GLOBALIZING ECONOMIC HISTORY: Multiple Roads from the Past
Edited by Francesco Boldizzoni and Pat Hudson
Publication Proposal
The aim of this volume is to document and to discuss the development of economic history as a global discipline from the later nineteenth century to the present. In doing so we hope to throw light upon the normative and relativistic nature of different schools and traditions of thought, including current paradigmatic western approaches, as well as those conceived in less open societies, and in varied economic, political and cultural contexts. It is thus hoped to clear the way for greater critical understanding and a more genuinely global approach to economic history in particular and to the humanities and social sciences in general.
Together the essays will be truly transnational in scope but they all start by addressing a menu of issues and questions from different cultural and national perspectives (see below). This agenda will work to give the essays a comparative focus whilst also leaving the way clear fully to explore a rich variety of perspectives. Many cultural and intellectual traditions, from different parts of the globe, will be exposed for consideration, and assessment, often for the first time in English. Using economic history as a focus, the volume will highlight influences peculiar to the world-wide history of one particular field of study, on the borderland between the social sciences and humanities. In doing so it raises issues that have a wider reach in helping to understand the evolution of other academic disciplines under the pressures of varied economic, political and cultural circumstances, change, and exchange, on both national and global scales.
A team of leading international contributors has been engaged whose existing work demonstrates an appreciation of the cultural history of the discipline. All have a specialism in economic history but more importantly they have an interest in historiography/methodology/ approaches, particularly in relation to their native culture. They also have a commitment to the larger process of globalising the discipline methodologically: understanding dominant ideas and historiographical trends, and opening these up to critical transnational perspectives. The wide geographical range of the essays is deliberate as is an agenda to consider both national and international influences.
Readership and place in the broader literature
There is virtually no competition for a volume of this kind. We know of no similar trans-national biography of a social science or arts discipline. There has been a stronger tradition of cross national comparisons of approach in the natural and physical sciences going back at least to the research and writing of Joseph Needham, and exemplified in the current work of Simon Schaffer at Cambridge, but the current volume is a new departure for social science and arts subjects.
The popularity and purchase of new global and transnational history is an important context for this project, particularly the idea that global history is as much about methodology as about spatial scope. Global history can be written on a regional or local level because processes of globalization often impact upon everyday life, in combination with earlier traditions and experiences, at those levels in clearly defined spaces. Global history is above all about recognizing contestations and interactions of ideas and approaches and their suitability in different economic, social and cultural contexts, as a counterpoint to privileging a global application of dominant Anglo-American models. That global history is concerned with highlighting multiple centres of enunciation of such ideas, as exemplified recently by Dominic Sachsenmaier, encourages the pursuit of multiple genealogies of thought as in the current project.1
Recent controversies on the state of health of economic history in the US and Europe have assisted in initiating a renewal of the discipline in some countries. This renewal and the progress and popularity of global history, together with its international reach, have added considerably to a thirst for good new economic history that is sensitive to time, place and culture. This trend is well illustrated in the take up and content of periodicals such as the Journal of Global History (founded 2005, published by CUP) and the Journal of World History (founded in 1990, restructured in 2003); and evidenced by recent high-profile comparative historiographical collections such as the Oxford History of Historical Writing (5 volumes, 2011 and forthcoming), edited by Daniel Woolf.
The choice of economic history for a study of this kind is interesting in itself but can also be justified as a centrally important exemplar for the global history and outlook of other disciplines. The book should thus appeal widely beyond economic history and particularly in those other social science and arts fields where a global approach is currently being favoured. As has been recently argued '… insights in comparative economic history, (are) essential to any larger social science account of modern world history'.2
The proposed volume will be written in a lively and accessible fashion introduced by a short prologue which will examine the agenda for the project as well as exploring the wider implications of writing trans-national histories and employing appropriate methodologies to do this. The concluding chapter will take up the same themes in the light of the essays and discuss the way forward. The volume is likely to become a reference book and a must-read for everyone working on economic and social history from established academics to undergraduate students, encountering the subject for the first time. A paperback edition might be produced for class adoption (directed to graduate students) and the volume is likely to have an exceptionally strong international readership and high translation potential because most of the contributors are leading figures, not just in their own countries but internationally.
Length: nineteen chapters (excluding the introduction) of 7,000 words average including references.
The authors listed in the prospectus have all agreed to participate and have agreed to a schedule that should see the book completed and submitted for publication by mid-2012.
1. Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives on Global History: theories and approaches in a connected world (Oxford, 2011).
2. Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and R. Bin Wong, Before and beyond divergence: the politics of economic change in China and Europe (Harvard 2011) dust jacket.
