„It is no longer the intention of history didactics to teach students as much forgettable knowledge as possible from a fixed canon. Rather, it asks and thinks about how students can learn questions, methods of thinking, ways of working, and content of history that are important to them in school, thereby increasing their ability to remember and connect them with historically enlightened social imagination.“ (Bergmann et al. 2003, 3)
This quote illustrates the attempt to rethink historical knowledge in order to help students better understand contemporary processes and problems in a world where „the global increasingly permeates the local“ (Forster/ Popp 2003, 5). This is where world history comes in with its macro perspective. According to Conrad, world history or global history tries to overcome national histories and their closed spaces in order to better represent and understand „transnational processes, exchange relations, but also comparisons within the framework of global contexts“ (Conrad 2013, 9).
What is world history?
For many authors, the terms world history and global history have converged to the point where one can speak of synonyms (cf. Sieder/ Langthaler 2010, 9), which is also assumed in the following of this text. More generally, global history refers to a form of historical analysis in which phenomena, events, or processes can be placed in global contexts (cf. Conrad 2013, 9). In this context, the interconnections of the globalized world are the starting point of global history with a focus on the exchange between „things, people, ideas, and institutions“ (Conrad 2013, 9). Contemporary world history questions the orientation of the history curriculum and the national-historical orientation and is characterized above all by analyzing globalization processes and enabling students to develop a macro perspective on global problems (cf. Forster/ Popp, 5).
However, a study of world history does not have to be global at all. Thus, Conrad describes that „it […] [can] be global, but depending on the subject matter or the question […] it [need] by no means encompass the whole world“ (Conrad 2013, 10). The most important insights or questions would result from the intersections of local and global levels and „their local manifestation“ (Conrad 2013, 10). On Baden-Württemberg’s state education server, global history is understood as a young field of historical scholarship that would also receive increasing attention in other disciplines. The quintessence of this young approach would consist of a change of perspective away from the Eurocentric and Westernized focus towards an awareness of non-European cultures (cf. Marks 2006, 178-180). However, a precise definition of global history is hardly possible, since the approaches start at different points in time. This is also shown in the project big history, which starts with the Big Bang (cf. Conrad/ Eckert 2007, 25).
Here it becomes clear that the global and world history approaches are similar in their macro perspective, but the spatial and temporal scope of this perspective can vary greatly from approach to approach, so that a uniform and precise definition of this field seems impossible (cf. Conrad/ Eckert 2007, 25). Thus, Simon writes the following about the question of what big history is:
„Big History is a young, transdisciplinary field, in which scholars from diverse academic disciplines seek to make sense of the story told by the entirety of human knowledge.“ (Simon 2015, 2)
The sheer scope and interdisciplinarity of this definition differs significantly from approaches that ‚merely‘ seek to depict globalization processes or global contexts and make them more comprehensible. In the big history approach, moreover, scientific findings are contextualized in the context of human history and civilization and embedded in a ’story‘: „And it is bound together with the art of storytelling that is the province of the humanities“ (Simon 2015, 2).
According to Conrad and Eckert, however, four broad perspectives can be identified within the field of world history that have emerged in recent years: World Economy and World System, Civilization Analyses, History of Globalization, and Postcolonial Studies (cf. Conrad/ Eckert 2007, 15 ff.). According to Sieder and Langthaler, on the other hand, global or world history „also includes social and cultural comparisons in educational science […], political science, social and cultural anthropology [and] cultural studies“ (Sieder/ Langthaler 2010, 10).
It becomes clear that no agreement has yet been reached around the scholarly discussion of a definition of global history because the different approaches differ too much from each other, as „there [are] hardly any limits to the possible global historical topics“ (Conrad 2013, 198). In general, it can be stated for the dimension of time that a large part of the global history approaches focuses on the contexts of the ‚modern epoch‘ and thus distances itself from the project of a big history that begins with the Big Bang (cf. Conrad/ Eckert 2007, 25). The view of the spatial dimension of world-historical or global-historical approaches is not always focused on the whole world, much more the „awareness of global connections“ (Conrad/ Eckert 2007, 27) plays an important role during the analysis.
Summary
It can be stated that world history tries to shift the perspective from a micro to a macro perspective by focusing on and trying to reveal global interconnections. Consequently, according to Conrad, two main potentials of global history can be noted. On the one hand, global history could pave the way for a global historical consciousness by focusing on international exchange (cf. Conrad 2013, 26). On the other hand, global history opens up the possibility of looking at history from a bird’s eye view and thus showing a more critical view of certain developments (cf. Conrad 2013, 27). This field of historical scholarship is also likely to gain importance for intercultural communication.
Literature
Bergmann, Klaus/ Mayer, Ulrich/ Pandel, Hans-Jürgen/ Schneider, Gerhard (2003): On the series Forum Historisches Lernen. In: Popp, Susanne/ Forster, Johanna (eds.): Curriculum Weltgeschichte – Globale Zugänge für den Geschichtsunterricht. Schwalbach, 3.
Christian, David (2011): David Christian – Gesamtgeschichte, 11 April. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqc9zX04DXs [03.07.2019].
Conrad, Sebastian (2013): Global history – An introduction, Munich: Beck.
Conrad, Sebastian/ Eckert, Andreas (2007): Global history, globalization, multiple modernities: on the historiography of the modern world. In: Conrad, Sebastian/ Eckert, Andreas/ Freitag, Ulrike, (eds.): Globalgeschichte – Theorien, Ansätze, Themen. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 7-49.
Forster, Johanna/ Popp, Susanne (eds.) (2003): Curriculum Weltgeschichte – Globale Zugänge für den Geschichtsunterricht, Schwalbach: Wochenschau Verlag.
Marks, Robert B. (2006): The origins of the modern world: a global world history, Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss.
Sieder, Reinhard/ Langthaler, Ernst (eds.) (2010): Globalgeschichte 1800-2010. vienna/ cologne/ Weimar: Böhlau.
Simon, Richard B. (2015): What Is Big History. In: Simon, Richard B./ Behmand, Mojgan/ Burke, Thomas (eds.): Teaching Big History. Oakland: University of California Press, 1-20.