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[there are three responses below --ed.] ------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Erez Manela" <manela@fas.harvard.edu> I'm very glad to see a discussion about the meanings of international, transnational, and global history, terms that are increasingly common but not well-defined. I generally share Anne Foster's sense about the usage of these terms, and I also agree with her that the scope of any one project and the work of any one scholar may well span several of these categories. But labels remain significant, not least from disciplinary and institutional perspectives. Job candidates need to define the field(s) into which their work falls. Departments that advertise positions in international, transnational, or global history need to know what it is they are looking for. Graduate programs that want to admit and train students in these fields need to define the scope of the program and its requirements in terms of courses, language skills, etc. Journals that publish in these fields need to know what falls within their scope. And finally, scholarship benefits from a sense of a common endeavor and an intellectual conversation engaged on common ground. So I do think the question of definition is an important one, and that there is still much work to be done. I hope to do some of that work in a historiographical essay on the "new" international history that I am currently working on for the AHR, which will attempt to trace the field's development and scope and to identify both intersections and distinctions vis-à-vis the transnational and global approaches. Generally, I think that quite a bit of common ground can be found between scholars who focus on state power and those who emphasize transnational flows, non-state actors, and global issues, and the sense of common endeavor among them can and should be strengthened. Erez Manela Harvard University ---------------------------------------------------------- From: "Marks, Sally" <SMarks@ric.edu> As one who deplores the trendiness of the profession, I fully agree with David Kaiser’s dismay at its recent neglect of governmental power. When I availed myself of early retirement (so liberating) to complain to the AHA of exclusion from the program of diplomatic, military, and imperial history, a program committee chairman informed me that she had no idea what diplomatic history might be. This year I participated in a panel on the 1919-23 peace settlement which sneaked into the program under the rubric of Historiography and was not listed in the small Diplomatic category. There was no International category. The transnational panel went under World History. Prof. Ponce’s distinction between diplomatic and international is interesting, but I had not previously been aware of its existing among English-speaking scholars, although possibly that was the intent of the author of the post which set me off (and perhaps Prof. Foster agrees?) I was puzzled (and still am) by references to international history as a new field when that was what so many practitioners thought they had been doing for 40 or 50 years. Certainly, those who merely read “what one clerk wrote to another” got and still get excoriated in reviews. As an example of what has long been common practice, my study of the diplomacy of German reparations has entailed not only cabinet records, foreign and finance ministry files of several countries and the Reparations Commission, but also J. P. Morgan Jr., the Comité des Forges, Ruhr industrialists, and the Reichsbank–and of course private papers. Prof. Dudziak’s account of the panel on transnationalism makes me sorrier than ever that health concerns prevented my attendance. Her post, plus those of Joseph Siracusa and especially Anne Foster, lead me to some general themes on which I think we can all agree. 1. If the predominant actors are governments, the study is not mainly transnational, but if it is primarily nongovernmental and transcends borders, it is transnational. Of course there will be some overlap. 2. Over-definition of terms is a mistake. I was primarily reacting against sloppiness–and against the idea that international history (as I understand it) is new. In any event, in an era when an American president declares, as one did, that Africa’s AIDS scourge is a national security threat to the United States, we are clearly on new terrain in the area of historical categorization and perhaps should not attempt to define too hastily, while at the same time using terms with some care. Sally Marks Independent Historian --------------------------------------------- From: "Abou B. Bamba" <bambaab@fulbrightmail.org> This is quite an interesting exchange. I just wanted to draw the attention of list-members that a similar discussion took place on H-World about 3 years ago. At the time, the issue was to clarify the distinction between world history, comparative history, international history, and transnational history. Here is part of what I said: “While both [transnational and international history] fields take the nation-state as an important frame of reference to understand the interaction between societies in the modern period, a transnational perspective would look at those instances where the sanctity of the state (as authority and power house) is subverted. This being said, one should be aware that historians of international relations are increasingly incorporating the analysis of non-state actors in the studies.” [Please see this link for full discussion<http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-world&month=0604&week=d&msg=SYhXuwMtbFVs/ym7QaoVqA&user=&pw=> ]. Abou B. Bamba Hobart & William Smith Colleges Geneva, New York
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