Global History. Conceptual History

Global history is a recent trend in modern historiography. Since the term’s emergence in the 1990s and to this day, there has been a debate around it. There is ongoing discussion about the correlation between terms ‘global history’, ‘world history’, ‘universal history’, ‘shared history’, ‘comparative history’, ‘big history’, ‘transnational history’, ‘connected history’, ‘entangled history’ etc. Conventionally, global history has been studied as the history of the states, empires, civilisations, vast areas, hemispheres. Presently, global history has been entering into the reflexive stage, thus actualizing conceptual history as a relevant method for studying global history’s subject field and methodological tools. Conceptual history enables us to look at the global history as at the concept and as a historical ideology of the Global Age; it also can help to define ‘global history’ term’s place in a large linguistic family of related concepts, to trace semantic connections between such constructs, as ‘backwardness’, ‘imperial meridian’, ‘revival – cultural transfer’. In this book, global history is presented by three types of historical writing: transnational history, social theology, histoire croisée. In the globalizing world the perception of global history must encompass national traditions, making it relevant both for the academic community and for the mass consciousness.