Galleons and Caravans Week 1 Global Connections

Today’s Lecture A. What is Galleons and Caravans about? B. What are the key concepts and methods used in the course? C. Historical Debates in Global/World History

José Escribano-Paez (seminars) What makes this course different? Team-taught course Anne Gerritsen José Escribano-Paez (seminars) Maxine Berg Guido van Meersbergen Adrianna Catena 2. Chronology: 1300-1800 3. Takes the wider world seriously

Thematically organised: Theories of global history Travel Silk routes Silver   Diasporas and migrations Global cities Global empires The European trade companies Global arts and material culture Environment and ecological exchange Religion Science and technology War, exploration and exploitation

1. What is Global History? www.warwick.ac.uk/go/globalhistory

What is global history? History of the entire globe?

What is global history? History of the entire globe? History of globalisation?

‘Globalisation’ is often seen as a phenomenon that boomed in the 1990s through: new systems of communication (the internet, email etc) a high degree of economic interconnectedness the power of large corporations cultural homogenisation

What is global history? History of the entire globe? History of globalisation? History of interaction and connection in the early modern world

Ways of doing global history: a. Connections: - to explain both economic and cultural phenomena. - connections are not always positive (exploitation, war, slavery, etc.). b. Comparisons: - especially used in the social sciences - based on indepth studies of specific localities - problem of what to compare

Ways of doing global history: c. Holistic: - the whole world as one unit (in ‘big history’ the whole ‘Universe’, as in David Christian’s Maps of Time (2004) - use of science and biology d. Systemic: - analyzes how different areas (be they localities, states or empires) relate to each other.

World and Global History Jounal of World History, since 1990, US-based Journal of Global History, since 2006, UK-based

What is wrong with Global History? Eurocentrism 2. Dominance of economic history

Three key debates World-systems analysis (Immanuel Wallerstein) The Modern World-System vol. 1: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century (1974) vol. 2: Mercantilism and the consolidation of the European world-economy, 1600-1750 (1980) vol. 3: The second era of great expansion of the capitalist world-economy, 1730-1840s (1989)

Three key debates Europe versus Asia Eric Jones and David Landes European exceptionalism Find the reasons why Europe shot ahead Andre Gunder Frank ReOrient the history of the world Rise of Europe only a short-term reality.

Three key debates Divergence or Convergence Agree that Europe moved ahead of Asia (creating divergence) Differ on when this happened (1500 or 1800) Differ on why this happened Coal colonies