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The Prospect of Global History
The Prospect of Global History takes a new approach to the study of global history, seeking to apply it, rather than advocate it. The volume seeks perspectives on history from East Asian and Islamic sources as well as European ones, and insists on depth in historical analysis. The Prospect of Global History will speak to those interested in medieval and ancient history as well as modern history. Chapters range from historical sociology to economic history, from medieval to modern times, from European expansion to constitutional history, and from the United States across South Asia to China.
- GenresHistoryWorld History
240 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2016
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About the author
James Belich
17 books28 followersJames Belich is a historian and academic whose writing has focused on reinterpreting nineteenth-century New Zealand history, particularly the New Zealand Wars. His scholarship on Maori and Pakeha relations has received critical recognition and his book, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (1980), won the international Trevor Reed Memorial Prize for historical scholarship. He is a Professor of History, and in 2006 he was made an Officer of New Zealand Order of Merit.
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April 6, 2026A book with strengths and weaknesses (see my general review here), but in this review I’m focussing on the afterword by John Darwin. He summarizes the benefits a historical look on globalization offers. And that is first of all that globalization has a very long history, not moving in a smooth, progressing line: “Taking the long view permits us to see that globalization can be analysed more subtly if we resist treating it as an unprecedented explosion in global exchange.” There were periods of substantial geographical enlargement in the sphere of exchange and interaction, periods of fast acceleration due to technological and other changes, but also periods of reduction and decline.
There’s also the acknowledgment that globalisation concerns much more than just the financial or economical: “Globalization, in short, is not ‘one big thing’ but a complex of processes, each with its own intricate history, each susceptible to the mutual influence of the others. The briefest of glances at the historical record would suggest the scale and importance of these ‘globalizing’ processes far back in time and hint at the value of grasping their inter-relation.”
Also, according to Darwin, the ‘agents’ of globalisation are very divers, both formal and informal agents, and therefore not always easily traceable: “The globalization that resulted was necessarily ‘messy’, incomplete, and ideologically incoherent.”
Another important fact is not to look at globalisation as a unilateral (for instance Western) process: “The long view that global history can offer helps us to see that no phase of globalization, or global connectedness, can be permanent. Globalization is always a work in progress, subject to reversals, transitions, crises, and breakdowns. No global order, whether economic or geopolitical, has been fixed for long. Each has created new frontiers and borderlands, new centres and peripheries, and incubated new sources of tension and change.”
Finally, Darwin warns that we have to beware for the trap of offering an alternative Whig History. In general, historians are prone for teleological views, writing history as if there was no other way beside the historical process that really happened in the past. In this sense, keeping an open mind on super-human history like that of climate change, or on other forms of modernity than only the Western one, is absolutely in order.
“Global history—history on a global scale—is not an historical programme, still less a uniform approach to the history of the world. Its appeal and its value lie precisely in the multiple vistas it opens up, in the connections it suggests, in the questions it asks. ‘An extensive sight or view; the view of the landscape from any position’ was an early definition of ‘prospect’. That might serve quite well to describe the prospect of global history.” I couldn’t say it any better.
There’s also the acknowledgment that globalisation concerns much more than just the financial or economical: “Globalization, in short, is not ‘one big thing’ but a complex of processes, each with its own intricate history, each susceptible to the mutual influence of the others. The briefest of glances at the historical record would suggest the scale and importance of these ‘globalizing’ processes far back in time and hint at the value of grasping their inter-relation.”
Also, according to Darwin, the ‘agents’ of globalisation are very divers, both formal and informal agents, and therefore not always easily traceable: “The globalization that resulted was necessarily ‘messy’, incomplete, and ideologically incoherent.”
Another important fact is not to look at globalisation as a unilateral (for instance Western) process: “The long view that global history can offer helps us to see that no phase of globalization, or global connectedness, can be permanent. Globalization is always a work in progress, subject to reversals, transitions, crises, and breakdowns. No global order, whether economic or geopolitical, has been fixed for long. Each has created new frontiers and borderlands, new centres and peripheries, and incubated new sources of tension and change.”
Finally, Darwin warns that we have to beware for the trap of offering an alternative Whig History. In general, historians are prone for teleological views, writing history as if there was no other way beside the historical process that really happened in the past. In this sense, keeping an open mind on super-human history like that of climate change, or on other forms of modernity than only the Western one, is absolutely in order.
“Global history—history on a global scale—is not an historical programme, still less a uniform approach to the history of the world. Its appeal and its value lie precisely in the multiple vistas it opens up, in the connections it suggests, in the questions it asks. ‘An extensive sight or view; the view of the landscape from any position’ was an early definition of ‘prospect’. That might serve quite well to describe the prospect of global history.” I couldn’t say it any better.
November 30, 2022
Series of articles on Global History, published in 2016, but going back to a conference held in Oxford, UK, in 2012. This certainly was an improvement on A.G. Hopkins, Globalization in World History, and Kenneth R. Curtis. Architects of World History, both works I read about a month ago. Excellent introductory and concluding article, whilst the other contributions focus on specific items, each time cross-boundaries (a remarkable one is on the history of the trade and the use of incense). The editors accentuate the need of working with a comparative and connected focus, but in the contributions connectedness is rather neglected. Another weakness of this book is that the authors are almost all male, and European/American. More in my historical account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews