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Galleons and Caravans: the main debates
Overview lecture
Galleons and Caravans
Week 2
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Global Connections
Today’s Lecture
A. What is Galleons and Caravans about?
B. What are the key concepts and methods used in the course?
C. Historical Debates in Global/World History
What makes this course different?
1. Team-taught course
2. Chronology: 1300-1800
3. Takes the wider world seriously
Thematically organised:
Theories of global historyTravelSilk routesSilver Diasporas and migrationsGlobal citiesGlobal empires The European trade companies Global arts and material culture Environment and ecological exchangeReligionScience and technology War, exploration and exploitation
1. What is Global History?
www.warwick.ac.uk/go/globalhistory
What is global history?
•History of the entire globe?
What is global history?
•History of the entire globe?
•History of globalisation?
‘Globalisation’ is often seen as a phenomenon that boomed in the 1990s through:
•new systems of communication (the internet, email etc)
•a high degree of economic interconnectedness
• the power of large corporations
• cultural homogenisation
What is global history?
•History of the entire globe?
•History of globalisation?
•History of interaction and connection in the early modern world
Ways of doing global history:
a. Connections: - to explain both economic and cultural phenomena.- connections are not always positive (exploitation, war,
slavery, etc.).
b. Comparisons: - especially used in the social sciences- based on indepth studies of specific localities- problem of what to compare
Ways of doing global history:
c. Holistic: - the whole world as one unit (in ‘big history’ the whole ‘Universe’, as in David Christian’s Maps of Time (2004)- use of science and biology
d. Systemic:- analyzes how different areas (be they localities, states or empires) relate to each other.
Jounal of World History, since 1990, US-based
Journal of Global History, since 2006, UK-based
World and Global History
1. Eurocentrism
2. Dominance of economic history
What is wrong with Global History?
DivergenceDavid Landes
• Environmental factors• Superior culture of
Northern Europe
Kenneth Pomeranz
• Post 1750• Coal and colonies
World-systems theory
Wallerstein Frank
Silver and economic integration
Flynn and Giraldez Richard von Glahn
Scientific development
Toby Huff Benjamin Elman
Scientific development
Toby Huff Benjamin Elman
East India Companies
Om Prakash Markus Vink • ‘the new thalassology’• Annales school
Industrial Revolution or Luxury
Maxine Berg‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods
in the Eighteenth Century’ Past and Present (2004)
Other topics for your consideration
• Empires—global or not?• Diaspora communities and their role in
creating connections• Maritime connections versus land-based
connections• Spread of religions• Cities as nodes of global trade• Columbian exchange
Global Connections
• Multidisciplinary approach– Economic history as well as social and cultural
history– Art and material culture– Literary materials (travel records, personal
accounts)• The early modern world had multiple centres
of gravity• Periodization: start in 1300