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History Notes Transnationalism Notes

Transnationalism Notes

Updated Transnationalism Notes

Transnationalism Notes

Transnationalism

Approximately 19 pages

Brief notes looking at the development of global, international, and transnational history....

Available here

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Transnationalism Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Transnationalism

Contents

  • Past questions

  • Quotes

    • Transnationalism

  • Transnationalism

    • Transnationalism

    • Development

    • The nation

    • History of national histories

    • Nationalism versus transnationalism

    • Politics

    • Economics

    • Culture

    • Society

    • Sociology

    • European expansion

Past questions

  • How useful is the study of global history to understanding processes of political and/or socio-economic change?

    • Specimen paper

  • How far have traditional understandings of nation changed under the impact of twentieth-century schools of history?

    • Tutorial essay

  • Has the time come to eschew national frameworks in historical analysis?

    • Trinity 2013

  • Can transnational history do without national histories?

    • Trinity 2012

  • Is global history anything more than a reaction against the notion of western exceptionalism?

    • Trinity 2012

  • Is either global history or transnational history more than a re-description of older ways of writing about the past?

    • Trinity 2011

  • Why do national histories so often generate the idea of national exceptionalisms? You may if you wish concentrate on one historiography.

    • Trinity 2010

  • Is global history only possible for the period after 1800?

    • Trinity 2010

Quotes

Transnationalism

  • Transnationalism was ‘only rediscoveries of truths very apparent to an older generation of writers in international history and international relations’.

    • Susan Strange, 1976.

  • Transnationalism is ‘contracts, coalitions and interactions across state boundaries’.

    • Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane.

  • The whalers from Nantucket ‘conquered the watery world’.

    • Herman Melville.

  • “What is certain is that he was neither a Czech nor a German… For this reason, Count Taaffe was to a certain degree objective and unbiased with regard to national strivings”.

    • A journalist.

  • That “the history of the world ought to go before the history of England”.

    • John Morley.

Transnationalism

Nature

  • Global history is perhaps more of an instinct than a rigid doctrine.

    • It is difficult to define.

      • We are in the midst of it now.

    • It is an established doctrine that is still very new and developing.

      • It evolved out of the 1970s.

      • With Said and post-colonialism.

      • People sought histories that were less euro-centric.

      • Just as they were to be less focused on the ruling classes.

  • There are at least three definitions.

    • One is defining global history as the history of modern globalisation.

      • Dating from around the 1960s.

      • Some push it back to the steam ship invention circa 1850.

      • Very much at the modern end of world history.

      • This is presentism – a Whig approach.

      • The causes of the present are a legitimate question, but not the only legitimate question.

    • The second definition is that of the western civilisation.

      • Some see this as the European, Indian, and Chinese world being understood.

      • Development of global city culture.

      • But excludes huge masses of peoples, such as Polynesians of the Pacific.

    • The third is the history of connectivity.

      • Connections between clusters of humans.

      • Connection of cultures.

      • Spread of the killer ape.

      • Cultures and networks of increasing size.

  • Global history contains every type of history.

    • Cannot stop at sub-disciplinary, or national boundaries.

  • It tries to connect the general and the particular.

    • Not the rival of specialist histories.

      • Does not ignore the particularities of time, location, and people.

      • Zooms in, as well as out.

      • Puts them in context.

      • Highlighting difference, as well as similarity.

      • General and particular must talk to each other.

    • Such as the juxtaposition of the histories of culture and of nature.

      • Ecological, not environmental history.

      • Ecological history is the interplay of human and non-human factors.

  • It is important to define transnationalism.

    • To distinguish it from other forms of nationalism.

      • Internationalism.

      • Supranationalism.

    • The term was coined to describe dealings between nation-states that did not fall under traditional diplomatic encounters.

      • It began to mean interests that extended beyond borders or frontiers.

      • Its wooliness meant it was unclear.

      • Susan Strange noted in 1976 that, whilst the word was new, many of its notions were ‘only rediscoveries of truths very apparent to an older generation of writers in international history and international relations’.

    • Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane, also writing in the seventies, made the original scholarly definition of transnationalism.

      • Describing ‘contracts, coalitions and interactions across state boundaries’.

      • Not directly controlled by central government.

      • It involves multiple parties and at least three countries.

      • Meaning that there can be some space for governmental intervention.

    • Their definition has since been modified.

      • To include more or less than three countries.

      • Giving space for universalism.

      • As well as simple to include two groups.

  • The transnational is anchored in the nation-state.

    • It is about dealings that cross multiple nation-states.

      • Whereas the global is not.

      • It is anchored somewhere in space.

  • In the 1980s, some historians started using transnationalism as a means to flee dominant national paradigms.

    • World historians in particular took it in unique directions.

      • Particularly expressing American interest and expansion around the world.

  • We can use the EU to explain the difference between the different nationalisms.

    • Internationalism is inter-governmental relations.

      • Such as the formation of a single trading area under the European Economic Community.

    • Supranationalism refers to organisations which sit atop governments.

      • Such as the European Court of Justice.

    • Transnationalism would be an EU educational initiative.

      • Crossing several borders.

      • Mixing NGOs and government bodies.

  • The problem is that the borders are not discrete.

    • Individuals can move seamlessly from representing themselves to representing governments.

      • Such as the historical men on the spot.

      • George Goldie, Macgregor Laird, Cecile Rhodes, Karl Peters.

    • Even within one organisation, different types...

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