Download Galleons and Caravans: the main debates

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 history
Travel
Silk routes
Silver
Diasporas and migrations
Global cities
Global empires
The European trade companies
Global arts and material culture
Environment and ecological exchange
Religion
Science 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.
World and Global History
Jounal of World History, since 1990, US-based
Journal of Global History, since 2006, UK-based
What is wrong with Global
History?
1. Eurocentrism
2. Dominance of economic history
Divergence
David Landes
Kenneth Pomeranz
• Environmental factors
• Superior culture of
Northern Europe
• 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