address the relationship between processes of (re-)spatialization on the one hand and the establishment and characteristics of spatial formats on the other hand. Under the global condition spatial formats are products of collective negotiations on the most effective and widely acceptable balance between the claim for sovereignty and the need for interconnectedness.
For a long time the 18th century as the period of the Enlightenment and revolutions was considered as origin of the dominance of Europe and its settlers beyond the Atlantic. Recent research on Global History has broadened the picture significantly. The articles in this book take a look at the development of Russia, India, the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and China. They discuss the 18th century as a time of global experience with the modernization of empires, as a time of a worldwide competition between the British and the French for the hegemony by land and by sea, but also as a time of a growing importance of national debt and internationally operating financiers. The articles which arose from a close cooperation of French, Italian and German researchers prove that traditional eurocentric narratives are subject to review, also and especially for the 18th century.
The interest in seemingly far away regions has grown dramatically throughout the globe during the last two decades. As during previous waves of globalization in the midst of the 19th and at the turn of the 20th centuries, increasing connectedness has resulted in new ways of observing and conceptualizing border-crossing flows of people, ideas, goods and capital as well as emerging spatial configurations. It can be argued that traditional regional and area studies will be replaced by transregional and global studies, while at the same time inter-regional comparison gains increasing importance. The volume presents both conceptual and empirical achievements of the Centre for Area Studies at the University of Leipzig, which was founded in 2009 and has focussed its efforts on the relationship between cultural encounters and political orders in a global age.
Detailed research on “socialist famines” has only just begun within the past twenty years. On the one hand, the opening of these countries and consequently access to their archives has facilitated a more detailed calculation of the demographic consequences and a better understanding of the political decisions made when faced with the starving masses. On the other hand, only joint research projects by domestic as well as foreign academics has enabled a combination of overarching questions with local case studies and, therefore, a more detailed assessment of central government decisions with respect to the vulnerability of the local and regional populations. This process of accessing archives and undertaking unbiased research is by no means yet concluded; it is, however, possible to give an overview of the research progress to date as well as compare and integrate it into a global perspective.