From Universal History to Transregional Perspectives: The Challenge of the Cultural and Spatial Turn to World and Global History in the 1970s and Today

Abstract

The article reconstructs the development of global history since the crisis of universal history in the 1970s, which under the weight of poststructuralist arguments had almost brought world history writing to a standstill. In contrast, the new approach, now labelled global history, which had taken up many of the suggestions of the cultural and spatial turn and coincided with the social interest in global connectivity, developed into an extraordinarily attractive form of historiography. Since the mid-2010s, however, criticism has been on the rise again, pointing to an inherent ideological globalism and a problematic narrowing towards an Anglo-Saxon model of globalization. However, this is countered by new approaches that once again recall the fruitful dialogue with cultural history, political geography, and area studies.

Biographical Note

Matthias Middell (SFB 1199 & Leipzig University, Germany)

Matthias Middell is a professor of cultural history at Leipzig University as well as a speaker of the SFB 1199 and director of the Global and European Studies Institute at Leipzig University. He studied history earning his PhD from Leipzig University with his research focusing on the French Revolution. Since 2013, he has served as the director of the Graduate School Global and Area Studies in Leipzig and is currently the head of the Erasmus Mundus Global Studies Consortium. He teaches regularly at partner universities and co-supervises PhD candidates with colleagues from France, South Africa, and Ethiopia. His current research interests include the history of the French Revolution from a global perspective, history of cultural transfers around the world, and the role of space in the understanding of the current world being the result of long-lasting global connections.