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World History in a Nation-State: The Transnational Disposition in Historical Writing in the United States
Marcus Gräser
| The internationalization of historical writing is here to stay. The high mobility of students and professional historians, the transnational cooperation in research projects and in journals, and above all the growing interest in research designs that do not ignore the borders of nation-states but cross them with vigor—all have become routine. While twenty years ago Karl Dietrich Erdmann could suspect that the "ecumenism of historians" was limited to international conferences, that is no longer so. To be sure, many of the transnationalizing trends have been encouraged and financed by national-level governments, and the national context of universities, archives, and professional historical organizations has not been threatened by these developments, nor has the historian's orientation toward a national public and its interest in historical information.1 |
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Noticeable tendencies toward internationalization of the historical profession as a dimension of the oft-proclaimed process of globalization, therefore, do not level all national distinctions; instead they create areas of conflict with national scholarly cultures and with the fluid traditions of "national styles" within the profession. Admittedly, it makes a difference whether national historiographies merely react to the trends of transnationalization in modern history that disconnect historians from the nation-state as a preferred research subject or themselves generate such transnational perspectives. To explain such differences (a task for the comparative history of historiographies), one may define a national style as a set of dispositions that may emphasize certain research opportunities and play down others. Any debate on transnationalization and on an emerging international historiography benefits from historicizing historiographies. In Dominic Sachsenmaier's words, we ought to contextualize our own historical activities
by asking the same sets of questions that we as historians would apply to academic networks of the past. It would greatly enrich the debates on global history if we would include our own professional worlds into the picture. These worlds include the sociologies of knowledge, and the multifarious social, political and cultural contexts that frame our academic endeavors.2
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In this essay, I will (in part I) sketch the widespread interest of American historians in world (or global) history, particularly with respect to a transformation and preservation of American history in a transnational context. I will then (in II) inquire about the present or recent motives for such interests and (in III) test whether a transnational orientation has been a lasting attribute engrained in American historical writing from its inception—a structural disposition that endured the field's transformation without perhaps ever being dominant. American historical writing has not assumed a completely transnational perspective, and it will probably never do so. That is why, in conclusion (in IV), I will mention contradictory tendencies whereby historians commit themselves to working exclusively on topics relevant within the borders of their own nation-state.3 |
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