Global History
Introduction to the course
„Historiography of Global History“
Course Type W3 = Philosophy of Science 3
Historiography of History
The historical writings (=texts) about
history itself
 a matter of a critical assessment of
sources applying relevant methods explicitlly
OR
The perspective or point of view from
which a specific historical writing emanates
 a matter of philosophy of science
How to deal with different
perspectives?
We can imagine infinite possibilities of
different perspectives, but we cannot tell
different histories simultaneously. So a
critical scientific attitude takes these
differences into account and under this
assumption opt for a particular perspective.
To negate differences in perspectives
produces a single vision of truth
=dogmatism
Perspectives on History (1)
Directed at the past as source for the recent
political/ economic/ social order  Historism:
methods = mainly positivistim and later
hermeneutics
Directed at the future of mankind 
Universalism: methods = philosophical,
mainly metaphysics
Directed at different social and cultural
circumstances  Multipersepctivity:
methods are more similar to social
sciences
Perspectives on History (2)
Focus on civilizations and their epic
struggle  World History, e.g. Annales:
economic, social histories
Directed at the relations and interactions
of people and other relevant entities in
past and present; globalisations & their
contemporary outcomes  Global
History, e.g. systemic approaches
Universal History (=UH)
... doesn‘t mean the same in different
epochs
18th century/ invention of UH as an
expression of a universal future of mankind
 philosophy of histroy
=Geschichtsphilosophie
19th century/ institutionalisation of UH as
the leading principle of history as an
academic science  philosophy of
historical sciences
=Geschichtswissenschaftstheorie
The philosophy of historical sciences
deals with ...
Theories
Methods
Organisation of historical sources and
the findings of research, e.g.
Periodization
Theories ...
Certain assumptions taken from
contemporary cognitive framworks brougth
into discussion about philosophy of historical
sciences
e.g. Cyclical cosmovision (e.g. genealogies);
anthroposophical pessimism  Golden Age (e.g.
Romans); anthroposophical optimism 
chronological progress  development;
structuralism (Foucault), systemic approach
(WST), constructivist theories, etc.
Methods ...
Historians assert their arguments applying
scientific means (=methods)
Examining sources applying quantitative (e.g.
statistics) and/or qualitative methods (e.g.
hermeneutics)  critical arguments
preparing datas and compare them (only the same
type of datas can be compared properly  reduction
of complexity)
Examining history writings itself according, e.g. to the
discourse practices within the field  history of
historiography
Periodization ...
The concept of an era focuses on cycles,
based on a definite dramatical event, but
preferably searches for several constructions
aggregating an episode
E.g.
• 12.10.1492 Or: Modern Times (Neuzeit? = WZGN
3)
• WW1+ Big Depression + WW2 OR: The era of the
Great War (Wallerstein)
Possible Classifications of History...
According to ages: Ancient World, Middle
Ages, Modern Times, Contemporary History
etc.
eurocentric
According to aspects: Economic, Social,
Political, Women‘s History etc.
eurocentric?
According to spaces and systems: Local,
European, World, WSA, Global History etc.
Classification of History According to
the Maximum Human Space or System
Universal History deals with how the world
will once become.
World History deals with the confirmably
constituting facts of the actual civilizations,
composed by different histories concluding in
a common vision of humanity.
Global History deals with globally asserted
interactions in their until now ignored
varieties and locally different levles of their
respective pertinance, e.g. bifurcations
(Wendezeit)
Is there an era of globalisation?
Scholars from different fields and
different theoretical backgrounds
agree: the era of globalisation emerged
since the 1960ies, the time mass
communication took place creating so
far a new global technoscietnific
civilisation
Global Perspective
Since the late 1960s, the image of „one
world“ has edged its way into contemporary
consciousness – the globe in its physical
finitness.
We share in humanity (UH), we are
connected by the world market (WH), and
potentially we interact with all inhabitants of
the planet (GH).
Global Perspective at the blue planet?
This is the message
conveyed by the first
photograph of the ‚one
world‘, taken from
outer space, which has
irresistibly emerged as
the icon of our age.
World or Global History?
Mazlish, Bruce 2005:
Terms.
In: Marnie Hughes
Warrington (ed):
World Histories.
Palgrave: N.Y., 18-43
Bruce Mazlish, Professor of History
received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Mazlish's
areas of interest and expertise are Western intellectual and
cultural history, with a special nod to history of science and
technology, the culture of capitalism, and history of the social
sciences. He is also an authority in the interdisciplinary field of
psychohistory as well as historical methodology; most recently
he has spearheaded an effort to conceptualize global history.
His most recent publications are: Leviathans: Multinational
Corporations and The New Global History, co-edited with Alfred
D. Chandler, Jr
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In
1986 he was awarded the Toynbee Prize, an international award
in social science.
• Source: http://web.mit.edu/bmazlish/www/
„World histories ...
themselves cannot become new forms
of myth, but must remain part of the
practive of history (Mazlish 2005, 39).“
„In practice, of course, pieces of the
whole are chosen for investigation, and
the local treated as an opening to the
world or globe (Mazlish 2005, 40).“
„Overall our world histories ...
share some common characteristics, but
also exhibit ‚local‘ differences. The most
essential common feature is a desire to
transcend their existing geographic
limitations (Mazlish 2005, 40).“
Can we write the History of the
Globe?
Bruce Mazlish Global History faces the basic
facts of our time:
• Satellites in outer space link the people together in
real time and a totally new fashion
• Nuclear therats reveal the inadequacy of territorial
states and it‘s military forces
• Environmental Problems
• Enormous expansion of MNCs
–
Mazlish, Bruce 2005: Terms. In Marnie Hughes
Warrington (ed): Wolrd Histories. Palgrave: N.Y., 1843
An examples of World History.
Arnold J. Toynbee,
Mankind And Mother
Earth - A Narrative
History Of The World,
Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1976.
--, Menschheit und
Mutter Erde. Die
Geschichte der großen
Zivilisationen, Claassen
Verlag GmbH, Düsseldorf,
1979.
Arnold J. Toynbee (1989-1975)
Born in London, Arnold J. he began his teaching career as a
fellow of Balliol College in 1912, and thereafter held positions at
King‘s College London (as Professor of Modern Greek and
Byzantine History), the LSE and the Royal Institute of
International Affairs (RIIA) in Chatham House.
Toynbee presented history as the rise and fall of civilizations,
rather than the history of nation-states or of ethnic groups. He
identified his civilizations according to cultural rather than
national criteria. Thus, the "Western Civilization", comprising all
the nations that have existed in Western Europe since the
collapse of the Roman Empire, was treated as a whole, and
distinguished from both the "Orthodox" civilization of Russia and
the Balkans, and from the Greco-Roman civilization that
preceded it.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee
1. Arnold J. Toynbee (philosophy of
history)
The History of human race according to
the main stages of production and
dissimination of knowledge consisted
of three successive phases
Prehistory
History
New Era
Toynbee ...
1. Prehistory
Communications are extremly slow
Knowledge advanced painfully
 Every new development had time to
spread everywhere before an other came
along
 All human societies developed in parallel
with one another and had many
characteristics in common
e.g. The Neolithical Revolution
Toynbee ...
2. History
Knowledge developed faster than the
means of disseminating it
 human societies grew more and more
different from one another
e.g. book printing
Toynbee ...
3. New Era
Knowledge advances more and more
rapidly, the dissemination of knowledge
progresses even faster
 human societies are likely to become
less and less differentiated from one
another
An examples for a historical
perspective according to Global
History
Michael Geyer/ Charles Bright,
(1995): World History in a Global Age. In:
American Historical Review 100/ 4: 104760.
Geyer and Bright  applied
philosophy of science
World History in a Global Age
Globalisation is not the trigger for a new age,
but a new ordering of relations of domination
and subordination among all regions of the
world
 After the European-Atlantic-civilisations
became the centering axis of an integrating
world (= The West), in the Global Age this
world became de-centered radically due to
worldwide processes of unsettlement.
Michael Geyer and Charles Bright...
Narrating world history in our global age
means
Taking into account the recent phenomenas
of globalisation =worldwide unsettlement
To do proper historical inquiry = archival
research
 Teasing out the fissures and tensions
between what happened and what is said to
have happened (= a kind of positivism!)
The worldwide processes of
unsettlement Geyer/ Bright...
1. The unequal process of industrialisation
2. The proliferation of transnational practices in
banking, commerce, information,
communication and in the interactions of
states
3. Migration reversed from the poor South to the
rich North
4. The vanishing of the nation-state 
proliferation of export platforms, para-states,
„private“ (family-based) states and state
satrapies.