”The Potential of Global History” Symposium

September 9 (Wed)　16:30-18:30

Fukutake Hall, University of Tokyo

On the late afternoon of September 9, 2015, the roundtable-style symposium was held with the title of “The Potential of Global History” (「グローバル・ヒストリーの可能性」) as a part of the 1^st GHC Summer School program. Five leading scholars in Global History Collaborative Consortium – Jeremy Adelman (Princeton University, USA), Alessandro Stanziani (EHESS, France), Andreas Eckert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany), Sebastian Conrad (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany), and HANEDA Masashi (University of Tokyo, Japan) – joined this forum as main speakers and shared their idea and experience in investigating the question of “Global History” so as to raise the issues to think about.

The themes covered are as following: what “Global History Collaborative” is, clarification of concepts, global history in each country, global history shared by us, the potential of global history, and examples of global history. Prof. Haneda, after giving an introduction of Global History Collaborative project, opened the discussion by proposing to re-consider the differences among the relevant concepts, namely, world history, global history (in English), グローバル・ヒストリー（global history in Japanese) and 新しい世界史 (new world history in Japanese). Each speaker first gave a general background in terms of the development and the recent situation of this challenging field in each country that indeed is connected to the contexts including academic traditions and temporal concerns both in each society and a broader world. The problems of migration, environmental climate change, history education, and English as the official academic language, for example, were brought up as factors that influenced the increased interest in the entanglement and global history.

Then the talks moved toward the discussion on the meaning of global history and its challenge upon national historiography, area studies, and any kind of centrism: in other words, Global History as a method and perspective. It helps to reflect on and modify fundamental premises. This does not necessarily mean to discard nation-states, but rather, it relates to locating and problematizing units, objects, regions, and terms in a larger and open context so as to go beyond the hegemony in academia and the hierarchy in the world. History and politics of knowledge production herein is another thing to think about. The conversation with different kinds of expertise and participation from mainstream historians will be necessary.

The last part of symposium was a more open-ended ideation on what we need to do with the tool of global history. The potential of global history is associated with the reason why we need global history today as well as the roles of history and (global) historians in the current world. This topic was continued in the open discussion with the audience. The importance of collaborative works, critical engagement, movements to make counter-effects, democratization of knowledge, the revision of national history and new identity such as “earthman/earthwoman”, once again were highlighted as possible strategies.

The reception at Sanjo Conference Hall in University of Tokyo was followed after the symposium. ,Prof. SONODA　（Deputy Director General, Division of International Affairs, Univerity of Tokyo) in his welcome remarks, put emphasis on the significance of this kind of collaborative works in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences, which could provide inspiration and a platform especially for young researchers. Prof.TAKAMIZAWA (Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo) proposed a toast to celebrate the event. Not only the participants of GHC Summer School, but also numerous researchers as well as faculty members of University of Tokyo joined the banquet and continued dialogues and networking.

(KIM Jiyoon)