HIST363: Global Perspectives on Industrialization

Whilst far from proclaiming that we are all global historians now, the fundamental shift modern globalisation has created in our approach to, and understanding of, the past (as well as the way in which we research and write it), makes it increasingly unlikely that Global History will plateau or become contented with the tracing of global connections and interactions. Rather, it appears that the field is in a period of crescendo. The formative period of Global History was undoubtedly one of comparisons and connections – breaking free from strictly national perspectives and methodologies, and situating historical places, events and people within a wider, interconnected geographical context. The result has been to appreciate the way in which nationally or locally driven processes possessed unknown global contexts and dimensions. There appears, however, an increasing need to appreciate the distinction between the global connections of objects, people, places and events, for example, and the process of intensification and concentration of connections which was capable of durable and broad global transformations. Beyond the macro-economic of, for example, the Great Divergence debate, the large-scale integration of separate regions and networks is a meta-narrative of globalisation which still remains largely pervasive despite over two decades of Global History.

Indeed, the past decade has witnessed the emergence of a new direction in Global History that has moved beyond the comparative and the connective, and is now concerning itself with perhaps the ultimate task of this field: the integrative.³⁰ This transition has involved moving deeper, beyond the novel appreciation of the global, to a far more complex and profound exploration of transoceanic integration, in which, for example, the Atlantic and Asia did not just share globetrotting connections, but were actually integrated into wider spaces of, for example, migration, trade, governance, and knowledge. That is not to suggest that histories of global integration have not existed. As early as the mid-twentieth century with the French historian Fernand Braudel's conceptualisation of a Mediterranean World, a host of conceptual and analytical frameworks of regional integration have gradually sprung up, especially that of the Indian Ocean World.³¹ There is undoubtedly a regionalism to such research, one of seas, oceans and bounded maritime spaces. But they are also intensely aware that they are working towards an even deeper integrative methodology. The transition of national based studies of the Atlantic to a broader 'Atlantic World' is perhaps the most prominent (and certainly most popular) example. As David Armitage and Michael Braddick have argued, such a region was created by 'a complex of evolving connections' which drew not just on the European and American seaboards, but also of West Africa, South America and the Caribbean.³² This has been the enduring appeal of a broader 'Atlantic World', one that clearly 'displays more openness to multidirectional effects'.³³

There are, of course, problems with Mediterranean, Indian and Atlantic 'Worlds', as those historians who adopt such analytical and conceptual frameworks are well aware. As Carole Shammas notes of the 'British Atlantic World', it is difficult to evaluate transnational connections, spaces and networks 'if it is prefaced by the name of an empire or nation-state'.³⁴ It is important to recognise that few historians of the Atlantic or Indian Ocean 'Worlds' would consider themselves strictly operating within the field of Global History, but rather more often those of Postcolonial or New Imperial Histories. Nonetheless, their integrative approach to a variety of national and geographic constituencies ensure that, as Armitage and Braddick were conscious when they promoted the oceanic framework of a 'British Atlantic', such work is part of a broader contribution to 'global histories'.³⁵ Belich et al., however, would argue that these crucial frameworks are nonetheless 'sub-global', and as such fail to provide a broader narrative for globalisation.³⁶

Of course, the alternative integrative histories to 'sub-regions' are those that follow Immanuel Wallerstein's World Systems, in which a network of global economic exchange eventually tied the world into a single capitalist order.³⁷ However, the fundamental reason why such research does not lend itself as a foundation for a new direction in integrative global history is its Western-centric analysis. As Maxine Berg has recently argued in her review of the field, 'the challenge is to convert Europe from a knowledge subject to an object of global history'.³⁸ Unfortunately such Euro-centric analysis permeates most 'integrative' histories. As the opening salvo of Armitage and Braddick's British Atlantic World makes clear, 'This new social and economic world was mostly a European creation'.³⁹ This statement can hardly be sustained in light of expansive research on the hybridity of European settlement, as well as the prominent agency of non-Europeans, in the Atlantic.⁴⁰ Though this is perhaps largely due to the volume's predominant focus on the North Atlantic, at the expense of its southern counterpart. Nonetheless even more admirable attempts to break free of the narrow Atlantic World and integrate various basins into the wider concept of an 'Oceanic Empire' have continued to perpetuate Europe as a 'knowledge subject', choosing to analyse 'diverse peoples' only within the context of how they 'found themselves pulled within British spheres of influence'.⁴¹ Moving forward, integrative global histories present a tantalising opportunity to recast Europe's agency and bring to the fore a narrative of globalisation which reflects (though not necessarily privileges) the more realistic contribution of non-Europeans to processes of transoceanic integration. It is the intention of this volume to address this important issue by rethinking what has previously been depicted as the quintessential European agent of expansion, the overseas corporation, and instead to recast it primarily as a transnational vehicle for concentrating and promoting the agency, actions and interests of non-Europeans in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Asia and Pacific regions.