One of the most important characteristics of global history is to analyze history from the perspective of cross-cultural comparison. Historians should be sensitive enough to the "encounter" of different cultures.
Moderator: Global history has become a popular word in the world, and "globalization history and globalization history" well summarizes its academic orientation. Global history not only refers to the development process of human history, but also a methodology for compiling a general history of the world, and it is also a new method and theory for constructing world history. Please talk about the connotation of global history mainly from the perspective of historical methods.
Bentley: One of the most important features of today's world is the high degree of interaction and influence among people from different countries, societies and regions. The word "globalization" originally refers to an economic phenomenon, but people soon find that it is equally useful to think about social and cultural issues. For example, mass migration has promoted the globalization of population statistics. Globalization has profoundly affected the world today, which has prompted historians to think about the role of the same process in previous times. Undoubtedly, due to the development of transportation and communication technology, the communication and influence between people has expanded in an unprecedented scope and level, making globalization stronger today than ever before. However, recent research on global history has found that cross-cultural communication and influence have influenced the development of history as profoundly as today.
One of the most important characteristics of global history is that it analyzes history from a cross-cultural perspective, not just from a national perspective. Global historians admit that it is very important to study the historical process of the country and society, because it provides a background for the formation of people's lifestyles in this region. But global historians believe that it is impossible to understand many important historical processes only from the perspective of the country. In order to understand cross-cultural trade, religious exchanges and cultural traditions, and even the spread of infectious diseases, it is necessary to adopt a broader perspective than nation-state and individual society.
Liu Xincheng: The object of global history is the contact history between human societies/groups and between human societies/groups and their environment. The task of global history is to explain the promotion of global interaction mechanism to human development by reviewing human communication activities that cross various boundaries and establish links between different systems. Professor Manning, one of the representatives of global history, has clearly pointed out that the significance of global history research is "large-scale interactive research". The genius of the global view of history lies in its core idea: interaction, that is, the interaction between people from different regions, nationalities and cultures in the fields of economy, politics and culture through contact.
Moderator: Global history pays attention to the overall movement in a large scale and a long period of time, opening up new research fields and theoretically breaking the influence of Eurocentrism. So how does global history transcend the traditional western view of world history?
Luo Xu: Eurocentrism has long been notorious in the history circle of China, but this view of history still has a strong influence in the research and teaching of world history, which has become an insurmountable obstacle in the compilation of world general history, especially in the modern part after 1500. It is very important to point this out, because, as some commentators have said, the so-called global history theory is largely a methodology for compiling the general history of the world. In this sense, China's theoretical interpretation of global history is obviously out of touch with the practice of compiling history. The special attention and inclination of the modern part of general history to Europe in structure, content and viewpoint comes from two related theoretical systems that have long regulated and dominated the research and teaching of modern world history: the main line theory of capitalism and the theme theory of modernization. Both of them try to interpret and cut the world history from teleology, so they inevitably bear the imprint of Eurocentrism. It is true that global history itself, as a theoretical method to understand and explain world history, is mainly the product of the expansion of western civilization, just like today's unstoppable globalization. What we should strive to do is to regard the modern rise of Europe as a historical and inevitable speculative system, analyze and deconstruct it based on its own internal logic, and abandon the Eurocentric tradition in the compilation of the general history of the world, no matter whether it appears in the form of capitalist expansion or modernization evolution.
Liu Xincheng: Since the end of last century, the traditional view of history in the western world has been seriously challenged. The challenge first comes from the changes of the times. People doubt whether the study of national history or civilization history based on "taxonomy" can really give a correct and comprehensive explanation of world history and provide useful experience for human beings to solve contemporary problems.
The new progress in scientific research has also impacted the traditional research methods and "classical conclusions" of western world history. After Einstein's theory of relativity appeared, researches in various fields not only paid attention to the isolation and static state of the research objects, but also investigated the "relationship" and "correlation" between the objects. The traditional western world history theory ignores the "relevance" between different regions, countries and civilizations. In the United States in the 1970s, not only the academic and theoretical circles, but also the whole society felt the "poverty" of world history theory.
It is in this case that some American historians suggest that a kind of "global integration" historiography should be created, with the purpose of showing that human beings belong to the same species and live on the same earth; Its method is to comprehensively investigate the diversity of human culture and the unity of operating mechanism, and explain the interactive relationship between different forms of human organizations such as civilization, nation or country in this "dynamic communication network" of the world; Its essence is to inherit the tradition of western historiography to explain world history under the framework of "mode" and replace "leading-spreading mode" with "interactive mode" (that is, the mode of western leading culture spreading to the world).
Global historians regard "interaction" as the basis of constructing world history because they believe that "interaction" is the existing form of human social organizations. They believe that any human social organization is not closed and isolated, they must exist in the communication with the outside world, form an interconnected system or network with each other, and influence each other within the system or network. Secondly, global historians believe that interaction is the driving force for the development of world history. Global historians draw lessons from anthropologists' research results and point out that social development originates from change, and the starting point of change is to contact new things from the outside. They say that the process of choosing new things is the traditional transformation process. Although society usually does not welcome new things, the result of resisting new things has also led to social changes. Because of this, global historians believe that historians should be sensitive enough to the "encounter" of different cultures.
Global historians agree that the analytical framework of geography has replaced the nation-state and individual society, and global historians have many ways to express the "interactive model"
Moderator: How do global historians study global history in the compilation of general history and special studies? How to construct world history with "interactive mode"?
Bentley: In order to analyze the process of cross-cultural communication, historians all over the world agree that the analytical framework of geography has replaced the nation-state and individual society. Based on the limitation of using nation-state as a means of historical analysis, global historians have conceived an alternative concept, taking economic, environmental and cultural regions as units, rather than taking nation-state as the boundary. Historians pay attention to the oceans that connect different continents. They study trade, immigration, biological expansion and cultural exchange through Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, China Sea and Caribbean Sea. From AD 600 to AD 1750, the Indian Ocean was the most active area of cross-cultural communication in the world. Persians, Arabs, Indians, Indonesians and China people from East Asia to East Africa are all active in this area. After 1492, the Atlantic Ocean became an important center of trade, immigration and species exchange, and later this center of gravity moved to the Pacific Ocean.
By recognizing that the ocean and the ocean are closely related fields of historical development, global historians can make a new interpretation of past historical understanding. Take the period from 600 to 1600 as an example. Until recently, when talking about this history, historians habitually focused on the Tang and Song Dynasties in China, the Turks in Central Asia, the Islamic world, the Byzantine Empire and medieval Europe. This is not wrong: in fact, it is appropriate and necessary to study the history of this period and consider these countries. However, global historians have turned their attention to the Indian Ocean, because it goes without saying that cross-cultural communication has had a decisive impact on the development of these individual societies. The earliest maritime trade through the Indian Ocean and then across the land linked almost all the eastern hemisphere, and the resulting wealth supported and maintained many countries and societies in this period. For example, China's silk and porcelain are exported to East Africa, Indonesian spices, Indian cotton cloth and steel, Southeast Asian Muslims' spices and horses, Byzantine jewelry and glass products, and East African gold, ivory and slaves are also supplied to other regions. The large demand for these products has stimulated the domestic economy and affected the development of the whole eastern hemisphere society.
If we only pay attention to a single society, we can't understand the types and influences of cross-cultural trade from 600 to 1600, explain the spread of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, and understand the communication of species, including the spread of food and diseases. Cross-cultural trade, religious exchanges and species exchanges have had an important impact on the historical process of every society. Just as globalization has deeply influenced contemporary people, cross-cultural communication has also constructed the historical experience of our ancestors. The research task of global history is to understand and explain the globalization process in the past history.
Liu Xincheng: In the compilation of general history and special studies, there are several ways for global historians to express the "interactive mode": First, it expounds the mutual and two-way cultural influence of different people after "meeting". Researchers point out that even American culture, as a representative of contemporary western civilization, is not a simple transplant of western culture in the United States, but a product of the integration of Indian culture, African slave culture and European culture, with three elements, not one. Second, describe various types of "communication networks" or "* * * circles" that once existed in human history, such as 1500 years ago, the "Eurasian non-world system" that covered most of the "old continent", the "trading network around the Indian Ocean" centered on Muslim merchants in the 8th-15th century, or the "South Asian continent" centered. There is also the "0" world, the cotton production world in 18 and 19 centuries, the sugar production world or the tape recorder world in the 1970s and 1980s. Third, discuss how the inventions produced in a certain area cause a chain reaction around the world. For example, it discusses the three great inventions of China in the Song Dynasty and how the monetary land rent system influenced the Islamic world and the Mediterranean world successively, stimulated the European market, and finally influenced the "geographical discovery"; Another example is how the silver mines in Peru, Mexico and Japan affected the economies of Europe, South Asia and China in early modern times. Fourthly, the relationship between "small place" and "big world" is discussed, which shows that the changes in any local area in the era of globalization reflect the development trend of the world. V. "Globalization of local history". Philip Curtin, an American historian known as "the father of contemporary historiography", became the president of the American Historical Society in 1995, and actively advocated introducing a global perspective into the study of national history and regional history, and re-examining regional historical events and re-evaluating the causal relationship and historical significance of these events in the context of the global overall movement, thus making "the study of local history global". 6. Comparative research on global topics, such as transnational and cross-cultural research on women's history, businessmen's history, immigration history and disease history, aims to explain the process and mechanism of "interaction" by comparing similarities and differences. Seven, ecological history, environmental history research. Some scholars believe that from a macro perspective, the interaction within human beings is inseparable from the interaction between human beings and all other life on the earth, as well as the interaction between human beings and the ecological environment. Therefore, ecological history and environmental history should be indispensable contents of global history. At present, "telling" world history from the ecological perspective is becoming a unique interdisciplinary research field. Eight, explore the interaction law and destination. In this regard, the views of historians around the world are not consistent. Regarding the law of interaction, some people think it depends on the "exporter" and others think it depends on the "importer". As for the final result of the interaction, some people think that the global culture is unified, while others think that the closer the global communication, the stronger the "local identity" and the cultural differences will always exist.
In China, the study of global history has developed rapidly, and any "global history" cannot but include the historical experience of China people.
Moderator: Please introduce the general situation of global history research on a global scale.
Manning: There are two new institutions that study global history, which can well illustrate the global development momentum of global history research. One is the Asian Federation of Global Historians, which was established in Tianjin, China in May 2008. The other is the Association of Global History and World History Organizations established in Dresden in July 2008. Their establishment shows that the expansion of global history research has brought about changes in related institutions. For a century, natural science has benefited a lot from worldwide information and organizational exchanges. History has long been regarded as the study of a single and unique society, and rarely discussed on a global scale. But now historians find that they need an extensive research plan. They need to explore historical records and analyze new information from other disciplines. At the same time, historians should not only study the past history, but also study the organization of knowledge, so as to ensure that their research and use of relevant information are correct.
The Association of Global History and World Historical Organizations emphasizes that world history is not only a summary of local or national history, but also encourages the study of global changes, including population changes and composition, the latest expansion of literate population in countries around the world, and current and past technological changes. If the study of global history achieves its ideal purpose, it will bring us a lot of important new knowledge. The global knowledge we have now, including global diseases, ecological changes, world trade and even family structure, can be explained within this framework.
The establishment of the Asian Federation of Global Historians is a key step in the formation of a world organization of global historians. The geographical scope of the organization covers the whole Asia and Pacific region, with representatives from China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and the United States.
In China, the study of global history has also developed rapidly. Of course, universities in China have been teaching world history for a long time. The expansion of these studies has brought about two changes. The first is to expand to the study of global history and international cooperation in such research. Second, the research method of global history emphasizes the interaction between region and times. Therefore, global history now regards China as a factor with global influence, and China has more and more interactions with other countries.
Moderator: How do China scholars construct their own world history system and organically integrate the content of China history into the narrative of global history?
Luo Xu: Historians generally believe that any "global history" cannot but include the historical experience of China people. But how to "integrate" the content of China history into the narrative of global history is a big problem. The general history of the world published so far has failed to effectively solve this problem. The first thing people consider is the proportion of China's history in a limited general history of the world. Domestic general history seems to have always chosen "loose outside and tight inside" For example, some books have a long discussion on the American Civil War, but only a few words introduce the largest and longest-lasting war in the world in the19th century, that is, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in China. Secondly, the choice of content, which content is suitable to become an organic part of global history, depends on the author's theoretical understanding of world historical changes. For example, the modern part of a representative general history describes the history of China (and other Asian countries) from 16 to 19 as dark and backward, and compares the brightness and progress of western European countries, thus showing the historical inevitability of the modernization process centered on the expansion of western capitalism. This Eurocentric view has been subverted to a great extent by western scholars (such as Frank and Kenneth kenneth pomeranz) in their new research on early modern history in the past decade, especially their re-evaluation of the great role of China (and Asia) in the early modern world. At the same time, the sensation caused by Frank and Kenneth kenneth pomeranz in the history circle of China also made people realize that the new understanding of China's historical role in the early modern world by western scholars does not mean that Eurocentrism in global history research will be replaced by Chinese centralism.
An important difference between global history and national history is the different value judgments. The difficulty here lies in whether to strengthen or weaken the "national characteristics" of global history. According to its definition, global history should transcend the position of any region or nation, but the act of studying and teaching global history takes place in a specific country and is always subject to the concepts and interests of local and ethnic groups. Many scholars, from McNeil to Bentley, believe that one of the responsibilities of historians who adhere to the global view of history is to transcend local or national positions, devote themselves to showing the historical process in which all countries and nations participate, and discover the cross-border and cross-cultural driving forces that change the environment for human survival and development.