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Maxine Berg, ed. Writing the History of the Global: Challenges for the Twenty-rst Century. British Academy OriginalPaperback Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 220 pp. $35.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-19-726532-1.

Reviewed by Brent J. Steele (University of Utah)Published on H-Diplo (December, 2013)Commissioned by Seth Offenbach

Why Do We Need a History of the Global?

Maxine Berg proclaims that Global history encom-passes a new approach to historical writing which has

emerged during the past een years (p. 1). us be-gins her ambitious edited volume Writing the History of the Global: Challenges for the Twenty-rst Century . Sucha seemingly innocuous opening assertion, we nd in thechapters to follow, is open to contestation or at leastprovocation. Such contestation is a prime example of notonly the challenges but also the richness of the debatesaround and of a global history. In short, the volumecontains an ironic twist that is endemic of the emergingapproach of global history itselfeven if one is not pos-sible, in the striving for a global history we nd a varietyof useful developments (methods, arguments, normativesuggestions, and the like) that areworthyof oura entionand praise.

Bergs volume derives from a 2009 conference heldby the British Academy, and the structure and organiz-ing theme is evident throughout the published volume.Following a very useful introductory chapter by Berg,the book is separated into four parts. Part 1, Interpre-tations: Ideas and the Making of Global History, withchapters by David Washbrook, Jan de Vries, and Jean-Frederic Schaub, provides an overview of what globalhistory is or what it might be, and what it might not be.Part 2, Methods and Methodologies in Global History,collects contributions from Prasannan Parthasarathi, R.

Bin Wong, and Jan Luiten van Zanden, which criticallyengage how such a global history can and perhaps al-ready has been done. Part 3, Shaping Global History,includes essays from Kenneth Pomeranz and Kaoru Sug-ihara, and focuses on the concept of divergences andcomparisons across regions. Part 4, Knowledge andGlobal History, provides examples of global history asconstituted in and through particular processes or ob- jects, including technology (Dagmar Schafers chapter),as well as art and artifacts (chapters by Craig Clunas,

and Glenn Adamson and Girgio Riello, respectively). econclusions to the volume and the discussion are found

in part 5, titled simply Round Table, with short reec-tive essays by John Darwin, Megan Vaughan, Peer Vries,and Sufu So and Billy Kee-Long So.

ere is a lot to commend in thismotivatedvolume. Itsets out to tackle a difficult and twofold taskestablishinghow or what a history of the global would mean, and,further, how to write about that history. By gatheringa group of talented and fairly interdisciplinary historianvoices, the books key overarching accomplishments arein parts 1 and 2, which acknowledge the necessity of mul-tiple methods, disciplinary perspectives, and theoreticalframeworks to characterize global history; and in a morelimited sense, in parts 3 and 4, which demonstrate howsuch a global history can be wri en, organized, institu-tionalized, and characterized.

We are not always privy to what debates or processesactually placed us at what Berg titles in her introduc-tory chapter this key moment of shi ing subjectareas into global historical writing (p. 14), but Bergschapter itself is worthy of some a ention precisely be-cause of its admirable summary and organization of thekey preceding moments or processes in the develop-ment of a history of the global. Specically, Berg positsseveral disparate resources or preceding locations thatxated, if not inuenced, a making of a global history.

One obvious location is found within the globalizationdebates of the 1980s and 1990s, but this is a location(deemed the penthouse level of history by Jan De Vries[p. 32]), according to Bergs characterization, that wasinherently problematic and not nearly as novel in the de-velopment of a global history. Instead, one can go backas far as antiquity, when a type of global was acknowl-edged and treated, from the Han and Tang China toArab, Persian and Hindu traditions (p. 4), all the waythrough the 1970s and the global approaches arising out

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of Marxist and specically world systems research, toeven more recently, the movement by postmodern andpostcolonial approaches that helped to deconstruct and

challenge the national histories and even area studies ap-proaches to history. Other perspectives relevant to sucha development of a global historysuch as the focuson microhistorysought to recapture what such histo-rians felt was the lost agency of human actors withinthe broader, sometimes grandiose, historical processes.And Berg posits a more recent trend back to compara-tive/regional histories as a method toward articulatingwhat global looks like that has inuenced and workedthrough, from, and between regions. In this manner, akey moment in the development of global history wasthe way in which historians could articulate a reaction tomodernity, as exemplied by Pomeranzs focus on con-

vergence and divergence. In this way, global historyhas, according to contributor Washbrook, helped to res-cue economic history from its darkest hour and make itrelevant once again (p. 29).

ese stages or locations were beset with their owndrawbacks, as the contributions that follow Bergs chap-ter identify, but they do at least point to the feasibilityof a global history not only being possible but also al-ready practiced (albeit in modest form) by scholars in thepast and present. Going forward, then, Berg suggestsa twofold basis for global history. First, such a historyshould be comparative or regional and focus on the con-nections between regions, an approach exemplied viathe model of asymmetries asserted in Schaubs chap-ter. As that compelling essay demonstrates, such anapproach need not be cosmopolitan or optimistic in itsarticulationin fact such an approach would equallynotethe frames of human history, such as invasion, occu-pation and absorption, inicted by societies upon othersocieties (p. 59). Berg also suggests an institutional re-conguration necessary for the writing and researchingof global history, one that acknowledges the need towork with the theories, ndings and techniques of dis-ciplines outside of history, which thus moves historiansfrom traditional models of the lone researcher to alter-

native academic models, experimenting with teamwork,networks, and electronic forums as well as transna-tional research networks (p. 13). is suggestion, too, isdeveloped further by other contributions, most vividly inVan Zandens chapter which calls for, at the very least,global datasets that the right institutions can bringtogether (pp. 108-110), however ambitious of a task thatmay be.

As my opening paragraph intimates, one additionalthematic contribution of this volume is its recognition,

across the essays, of the difficulties in establishing sucha global history. is is especially true with its re-freshingly frank take on the problems with previous

grandiose, Western, and largely Eurocentric ways of writing global history. In this vein, chapters 2, 4, and8, by Washbrook, Schaub, and Pomeranz, are admirablecontributions, focusing on theproblems with ssures anddivergences and the drawbacks to even promising meth-ods or approaches to the global.

Although not explicitly stated, the volume as a wholeis keenly aware of the normative drawbacks to the pre-ceding ways of doing history and characterizing history.For instance, how can one do comparisonseemingly inan a empt to, as Parthasarathi, who is a supporter of the method, asserts, identify and interpret mutual inu-ences in arguing for a global history (p. 74)withoutat the same time reifying the differences (and thus in-compatibilities) between the regions or units being com-pared? Further, as past practices of comparison sug-gest, cannot these comparisons reinforce a Eurocen-trism that prides itself as the model, the default, of his-torical development as a marker or yardstick of com-parison? Contributors confront such thorny issues, with Jan De Vries unapologetically asserting that a global his-tory that does not challenge Eurocentric historical nar-ratives essentially does nothing (p. 42). In this vein,some of the most creative devices in Writing the His- tory of the Global are those acknowledging this difficultbalance. Schaubs chapter provides a way to confrontthe asymmetry of contacts between regions being com-pared, and Sugiharas chapter inverts the yardstick byusing an East Asian perspective to assess the Europeanmiracle of growth that plots Europe, not the rest of theworld, [as] that which diverged from the general trendof smithian growth (pp. 132-134). A more stridentdefense of the method of comparison comes through inParthasarathis piece, which places the problems with itnot on the method perse butthe historical determinismthat usually accompanies comparison, one that uses theEuropean path of development as the norm (pp. 75-76)as exemplied by such works as Max Webers e

Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930) andEric Joness e European Miracle (1981), to name justtwo.

ere are, however, some shortcomings of the bookfor those approaching it, as I did, from the eld of inter-national relations. With the recognition that this volumeis a collection of mainly historians and wri en within thedebates over a global history that resonate among histo-rians, the volume still presumes a lot from the audience.Tensions and discussions that have played a large role in

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the writing of global history, such as the divergence de-bates, play from an outsiders vantage point a somewhatoversized role in the volume. Further, the voice of con-

tributors seems to be fairly collectively contained, speak-ing to the topics that seem to have animated the confer-ence which served as a springboard for the volume, butrarely seeking to expand the audience past those conver-sations. For instance, Schaub invokes an otherwise well-known moment of pessimistic-optimistic prophesizingby referring to the essays produced at the end of the ColdWar by Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama. Butin doing so, Schaub asks the reader to consider the gen-eral consensusamongEuropean historiansagainst thesetwo popular essays from the USA, without giving usa hint as to what , precisely, that general consensus isor was (p. 62). Clunass fascinating chapter is never-

theless riddled with references to key moments or ar-guments found in the eld of art history, such as thele ers of Bernard Berenson, a dominant gure in theconnoisseurship of Italian Renaissance art (p. 168), butthe relevance on global history is not immediately, oreven secondarily, apparent. is is all reinforced withthe rather provincial concluding section, which bringstogether contributors to issue some thoughts on the pre-ceding essays, a format that likely makes sense in a con-ference se ing but one that has less effect in an editedvolume. In short, even thoughsome of those essays(suchas Sufumi So and Billy Kee-Long Sos contribution onthe identication of a global identity) are incrediblyprovocative and fascinating, they leave the reader withli le more than an impressionistic sense of where to gofrom here in doing a history of the global, and largelywithout any direction outside of the discipline of (andsubdisciplines within) history.

Two further drawbacks, albeit by no means fatal ones,can be identied. Despite Washbrooks claim, at the be-ginning of chapter 2, that global history is not interna-tional history, by which he means a history of the worldwri en simply in terms of the relations between differ-ent national or proto-national entities, many of theexamples or suggestions for a global history in the vol-

ume are most assuredly by this denition international(p. 21). Several contributions focus on China (Scheferschapter 10) or Chinese art (Clunass chapter 11), or de-pend on (as mentioned above) the connections between

regions and countries or civilizations (as evidenced inAdamson and Riellos vivid chapter on global objects).

e point here, and again it seems only a minor one to

make, is that even if a global history has to be global itstill must depend on an international or even local con-text to be made apparent or real or illustrative. Related tothis, someone from an interdisciplinary eld like interna-tional relations will notice a rather puzzling omission of where we might nd or at least consult, the globalinthe so-called global cities examined by sociologists likeSaskia Sassen,[1] a location that would lead one to con-sult the diverse eld and subsequent methods of urbanstudies scholars.

Finally, and albeit with an admirable collection of es-says and scholars who approach this ambitious projectwith clear eyes and diverse recognition of the inherenttensions that exist in practicing a history of the global,the volume spends more time on how we might go abouta global history without fully or adequately addressingwhy we need global history. What is its value? Onlybriey does such a normative incentive peek through inthe volume, such as Washbrooks assertion in one keypassage that a global history may serve as a criticaltool to advance further that questioning and destabiliza-tion of received wisdom, or certainty. It can do so bychallenging authenticity, determinacy, and authorship(p. 23). Such a critical perspective is found in bits andpieces throughout this volume, but one wonders whether

something as audacious as a global history cannot alsofall into the trap of pushing forward its own sense of cer-tainty, determinacy, and authenticity. Can those whotake away from this rich volume its forceful contribu-tions in the form of a set of tools or suggestions on whatglobal history entails, what it should include (and, osten-sibly, exclude), and how it should be promoted also askwhether we need such a history in order to make senseof the global problems or processes that surround us inthe rst place?

Note

[1]. In fact, I would note that some historians inter-

ested in global history, such as Anton Rosenthal of theUniversity of Kansas (among likely many others), alsoconvey an intense interest in cities as cites of the global.See h p://history.drupal.ku.edu/anton-rosenthal.

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at:h p://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.

Citation: Brent J. Steele. Review of Berg, Maxine, ed., Writing the Historyof the Global: Challenges for the Twenty-rst Century . H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. December, 2013.

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