Global Past, Human Community, Dynamic Interaction 3

A. A. 2018-2019 Corso di laurea magistrale in International Relations The Global History of the Contemporary Age An Introduction (Professor Teodoro Tagliaferri) 1. Aims and Contents of the Course 2. Key Concepts: Global Past, Human Community, Dynamic Interaction 3. Contemporary India in the Perspective of the New Global History: the Reinterpretation of the Origins of British Colonialism 4. Methodological Excursus: Indian Civilization in the “Orientalist” Representation of James Mill 5. Christopher Bayly’s General Approach to Global History in The Birth of the Modern World 6. The Interactive Emergence of the British Domination in Afro-Eurasia in Bayly’s Imperial Meridian 7. The World Historical Impact of «British Nationalism» in the Age of Revolutions 8. A Global Past for a Common Future: The Ethics of Global History 9. Overcoming Eurocentrism: the First Step 10. The Expansion of Europe in the Perspective of the New Global History 1 1. Aims and Contents of the Course This course of Global History of the Contemporary Age is a course of Contemporary History specifically aimed to postgraduate students for a Master’s degree in International Relations in English and this implies that it differs substantially, both in its aims and its contents, from a course of Contemporary History for a Bachelor’s degree, like the Italian «Laurea Triennale», under three main respects. First of all, and more obviously, it presupposes that the student has already acquired a basic knowledge of the fundamental outlines of the history of the contemporary age. Secondly, as hinted in its title, the subject-matter of this course is the same subject- matter of the general or more elementary course of contemporary history: the contemporary age. This means that, whatever beginning we take as point of departure (the French Revolution, or the American Revolution, or the Industrial Revolution, or the Seven Years War of the middle of the eighteenth century), the period covered by this course includes the present age. But it includes the present both in the sense that the present forms a part of it and in the sense that the understanding of the present, a better understanding of our own present is the ultimate goal pursued by this discipline. Contemporary history is not about the past in itself, it is about the present as seen in its historical making, and it deals with the past only in so far our present, our political present is rooted in that past. So, in defining the contents of the teaching of contemporary history (which may legitimately vary from teacher to teacher), a teacher must, or should, clarify to himself and to his fellow-students what is the present that he selects (among the many possible presents) as his starting point, the present of which he is interested to investigate the genealogy. Within the context of this course we will deliberately take as our starting point the globalized society of our time and will conduct an inquiry about its making, an exploration of its historical background. More precisely, my firts aim will be to lead you to acquire an intimate understanding of a specific approach to the making of the global society. This approach is focused on the role 2 played in the making of the global society by a particular set of historical phenomena, the so-called cross-cultural and transregional interactions, as we will see. This is the approach which is being practised by the schools of international historiography of the contemporary age which are grouped under the scientific paradigm of the so called New World History. The methodology of the New World or New Global History is well exemplified by the two books (both in English) that we will employ as our textbook: 1) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780 - 19141. Global Connections and Comparisons, published by Christopher Bayly in 2003; 2) After Tamerlane. The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, from 1400 to 2000, published by John Darwin in 2007. Both Bayly and Darwin are prominent and influential practitioners of the New World History. By studying in depth some parts of their works you should become acquainted not only with the particular periods or aspects of the making of the global society they treat, but also with the methods and procedures which connote the achievement of original results in the specialized research field of the Global History of the Contemporary Age. This is another momentous difference between the teaching and studying of the contemporary history at the undergraduate level and the teaching and studying of contemporary history at your Master’s level. At the Master’s level the teaching of whatever discipline must pursue a specializing aim. In order to obtain the Master’s degree, you are required to give proof, by means of your final thesis, of having become able to produce original research results in the field of specialization of your choice. And this is true for the Contemporary History too (even when …). The specialized study of the Contemporary History is included in your curriculum for two reasons. In the first place, Contemporary History is deemed (here in Naples, at least) an essential component in the specializing training of a master student in International Relations, whatever the field of specialization he may choose to pursue. In the second place, one or more of you 1 The two dates refer, approximatively, to the American Revolution and the First World War. 3 might choose to specialize in Contemporary History itself or, more probably, to devote part of their energies at this stage of their education to work to a Master’s thesis in Contemporary History. This means that the additional duty incumbent upon me when I teach students for a Master’s degree is to teach them also the methods through which scientific knowledge is achieved in my profession. So, a further object of this course is to give you a preliminary notion, at least, in the very short time at disposition, of the research procedures, treatment of sources, use of analytical categories, technical language and terminology, alternative interpretations, organization of the research and modalities of exposition, circulation and evaluation of its results within the scientific community, which characterize the pursuing of original knowledge in the disciplinary field of the Global History of the Contemporary Age. To this purpose you are requested to study also an essay of mine devoted to the methodology of Christopher Bayly (Christopher Bayly e «the return of universal history», published in 2017). The need for specialization is one of the reasons why this course will not attempt a general survey of the whole subject-matter, the Global History of the entire Contemporary Age, but will approach its study through an in-depth examination of a particularly relevant moment in the making of the global society, or the history of globalization. This is why the program of the course of this year also has a more specific title of its own, that is The Crisis of the Eurasian Equilibrium and the Transition to Global Modernity. We will mainly focus, in other words, without never losing sight of the overall picture, on a necessarily more limited but absolutely crucial subperiod of the global history of the contemporary age. We will study in greater detail, and in a more in-depth way, a transitional phase which can be considered the first act in the drama of contemporary globalization, the first act in the making of the globalized society of our times, of the world we are presently, in this very moment, living in. This transitional subperiod on which we will dwell spans the century or so from the middle of the eighteenth century to the Thirties and Forties of the nineteenth century. If we wanted to trace the chronological limits of the subperiod in question adopting as signposts some particularly emblematic dates 4 or big events, we could use, to indicate its beginning, the seven-year war (1756- 1763) and, to indicate its end, the first Anglo-Chinese opium war (1839 -1842), which marks in turn the commencement of a further stage and a further acceleration in the history of globalization and in the making of the present global world. 2. Key Concepts: Global Past, Human Community, Dynamic Interaction In order to justify this choice, it is necessary to move to examine briefly the specialized meaning that the term “global” acquires when it is used by the school of global historians (the New World Historians) whose path we will follow in this course. Let us immediately clear the field of a possible misunderstanding, by clarifying what the meaning of global is not. The new global historians do not claim to have discovered a key to understand the totality of the human past. On the contrary, they try to draw attention to the importance of a specific category of phenomena which have been completely neglected or undervalued by their professional ancestors. The terrain of specialistic competence that the world historians claim for their discipline consists in the study of the «global past» and the evolution of the «human community». In the eyes of the new world historians historical events and processes are qualifiable as global when, and only when, they «work their influence (and make their influence felt) in more than one civilization or cultural region», when they unfold themselves on an «interregional» scale, or on a «hemispheric» scale embracing an entire group of civilizations, or on a literally «ecumenical», worldwide scale. As important examples of global historical phenomena we may quote major migrations and the creation of transoceanic diasporic communities, the diffusion of botanical and animal biological species and the spreading of diseases, the establishment of long distance trade networks, the impact of innovations in transport and communication technologies, the encounters and the exchanges of religious, cultural and political traditions, missionary initiatives, the imposition and the 5 exertion of economical, military, political and administrative control on colonial territories and attempts at empire-building involving peoples rooted in far remote and far different civilizational backgrounds (like Europeans and various branches of Asiatics in the spectacular case of British India).

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