Opportunities, Limits and Tasks of Transnational History – A Snapshot

Having a look at the program of the Second European Congress of World and Global History, organized by the European Network in Universal and Global History (http://www.eniugh.org) and held in July 2008 in Dresden, one might have the impression that transnational history is a very lively field of research. The conference program revealed an enormous variety of themes, reaching from ‘The French Revolution in Transnational Perspective’ over ‘International Organizations’ to ‘Piracy in the Indian Ocean’. Different historical epochs besides the modern age, all world regions – with a focus on Europe and North America – and sub disciplines such as international relations, the history of historiography, cultural, social, environmental or economic history were treated in specialized panels. Historical research in its full extent was represented in Dresden, though being reformulated in the perspective of intercultural interaction and cross-bordering exchange of ideas, commodities or people. What was the impression after the closing of the conference? First, the widening of a perspective limited on the nation state seems to be highly attractive, especially in the eyes of younger scholars. Second, transnational history is closely connected to the historiographical trend, which at the moment earns a lot of attention among historians: global history. Regarding the relationship between what goes as “global” and “transnational” history, the conference program suggested that there was a close overlapping between subjects labelled as transnational and the ones labelled as global. Hence, a precise differentiation between these two approaches seems difficult if not impossible and even not recommendable considering some of the excellent findings presented and discussed in Dresden. Nevertheless, the range of research that were presented at this meeting poses questions concerning the distinct quality of transnational history, its research objectives and trends. 

Central to many projects was the concentration on historical actors and their way to deal with, transform or circumvent geographical, political, economic, cultural, linguistic, social or legal borders. These borders define a spatial unit, which is territorialized in terms of a certain social, political, economic or cultural order that determines norms, ideas, values and practices of individuals or social groups. Having in mind this approach, research on transnational history can be classified along three lines of systematization. The first kind of studies is focusing on the nation state. They ask how national governments and societies responded to cross-border interaction by promoting, preventing or controlling trans-border relationships. Even though these works emphasize the strong influences of global impacts on the shaping of national societies, presenting nationalization as the other side of globalization, they do not essentially question the nation as main frame of reference for historical actors and as starting point for historical research. The second type of research considered as transnational consists of studies on intercultural interaction and entanglement. This branch of research considers migration, transnational operations of civil society networks and the transfer of knowledge and goods as the normal case whereas the territorialisation and nationalization of economic, social, technical or cultural flows is perceived rather as an historical exception, which attempted to control and reorganise pre-existing flows and networks. In this respect, the congress demonstrated an impressive variety of subjects including migration, transport, communication, imperial frontier zones, colonial expansion, slavery, piracy, international trade, environmental protection, diasporas or civil society networks. The merit of these studies is a profound insight in the complexities of the modern world. Instead of a well-ordered nationalized and regionalized segmentation of the world with shifting power relations between strong and weak states, the reader is confronted with multi-layered interests and loyalties of state authorities, informal networks and formal associations; with overlapping and conflicting social, economical, political, legal or cultural orders; with the simultaneity of de- and re-territorialisation and the one of cooperation and conflict; with institution building; and finally with networks of experts and professionals not necessarily pursuing national but rather their own interests. Third, the congress in Dresden offered much on-going research in what we currently call global or world history. As said earlier, it would be worth a dedicated discussion to find out whether there are serious differences between world or global history on the one and transnational history on the other side. Such a debate would definitely have to take into account the growing institutional relevance of global topics on the agenda of national research funding associations and the increasing number of research positions for subjects related to global history. Against this background it might be risky to identify differences between transnational and global history, a risk, which is reinforced by the fact that all conference participants regarded the presence of both approaches at a Congress of World and Global History as a matter of course. Nevertheless, from a glance at the panels presented in Dresden, there seems to be at least one difference, even though, admittedly, it is rather a small one. It concerns the reach of explanations. On the methodological level, studies explicitly dedicated to global history include the analysis of each kind of cross-bordering interaction as transnational history does. But the results are not primarily used to analyze the relationship between state-centred interests on the one hand and elites and experts operating on a transnational level on the other hand. Studies in global history include this aspect but their primary purpose is to explain relationships and problems of global importance and global range of influence. Consequently, processes of transnationalization in the sense of a permanent challenge to the crucial function of modern states – the control of a territorial regime – is central to studies in global history while they are at the same time contextualizing this angle in regard to the wider perspective of the formation of global constellations. 

Which conclusions can be drawn from the remarks on the congress?  Regarding the many and diverse projects presented, transnational history seems to be a very attractive field of research. This snapshot of the field gives good reasons to be interested into intriguing and innovative results from ongoing and future research. At the same time, the institutionalisation of transnational history as a historiographical sub discipline does not seem very likely, in view of the plurality of subjects, approaches, epochs and regions that were considered among and within the panels. On the contrary, we would be well advised to perceive transnational history not in institutional patterns but as a valuable conceptual, theoretical and methodological tool for understanding processes of nationalization, globalization and regionalization in the modern world. Finally, there remains one important task for the near future: Even though a lot of research is done on transnational relationships, the discussion about methods and theoretical approaches is not very much advanced. This discussion would have to take proven methods into account such as the historical comparison and the concept of cultural transfers. The task is to critically revise these methodological offers, to adjust them to the particular demands of research on transnational processes and to work out a conceptual tool for the theoretical and methodological framing of trans-border interaction. 

Isabella Löhr  recently finished her dissertation on International Cooperation and the Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights, 1886-1952  at the University of Leipzig (Germany). She is now working at the University of Heidelberg, with a specific interest for the history of international organizations.