Globalization and Transformation 2014039506, 9781412856058, 9780203790663

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GLOBALIZATION AND

TRANSFORMATION

GLOBALIZATION AND

TRANSFORMATION BRUCE MAZLISH Routledge

Taylor&FranctsGroup

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2015 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2015 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2014039506 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mazlish, Bruce, 1923Globalization and transformation / Bruce Mazlish.    pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4128-5605-8 1. Civilization, Modern. 2. Globalization. I. Title. CB357.M4197 2015 909.8--dc23 2014039506 ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-5605-8 (hbk)

To Howard Schneiderman, friend and colleague.

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

1 Where Are We Going? The Project of Humanity

1

2

Comparing Global History to World History

33

3 Humanity and Globalization

47

4

Identity in a Global Era

59

5

The Advancement of Humanity

71

6

The Global and the Local: Parts and Wholes

83

7

The New Global Merchants of Light

93

8 Revisiting Barraclough’s Contemporary History

103

9

On the Brink of the Global

129

10

Whither Globalization?

137

Subject Index

143

Name Index

155

Works Cited Index

159

Acknowledgments I am greatly indebted to Ken Weisbrode and Matt Alpert for editorial and intellectual assistance.

ix

Introduction (1) Globalization is a protean term with many different aspects to it. It refers to a major transformation in the conditions under which the human species is carrying out its existence. This is true both materially and mentally. We are justified, therefore, in considering ours a global age, succeeding upon what historians have called the modern age.1 Needless to say, it is not a total shift—indeed, some parts of the world have not even accepted the challenge to their past traditions—neither is this shift uniform in all parts of a society’s culture, politics, or economics.2 Neither is there even a comprehensive and complete acceptance of what is meant by the term “globalization,” although in a moment I will make a stab at it. Given such uncertainty, it is not surprising that agreement as to its causes and consequences is not to be had. A fitting description of our subject may well be Gilbert and Sullivan’s lines about a game of pool played “on a cloth untrue/with a twisted cue/and elliptical billiard balls.” The situation is made even more complicated by the confusion among historians over the terms world history, global history, and New Global History. World history generally refers to everything in the past, especially as relating to every kind of society while emphasizing their relation to one another. Global history does the same but singles out those strands in these relations that are seen as having global implications. New Global History, not yet accepted xi

xii    Globalization and Transformation

by many historians as a distinct field of inquiry, focuses on post-World War II developments. Critical in my account of globalization is the computer revolution and the launching of artificial satellites that made it possible. It is this technological development that has made possible the increased interconnectivity that characterizes postWWII globalization. Indeed, one of the key aspects of this period of globalization is its compression of time and space. Some years ago there was much discussion about technological determinism. It was rightly concluded that this was an unsustainable notion. We should not, however, go to the opposite extreme and underestimate the importance of technology, tied as it is to culture, society, and economy. In fact, it is a key element in history and absolutely fundamental to our efforts to understand the human past.3 Let us look more closely at some of the technological developments contributing to globalization. The way was being prepared in the nineteenth century by the telegraph and the railroad. The former promoted quicker communication. The latter facilitated the sending of goods and persons—in general replacing canals in this regard. When the English scientist Charles Babbage invented and built what he called his “difference engine,” a giant step was taken toward the development of the modern computer. Aided by the need to break enemy codes during WWII, funding and scientists were gathered to construct the necessary computers. At first, they were huge, on the order of a football field in size. Gradually they were “miniaturized,” with a present-day laptop possessing much greater power and speed than the earlier leviathans. It is this computer that is the basis of modern globalization. The other essential innovation was the launching of artificial satellites, the platforms that allowed the computers to send messages more or less instantaneously. It was in the 1920s

Introduction    xiii

that the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky envisioned the principles of rocketry. WWII carried this further with deadly consequences, the price that was paid for taking the steps toward realizing Tsiolkovsky’s ideas in reality.4 There are many other technological factors involved in globalization, but I want to briefly note one that is less often mentioned: the shipping container. Some years ago there was vague talk about using submarines to ship bulk goods. After all, they would not be affected by the vagaries of weather. The idea came to naught; however, the idea of container ships caught on. Invented in 1956, we are told that some economists “reckon the shipping container has done more for global trade than every trade agreement signed in the past 50 years.”5 As my friend and colleague Raymond Grew reminds me, this “innovation” rested on a long historical development. Old trade patterns, language learning, capitalist pressures, business practices, specialization, and such all came together with explosive force in something as simple as shipping containers. These containers have enormously reduced the cost of loading and unloading, thereby doing away with the dock workers and their unions. They also reduce the time involved in loading and unloading. Whereas British battleships ruled the waves in the nineteenth century, it is the humble container ship that does so in the twenty-first century. It is appropriate to place it alongside the computer and the satellite as fostering globalization. Having looked at some of the factors making for globalization, it is time now to hazard a definition. One of the best is given by A. G. Hopkins when he writes, Globalization involves the extension, intensification and quickening velocity of flows of people, products and ideas

xiv    Globalization and Transformation

that shape the world. It integrates regions and continents; it compresses time and space; it prompts imitation and resistance. The results alter and may even transform relationships within and among states and societies across the globe.6 These technological innovations are an integral element in the formation of consciousness and, now, of global consciousness. As the sociologist Roland Robertson remarked, “Globalization as a concept refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole.”7 It joins with the increased reflectivity that has come to characterize modernity. Such reflectivity contributes strongly to a growing sense of a common humanity. Thus, there is a special reality emerging from the process(es) of globalization.8 This special reality has an affinity with the spread of both thinking about human rights and a movement to bring them about in reality. This is one of the most profound changes in our contemporary life, though lift-off had taken place as early as the seventeenth century. A sort of culmination can be found in the UN ­Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Marshall McLuhan, as is well known, has spoken of a “global village.” There are, I believe, other, better ways of capturing what is happening. I turn again to Robertson who urges us to undertake a “reformulation and ‘modernization’ of the concept of community so as to make it refer to the world as whole in all its difference and variety.” (Specifically, he has in mind the role of women.)9 We are furthered in this quest by the speculations of William J. Mitchell in his 1996 book City of Bits, where he seeks to reformulate the notions of space and place on what he calls the Infobahn. His argument is that we are constructing a “biosphere— a worldwide, electronically mediated environment . . . [that] will

Introduction    xv

transcend national boundaries . . . [and] . . . will quickly create opportunities—the first in the history of humankind—for planning and designing truly world-wide communities.”10 Before going further, we must remember that the nationstate whose boundaries are now being transcended was itself spread globally from its origins in Europe. For a long period, too, these nation-states were the site of human rights assertions. It was in the course of the French Revolution that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was legislated. Only later were these rights extended to women and made universal (i.e., freed from their rooting in the nation-state). Tolerance arose from the religious wars of the seventeenth century. It was simply an acceptance that religious opponents could not eliminate one another by military means. It was hardly an affirmation that to be human was to have the right to freely choose one’s faith, among other rights. The movement culminating in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 was a long and contentious one, though finally ending in success. The computer revolution, the satellite launchings, the universalizing of human rights, the development of a community conceiving of itself as humanity possessed of these rights—these are some of the key elements of post-WWII globalization. In what follows, I have sought, in a kind of kaleidoscopic fashion, to take up some of the factors involved, often looking at the same element but in a changing setting. This way of seeing correlates with the shifting nature of globalization itself. (2) Most of the chapters in my book consist of attempts to explicate various aspects of globalization. I start in chapter 1 by asking where globalization is taking us in regard to what I call the project of Humanity. Or, rather, since human beings

xvi    Globalization and Transformation

are agents, though of limited power, where are we trying to go via the process of globalization? For me, the concept of humanity is intimately attached to globalization.11 In writing chapter 1, I have been inspired by Barraclough’s notion of structural changes, presented in chapter 8. I examine warfare, economy, technology, and religion as fundamental features in the human experience, past and present. Warfare, while always destructive, has often also had a constructive side, creating larger political structures such as the nation-state. Indeed, it plays a heavy role in what Norbert Elias, the twentieth-century sociologist, calls “the civilizing process.” New thought and research has taken place on the question of whether violence has been increasing or decreasing in the twenty-first century. Stephen Pinker has argued for the latter.12 If he is right, might we correctly correlate globalization with this trend? The relation of trade and warfare is complicated. Each can be an expansion of power, though by different means. There is one school of thought that holds that trade is antipathetic to war. This is surely an oversimplification and invites much more thought and research.13 Technology is a fundamental part of human beings’ relations to their environments.14 Most recently, computers and satellites have figured dramatically in that relation and, of course, play a major role in globalization. Indeed, that role promises, if anything, to increase. Religion is one of the most unpredictable of our fundamental structures. Many thinkers in the nineteenth century foresaw the arrival of an increasingly secular society. They would surely be confounded by the twenty-first-century rise and spread of fundamentalism, both Islamic and Christian. One reason for this rise is as a reaction to a perceived threat in globalization. Naturally, it is the interplay of war, economics, technology, and religion, as well as other factors that will be shaping

Introduction    xvii

the future. Context is everything, as is contingency. It does seem clear, however, that increased self-reflectivity has been occurring. As part of this, especially after Hiroshima, there is a growing awareness of the fragility of life. (3) I need not go into equal detail in this Introduction on the chapters that follow. Chapter 2 elaborates on the terminological issues sketched in the first section of this Introduction. It compares and contrasts the work of world history, global history and New Global history, motivating the treatment of the global as a distinctive kind of topic matter. Chapter 3 goes into further reflections on the concept of humanity in a global setting. I stress the role of the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–46 in making us all aware of “crimes against humanity.” I then couple this event with the growth of human rights and underline their connection with globalization. It is a natural step from the concept of humanity to a fuller treatment of identity. We all have plural identities—I am a father and a husband, an American, a resident of the state of Massachusetts, a participant in a particular profession, and so forth. Is a global identity being added to these “local” ones? What sort of empirical evidence exists to answer this question? What sort of case studies need to be taken to further this inquiry? These are the kind of questions addressed in chapter 4, “Identity in a Global Era.” With a clearer idea of what we mean by humanity and how we (should) try to describe it, we turn in chapter 5 to the question of its advancement. Inspired by Francis Bacon, we raise the issue of progress. Has humanity “progressed” and, if so, in what ways? What global political institutions would be required to support this advancement, and foster a sense of global identity? Looking closely at the theories of Charles

xviii    Globalization and Transformation

Darwin and the science of geology developing around him, I attempt to provide the context in which the effort to answer this question must be placed. As is well known, the phrase “the global and the local” is often found in analyses of globalization. In chapter 6 I look at the idea of methodological terms and couple it with an inquiry into the concept of parts and wholes. I try to deal with the subject in heuristic terms. Next, again inspired by Francis Bacon, I take up what he called “the Merchants of Light” and extend the idea to globalization in chapter 7. It was originally merchant empires, such as the English and Dutch East India ­companies, rather than nation-states, that crisscrossed the ocean in pursuit of profits and power. Along with trade they brought knowledge from distant shores. They were merchants of light—predecessors of the Enlightenment—as well as of often-exotic products. Today, it is multinational corporations (MNCs) that play this role, though in a very different manner—one that needs to be explored. We also witness an almost exponential growth of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), both as part of globalization and as a means of furthering it. Chapter 8 is on a major forerunner of New Global History, the distinguished British historian Geoffrey Barraclough. In his work we see in embryo much of what was to follow historiographically. First off, he validated contemporary history. Next, he saw it as a break with the ­modern. Thus, he foresaw global history avant la lettre. He also pointed the way to analyzing it by focusing on the underlying structural changes. These changes he identified as, The changed position of Europe in the world; the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as ‘superpowers’; the breakdown (transformation) of old imperialisms, British, French, and Dutch; the resurgence

Introduction    xix

of Asia and Africa; the readjustments of relations between white and colored peoples; [and] the strategic or thermonuclear revolution. These changes hardly seem to prefigure globalization. But when Barraclough remarks that it is, “The impact of Technical and Scientific Advance [that is] the primary differentiating factor, marking off the new age from the old,” we realize he is on the scent. He refers to innovations such as the internal combustion engine and the wireless telegraph. He does not, therefore, anticipate the computer revolution and the launching of satellites. He is a forerunner of New Global History, not a prophet thereof. Still, comparing Barraclough with two recent global historians, Judt and Hobsbawm, provides a context to appreciate the value of New Global history and its considerations of the structural changes and processes of globalization, charted over the course of the chapters in this book. Chapter 9 deals with what I call “going, going . . . gone global.” It is an extension of some of the treatments of various features of globalization remarked upon in earlier chapters. The chapter also briefly looks at anti-globalization and then further examines the linkage of globalization with the concept and identity aspects of humanity. Lastly, it makes allusion to a path-breaking article on the future possibilities of a “Society of all Humanity” by the sociologist Martha Van Der Bly. In a final chapter, 10, I briefly raise the question as to “Whither Globalization?” Neither a crystal ball nor a prediction by Nostradamus is available to help us. History is an inquiry into the human past so as to help us figure out who we are by examining who we have been. This, in turn, helps us to speculate as to who we want to be. Humans are agents who seek to play a role in the unfolding of our destiny, while realizing that we are only bit players.

xx    Globalization and Transformation

Contingency rules over Clio’s domain. Yet we have a moral duty to behave as if we can shape our present and future. At our present moment of time, we recognize that after about five hundred years of what historians describe as modernity we have moved over the last fifty years or so into something best described as globalization. It is now our task to inquire into it and understand it as best we can. That in essence is what this book is about. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

One of the first to perceive this change was the British sociologist Martin Albrow, The Global Age (Stanford University Press, 1997). Cf. Bruce Mazlish, “Rejected Modernity.” Submitted to Millennium, a journal. Cf. Bruce Mazlish, The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-evolution of Humans and Machines (Yale University Press, 1993). Cf. Mazlish, The Fourth Discontinuity, op. cit., especially p. 187. “High-Tech Shipping Containers: Boxing Clever,” The Economist (March 1, 2014): 80. A. G. Hopkins, ed., Global History: Interactions between the Universal and the Local (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 3. Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (Sage, 1992), 8. Cf. Bruce Mazlish, The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Robertson, op. cit., 108. William J. Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn (MIT Press, 1996), 167. Cf. Mazlish, The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era, op. cit. Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). See, however, Timothy Snyder’s critique of Pinker’s work, “War No More,” Foreign Affairs Jan./ Feb. (2012), along with my own critique in chapter 5. Cf. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Wesleyan Press, 1973). Cf. Mazlish, The Fourth Discontinuity, op. cit.

1 Where Are We Going?   The Project of Humanity (1) In 1902, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin issued his short clarion call, “What is to be Done?” It was a call to revolution against tsarist Russia by a highly-disciplined, small elite: the Bolsheviks. The result was eventually Soviet Russia, communist rule in that country for about seventy years (much of it under Stalin), and then its downfall, bringing Marxist-Leninism into disrepute. Today such utopian visions are no longer in fashion. Instead, more soberly and staying closer to the ground, we must ask what are the possibilities and promises of our situation as it really is.1 Ours is a time of what appears to be darkening skies in which it is important to assess our condition by looking both forward and back. In such an inquiry it is well to look at some of the major shaping forces throughout the past: warfare, economy, technology, and religion. They are still with us, not as essences but as dynamic, changing processes. I will not be gazing at a crystal ball, but examining the trends to be found in each and in combination. Then, I will speculate on this basis as to where we, the human species, are headed. 1

2    Globalization and Transformation

Humanity is an historical process. By this I mean that, having achieved biological unity as Cro-Magnon man about forty thousand years ago, the human species then embarked on the path of cultural evolution. Gifted with language and the use of tools, starting with small groups of hunter-gatherers, and tending to live in larger and larger social bonds—the familiar line of family to clan to tribal ties and then to the nation-state in the last three hundred or so years—the human species now stands on the threshold of the largest of such bonds, that of humanity. This stadial process was first given significant attention starting in the seventeenth century and became ubiquitous in the eighteenth century. It was Scottish philosophers, such as Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, who developed and popularized this view. They placed it in the context of “progress.” They made dynamic the various social bonds, such as family, clan, and tribe, and, emerging in their time, the nation. I am now suggesting that we must add the bond of humanity. Before going on, I must admit that what follows is largely Eurocentric. Although I have tried to inquire into the concept of humanity in other cultures and societies, I have achieved little clarity. Specialists in, say, Chinese or Indian studies will have to shoulder that burden. On fait ce qu’on peut.2 In the West, there were many steps in the growing awareness of self and society. One spectacular explosion occurred in Europe at the time of the Renaissance. It dramatically reworked the relation between the religious and the secular. As Gabrielle Spiegel so succinctly put it, Challenging the divine authority of pope and emperor, the humanists crafted a vision of history that engendered nothing less than a new kind of humanity, entailing a belief in the free, autonomous subject in charge of his or her self with the power to affect the fate of others.3

Where Are We Going? The Project of Humanity    3

Niccolò Machiavelli was a striking figure in this reworking. A resident of Florence under the Medici, a minor figure of state, and the author of unremarkable plays, he fashioned his stick of dynamite, The Prince, as part of a larger book, ­Discourses. In The Prince, he stated that he was opening up a “new route.” It was a road to realism and an attempt at political science. It was in contrast to the Mirror of Princes literature prevalent at the time. Machiavelli proclaimed that he would describe how political affairs really were, rather than should be. He would be scientific, and his science dictated that the prince (we can substitute the state) must sometimes act in evil ways to preserve his power and the well-being of the people. If we step back from The Prince for a moment, we can see that Machiavelli was extolling the very split between religion and the state, between moral injunctions and realpolitik, that was described by Spiegel in the quote above. Implicit in his work was the notion of the self as autonomous and as creating its work of art, the state, free of all religious trammels. The Florentine was offering us a “new kind of humanity.” Condemned by ecclesiastics, moralists, and princes alike, Machiavelli’s ideas were as much a blow against the walls of the Catholic Church as was Martin Luther’s nailing in 1517 his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door. Together the two exploded the unity of the Church. Into that breach, in the strange ways of history, stepped those who favored religious tolerance as one of the rights of man, especially after the ghastly religious wars. There were also those who wished for a secular society. Here were further steps toward the autonomous human being. The next, and overpowering, step was taken in the seventeenth century in what came to be called the “scientific revolution.”4 Now the bar facing any belief was its ability to clear the fences—not of religious faith, but those of reason. By the eighteenth century, we are in the realm of Enlightened

4    Globalization and Transformation

reason. The philosophes, not the clerics, appear to dominate public opinion. It is in a newly opening public space, rather than in the cloisters, that the reigning ideas are to be found. It is the salon, not the altar, where the brightest men gather, with the salons often being hosted by women. We have before us a new example of the admired human being, a new being. At about the same time that Machiavelli was opening a new route in the political world, the voyages of discovery epitomized by Columbus and his three small ships opened up a view of a “new” continent. For the first time, the world became global in the sense of man recognizing it as such. About a half century later, the astronomer Nicolas Copernicus (what a nice touch that he and Machiavelli have the same first name), building on the notion of the Earth as a planet, saw it as no longer the center of the universe but itself circling around the sun. The effect on man’s self-image can hardly be overestimated. Copernicus’s gaze at the Earth was “from outside, as a globe in the universe.”5 The impact on man’s perceptions was staggering. The notion of the globe, as represented in models, became ubiquitous in the paintings of the time. Once present in thought, it could be mapped both as to latitude and later as to longitude and thus be taken possession of both mentally and physically. Meanwhile, we can see the development of maps from the time of the ancients up until the “New World” discovery. These maps portrayed regions of the earth on a flat surface. They also, so to speak, took possession of these spaces, first in the mind and then in a physical sense with sailing expeditions. Conquest in the mind led to conquest in the real world. It was Abraham Ortelius who gathered together the best maps of the time, thus providing Europe with what his friend Gerard Mercator called in 1569 an atlas.

Where Are We Going? The Project of Humanity    5

Building on the rediscovery of Ptolemy’s Geographia, the humanists could imagine standing outside the planet and plotting “its surface through perspective and mathematics.” As a result Martin Behaim, a geographer living in Lisbon in the same year that Columbus sailed west, produced the first terrestrial globe.6 Almost immediately, as remarked earlier, these globes became enormously popular. Many paintings of the time show affluent individuals with a globe on their desks or beside them. Now individuals at home could vicariously share with the courageous sailors their explorations, especially of the New World. They could employ their own compass to trace lines on the globe, just as the adventurers upon the seas could use a different sort of compass to guide them through hitherto unknown seas. The newly discovered lands had aboriginals on them. Were these people fully human beings? If that was the case, they could be converted to Christianity and thus take on the cloak of civilized beings. Or were they cannibals, thus devilish and to be exterminated or enslaved? In any case, the existence of these “Indians” challenged the thinkers of the time to think harder about what it meant to be human. This experience was to be part of a new kind of humanity. An incipient science of anthropology had come into being. I have already touched briefly on the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. More needs to be remarked upon. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory had been advanced as merely an aesthetically and mathematically enticing theory, and not as reality. When Kepler and Galileo claimed it was real, a clash with religion ensued. As is well known, Galileo was brought before the Inquisition and told to recant. To save his life he did. The story is told that as he was leaving the scene of his trial, he said under his breath, “It still moves.” This is simply to echo what he had said earlier; religion might tell us how to go to heaven, but science tells us how the heavens move.

6    Globalization and Transformation

There used to be much talk about the battle between religion and science. In fact, most early scientists were still religious, claiming that they were simply on the track of God’s creation. In principle, there was a sharp difference in the way science viewed the world and the way religion did: one employed reason, while the other, when push came to shove, embraced faith. In reality, at the time scientists often thought in terms of two truths. Many had no trouble with this form of schizophrenia. Isaac Newton, with his theories of gravity and optics, imposed a universalism on man’s universe, which could be tied to the project of Humanity. The world was the same everywhere and was recognized as such by all people guided by reason. The belief that what defined humanity was a common reason became deepened and central, as expressed dominantly in the so-called Age of Reason. Newton himself was a religious man, though he disbelieved in the Trinity, and he spent much of his career looking for numerical markers in the Bible. In France especially, a rational, mechanical worldview seemed to dominate in the eighteenth century. In fact, with La Mettrie’s L’homme machine building on Descartes’s work, man seemed to be hardly, if at all, more than a mechanical being. It would be wrong, however, to think that the mechanists had it all their own way. Diderot thought in organic terms, and Buffon wrote widely on natural history. By the end of the eighteenth century, the term biology was coined. And before that, in a further correction of the mechanical tendency, Rousseau inserted the organic in the shape of the passions into man’s nature. Clearly, up to now I have been operating mainly in the terms of intellectual history. In the more material world, humans were being shaped by what came to be called The Industrial Revolution. By 1833 Thomas Carlyle could read the “signs of the time” and pronounce his era a mechanical

Where Are We Going? The Project of Humanity    7

one, hailing the advent of what he called industrial society. Man’s project was being pointed in a new intellectual and material direction. His sense of self was altered. This self-identity, however, with its emphasis on “man the machine,” was soon complemented or displaced by man the evolutionary creature, a result of natural and, added later, sexual selection. Here we burst past the Eurocentric framework. Though the knowledge of the world’s species was spurred by the imperialism of the West, it allowed Darwin to build his theory as a global one. It was not just Western man who had taken on a new kind of humanity, but man everywhere. At the same time that Darwin was exploring man’s long natural past, a new form of inquiry, archaeology, was digging up his more recent past. The fossil record, along with geology, exploded the view that humanity’s past was a short one, with his creation de novo about six thousand years ago. (2) In 1859 Darwin published The Origin of Species, presenting his evidence and arguments for his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. In 1872 he extended his theory to the human species. He called that book The Descent of Man, which unfortunately led to easy caricature of man as descended from a monkey. Hee haw. It would have been better and truer to his theory if he had called his book The Ascent of Man. (This was the title chosen by Jacob Bronowski for his wonderful series on the BBC.) Darwin’s work, it should be needless to say, did not emerge full-blown as did Athena from Zeus’s forehead, but came from standing on the shoulders of lesser giants. Foremost among these were geologists and Darwin at first saw himself as one. There is an irony here in the fact that the Catholic Church in Rome bases its claims to supremacy on the passage in

8    Globalization and Transformation

Matthew 16:18 (King James Version): “I tell you that you are Peter and it is on this rock that I will build my church.” Peter in Greek means rock and it is a nice conceit to realize that the Catholic Church is based on a pun and that the geologists with their pick axes were undermining the foundations of faith. (It is also worth noting that Islam, too, has its rock: the Kaaba at Medina.) As remarked earlier, in some quarters historians of science have postulated a battle between religion and science. This may be so in terms of philosophy and methodology; it is certainly not true historically. Most scientists, at least up until the end of the seventeenth century, saw their work as being on the track of God. Only in the late eighteenth century itself did cracks appear in this edifice of faith. The geologists had begun the work of weakening religion’s foundations. We can see this shift literally in the case of William Buckland. The first Reader in Geology at Oxford University, the position thus giving institutional recognition to the new science, Buckland was born into a clerical family. This was hardly unusual, for churchmen with a living were frequently found in the annals of natural history and other branches of incipient sciences. After earlier schooling, he attended Oxford University, where he spent much of the rest of his life. The universities at this time can be said to have been an arena for the battle of what we now call the Two Cultures. Devotees of the classics and ancient languages were loath to see their primacy challenged by the new sciences. Buckland also undertook the usual upper-class European tour. In his case, it was not to view great art but to find geological specimens and ship them back to England. Earlier, indeed, with the same idea in mind he had travelled by horseback to parts of the British Isles to discover fossils as well as new specimens. His professional career really took off with his appointment as Reader in Geology at Oxford in 1819.

Where Are We Going? The Project of Humanity    9

The inaugural address he delivered then was published the next year under the seminal title of Vindiciae Geologiae; or the Connexion of Geology with Religion Explained. His aim was to reconcile the new science of geology with Biblical accounts of Creation and Noah’s Flood. This was followed by the more famous Bridgewater treatise in 1836, intended to prove “the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation.” A scientific celebrity and an eccentric—not an unusual combination among gifted individuals—Buckland was unwittingly undermining the rock of faith. His successor, Charles Lyell, both illustrated the growing professionalization of geology and its affinity with secularism. It was his Principles of Geology, published in three volumes from 1830 to 1833, that became the Bible of the new science. (It is only in 1833 that William Whewell, a great philosopher of science, coins the term science under which to place the branches of physics, chemistry, and biology; more on Whewell later.) At the time of Lyell’s Principles, a debate existed between proponents of a diluvial explanation for the earth’s formation versus a volcanic one. Both, however, espoused a catastrophic explanation. Lyell’s great achievement was to advance a theory of uniformitarianism—a term later coined by Whewell—to describe the phenomena: that is, that the same formative processes of the present had existed in the past. They had taken place gradually over an immense stretch of time. Lyell saw geology in historical terms. Indeed, in his Principles he gives a detailed account of all his predecessors, including Axel Werner in Germany who specialized in mineralogy and mining. He was also enamored with the theories of Lamarck and his vision of progress and human evolution. In many ways, then, Lyell was setting the stage for Charles Darwin, who, as said earlier, started out as a geologist and only gradually extended his work to biology. It is on Lyell’s

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“rocks,” however, that the young Englishman can be said to have built his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Now, it is well to take a couple of short detours before continuing on our path. The first is back to Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist. He it was who in the 1730s classified the flora and fauna of the world. This made it possible to compare all specimens all over the globe. Standardization was a feature of much of the seventeenth and eighteenth century world, whether of time, space, or species. On this basis, a world could be organized, assuaging the desire for uniformity. It becomes a firm foundation on which to establish a continuing science. It is unclear if Darwin could have done his work without Linnaeus. The work of the Swedish scientist can be seen as a necessary, even though not a sufficient, cause. Our other detour is to the work of William Whewell. He is the preeminent philosopher of science in the early part of the nineteenth century; indeed, as remarked earlier, it is Whewell who coined the term science as a rubric under which to place the separate disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and botany. Unlike so many others, his father was not a minister, but a carpenter. Whewell’s brilliance was recognized early, and he was sent to Cambridge University on scholarship. Later, in 1828 he was awarded the Chair in Mineralogy. A decade later he became a Professor of Moral Philosophy. Clearly, there was not the sharp difference among the disciplines to which we are now accustomed. Nor was there the schism between what has been called the Two Cultures, the sciences and the humanities. In fact, Whewell won a prize for an epic poem, “Boadicea.” (His mother wrote poetry as well.) He also demonstrated strong mathematical abilities, placing as Second Wrangler in that area. Thus, avant la lettre he cut across the two fields.

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His true strength, however, was in science and its philosophy. A follower of Francis Bacon, Whewell furthered the theory of induction espoused by the seventeenth-century thinker and statesman. He did this in his book Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History, published in 1840—with two further editions appearing later. For Whewell, validation of a theory lies in prediction, consilience, and coherence. Our intent is not to attempt a full treatment of his philosophy, but to focus here on the part relating to consilience. As defined in one online dictionary, consilience means the agreement of two or more inductions drawn from different sets of data.7 It was the method favored by Darwin. Thus, in the Origin of Species he has chapters on variation under domestication and under nature, on natural selection; on instinct, hybridism, geological distribution, morphology, embryology, and rudimentary organs. All “jumped” to the same conclusion: the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Darwin’s inspirations in regard to induction were John Hershel, the great astronomer, and William Whewell, whose Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History Darwin had read and critically annotated. Before pursuing our argument directly, another digression is in order. It is to note the extraordinary confluence of thinkers in the British Isles at the time. The synergy was explosive. In 1830, George Stephenson opened the Liverpool and London Railroad; in 1832, Charles Babbage built his difference engine, followed by the analytic engine, the ancestor of the modern computer; Hershel and Whewell were both expounding their views on the nature of science; and Faraday was engaged in his work on electricity. All were almost in shouting distance of one another. We are reminded of fifth-century BC Athens. The 1830s in Britain are comparable, though now on a nation-state basis.

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In the twenty-first century we are aware of the Silicon Valley syndrome; the synergy syndrome of the earlier period is similar. Let us now return to our main path. In The Origin, Darwin had spelled out how species evolved by natural selection. In The Descent of Man, he extended his theory to the human species: man, too, was subject to the forces of evolution. However, a momentous gap remained. About forty thousand years ago the physical evolution of Homo sapiens more or less stopped. What took over was cultural evolution. The latter was tightly tied to tools and then machines (i.e., to technology). Instead of evolving, for example, in the direction of acquiring wings, man invented them—able to put them on as a glider or airplane and to take them off—thus remaining the same species. Did natural selection apply here too? A misguided Social Darwinism claimed yes, but this was ideology rather than science. The human sciences sought to discover the rules of cultural evolution. Here there was no Darwin or Newton, but a host of scholars working in specialized disciplines. John Stuart Mill may have been one of the last Renaissance thinkers before academic professionalism and disciplines took over all fields. The discipline that most attempts to inquire into cultural evolution is history—along, of course, with the new sciences such as economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology, which it seeks to use. Can consilience be thought of as the method par excellence in this inquiry? What are the methods suitable to the human sciences? First, let us inquire further into consilience. As we have noted, it was used to good effect by Darwin. Another biologist and entomologist, E. O. Wilson, has tried to extend its usage in his 1998 book Consilience.8 He aims at bringing the human sciences under the aegis of biology. In my view, while a noteworthy attempt, it does not succeed.

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Historians, without using the term, employ it all the time. For example, in trying to understand and explain the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, they will appeal to a whole range—intellectual, economic, political, social, etc.—of factors and their interactions, determining whether these various kinds of evidence each lead to the same conclusions. In short, consilience is a major form of induction employed by social scientists in a routine fashion. It is only one, however, in the arsenal available for inquirers into the human past, present, and future. We must now turn to other possibilities. (3) With the advent of archaeology, man could now peer over what has been called “the deep abyss of time” and see the cultural-evolutionary development, as hunter-gatherer peoples cohered into clans, tribes, and then larger units. Early civilizations emerged out of the dirt and were reconstructed in imaginations with their artifacts displayed in museums. A child can enter these storehouses of the past and see from whence he or she has come. Other ways of knowing the human had been devised earlier. The science of statistics was developed by Sir William Petty and John Graunt in the seventeenth century. The mathematics of probability was first applied to such mundane matters as death and fire in order to set insurance rates. This approach was extended to population at large, where it permitted a ruler to calculate the tax revenues he could raise—and thus fund his army. Actual persons faded into numbers, thus posing the opposite to the trend toward individualism described earlier. Such objectivity was balanced by the subjectivity of novels. Starting in the seventeenth century and accelerating in the eighteenth, the genre enormously expanded the reader’s insight into the lives of others—hence making those insights

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his or her own. (Much of the readership was, in fact, female.) With Daniel Defoe and his Robinson Crusoe, the reader could become an individual on his or her own; with George Eliot and her novels, learn what it was to be in a social network. Defoe and Eliot, and their fellow novelists, helped create an expanded and deepened sense of empathy. In the early nineteenth century, a movement called Romanticism spread through Europe. Its precursor was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who almost single-handedly brought passions into the center of attention. Man was not the rational creature he prided himself on being. The emotions were the cause of his motions more than the calculating mind. This idea had intense reverberations. It is of especial interest to trace it running through the science of economics, from Adam Smith through William Stanley Jevons and up until today. One culmination can be seen in the work of Sigmund Freud. With his psychoanalysis, the unconscious took over from the reigning ego, leaving both to fight on an uneven terrain. (4) Let us pause to sum up for the moment. Until now we have focused on the intellectual development helping to define the project of Humanity, while taking a side look at the Industrial Revolution. I want to shift now to focus on a process that has had enormous influence on humankind: war. It is often neglected or shunted to the side by historians because they find it distasteful. This is an error. Like it or not, war has had an inordinate role to play in the evolution of Homo sapiens. In considering war it is useful to start with Thomas Hobbes. In Leviathan he argued strenuously that peace was only possible where there was a strong, all-powerful government. All violence was concentrated in its hand, thus ensuring peace among its members.

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Let us now jump from Hobbes to the twentieth-century ­German sociologist Norbert Elias and his great work, The History of Manners. Here he advances two theses. The first is that a “civilizing process” took place in Europe around the fifteenth century, where, starting in the courts, peaceful manners began to replace violent behavior. The process soon spread to the bourgeoisie of the next few centuries. For example, instead of using a knife to kill one’s dinner companion for a presumed insult, it was now dulled and used only to cut up one’s food. Elias’s second thesis is that organized violence—war—was intended for immediate gain but ended up creating larger and larger social units. In these expanding social units, violence was prohibited among one’s fellow subjects and such prohibitions enforced by the legal agents and courts of the state. Now all violence was to be turned outward, toward other states. This, in turn, created larger and larger social units. It is the thesis of Stephen Pinker that, in spite of external appearance, the violence of both war and civil life has decreased enormously over the millennia. Building on Elias, Pinker uses both statistical and narrative evidence to make his case.9 On another front, international law, another tremendous revolution has taken place. In 1945–6, after the horrors of the Nazi regime and WWII, the Nuremberg Trials took place. Most attention has been on the specific charges of these crimes against humanity. Of equal importance for the project of Humanity was the declaration that aggressive war was itself a crime. War, which hitherto had been thought of as a heroic act, was now seen as a sordid enterprise. Millennia of human behavior were now rejected and reviled. Surely this can be seen as one of the turning points in human history. The importance of prosecuting crimes against humanity has not yet played itself out but may ultimately have equal or greater significance. It raises the question: what is this

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humanity that has been sinned against? Is it a simple, welldefined victim? Or is it a developing category—humanity—that is coming into existence as an active, potentially sovereign force? No longer an abstract philosophical idea, it is emerging as a concrete entity in reality from the connecting forces of globalization, spurred on by the computer revolution linking people immediately in real time via the artificial satellites. With the space voyage to the moon, where astronauts could look at the Earth as a single unity, a new consciousness of the human shape could take on inspiring form. Have we wandered far from our subject of war? Rather, I would argue, we have simply broadened our comprehension of it. If Pinker is right, violence and war, which is organized violence, have declined (even if, as his critics suggest, he overlooks certain countervailing trends). Meanwhile, human attitudes toward war have turned from viewing it as normal and heroic to seeing it as a crime. This is surely a further step in the right direction in the project of Humanity. We ourselves have changed in the process. Much remains. Hobbes’s Leviathan was presumed to protect us. What if it does so from external threats but then uses its power for internal oppression? This has often been seen as the situation today in which Gaddafi-like “leaders” terrorize their own population and reject international criticism as interference with the country’s sacred sovereignty. War was said by Clausewitz to be politics by other means. What if the politics are dominated by a military, as had been the case, for example, in Egypt and Pakistan? In fact, in the latter country, the military, spearheaded by the ISS, the intelligence service, not only exercises political control, but owns much of the economy.10 In such situations, humanity hardly gets to peek under the tent. World War I was called the war to end all wars. In 1939 those words rang hollow. Are we once again faced with the possibility of another war to end all wars? Is such a catastrophe

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needed to fulfill Elias’s thesis concerning such events leading to larger social groupings? But would humanity survive such an event? Nuclear or biological war would probably mean the end, perhaps not of humankind, but of civilization as we have known it. During WWII General LeMay advocated bombing the enemy back into the Stone Ages. Would a major war today do exactly that? Is this how the project of Humanity might end? These disturbing questions arise. Will the civilizing and humanizing process proceed far enough? Or will our destructive technological and industrial powers run ahead, snuffing out these hopes through cataclysmic war, climate change, or other wounds to the natural world? Such questions highlight the qualifications that need to be raised in regard to the Elias and Pinker theses. In my mind, they do not undermine them. Instead, they suggest the difficulties in the way of such realization. A new kind of humanity does not arise overnight. War has certainly been a part of its formation in the past. I believe that we may have reached the point where “man’s inhumanity to man” in the form of a major war is no longer an option. The human personality and the society in which it exists are no longer to be shaped by war, that most horrendous means to a good end. (5) The discovery of Stone Age fossils showed that early man had developed flints and axes that could be used to hunt both large animals and fellow men. From Cro-Magnon’s inception, the species has evolved, culturally, along with its tools. My 1993 book is titled The Fourth Discontinuity: The CoEvolution of Humans and Machines (op. cit.). In retrospect, I can see where I was perhaps too clever. The fourth discontinuity in the title was meant to call attention to a thesis: while man

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had overcome the sense of discontinuity between his sense of the earth and other planets (Copernicus), and of himself and the other animals (Darwin), and of his rational and irrational attributes (Freud), he had yet to overcome the discontinuity between the machine and himself. The rest of that book was devoted to the way in which man and machine evolved together. This was the weight of the book, but the first part of the title tended to divert attention from this fact. In any case, in that book I went into historical and philosophical detail as to how human evolution in the last forty-five thousand years or so has been inextricably tied up with his development of tools and machines. Earlier in this chapter, I mentioned La Mettrie’s book on man as machine. There, I was emphasizing man and machine. My story ended, for the moment, with two emphases. The first was on man as a “prosthetic God,” Freud’s felicitous phrase to indicate how our body parts were increasingly being replaced by devices, such as mechanical heart implants, hip replacements, and so forth. My other emphasis was on the evolution of robots, which, combined with computers, were taking on a life and intelligence of their own. I cite my book as prelude to my argument that, along with war, technology plays a fundamental role in fashioning a new kind of humanity. At first glance, this might seem a contradiction. Some will argue that in becoming more mechanical, man will become less human. Obviously, I am arguing that this trend is, and always has been, part of the project of Humanity. Along with war, technology is one of the great shaping forces in the life of Homo sapiens. Indeed, the two are generally correlative. It has been said that “war is the mother of invention.” Societies are prepared to spend huge amounts of money in developing new weapons, supposedly for their security. In any case, much funding for scientific and technological development has come in present-

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day America from the Department of Defense. One of its more serendipitous investments was in DARPA, from whence emerged the “free” Internet as we have come to know it. From the Stone Age axes and the ancient catapults, we are now in the age of drones, robotic soldiers, and cyber warfare. The last nuclear attack took place in 1945. None have occurred since, though the possibility lurks ominously above us. As has been oft remarked, since the end of WWII, the atom bomb—now hydrogen bomb—has had the paradoxical effect of freezing the possibility of war between the major powers at the same time as threatening to bring about “the war to end all wars” and civilization as we know it. Does this hiatus afford the breathing space for long-term trends that carry hope that violence is in decline? Is one such factor the economic? (6) Since the earliest of times, trade in the form of barter has characterized human society. When Stephen Pinker wrote his book The Better Angels of Our Human Nature (2011), he argued for the decline of violence over the long term to our present. His evidence is both numerical and narrative. He analyzes the many factors involved in this historic process, among which he includes the economic. Standing on the shoulders of his accomplishment, I want now to stress the economic as a major shaping force in the project of Humanity. The economic system itself has been transformed over the centuries from primitive barter to the invention of money, constantly expanding trade, a commercial revolution, an industrial revolution, and now into an information revolution. As Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and others have pointed out, the market became worldwide. Today, we can describe it in terms of a global market. Along with this expansion has come

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a widening of our consciousness as Homo economicus. For better or worse, part of the new kind of humanity is composed of a self-interested, avaricious self. In earlier times this self was frequently condemned. Whether it was Jesus chasing the money changers out of the Temple or both Christians and Muslims crying out against interest (i.e., usury), the tone was the same: a monied economy was reprehensible. It is startling, especially in the light of Max Weber’s “Protestant Ethos” thesis, to read Luther’s words suggesting that capitalists be broken on the wheel. (Of course, Weber was emphasizing the Calvinist doctrine.) The curse on interest (and self-interest) is today still to be found in the Islamic religion. (One must remember, however, that Mohammad was a merchant.) Production and trade are means of expanding human wellbeing. (Although, sometimes they are rapacious and have the opposite effect.) They gradually coordinate with urbanization and the latter with cosmopolitanism. It is in this context that Athenians in the fifth century BC speculated about what it meant to be human. In that same period, Herodotus launched an “inquiry” into the recent past. Thus began the discipline of history, gradually reaching back into the whole of past time. In a different manner, in the second century AD, the playwright Terence announced that “nothing human is alien to me.” These are early voices, anticipating the concept of humanity—voices born of their urban, cosmopolitan contexts, in turn born of economic activity. The real breakthrough came with the awareness that all of economic activity could be conceived as occurring within an economic system. In seventeenth-century England, numerous pamphlets and tracts were published on such subjects as banking, credit, and currency.11 Only in the eighteenth century, in a great burst of imagination, did thinkers such as Adam Smith conceptualize a complete system, a new world

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of thought, so to speak. Economic activity was now visualized in terms of production—the division of labor—and demand, as shaping prices. The fixed pie of mercantile economics was replaced by a progressively expanding world market. The first to have conceived of economics as an annual cycle of activity were the physiocrats in France. Their emphasis was on land and its “recycling.” Smith replaced land with labor, and its division, as the mainspring of the economic clock. Ever since then we have seen the world in these terms, though with modifications. I do not see my task as writing the history of economic thought, even a short one. It is simply to give some specificity to the assertion that, like war, economic activity (and thought) is now one of the defining attributes of modern man. It forms a major part of the ongoing project of man. It is central to the engendering of a new kind of humanity. (7) War, technology, and economics are all intertwined. So is our next fundamental topic, religion. There have been religious wars, wars fought with increasingly sophisticated technology, and wars for economic gain. Yet, religion itself is too vast a subject to see it as submerged in these other fundamental shaping forces of humanity. Was there a time before religion? Stone Age fossils can tell us little or nothing about the beliefs of those whose bones comprise or accompany them. At the opposite end of our inquiry is the question: will religion always persist? To begin with, religion is amorphous and certainly not monolithic. It comes in all sorts of shapes and forms. It can be said to have emerged out of myths and to remain fixed in them. Humans must have meaning in their lives. There has been a ceaseless striving, long before modern science, to string together perceived sensations and events on a necklace

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of cause and effect. From whence have we come and whither are we going? How do we explain a thunderbolt? A god threw it. An erupting volcano? A god was angry. Why was he or she angry? Because man, in some fashion, has misbehaved. The remnants of these beliefs persist, even though scientific explanations are now at hand. In a recent conference, Elaine Pagels spoke about The Book of Revelation. In answer to the question, “Why does religion still persist?” she responded as follows: I think because this is about emotion. This isn’t conceptual. . . . This is about hope and fear. This is about how we dream. And I think it’s because those images, the monsters, the whores, the beasts, it’s about what we fear, what we hope. It’s about revenge, it’s about anger. . . . And it’s [sic] still works, for some people.12 There are many other functions performed by religion. It binds its adherents into a community, as Emile Durkheim, especially, announced. (The word religion itself means to bind together.) Rituals play a large part in this function of connecting. Religion endows festivals with supernatural meaning. It offers meaning to an otherwise inexplicable universe. In monotheistic religions it promises to rectify injustice in this world and to punish those who commit it in the next world. The Greeks were far too sophisticated to contemplate a world of black and white, God and the Devil. Their gods mirrored the world of actual humans, with all their mixed and irrational motives. Even the gods competed against one another; there was no monolithic and single God. (Even in later Christianity God has been split into the Trinity.) There is no need for me to rehearse the history of religion, ranging from the pagan gods through Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with innumerable twists and turns. Wars, in one sense, can be ordered by placing a circumference around each.

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This is far more difficult, if not impossible, with religion. There are limited ways in which humans can kill one another. There are myriad ways in which humans can express themselves, their hopes, and their fears through religion. Overwhelmingly, religious-minded people want certainty— though they may thrash around in the attempt to reach it. In general, they also want purity and perfection. It is instructive in this regard to look at Sayyid Qutb. One of the fountainheads of Islamic fundamentalism, this Egyptian “intellectual” announced his desire for a perfect society. He then added that Islam gives “absolute certainty” that it will eventually prevail worldwide.13 Similar statements can be found in adherents of other religions. Monotheism is usually regarded as a major step forward in religious conceptions. Though generally taken for granted, this should not be. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have all had their fair share of violence, often committed in the name of peace. On the other hand, the best defense of religion can be found in Marshall Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam. In his second volume, he explains how it emerged as a response to the pressing need for justice, for a larger sense of self, and an explanation for all of existence. The problem is that, in satisfying these needs, the major religions tend to preach the extermination of those who are not in the chosen circle. They also place their tenets above mundane reason and preach faith. Thus, a Jesuit spokesman in 1624 declared, “Faith must take first place among all the other laws of philosophy, so that what, by established authority, is the word of God may not be exposed to falsity.”14 In short, the word of God must not be questioned. However, for those not persuaded by such a statement, this conclusion begs the question. In the end, it always comes down to the issue of interpretation. If someone came along today and said the moon was made of green cheese, we might try to convince him otherwise or simply shake our heads.

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If that same person said he had received a revelation from God, saying he was the voice of God, and his words were to be taken on faith, we might find ourselves pointing in the direction of the asylum. None of what is said here will bother a true believer. Faith takes precedence over reason (i.e., critical reason that appeals to empirical experience and theory based on it). Needless to say, persons holding such beliefs by faith must be respected, even if one thinks their beliefs to be hollow. What is perhaps most important at this point is to look at religion in historical and sociological terms. For a long time, many intellectuals believed that religion was being displaced by secularism in the modern world. While partly true—Europe is a case in point—recent events have shown the shallowness of this prediction. Christian fundamentalists in the United States and their Islamic counterparts in the Arab Middle East show the strength of the opposition. As in so many situations, it’s a case of the glass half-full or half-empty. To every action in history, there is a reaction, or many of them. Materialism, whether in the form of Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things (ca. 50 BC) or a good deal of Enlightenment thought or Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural (and sexual) selection, offered an alternative choice to religion. The modernity of the last three hundred years or so has pointed in that direction. Will something called religion persist in the face of these challenges? Will humans—assuming they are still around—or the robots that may displace them require such beliefs five hundred years from now? Will a millennia-old belief system fade away by then? We can hardly answer such questions. All we know for the moment is that religion—like war, technology, and economic activity—acts as a major shaping force in the project of Humanity. Whether it also serves as a means of fostering a new kind of humanity remains a troubling question.

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(8) War, technology, economics, and religion have been and continue to be powerful shaping forces in the human experience. I want now to turn in a slightly different direction and take up the trajectory of growing reflectivity or, to put it in Hegelian terms, increasing self-consciousness. Where Pinker has so brilliantly argued for the decline in violence, I wish now to concentrate on the increase in reflectivity and self-control. In a very provocative book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), the psychologist Julian Jaynes puts forward the following thesis. Instancing the Greeks, he writes that, Iliadic man did not have subjectivity as we do; he had no awareness of his awareness of the world, no internal mind-space to introspect upon. In distinction to our own subjective conscious minds, we can call the mentality of the Myceneans a bicameral mind. It is interesting in this connection that the Greeks apparently had no word for conscience. Jaynes continues his argument that, the presence of voices which had to be obeyed were the absolute prerequisite to the conscious state of mind in which it is the self that is responsible and can debate within itself, can order and direct, and that the creation of such a self is the product of culture. In a sense, we have become our own gods.15 Clearly, this is suggestive, although Jaynes’s arguments have been questioned. It stirs our imagination as we think about the issue of growing self-consciousness. It is like a step in a Japanese sand garden in which we leap from one stone to another. It provides another link in our progression from

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Pinker’s decrease in violence to my emphasis on increasing individual self-control—implicit if not explicit in his work. Moving on from Jaynes, we can quote Edmund Burke as a way-station to our argument about growing reflectivity, which he puts in terms of self-control. The great conservative of the late eighteenth century, having witnessed the excesses of the French Revolution, observed that to prevent humanity from falling into the Hobbesian war of all against all we needed “the habits of self-control and social harmony they absorb when they conform to the norms of a civilized society.”16 This can return us to Norbert Elias and his work on the civilizing process. As we recall, his thesis based itself on a change in manners: no longer was one permitted to fart or belch in a public setting. Control was necessary. An interesting thing about the “self” in self-control is how vague a concept it is. A word derived from Middle English, it seems to circle back on itself. It indicates a certain kind of self-consciousness. Indeed, it appears to come into currency only around the seventeenth century in Europe, in tandem with another new concept: society. As a concept, society had shifted from a term meant to describe personal relations to a larger notion. The reigning assumption was that self and society are opposites. This view lasted until the twentieth century, when evolutionary psychology made it clear that the two are intertwined. Elias glimpsed this fact and, partly inspired by Freud, whom, however, he criticized, the German sociologist wrote that the concepts of “individual” and “society” are “referred to as a pair of opposites.” They are not. When change occurs, both the individual self and the society must change together. As Elias concludes, “a natural process prepares human beings for a civilizing pattern of drive-regulation.”17 Elias had intuited the findings of current-day evolutionary psychology. He put his ideas in historical terms. Thus, in addition to courtly manners softening, he spoke of how the monopolistic privilege of state and society to sanction

Where Are We Going? The Project of Humanity    27

love relations disappeared when a much greater demand on individual self-control rose in its place (21). This growing self-control, coupled with self-consciousness, allowed for an evolving society in which the individual found himself advancing toward a new kind of humanity. The literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt discerned what he termed “self-fashioning” arising in fifteenth-century ­England.18 In retrospect, we can see that England itself was also being remade. By the time of the nineteenth century and the Industrial Revolution, another element had been introduced: the timepiece. The controlling pace of the clock—especially time discipline at the workshop—shortly permeated all of Western society. This outside control was matched by internal control. One began to live more and more “on time.” (9) If my assertion that along with (at least partially) decreasing violence we are witnessing an increase in self-consciousness and autonomous self-control is correct, we must ask what follows from this fact. What effect, if any, will it have on those four shaping forces on humanity of war, technology, economics, and religion? The decline in violence tracked by Steven Pinker appears to correlate with the increase in self-control. As in the above example of the knife drawn at the dinner table, now self-control would dictate a different form of response. The same holds true on the international level. An insult or attack on national honor is more likely to result in the withdrawal of diplomats, later to return. Unfortunately, to accumulate statistics supporting this assertion is beyond my power. Technology gives humans more control over their environment. It is not clear that it provokes more self-control. Indeed, a familiar lament is that the increasing power of technology is not matched by a similar increase in man’s capacity to

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prevent its misuse. After all, the use of an atomic bomb at Nagasaki and Hiroshima does not seem to show increased self-control and reflectivity at the national level. There is little evidence so far that increased individual self-control results in increased national self-control. It is the existence of international organizations, such as the International Criminal Court, that holds promise for the future. Economics may in part be correlated with increased selfcontrol, as in Max Weber’s famous “Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” Time discipline, as touched on earlier, surely goes in this direction. However, as financial capitalism succeeded industrial capitalism, the sort of control necessary to prevent banking disasters has not been much in evidence. Short-term gain has triumphed over the longer run perspective. Religion is an amorphous, contested area in this regard. It is not, as said before, a monolith. One can, however, generalize. Almost all of the monotheistic religions require submission to the voice of God. It is not I who take these actions, but God who speaks through me. This formula is reminiscent of Freud’s discussion of possession. When little girls in colonial American times would pinch and scratch their elders, they could disclaim any evil intent; it was the devil who made them do it. Self-control was non-existent. In regard to self-control, secularism rather than religion seems a more favorable environment. The former, in its best moments, places responsibility on the individual.19 It is a human voice, not that of a projected God, that takes on that responsibility. In the eighteenth-century Enlightenment the belief was strong that progress was taking place in this direction. Have events borne out such optimism? What was overlooked is that an action brings on a, or many, reaction(s). While Europe has become increasingly secular, both the

Where Are We Going? The Project of Humanity    29

extremists in Christianity and Islam have been on the rise. One must not forget, however, China and its over one billion people. Though an interesting question is whether the political party has taken the place of a church, various dissenters striving for human rights point in the direction of autonomous self-consciousness or the effort thereto. (10) I have tried to sketch the landscape in which the project of Humanity has gone forward. The drive to a “free, autonomous subject in charge of his or her self,” as Spiegel put it, is a continuing one. Events have been conspiring to create a new kind of humanity. The trials alleging crimes against humanity have sparked a judicial revolution whereby humanity is now given a voice. In this atmosphere, the autonomous individual with increased self-consciousness and control can be discerned. This project of humanity, as I have tried to follow it, has been at least as significant as that of the expanding science and technology that captures so much of our attention. There have been hiccups along the way. In the sixties in the West a movement for spontaneity and relaxation of individual and social control burst forth. It was a conscious demand for relaxation of the increasing move to self-control. Just as Elias’s civilizing process has had its decivilizing moments, so has the increase in self-control. Yet, the arrow points to its greater realization. In this most pessimistic of times, it is a shaft of light pointing us in a more optimistic direction. Notes 1.

A few days after finishing the unpublished manuscript article out of which grew this chapter, I was made aware of Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity is Near (Penguin Books, 2005). Unfortunately, the title reminds one of the cartoon showing an unkempt

30    Globalization and Transformation



2.

3. 4.

man carrying a sign saying “The end is near.” Kurzweil is certainly not that individual. He is an extraordinary thinker and innovator with many successes, both material and intellectual, to his name. He is brilliant and must be taken seriously. In this book he pursues the idea of exponential growth in regard to artificial intelligence, a field in which he has pioneered. He presents his work in terms of six epochs, with the fifth being the merger of human technology with human intelligence. The sixth is when we fuse our human and machine intelligence with the universe. What are we to make of all this? Kurzweil is a futurologist. I am an historian. As such, I published a book in 1993, The Fourth Discontinuity: Co-Evolution of Man and Machine op. cit. in which I speculated on the possibility of a computer-robot—which I called a Combot—created by but exceeding the abilities of our own human species. Who am I then to scoff at Kurzweil, who also has the mathematical skills to support his visions, one of which is humans never dying? I will stop here, simply noting Kurzweil’s book without really engaging with it, which would require an entire chapter of its own—for which I am unsure that I am equipped. Instead, having noted this challenge to my ideas I will now go about my more pedestrian work in this chapter. It happens that in India there is the concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. It is a Sanskrit phrase meaning that the whole world is one single family. We are told that the concept originates in a classic text where it means, “[Thinking] ‘This is my own relative and that is a stranger’ is the calculation of the narrow-minded; for the magnanimous-hearts, however, the entire earth is but one family” (from Wikipedia). I owe this reference to Priya Natarajan. There is a similar ancient African concept called Ubuntu. One also thinks of the phrase “Nothing human is alien to me,” by the Roman Terence in the second century AD, mentioned later in this chapter. Gabrielle Spiegel, “Response to Constantin Fasolt’s Limits of History,”Historically Speaking, May/June (2005): 12. Jonathan I. Israel in his enormously erudite book Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford University Press, 2001) argues for the primacy of Spinoza and Dutch thinkers in the making of modernity.

Where Are We Going? The Project of Humanity    31

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

Hans Blumenberg, The Genesis of the Copernican World, Robert M. Wallace trans., (MIT Press, 1987), 216. Blumenberg, a German historical philosopher, deserves much more attention than he has generally received. I have borrowed heavily from John H. Headley, The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2008). The quotes are from p. 16. His various articles on the Renaissance have also been of great value. As on so many other topics, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers an informed and comprehensive entry. It also offers a useful bibliography. E. O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1998). Timothy Snyder, “War No More,” Foreign Affairs, Jan./Feb. (2011) critiques Pinker’s work from an historical perspective, a useful corrective. Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2007). Cf. especially Joyce Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton University Press, 1978). Elaine Pagels, “The Book of Revelation: Prophecy and Politics.” (lecture, Edge Master Class 2011, July 17, 2011, unpaginated). John Moller Larsen, A Western Source of Islamism: Soundings in the Influence of Alexis Carrel on Sayyid Qutb, (Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation, Aarhus University, 2011), 18, 100. Stephen Greenblatt, Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2011), 253. Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1976), 75, 79. Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 184. Elias, “On the Process of Civilisation” in The Collected Works of Norbert Elias, Vol 3, Richard Kilminster, Stephen Mennell, Eric Dunning and Johan Goudsblom eds., (University College Dublin Press, 2012), 51, 45. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (University of Chicago Press, 2012).

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19. Of course, secularism and science sometimes push in a direction other than either God or humanity. Some consider neurocognitive studies grounds on which to take some responsibility away from the individual and instead attribute it to biological factors, in particular the brain. After all, we don’t choose or shape certain genetic features of our own brains, any more than we choose any other biological predisposition. However, too many factors contribute to moral decisions for me to side with any determinism of the brain which too strongly deflates individual responsibility.

2 Comparing Global History   to World History1 (1) The historical profession has been slow to appreciate the importance of globalization. One reason appears to be the confusion caused by the claims of world history, which has been struggling to achieve its own identity. In its fight against more traditional, national approaches, world history has generally seen global history—that is, the study of globalization—as a dilution of its challenge to the establishment. Hence, world historians have tended either to ignore the New Global History or to claim that it is already encompassed by what they are doing. Is their response legitimate? What exactly is world history? And what is global history? World history has accumulated a number of definitions, most of them reflecting different schools of thought. The “Invitation to Membership” of the World History Association (WHA) begins with the statement, “If you teach the whole history of the whole world in nine short months, you know the challenge of planning and organizing a meaningful course in world history.” Although adherents of the WHA often deny it, the implication 33

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seems to be that world history is “the whole history of the whole world,” thus offering no obvious principle of selection.2 Bentley, the editor of The Journal of World History, gives a more limited definition: “My impression is that most participants in the discussion [about the definition of world history] took interactions between peoples participating in large-scale historical processes to be one of the principal concerns of world history.” This conception of world history is also vague. For example, would every historian of the Industrial Revolution (even if restricted to one country)—surely, a large-scale historical process—necessarily be a world historian as well, and if not, why not? Bentley continues, “Thus, world history represents (among other things) a dialogue between the past and the present, in that it seeks to establish a historical context for the integrated and interdependent world of modern times.”3 McNeill is the premier figure of modern world history. He follows, by his own admission, directly in the line of Arnold Toynbee, who inspired him with an ecumenical vision. But McNeill translated this vision into more mundane historical practice. His Plagues and Peoples (1976) is intellectual worlds removed from Toynbee’s Study of History (1933–1954).4 However, although, like Toynbee, McNeill takes civilizations as his framework of analysis, he does not construe them as hermetically closed but as open to cultural borrowings. Ralph Linton and Robert Redfield—anthropologists—also influenced McNeill. From them came his interest in “transcivilizational encounters,” which have shaped his definition of world history as the study of “interaction among peoples of diverse cultures.” Long-distance trade, the spread of religions and plagues, and a multitude of other trans-civilizational factors have prominent places in McNeill’s world history. These concerns are always informed by a biological and ecological awareness that has no precedent in Toynbee’s work. Without specifically invoking the theory of evolution, McNeill lives

Comparing Global History to World History     35

and writes in its environment. The results have been brilliant treatments of processes occurring on a worldwide scale, such as the spread of disease or the emergence of military power.5 Other variants of world history exist alongside McNeill’s version. The crucial variable is the definition of world. Fernand Braudel seemed to have abandoned his fascination with civilizations in favor of “world-systems”—that is, worlds constructed by trade and culture. Characteristically, his book, The Mediterranean6 carries the subtitle, The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Braudel’s disciple, Wallerstein, in The Modern World-System (1976), shows in great detail how the modern commercial and capitalist world came into existence. In similar accounts, of course, Columbus’s voyage occupies a central place, adding a “New” World to an Old one. Wallerstein’s emphasis in the second volume is on the seventeenth-century mercantile competition among the Western European nations. His is history in the grand style but with its feet on the ground (or, perhaps one should say, in the sea).7 Carrying the world-system approach even further back in time, Abu-Lughod has suggestively argued for an earlier “system of world trade and even ‘cultural’ exchange.” She finds such a system in the period 1250–1350 AD, which she designates as a “crucial turning point in history.” Though lacking an international division of labor, her system connects disparate areas of the world—Europe, India, and China—through trade between key cities. Applying this approach to even earlier periods, she speaks of the Roman Empire as the “first nascent world-system.”8 (2) What all these variants on world history—McNeill’s, Braudel’s, Wallerstein’s, and Abu-Lughod’s—share is a concern with systemic processes and patterns among a wide variety of historical and natural phenomena that affected diverse

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populations. Compared with earlier ecumenical histories, they are less keen about making predictions and about tracing the course of civilizations through fixed cycles. In addition, though forced to rely heavily on secondary accounts, they stay close to the scholarship of ordinary historians, offering strictly secular accounts, even of religion. In short, these accounts are serious attempts to treat historical phenomena that arise on a world scale. And it is at this point that the meaning of the term “world” becomes especially crucial. It is the point at which a possible transition to global history occurs.9 As with the competing definitions of world history, obfuscation also enters into the differences between world and global history. In the foreword to a series edited for the American Historical Association—“Essays on Global and Comparative History”—Adas announced a “‘new’ global or world history” that differs in fundamental ways from its predecessors. That difference, for Adas, led to virtually a paraphrase of McNeill’s version. Adas’s series included not only an account of AbuLughod’s thirteenth-century world-system, but also such essays as “The Columbian Voyages” and “Gender and Islamic History.” It offered serious and worthwhile contributions to world history but unthinkingly misappropriated the title “Global History,” which needed to be defined afresh in its own proper terms. Even McNeill realized that something unprecedented was in the works, commenting, “I suspect that human affairs are trembling on the verge of a far-reaching transformation,” which he compared to the importance of the agricultural revolution.10 We encounter the same intuition in an important article by Geyer and Bright, the very title of which, “World History in a Global Age,” indicated the tenuous transition taking place. In their words, What we have before us as contemporary history grates against the familiar explanatory strategies and analytic categories with which scholars have traditionally worked. . . .

Comparing Global History to World History     37

This is a crisis, above all, of Western imaginings, but it poses profound challenges for any historian: the world we live in has come into its own as an integrated globe, yet it lacks narration and has no history. . . . The central challenge of a renewed world history at the end of the twentieth century is to narrate the world’s past in an age of globality.11 Our “imaginings” must leap from world history to global history. In making this jump, a look at the etymology of the words world and globe is helpful. Words are not just what individuals say they mean; they have a historical nature. World comes from the Middle English for “human existence”; its central reference is to the earth, including everyone and everything on it. Worlds can also be imaginary, such as the “next world,” meaning life after death, or they can designate a class of persons—the academic world, for instance. For many, the discovery of the “New World” marked the advent of world history. More recently, a first, a second, and a third world have been discerned, demarcating different levels of development. Such usage ill accords with the term global. (One cannot substitute New Globe for New World in 1492 or third globe for third world today.) It occupies a different valence, deriving from the Latin globus, the first definition of which is “something spherical or rounded,” like a heavenly body. Only secondarily does the dictionary offer the synonym earth. Global thus points in the direction of space; its sense permits the notion of standing outside our planet and seeing “Spaceship Earth.” (Incidentally, earth is a misnomer for our planet; as is evident from outer space, our abode is more water than earth.) This new perspective is one of the keys to global history. (3) What are the other keys? These we can determine by dividing the definition of global history into two parts. The first

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focuses on the history of globalization; that is, it takes existing processes, encapsulated in the “factors of globalization,” and traces them as far back in the past as seems necessary and useful. The second signifies processes that are best studied on a global, rather than a local, a national, or a regional, level. The second definition is a continuation of much that is to be encountered in McNeill’s variation of world history, except that it begins in the present, openly acknowledging its informed global perspective. The first part of the definition—the history of globalization—is both the heart and the novelty of global history, deciding the initial field of study and raising the questions, What is involved in globalization? and What are the factors at work in our contemporary “world”? An early attempt to answer them stated, The starting point for global history lies in the following basic facts of our time (although others could be added): our thrust into space, imposing upon us an increasing sense of being in one world—“Spaceship Earth”—as seen from outside the earth’s atmosphere; satellites in outer space that link the peoples of the earth in an unprecedented fashion; nuclear threats in the form of either weapons or utility plants, showing how the territorial state can no longer adequately protect its citizens from either military or ecologically related “invasions”; environmental problems that refuse to conform to lines drawn on a map; and multinational corporations that increasingly dominate our economic lives.12 Among other “basic facts of our time” that could be added to this list are global consumerism (obviously related to multinationals), human rights, the displacement of an international political system by a global one (the GeyerBright article cited earlier is especially strong in this regard), the globalization of culture (especially music, as fostered by

Comparing Global History to World History     39

satellite communications), and so forth. What is essential to note is the synergy and synchronicity of these various factors— their unprecedented interaction with one another, in everincreasing extent and force, notwithstanding the origin of them all in a differentiated past. Globalization is the sum of their combined presences. It is a reality that now affects every part of the globe and every person on it, even though in widely differing local contexts. In fact, one could say that much of global history has necessarily to devote itself to studying the factors of globalization in relation to a “local” reality, which can take many forms. (4) The practitioners of global history include adherents of both a strong and a weak interpretation (just like in the case of the artificial intelligence research community). The former are convinced that globalization is ushering in a new global epoch, which replaces existing attempts to construct such periods as the postmodern or the postindustrial. The adherents of the weak interpretation abstain from divisionary schemes and are content to study the globalization process without further claims. For those who see globalization as introducing a new period, the issue of when the global epoch “began” is worth considerable attention analogous to the issue of when modern history began. Some opt for the 1950s and others for the 1970s. (I place myself in the epochal camp and opt for the later time.) This argument turns on the question of when enough synergy and synchronicity arise to justify the launch of a new periodization. Behind this argument is a conviction that time and space have been compressed in an unprecedented fashion. The roots of this compression reach far into the past. The development of sea vessels, from sail to steam and cutting distance and duration, forms one thread in this account. The invention of the telegraph, the laying of cables, and the introduction of

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the telephone and then of radio communication represent another wave of enormous changes. Now, satellites, with the aid of computer linkages, allow simultaneous communication between any spots on the globe—six hundred million people watched the first step on the moon on their television sets— and they can go from one end of the globe to the other in less than a day. It should also be noted that with globalization has come the adoption of a uniform calendar.13 Another major thread to follow is mapping. Since the fifteenth century, Ptolemaic maps have guided the opening of a “new” world in which half of a previously unknown globe spun into perspective. Yet, forgotten in this burst of vision was the fact that large areas of that globe were still unknown from the European perspective. Parts of Africa remained unmapped until the end of the nineteenth century, and the poles were not adequately explored until recent expeditions. Only in our time has the globe come to be more or less fully known (including the depths of its seas). We have even seen it from outside as one of many spherical bodies in space. Our map of the globe must now take its place as part of the mapping of outer space. Such brief investigations into some of the elements that enter into the factors of globalization indicate how they are rooted in the past. After all, global history is a historical inquiry, although its starting point is unabashedly close to the present, newly identified as a global epoch. The accounts of global historians are heavily tinged by scientific, technological, and economic “happenings” of recent times. Whether or not one approves of these happenings, global history, as the study of Wie es eigentlich gewesen, must inquire into them. (5) The emergence of globalization was not simply a matter of science, technology, and economics; political developments were also requisite. First, the competition between

Comparing Global History to World History     41

the Soviet Union and the United States in space was essential for the creation of our increasingly satellite-dependent world, with its attendant communications revolution. Furthermore, the decline of communism eroded the old political-ideological divisions, leaving the way open for a genuinely global society in which all countries can and must participate, though differentially. Modernization was primarily a Western imposition. Globalization, in contrast, is a global process in which numerous participants are creating a new “civilization,” to borrow the term from the world historians (for better or for worse). For example, Germany and Russia, not to mention the European community, are major contributors; Japan has become almost as powerful as the United States; Indonesia, Malaysia, and Australia are starting to make their presence felt; and China and India are looming increasingly on the horizon, along with Brazil, Nigeria and others.14 Needless to say, the course of this globalization is not foreordained: global history is not Whiggish. Or, more to the point, the shape it will take cannot be predicted. Like most historians, global historians are aware of the contingency and uncertainty of human affairs; they are not practicing ecumenical history. Nor are they practicing world history in the primitive sense of “the whole history of the whole world.” Rather, global historians, or at least historians of globalization, are trying to establish a more deliberate research agenda. They know that each of the factors of globalization requires rigorous empirical study and that new actors will increasingly occupy the center of the historical stage. This includes NGOs such as human-rights and environmental groups, along with other third-sector organizations: MNCs, which are almost equivalent in importance to nation-states (of the one hundred entities possessing the largest gross domestic products, GDP, forty-nine are MNCs), and the UN—in all its aspects, but especially its nascent military role.

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Although global history is mainly transnational in its subjects of study, it would be a grave error to neglect the study of the nation as well. National history merits reexamination in light of how the forces of globalization have affected the nation-state and vice-versa. Nations will not be going away. They are still the preferred settings for large numbers of people to organize on behalf of common ends—protection of territory and property; economic production; and, last but not least, group identity. The literature on the subject is vast. In short, global history, though it seeks to transcend national history, is engaged nevertheless with the nation-state as a major actor on the international and global scene. The main focus of world history, as opposed to global history, has been civilizations. But as global historians are well aware, civilizations do not send up rockets, operate television networks, or organize a global division of labor. Empires, the carriers of civilizations in the past, are no more; they have been replaced by nation-states. (There are more than 190 as of this writing and counting.) Hence, global history examines the processes that transcend the nation-state framework. (In the process, it abandons the centuries-old division between civilized and uncivilized, between ourselves and the “other.” “Barbarians,” that is, inferior peoples, no longer figure in global history; there are only-momentarily less-developed peoples.)15 Global history is still an emerging project with many aspects to study. Does it make sense, for example, to talk about a developing global identity? Remember that before America became the United States, the early European settlers had a colonial identity that was only gradually supplemented, and perhaps eventually replaced, by a national one. Can the same process occur with a global identity—even though it would be unattached to a world government, which for the foreseeable future appears utopian or even dystopian? After all, people are connected today in actuality in a way that was

Comparing Global History to World History     43

only previously dreamt of in a vague aspiration to “humanity.” Will people’s sense of themselves begin to approximate their true situation? And will historians of global history be forced to reappraise their identifications, that is, their unconscious national attachments and perspectives?16 We could go on to say much more about various facets of global history, but, hopefully, enough has been sketched so as to support the assertion that it embodies a new consciousness, a new perspective—heavily involved with the work of science and technology that has allowed us to view our planet from space, while also highlighting our earth’s evolutionary and ecological nature—that separates it from previous endeavors, for example, in world history. Exactly how it will play out in empirical research will be apparent only in the work of future global historians.17 Historians, by trade and tradition, are generally suspicious of theory. In global history, however, theoretical considerations, emanating from the social as well as the natural sciences, are indispensable to particular inquiries. And in spite of employing the method of consilience and considering a range of factors to draw their conclusions, historians are also distrustful of, or indifferent to, work done in other disciplines. In global history, multi- or interdisciplinary orientations move front and center. The very notion of globalization came from sociology. Future work will have to engage economists, economic historians, political scientists, and historians alike. Words do matter—in this case because they determine how we conceive of the work in which we are engaged. Of course, arbitrary definitions can be attached to the terms world and global history. And however we define them, ambiguity will cling to these terms, as well as overlaps. Still, if work is to go forward effectively, it is essential that we also be as clear as possible about the differences. There is space enough for world history to operate without taking an “imperial” turn to encompass global history in its domain. Greater

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definitional precision will allow each subfield of history, the world and the global, to flourish independently. Although world history and global history exist on a continuum, we must realize that we cross a significant boundary when we enter upon the history of globalization or, more succinctly, global history. Notes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Journal of Interdisciplinary H ­ istory, 1998, 385–395. “Invitation to Membership” was an undated mailing from Richard Rosen, executive director of the WHA. Jerry Bentley, “Review of Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens eds., Conceptualizing Global History (Boulder, 1993),” H-NET Book Review (August 1995). Of special interest concerning the topic at hand are the chapters in Conceptualizing Global History by Wolf Schafer (“Global History: Historiographic Feasibility and Environmental Reality,” 47–69) and Manfred Kossok (“From Universal History to Global History,” 93–111). Arnold J Toynbee A Study of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1933–1954). William H. McNeill, “The Changing Shape of World History,” History and Theory, Theme Issue 34, “World Historians and Their Critics,” (1995), 14. See also the work mentioned in the previous paragraph: idem, Plagues and People (New York: Anchor Books, 1976). Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean: The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Siann Reynolds trans., (New York: Collins, 1972). Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System. II. Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World Economy, 1600–1750 (New York: Academic Press, 1980). Janet Lipman Abu-Lughod, “The World System in the Thirteenth Century: Dead-End or Precursor?” American Historical Association (Washington, DC, c. 1993), 2, 6. See also idem, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250—1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Comparing Global History to World History     45

9.

10.



11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

Despite their general disinclination to make predictions, a number of world historians have activist interests. McNeill, for one, is concerned with environmental trends, and Wallerstein’s Marxist inclinations implicitly push him in a predictive direction. See, for example, Michael Adas, foreword to Abu-Lughod, “The World System in the Thirteenth Century,” viii (op. cit.). See also McNeill, “Changing Shape of World History,” 25 (op. cit.). This is a recent comment. As I interpret it, contextually, McNeill is talking about the need for a new definition of world or global history rather than about one of his previous “transmutations.” McNeill was a participant at the first international conference on global history in Bellagio, Italy, 1991. Though, at the time, he denied any difference between world and global history, what others said may have influenced him. Others may find this inference hazardous, but I hold to it, based on personal acquaintance. Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, “World History in a Global Age,” American Historical Review, C (1995): 1037, 1041. Bruce Mazlish, “An Introduction to Global History,” in idem and Buultjens eds., Conceptualizing Global History (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 1–2. Bruce Mazlish, “Introduction,” in idem and Buultjens eds., Conceptualizing Global History, op. cit., 17–20. More than three billion people are said to have seen the Coca-Cola commercials that accompanied the 1992 Olympic Games on television. The demise of the Soviet Union must be seen in a global context. As Charles S. Maier wrote (in “The Collapse of Communism: Approaches for a Future History,” History Workshop, XXXVIII [1991], 34–59: “The Communist collapse was a reaction to forces for transformation that have gripped West and East alike, but which Western Europeans (and North Americans) had responded to earlier and thus with less cataclysmic an upheaval.” Samuel Huntington’s notion of an apocalyptic clash between Islam and the West in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Penguin Group, 1996) is a recent and ill-informed attempt to view history in terms of civilization. A notion of the conflict between civilizations is also current in Russia, where it takes the form of a long-standing “Eurasian”

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ideology, which has been embraced by many nationalist or communist opponents of Boris Yeltsin and others perceived as “reformers.” 16. For the problem of a developing global identity, see Bruce Mazlish, “Psychohistory and the Question of Global Identity,” Psychohistory Review, XXV (1997), 165–176. 17. Some indications of global history’s direction are already apparent. Nearly a dozen international conferences have taken place already: from 1991–2012, in Italy, Germany, Hong Kong, Russia, and across America. Their topics have spanned culture, migration, food, MNCs, America as a superpower, cities, philanthropy, childhood, law and human rights. These are described (along with links to their published proceedings) at http://toynbeeprize.org/ global-history-network/conferences/.

3 Humanity and Globalization (1) When does humanity come into existence? To answer this question one must decide what humanity means. On the most important level, it is a social construct, an imaginary community, emerging through historical vicissitudes as a form of selfawareness. In the terms in which I am addressing it, the notion of humanity is a recent invention, a novel conception, whose existence is correlated with the ending of World War II and the beginning of the present-day process of globalization. The invocation of WWII gives a relatively precise date for attempts to define humanity legally and for globalization to give it actuality. Surely, however, I am making a hyperbolic argument. Has not humanity existed since the dawn of human time, that is, the evolution of the species Homo sapiens? Has it not been present in Greek and Roman times, mentioned in chapter 1, as when Terence declared, “Nothing human is alien to me”? Does it not flower in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, where numerous books and tracts have the word humanity in their titles? Does it not spring upon us full-blown in Hegel’s ruminations? And what of the notion in non-Western societies, where it takes idiosyncratic but nevertheless recognizable and comparable forms? 47

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To give flesh to these assertions, let me return to my original argument. Toward the end of WWII, the Nuremberg trials were held. The International Military Tribunal took the major step of moving from mere war crimes, as defined by existing codes, to what it declared to be “crimes against humanity.” It redefined aggressive war as a crime against the world and invited individuals to answer to their own conscience—and thus humanity—in refusing to obey the orders of their leaders. Crimes against humanity: this was a new idea no matter how hedged in by the old terms of internationalism. It meant that leaders could be seen as illegitimate because they fostered “inhuman” behavior. It implied that such a judgment could transcend national sovereignty and be made by humanity, with punishment to be carried out in its name. Another term, genocide, was tied to the notion of crimes against humanity, thereby limiting the scope of the latter. During the war, Winston Churchill, reacting to what he viewed as the unprecedented Nazi murders, commented, “We are in the presence of a crime without a name.” In response, the Polish Jew Raphael Lemkin, whose family had been victims of the Nazis, introduced the term genocide in 1944 to describe the horrible happenings. He then campaigned for an international treaty making such practice criminal and subject to punishment. In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted a law banning it, followed by a Genocide Convention. Thus, the crime against humanity that had no name had now acquired one: genocide. For Lemkin, who had certain ideological predilections, genocide was defined as not only killing people but eliminating their whole way of life and culture. As one scholar, Gerard Alexander, puts it, “Genocide is defined as an attempt to destroy communities defined in religious, ethnic, or cultural terms.” Excluded from the treaty banning genocide were attempts “to destroy groups defined in political terms.”1 As genocides, this categorization escaped

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under the radar identifying crimes against humanity. Thus was limited the ability of the international covenanting powers to intervene in the name of humanity in mere cases of terrible inhuman oppressions that were not defined as genocide. (2) While this legal development was taking place, the notion of humanity itself was being reconstructed and taking on a new actuality. The age-old aspiration to universality and oneness was being subjected to a process of globalization uniting and linking individuals and peoples in an expanded fashion that was in many ways unprecedented. With the Information Revolution, my neighbor now might just as readily be living in Siberia as in the street across from me, say, in Manhattan— and vice-versa. Actions on a Western stock exchange in regard to grain prices might quickly translate into starvation in an African country. It is the speed and extent of such linkages that is new, for they could be traced out earlier as well; in short, a quantitative change has been taking place, but one with qualitative implications. We must see what is happening holistically. Each piece of present-day globalization can be identified earlier. It is the synchronicity and synergy of the factors involved and their increasing depth and power that are making for a new awareness of a common humanity. It must now be conceived in a planetary fashion. Once humans have stepped out into space, they can look back at a common homeland—Spaceship Earth—in which national boundaries are invisible. It takes a while for the terminology to catch up. When Armstrong plants a flag on the moon, it is an American one, and he utters the famous words, “One small step for mankind,” ignoring the gender change taking place on his launching pad, Earth. This is in tune with the Council for the Study of Mankind in the 1960s at the University of Chicago and

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many other such anthropologically inspired efforts to map the face of “mankind.” Such language is now anachronistic. 2 Equality is a cornerstone of the conception of humanity. Manifesting itself specifically in the form of human rights, it insists on everyone—women, children, minorities, and not just male members—being equally entitled to what were formerly the privileges of one set and sex. The drive to equality has deep roots: in religions of various sorts, in the secular philosophies of the Enlightenment, even in the all-pervasive nature of consumerism. This drive has gathered speed and spread ever more widely. To be found in such shapes as Bibles and novels, the aspiration to various forms of equality has leaped across time and space via the new media and the Internet. Institutionalized in the shape of NGOs, it insists that everyone, not just everyman, has rights because of belonging to humanity and not to a particular country and its legal system. Not everywhere triumphant, or accepted to the same degree, the notion that everyone is equal in the sense of belonging to humanity, and vice-versa, is nevertheless a powerful and prevalent characteristic of our time. The process of imagining humanity gathers force from ­something called by the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking “dynamic nominalism.”3 This means that once you invent a category, people will sort themselves into it, behave according to the description, and thus figure out new ways of being. (The example he gives is of homosexuality.) As the category humanity takes on greater imaginative power and existence, it attracts people into it and swells the category itself. Perhaps another way to describe this process is to speak of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The notion of a category and its realization, however, give a firmer epistemological footing to the project. The notion of humanity becomes more and more a self-realizing “destiny” for the species that used to be called mankind.

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(3) At the most fundamental level, humanity is a matter of biology cum culture. Without going into the details, a few comments here will promote our discussion. The great classifier, Carl Linnaeus, was the first to introduce the term Homo sapiens, doing so in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae in 1758. Placing the species under Mammalia and then Primates, the Swedish naturalist brought home the fact that Man was an animal, to be studied as one. Though still seen in terms of the Great Chain of Being, a static conception, Homo sapiens now, paradoxically, could be conceived of as having a history. Linnaeus had taken one of the first steps that would eventuate in Darwin and evolutionary biology. The Swedish naturalist also, however, separated man from man, by introducing racial distinctions. Thus, he pursued his rage for classification by speaking of Wild Man, American, European, Asiatic, and African, with the implicit and often explicit claim that the European was superior and the American and African inferior. Still, the fundamental unity of humanity was implicit in the umbrella term Homo sapiens, generally interpreted as “wise man.” Thus was created the biological category for imagining humanity in scientific terms. Set in the discourse of the Great Chain of Being, humans were placed below the angels but above the other primates such as apes and chimps. Well before Linnaeus the resemblance of humans and apes was a commonplace observation. Even the groundlings of Shakespeare’s time knew what he had in mind when he has Othello utter the words, “I would change my humanity with a baboon.” Self-definition is almost always in terms of what one is not: to be human is to aspire to be an angel and to recognize that one is not an ape. Thus, humanity seeks to separate itself from the bestial.

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Yet, with the work of Darwin, that separation became harder to make in certain ways while easier in others. Physical anthropology and evolutionary biology showed in detail how connected man and the other primates were. Now there was a different chain linking chimps to their collateral branches that produced early man in his various modes: Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and then Homo sapiens. A major difference between the latter and chimps and gorillas was in the larger jaws and smaller brains of these simian cousins. It is the fossil record that records the evolution into Homo that began about 2.3 million years ago. Thus began the long trek toward what I am identifying today as humanity. (4) In that journey, Homo sapiens became wise because of what we have come to call culture. Thus if the basis of humanity is the biological evolution that I have briefly touched upon, its exfoliation is in terms of cultural ­evolution. The record of that evolution is to be found mainly in terms of history rather more than in fossils. It is this evolution that we must have in mind when we speak of the historical vicissitudes that eventuate in our imagining of the category humanity. It is a long story. In this account, I touch only briefly on some of its beginning and some of its present-day imagining. Throughout his existence, Homo sapiens remains an animal. His nature is rooted, as sociobiology keeps telling us, in his genes, so closely resembling those of his cousinly primates. In the case of chimps, they live in groups, inhabiting a specific territory, which they defend against others. They compete for females (and, in fact, vice-versa, with the female competition for males perhaps less obvious), kill chimps from neighboring communities, seek to expand their territories, and so forth. Not unexpectedly, we find similar traits in humans.

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What I want to emphasize here is that the question of humanity has taken on new salience and meaning in the last half of the twentieth century as it merges with a new millennium. New forces have been and are at work—our present vicissitudes—bringing into being humanity as a new imaginary. Any attempt to describe human nature must reckon with these facts and how they are mirrored in human behavior. In seeking to understand the social construction of humanity, we must recognize these foundations. Man’s inhumanity is a constant part of his humanness, as exemplified in the story of Cain and Abel. Homo sapiens is a covetous, murderous, conniving beast of prey. To say this, however, is to give only half the story. As Thomas Huxley understood in his Evolution and Ethics, the species is in conflict with nature, seeking to deny its own competitiveness and to aspire to something “higher.” In this conflict, Homo sapiens’s base and basic instincts must be hedged around by barriers and restraints. These must be of both a legal, and a sociocultural, nature. In fact, that something higher is also rooted in humanity’s genetic evolution, as the species moves toward cultural evolution. Huxley’s mentor, Charles Darwin, recognized that altruism was as much a part of human nature as narrow self-interest and preservation. In his account in the Descent of Man, he seeks to show how man is lifted, so to speak, above himself by the rise of social conscience and religion. This book is a good place to begin a study of the civilizing process, though the author of the Descent does not himself operate in those terms. But we, along with thinkers such as Norbert Elias, can do so. Once gifted by the evolutionary process with language and the ability to manipulate symbols, the species can imagine a past, present, and future. It can aspire to a self-realization rooted in its own spiritual aspirations. In a long, drawn–out,

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and non-deterministic process—often in the form of two steps forward and one step back—Homo sapiens has been moving toward an ever wider sense of community. One version was envisioned in the eighteenth century, for example, by Immanuel Kant. The German philosopher spoke of the “cosmopolitan nature” of humankind. I prefer to think in more dynamic and less teleological terms. Humankind has no fixed nature—there is no human nature as such; only a changing, kaleidoscopic set of characteristics, based as they are on certain evolutionary tendencies. Instead, I am arguing that the species is struggling in history to define itself. One definition toward which it has been groping, and now seems to be taking on greater actuality, is that of humanity, embedded as it is today in the present process of globalization. (5) If evolutionary theory tells us about human nature, an empirical matter, it tells us little or nothing about human rights, a normative subject. The latter is a product of cultural evolution, which basically means historical experience. In the case of human rights, it is a recent experience. It can be traced back in the West to roots in natural law theory. With the Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius, the concept of human rights took a momentous step forward in the seventeenth century when he defined them as separable from God’s will. As such they became intrinsically human, with humans conceiving of them in contractual terms. It would require revolutions to bring such rights into actuality. The great revolutions in the West at the end of the eighteenth century enshrined human rights in the form of declarations. What had previously been the privileges of the few now became the rights of the many. Where privileges had formerly been attached to individuals as members of an estate or a guild, now they were declared the birthright of any individual who was a member of the nation—or, at least,

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they were in principle. In practice, women and minorities were excluded from the entitlements of the “rights of man.” When the French entitled their declaration that of the Rights of Man and Citizen, they indicated the gender and political limits to the so-called human rights. Hence the paradox of a universal declaration with local restrictions. Still, an expanded version of humanity and human rights had been given to the world as inspiration for those who wished to expand rights to all of humanity and not just members of particular states. The shift, of course, did not take place all at once. Hegel marks one way station. Wrestling mightily with redefinitions of freedom and self, the German philosopher sought to go beyond his compatriot Kant and the latter’s exhortation to his Enlightenment colleagues to “dare to know.” Hegel, instead, threw out the challenge to “Dare to know thyself,” that is, to critique one’s own self as historically developed and developing. As part of this development, as explained by Hegel in his Philosophy of Right—note the last word in the title—in 1821, It is part of education, of thinking as the consciousness of the single in the form of universality, that the ego comes to be apprehended as a universal person in which all are identical. A man counts as a man in virtue of his manhood alone, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, or German, etc. This is an assertion which thinking ratifies. Hegel, as is well known, having glimpsed a promised land, faltered and lapsed into parochialism and provincialism or, at best, extreme Eurocentrism. His reiterated use of the term “man” as what counts, though it reaches out to a larger conception, shows the partiality of his time and vision. Yet, when posed against the announcement, say, of the contemporary Savoyard and Frenchman Joseph De Maistre and his declaration, “I have seen Frenchmen,

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Italians, Russians . . . but Man I have never met,” we recognize how far Hegel has come. He has posited a consciousness—a self-consciousness—that needed only to come down from the abstract spaces of his philosophy into the actuality of human existence to give substance to the category humanity. Jumping from Hegel to our own times, we note the pronounced shift from civic to human rights, mediated by the German philosopher’s recognition of man as a being conscious of his humanity. That shift was correlated with the war crimes trials of WWII and the expansion of globalization, bringing more and more peoples closer and closer. The declaration of rights by the UN in 1948 marks the difference with earlier, more limited declarations. The rights listed here are for all people and not just for those in particular nation-states. Deficient as to enforcement and vague as to economic and social protections, the 1948 declaration is animated by a sense that humanity confers rights that transcend local cultures and societies. The establishment of an International Criminal Court was as important as the Declaration. This tribunal, established by the 1998 Treaty of Rome, set up punishments for those who violated human rights. Opposed by some, such as the United States, it has received approbation from most other nations and is now in functioning existence. In less institutionalized form, we have NGOs dedicated to the exposure of human rights violations and the mobilization of world opinion to combat them. Such NGOs avail themselves of the power of the Information Revolution that plays so central a role in the present process of globalization. There have been many failures in all of these early efforts to promote human rights. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic stretched over four years and ended inconclusively. The genocide of Rwanda was not prevented and the punishments for its perpetuators hardly serve as a model of judicial procedures. Sudanese violations of human rights, perhaps to the point of genocide, have left over a million people homeless;

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again the international community has been laggard if not criminal in its neglect to do something. Yet, such failures must not be allowed to obscure the fact that human rights are actually and positively on the agenda of humanity. For example, Kosovo has hardly been an unmitigated success, but it can and should be seen as the first war for human rights, a remarkable transcending of national sovereignty in the name, at least implicitly, of Humanity. (6) Let us conclude with a few more observations and questions. Obviously, the category of humanity and the notion of human rights are connected; perhaps we should speak of an affinity. There are also different versions of humanity, such as the Chinese, the Indian, etc. Can and do these co-exist with the notion of human rights? Is the latter a necessary inference from a definition of humanity that has resulted from the process of globalization, and are these human rights a requisite transcending of national and cultural boundaries? While the category of humanity must recognize differences, can it accept a difference that calls into question its fundamental principle? Surrounding the category of humanity is a whole host of related invocations of the “human.” The air is filled with discussions of human development—and of indexes to measure it—and of humanitarian assistance. Among scholarly disciplines, there is in the West something called humanism and the humanities. What is the relation of such studies to the category of humanity, and do they have their counterparts in non-Western cultures? Do such humanistic studies tutor us in the way to humanity? What I have tried to show is that the frame in which such observations and questions fit is provided by the ­introduction into history of Homo sapiens. A classification, which gives biological unity to humankind, it became the

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basis for theories about evolution, which itself took a turn to the cultural about forty thousand years ago. This then provided the ground on which ideational unity concerning humanity has been able to arise. As I have been arguing, the latter is a social construct. It takes the form of self-awareness and emerges through the vicissitudes of history. In its latest manifestation as historical consciousness, that is, going back about twenty-five hundred years—especially in the form of written history—this consciousness now allows us to be aware that we are involved in a process of increased globalization, and that one of the consequences of globalization is that we are actually becoming something called humanity and not merely aspiring toward that condition. Needless to say, the aspiration plays a critical role in the coming-into-being of our new identity. A self-reinforcing process is under way in which aspiration and reality mingle in a more and more interconnected manner. In the end, we must understand that humanity is a continuing project, very incomplete as yet, and subject to great stresses and strains, of both mind and matter. A major task of the twenty-first century is to advance that project. Notes 1.

2. 3.

Gerard Alexander, “The Realities of Confronting Genocide: A Review of Samantha Power’s ‘A Problem from Hell,’” The Hedgehog Review 5: 1 (Spring 2003): 93. See also Power’s book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002). Thus, the Soviet Gulag and the Maoist mass murders, not being defined as genocides, escaped under the radar. Of course, even in this book reference to ‘man’ persist as convenient shorthand and to distinguish from the concept of “humanity.” Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).

4 Identity in a Global Era1 (1) The term identity is protean in its meaning and reach. One definition sees it as “an umbrella term used throughout the social sciences to describe a person’s conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations (such as national identity and cultural identity).”2 The latter, i.e., group identities, are generally created out of families, clans, ethnic ties, religions, and regional affiliations. One identity, the national, has come in the last five hundred years or so to predominate. It is usually based on a bounded territory, a centralized government that is in control of collecting taxes, maintaining order, and a police and military force. In the words of Benedict Anderson it is also an “imagined community.” In regard to the nation, subjects do not meet face-to-face—there are too many of them—but feel held together by rituals, ceremonies, parades, monuments, and especially common memories. These support a kind of Russian doll of identities in which every person has a plurality of identities. Which one will take precedence in a particular situation is often a matter of contingency.

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Identity is a serious matter. Indeed, it can literally be a matter of life or death. For some who seek black and white answers and the sense of certainty, a ferocious assertion of a particular part of their identity is absolutely necessary. “I am an Aryan,” for example. To confirm that identity, other must also be clearly delineated. For the Nazis, Jews and Slavs were principal among the “others.” As such, they had to be eliminated to confirm the pure German identity. Generally, however, identity functions in a less ominous key. Much has been written recently on the relation of consumerism and our identity. Thus, a Latin American anthropologist and sociologist has devoted the whole of his book to seeking to establish how global consumer patterns have shaped entire peoples. He argues, for example, that today “social participation is organized through consumption rather than through the exercise of citizenship” and that rather than being constituted through national symbols “they are shaped by the programing of, say, Hollywood, Televisa, and MTV.”3 In a foundational book, The Birth of Consumer Society, Neil McKendrick and colleagues have outlined the history of consumerism as it developed in England during the eighteenth century. At one point in their account, they quote an observation from that time, that identity is tailor-made; that is, one’s tailor gives one his shape, his identity, for it is clothes that make the man. It is worth giving the whole quote. There are Numbers of Beings in about this Metropolis who have no other identical Existence than what the Taylor, Milliner, and Perriwig-Maker bestow upon them: Strip them of these Distinctions, and they are quite different Species of Beings; have no more Relation to their dressed selves, than they have to the Great Mogul, and are as insignificant in Society as Punch, deprived of his moving Wires, and hung up upon a Peg.4

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In the eighteenth century, then, in England, some thought that one could tailor oneself, thus establishing one’s identity. Insofar as business suits have become ubiquitous around the world, can we see this custom as contributing to a global identity? Immediately, however, we have to acknowledge that local dress, such as Arabic robes and headdress as well as Indian clothes, must sharply qualify this generalization. (2) Can Anderson’s notion also apply to a global community? Can we also gain insight in regard to this question by the comment of the British sociologist Roland Robertson, quoted in the Introduction of this book, that “globalization as a concept refers both to the compression of the world and intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole”?5 Elsewhere, including in the following chapter, I have argued, as in the previous chapter, that experiences such as Hiroshima and the lunar landing in 1957 contributed to the human species’ sense of oneness. I have further argued, as in the previous chapter, that WWII and the Nuremberg Trials with their charge of crimes against humanity have also fostered an increased concept of humanity and thus implicitly a global identity. It is in the context of statements and questions such as these that we can most usefully ask whether and how a global identity might emerge. What are the factors that might help it develop? Obviously, economic trade must come high on the list. With the computer revolution, trade deals and arrangements can be made almost instantaneously. One important result is certainly global consumerism. Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are very visible signs of this occurrence. So is the transmission of ideas and values. Where MNCs play a major role in the case of trade, NGOs occupy the center of the stage in regard to ideas and values. Each in its way contributes to the formation of a global identity.

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The fact is that there is both soft and hard evidence in support of the emergence of a global identity. I have already cited the role of Hiroshima and the moon landing as part of the soft. Hard evidence is harder to come by. The citation of a multination 2005 poll is one such piece. It found that “one citizen in five across the world strongly identifies with being a citizen of the world instead of being a citizen of a home country.”6 Social scientists need to be imaginative in devising other ways of measuring global identity. As Martha Van Der Bly, a Dutch sociologist, frames the challenge, “Just as earlier sociologists faced the challenge of contributing to the establishment of national societies, so contemporary sociologists face the challenge of contributing to the understanding and building of a global society.”7 National identity is obviously linked to memories. Many of these have required centuries to come about and do so in the midst of settled communities. Does a memory bank exist for the global community? Is one forming? In regard to the national, it is reinforced by rituals, parades, and other such manifestations. In addition, going beyond the national as such, there is also the celebration of Earth Day. Can we also mount a Global Day? Have a holiday and parades celebrating it? And speeches commemorating it? Artists as well as politicians must put their minds to the problem. (3) As the age of absolute monarchy gave way to the tumbrels of the 1789 French Revolution, the overriding identity for many people became that of nationalism. Such identity, though often asserted in singular, chauvinistic terms, was, in fact, a multiple. I am a Breton as well as a Frenchman. I am a Southerner as well as an American. A classic example is Crèvecoeur’s question, “Who is an American?” His basic answer was the person who had fled to the new continent to escape the restraints of

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the old world. When looked at more closely, this person was a tissue of various, often conflicting, identities.8 Further, we must note that different societies and cultures can have vastly different ideas about identity or the lack thereof. For example, we are told that in classical China and subsequently “there is no strict notion of identity in the sense of some self-same identical characteristic that makes all members of a class or category or species the same.” Instead, person or thing consists of shifting historical relations. Thus, in a wonderful phrase, “The Chuang-tzu tells us that none of us walks alone; each of us is ‘a crowd,’ a ‘field of selves.’”9 Returning to the Western conception, let us note that national identity is given concrete expression in the form of heroic statues, national anthems, celebrations such as that of July 4 in America and July 14 in France, parades, holidays, and many other such visible demonstrations. Conflict can arise in these areas, with Confederate statues being erected even after the Civil War, symbolizing the survival of nostalgia for a Southern identity. Identity is obviously constructed and, in that sense, always fluid and dynamic. As we have already stated, memories play an important role in this construction as do future hopes.10 ­(Zionism is an obvious case in point.) In the present, as is well-known, the main locus of most identities is located in the nation-state. Having become in the course of modernity the main structure for ordering and giving meaning to people’s lives—there are now at least 190 nation states—and having broken up empires in the progress, nations are now the main source of an individual’s identity, transcending more local ones. Developing mainly in Europe, the nation-state has spread rapidly to the rest of the world.11 There the nation-state developed as a defense against Western imperialism. Observing the superiority of the nation-state cum empire, other peoples

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decided to copy them. As the Japanese scholar Sakai Naoki remarked, The attempt to posit the identity of one’s own ethnicity or nationality in terms of the gap between it and the putative West, that is, to create the history of one’s own nation through the dynamics of attraction to and repulsion from the West, has, almost without exception, been adopted as a historical mission by non-Western intellectuals.12 In the case of China, the search for national identity has been mixed with the effort to define national culture in a globalizing world.13 The question has risen: who is to control this search, and how is it tied to historical memory? The political implications are strong. The answers are not yet clear. (4) While, until recently, the search was in terms of finding a national identity, we are now in a global era. How does this affect individual and group identity? Does it offer a conflicting or an additional, transcending one? If national identity is to be overridden, will it be in terms of regional rather than global identity? This is surely one of the issues facing the European Union. The evidence suggests that the formation of a European identity has been laggard. As Walter Laqueur has written, All investigations have shown that people feel an attachment to the place and the country in which they were born (90 percent), but much less so to a wider institution involving a different way of life or a different language. According to a 1996 Eurobarometer survey, only 51 percent of Europeans ‘felt European.’14

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Leaving aside the “glass half-full, half-empty” nature of this assertion, the question arises whether a sense of a global identity has been overriding that of a European one? Further research is needed to answer such a question, along with questions regarding regional blocs such as the Union of South American Nations, the African Union, and others the world over. What must be remembered is that individual and collective identities go together. Freud tended to see the individual alone, entangled in the battleground of his own past. In his major attempt at understanding collective identity, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Individual, he speculated that our identification was shaped by the Great Man, charismatically dominating us. Freud’s only use of the term “identity” seems to have been in his “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” and then only as a technical term. Later, building on Freudian psychoanalysis, Erik Erikson was to make identity one of the centerpieces of his explorations. He spoke of the eight stages of man, one of which was concentrated on establishing one’s identity at adolescence. He concluded that “true identity . . . depends on the support which the young individual receives from the collective sense of identity characterizing the social groups significant to him: his class, his nation, his culture.”15 In this light it is clear that national identity is fostered by how a person’s neighbors are feeling. Memory and history were conjured up to support this affiliation. There were national libraries and archives, national days of celebration, national monuments of agreed-upon heroes, and national myths. There were national armies. There were national taxes. In short, there was a whole armada of times and things to reinforce the idea of one’s national identity. Ideally, such an identity transcended merely local class and ethnic lines. Again as Benedict Anderson has famously pointed out, the printing revolution provided the means by which an “imagined community” could arise and help give birth to a real country.16 Once in existence, the whole paraphernalia

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of education, social services, taxes, and, often, enrollment in the national army helped to cement the ties that bind. (5) What are the comparable features that are shaping, or might shape, a global identity? There is, first, the process of globalization itself. It is marked and defined as a process making for increased interconnectivity and interdependence. In my view, the post-WWII era needs to be seen as a “rupture,” whose basis is in the computer revolution and its hook-up to artificial ­satellites, making possible instantaneous communication in real time. We must also note the step out into space, whereby the planet, Blue Earth, can be seen in its wholeness. These various happenings make for an unprecedented global consciousness. Such consciousness, however, does not necessarily add up to a global identity. There are great difficulties in regard to the latter. There are no monuments to global heroes—unless one were to count those depicting astronauts. Where are the sacred spaces for globalization, say, comparable to Gettysburg in the United States? The patriotic parades celebrating a global event (cf. July 4 in America)? Where are the global sports teams? (The Globetrotters is simply a name.) To ask such questions is to state some of the barriers to a global identity. Globalization is the reality, however, to which humanity must adjust. It seems to have taken off in the 1870s with the extraordinary innovations of the telegraph, the telephone, and steam engines and steamships connecting the world rapidly. Indeed, one might want to label this a “first” globalization. The second one, on which we are concentrating, the post-WWII development, also marked a communications revolution: the use of the computer and the Internet. Earlier, as noted, the nation-state was the prevalent form from the time of the Treaty of Westphalia on. Its diffusion

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from the West should be looked upon itself as an early example of globalization. At nationalism’s heyday in 1789, at the time of the French Revolution, Jeremy Bentham, the Utilitarian philosopher and legalist, coined the term “international.” This can be regarded as an early step toward a global world. The long line toward this end is marked by a concept of three worlds: a first world of the democracies and their allies, a second world of the Soviet Union and its proxies, and a third world of unaligned states. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of them tumbled into one world. For a brief moment, the US was the only superpower. With the rise of China, economically and otherwise, that can no longer be said—although America still has overwhelming military power. All peoples are in one world. In spite of all these difficulties, a growing global consciousness shows signs of also becoming a global identity. One straw in the wind is a small research project. Julia Docolas, a young scholar at Leipzig University in Germany, has written a thesis tackling the subject both theoretically and empirically. She reviews the various theories as to what identity means and then studies 145 of her fellows at the Erasmus Mundus Center at the university. They come from all over the globe. Do they have common values? Her findings are that though national attitudes and loyalties persist, elements of a common global identity exist along with them. As she recognizes, there is a certain self-selection in the students gathered at the center. Other such projects need to be undertaken. For example, do the UN troops have any sense beyond that of their more local affiliations? An anthropologist should be embedded with them to study this question. When the UN was first established, it was proposed that it have its own military force. Surprisingly, this idea was supported by the then American Secretary of State, the conservative John Foster Dulles.

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Nevertheless, it did not come to pass. The seventy-five thousand members or so UN military force is made up of levies from various countries. An even more important project would be to study the development of an international civil service. This should be done in figurational terms. Where Elias had studied eighteenth-century French court society, now the need is to study twenty-first-century international society. It may require a team effort, but in these days of instant computer accessibility such an effort is more feasible than ever before. We must recognize how long and contingent a project lies ahead before global identity becomes a significant force. One need only look at the centuries before Germany or Italy became a single state with a national identity. In the case of the latter it is estimated that in 1861, when Italy became a single state under the Piedmontese crown, something like 97.5 percent of the population didn’t speak the national language. Most spoke local dialects.17 Even today, many think of themselves as Sicilian rather than Italian. Nevertheless, as globalization continues, as it is likely to do, more and more problems are also seen as global: for example, climate change and ecological exhaustion. They require global solutions, even though based in local areas. A growing global identity would be very valuable in helping humanity limp toward the needed answers. Again, Hacking’s dynamic ontology could be expected to happen in the case of global identity.18 This is the hope of our century. Notes 1.

This chapter appeared in earlier versions, most recently as “Appendix I: The Question of Global Identity” in The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009).

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2.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Incidentally, there is no entry for “identity” in the classic 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, only the term “identification.” 3. Néstor García Canclini, Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts, George Yúdice trans. (University of ­Minnesota Press, 2001), 5. Canclini’s work is very much influenced by post-modern thought. It might also be noted that politics and citizenship have been heavily subject to the same forces that have been involved in selling commodities. 4. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and John H Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The commercialization of eighteenth-century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 49. It should be noted that with the advent of off-the-rack clothes, class distinctions were no longer so distinguishable at first glance. 5. Roland Robertson, Globalization (Sage, 1992), 8. 6. Cited in Robert Paehlke, “Global Citizenship: Plausible Fears and Necessary Dreams,” in Great Transition Initiative: Toward a Transformative Vision and Praxis, 5. Subsequently, this poll has been called into question. 7. Martha Van Der Bly, “Globalization: A Triumph of Ambiguity,” Current Sociology, 53:6(2005): 875. 8. Cf. Bruce Mazlish, “Crèvecoeur’s New World” in The Leader, the Led, and the Psyche (1990). 9. Roger Ames, “Acknowledgements” and “Introduction” in Sun-Tzu, The Art of Warfare, Roger Ames, trans. (London: Folio Society, 2007), 38, xiv. 10. Cf., for example, Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “The History and ­Historiography of Memory Studies,” a talk given at a conference in Germany, 2011. 11. For a healthy corrective to the notion that nationalism is solely an invention of the West, see Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization (Oxford University Press, 2006). 12. Quoted in Jie-Hyun Lim, “The Configuration of Orient and Occident in the Global Chain of National Histories,” in Narrating the Nation: Representations in History, Media and the Arts, Stefan Berger, Linas Eriksonas, and Andrew Mycock eds., (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 3.

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13. See, for example, Wu Mei and Guo Zhenzhi, “Globalization, National Culture, and the Search for Identity: A Chinese Dilemma,” Media Development 1 (2006). 14. Walter Laqueur, “Night Thoughts on Europe,” The National Interest (October 25, 2011). 15. Eric Erikson, Insight and Responsibility, (W. W. Norton, 1964), 93. 16. Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Growth and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991). 17. See the useful article: Tim Parks “Booted,” The New Yorker, (April 11, 2011). 18. Once more, see Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).

5 The Advancement of Humanity1 (1) It is estimated that the universe as we know it came into existence about fifteen billion years ago. The age of the planet Earth is estimated at about five billion years. Hominid ancestors appeared about two and a half million years ago. Homo sapiens emerged about forty thousand years in the past, then surviving our Neanderthal cousins. The human species engaged mostly in hunting, gathering, and scavenging until around twelve to ten thousand years ago, when the first agricultural settlements began to appear. A dramatic way of illustrating this oft-told story—which constantly changes in detail, though not substance as new archaeological digs uncover new material—is to start at one end of a blackboard and go all the way across to the opposite end and then add a point. That point marks the moment when the human species first appears. That we know all this is part of the advancement of humanity itself. It has been learned in the course of our evolution. As discussed in chapter 1, the theory of evolution as explained by Darwin was biological in nature. His great work, The Origin of Species, traced the ways in which natural selection—to which 71

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he later added sexual selection—was the mechanism leading to the production of new species. With incredible detail, the English naturalist drew upon field after field—histology, embryology, comparative natural history, etc.—to show his theory in operation. His method was that of consilience, where numerous phenomena could all be subsumed and explained under one convincing explanation.2 As we know, Darwin’s theory of evolution required millions and millions of years for it to make sense. It was geology that prepared the way for Darwin, and, indeed, he started in that field. William Buckland in the early nineteenth century established the global nature of the earth. Charles Lyell followed him and established the fact that transformations throughout the earth occurred in similar ways everywhere and at all times in a regular fashion—and on a huge time scale. When the young Charles Darwin shifted his attention from geology to natural history, he drew upon the notion of consistent transformation occurring over enormous eons of time. Starting with the Voyage of the Beagle and then The Origin of Species he demonstrated how evolution worked by natural selection. In The Origin, Darwin stopped before man. That barrier was transcended in The Descent of Man, where man’s descent from more primitive forebears was described along with pages and pages devoted to the role of altruism and morality as an intrinsic part of survival of the fittest. Thus, Darwin’s theory of biological evolution thrust itself to the very edge of cultural evolution. For that is the momentous shift that occurred some forty thousand years ago. It has taken on the rubric of “The Ascent of Man.”3 I want to claim that, heuristically, it is better thought of as “The Advancement of Humanity.” This is a story of how Homo sapiens became aware that he was human and what that entailed. It is an unfinished story, a process still under way. And a construction, still being created.

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(2) It is a story that can be told from many vantage points. The rise of civilization can be seen as originating in the Mesopotamian region. Ancient Egypt can make the same claim. China is another candidate. In any case, similar features can be found in all three areas. The emergence of written languages— an incredible development—is one feature. Urban centers are another feature. In such centers, social stratification arises: priests, warriors, traders, and peasants fill definite niches. Astronomy comes on the scene. It serves mundane agricultural needs as well as religious ones. In his wonderful book, The Genesis of the Copernican World (1987, op. cit.) Hans Blumenberg speculates that the arboreal forebear of modern man came down from the trees and stood upright on the savannah. All sorts of consequences followed. For one he could see the horizon and the heavens, thus the beginnings of astronomy. For another he could copulate face-to-face. A surge in a new kind of intimacy was possible. The human is one of the few species that exhibits sexual drive throughout the year and not just during rutting time. The constant libido helps foster a family that stays together. For most of its existence, the human species has lived by hunting and gathering. Then about twelve to ten thousand years ago agricultural settlements began to appear. This is the way of telling the story of the rise of civilizations. We know of these happenings by the very tools of knowledge that subsequently developed: paleontology, archeology, and linguistic studies. We are talking of a species that can live in the torrid tropics but also the frigid Arctic. It is the ultimate predator, able to eat birds of the air, all other animals on the earth, and fish and shellfish from the sea. The bones of the very first humans are found with tools besides them. The fact is that we cannot think of Homo sapiens without tools, no matter how primitive: flaked stones, axe

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handles, and later bows and arrows. Human evolution is a matter of co-evolution of man and machine.4 From these early tools to the computer on which I type this statement to the huge particle accelerator at CERN, where the Higgs boson has just been found, we can see extensions of human power, whether in terms of might, sight, hearing, or all the other senses. The discovery and domestication of fire was a major step, followed by many other advances in the amount of energy at human disposal. (3) This brings up the question of progress. Much confusion reigns in the subject mainly because of an inclination to treat it as a monolith, when clearly it requires differentiation. A bad conscience on the part of many Westerners, commendable in some ways, and an overdose of reflectivity on the part of intellectuals may account for this attitude. Clearly, if we look at science and technology, there has been progress in the sense of humans gaining greater control over their environment by means of tools and machines; these, in turn, facilitate greater scientific understanding. A major reason for rejecting this fact is, or so it is claimed, that such accomplishments are not seen as accompanied by moral progress. Many see drones as worse than spears. Artificial satellites may enable computer connections, but they may also lend themselves to nefarious military use. One of the most savage denunciations of science was delivered in the eighteenth century by Jonathon Swift, who did not deny its “progress” but deplored its results. Swift was hardly a Romantic, but Romanticism had affinities with his stance. A counterpart of the acerbic Swift was the lachrymose Rousseau. The latter appealed to an idyllic “nature” before it was spoiled by the coming of civilization. There is a utopian quality to Rousseau’s vision, although it

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looks to the past rather than the future. In short, he denied the idea of progress, hook, line, and sinker. He threw out the baby with the bath water. He was wrong. A century before him, Francis Bacon had written The Advancement of Knowledge. In this book and in his Novum Organum, he described how human knowledge had advanced beyond that of the ancients and outlined the method and the needed institutions by which further advances could be made. Subsequently, the historical record has proven that Bacon was right. Has progress taken place in other spheres? Art is reflective of the society in which it is produced. In principle, then, ancient African art is as advanced as twenty-first-century Western art. However, connoisseurs make distinctions between better and lesser pieces of African sculpture, and modern artists such as Picasso have borrowed heavily from the African examples. Arguments can also be made in terms of increased complexity, but this is a land mine. In short, the issue is an ambiguous one. The case for literature may be a stronger one at first blush. More complicated societies might be presumed to produce “better,” deeper literature. This is hardly a strong argument. As the old saying has it, de gustibus non est disputandum. Other scholars have wrangled over this subject in more informed terms than I, and I shall, therefore, leave it at that. War, that is, organized violence, is intimately and increasingly linked to technology and science. For example, The Advanced Research Projects Agency (now DARPA), a branch of the United States Department of Defense, funded the initial research into the Internet. Example after example could be given in regard to land, air, and sea operations. Some of the money goes to pure research; a large part goes to applied research. In our globalized world, satellites and drones go whizzing above us in the sky.

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The work of the German sociologist Norbert Elias and his disciples bears heavily on our account once more. Elias is concerned in his Civilizing Process and his The Court Society5 to ground his theory of figurations in precise historical detail. He describes how violence has become more and more concentrated in the hands of larger state units, which seek a monopoly of it within their own borders and then wage war against similar entities. Going further back in time, Johan Goudsblom, a disciple of Elias, examined the way a military caste formed at the time ten to twelve thousand years when agriculture, facilitated by fire clearing the land, first developed. Fixed settlements, gradually becoming cities, required a specialized military caste to defend them. Even earlier a priestly caste emerged. As Goudsblom explains, “People had to have knowledge of the plants and animals and of the conditions favoring or impeding their growth.”6 It was the priests who claimed that knowledge. Looking at the skies, they could also claim that their knowledge came from the gods. In any case, that knowledge was advanced knowledge. Progress in this sphere was evident. But what of the moral sphere? I want to make the case that progress has also occurred in this realm. Think of the abolition of the slave trade and slavery—though pockets still exist. A condition of humankind for millennia, it was declared illegal and the trade abolished by the British in the nineteenth century. It did require a civil war in America before it could be truly said that it had been vanquished. Still, a landmark had been reached in human history. In the middle of that same century, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill hailed what he called The Domestic Revolution. The subjection of women was to be at an end. Mill was too optimistic. It has been a long, drawn-out fight,

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even in the so-called advanced countries, and markedly less successful in other parts of the world, especially in the Islamic Middle East. The banner, however, had been hoisted and the battle continues. The rights of women have been part of the larger struggle for human rights. This is a monumental step for humankind. It comes from a Hegelian-like moment when the concept of humanity comes down from the heavens and begins to manifest itself on Earth. It begins at the dawn of the computer age: in the middle of the nineteenth century, Charles Babbage built his difference engine, a successor to the abacus and a forerunner of the modern computer. (4) Up until the end of WWII, most historians thought of the previous three hundred years under the rubric of modernity. It was a professional concern; the word was hardly known or used by most lay people. After 1945, however, a new periodization came into currency: globalization. In this case, the general public knew and used it in everyday life. It marked a new era in human existence. It was characterized by a number of factors, even though economists saw it through one eye, as characterized solely by the world-wide extension of the free market. The economy did compose an important part of the story. It was only one part of the elephant, however, with other parts being just as, if not more, important. A concatenation of factors was and is at play. I have already addressed them above under the heading of the concept of humanity: the atomic bomb and global military might; the Nuremberg trials, the International Criminal Court and the notions of genocide and crimes against humanity; the moon landing and Blue Planet logo; artificial satellites, computers and telecommunications. Here I’d like to revisit them to explore, detail and

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emphasize the ways in which they charted the advancement of humanity. As discussed in chapter 3, in 1945–46 the Nuremberg Trials took place. They mark a momentous moment in history. Often overlooked is the fact that for the first time in human history aggressive war—organized violence—was declared a crime. It is hard to exaggerate this shift in attitude with respect to humankind. It is as if the nature of the species had changed. It was not that peoples themselves had changed, but rather the societies and institutions in which they lived. For over forty thousand years Homo sapiens had engaged in war; now it was declared a crime. It was part of a general indictment concerning crimes against humanity. The roots of this idea can be found as early as 1913—and traces even earlier—in regard to the ­Turkish “genocide”—a hotly debated topic—of their Armenian population.7 At first labeled crimes against Christian civilization and humanity, the first part was removed as hurtful to Muslims. The broader connotation of crimes against humanity remained. The dominance of the notion of genocide in this formulation was gradually displaced in the list describing such crimes. As suggested in chapter 1, with the phrase “crimes against humanity” the question naturally arises: what is this humanity that is being sinned against? At this point the term humanity comes down from the philosophical heavens and takes on real existence on this Earth. It becomes an active force, potentially exercising sovereign powers. One example is the International Criminal Court. With good fortune, it may be a harbinger of more powerful and extensive international institutions devoted to peace and justice in the world. This process is facilitated by other post-WWII developments. The lofting of artificial satellites and the landing of

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a man on the moon and the spread of personal computers linked to one another via satellites have made for an extraordinary rise in global existence and awareness, and in global interconnectivity and interdependence—the very definition of globalization. The growing currency of the word globalization from the 1950s through the 1980s is a testament to the change in consciousness. The dropping of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima toward the end of WWII has been described as the first global event.8 With the moon landing, said to have been witnessed live by six hundred million people around the world, humanity could look back on its common home, Planet Earth. The logo of the Blue Planet became a universal symbol, uniting all peoples. With the computer revolution, people everywhere were able to connect with one another immediately in real time. Thus the ideal became real. The global is always local. Its presence is also different in different parts of the world with differential force and consequences. Some people argue about whether it is producing homogeneity. Of course it is producing homogeneity in some ways and heterogeneity in others. So, too, global consciousness is stronger in some places and weaker in others. These become research problems to be executed on the local as well as the global scale. What is clear, however, is that, as part of globalization, what I have called elsewhere a Judicial Revolution has been occurring.9 Highlights in this development have been the Nuremberg Trials, followed by the Yugoslav and Rwanda Trials, and culminating, for the moment, with the creation in 1998 of the International Criminal Court.10 One must step back from the incessant small wars and turbulence of our time to see the extraordinary accomplishment in terms of international law and the pursuit of justice. Some have asserted, in fact, that there has been a long-term decline in violence. Foremost among them has

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been Steven Pinker, with his 2011 The Better Angels of Our Nature.11 Using extensive statistical and narrative evidence to make his case, Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist, favors us with an over seven-hundred-page tome. We are almost borne down by its sheer weight, and he puts together impressive evidence that is worth considering and even building upon, as I have tried to do in chapter 1. Still, I myself, as an historian, use these results selectively and cannot be fully persuaded in the face of an argument weakened by several factors overlooked.12 Of course, in Pinker’s favor is the fact that war among the major European powers is more or less now inconceivable. The age-old enmity of France and Germany has given way to the European Union. While conflict can and has erupted in such areas as the Balkans, it is the exception. A more global view suggests Pinker’s limitations as well as our forgetting the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the firebombing of Dresden during WWII. Even worse is the ignoring of the violent civil wars in parts of Africa. Nevertheless, as we have seen, there have been ­achievements. We need to build on them, as explored in the previous ­chapter. In order to successfully advance toward humanity, we must take the action steps required to cultivate and nurture a global identity. Visible symbols of humanity must become widespread; days devoted to its recognition, as with Earth Day and the various other International Days recognized by the UN, should be organized; and websites hosting and putting in touch friends of humanity would be helpful. Research needs to be stimulated as to how to best realize this global identity. Again, as one example given above, an anthropologist should be implanted among UN troops to see if these soldiers develop any sort of identity beyond that of their own country.

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(5) To summarize: long-term global processes should be studied in an Elias-like framework. It should have two major results. One is greater understanding of our present situation and how we have gotten here. The other is to foster the project of Humanity itself. Again, it is worth raising the work of Hacking on “dynamic nominalism,” and the way in which humanity too could become a self-realizing category.13 Aside from a few ostriches, we are aware of impending disasters in the form of climate change and ecological ­exhaustion. These challenges transcend national boundaries. They cry out for international and global solutions. They demand global institutions to deal with them. Either we stumble toward such structures, or we shall find ourselves in a global shamble. Crises tend to concentrate the human mind. With Samuel Johnson to inspire us, we need desperately to ­concentrate our minds right now. It is the required giant step we must take in our advancement of humanity. Notes 1. 2.

3. 4.

An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Human Figurations 2:1 (February, 2013). William Whewell in the nineteenth century, who also coined the term science to encompass all the separate studies such as geology, botany, and natural history, was the philosophical proponent of the idea of consilience. See chapter 1 for more details. The Ascent of Man was the title given by Jacob Bronowski to his extraordinary and brilliant TV series on humankind, mentioned in chapter 1. I have written at length on this subject. See Bruce Mazlish, The Fourth Discontinuity: Co-evolution of Humans and Machines (1993), op. cit.

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5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

Respectively: Norbert Elias, “Civilizing Process” in The Collected Works of Norbert Elias, Vol 3, Richard Kilminster, Stephen Mennell, Eric Dunning and Johan Goudsblom eds., (University College Dublin Press, 2012) and idem, “The Court Society” in The Collected Works of Norbert Elias Vol 2, Richard Kilminster ed., (University College Dublin Press, 2006). Johan Goudsblom, Eric Jones, and Stephen Mennell, The Course of Human History (M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 40. See especially Sévane Garibian, “Géoncide arménien et conceptualisation du crime contre l’humanité. De l’intervention pour cause d’humanité à la intervention pour violation des lois de l’humanité,” Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah, 177–178 (2003): 274–294. Martin Albrow, “Hiroshima: The First Global Event?” (Paper presented to the Workshop on “Collective Memory and Collective Knowledge in a Global Age” at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics and Political science, April 17–18, 2007). Bruce Mazlish, The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era (2009), op. cit. It is to the shame of the United States that, along with Russia and China, it has not ratified its agreement with the ICC. If it had, of course, both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney would have been subject to trial for their open advocacy and use of torture. Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (Harvard University Press, 2011). Again, see Timothy Snyder, “War No More,” Foreign Affairs, Jan./Feb. (2012). Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).

6 The Global and the Local:   Parts and Wholes1 (1) The phrase “the global and the local” has become ­something of a cliché. It reflects, of course, the notion that everything has become connected. It provokes us to methodological considerations. These, in turn, prompt us to consider more closely the relations of parts to wholes. This subject should permeate all considerations of present-day globalization. It is useful to look at it first in terms of what has been called the butterfly effect, the work Edward Lorenz in chaos theory. As summarized by Wikipedia, sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane’s formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks earlier.

83

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An imaginative and classic expression of the effect is given in Rudyard Kipling’s story “The Butterfly that Stamped,” where it is not the flapping of wings but a petulant stamping of feet that affects the rest of the world. In any case, the phenomenon described is the same. Flapping or stamping, the entire world is shaken to its axis. Much of modern science has been based on breaking or dissolving the subject under investigation into its component parts. The assumption is that once the detailed task of doing so is accomplished, and the part subject to investigation, these parts can then be reordered into a meaningful whole. The achievements of this form of scientific method in investigating nature have been quite extraordinary. The term positivism has frequently been used to describe this procedure. The equivalent of this procedure in history appears to be the production of monographs. Here, generally, a local subject is chosen, say, the county in a given state. Similar studies can be done in other counties. Eventually, a monograph dealing with the whole of, for example, South Carolina, incorporating the various smaller subjects, may be written. That, in turn, forms part of the corpus of work on slavery in general. How these parts, whether in natural or human science, are combined remains a problem. Various attempts at a solution follow. For example, Linnaeus in his Systema Naturalis sought the answer in classification, relating all parts of the world of natural history by means of this arrangement. In the human sciences, what is called hermeneutics arose as a possible answer. Described as a “hermeneutic circle” by the German thinker Schleiermacher, it meant that one must understand the whole in order to understand the parts—thus reversing the usual flow. For the German thinker, hermeneutical understanding meant a continuous going back and forth between text and

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context. (The texts were generally those to be found in theology and jurisprudence.) As he put it, Complete knowledge always involves an apparent circle that each part can be understood only out of the whole to which it belongs, and vice-versa. All knowledge that is scientific must be constructed in this way.2 The organic whole was contrasted with the mechanical part. It was the German biologist Ernst Haeckel who coined the term ecology and gave it currency in the 1860s. The greatest exponent of investigating nature in these terms was Charles Darwin. Though he never used the term ecology—any more than he did evolution—in his writings, he obviously had the concept in mind when, in his Voyage of the Beagle, he wrote of the possible effect of the destruction of a forest, Yet if in any country a forest was destroyed, I do not believe nearly so many species of animals would perish as would here, from the destruction of the kelp. Amidst the leaves of this plant numerous species of fish live, which nowhere else could find food or shelter; with their destruction the many cormorants and other fishing birds, the otters, seals, and porpoises, would soon perish also; and lastly the Fuegian savage, the miserable lord of this miserable land, would redouble his cannibal feast, decrease in numbers, and perhaps cease to exist.3 In his great work, The Origin of Species (1859), Darwin gave ecology a memorable dynamism, endowing it with an existence stretched over eons and epochs. In wonderful prose—Darwin had read Wordsworth’s “Excursion” to good advantage—he showed ecology’s inner workings according to the theory of evolution by natural selection. In his following work, The Descent of Man (1871), he sought to demonstrate

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how the human species had come to acquire morality and self-consciousness. The next step to be taken is to look at Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his work in systems analysis. Bertalanffy, too, was a biologist. In the 1920s in Vienna, Paul Weiss first proposed a systems theory view. It was taken up and furthered by Bertalanffy. In his systems theory, the emphasis was on the relations between the parts that connect them into a whole. It is an integrative approach, stressing wholism.4 As Wikipedia in an excellent entry reminds us, the term wholism does not have a well-established or precise meaning. It is intended to apply to all fields and levels of analysis and especially to self-correcting systems though feedback. Thus, we need to say more about feedback and its development as theory by Norbert Wiener. Whereas Bertalanffy moved from biology to systems theory, in the case of Norbert Wiener the move was from mathematics to biology. Cybernetics was the name he chose for his exposition of feedback mechanisms. We are all familiar with a prosaic version of this occurrence: driving a car or a boat, we need to move the steering wheel to one side and then the other to hold a steady course. Feedback is the term that Wiener used to describe this procedure in larger systems. An ordinary example of a feedback mechanism is the thermostat in a house. Very suggestive is Wiener’s observation that, the degree of integration of the life of the community may very well approach the level shown in the conduct of a single individual, yet the individual will probably have a fixed nervous system, with permanent topographic relations between the elements and permanent connections, while the community consists of individuals with shifting relations in space and time.

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What becomes crucial then is the “intercommunication of its members.”5 As can be seen, cybernetics is not the same as systems theory, but it should be viewed as having an affinity with it. In his “self-interview”—an interesting idea—the historian Roland Benedikter employs a classic version of systems theory in order to understand globalization.6 He examines six core fields of societal transformation (politics, economics, the so-called cultural turn, the “renaissance of religions,” technology, and demography); these can be seen as the “parts.” Then he turns to the resulting “change as a whole,” ordering the six core fields into an overarching “whole.” It is an impressive performance. He offers a nuanced account; each of the core fields can be the leading edge of change at different times. His view obviously points in the direction of interdisciplinary work, to deal with the six fields. Benedikter is also suggesting that an historian’s emphasis should be on process rather than event. (2) A particular example of the call to wholism can be found in Timothy Snyder’s lengthy book Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. The title obviously invites comparison with the term borderlands. Equally obvious is that Snyder intends to cross them willfully, as of lesser importance. As he informs us, Attention to any single persecuted group . . . will fail as an account of what happened in Europe between 1933 and 1945. Perfect knowledge of the Ukrainian past will not produce the causes of the famine. Following the history of Poland is not the best way to understand why so many Poles were killed in the Great Terror. . . . A description of Jewish life can include the Holocaust, but not explain it. Often what happened to one group is intelligible only in light of what has happened to another.7

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This call to wholism requires a command of many languages—which Snyder has—and many other historians may not have—hence a further reason for interdisciplinary work. Parts can be handled by single hands; wholes generally require many such hands. The “mechanical” approach must give way to the “organic.” This is true in all fields. Economics is a field in which this has not yet happened in terms of the dominant establishment. There, a “mechanical” view of a rational, profit-making actor with perfect knowledge in a closed system still prevails. It is also reflected in the division into micro- and macroeconomics with scant integration. It is being challenged, however, increasingly by new approaches, especially those under the heading of behavioral and of contextual economics. Foreshadowed by the historical school of economic thought at the end of the nineteenth century, contextual economics goes further in its placement of economic activity in the world of politics, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy as well as history proper. In political science, for example, we can see the partswholes problem given one sort of solution by the establishment of a federal system. Here, a balance is sought between the need for centralized government and the desire for state autonomy. The two drives are in constant tension. The European Union is another example, although it seems not yet to have solved its problems via a working federalism. One last example in regard to the political is enshrined in the words of the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. As she famously remarked, “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women.” Obviously she was unaware that a similar sentiment had been voiced a few centuries earlier by the arch conservative Joseph de Maistre. Reacting to the Declaration of the Rights of Man by the French Revolution, the Savoyard/Italian thinker remarked, “I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians . . . but Man I have never met.”8

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Aside from not knowing the ancestry of her words—certainly forgivable—Thatcher had forgotten her own training in chemistry. Here, hydrogen and oxygen exist as parts, but then combine into the whole of water. As in all good science, we must gain knowledge separately of the parts and then equal knowledge of their integration into a whole. What is true for chemistry is equally true for sociology; we seek for knowledge both of the individual and of the society in which he acts and by which he is shaped. “No man is an island unto himself,” as John Donne put it so well. (3) I want to conclude by applying what has been discussed above to the immediate present and to one country as it figures in globalization. That country is China. Its economic surge and its attendant cultural effusion have been sufficiently commented on elsewhere that there is no need here to repeat those facts and their details. China is a five-thousand-year-old civilization whose constant concern has been unity over a vast country that until recently was based on agriculture. Its culture has been marked by Confucianism and related philosophies, with an emphasis on a “Mandarin” class installed in bureaucracies and supposedly selflessly ruling the country. The military was given limited respect. An intellectual bureaucracy was given more honor. Classical Chinese thought saw everything in terms of historical relations, not essences. Yin and yang may be viewed as symbolizing this attitude. Many scholars see the Chinese approach as very different from Greek thought with the latter’s notion of appearances and reality. There appears no such divide in Chinese thought. As one scholar of China puts it, “The Asian worldview sees parts always in the context of the whole that they form together.”9 He then instances different

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approaches to medicine taken by Chinese and Westerners. Given this situation, there seems to be no parts-wholes problem to be encountered in that vast land. Does this mean that systems theory would play little or no role in China? Yet China is playing an ever greater role in our globalized world, both acting upon the process and being acted upon by it. It can be subjected to systems theory as done so suggestively by Roland Benedikter. Many other approaches, of course, can also be fruitful. The fact is that the integration of China, its economy, and its values into an increasingly globalized world is one of the central challenges of our time. So, too, for China is the effect of globalization upon its millennia-old civilization. Cause and effect, of course, are interrelated and part of an on-going dynamic. Or to put it in terms of the Chinese worldview, globalization, like every other human phenomenon, must be seen in terms of historical relations. The Chinese example is simply one among many of the problems facing our time: it is that of understanding and dealing well with the challenges posed by the eternal-seeming opposition of individual and community, diversity and universalism, freedom and stability, and similar supposed dichotomies. It is here that the parts-wholes discussion becomes so relevant. We must understand and transcend this perceived division and realize that, while they may always be in tension, that tension is part of the grandeur of human life.10 In short, China provides a microcosmic example of that problem that is faced by humanity at large. Notes 1.

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “Part and Wholes: The seven-dimensional approach of Roland Benedikter to the analysis of globalization – and its predecessors in the history of the interdisciplinary Social Sciences, An affirmative reading” in Transience 4:1 (2013).

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2.

For a fuller treatment of positivism and hermeneutics see the chapters under those headings in Bruce Mazlish, The Uncertain Sciences (Yale, 1998; paperback ed. with a new introduction, Transaction Press, 2007). The quotation from Schleiermacher is on page 91. 3. Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1939), 229. 4. His major work is Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Global System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (George Braziller, 1968). 5. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Cambridge: The Technology Press, MIT, 1948), 182. I had the honor of being a colleague of Wiener at MIT. His book on cybernetics is well-written, though also filled with mathematical formulae. Wiener prided himself on his writing and tried his hand at novels. If I may share a personal memory, it is of my esteemed colleague walking past the offices of people in the humanities and social sciences, waving his arms, and saying, “I want you to read this and tell me what you think.” 6. Roland Benedikter, “Global Systemic Shift: A Multidimensional Approach to Understand the Present Phase of Globalization.” New Global Studies 7.1 (2013): 32–46. 7. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (Vintage, 2011), xix. 8. Incidentally, this view has been echoed by the French “radical” thinker, Michael Foucault. In his view, man does not exist except as a word coined during a particular period of time. 9. Alan T. Wood in an e-mail to me, January 24, 2012. On Chinese thought I have also found Wood’s work in progress, “All under Heaven,” (unpublished) of great inspiration. Other works to be consulted are the Introduction by Roger T. Ames to the Folio Society edition of Sun-Tzu: The Art of War (London, 2007), and Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World (The Penguin Press, 2009). Jacques’s catchy title is misleading, for as his subtitle “The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order,” indicates he is really studying China’s role in a globalizing world. 10. Those who know their Darwin will recognize the echo here.

7 The New Global   Merchants of Light1 (1) In my 2014 book, Reflections on the Modern and the Global (op. cit.), the first paragraph calls attention to the major shift taking place in our time. I reproduce it here as the take-off point for further thoughts on the subject. As I said then: An extraordinary ‘happening’ has been perceived or constructed by historians and other social scientists as having taken place over the past 500 years or so. It is the transition from the so-called Middle Ages via the ­Renaissance, to Modernity. Dating is essential to the historian’s craft. In any case, we need to inquire into the nature of that Modernity in order to understand ourselves today. It is also imperative that we understand that a comparable transition has been taking place in the last 50 years or so, from Modernity to Globalization. And equally imperative that we try to understand Globalization and its vicissitudes.

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The opening of the previous chapter noted that all global is local and vice-versa is a cliché by now. We must look behind the cliché a bit further in this chapter.2 Social scientists must re-examine the local for its global connections and the global in a local setting. In principle, all sites are of equal interest. Thus, a small Chinese town is in theory on par in this regard with a large European city. A multitude of research projects loom before us. Yet, though all are equal, some are more equal than others. Running the risk of Eurocentrism, I want to focus here on the critical role of the West in the process of globalization. My guiding metaphor is the phrase “merchants of light,” used by Francis Bacon (136).3 It is a term pregnant with meaning. Bacon was speaking of those who brought back books and experiments from other parts of the world. They were the entrepreneurs who built up merchant empires encompassing the entire globe and expanding both humanity’s material and mental riches— although in the name of their nation- and city-states. Especially in England, these merchants often tended to be Puritans, who, unlike the aristocrats, did not disdain the manual arts. Rather, as Max Weber has argued, they found their “calling” in the plain things of this world. They were iconoclastic, opposing the false glitter of the arts supported by the aristocrats. Like the Renaissance humanists who were disenchanted with their intellectual inheritance and painted their way past it, the Puritans were also dissatisfied with their heritage, and they sought a “new model.” They were also supporters of the experimental arts. Writing in the “plain” style, they sought to set aside the false lures of alchemy and astrology and, by means of painstaking laboratory experiments, establish truths that could be written down so that others could duplicate the results achieved. The truth could then be convincingly witnessed and subject to further verification, or else shown to be discredited.4

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The “merchants of light” were generally connected to the merchant empires that flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As James D. Tracy (1991) describes them, European enterprises: organized their major commercial ventures either as an extension of the state, like Portugal’s Estado da India, or as autonomous trading companies like the English East India Company . . . endowed with many of the characteristics of a state, including the capacity to wage war in furtherance of their interests.5 At the heart of the enterprises was money. It held a universal value. It was, in principle, accepted everywhere: gold and silver being held in the same regard almost everywhere around the world. As Quesnay later remarked, money knows no country. It took what seemed incommensurables and made them commensurable. Knowledge, it was now recognized, was a similar universal. Not always seen as something that should be shared and verified—for knowledge was power and often shrouded in mysticism—it gradually became recognized as a boon to all who held it, to humanity. For Bacon such knowledge could be obtained only by breaking with the authority of antiquity. As he wrote (341), With regard to authority, it is the greatest weakness to attribute infinite credit to particular authors, and to refuse his own prerogative to time, the author of all authorities, and, therefore of all authority. For truth is rightly named the daughter of time, not of authority.6 Men have been bewitched, however, to prevent them becoming “familiar with things themselves.” Now they must turn to things and experiments with them directly.

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The power of many words must be shattered by a present appeal to experiment. These could be undertaken in Bacon’s House of Solomon, the forerunner of the Royal Society. Here, learned men would follow the light of nature and come to grips with reality for themselves. Bacon was fully aware of the obstacles to seeing clearly—the idols of the mind, the lack of certainty—but he thought that such recognition allowed mankind whatever advancement in knowledge was possible. Such knowledge surpassed that of the ancients, and Bacon was perhaps the first to make this point forcefully and to draw out its consequences. Progress was possible and had taken place. The Moderns had won the battle. Geography is not destiny.7 Yet, it does play a major role in the case of the small European nations that bordered on the Atlantic Ocean. They sent out the ships that made up the merchant empires and that opened up the “New World.” Until the eighteenth century, China was the richest and the most powerful civilization in the world, one that could go back five thousand years. A huge land mass, it did not see itself as a seafaring nation. Its one overture into the South Seas, with a huge armada led by Zheng He, was called back as China recoiled upon itself. It was the small and comparatively poor nations on the European edge of the Atlantic Ocean that developed the ships that could sail around the world—as Magellan did in 1517. The Italian city-states exploited the riches of Asia, as did Portugal, Spain, France, and England, which also headed out into the Atlantic and discovered the New World. With the wind in their sails, they built new empires. Figuratively, and often literally, they conquered the globe. The last five hundred years or so have been treated by historians under the rubric of Modernity. It is a story oft told. In the decades subsequent to World War II, Western

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historians have generally fallen into a pit of guilt spurred on by the many evils committed by imperialism. Postcolonial and post-suburban histories have added to this burden of guilt. And subsequent globalization and global history has contributed to a reassessment of the West’s contribution. Thus, in the light of the post-WWII globalization, it is time to reevaluate our situation. For example, the compass and the printing press seem to have been invented in China, along with much else as shown by Joseph Needham in his classic Science and Technology in China. They are contributions to humankind and not mere trophies exhibited for nationalistic purposes. The same is true for much of the developments that have taken place in the West during the period of Modernity, culminating in the persistence of a political dissent and the assertion of human rights. At the heart of Western modernity has been the Enlightenment. In recent years, historians have worked to delineate various national forms: French, English, Scottish, and so forth. There has been much talk about multiple modernities. Recently, in the light of globalization, the Enlightenment itself has been examined as a global phenomenon. In a path-breaking article, Sebastian Conrad (2012) has used his grounding in European and Japanese history to write “Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique.”8 Arguing for revision of the Eurocentric view, he recasts the history of Enlightenment as a history of global conjunctures. In the new enlightenment cast by global history, we can usefully think in terms of long-term processes. The prototypic example has been Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection. It was built on the solid rocks of nineteenthcentury geology, describing how ancient was the earth and subject everywhere to the same uniform transformations. Starting as a geologist, Darwin applied the same general

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framework and assumption of extended time to the world of natural history—first called biology around 1800. He was able to do this because of the globalization that had been taking place around him, bringing flora and fauna from around the world. Western imperial powers were the new “merchants of light.” The voyage of the Beagle, so critical in Darwin’s life, was undertaken to chart the coasts of Latin America and thus facilitate voyages of trading. Linnaeus had pioneered a century earlier in establishing a uniform classification, thus making possible a universal language for nature. It was globalization that collected the flora and fauna that Darwin could cite in his theory of evolution. A false humility—though from good motives—has led many historians to blind themselves to some obvious facts. Now, we must all embrace an identity with humanity, not eliminating, but transcending our more local ties and seek to write history from that point of view. All history, in principle, must now be global history. (2) The increasing rapidity of the globalization process after WWII has resulted in mercantile empires being replaced by MNCs. One research project shows that they had increased ninefold from around seven thousand in 1960 to over sixtythree thousand in 2000. This growth takes the form of a J-shaped curve of accelerating growth, and, while for competitive reasons this growth may not continue in the same way, it may still be expanding.9 In the process, cash—tangible gold and silver—more and more disappeared, to be replaced by credit—figures in some account book or computer file. The financial sector of many economies expanded, with the manufacturing sector diminishing. Booms and busts took on a new shape. It cannot be

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said that MNCs are merchants of light. Rather than bringing back new knowledge and experiments from abroad, they impose their own innovations on others in the world, thereby exercising power over them, especially for the pursuit of profit. At the same time, fostered by the globalization process, the number of NGOs can be said to have metastasized. They have provided ideas and resources in the face of global challenges and dangers, where nation-states and even the UN stood by helplessly. Power and politics have taken on a new face. With globalization, the problem of political representation has become an ever-growing challenge. Some fantasists play with the idea of a world government. The difficulties associated with the present UN suggest the more complicated problems that would be involved in any attempt to realize such a dream. At the moment, we must further consider an existing substitute—the NGOs. The people who run them are generally not elected and their activities are not subject to review (except perhaps in the form of future refusal of funders); in this sense they are not accountable. Yet, in very roundabout fashion, they do represent an amorphous public, and occupy a public space facilitated by the computer revolution. Part of their work is to do the research necessary for UN resolutions. Another part is to carry out tasks that are in the service of humanity. (Examples include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.) (3) Let us return now to the Enlightenment and its fate. In the eighteenth century, attacks were made on it from the upholders of tradition, especially in the Catholic Church. Enlightenment was also attacked from another side by Romantics, who accused it of being too mechanical. By and large, however, it seemed to have survived among secular thinkers and, in

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countries such as France, to have captured the citadels of public space. In the twentieth century, it came under attack from members of the Frankfurt School. Theodor Adorno, for example, argued that the Enlightenment was responsible for totalitarianism. Although his thesis conveniently overlooks the fact that Great Britain and France—though with malignant strands of fascism, as in the Action Français—did not succumb to totalitarianism, it could draw upon such sources as Rousseau and his theory of the general will. This latter argument was developed in detail by a historian named Jacob Talmon (1952).10 The Enlightenment was a movement advocating the supremacy of reason and the possibility and desirability of political dissent. Skipping ahead a few centuries, the advent of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis marked a further crack in that edifice of belief, at least in regard to reason. Followers of Freud believed or suspected that the Id controls most of what we do and think, with the Ego trying to rein it in as if it were a bucking bronco. Two things further must be said in this regard. One is that Freud himself was a product of the Enlightenment and its embrace of scientific method. The other is that we are now more aware of the shaky bridge of reason carrying us over the abyss of raging emotions. (Further research in the field of neurobiology in fact has shown us that reason and emotion are always tied together.) With this rational awareness, we are better equipped to deal with our fears, anxieties, and so forth. A battle that needs continually to be fought is against antiscience forces. It seems incredible that in an advanced society such as the United States, close to 40 percent of Americans polled reject Darwin’s theory of evolution. One possible explanation is that about the same number declare themselves

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to be evangelical Christians, who have a different theory of origins. At the close of the nineteenth century, an alleged battle between theology and science was prominent in the climate of opinion. As a matter of historical fact, this thesis has been shown to be false; seventeenth-century scientists, for example, were religious and saw themselves and their work as being on the track of God. It has become increasingly clear, however, that the methods of science and religion are really philosophically incompatible, though the two in practice may not be so. In science, there is constant challenging of dogma, whereas most religion is based on faith and unproved revelation. The battle continues in muted fashion. Europe has become increasingly secular minded. China never had monotheistic religion—in spite of the Jesuits’ attempts. Even in evangelicaltinted America, non-believers, according to the polls, are now one in five. (4) Where does this leave us? As the German sociologist Ulrich Beck (1992), for example, has pointed out, we are in an era of global risks.11 Faced as we are with massive challenges in the form of climate change and resource depletion (especially of water), we lack the global institutions necessary to deal with them. The UN is woefully inadequate. Even more dismal is the climate of opinion. In opposition, globalization has been a retreat to fundamentalism in many parts of the world. While using the technology linked to science, most extremists reject the scientific method and the open-mindedness that goes with it. A serious campaign to restore the prestige and validation of science is the challenge that lies ahead. To be fully aware of the problem is the first step needed to deal with our situation in this globalizing world.

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Notes 1

An earlier version of this chapter appeared in: New Global Studies 7:1 April (2013), 25–31. 2. Professor Wolf Schäfer of the University of New York at Stony Brook is doing the best work exploring this problem from both sides. 3. Francis Bacon, “The New Atlantis,” Ideal Commonwealths (The Colonial Press, 1901). Bacon also speaks of those who direct new experiments of a “higher light” (136); cf. E. H. Gombrich, “Eastern Inventions and Western Responses,” Daedalus 127:1 (Winter 1998). 4. In Bruce Mazlish, The Uncertain Sciences (op. cit.), I go into much more detail on Francis Bacon and seventeenth-century science. 5. James D. Tracy, ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade 1350–1750 (Cambridge University Press, 1991). 6. Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning and Novum Organum (The Colonial Press, 1900). 7. Robert Kaplan in his book The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (New York: Random House, 2012). comes close to taking this position, although giving lip service to human activity. 8. Sebastian Conrad, “Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique,” American Historical Review 117:4, (2012). 9. Medard Gabel and Henry Bruner, Global Inc: An Atlas of the Multinational Corporation (New York: The New Press, 2003). It is a project of the New Global History Initiative and the World Game Institute (now: o.s.Earth). The conference behind this Atlas also resulted in a book, Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and Bruce Mazlish eds., Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History (Cambridge University Press, 2005). 10. Jacob Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (Beacon Press, 1952). 11. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage Publications, 1992).

8 Revisiting Barraclough’s   Contemporary History1 (1) The British historian Geoffrey Barraclough published his Introduction to Contemporary History in 1964. Effectively, he argued that “contemporary,” or “recent,”2 history was a legitimate, indeed requisite, subject for the historian. In itself, this was a major break with more traditionally conceived historical practice, returning us to the Herodotean origins of the discipline. Of even greater importance was his forceful assertion that contemporary history marked a break with the “modern,” requiring the historian of the events of the last sixty to seventy years to take account of “underlying structural changes” (1).3 In a bold act of prediction and analysis Barraclough sketched the outlines of global history avant la lettre. How prescient was he, in fact, and how well has his analysis held up? In revisiting Barraclough, we can gain renewed insight into our own “contemporary” history— that is, the events that have unfolded in the last half-century or so—as well as gain new ways of thinking about history. In what follows, I intend to put aside his extensive work in medieval history and in German studies, as well as his 103

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other forays into the nature of history. Sometime in the 1950s, Barraclough, his reputation secure in the traditional fields in which he had worked, turned toward international history as it trembled on the brink of becoming world or global history. In fact, in 1957 he accepted an appointment as Research Professor of International History at the University of London, which carried with it the directorship of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (succeeding Arnold Toynbee). Like many other historians at the time, he was inspired to transcend his Eurocentric perspective and to reach for a larger vision. His vision is best displayed by his Contemporary History book and strikingly so in its first chapter. My focus in this chapter will be on that book—with occasional shafts of light thrown on it by his other work.4 I will treat extensively of that first chapter, as it bears on our present-day thinking about world and global history, and then the following seven chapters as the author attempts to exemplify his new view of history in the concrete developments of the period 1890 to 1960. In these chapters, we get an early effort to describe and analyze the history of that time, a task that we can now compare with, for example, the recent books by Eric Hobsbawm and Tony Judt. Such comparison allows us to judge how much direct influence Barraclough has had on those who now practice “contemporary history” and how these two prominent present-day historians have carried out the detailed task. (2) Barraclough offers us a succinct definition when he says that “contemporary history begins when the problems which are actual in the world today first take visible shape” (12). With this definition in hand, he can then address the question of periodization. Given the difficulty of identifying exactly when these problems first appear, and recognizing that they spill

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over exact boundaries, he floats dates such as 1945 or 1939 or 1917 or 1898 as his starting point. The decision hangs on our awareness as to when we think the underlying structural changes begin to take shape. If I read him correctly, however, he really takes the period 1890 to 1960 as marking for him the time of contemporary history. What counts is that such history requires us to take on a new perspective and new values, which then enables us both to perceive what has happened and to realize that everything, so to speak, has fundamentally changed. Barraclough is constantly using the phrases watershed between two ages, turning points (in fact, there are too many of these, which leads to an unsettling of his argument), sense of living in a new period, and so forth. In this new period, for example, he sees a displacement of what was formerly central to the periphery and vice-versa. We are living in a new world, which can only be understood in terms of a “worldwide perspective” (2). Occasionally, Barraclough uses the phrase “world history,” but in general he speaks of “contemporary history.” This is a topic to which I shall return. Certain consequences attach themselves to his call for a new perspective. For example, the notion of archives must be rethought. The Rankean notion of fixed archives, to be found mainly in Europe and detailing diplomatic maneuvers, is overturned in a world where events in a mostly illiterate part of Nigeria may have greater importance than what goes on in a conference in Berlin. The notion of a Europe in decline yields to an emphasis on Europe’s role in bringing about a world in which Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and other parts of the globe are developing. The traditional procedure of historians working from the past forward and stressing temporal causality is supplanted by an insistence on starting from the present—as implicit in Barraclough’s definition of contemporary history—and working backwards.

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As a secondary consideration, this procedure can allow us to trace a present structure to its roots as far back in the past as appears useful. These underlying structural changes occur according to an “inner logic,” where a sort of dialectic is involved. Thus, actions of one kind occurring on one side of the world result—in a semi-deterministic fashion—in changes on another side. Fortunately, Barraclough is sufficiently aware of contingency and agency to avoid the worst excesses of determinism. We must bear his overall stance in mind as we read his list of basic structural shifts: The changed position of Europe in the world, the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as ‘superpowers,’ the breakdown (or transformation) of old imperialisms, ­British, French and Dutch, the resurgence [note his term] of Asia and Africa, the readjustments of relations between white and colored peoples, the strategic or thermonuclear revolution. (9) It is such shifts, taken together, that separate the contemporary from the preceding period. In the chapters following upon his first, Barraclough will seek to show in detail “what was happening.” For the moment, he settles for a claim that the list above distinguishes contemporary—which at one moment he calls “postmodern”—from modern history. Outstanding among the forces at work are: the industrial [actually, as he shows, the second industrial revolution] and social revolution in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the ‘new imperialism,’ whose result in the next century is the end of colonialism. The overall result is ‘the transition from a European to a global pattern of international politics.’ (18)

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We have arrived at “contemporary history.” Here, the fixed points of modern history—a sovereign nation-state and a firmly established social order, dominated by the bourgeoisie—­have been shaken and indeed overturned, and we are in a “new world . . . in orbit” (21). Barraclough has intuited what is known today as global history, or even New Global History. He himself is caught between the old and the new. This may be one reason why his pioneering work has fallen into neglect, pushed aside by those doing conventional treatments of the period 1890–1960, and is generally overlooked by those who bring his new perspective to bear on the period 1945 to the new millennium; moreover, the “contemporary” is a sliding definition, and what is contemporary at a given time can change. One result is that the lens by which he calls us to view our situation—our contemporary situation—has not been directly used by others to see what he saw. When Barraclough turned his way of seeing on the period 1890–1960, he did so in terms of the theories enunciated in the introductory chapter to his book. Thus, seven of his chapters are devoted to the underlying structural changes that he believed had taken place during that time. Taken together, these seven chapters amount to a different sort of history of the period than is usually written. Though details litter the chapters, some quite obscure, such as a reference to the Tamil novel in Ceylon (now, of course, Sri Lanka), Barraclough flies high above the usual terrain. His is a novel sort of history, penned in terms of his new perspective and values. (3) Chapter II, the first substantive chapter, is titled “The Impact of Technical and Scientific Advance.” For Barraclough, this is the “primary differentiating factor, marking off the new age from the old” (38). This factor has numerous ramifications,

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which we will explore in a moment, but first it must be noted that everyday life changed drastically between, say, 1867 and 1881. Suddenly present in that life was the existence, for example, of the internal combustion engine; the telephone; the microphone; the gramophone; wireless telegraphy; the electric lamp; mechanized public transportation; pneumatic tires; the bicycle; the typewriter; cheap mass circulation newsprint; the first of the synthetic fibers, artificial silk; and the first of the synthetic plastics, Bakelite. Thus began the flood of material changes that has continued unabated until this day. It is almost as if Barraclough were a technological determinist, a judgment made stronger by his attention to the developments of the electrical and chemical industries, of petroleum as an energy source equivalent to coal, of aniline dyes, and on and on. Similar improvements took place in the biological field, with the first use of antibiotics, the discovery of vitamins, and so forth. For him, these and other scientific and technological changes “are the starting point for the study of contemporary history” (43). These developments have created urban and industrial society. Such a society is marked by crises of overproduction. Most importantly, the period is characterized by an immense increase in population and its concentration in urban centers. Fundamentally, it results in the emergence of mass society with its consequent transformation of political life as hitherto known. At the same time, the world enters into a new imperialism, driven by the capitalist system’s need for a world market and for increased resources to be acquired anywhere and everywhere. Thus, the revolution started in Europe rapidly spreads and brings the entire world into its embrace. For Barraclough these world-wide developments—we are in the presence of a world revolution—all occur within the span of a single generation. This is the fundamental fact of his contemporary history.

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All of these details are packed, gracefully, into a single chapter. Does it confirm the notion that he is a technological determinist? I think not. While the shadow of Karl Marx hovers over his thinking, the British scholar attends to the facts as they unfold in a connected fashion—his inner logic—and not according to a general theory. His starting point is, indeed, science and technology, but he then goes on from there holistically to describe how one thing is connected to another, all constituting, and leading to, deep structural changes. These composite changes mark off our contemporary period from that which has gone before. The lines between modern and contemporary history are smudged, but for Barraclough they are there, with momentous consequences. In fact, Barraclough’s attribution of “primary” to various causes is shaky. In his next chapter, he speaks of the demographic factor as “the basic [my italics] change marking the transition from one era of history to another” (87). One of its primary consequences is “The Dwarfing of Europe.” Without going into the same detail as devoted to the previous chapter, we can note his argument that Russia and the USA have emerged on the flanks of Europe—Tocqueville had of course predicted this shift—and that the balance between white and colored has altered drastically. Such effects were the unintended results of European intervention in various parts of the world in pursuit of its selfish desire for resources and power. In Adam Smith-like fashion it resulted in Europe undermining its own position, marked by a shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific as the primary zone of importance. By now it should be clear how Barraclough “does” contemporary history. The remaining chapters can be dealt with even more briefly. The field of international relations, for example, is described as moving from the traditional balance of power to a world politics dominated by the USA and the Soviet Union. Where World War I was basically a European

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war, World War II was truly a world war, with Japan playing a leading role. By seeing these events from “the broader perspective of world history” (102), we discern their true shape. Next, Barraclough addresses the shift from “Individualism to Mass Democracy.” Here he observes how liberalism and its bourgeoisie adherents are displaced and replaced by new forms of social-political organization. State intervention is central to the political sphere. Mass politics, based on permanent “machines” (i.e., persisting past immediate elections), now dominates, and propaganda replaces “reasoned” appeals to an elite in Parliament. In the economic realm, family-dominated businesses give way to finance capitalism (and, we would add, a managerial revolution.) Returning to the theme of Europe having to relinquish its central position, we are given more details as to how this took place. In the revolt against colonialism, something like a quarter of the world’s population turned to national movements of liberation that gradually coalesced into a universal revolt against the West. In Barraclough’s eyes, a dialectic is involved in which the West’s need to invest outside its borders leads inexorably to the undermining of its position. By an “inner logic” (166), European expansion invoked opposition, which modernized the former victims of colonialism and equipped them to turn Europe’s own weapons against it. In his chapter VI, Barraclough invokes Sun Yat-sen and China, the Indonesian nationalist movement, and nationalist movements in North and Sub-Saharan Africa, making subtle and informed distinctions in each case. He is also aware that even without the West’s impact, these societies were not static. In his penultimate chapter, Barraclough takes up the issue of ideology and its challenge. Seeking to bring balance to the discussion, he adopts a neutral tone in writing about communism, which he describes as a doctrine to meet a new age. In its Leninist shape it carries a universal appeal as an alternative

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to liberalism. One consequence is that even liberalism must adapt and liberate itself from the extremes of laissez-faire (i.e., go forward as a welfare state). In this context, fascism and national socialism are accorded less than a full paragraph. The last chapter gathers up a great deal of what was happening in art and literature as a way of dealing with the overall change in “human attitudes.” It is in the course of this coverage that Barraclough mentions the Tamil novel in Ceylon (already noted). He is well up on the various developments that occur under the heading of modernism and avant-garde art. Here, he tells us, “progress” (231) is slower than in science and technology, from which we had started in the first chapter. Faith in the meaning of reality is shaken, in both art and science, but happily the negative reaction to science and technology is gradually being matched by a more positive reaction. The author’s conclusion is that what we are witnessing, all in all, is the collapse of the humanist tradition. (4) Standing back from this overview of the book, and thus contemporary history, we can see that the work is a tour de force. Barraclough’s coverage is astounding, and his versatility in crossing over the disciplines is very impressive. His good judgment and wisdom are to be seen in paragraph after paragraph. He has offered us not only a validation of contemporary history, carried out through a new perspective and novel historical values, but also an exemplification of how one scholar can carry out such a task. With this said, we must also note some of his limitations and even errors. He clearly overestimated the staying power and attraction of communism. But so did almost everyone else. He was wrong in thinking that laissez-faire capitalism had passed from the stage of history: Thatcher and Reagan and the global expansion of free-market capitalism in the 1980s

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and ’90s show it roaring back on a world-wide scale. But who was to guess? The most serious flaw in Barraclough’s account is the complete omission of religion; there is no treatment of it. Implicitly, he seems to share the Enlightenment view that religion will simply gradually disappear in a cloud of secularism. Post 9/11 we know how shallow this view is and how powerfully religion, especially as it plays out politically, figures in our contemporary history. What these errors show is how difficult, if not impossible, it is to predict history, a matter of contingency. Barraclough’s own practice of contemporary history was skewed toward the perspective of international relations. It gave him great insights. (Needless to say, it is a necessary part of the whole being described.) But it also stood as a block to his use of other disciplines. Sociology and its perspective are almost entirely missing from Barraclough’s tool-kit. Elsewhere he pooh-poohed the contribution of Norbert Elias and his ideas about the civilizing process. (5) Although not too many historians have worked along the lines put down by Barraclough, a brief comparison with a few others will help give us a clearer idea of his possible influence and his actual achievements. I choose as my examples Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes (Vintage Books, 1994) and Tony Judt’s Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (Penguin Books, 2005).5 Both these books are obviously engaged in contemporary history. Both authors, of course, have the benefit of over thirty years of additional knowledge to that held when Barraclough wrote his Introduction. The definition of world or global history and the perspective thereof is more contentious. The subtitle of Hobsbawm’s work is “A History of the World, 1914–1991,” which he treats as the short twentieth

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century. In over six hundred pages and nineteen chapters, he offers both a detailed account of what happened and a guide to the basic structural changes of the period. He writes with great style, blunt judgments, and extraordinary insight. Our focus here will be on a few central points. For Hobsbawm, there seem to be three major period shifts: one after WWI, which he labels “The Age of Catastrophe”; another in the 1970s, for which he uses the term watershed; and that in the 1990s, where the one thing certain was that “an era of history had ended” (559). Within these ­periodizations, we are presented with a masterful account of the great rivalry of capitalism and socialism, with fascism as a steady drumbeat, leading to the alliance of its two rivals, which for Hobsbawm is the “hinge of twentieth-century history” (7). Here, we see how “The Great Slump” prepared the way for the apparent collapse of liberalism and the coming of total war. While giving a remarkable account of the details, Hobsbawm never loses sight of the forest for the trees. We shall concentrate on his forest view. Calling fascism a universal movement, he recognizes its appeal at a time of economic crisis, when it seemed to deal better with unemployment and the iniquities of laissez-faire than did liberal ­capitalism. Barraclough, as we remember, dismissed fascism in a few paragraphs; Hobsbawm does better by what he dislikes, acknowledging fascism and Nazism until its final defeat and disappearance as a major structural force. The same is true in respect of communism. Matching Barraclough’s respect for it—and this even after its collapse in the nineties—Hobsbawm draws upon his own personal involvement. His neutral account, remarkable for someone who was accounted a communist sympathizer or more, illuminates the Cold War in a unique way. Personal touches enhance his book, as he remarks upon his memory of hearing Castro in one of his great public monologues—an experience

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shared at a different occasion by the present writer. Even after the end of Soviet communism, he insists, correctly I believe, that its failure “does not reflect on the possibility of other kinds of socialism” (498). Similarly, he goes against the current in insisting that the Soviet Union, brutal and repressive as it was, was not “totalitarian” (393–4). In both these matters his historical account persuades us that he is right. Humor and nuance characterize his story—so does bluntness, as when he states that JFK was the “most overrated US president of the century” (243). Hobsbawm constantly does what an historian is supposed to do: cut through myth. This, however, is only one part of his accomplishment. The other is to identify the deep structural changes of contemporary history. Thus, he is unafraid to pronounce, “Never has the face of the globe and human life been so dramatically transformed as in the era which began under the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” (177). Amidst attention to the striking features of The Age of Extremes, I run the risk of myself losing sight of the forest (i.e., understating the structural changes). Let me hastily signal some of them. They run throughout the book but mainly manifest themselves in the post-nineties period. Among them are the death of the peasantry, the mass entry into the public domain of married women, a revolution in the nature of the family and family relations, the coming of youth culture and the concept of youth, the democratization of arms (i.e., their omnipresence), the emergence of an international division of labor, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, the population explosion across the globe, and the rise of guerrilla warfare. The contemporary is a time of great uncertainty. Hobsbawm is at home, though an amateur, with the major changes in the nature of science itself, marked by such ideas as the “uncertainty principle” and chaos theory, unsettling the reliance on experience and reality previously present in physics.

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(Oddly enough, Hobsbawm does not treat of the human sciences; for that the reader might want to turn to my own work, The Uncertain Sciences, [1998/2006] op. cit.) Thus, the crisis and catastrophe of our contemporary period rests on the intellectual uncertainty proffered by the natural sciences, not unexpectedly fostering distrust in humanity’s rational powers. Much of this is reflected in the arts, which Hobsbawm informs us have been made omnipresent by ­technology. (Incidentally, he is an expert in the history of jazz.) The future appears bleak. History, we are told, is no help in prophesying; it can only tell us that we must change so as to adapt to a changing world. The major threats are demography and ecology, but how we shall—or should—respond to them is beyond the power of the historian to tell us. The nation-state is weakened; the media replaces political parties but cannot govern. As we head into the new millennium, a sense of gloom pervades Hobsbawm’s book. The only positive note is that, looking back over the past half-century or so, we know more clearly from whence we have come. Perhaps this will better enable us to see our way forward? As for Barraclough, he is nowhere mentioned in the index or in Hobsbawm’s book. Yet obviously his shadow hovers over it. The Age of Extremes is a marvelous exemplification of the use of the same sense of new perspective. It is truly a world or global history of sorts. Can the same be said of Judt’s Postwar? (6) The answer is given in the subtitle, A History of Europe since 1945. The book is over nine hundred pages, but hardly glances at matters outside its borders. Those borders, however, have been expanding, and the story Judt tells is basically of the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence, from the ashes of the old Europe, of a new one in the form of the European Union. It is a Europe, West and East, but shorn of

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its imperialistic holdings. In terms of what it sets out to be, Postwar is a splendid book, an exemplary exposition. It is only partial derogation of Judt’s achievement to note its limited nature in the light of Barraclough’s call for a new kind of contemporary history. Decolonization, for example, is recounted from a European perspective. Though the EU is described as incorporating a great “trans-national achievement” (534)— a reference to the Schengen Agreement setting up a shared regime of passport control for the signers—Judt is not interested in transnationalism as a phenomenon per se. Globalization, though given a few pages, is dismissed in rather a perfunctory manner (736–737). At the heart of the book is the author’s stress on memory. Europe must come to terms with its past, the whole of it, though for political purposes partial amnesia is necessary. The author himself is deeply and personally involved in these memories. One comment is revealing. At the end of the book, Judt declares, “In retrospect, ‘Auschwitz’ is the most important thing to know about World War Two” (823). This may be so, but Judt does not defend this interpretation; perhaps it is implicit in his entire book. Staying within the context of a rejuvenated Europe—and Judt’s account of the devastation, physical and mental, wrought by the war is superb—the author emerges finally, in contrast with Hobsbawm, in a mood of some optimism. As he announces in his last full chapter, neither America nor China can offer a serviceable model for universal emulation. Instead, he concludes, in a moment of prediction, “The twenty-first century might yet belong to Europe” (800). Probably neither Barraclough nor Hobsbawm would agree. Judt is likely to be regarded as the last of the great traditionalists. He does contemporary history brilliantly but not in the context of the new perspective called for by The Introduction to Contemporary History, a book written just over a half-century

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ago. Yet, by my invoking Judt’s book, along with that of Hobsbawm’s, we can arrive at a more adequate judgment of Barraclough’s achievement. It has been a beacon, hovering over the historical landscape, rather than a steady light. It is a beacon, however, that must constantly be relit. There can be no question of the importance of ­Barraclough’s Introduction in vindicating the practice of contemporary history. Its effects on the practice of “world history” are less clear, as is that designation itself. Barraclough’s call for a new perspective and new values do embed themselves, however, in the way world historians go about their business, generally trying to transcend a Eurocentric orientation. In regard to global history, and beyond that New Global History, his first theoretical chapter is a continuing inspiration. For that, and for some of the earlier reasons given, revisiting Barraclough is a “contemporary” obligation. (7) Geoffrey Barraclough vindicated contemporary history as a subject. In the process, he also serves as an inspiration for all those who attempt to engage in its practice, especially in regard to globalization. His spirit hovers especially over the initiative in this regard that has been going forward under the name of the abovementioned New Global History (NGH). In this second section, I will look at the way he himself moved in the direction of NGH and yet missed much of what goes on under its rubric. In no sense does this detract from Barraclough’s inspiration; rather it underlines the distinction between inspiration and prediction. NGH, of course, does not exhaust Barraclough’s influence. His name is often invoked by those working in world history and global history. He is, apparently, also a guardian angel for those in China who are attempting to understand globalization historically. His name appears frequently in

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discussions of world history, aligning him with Toynbee and others opposing Eurocentrism. Thus, Wu Yujin, a leading scholar of the post-Cultural Revolution period, wrote a long review of History in a Changing World and mentions Barraclough in a 1964 essay.6 The new magazine Chinese Global History Review, published in Beijing, edited by Sun Yue, is now translating the present essay. A funny thing, however, appears to happen on the way to Beijing. World history and global history become servants to national and nationalistic Chinese history. The global is subsumed under the national history, rather than vice-versa. China, however, is not unique in this way of dealing with world and global history. As was demonstrated at the recent conference “Global History Globally,” held at Harvard ­University, February 8–9, 2008, more or less all of these efforts—whether in Japan, South Korea, Turkey, France, Germany, Cameroon, Senegal, Argentina, or Trinidad and Tobago—have the same tendency. The Korean historian, Jie-Hyun Lim, said in his excellent paper for the conference, “Various orientations of transnational history, once presumed as the alternative to competing national histories in East Asia, accommodated and even served nationalist agenda.”7 This could also serve as a description of the vicissitudes of world and global history across the globe. (8) At this point, a brief distinction among the various historiographical designations world, global, and New Global ­History is useful to recall from the Introduction of this book, along with chapter 2. (Other terms, such as transnational, translocal, histoire croisse, etc. are also often invoked, testimony to the fluidity of the field.) Many historians, of course, think such terminological disputes a waste of time. In their view, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I take a different

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view. Mine is the ­Linnaean approach. Scholars in different parts of the world will not know that they are talking about the same species unless there is a common classification, so that a primrose is not a rose. Of course, such efforts can degenerate into pedantry if one’s eye is not kept on reality. In other words, there are real features characterizing world, global, and New Global History, and classification is useful in identifying them so as to facilitate research into what they represent. With this said, it is important to add that all three approaches are legitimate ways of understanding the human past, ancient or recent. They lie, indeed, on a spectrum, with each illuminating the others. What they all have in common is a desire and intention to transcend the hitherto prevailing Eurocentric perspective. The latter lost its dominance after WWII with the concomitant end of colonialism. It is interesting to note that Europe and America in the nineteenth century were at the height of their demographic rise, which was underpinning their economic, technical, and cultural supremacy. By the late twentieth century the signs were reversed—both immediate population decline and slow political and cultural sagging were now evident—and Eurocentrism was on the wane. We must remember that history is both an art and a social science discipline generally practiced in an academic setting. As a mainstay of most history departments in the United States of the 1950s, one could find the European Civilization course—and an American Civilization survey course. It is this offering that has been displaced and replaced by world history. Thus, there is a powerful institutional component to the rise of world history—in lieu of the rise of the West. What has happened in America, still the bellwether in the academic world, has been taken up, mutatis mutandis, in other parts of the globe under the name of world history or global history.

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Much ink has been spilled in the effort to define these ways of transcending Eurocentrism, and to rise to the global. I wish to avoid descending into this pit here8 and to simply make a few bold strokes on the canvas of debate. In Barraclough’s terms, both world and global historians are not doing contemporary history—and there is no reason why they should—unless dealing with the most recent past or being imbued with the new perspective as he tried to outline it. That latter is the subject matter of New Global History. Thus, while world and global history primarily look back to the past—where most historians are most comfortable—New Global History looks mostly to the present and the future. In doing so, New Global historians are forced to abandon the usual reliance on traditional archives, which arose with the coming of the nation-state, and to focus on the global processes that arise separate from, though connected to, the nation-state. Needless to say, the latter is not disappearing—in fact, the number of states has exploded post-1945, now numbering 193 in the UN—but they have changed in their powers and abilities to deal with problems of sovereignty, security, and suchlike. The focus on the nation-state, while it can no longer function or be understood separately from global developments, is displaced in New Global History by a sustained focus on the processes of globalization. This entails detailed research on such expanding institutions as non-governmental organizations, multinational corporations, and international bodies such as the UN and its myriad derivatives. Human rights and the concept of humanity must figure prominently.9 It is essential to note that the term globalization is of recent origin. A research topic in its own right, the term appears to have originated in the 1960s or 1970s. The United States, Japan, and perhaps Latin America all have claims to be the first in creating this neologism. We need not get hung up on priority, inasmuch as it is the widespread use of the term that is critical; it was certainly ubiquitous by the 1970s—from

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which time it has increasingly become a faddish term.10 What counts most is that the term signifies a revolution in consciousness; we now recognize that we all live in a globalized world on a planet, Earth, that can actually be viewed from outer space. With this in mind, we can then argue about whether globalization is merely or largely equivalent to the spread of a market economy, as economic historians would have it, or a political enlargement—on the way to world government, as some would fancifully have it—or whatever. I will be as forthright as possible. Those who equate globalization with the extension of the market, meaning the free market, are more ideologists—even if unconsciously so— than they are informed social scientists. To the New Global historian, economics is always political, social, and cultural and cannot really be understood otherwise. This means that NGH must be as interdisciplinary as possible—that is, history must be seen as holistic—and must transcend both existing boundaries of study and lines on a map. It is, therefore, the overall shift in consciousness that should stand in back of all further work in the field. (9) Let us now return to Barraclough. Recall he began his career in history as a medievalist. His jump to contemporary and global history is less surprising if we remind ourselves that the nation-state did not exist in the Middle Ages. Empires and religions with universalist claims dominated. Thus his mindset was already predisposed to the transcendence of the modern form of nation-state governance and to the study of large-scale, sweeping movements. This same excursion into what might be called the sociology of knowledge helps illuminate Barraclough’s openness to the idea that modernity has been transcended by contemporary history, which places us in a global period. As we saw, he attempted to spell this out in field after field, ranging from

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technology to art and music. If one starts from the past, it is natural to see modernity emerging from a medieval past. If one starts, however, from the present and its problems, as he advocates, the modern is in the past and is no longer “contemporary.” Into its place steps the global. Also entailed in this view is that the heyday of Europe, more or less equated with the modern, is now over. The Eurocentric perspective is not only wrong, in the sense of being too narrow, but outdated. Thus, we witness Barraclough’s frequent use of such terms as watershed and turning point, mentioned above. For him, we have literally passed into a new period, for which a new kind of history is necessary; I have proposed New Global History as the response to this need. It is here that it is useful to go back to the definitional question concerning world, global, and New Global History. As I said earlier, we are on a spectrum. As recent debates on the uniqueness and universality of the West demonstrate, the debate is lively.11 I would like to argue that out of that debate can emerge the profound conclusion that all of world and global history, pre-1945, underlines the understanding that humanity must be seen in the large. By that I mean that all innovations and achievements anywhere must be viewed as resulting from interactions, interdependencies, and interconnections everywhere. To illustrate this central point, I will quote another scholar, who puts it extremely well. As Jack Goldstone argues in discussing the developments so prominent in the European Renaissance, they must be recognized as linked to developments in other times, societies, and cultures. Thus, we must recognize that, India’s contribution of the ‘zero’ matches any ­contribution of Renaissance art or architecture to modern society; that modern science rests not on a Greek but on a GrecoHindu-Arabic mix of advances and discoveries; that

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modern technology borrowed uncounted critical breakthroughs from non-western societies, including ship design, the compass, printing, paper, cotton production, silk production and more. He also notes that “modern bureaucracy, meritocracy, rationalism, and equality before the laws owe much to influences from China and even Babylon.”12 Needless to say, all of these assertions are arguable. Not so, however, the general point: that all human actions and reactions are the result of manifold influences and mutual developments. We avoid infinite regress by concentrating on those influences and developments that seem most pertinent to the social constructions that we identify in our local and particular scholarly work. By rising to the level of “humanity” as the subject of world, global, and New Global History, we are able to deal with the details—whether in the form of empires or national states—in their proper setting. This is why, henceforth, all history should be some form of global history. (10) This is the profound insight vouchsafed us by the author of Introduction to Contemporary History. It overshadows everything else he has to share with us in that book. It places in their proper perspective both his correct observations-cum-­ predictions that Asia is rising and that European colonialism is disappearing and also his erroneous statement that the Soviet Union, for example, would persist. When we focus on the deepest structural changes of his contemporary period—we must remember he was writing in 1964—we see that he got many things right and helped prepare the way for subsequent historical inquiry and analysis. Much of that inquiry and analysis has taken place at the hands of Western scholars as they struggle to free themselves from Eurocentrism and by non-Western scholars who are

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­ evertheless trained in the Western ways. It is useful once again n to bring in the eyes of a sociologist of knowledge. He/she—and the gender question is an important addition—will note that among the Western scholars a disproportionate number are Asian or African specialists. Coming in from the traditional “periphery” of history, they move their specialties to the ­“center” and displace their colleagues in European and American history. A similar statement could be made about economic historians, allowing for various differences. Thus, within the discipline of history itself, a transcending of the hitherto accepted boundaries of the profession matches the march past established boundaries and borders of states and regions on the map.13 There is a danger that even efforts such as these retain their Eurocentric cast. World history as “European survey heavy” lurks in the publishers’ catalogues. More weighty is the risk that globalization gets lost as a unique contemporary development—a new perspective—that both separates us in significant ways from the past and illuminates it. This notion, too, is part of Barraclough’s heritage for us. What he bequeaths to us is an appeal to constantly do “contemporary history,” concentrating on structural changes. As he eloquently reminds us, we must be open to the new while not ignoring continuities. Indeed, it is only in the light of the latter that we can recognize the presence of the novel. In this vein, practitioners of NGH can insist on the importance of periodization and emphasize the ruptures that occur in human affairs. Barraclough’s “new world” of history, with his insistence that it involves a concatenation of changes, points us in the direction of present-day globalization being viewed holistically or, in my terms, as a group of “factors” emerging concomitantly. Among these factors are many that engaged Barraclough’s attention but many that he knew nothing about. He says little about the human journey into outer space,

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about the satellites fostering instantaneous communication beyond anything previously known, about the way such a development facilitates the spread of multinational corporations and non-governmental organizations, or about the emergence of a computer world. Nor does he speak much about the UN (there is one trivial entry in the index of his book), the rise of human rights movements, and the power of religious extremism. We are much concerned today with the environmental question, whose planetary nature is made evident from pictures of Earth taken from on high, and especially with the short- and long-term effects of global warming; these are all structural changes or factors either non-existent or unnoticed by Barraclough. They are, however, the province of research by New Global historians. If Barraclough were alive and writing today, he would be among the foremost New Global historians: primus inter pares. This is not the case, of course; he died in 1984. Yet in one sense he didn’t really die, for his work lives after him. It is his inspiration that enrolls him in the camp of NGH; it is under his banner that the work of “contemporary” history continuously goes forward. As I have tried to argue, the cause is larger than a particular subfield, for it is not just NGH but world and global history at large that are enlisted in the struggle to understand the past, the present, and the future of an emerging global humanity. This chapter added to the historiography of NGH from chapter 2, focusing on Barraclough. It provided a way station for reflection on the topics of chapters 3–7. In the next (and final) two chapters of this book, I recap chapters 3–7 and the journey toward global humanity through trade, seafaring, communication, and knowledge. I assess the relevance of global history and prospects of global humanity and its institutions – given accelerating interconnectivity threatened by countercurrents of economic protests and extremist religions.

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

This chapter was previously an article that went through a couple of versions and expansions, the most recent of which appeared in New Global Studies, 2:3 (October 2008). Barraclough’s ideas were originally presented as lectures given to an Oxford Recent History Group. Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (London: C. A. Watts & Co., LTD, 1964). Page references are to this edition. Most commentary on Barraclough has been about his earlier book, History in a Changing World (Blackwell Press, 1956), and emphasizes his break with historicism. In reviewing that book back in 1957, E. Harris Harbison highlighted Barraclough’s debt to Arnold Toynbee and the latter’s attempt to revive on new foundations “the old conception of universal or world-history.” World Politics 9 (January 1957): 262. As will be obvious in what follows, I believe that Barraclough in his 1964 Introduction transcended the vision of his earlier work. Charles Bright and Michael Geyer, Benchmarks of Globalization: the Global Condition, 1850–2010 (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2012) would also be an apt candidate for comparison. Luo Xu, “Reconstructing World History in the People’s Republic of China since the 1980s,” Journal of World History 18:3 (September 2007): 333. Incidentally, Wu was trained at Harvard University in the 1940s. A leading expert on Chinese ­historiography in respect of world history is Q. Edward Wang. See his “The Rise of Great Powers=the Rise of China? The Transition from World History to Global History in the PRC and its Political Implications,” A paper drafted for the symposium on “Global History, Globally,” Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Feb. 7–9, 2008. Jie-Hyun Lim, “Tensions between National and Transnational Paradigms in Contemporary East Asian Historiography—on Korea and Japan,” Paper presented at Global History, Globally conference, op. cit., p. 7. In previous writings I have tried to go much further in dealing with the terminology of global studies. See, for example, Bruce Mazlish, “Terms” in Advances in World History, Marnie Hughes-

Revisiting Barraclough’s Contemporary History    127

9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

Warrington ed., (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). In Bruce Mazlish, “Comparing Global History to World History,” (Journal of Interdisciplinary History 28, no. 3 [1998]), I especially examine the etymology and thus valence of the two terms, which point to important differences of orientation. (Try substituting third globe for third world.) World, from the Middle English for “human existence,” refers to the earth. Globe comes from Latin and is defined as “something spherical or rounded” like a “heavenly body” and points in the direction of space. For the concept of humanity, which builds upon the notion of crimes against humanity, see further Bruce Mazlish, The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era (2009), op. cit. A related problem of sorts is periodization. Ought we to date globalization per se from the 1940s, 1950s, etc. up to the ­present? It depends on when we think a number of factors have sufficiently coalesced into what we consider globalization. See, for example, “Recentering the West: A Forum” in Historically Speaking (Nov./Dec. 2007). Jack Goldstone, “To the Editors [of the journal Historically Speaking]” (unpublished manuscript), 2. One should also note the effect on hiring in any history department.

9 On the Brink of the Global1 (1) As early as the third century BC, Greek astronomers had established the sphericity of the planet. To represent this fact, the earliest terrestrial globe was created. This was done by gluing strips—known as gores—of a printed paper map onto a sphere generally made from wood. Almost none of these early globes have survived, though various ones were constructed in China and in Islamic countries. It appears that the earliest surviving globe was that created in Nuremberg, Germany in 1492—a momentous year—by Martin Behaim. It did not show America, but that was corrected in a globe made in 1507 by Martin Waldseemülller. Almost at the end of the sixteenth century, in fact, in 1599, a theatre was opened in London called the Globe. The name presumably derives from a Latin line written by Petronius, a first-century author in Rome, to the effect that “all the world plays the actor.” It was at this theatre that many of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed. One of them was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In it a character named Puck proclaims “I’ll put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes.” This imaginary course was far faster than Magellan’s circumnavigation of the earth in 1517–1519. 129

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It did, however, correlate with the expansive thrust of Britain into both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Puck’s forty-minute “girdle” anticipates the even faster globalization brought about by the computer. With today’s computer, communication around the globe can take place almost instantaneously. Though a prototype of the modern computer can be found in the mid-nineteenth century in the work of Charles Babbage with his difference engine, it is really only after World War II that we can speak of “the computer revolution.” As I have argued elsewhere, including in chapter 4 above, I believe that present-day globalization is best thought of as a “rupture.”2 Using satellites launched into space, computers link the world much faster than Puck’s forty minutes. The compression of time and space that had been taking place earlier takes a giant leap forward.3 It takes us into a truly global world. Periodization is essential for historians in their effort to understand the past.4 The transition from modernity to globalization is robustly taking place.5 Historians and social scientists now need to run to catch up.6 (2) In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was the small nations open to the Atlantic Ocean that were best placed to take advantage of exploratory and trade possibilities. At first they did so in terms of merchant empires. These, such as the British and Dutch East India Companies, intersect with, as one writer puts it, “the debate about the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe.”7 They are also intermediary to the growth of nationalism and the nation-state, which took over the functions of these private companies. Basic to these developments was money. One of the great inventions of humankind, it more or less has a universal value.8 It was the lubricant that greased the wheels of

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commerce. As noted in the chapter 7, with trade based on money, another universal traveled: knowledge. Francis Bacon captured this fact when he coined the phrase “merchants of light” to describe the dual role of the merchant empire builders, who, along with trade, brought knowledge, now to be put into scientific form.9 It was the British Royal Society, inspired by Bacon, where many of these merchants could be found. Again, this was the institution where their claims could be advanced and subjected to debates and tests. It was also the space where the profession of scientist could find its origins. (In France there was the Academy of Science.)10 One of the great “lights,” though not a merchant, was Isaac Newton. His theories of gravity and optics were universal truths. Like money, they held true everywhere in spite of different climes and cultures. Until the eighteenth century, other countries—China for one—were richer than the European ones. What Europe had and used, however, were sailing vessels and, later, steamboats that allowed them to project force anywhere around the globe. The coming of the Industrial Revolution, first in Great Britain, increased this force with the result that by the nineteenth century large parts of the globes being constructed were colored red. The actor at the Globe theatre now strode the scene. (3) The eighteenth century has been called the age of Enlightenment. Philosophes and scientists succeeded the merchants of light. Belief in God gave way to belief in Newton and his laws.11 Scientific explorations took place in laboratories and on the seas. Robert Hooke performed his famous experiments on the existence of the vacuum in England.12 Sir Joseph Banks financed expeditions to bring back flora and fauna to the home country. Voyages were undertaken with specific scientific questions in mind. Thus, for example, the Frenchman

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Maupertuis led an expedition to Lapland to determine the shape of the earth, and in 1761 and 1769 he observed the transit of Venus, which occurs only every couple of centuries and in exactly that order—that is, eight years apart. Science, which dealt with universals, had become global. It required comparable nomenclature. Linnaeus supplied it in regard to the animal and mineral world. Time was finally fixed around the globe by the establishment of Greenwich Mean Time in 1884. By the time of the twentieth century, global weather reports were being made. Mathematics, that extraordinary offspring of the human mind, held true everywhere. Now, and especially so after WWII, what came to be called World History and Global History, as well as New Global History, began to shape the patterning of the past.13 (It should be noted that history as a discipline was shaped mainly in the nineteenth century in the graduate schools of German universities.) Thus, past, present, and future took on the imprint of the global. (4) Globalization has not had it all its own way. It has called forth anti-globalization. The protests in Seattle in 1999 called forth world attention. On another side it found doubters, those who believed that the process was slowing down and might even go into reverse. These doubters could point to the efflorescence of religious, ethnic, and national identifications. A particularly divisive form has been Global Islam and its Jihadist claim to a world-wide caliphate. A more favorable view of globalization sees it as fostering an identification that transcends more local attachments, in short, a global identity. Clearly, this requires much empirical work to test such an assumption. An historical perspective is also essential. I have attempted to undertake such an inquiry in my 2009 book The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era.

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In that book, I cite the growth of a sense of common humanity stemming from the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–46. As discussed briefly in previous chapters, its charge of “crimes against humanity” made central the question, what is this humanity that is being sinned against?14 A moment’s reflection reminds us that it is also a part of our humanity, our nature, that committed such crimes. Other, more benign signs, however, can be found in the launching of satellites making feasible the use of computers for more or less instantaneous communication. One result, as stated earlier, has been an extraordinary compression of time and space. What of the future? In a path-breaking article, the sociologist Martha Van Der Bly theoretically develops the concept of a society that goes beyond thinking of “us” and “them.” She does so in terms of seven theses, the most important of which is “that humans’ capacity to cross borders (in a metaphorical and literal sense) is greater than the desire for its opposite” (1). She then expands on her theses in the next thirty-five pages.15 In short, Van Der Bly, in her sociological concepts and abstractions, and I, using the lens of history to look at the past and present and the projection into the future of currents that have been running strongly in the past, envision a growing sense of humankind becoming part of one humanity. This identity will not do away with more local ones but transcend them—aided by transnational history, global history, and New Global History. Immanuel Kant had written of man’s social/unsocial nature—his being a “crooked stick”—and thus of the limitations in the way of achieving a universal peace. There is no need to challenge Kant’s description of human nature and its consequent depiction as it works itself out in economic terms by Adam Smith. It is enough to know that a fuller analysis of human nature, as in the case of Van Der Bly, shows

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how other traits can help the theorist and social scientist go beyond Kant. In his The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin spoke of how there is grandeur in realizing and seeing the course of the human species’ physical evolution. Is there not equal grandeur in seeing the species’ intellectual development, though subject to more complicated causes than that of natural selection? Intrinsic to this development is the fact that Homo sapiens is conscious of what is happening and acts as an agent, especially by the use of technology and culture, in this process. It is a process still going on. Its latest shape is globalization. Manifesting itself after WWII, globalization means increased interconnectivity and interdependence and an extraordinary compression of time and space. It invokes reaction, in the form of anti-globalization and an attempted return to supposedly more primordial tribal, ethnic, or religious identities. This should hardly come as a surprise. Modernity before globalization had aroused strong reactions and still does. There is no reason to expect less from globalization. These are exciting times. Globalization and its consequences are hardly predictable or inevitable. We humans are not merely passive creatures observing “what is going on.” We are the central actors in the human drama, strutting around the stage—Shakespeare’s Globe—as both the heroes and the ­villains. Notes 1. 2.

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “The Imprint of the Global” in New Global Studies 8:2 July (2014), 177–182. See the chapter by this name in Bruce Mazlish, Reflections on the Modern and the Global (2014), op. cit. Cf. Martin Albrow’s article “Hiroshima: The First Global Event?” (paper presented to the workshop on “Collective Memory and Collective Knowledge in a Global Age” at the Centre for the Study of Global Gov-

On the Brink of the Global    135

ernance, London School of Economics and Political Science, April 17–18, 2007). 3. Cf. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). 4. M. I. Finley, The Use and Abuse of History (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993) is especially clear-sighted in this regard. 5. I attempt to look at this transition in depth in Bruce Mazlish, Reflections on the Modern and the Global (2014), op. cit. 6. A major effort to see how this is occurring around the world is Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives on Global History (Cambridge University Press, 2011). 7. Thomas H. Brady, “The Rise of Merchant Empires, 1400–1700: A European Counterpoint,” in The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade. 1350–1750, James D. Tracy ed., (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 148. This is a very important book, though often overlooked. 8. For a luminous treatment of money see Georg Simmel, [The Philosophy of Money.], Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1900. 9. Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning. 1604 (World Classics, 1901), 136. Bacon also speaks of those who direct new experiments of a “higher light” (136). Cf. chapter 7 in this book for a more extended treatment. 10. As discussed above in chapter 1, the terms science and scientist were not devised, however, until 1833 when William Whewell, the philosopher of science first coined these rubrics as generic terms encompassing distinct fields such as physics, chemistry, and biology. 11. In his book (Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 [Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001], 810), Jonathan Israel argues that the origin of the Enlightenment was in the seventeenth century and mainly in Holland. Spinoza is the hero in this account. A very interesting effort to look at the Enlightenment as a global event, also cited in chapter 7, can be found in Sebastian Conrad’s “Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique,” The American History Review, 117:4 (October 2012): 999–1027. 12. This whole episode in science is treated brilliantly by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton University Press, 1985).

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13. For an extended discussion of these changes in historiography, see Marnie Hughes-Warrington ed., Advances in World Histories (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). My own contribution is chapter 2, “Terms.” An excellent investigation of the treatment around the world of global history is Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World (Cambridge University Press, 2011). 14. In fact, even earlier the charge of “crimes against civilization and humanity” had been leveled against the Ottoman Turks’ treatment of the Armenians in 1913. As mentioned in chapter 5, the word civilization was later dropped because of perceived offense to the Islamic religion. 15. Martha Van Der Bly, “Pananthropoi—Towards a Society of All Humanity” Globality Studies Journal 37 (Sept 8, 2013).

10 Whither Globalization? History means inquiry. Such was Herodotus’s usage. As the discipline of history developed, the inquiry tended to be into the past. In principle, however, there is little reason why it cannot also be extended into the future. All of history, of course, is subject to contingency. Prediction is simply a probability estimate with an extraordinary number of variables. Is the case for looking ahead therefore a waste of time? I think not. It must be done with various strictures in mind. One is that in seeking to understand long-term processes, the historian or social scientist must try to identify strong currents that are coursing through society. Then he launches twigs of thought into the current, aware that they may get caught in a mud bank or go floating on further and then disappear. Another directive to be kept in mind is that to every action there is a reaction: the Reformation was followed by a CounterReformation, Secularism by a return to ­Fundamentalism. Hegel’s thesis-antithesis-synthesis is a rigid, but suggestive, way of conveying this fact. In general, the historian can only carry this sequence a little way out. Still, the attempt must be made. 137

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Yet another caution must be observed. It is to avoid thinking in terms of monoliths. This was certainly an error during the Cold War, when communism was thought about as an undivided entity, ignoring the numerous strands other than the Russian, with the Chinese foremost among them. The same may be true today. There are many divisions in Islam, starting with that between Sunni and Shiite. Further, neither of these two is monolithic: Turkey is Sunni but vastly different from Sunni Saudi Arabia. What is clear is that a process of accelerated globalization has been taking place since World War II. Many historians see a continuous line of world or global history. By this they mean increasing interactions have been taking place among peoples, societies, and civilizations more or less since the ascent of Homo sapiens. The case for this view, allowing for temporary regressions, can easily be made. It should not, however, prevent us from conceiving of post-WWII as a “rupture.”1 In my view this is heuristically ­desirable. It accords with the fact that widespread consciousness of our entering a “Global Age” can be established.2 There can be contention over its first significant use but none over the fact that it came into common currency sometime in the 1970s and 1980s. In conjunction with other events, it has made us superaware of our common humanity. The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima dramatically showed us how precarious our human civilization is. The moon landing presented us with a striking visual image of our togetherness on the Blue Planet. Perhaps greatest of all in it effects was the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–46, with its charge of “crimes against humanity.” The question immediately arose: what is this humanity that is being sinned against? That question has inspired much of my subsequent work. A preliminary step in this search was to periodize ­globalization. A number of scholars have undertaken this task.3

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What is certain is that national boundaries are constantly being breached electronically. More and more problems are arising on the global level and require transnational solutions. This is clearly an ongoing effort. In the fifteenth century, the West was discovering globalization. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it is constructing globalization. Along the way, historians have established transnational studies.4 These are closely attached to the desire to avoid Eurocentrism. This whole development is also predicated on a worldwide decolonization. One result is about 192 independent nation-states, jealously protective of their sovereignty, just when society’s problems are becoming more and more global. A concomitant development is the increase in ethnic and religious identities, largely in reaction to the actions of globalization. Similarly, anti-globalization has been on the rise, vide Seattle. In fact, it appears most probable that one response to the question of “Whither globalization?” is an increase in anti-globalization, as attendant to, though separate from, the increase in ethnic and religious affirmations. Opposition to globalization has many sources. A primary one is economic. As Karl Marx had predicted in the nineteenth century, the world market was constantly being expanded by capitalism. Money played an increasingly important role in human life.5 It was also the life blood of Western imperialism. In Marx’s terms, the cash nexus had come to dominate all relations. A more onerous way of phrasing it is to call it exploitation. The spread of globalization could easily be equated with growing exploitation. Indeed, this can be factually demonstrated— so can its counterpart, the rise in standards of living. Black and white only exist in the service of ideology, not of serious historical analysis. Can we conceive of globalization fading away? The great German sociologist Norbert Elias wrote of decivilizing

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processes as well as civilizing ones. Ought we to think of deglobalizing as well as globalizing processes? The astute economist Thomas I. Palley, who is also aware of the political context of developments, describes much of the anti-globalization movement and goes so far as to suggest that it will be economic forces rather than political ones that will bring about the end of globalization.6 (We ought to keep in mind however the fate of Fukuyama’s “end of history” notion.) Far more likely is that the globalization process will continue at different rates, in different places, and with different results. Most of us lust after simple, straightforward findings. Alas, reality is complex and changeable. Increasingly, human problems are global and far-reaching in nature, for example, climate change and ecological exhaustion. Solutions cry out for transnational action. But these actions are often anathema for existing nation-states. The Wilsonian doctrine of self-determination has been a curse placed on the world. How far down must one go to accommodate requests for “our” selfhood that in turn hold others down? Is it turtles all the way? In opposition, I wish to place the expansion of international institutions and the rise of the concept of humanity. It is this identity that must transcend the more local national, ethnic, and religious identities.7 This is now the battlefield where, as Matthew Arnold wrote, ignorant armies clash by night and the future is shrouded in darkness. We can only pose educated questions as we grope our way into the shadows. Will global and international institutions replace existing nation-states in the formation of policy? Will global government move forward? The odds are very much against such a development.8 Will the power of nation-states decline? The most probable answer is that, while they will be more and more affected by globalizing forces, they will still be the prime movers in world affairs.

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Global history can usefully be seen as moving in fits and starts. Of course, there can be cataclysmic events. One possibility is a global economic disaster, greater even than the Great Depression of 1929. Another is an even further descent into ethnic, religious, and national conflict. The best guess is that even as a global consciousness and identity increase so will the forces of division persist and develop. A Hegelian approach can be useful here. What we must avoid is a black-white way of thinking. Gray is the color in which the owl of Minerva takes its flight. Global history, or rather New Global History, is here to stay. It draws its power from post-WWII developments in a number of areas, as I have tried to show. There is nothing inevitable in what history or historiography will produce. The core of history is contingency. Only educated guesses are possible, a matter of probability rather than certainties. It is with such a guess that I come to my conclusion. Globalization and global history will persist for the foreseeable future. Its pace, of course, will be varied in different locales and societies. What lies beyond it in the evolution of the human species is highly speculative. Can we entertain the notion of a planetary history? Or is this, in fact, to move from history to science fiction? Notes 1. 2.

Bruce Mazlish, “Ruptures in History,” Historically Speaking (June 2011). Martin Albrow, The Global Age (Stanford University Press, 1994). It is interesting to note that one of the earliest, if not the earliest, uses of the term occurs as the subtitle of Hans Kohn, The Age of Nationalism: The First Era of Global History (Harper, 1962). Wolf Schafer, a year before Albrow, came up with the idea of global ages in the plural. Submitted to the New York Times at the time, unfortunately it was not published then. Fortunately, it will appear soon in a book containing

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3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

essays by Schafer on global history. Other useful works to consult are Arif Dirlik, Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Books, 2006); David Held, Anthony G. McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Stanford, 1999); Global History, A. G. Hopkins ed., (Palgrave, 2006); Roland Robertson, Globalization, Social Theory and Global Culture (Sage, 1992); “Terms” in Advances in World Histories, Marnie Hughes-Warrington ed., (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Cf. Jan Nederveen Pietersen, “Periodizing Globalization: ­Histories of Globalization,” New Global Studies 6:2, (July 2012). Also, Bruce Mazlish, “Periodizing Globalization,” in Reflections on the Modern and the Global (2014), op. cit. Outstanding in this regard is the work of Akira Iriye and some of his colleagues. Once more, for a profound philosophical reflection on money see Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money], Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1900. For more on the cash nexus, see Bruce Mazlish, A New Science: The Breakdown of Connections and the Birth of Sociology (Oxford 1989; paperback, Penn. State U. Press, 1993). Thomas I. Palley, The Economic Crisis: Notes from the Underground (CreateSpace, 2012). Cf. Bruce Mazlish, The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era (2009), op. cit. One of the most informed and realistic explorations of this question is Stewart Patrick, “The Unruled World,” Foreign Affairs 93:1 (2014): 58–73. His overall conclusion does not hold out much hope for such an outcome. Cf., however, Robert C. Paehlke, Hegemony and Global Citizenship: Transitional Governance for the 21st Century (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014). In this chapter here, the author is sanguine, partly because he is trying to build a movement that will carry us in this direction.

Subject Index Aboriginal peoples (or: “Indians,” [Native] Americans), 5, 51 Academy of Science (French), 131 Action Français, 100 Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 19, 75 Africa, xix, 30 n2, 40, 49, 51, 65, 75, 80, 105–106, 110, 124 African Union [AU], 65 Age of Catastrophe (Eric Hobsbawm; see also: WWI), 113 Agency, xvi, xix, 15, 75, 106, 134 Agriculture, 76, 89 Alchemy, 94 Amnesia (see Eurocentrism) Amnesty International, 99 Anthropology, 5, 12, 34, 50, 52, 60, 67, 80, 88 Anti-globalization (see globalization) Antiquity (or: ancients), xviii, 4, 75, 95–96 Arab, 24, 61, 122 Archaeology (or: fossils), 7–8, 13, 17, 21, 52 Archives, 65, 105, 120 Argentina, 118 Aristocrats, 94 Armenian genocide (see genocide) Army (see also: military), 13, 66 Art, 3, 8, 62, 75, 111, 119, 122 Asia, xix, 45 n15, 51, 89, 96, 105–106, 118, 123–124, 126 n7 Astrology, 94 Astronomy, 4, 11, 73, 76, 129 Athena, 7 Athens, 11, 20 Atlantic Ocean, 96, 109, 130

Atlas (see mapping) Atomic bomb (or: nuclear), xvii, xix, 17, 19, 28, 38, 61–62, 77, 79–80, 82 n8, 106, 114, 134 n2, 138 Auschwitz, 116 Australia, 41 Authority, 2, 23, 95 Babylon, 123 Balkans conflict, 80 Banking (see economics) Berlin, 105 Bible, 6, 50 Biology, 2, 6, 9, 12, 17, 32 n19, 34, 51–52, 57, 71–72, 85–86, 98, 100, 108, 135 n10 Biosphere, xiv Bolsheviks, 1 Borderlands, 87 Bourgeoisie, 15, 107, 110 Brazil, 41 Bridgewater treatise, 9 Bureaucracy, 89, 123 Butterfly effect (Edward Lorenz), 83 Cain and Abel, 53 Calvinist, 20 Cameroon, 118 Capitalism (or: laissez-faire, free market), xiii, 20, 28, 35, 77, 108, 110–111, 113, 121, 130, 139, 142 n2 Causality, 14, 22, 90, 105 Central America (see Latin America) CERN, 74 Ceylon (Sri Lanka [contemporary]; or: Tamil), 107, 111 Chaos theory, 83, 114 143

144    Globalization and Transformation Chemistry, 9–10, 89, 135 n10 China, 2, 29, 35, 41, 57, 63–64, 67, 70 n13, 73, 82 n10, 89–90, 91 n9, 94, 96–97, 101, 116–118, 123, 126 n6, 129, 131, 138 globalization and, 35, 64, 82 n10, 89, 94, 116, 138 inventions, 73, 97, 123, 129 modern and, 96, 123, 131 nationalism and, 110, 117–118 rise of (as a superpower), 41, 67, 89, 91 n9, 126 n6 secularism and, 29, 101 worldview of (and universals/ essences), 63, 89–90 Christian, xvi, 5, 20, 22–24, 29, 78, 101 Catholic Church, 3, 7, 8, 99 evangelical, 101 fundamentalism, xvi, 24 Cities (see urbanization) Citizenship, xv, 38, 55, 60, 62, 69 n3,6 Civil wars, 63, 76, 80 American, 63, 76 African nations, 80 Civilization (civilized), 13, 17, 19, 34–36, 41–42, 45 n15, 46 n17, 69 n11, 73–74, 78, 89–90, 96, 119, 136 n14, 138 Christian, 78 China, 89–90, 96 Islamic, 136 n14 university courses (European, American), 119 Civilizing process (Norbert Elias), xvi, 15, 26, 29, 53, 112 decivilizing processes (Norbert Elias), 139–140 Clausewitz, Carl von, 16 Climate change (or: global warming), 17, 68, 81, 101, 125, 140 Clio, xx Clothes, 60 Coca-Cola, 61 Cold War, 113, 138 Colonialism (European), 42, 106, 110, 119, 123

Combot (Bruce Mazlish), 30 Communications (satellite), xii, 39–41, 66, 77, 125, 130, 133 Communism, 1, 41, 45 n14, 46 n15, 110–111, 113–114, 138 Compression (of space and time; see also: computer revolution, mapping), xii, xiv, 39, 61, 130, 133–134 Computer Combot (see entry, see also: robot under evolution) difference engine, xii, 11, 77, 130 revolution (see also: communications, satellites), xii, xv, xviii–xix, 15–16, 61, 66, 79, 99, 130 Confederate statues, 63 Confucianism, 89 Conscience (see self) Consciousness, xiv, 16, 20, 25–27, 29, 31 n15, 43, 55–56, 58, 61, 66–67, 79, 86, 121, 138, 141 Consilience, method of (William Whewell, E. O. Wilson), 11–13, 43, 72, 81 n2 Consumerism, 38, 50, 60–61, 68 n3,4 Contemporary history (Geoffrey Barraclough), xviii, 36, 103–105, 107–109, 111–112, 114, 116–117, 120–121, 124, 125 n3 Contingency (or: context, historical experience), xvii, xx, 41, 59, 68, 83, 106, 112, 137 Cosmopolitanism (see urbanization) Council for the Study of Mankind (University of Chicago), 49 Counter-Reformation, 137 Cro-Magnon man (biological unity), 2, 17, 57 Crooked stick (Immanuel Kant), 133 Cultural Revolution (post- period), 118 Cultural turn, 87 Cybernetics, 86, 87, 91 n5 Dare to know (Immanuel Kant), 55 thyself (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel), 55

Subject Index    145 DARPA (see Advanced Research Projects Agency) Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (France), xv, 15, 54–55, 88 Decolonization, 116, 139 Democracy, 31 n6, 67, 102 n10, 110, 114 Demography (or: population), 13, 16, 87, 108–110, 114–115, 119 Determinism, xii, 32 n19, 106 Dialectic, 106, 110, 137 Difference engine (see computer), xii, 11, 77, 130 Dissent, 29, 97, 100 Dogma, 101 Domestic Revolution, 76 Dresden firebombing, 80 Drones, 19, 74–75 Dutch (see Holland) Dwarfing of Europe (Arnold Toynbee), 109 Dynamic Nominalism (or: dynamic ontology; Ian Hacking), 50, 68, 81 Earth Day, 62, 80 Earth, 4, 9, 16, 18, 30 n2, 37–38, 43, 49, 66, 71–73, 77–80, 98, 102 n9, 121, 125, 126 n8, 129, 132 boundaries (see also: geography), 49 circumnavigation of, 129 climate change (see entry) heliocentric (Copernican) theory and, 4, 18 Day, 62, 80 geological formation and age of, 9, 71, 97 humanity and, 30 n2, 37, 77–78 maps (see entry) satellites and (see entry) shape, 4, 72, 132 view from outer space (or: Spaceship Earth [R. Buckminster Fuller], Blue Earth/Planet), 37–38, 49, 66, 79, 125 East India Company, xviii, 95, 130 British (English), xviii, 95, 130 Dutch, xviii, 130 Portugal (Estado da India), 95 war (ability to wage), 95

Ecology, xiv, xvi, 27–28, 35, 38, 41, 44 n3, 45 n9, 74, 85, 115, 125 Economics (or: banking, market, trade), xi, xiii, xvi, xviii, 12, 14, 19–21, 25, 27–28, 31 n11, 34–35, 40, 42–43, 61, 67, 73, 76–77, 87, 88, 102 n5, 108, 111, 121, 130–131, 139, 142 n2 anti-globalization and, 139–141 capitalism (see entry) contextual (behavioral), 88 family businesses (see entry) fascism and, 113 global identity and, 61 humanity and, 19–21, 133 self-control and, 28 worldwide market, 19, 21, 108, 139 Egypt, 16, 23 ancient, 73 Emotions, 14, 22, 100 Empire, 35, 42, 63, 94–96, 98, 102 n5, 130–131, 135 n7, 121, 123 merchant (mercantile), 94–96, 98, 102 n5, 130–131, 135 n7 nation-states replacing, 42, 63, 98, 123 Roman, 35 universalism and, 121 Western (see: imperialism) End of history (Francis Fukuyama), 140 England (or: [Great] Britain), xiii, xviii, 8, 11, 20, 27, 31 n11, 60–61, 69 n4, 76, 88, 94, 96, 100, 106, 130–131 economics and, 8, 60, 131 clothes (see entry) globalization and, 130 imperialism (see entry) science and (see also: Babbage, Darwin), 11, 20, 131 self and, 27 Enlightenment (see also: merchants of light, rationalism), xviii, 24, 28, 30 n4, 47, 50, 55, 97, 99–100, 102 n8, 112, 131, 135 n11 dissent (v. totalitarianism) and, 99 global (see multiple modernities) humanity and, 47

146    Globalization and Transformation secularism and, 50, 112 science and, 110, 131 self and, 28, 55 trade and, xviii, 24 Environment (see: ecology) Equality, 50, 94, 123 Erasmus Mundus Center (Leipzig University), 67 Estado da India (see: East India Companies) Eurocentrism, 2, 7, 49, 55, 94, 105, 117–120, 122–124, 139 amnesia and, (Tony Judt), 116 Europe (see also: Western), xv, xviii, 2, 4, 8, 14–15, 24, 26, 28, 31 n6, 35, 40–42, 44 n7, 44 n8, 45 n14,15, 51, 63–65, 70 n14, 80, 87–88, 91 n7, 94–97, 101, 105–106, 108–110, 112, 115–116, 119, 122–124, 130–131, 135 n7 European Union, 64, 80, 88, 115 Evolution cultural, 2, 12–13, 52–54, 72 Evolution and Ethics (Thomas Huxley), 53 evolutionary biology, 51–52 evolutionary psychology, 26, 80 evolutionary theory (or: theory of (biological) evolution, natural selection) 7, 9–12, 24, 34, 58, 71–72, 85, 97–98, 100, 134 human (species; or: Homo Sapiens), of, 9, 18, 73 machines (or: robot, technology; co-evolution with humans; see: Fourth Discontinuity), of, 18–19, 24, 30 n1, 74, 134 sexual selection, 7, 24, 72 Experiment (or: empirical; see also: science methods), 24, 94–96, 99, 102 n3, 131, 135 n9,12 Exploitation, 139 Faith, xv, 3, 6, 8–9, 23–24, 101, 111 Family, 2, 30 n2, 73, 110, 114 -dominated businesses, 110 Fascism, 100, 110–111, 113 Federalism, 88

Feudalism, 130 Financial sector, 98 Florence, 3 Fourth discontinuity (Bruce Mazlish), 17 Fossils (see archaeology) France, 6, 21, 63, 80, 96, 100, 118, 131 Frankfurt School, 100 Free market (see capitalism) French court society, 68 French Revolution, xv, 26, 62, 67, 88 Fuegians, 85 Fundamentalism (see religion) Gender, 36, 49, 55, 124 General will (Jean-Jacques Rousseau), 100 Genocide, 48–49, 56, 58 n1, 77–78, 82 n7, 136 n14 Armenian, 78, 82 n7, 136 n14 Communist purges (see Maoist mass murders, Soviet gulag), 49, 58 n1 Convention, 48 Rwanda, 56 WWII (see Holocaust), 48, 77 Geography, 5, 96, 102 n7 Geology, xviii, 7–9, 11, 72, 81 n2, 97 Germany, 9, 41, 46 n17, 61, 68, 69 n10, 80, 118, 129 Global citizenship poll, 62, 69 n6 community, 61–62 Day, 62 events (see Hiroshima, moon landing, Nuremberg Trials) identity, xvii, 42, 46 n16, 61–62, 64, 66–68, 68 n1, 80, 132 institutions (or: world government; see also: UN), 38, 42, 81, 99, 101, 109, 121 memory, 62 (see also global events) warming (see climate change) time (see time) village (Marshall McLuhan), xiv Wilsonian doctrine (of self-determination) and, 140

Subject Index    147 Global History, xi, xvii, xviii, xx n6, 33, 36–44, 44 n3, 45 n10,12,13, 46 n17, 97–98, 102 n8,9, 103–104, 107, 112, 115, 117–123, 125, 126 n6,7,8, 132–133, 135 n6,11, 136 n13, 138, 141–142 n2 Barraclough and (see entry) factors, 36–38 international conferences on, 45 n10, 46 n17 Globalization, xi, xx n7, 16, 33, 38–44, 47, 49, 54, 56–58, 61, 66–68, 69 n2,5,7, 70 n13, 77, 79, 83, 87, 89–90, 90 n1, 91 n6, 93– 94, 97–99, 101, 116–117, 120–121, 124, 126 n5, 127 n10, 130, 132, 134, 138–141, 142 n2,3 anti-, xix, 132, 134, 139–140 deglobalizing processes, 140 emergence of, 40 expansion of, 56 factors of, 37–38, 40 post-WWII, xii, xv, 77, 97, 134, 138, 141 process of, 39, 47, 49, 54, 56–57, 66, 94, 98–99, 120, 140 spread of, 139 Globe (London theatre), 129, 134 Globe, xiv, 4–5, 10, 37, 39–40, 66–67, 94, 96, 105, 114, 118–119, 129–132 God, 6, 8, 9, 22–24, 28, 32 n19, 54, 101, 131 will of, 54 Gods, 22, 76 humans as, 18, 25 Gold (see money) Gravity, 6, 131 Great Britain (see England) Great Chain of Being, 51 Great Depression, 141 Great Man, 65 Great Slump (Eric Hobsbawm), 113 The Great Terror (see Soviet gulag) Greek (also: pagan), 8, 22, 25, 47, 89, 122, 129 Greenwich Mean Time (see time) Guerrilla warfare, 114

Heliocentric theory, 5 Hermeneutics, 84, 91 n2 Higgs boson, 74 Higher light (under truth or experiment; Francis Bacon), 102 n3, 135 n9 Hindu, 122 Hiroshima (also: Nagasaki, see also: atomic bomb, global events), xvii, 28, 61–62, 79–80, 82 n8, 114, 134 n2 Historiography, xviii, 44 n3, 69 n10, 97, 102 n8, 118, 126 n6,7, 135 n11, 136 n13, 141 new global history, xviii, 44 n3, 118, 136 n13, 141 History (see also: contemporary, global, national, New Global, recent, transnational, world) see also: agency, contingency, end of, prediction Hobbesian war, 26 Holland (also: Dutch), xviii, 106, 130, 135 n11 Holocaust, 87 Homo economicus, 20 Homo erectus (or: habilis, Australopithecus, and Neanderthal), 52, 71 Homo sapiens, 12, 14, 18, 47, 51–54, 71–73, 78, 134, 138 Homogeneity, 79 Hong Kong, 46 n17 House of Solomon (Francis Bacon’s), 96 Human Rights Watch, 99 Human rights, xiv, xv, xvii, 29, 31 n6, 38, 41, 50, 54–57, 77, 97, 120, 125 Human sciences, 12, 84, 115 Humanism, 57 Humanitarian, 57 Humanities, 10, 57, 91 n10 Humanity, xiv–xvii, xix, xx n8,11, 2–3, 5–7, 14–20, 24, 26–27, 29, 32 n19, 43, 47–58, 58 n2, 61, 66, 68, 68 n1, 71–72, 77–81, 82 n9, 90, 95, 98–99, 120, 122–123, 125, 127 n9, 132–133, 136 n14,15, 138, 140, 142 n7 biology of (see evolution entry)

148    Globalization and Transformation category (or: concept(ion), idea, imaginary, notion, social construction, term, word), xvi–xvii, xix, 2, 16, 20, 47, 49–52, 55–58, 61, 63, 77, 81, 120, 127 n9, 140 crimes against, xvii, 15, 29, 48–49, 61, 77–78, 127 n9, 133, 136 n14, 138 catastrophe and, 16–17 earth and (see entry) equality and (see entry) globalization and, xvi, 54, 66 Hobbesian war and (see entry) humankind, xv, 14, 17, 54, 57, 77–78, 81 n3, 96–97, 130, 133 human rights and (see entry) identity and (see global entry) inhumanity and (see entry) intellectual development (or: knowledge), 14, 94–95, 115, 134 mankind (see also gender), 49–50, 58 n2 new kind of, 2–3, 5, 17–24, 27, 29, 122 primates and (see entry) project of (advancement of; see also: progress), 6, 14–16, 18–19, 24, 29, 58, 68, 72, 78, 81 reflectivity (see self entry) technology and (see evolution, technology and self) versions of, 57, 98 war and, 14, 17–18, 21 Hunter-gatherers, 2, 13 Identity (or: affiliation), xvii–xix, 7, 42, 46 n16, 58–68, 69 n2,13, 80, 98, 133, 140–141 clothes and, (see entry) consumerism and, 60 cultural (or: ethnic), 59, 64, 140 Freud, 65 national (see national) religious, 60 global (see global) Imperialism (see also: empires; East India Companies), xviii, 7, 43, 63, 97–98, 106, 108, 116, 139

new, 106, 108 Western, 63, 98, 139 India, xviii, 2, 30 n2, 35, 41, 57, 61, 95, 122, 130 Individual(ism) (see society), 13–14, 26–29, 32 n19, 48, 49, 54, 59, 63, 64–66, 86, 88–90, 110 Indonesia, 41, 110 Induction, 11, 13 Industrialism 6–7, 14, 17, 19, 28, 27, 34, 39, 106 Revolution, 6, 14, 19, 27, 34 Infinite regress, 123 Infobahn (William J. Mitchell), xiv, xx n10 Information Revolution (see also: communication, computer revolution, satellites), 19, 49, 56 Inhuman, 17, 48–49, 53 Innovations (see inventions) Intellectual development (see humanity) Interconnectivity (or: interdependency, interactions), xii, 34, 39, 58, 66, 79, 122, 134, 138 Interdisciplinary, 43, 44 n1, 87–88, 90 n1, 121, 126 n8 International Criminal Court (ICC), 28, 56, 77–79, 82 n10 International days, 80 International Military Tribunal, 48 International, 15–16, 27–28, 35, 38, 42, 45 n10, 46 n17, 48–49, 56–57, 67–68, 77–81, 99, 104, 106, 109, 112, 114, 120, 140 Internationalism, 48 Internet, 19, 50, 66, 75 Inventions (or: innovation), xix, 40, 66, 108, 123, 131 Irrationality, 18, 22 Islam, xvi, 8, 20, 22–24, 29, 31 n13, 36, 45 n15, 77, 129, 132, 136 n14, 138 Italy, 45 n10, 56, 68, 88, 96 Japan, 25, 41, 97, 110, 118, 120, 126 n7 Jazz, 115 Jesuit, 23, 101

Subject Index    149 Jihad, 132 Judaism, 22–23, 87 Judicial Revolution, 29, 79 Knowledge (see also: Enlightenment, reason), xvii, 7, 31 n8, 73, 75–76, 82 n8, 84–85, 87–89, 95–96, 99, 112, 121, 124, 131, 134 n2 antiquity (see entry) imperialism and, 7, 99, 131 incompleteness of (see also: hermeneutics), 87–89 origins of, 76 reflectivity [epistemology] and, 73 sociology of (see entry) trade and, xviii, 99 universality of, 95, 131 Kosovo, 57 Labor, xvii, 21, 35, 42, 94, 114, 131 Language, xiii, 2, 8, 50, 53, 64, 68, 73, 88, 98 Lapland, 132 Latin America (or: Central and South America), 60, 65, 98, 105, 120 Liberalism, 110–111, 113 Local(es), xvii–xviii, xx n6, 38–39, 46 n17, 55–56, 61, 63, 65, 67–68, 79, 83–84, 94, 98, 118, 123, 132–133, 140–141 Malaysia, 41 Managerial revolution, 110 Mandarin (class), 89 Manhattan, 49 Manufacturing sector, 98 Maoist mass murders, 58 Mapping (or: atlas, globes), 4, 40 Market (see economics) Marxism, xii, 1, 19, 45 n9, 106, 108–109, 139 anti-globalization and, 139 economic theory, 45 n9 Leninism, 1 technological determinism and, xii worldwide markets, prediction of, 19

Mass politics (or: mass society), 110 Materialism, 24 Mathematics, 5, 10, 13, 30 n2, 86, 91 n5, 132 McDonald’s, 61 Mechanical, 6, 18, 85, 88, 99 Media, xiv, 50, 69 n12, 70 n13, 115 Medicine (antibiotics, vitamins), 90, 108 Memory (see global identity), 59, 62–65, 69 n10, 82 n8, 91 n5, 113, 116, 134 n2 Merchants of light (Francis Bacon), xviii, 94–95, 98–99, 131 Mesopotamia, 73 Meteorology (weather reports), 132 Middle Ages, 93, 121 Military, xv, 1, 16, 19, 31 n10, 35, 38, 41, 48, 59, 67–68, 69 n9, 74, 76–77, 89 Minerva, 141 Modernity (Moderns), xiv, xviii, xx, xx n2, 1, 21, 24, 30 n4, 31 n14, 34–35, 39, 63, 73, 75, 77, 84, 93, 96–97, 102 n11, 103, 106–107, 109, 121–123, 130, 134, 135 n5,11, 142 n2,3 Ancients and (see antiquity) Enlightenment and (see entry) globalization and, xiv, xx, 96, 130, 134 human rights and, 97 nation-states and, 63 periodization, 1, 39, 77, 93, 96, 106–107, 121–122 reflectivity and (see entry) science and (see entry) secularism and (see entry) Modernization, xiv, 24, 41, 110 Money (or: cash, currency, gold, silver), 18–20, 75, 95, 98, 130–131, 135 n8, 139, 142 n5 Monotheism, 22–23, 28, 101 Moon landing (see also: global events), 16, 40, 59, 62, 79, 138 Multinational corporation (MNC), xviii, 38–39, 41, 61, 98–99, 102 n9, 120, 124–125

150    Globalization and Transformation Multiple modernities, 97 Music, 38, 122 Mysticism, 95 Nagasaki (see Hiroshima) National, xv, 27–28, 33, 38, 42–43, 48–49, 57, 59–60, 62–68, 69 n12, 70 n13,14, 81, 97, 110–111, 116, 118, 123, 126 n7, 132, 139–141 identity, 42, 59–60, 62–65, 68, 70 n13, 80, 140 history, 42, 118 nationalism, 62, 67, 69 n11, 70 n16, 130, 141 n2 Nation-state (or: state), xiv–xvi, xviii, 2–3, 11, 15, 26, 38, 41–42, 56, 63, 66, 68, 76, 88, 95, 99, 102 n5, 107, 110, 115, 120–121, 123, 130, 135 n7, 139–140 human rights and, xv, 56 imperialism and, 63, 139 merchant empires (see entry) multinational corporations and, 41 nongovernmental organization and, 99 global institutions (see entry) Treaty of Westphalia (see entry) Natural law theory (jurisprudence), 54 Natural selection (see evolution) Nazi (or: National socialism), 15, 48, 60, 111, 113 Neurocognitive studies, 32 New Global History (NGH), xi, xvii– xviii, xix, 33, 102 n9, 107, 117–125, 132–133, 141 New Global History Initiative (Toynbee Prize Foundation), 102 n9 “New World,” 4, 5, 35, 37, 40, 69 n8, 96 Nigeria, 105 9/11, 112 Non-governmental organization (NGO), xviii, 41, 50, 56, 61, 99, 120, 124–125 Non-Western, 47, 57, 64, 69 n11, 123 Novels (literature), 13, 14, 50, 91 n5 Nuclear bomb (see atomic bomb)

Nuclear (Thermonuclear) Revolution, xix, 106 Nuremberg Trials (see also: global events), xvii, 15, 48, 61, 77–79, 133, 138 o.s.Earth (see also: World Game Institute), 102 n9 Optics, 6, 131 Othello (idem., William Shakespeare), 51 Ottoman empire, 136 n14 Pacific Ocean, 109, 130 Pagan (see Greek) Pakistan, 16, 31 n10 Parliament, 110 Passports, 116 Peasantry, 73, 114 Peoples of color (or: “colored people”), xix, 106, 109 Period, xii, xv, 12, 20, 35, 39, 91 n8, 95, 104–109, 113–115, 118, 121–123 Periodization (or: dating; see also: contemporary history, globalization, rupture), 39, 77, 93, 104, 113, 124, 127 n10, 130, 138, 142 n3 Philosophy (or: philosopher), 2, 4, 8–11, 23, 30 n4, 31 n5,7, 50, 54–56, 67, 76, 88, 131, 135 n8,10,11, 142 n5 Enlightenment and, 50, 131 humanity and, 4, 16, 56, 78 public spaces (see entry) of science (see science methods entry) Physics, 9–10, 114, 135 n10 Physiocrat, 22 Poland, 87 Politics (or: political), xi, xvi–xvii, 3–4, 12–13, 16, 29, 31 n12, 38, 40–41, 43, 48, 55, 64, 69 n3, 82 n8, 87–88, 97, 99–100, 102 n5, 106, 108, 109–110, 112, 115–116, 119, 121, 126 n4,6, 135 n2,3, 140, 142 n2 genocide classification and (see entry)

Subject Index    151 global institutions (see entry) human rights limits, 55 mass politics (see mass society) media and (see entry) political science, 3, 12, 43, 82 n8, 88, 135 n2 war and, 16, 80 Population (see demography) Portugal, 95–96 Positivism, 84 Possession (Sigmund Freud), 28 Postmodern, 39, 69 n3, 106, 135 n3 Post-suburban, 97 Post-WWII, xii, xv, 66, 78, 97, 138, 141 Prediction (or: guess, speculation), xix, 11, 24, 36, 45 n9, 103, 116–117, 123, 137 Primates, 51–52 Printing revolution, 65 Probability (statistics), 13 Progress, xvii, 2, 9, 21, 25, 28, 63, 74–76, 91 n9, 96, 111 Psychoanalysis, 14, 65, 100 Public space, 4, 99–100 Puck (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”), 129–130 Puritans, 94 Rankean world archives, 105 Rational[ism] (or: reason), 3–4, 6, 14, 18, 22–24, 68, 88, 100, 107, 115 Age of Reason, 6 Chinese origin, 123 emotions (see entry) faith (see entries) psychoanalysis (see entry) Realpolitik (Machiavelli), 3 Reason (see rational) Recent history, 103, 125 n2 Reflectivity (see also: self), xiv, xvii, 25–26, 28, 74 Reformation, 3, 20, 137 Religion, xvi, 1, 3, 5–6, 8–9, 20–25, 27–28, 34, 36, 50, 53, 59, 87, 101, 112, 121, 136 n14 fundamentalism (or: extremists), xvi, 23–24, 29, 101, 125, 137 renaissance of, 87

Renaissance, 2, 12, 31 n6,18, 93–94, 122 Resource depletion, 101 Responsibility (see also: self-control), 28, 32 n19, 70 n15 Revolution (see: computer, [China’s] Cultural, domestic, French, industrial, information, judicial, managerial, [thermo]nuclear, printing, scientific) Robot (see evolution) Romanticism, 14, 74 Royal Institute of International Affairs (University of London), 104 Royal Society (British), 96, 131 Rupture (or: turning point, watershed), 66, 15, 35, 105, 113, 122, 124, 130, 138, 141 n1 Russia, xiii, 1, 41, 45 n15, 46 n17, 56, 59, 82 n10, 88, 109, 138 Rwanda, 56, 79 Salons, 4 Sanskrit, 30 n2 Satellite (see communications), xii– xiii, xv, xvi, xviii–xix, 15–16, 38–41, 66, 74, 75, 77–79, 124–125, 130, 132–133 Saudi Arabia, 138 Schengen Agreement, 116 Science (see also: knowledge), xviii, 3, 5–6, 8–14, 21, 25, 29, 32 n19, 40, 43, 48, 53, 59, 74–75, 81 n2, 82 n8, 84, 88–89, 90 n1, 91 n2,5, 97, 100–101, 102 n4, 109, 111, 114–115, 119, 122, 131–132, 135 n3,10,12, 141, 142 n5 anti-scientific, 74, 100–101 China and (see entry) funding of, 18–19 globalization and, 40, 131–132 humanity and, 29, 43, 51, 101 India and, 122 method (or: understanding; see also: rationality), 3, 6, 12, 22, 43, 74, 84–85, 89, 100–101, 111, 114 philosophy of, 9–11 progress and, xix, 74, 109, 111

152    Globalization and Transformation religion and, 5–6, 8, 21, 101 satellites and (see entry) scientific revolution, 3, 5, 13 standardization and (or: classification, organization, uniformity; see also: universal), 10 term, 9–10, 81 n2, 135 n10 war and, xii, 18, 75, 101 Scotland, 97 Seattle protests, 132, 139 Secularism, xvi, 2–3, 9, 24, 28, 32 n19, 36, 50, 99, 101, 112, 137 Enlightenment (Renaissance) and, 2–3, 50, 99 predictions of spread (and countercurrents of), xvi, 24, 28, 101, 112, 137 science and, 9, 32 n19, 36 self-control, 28 Self, 2–4, 7, 20, 23, 25–26, 29, 55 -awareness (or: -consciousness, conscience), 25–27, 29, 48, 53, 58, 56, 74, 86 -control (see also: responsibility, spontaneity), 25–29 -definition (or: -determination, -fashioning, -identity, -image), 4, 7, 27, 31 n18, 51, 140 -fulfilling (or: -realizing, -reinforcing), 50, 53, 58 -interest, 20, 53 -interview (Roland Benedikter), 87 -reflectivity (see also: entry), xvii Senegal, 118 Sexuality, 73 Shiite, 138 Shipping container, xiii, xx n5 Siberia, 49 Silicon Valley syndrome, 12 Slavery, 76, 84 Slavs, 60 Social Darwinism, 12 and racism (of Carl Linnaeus), 51 Social stratification, 73 Socialism, 113–114 Society (see also: global, local, national, religion, trade, war), xi–xii, xvi, xix, 2–3, 7, 17, 19, 23,

26–27, 41, 60, 62, 68, 69 n4,9, 75–76, 82 n5, 88–89, 91 n9, 96, 100, 102 n10, 108, 122, 131, 133, 136 n15, 137, 139 self and, 2, 17, 26–27, 78, 88–89, 133 Sociobiology, 52 Sociology (or: sociologist), xiv, xvi, xix, xx n1, 12, 15, 24, 26, 43, 60–62, 69 n7, 76, 88–89, 101, 112, 121, 124, 133, 139, 142 n5 of knowledge, 121, 124 South America (see Latin America) South Carolina, 84 South Korea, 118 South Seas, 96 Soviet Gulag (or: The Great Terror), 87 Soviet Russia/Union, xviii, 1, 41, 45 n14, 58 n1, 67, 106, 109, 114–115, 123 Spaceship Earth (see Earth) Spontaneity, 29 Sri Lanka (see Ceylon) Standards of living, 139 Stone Age, 17, 19, 21 Structural changes (Geoffrey Barraclough), xvi, xviii, xix, 103, 105–107, 109, 113–114, 123–125 Sudan, 56 Sunni, 138 Superpower, xviii, 67, 106 Systems theory, 86–87, 90 Tamil (see Sri Lanka) Taxes, 13, 59, 65–66 Technology (see also: invention, progress, science), xii–xiv, xvi, 1, 12, 17–18, 21, 24–25, 27, 29–30, 40, 43, 74–75, 87, 97, 101, 108–109, 111, 115, 122–123, 134 determinism, xii, 108–109 evolution and (see entry) globalization and, xii–xiv humanity and (see entry) non-western (see also: China, Hindu entry), 123 self and, xiv, xvi, 27, 43 war and (see science entry)

Subject Index    153 Television, 40, 42, 45 n13, 60, 81 n3 Theology, 85, 101 Thermostat, 86 Third globe, 126 n8 Time (discipline; or: [universal] Greenwich Mean Time), 21, 27, 132 economic clock, 21 uniform calendar, 40 Totalitarianism, 100, 102 n10, 114 Trade (see: economics) Trans-civilization studies, 34 Transnational (governance, action, solutions; see also: global institutions), 42, 116, 139–140 Transnational studies (or: history), 118, 126 n7, 133, 139 Treaty of Rome, 56 Treaty of Westphalia, 66 Trinidad and Tobago, 118 Truth, 6, 94–95, 131 Turkey, 78, 118, 136 n14, 138 Two Cultures [C. P. Snow], 8, 10 Ubuntu, 30 n2 Ukraine, 87 UN [United Nations], xiv, xv, 41, 48, 56, 67, 80, 99, 101, 120, 125 Uncertainty Principle [Werner Heisenberg’s], 114 Uniformitarianism (geology), 9 Union of South American Nations [USAN], 65 United States (of America; or: American; see also: Western), xvii–xviii, xx n13, 19, 24, 28, 41–42, 46 n17, 49, 51, 56, 58 n1, 62, 63, 66–67, 75–76, 82 n10, 100–101, 106, 116, 119–120, 124, 129 anti-science and, 100 Christian fundamentalists and, 24, 100–101 Civil War (see entry) colonial, 28, 42 history research, 119, 124 International Criminal Court and (see entry) space exploration (see also: moon landing, satellites), 41, 49

science funding and (see entry) superpower, xviii, 41, 67, 106, 109, 116, 119 Universal (or: essence), xv, xx n6, 6, 44 n3, 49, 55, 79, 90, 95, 98, 110, 113, 116, 122, 126 n4, 130–133 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN), xiv–xv, 15, 54–56 Universe, 4, 6, 22, 30, 71 Urbanization (or: cities, cosmopolitanism), 20, 35, 46 n17, 54, 73, 76, 94, 96–97, 108 Utilitarianism, 67 Utopian, 1, 42, 74 Vacuum (experiment), 131 Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, 30 n2 Venus, transit of, 132 Violence, xvi, xx n13, 14–16, 19, 23, 25–27, 75–76, 78–80 Warfare (or: organized violence; see also: Civil War, Cold War, crime against humanity, genocide, humanity, science, technology, World War I, World War II), xv–xvi, xx n12, 1, 14–19, 21, 24–27, 31 n9, 35, 38, 41, 48, 56–57, 59, 63, 67–68, 69 n9,11, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82 n12, 89, 91 n9, 95, 110, 113–114 cataclysmic, 16–17, 19 cyber, 19 decrease (see violence; see also: self-control) guerilla warfare (see entry) nation-state, xvi trade and, xvi, 95 Welfare state, 111 Western (or: the West; see also: Enlightenment, Eurocentrism, imperialism, modernity, Renaissance), 2, 7, 27, 29, 31 n13, 35, 37, 41, 45 n12,14,15, 49, 54, 57, 63–64, 67, 69 n11, 74–75, 90, 91 n9, 94, 96–98, 102 n3, 110, 115, 119, 122–124, 127 n11, 139

154    Globalization and Transformation White peoples, xix, 106, 109 Wholism (holism; or: integration, organic, synchronicity, synergy), 11–12, 39, 49, 86–88, 109, 121, 124 Wilsonian doctrine (of selfdetermination; see global), 140 Women (and rights; see also: Domestic Revolution), xiv, xv, 4, 50, 55, 76–77, 114 World Game Institute (see o.s.Earth) World History (also: transnational history), xi, xvii, 33–38, 41–44, 45 n5, 46 n9,10, 104–105, 110, 117–119, 120, 122, 124–126 n4,6,8, 132 World History Association (WHA), 33–34, 44 n2

World War I (WWI; see: Age of Catastrophe), 16, 109, 113 World War II (WWII), xii–xiii, v, 15, 17, 19, 47–48, 56, 61, 66, 77–80, 96–98, 110, 119, 130, 132, 134, 138, 141 World-system (Fernand Braudel), 35–36, 44 n7 Writing (written language), 42, 59, 73, 94 Yin and yang, 89 Youth culture, 114 Yugoslavia, 79 Zero, 122 Zeus, 7 Zionism, 63

Name Index (italicized do not appear in the body of the text) Abu-Lughod, Janet Lipman, 35–36, 44 n8, 45 n10 Adas, Michael, 36, 45 n10 Adorno, Theodor, 100 Albrow, Martin, xx n1, 82 n8, 134 n2 Alexander, Gerard, 48, 58 n1 Ames, Roger, 69 n9, 91 n9 Anderson, Benedict, 59, 61, 65, 70 n16 Appleby, Joyce, 31 n11 Armstrong, Neil, 49 Arnold, Matthew, 140 Babbage, Charles, xii, 11, 77, 130 Bacon, Francis, xvii, xviii, 11, 75, 94, 102 n3,4,6, 131, 135 n9 Banks, Sir Joseph, 131 Barraclough, Geoffrey, 103–127; xvi, xviii, xix, 103–113, 115–118, 120–122, 124, 125 n3, 126 n4 Beck, Ulrich, 101, 102n12 Behaim, Martin, 5, 129 Benedikter, Roland, 87, 90, 90 n1, 91 n6 Bentham, Jeremy, 67 Bentley, Jerry H., 34, 44 n3 Berger, Stefan, 69 n12 Blumenberg, Hans, 31 n5, 73 Brady, Thomas H., 135 n7 Braudel, Fernand, 35, 44 n6 Brewer, John, 69 n4 Bright, Charles, 36, 38, 45 n11, 126 n5 Bronowski, Jacob, 7, 81 n3 Bruner, Henry, 46 n17, 102 n9 Buckland, William, 8–9, 72 Burke, Edmund, 26

Bush, George W. (United States President), 82 n10 Canclini, Néstor García, 69 n3 Carlyle, Thomas, 6 Castro, Fidel, 113 Cheney, Dick (United States VicePresident), 82 n10 Chuang-tzu (idem.), 63 Churchill, Winston, 48 Clausewitz, Carl von, 16 Columbus, Christopher, 4–5, 35 Conrad, Sebastian, 97, 102 n8, 135 n11 Copernicus, Nicolas, 4, 5, 18, 31 n5, 73 Darwin, Charles, xviii, 7, 9–12, 18, 24, 51–53, 71–72, 85, 91 n3,10, 97–98, 100, 134 De Maistre, Joseph, 55, 88 Defoe, Daniel, 14 Descartes, Rene, 6 Diderot, Denis, 6 Dirlik, Arif, 142 n2 Docolas, Julia, 67 Donne, John, 89 Dulles, John Foster, 67 Dunning, Eric, 31 n17, 82 n5 Durkheim, Emile, 22 Elias, Norbert, xvi, 15, 17, 26, 29, 31 n17, 53, 68, 76, 81, 82 n5, 112, 139 Eliot, George, 14 Erikson, Erik, 65, 70 n15 Eriksonas, Linas, 69 n12

155

156    Globalization and Transformation Faraday, Michael, 11 Ferguson, Adam, 2 Finley, M. I., 135 n4 Foucault, Michel, 91 n8 Freud, Sigmund, 14, 18, 26, 28, 65, 100 Fukuyama, Francis, 140 Gabel, Medard, 46 n17, 102 n9 Gaddafi, Muammar, 16 Galilei, Galileo, 5 Garibian, Sévane 82 n7 Gat, Azar, 69 n11 Geyer, Michael, 36, 38, 45 n11, 126 n5 Gilbert and Sullivan, xi Goldblatt, David, 142 n2 Goldstone, Jack, 122, 127 n12 Gombrich, E. H., 102 n3 Goudsblom, Johan, 31 n17, 76, 82 n5 Graunt, John, 13 Greenblatt, Stephen, 27, 31 n14, 18 Grew, Raymond, xiii, 46 n17 Grotius, Hugo, 54 Guo, Zhenzhi, 70 n13 Hacking, Ian, 50, 58 n3, 68, 70 n18, 81, 82 n13 Haeckel, Ernst, 85 Harbison, E. Harris, 126 n4 Harvey, David, 135 n3 Headley, John H., 31 n6 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 25, 47, 55–56, 77, 137, 141 Held, David, 142 n2 Herodotus, 20, 103, 137 Hershel, John, 11 Hobbes, Thomas, 14–16, 135 n12 Hobsbawm, Eric, xix, 104, 112–117 Hodgson, Marshall, 23 Hooke, Robert, 131, 135 n12 Hopkins, A. G., xiii, xx n6, 142 n2 Hughes-Warrington, Marnie (126 n8, 136 n13, 142 n2) Huntington, Samuel, 45 n15 Huxley, Thomas, 53 Iriye, Akira, 142 n4 Israel, Jonathan I., 30 n4, 135 n11

Jacques, Martin, 91 n9 Jaynes, Julian, 25–26, 31 n15 Jesus, 20 Jevons, William Stanley, 14 JFK [Kennedy, John F], 114 Johnson, Samuel, 81 Jones, Eric, 82 n6 Judt, Tony, xix, 104, 112, 115–117 Kant, Immanuel, 54–55, 133–134 Kaplan, Robert, 102 n7 Kepler, Johannes, 5 Kilminster, Richard, 31 n17, 82 n5 Kipling, Rudyard, 84 Kohn, Hans, 141 n2 Kossok, Manfred, 44 n3 Kurzweil, Ray, 29–30 n1 Laqueur, Walter, 64, 70 n14 Larsen, John Moller, 31 n13 LeMay, Curtis Emerson (WWII General), 17 Lemkin, Raphael, 48 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 1, 110 Lim, Jie-Hyun, 69 n12, 118, 126 n7 Linnaeus, Carl, 10, 51, 84, 98, 132 Linton, Ralph, 34 Lorenz, Edward, 83 Luther, Martin, 3, 20 Lyell, Charles, 9, 72 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 3–4 Magellan, Ferdinand, 96, 129 Maier, Charles S., 45 n14 Margaret Thatcher (British Prime Minister), 88–89, 111 Marx, Karl, 1, 19, 45 n9, 109, 139 Maupertuis, Pierre Louis, 132 McGrew, Anthony G., 142 n2 McKendrick, Neil, 60, 69 n4 McLuhan, Marshall, xiv McNeill, William H., 34–36, 38, 44 n5, 45 n9, 10 Mennell, Stephen, 31 n17, 82 n5, 6 Mercator, Gerard, 4 Mettrie, Julien Offray de La, 6 Mill, John Stuart, 12, 76 Milosevic, Slobodan, 56

Name Index    157 Mitchell, William J., xiv, xx n10 Mohammed, 20 Mycock, Andrew, 69 n12 Naoki, Sakai, 64 Natarajan, Priya, 30 n2 Needham, Joseph, 97 Newton, Isaac, 6, 12, 131 Ortelius, Abraham, 4 Paehlke, Robert C., 69 n6, 142 n8 Pagels, Elaine, 22, 31 n12 Palley, Thomas I., 140, 142 n6 Parks, Tim, 70 n17 Patrick, Stewart, 142 n8 Perraton, Jonathan, 142 n2 Petronius, 129 Petty, William Sir, 13 Picasso, Pablo, 75 Pietersen, Jan Nederveen, 142 n3 Pinker, Steven, xvi, xx n12, 15–17, 19, 25–27, 31 n9, 16, 80, 82 n11 Plumb, John H., 69 n4 Ptolemy, 5 Quesnay, François, 95 Qutb, Sayyid, 23, 31 n13 Ranke, Leopold von, 105 Reagan, Ronald (United States President), 111 Redfield, Robert, 34 Robertson, Roland, xix, xx n7, 9, 61, 69 n5, 142n2 Rosen, Richard, 44 n2 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 6, 14, 74, 100 Sachsenmaier, Dominic, 135 n6, 136 n13 Schäfer, Wolf, 43 n3, 102 n2, 141 n2 Schaffer, Simon, 135 n12 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 84, 91 n2 Shakespeare, William, 31 n18, 51, 129, 134 Shapin, Steven, 135 n12 Siddiqa, Ayesha, 31 n10

Simmel, Georg, 135 n8, 142 n5 Slotkin, Richard, xx n13 Smith, Adam, 2, 14, 19–21, 109, 133 Snyder, Timothy, xx n20, 31 n9, 82 n12, 87–88, 91 n7 Spiegel, Gabrielle, 2–3, 29, 30 n3, 69 n10 Spinoza, Baruch, 30 n4, 135 n11 Stephenson, George, 11 Swift, Jonathan, 74 Talmon, Jacob, 100, 102 n9 Terence, 20, 30 n2, 47 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 109 Toynbee, Arnold, 34, 44 n4, 104, 118, 126 n4 Tracy, James D., 95, 102 n5, 135 n7 Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin, xiii Van Der Bly, Martha, 133, 136 n15 von Bertalanffy, Ludwig, 86, 91 Waldseemülller, Martin, 129 Wallace, Robert M., 31 n5 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 35, 44 n7, 45 n9 Wang, Q. Edward, 126 n6 Weber, Max, 20, 28, 94 Weiss, Paul, 86 Werner, Axel, 9 Whewell, William, 9–11, 81 n2, 135 n10 Wiener, Norbert, 86, 91 n5 anecdote about, 91 n5 Wikipedia [as source], 30 n2, 69 n2, 83, 86 Wilson, E. O., 12, 31 n8 Wilson, Woodrow (United States President), 140 Wood, Alan T., 91 n9 Wordsworth, William, 85 Wu, Mei, 70 n13 Xu, Luo, 126 n6 Yat-sen, Sun, 110 Yue, Sun, 118 Zheng He, 96

Works Cited Index (bolded discussed in the body of the text) Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (Timothy Snyder), 87, 91 n7 Book of Revelation, The, 22, 31 n12 “Booted” (Tim Parks), 70 n17 “Butterfly that Stamped, The” (Rudyard Kipling), 84

“Acknowledgements” and “Introduction” in Sun-Tzu, The Art of Warfare (Roger Ames, trans.), 69 n9 Advancement of Learning, The (Francis Bacon), 75, 102 n6, 135 n9 Advances in World Histories (Marnie Hughes-Warrington ed.), 126 n8, 136 n13, 142 n2 Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991, The (Eric Hobsbawm), 112, 114–115 “All under Heaven” (Wood, Alan T.), 91 n9 “An Introduction to Global History” (Bruce Mazlish), 45 n12 Ascent of Man, The (Jacob Bronowski), 7, 72, 81 n3 Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250—1350 (Janet Lipman Abu-Lughod), 44 n6 Benchmarks of Globalization: the Global Condition, 1850–2010 (Charles Bright and Michael Geyer), 126 n5 Better Angels of Our Human Nature, The (Steven Pinker), xx n12, 15, 17, 19, 26–27, 31 n9, 80, 82 n11 Birth of a Consumer Society: The commercialization of eighteenth-century England, The (Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and John H Plumb), 60, 69 n4

Chinese Global History Review (Sun Yue), 118 Chuang-tzu (idem.), 63 City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn (William J. Mitchell), xx n2 Civilizing Process, The (Norbert Elias), 76, 82 n5 Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, The (Samuel Huntington), 45n15 Collected Works of Norbert Elias, The (Richard Kilminster et al eds.), 31 n17 “Collective Memory and Collective Knowledge in a Global Age” [workshop], 82 n8, 134 n2 “Comparing Global History to World History” (Bruce Mazlish), 126 n8 Conceptualizing Global History (Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens eds.) [from conference], 44 n3, 45 n12,13, 46 n17 Condition of Postmodernity, The (David Harvey), 135 n3 “Configuration of Orient and Occident in the Global Chain of National Histories, The” (Jie-Hyun Lim), 69 n12

159

160    Globalization and Transformation Connexion of Geology with Religion Explained, The (William Buckland), 9 Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (E. O. Wilson), 12, 31 n8 Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts (Néstor García Canclini), 69 n3 Course of Human History, The (Johan Goudsblom, Eric Jones, and Stephen Mennell), 82 n6 Court Society, The (Norbert Elias), 68, 76, 82 n5 “Crèvecoeur’s New World” (Bruce Mazlish), 69 n8 Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Norbert Wiener), 91 n5 Descent of Man, The (Charles Darwin), 7, 12, 53, 72, 85 Discourses (Niccolò Machiavelli), 3 “Eastern Inventions and Western Responses” (E. H. Gombrich), 102 n3 Economic Crisis: Notes from the Underground, The (Thomas I. Palley), 142 n6 Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Joyce Appleby), 31 n11 “Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique” (Sebastian Conrad), 97, 102 n8, 135 n11 Essays on Global and Comparative History (series, Michael Adas ed.), 36 Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy, The (John H. Headley), 31 n6 “Excursion” (William Wordsworth), 85 Food in Global History (Raymond Grew, ed.) [from conference], 46 n17

Fourth Discontinuity: The CoEvolution of Humans and Machines, The, (Bruce Mazlish), xx n3, 4, 14, 17, 30 n1, 81 n4 “From Universal History to Global History” (Manfred Kossok), 44 n3 Genesis of the Copernican World, The (Hans Blumenberg), 31 n5, 73 Geographia (Ptolemy), 5 “Géoncide arménien et conceptualisation du crime contre l’humanité: …” (Sévane Garibian), 82 n7 Global Age, The (Martin Albrow), xx n1 “Global and the Cities” conference, 46 n17 “Global Citizenship: Plausible Fears and Necessary Dreams” (Robert C. Paehlke), 69 n6 “Global Civilization and Local Culture” conference, 46 n17 Global History and Migrations [from conference], 46 n17 “Global History, Globally” [symposium], 126 n6,7 “Global History: Historiographic Feasibility and Environmental Reality” (Wolf Schäfer), 44 n3 Global History: Interactions between the Universal and the Local (A. G. Hopkins, ed.), xx n6, 142 n2 Global Inc: An Atlas of the Multinational Corporation (Medard Gabel and Henry Bruner) [from conference], 46 n17, 102 n9 Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism (Arif Dirlik), 142 n2 Global Perspectives on Global History (Dominic Sachsenmaier), 135 n6 Global System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (Ludwig von Bertalanffy), 91 n4 “Global Systemic Shift: A Multidimensional Approach to

Works Cited Index    161 Understand the Present Phase of Globalization” (Roland Benedikter), 91 n6 Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (David Held et al.), 142 n2 “Globalization, National Culture, and the Search for Identity: A Chinese Dilemma” (Wu Mei and Guo Zhenzhi), 70 n13 “Globalization: A Triumph of Ambiguity” (Martha Van Der Bly), 69 n7 Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (Roland Robertson), xx n7,9, 69 n5, 142 n2 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Individual (Sigmund Freud), 65 Hegemony and Global Citizenship: Transitional Governance for the 21st Century (Robert C. Paehlke), 142 n8 “High-Tech Shipping Containers: Boxing Clever” (The Economist), xx n5 “Hiroshima: The First Global Event?” (Martin Albrow), 82 n8, 134 n2 Historical Ontology (Ian Hacking), 58 n3, 70 n18, 82 n18 “History and Historiography of Memory Studies, The” (Gabrielle M. Spiegel), 69 n10 History in a Changing World (Barraclough, Geoffrey), 118,   126 n4 “History in a Changing World” [Geoffrey Barraclough review], (E. Harris Harbison), 126 n4 History of Manners, The (Norbert Elias), 15 Idea of Humanity in a Global Era, The (Bruce Mazlish), xx n8,11, 68 n1, 82 n9, 127 n9, 132–133, 142 n7 Imagined Community (Benedict Anderson), 59, 65, 70 n16

“Imprint of the Global, The” (Bruce Mazlish), 132, 134 n1 Insight and Responsibility, (Eric Erikson), 70 n15 Introduction to Contemporary History (Geoffrey Barraclough), 103–112, 114, 116–117, 120–122, 124–125, 125 n3, 126 n4 “Introduction” to Conceptualizing Global History (Bruce Mazlish), 45 n13 Journal of World History, The (Jerry Bentley), 34, 126 n6 L’homme machine (Julien Offray de La Mettrie), 6 Leader, the Led, and the Psyche, The (Bruce Mazlish), 69 n8 “New Atlantis, The” (Francis Bacon), 102 n3 Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes), 14, 16 Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer), 135 n12 Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History (Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and Bruce Mazlish eds.), 102 n9 Mediterranean: The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, The (Fernand Braudel), 35, 44 n6 “Midsummer Night’s Dream, A” (William Shakespeare), 129 Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (Ayesha Siddiqa), 31 n10 Modern World-System, II. Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World Economy, 1600–1750, The (Immanuel Wallerstein), 35, 44 n7 Narrating the Nation: Representations in History, Media and the Arts (Stefan Berger, Linas Eriksonas, and Andrew Mycock eds.), 69 n12

162    Globalization and Transformation New Science: The Breakdown of Connections and the Birth of Sociology, A (Bruce Mazlish), 142 n5 “Night Thoughts on Europe” (Walter Laqueur), 70 n14 Ninety-Five Theses (Martin Luther), 3 Novum Organum (Francis Bacon), 75, 102 n6 On the Nature of Things (Lucretius), 24 “On the Process of Civilisation” (Norbert Elias), 31 n17 Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, The (Julian Jaynes), 25, 31 n15 Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, The (Jacob Talmon), 102 n10 Origin of Species, The (Charles Darwin), 7, 11–12, 71–72, 85, 134 “Pananthropoi—Towards a Society of All Humanity” (Martha Van Der Bly), 135 n15 “Parts and Wholes: . . .” (Bruce Mazlish), 90 n1 “Periodizing Globalization: Histories of Globalization” (Jan Nederveen Pietersen), 142 n3 Philosophy of Money, The (Georg Simmel), 135 n8, 142 n5 Philosophy of Right (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel), 55 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History (William Whewell), 11 Plagues and Peoples (William H. McNeill), 34 Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade 1350–1750, The (James D. Tracy, ed.), 102 n5 Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, (Tony Judt), xix, 104, 112, 115–117 Prince, The (Niccolò Machiavelli), 3

Principles of Geology (Charles Lyell), 9 “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (Sigmund Freud), 65 “Psychohistory and the Question of Global Identity” (Bruce Mazlish), 46 n16 Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Jonathan Israel), 30 n4, 135 n11 “Realities of Confronting Genocide: A Review of Samantha Power’s ‘A Problem from Hell,’ The” (Gerard Alexander), 58 n1 “Reconstructing World History in the People’s Republic of China since the 1980s” (Luo Xu), 126 n6 Reflections on the Modern and the Global (Bruce Mazlish), 93, 134 n2, 135 n5, 142 n3 Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Richard Slotkin), xx n13 “Rejected Modernity” (Bruce Mazlish), xx n2 Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (Stephen Greenblatt), 31 n18 “Response to Constantin Fasolt’s Limits of History” (Gabrielle Spiegel), 30 n3 Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, The (Robert Kaplan), 102 n7 “Review of … Conceptualizing Global History” (Jerry Bentley), 44 n3 “Rise of Great Powers=the Rise of China? …, The” (Q. Edward Wang), 126 n6 “Rise of Merchant Empires, 1400– 1700: A European Counterpoint, The” (Thomas H. Brady), 135 n7 Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Ulrich Beck), 102 n11 Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe), 14

Works Cited Index    163 “Ruptures in History” (Bruce Mazlish), 141 n1 Science and Technology in China (Joseph Needham et al), 97 Singularity is Near, The (Ray Kurzweil), 29–30 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 31 n7 Study of History, A (Arnold Toynbee), 34, 44 n4 Sun-Tzu: The Art of War (Roger Ames trans.), 69 n9, 91 n9 Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Stephen Greenblatt), 31 n14 Systema Naturae (Carl Linnaeus), 51, 84 “Tensions between National and Transnational Paradigms in Contemporary East Asian Historiography—on Korea and Japan” (Jie-Hyun Lim), 126 n7 “Terms” in Advances in World Histories (Bruce Mazlish), 142 n2 Age of Nationalism: The First Era of Global History, The (Hans Kohn), 141 n2 “Book of Revelation: Prophecy and Politics, The” (Elaine Pagels), 31 n12 “Changing Shape of World History, The” (William H. McNeill), 44 n5 “Collapse of Communism: Approaches for a Future History, The” (Charles S. Maier), 45 n14

Uncertain Sciences, The (Bruce Mazlish), 91 n2, 102 n4, 115 “Unruled World, The” (Stewart Patrick), 142 n8 Use and Abuse of History, The (M. I. Finley), 135 n4 Venture of Islam, The (Marshall Hodgson), 23 Vindiciae Geologiae (see Connexion of Geology with Religion Explained, The) Voyage of the Beagle (Charles Darwin), 72, 85, 91 n3, 98 War in Human Civilization (Azar Gat), 69 n11 “War No More” (Timothy Snyder), xx n10, 31 n9, 82 n12 Western Source of Islamism: Soundings in the Influence of Alexis Carrel on Sayyid Qutb, A (John Moller Larsen), 31 n13 When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (Martin Jacques), 91 n9 “World History in a Global Age” (Michael Geyer and Charles Bright), 45 n11 “World System in the Thirteenth Century: Dead-End or Precursor?, The” (Janet Lipman Abu-Lughod; Michael Adas foreword), 44 n6