A joint book review meeting for The Potential of Global History was held at the Bunkyo Campus of Nagasaki University on Saturday, March 17, 2018. At this meeting, in addition to engaging in criticism and discussion to commemorate the publication of this book, we exchanged views on the future outlook and potential for world and global history.

To open the meeting, the background of the publication of the book and the purpose of the meeting was given by the editor of the book, Masashi Haneda (Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo). Professor Haneda pointed out the difficulties in translating the papers and works for the book given the intellectual traditions that have been built up in association with each of the original languages.

Following the introduction by Professor Haneda, three commentators of differing generations and specialties gave reviews of the book. The first commentator was Fuyuko Matsukata (Associate Professor, Historiographical Institute, the University of Tokyo), who is a specialist in Early Modern Japanese History. Associate Professor Matsukata raised arguments concerning the goals of global history and their diversity. In addition, the current state of world history or global history in Japan was discussed with reference to a variety of themes, such as the publishing industry, world history as one half of a pair with Japanese history, the nurturing of human resources in universities and the preservation of local history.

The second commentator, Hiroshi Emoto (PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo) gave comments from the standpoint of architectural history. Mr. Emoto pointed out that not only the scholarly works in the discipline of history but also technological advances have potential as a driving force for the development of world and global history. As specific examples, Mr. Emoto discussed the impact of rapid advances in the construction of large-scale corpuses and machine translation technology while drawing on the experience of his own overseas research and the writing of his doctoral thesis.

The third commentator was the moderator of the meeting and researcher in Indian Ocean Maritime and World History, Hideaki Suzuki (Associate Professor, School of Global Humanities and Social Studies, Nagasaki University). Associate Professor Suzuki raised the topic of how we should consider people and places that remain uncovered even by the scopes of world or global history. He then gave a summary of current situation in history-related academic associations, in which there is a persistent sense of suspicion and negative reactions toward world and global history, and discussed ways and means by which connections could be made and harmony created with existing historical research.

After the commentators' presentations, the meeting moved on to a general discussion that included the participants of the meeting. In the discussion, researchers with various standpoints and expertise, from those who are active in the front line of research to young researchers, engaged in lively debate based on their own situations in academic associations and awareness of the issues. As one instance, in the field of scholarship and education, there arose the topic of how the framework related to Japan, such as the Japanese language, Japan Studies and Japanese history should be handled. In addition, various opinions were presented on how world and global history, without falling into a new Eurocentrism, can initiate dialogues with the historical research achievements accumulated in the languages of each country and how these research outcomes can be shared in a wider context.

With this meeting, all the events of this academic year were completed. Beginning from next month, the project will enter its final academic year. In the current situation, however, it is still true that there are various conflicting views regarding world and global history. Nevertheless, with GHC members deepening their discussions, it is possible to gain a sense that there is steady progress toward a sharing of awareness regarding the definition, goals to be aimed at and research methods of world and global history. I look forward with great expectation to future GHC activities to pass on the fruits of the discussions held thus far and to endeavor to further deepen world and global history research. (TOKUNAGA Yoshiaki)