Globalization in Historical Perspective



Globalization in Historical Perspective 1999 -

The Centre’s programme on Globalization in Historical Perspective began in 1999. It is coordinated by Emma Rothschild. It has been concerned with, among other topics, the history of the idea of globalization and of global connections, especially in the eighteenth century; the end of periods of globalization, and the reversibility of globalization, looking at trade and tariffs, emigration and immigration policies and monetary history; international history, as a history of relations between individuals and cultures, including individuals who belong to several cultures at the same time, or who move between different identities, languages, countries of residence and nationalities; the history of the United Nations and other international institutions; and history under siege, especially in relation to conflicts over historical truth and the teaching of history.

Some recent meetings include the following.

In December 2002 a meeting was convened to discuss the current state of the UN Archives. The meeting was held in Trinity College, Cambridge and participants included Sunil Amrith (Christ’s College, Cambridge), Jens Boel (UNESCO Archives), Bernhard Fulda (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge), Tim Harper (Magdalene College, Cambridge), Sir Richard Jolly (Institute of Development Studies, Sussex), Paul Kennedy (Yale University), David Reynolds (Christ’s College, Cambridge) and Emma Rothschild. The Centre will establish a website for researchers intending to work with UN archives and follow-up meetings are expected to take place.

Catherine Merridale (Bristol University) organised a half-day meeting entitled Redesigning the Past: Political Transition and the Uses of History. The meeting, which examined history and history curricula in the former Soviet Union, Indian Subcontinent and Southern Africa took place in Trinity College, Cambridge on 2 February 2001. It focused on the collapse of dictatorships, and the subsequent reinvention of history by journalists and politicians. History is by turns a source of legitimation for new governments, a generator of transformatory rage, a set of falsified details to be put right, and a source of consolation for those who fear that their society has preserved few cultural resources beyond its bitter memories and loss. The meeting also focused on some of the questions which arise from the re-writing of history: inter-generational conflict, conflicts about language and paradigm, and the emergence of indigenous histories. Participants included William Beinart (St Antony’s College, Oxford), Stefan Berger (University of Glamorgan), Johanna Crighton (University of Cambridge), Jürgen Kocka (Social Science Research Centre, Berlin), Richard Evans (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge), Bernhard Fulda, Stephen Howe (Ruskin College, Oxford), Urte Kocka (Freie Universitat Berlin), Rana Mitter (Institute for Chinese Studies, University of Oxford), Emma Rothschild, Naoko Shimazu (Birkbeck College, London) and Gareth Stedman Jones.

A follow-up two-day colloquium on Redesigning History: Political Transition and the Uses of History was held in January 2002, at King’s College, Cambridge. It explored the ways in which history writing, and more generally, the public understanding of the past, can change in the wake of political transformations such as the collapse of an ideological dictatorship (Nazism after 1945, Soviet Communism after 1989) or the defeat of a colonial system (the Indian sub-continent, South Africa). In the workshop history was defined broadly, encompassing the material that is provided for textbooks, national curricula, academic research, popular history and the broadcast media. It also explored the idea of an international history, defined as it may be by the interplay between national and regional cultures, however they are imagined, and the homogenising influence of global media and mass public history.

Participants included Christopher Bayly (St Catharine’s College, Cambridge), Stefan Berger (University of Glamorgan), Richard Evans (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge), Jürgen Kocka, Rana Mitter, Naoko Shimazu and Romila Thapar (Jawaharlal Nehru University). Papers from the colloquium have been published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary History in January 2003.

On 2-4 March 2001, a colloquium was held at King’s College, Cambridge on The Political Economy of British Economic Experience, 1688-1914. The meeting was organised by Donald Winch (University of Sussex) and brought together economists, economic historians and historians of economics. Papers were presented by F.M.L. Thompson (Institute of Historical Research, University of London) on Changing Perceptions of Land Tenures in Britain, 1750-1914, Anthony Howe (LSE) on Free Trade Protection, 1688-1914, Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck College, London) on Popular Political Economy and the Contestation of National Identity and Political Practice: Free Trade and Tariff Reform, 1846-1931, Kenneth Morgan (Brunel University) on Mercantilism and the British Empire, 1688-1815, Andrew Porter (King’s College, London) on The Political Economy of Empire, Forrest Capie (City University, London) on The Evolution of the Lender of Last Resort: The Bank of England, Joanna Innes (Somerville College, Oxford) on The Distinctiveness of the English Poor Law, 1750-1850, José Harris (St Catherine’s College, Oxford) on Morality, Poor Law, and Welfare State, Patrick O’Brien (LSE) on Path Dependency. British Exceptionalism and the Rise of Fiscal States in Western Europe from Westphalia to the Treaty of Vienna, Martin Daunton (Churchill College, Cambridge) on British Taxation from the Napoleonic Wars to the First World War, Roberto Romani on The Image of Britain in the Eyes of French and Italian Economists, James Thompson (Jesus College, Cambridge) on ‘A Nearly Related People’: Some German Views of the British Labour Market, 1870-1900, Emma Rothschild on The English Kopf, and Gareth Stedman Jones on National Bankruptcy and Social Revolution: European Observers on Britain, 1813-1844. Revised versions of these papers were produced in a volume edited by Donald Winch and Patrick O’Brien, which was published by Oxford University Press in August 2002 as a volume titled The Political Economy of British Economic Experience, 1688-1914.

A colloquium on Globalization in World History, organised by Tony Hopkins (Pembroke College, Cambridge), John Lonsdale (Trinity College, Cambridge) and Christopher Bayly, took place on 3 June 2000 at King's College, Cambridge. The meeting opened with an introductory paper by Tony Hopkins entitled The History of Globalization - and the Globalization of History. The first session, on the eighteenth century, heard papers by Christopher Bayly on ‘Archaic' and 'Modern' Globalization in the Eurasian and African Arena, c. 1750-1850, Richard Drayton (University of Virginia) on Putting the World to Work: Slaves, Empires and the Collaboration of Land and Labour, 1500-2000, and Tony Ballantyne (University of Illinois) on Imperialism and the Globalization of Knowledge: The British case. Papers presented during the session on the nineteenth century included those by Tim Harper (Magdalene College, Cambridge) on Globalism, Diaspora and Empire in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, Amira Bennison (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge) on Western Globalization versus Muslim Universalism: Interactions since 1850, and Dimitris Livanios (University of Cambridge) on 'Conquering the Souls': Nationalism, Religion and Violence in the Balkans During the 'Long Nineteenth century', c. 1774 - c. 1913. The final session, on the twentieth century, brought together presentations from John Lonsdale on Globalization, Ethnicity and Democracy: A View from ‘the Hopeless Continent’, David Reynolds (Christ’s College, Cambridge) on American Globalism, Mass, Motion and the Multiplier Effect, Hans Van de Ven (St Catharine's College, Cambridge) on Globalization in late Qing and Early Republican China: Continuities and Discontinuities with the Present, and Tony Hopkins on Globalization With and Without Empires: The Balinese and the Innu. Other participants included David Held (LSE), Charles Jones (Wolfson College, Cambridge), Michael Kitson (St Catharine's College, Cambridge), Emma Rothschild, and David Washbrook (St Antony's College, Oxford). A number of the papers were published by Randomhouse in a book, Globalisation in World History, in 2002.

The Centre arranged a one-day colloquium, organised by Becky Conekin (London College of Fashion), on Exhibiting Britain, held at King's College, Cambridge in November 1999. The aim was to discuss the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Festival of Britain, 1951 and the Millennium exhibitions in a historical, comparative context. A paper by Dr Conekin presented the Festival of Britain as a Labour-led project, which drew on invented traditions and a sense of ancient ancestry. There were also presentations by Max Jones (Peterhouse, Cambridge), on Historians, National Identity and Heroes in Early-Twentieth Century Britain, Tony Swift (Essex University) on The Great Exhibition of 1851, and by Brigitte Vogel, who was co-curator of the ‘Unity, Justice and Freedom': The Germans 1949-1999 exhibition, which was held at the German Historical Museum, Berlin. The day concluded with a panel discussion of issues of national identity and commemoration in the past, present and future.

A colloquium on European Monetary Unification, organised by Luca Einaudi, was held at King's College on 24 September 1999. The aim of the colloquium was to discuss monetary integration of Europe in the 1860s and 1870s, looking specifically at the Latin Monetary Union. The politics of monetary union was explored through papers which use new archival resources in England and France. The position of enthusiastic and reluctant new candidates to join the existing union after its formation was also considered, with particular emphasis on the British and German internal debate. Participants included Marc Flandreau (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris), Anatole Kaletsky (The Times), and Jonathan Steinberg (Trinity Hall, Cambridge).

The Centre organised a one-day roundtable discussion on Knowledge and Multilateral Interventions, which was held on 12 July 1999, at Trinity College, Cambridge. The purpose of the meeting was to examine the UN’s use of information in the Bosnia and Cambodia operations, and possible lessons that could be taken from these experiences to inform present ‘interventions’. Participants included Christopher Bayly, John Boyd (Churchill College, Cambridge), Yusuke Dan (Tokai University, Japan), John Grimond (The Economist), Magnus Lennartsson (Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs), Rama Mani (Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Cambridge), Edward Mortimer (UN), Thant Myint-U (UN), Izumi Nakamitsu (International IDEA), Paul Risely (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia), Emma Rothschild, and Elizabeth Sellwood (Royal Institute of International Affairs).

In the same month there was an international conference on the Peculiarities of the British Economic Experience, at King’s College, Cambridge. There were four sessions: Foreign Observers, Free Trade and Protection, Fiscal Policy and Empire. Presentations were made by Peter Cain (Sheffield Hallam University), Martin Daunton (Churchill College, Cambridge), Anthony Howe (LSE), Patrick O’Brien (Institute of Historical Research, University of London), George Peden (University of Stirling), Emma Rothschild, Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey (LSE), James Thompson (King’s College, Cambridge), Frank Trentmann (Princeton University), and Donald Winch (University of Sussex).

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