The Third European Congress on World and Global History at the London School of
Economics & Political Science 14-17 April 2011
The European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH) organized this major
event for the third time since 2005. The great number of participants as well as the
sheer range of topics presented in this 4-day marathon is (was) an impressive statement
for just how important transnational and global perspectives in history writing has
become in recent years.
Under the heading ‘Connections and Comparisons’, nearly 100 panels presented their
research and critical reflections on topics encompassing almost all greater world regions
from the early modern period to the contemporary. Themes such as "Production,
Change and Spread of Knowledge", “Trade and Finance”, “Global Hierarchies and
Inequalities” and "Colonialism and Decolonizalisation" structured this fruitful encounter
between leading scholars and young researchers from all over Europe and beyond and
across the disciplines of economic, social, political and cultural history. Prof. Maxine
Berg (University of Warwick) and Prof. Michel Espagne (CNRS, Paris) were invited to
give the keynote lectures for this event. The interest in the ERC-funded project based at
the University at Warwick was great and the questions that Maxine Berg addressed in
her talk on Europe’s Asian Centuries: Material Culture and Useful Knowledge 1600-1800
were widely discussed throughout the conference.
The concluding round table sought to survey the present state of global history and its
impact on teaching, not only in higher education but also in secondary schools in
Europe. Prof. Alexander Chubariyan (Institute of World History of the Russian Academy
of Sciences, Moscow), Prof. William Clarence-Smith (SOAS, London), Dr. Martina Winkler
(University of Münster) and Dr. Blaise Wilfert-Portal (ENS, Paris) gave an account of the
situation in their respective scholarly communities – pointing collectively to the need for
change and a stronger involvement of global historians in the preparation of text books for an education that transcends the narrowness of the national historiographical canon
better reflect global entanglements in past and present.