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 historyTravelSilk routesSilver  Diasporas and migrationsGlobal citiesGlobal empires The European trade companies Global arts and material culture Environment and ecological exchangeReligionScience 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.

Jounal of World History, since 1990, US-based

Journal of Global History, since 2006, UK-based

World and Global History

1. Eurocentrism

2. Dominance of economic history

What is wrong with Global History?

DivergenceDavid Landes

• Environmental factors• Superior culture of

Northern Europe

Kenneth Pomeranz

• 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