Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction: The Nation State and Beyond. Governing Globalization Processes in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Nation State and Beyond

Abstract

The history of globalisation is anything but a no-frills affair that moves smoothly along a clear-cut, unidirectional path of development and eventually leads to seamless global integration. Consequently, scholarship in the social sciences increasingly argued against equating the history of globalisation processes and transcultural entanglements with the master narrative of the gradual homogenisation of the world. A strong common ground these concepts share is the objective of transcending the national as an analytical category and replacing it by focusing on interaction and flows, transfers, and exchanges as the core categories in the study of history. Examining the shifting patterns of global connections has, therefore, become the main challenge for all those who seek to understand the past, the present, and the future of modern societies. And this challenge includes finding a place for the nation state—a form of social organisation that no longer seem to fit into the new analytical framework despite its obvious historical and current significance. Against this background, the introductory chapter argues that the authors assembled in the volume suggest another reading of the role and significance of the nation state in the development of the modern world. The studies presented here argue that looking at the nation state from the perspective of global entanglements gives way to its interpretation as a dynamic and multi-layered structure that partakes in globalisation processes and plays different and at times even contradictory roles at the same time. Accordingly, it is not the nation state that ceases to exist, due to increasing processes of global exchange, but a certain perspective on the nation state which can no longer be upheld.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Conrad and Eckert 2007, p. 21.

  2. 2.

    Clark 1997.

  3. 3.

    Manning 2003, p. 15.

  4. 4.

    Geyer and Bright 1995.

  5. 5.

    Cooper 2001, p. 191.

  6. 6.

    Ibid, pp. 189–213.

  7. 7.

    Anghel et al. 2008; Krücken 2009; Lechner 2009.

  8. 8.

    Hopkins 2002, pp. 11–46; Gunn 2003; for studies covering the early modern and the modern era see for example: Darwin 2008; Fernandéz-Armesto 2007; Wendt 2007.

  9. 9.

    Bayly 2004; Osterhammel 2009.

  10. 10.

    Osterhammel and Petersson 2005, p. 24.

  11. 11.

    Hardt and Negri 2000, p. XI.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., p. XII.

  13. 13.

    Döring and Thielmann 2008; Harvey 2006; Warf and Arias 2009.

  14. 14.

    See the related concepts of “convergence of time and space” (Janelle), “time-space distanciation” (Giddens), “time-space compression” (Harvey, Stein) or the “disempowerment of space” (Sonnemann). Janelle 1969; Giddens 1981, 1984; Harvey 1990; Stein 2001, p. 106; Sonnemann 1990, p. 21.

  15. 15.

    See, for instance, a recent study by Regine Buschauer that looks at the recurrence of discourses on “annihilated” (German: “vernichtet”), “dead” (“getötet”), “disappeared” (“verschwunden”) or “lost” (“verloren”) space in the context of several technological transformations. Buschauer 2010, p. 17.

  16. 16.

    See Wenzlhuemer 2010; Holton 2005.

  17. 17.

    Iggers and Wang 2008.

  18. 18.

    O’Rourke and Williamson 2000; O’Brien 1997; Pomeranz and Topik 2006.

  19. 19.

    Maier 2006, p. 35.

  20. 20.

    Chernilo 2007; Marjanen 2009; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002.

  21. 21.

    To name but a few examples: Hopkins 2006; Manning 2003; Vries 2009; Hughes-Warrington 2005.

  22. 22.

    Hadler and Middell 2010, p. 23f.

  23. 23.

    Bentley 2003; O’Brien 2006; Middell 2005; Osterhammel 2008.

  24. 24.

    See for example McNeill and McNeill 2003. See also Patrick Manning’s definition of world history: “To put it simple, world history is the story of connections within the global human community”, in: Manning 2003, p. 3.

  25. 25.

    Gruzinski 1999; Lepenies 2003; Randeria 2002.

  26. 26.

    Bentley and Ziegler 2000.

  27. 27.

    Herren et al. 2012 (forthcoming); Bose and Manjapra 2010.

  28. 28.

    Iriye and Saunier 2009; Patel 2009; Tyrrell 2007.

  29. 29.

    Freitag and von Oppen 2010.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.; Herren et al. 2012 (forthcoming).

  31. 31.

    The phrase has been borrowed from Evans et al. 1985.

  32. 32.

    Hardt and Negri 2000; Zürn 2005.

  33. 33.

    Geyer and Paulmann 2001; Löhr 2010; Murphy and Yates 2009.

  34. 34.

    See also Brenner 1999; Middell and Naumann 2010.

  35. 35.

    Revel 1996.

Bibliography

  • Anghel, Remus Gabriel, et al. eds. 2008. The Making of World Society. Perspectives From Transnational Research. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bayly, Christopher A. 2004. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914. Global Connections and Comparisons. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bentley, Jerry H. & Herbert F. Ziegler. 2000. Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Boston: McGRaw Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bentley, Jerry H. 2003. “World History and Grand Narrative.” In Writing World History 1800–2000 (Studies of the German Historical Institute London) edited by Benedict Stuchtey and Eckhardt Fuchs, 47–65. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bose, Sugata and Kris Manjapra, eds. 2010. Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas. New York: Plagrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brenner, Neil. 1999. “Beyond State-Centrism? Space, Territoriality, and Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies.” Theory and Society 28, 39–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buschauer, Regine. 2010. Mobile Räume: Medien- und diskursgeschichtliche Studien zur Tele-Kommunikation. Bielefeld: Transcript.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chernilo, Daniel. 2007. A Social Theory of the Nation-State. The Political Forms of Modernity Beyond Methodological Nationalism. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conrad, Sebastian and Andreas Eckert. 2007. “Globalgeschichte, Globalisierung, multiple Modernen: Zur Geschichtsschreibung der modernen Welt.” In Globalgeschichte. Theorien, Ansätze, Themen, edited by Sebastian Conrad et al. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Frederick. 2001. “What is the Concept of Globalization Good for? An African Historian’s Perspective.” African Affairs 100, 189–213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, Ian. 1997. Globalization and Fragmentation. International Relations in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Darwin, John. 2008. After Tamerlane. The Global History of Empire. London: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Döring, Jörg and Tristan Thielmann, eds. 2008. Spatial Turn. Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften. Bielefeld: Transcript.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans, Peter B. et al. eds. 1985. Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fernandéz-Armesto, Felipe. 2007. Pathfinders. A Global History of Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freitag, Ulrike & Achim von Oppen. 2010. “‘Translocality’: An Approach to Connection and Transfer in Area Studies.” In: Translocality. The Study of Globalising Processes From a Southern Perspective, edited by Ulrike Freitag, 1–24. Leiden: Brill.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Geyer, Michael H. and Charles Bright. 1995. “World History in a Global Age.” American Historical Review 97, 1034–1060.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Geyer, Michael H. and Johannes Paulmann, eds. 2001. The Mechanics of Internationalism. Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840 s to the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, Anthony. 1981. A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Volume 1: Power, Property and the State. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gruzinski, Serge. 1999. La pensée métissage, Paris: Fayard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunn, Geoffrey C. 2003. First Globalisation. The Eurasian Exchange, 1500–1800. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hadler, Frank and Matthias Middell. 2010. “Auf dem Weg zu einer transnationalen Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas.” Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 20 (1/2): 8–29. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, David. 1990. “Between Space and Time: Reflections on the Geographical Imagination.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80 (3): 418–434.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, David. 2006. “Space as a Keyword,” In David Harvey: A Critical Reader, edited by Noel Castree and Derel Gregory, 270–293. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herren, Madeleine, et al. Forthcoming. Transcultural History. Theories, Methods, Sources. Heidelberg: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holton, Robert J. 2005. Making Globalization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopkins, Anthony G. 2002. “The History of Globalization – and the Globalization of History.” Globalization in World History, 11–46. London: Pimlico.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopkins, Anthony G., ed. 2006. Global History. Interactions Between the Universal and the Local. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, ed. 2005. Palgrave Advances in World Histories, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iggers, Georg G. and Q. Edward Wang. 2008. A Global History of Modern Historiography. Harlow: Pearson Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iriye, Akira and Pierre-Yves Saunier, eds. 2009. The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Janelle, Donald G. 1969. “Spatial Reorganization. A Model and Concept.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 59, 348–364.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krücken, Georg, ed. 2009. World Society. The Writings of John W. Meyer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lechner, Frank J. 2009. Globalization. The Making of World Society. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lepenies, Wolf. 2003. Entangled Histories and Negotiated Universals. Centers and Peripheries in a Changing World. Frankfurt am Main: Campus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Löhr, Isabella. 2010. Die Globalisierung geistiger Eigentumsrechte. Neue Strukturen internationaler Zusammenarbeit, 1886–1952. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maier, Charles. 2006. “Transformation of Territoriality, 1600–2000.” In Transnationale Geschichte. Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien, edited by Gunilla Budde et al., 32–55. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manning, Patrick. 2003. Navigating World History. Historians Create a Global Past. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marjanen, Jani. 2009. “Undermining Methodological Nationalism. Histoire croisée of Concepts as Transnational History.” In Transnational Political Spaces. Agents – Structures – Encounters, edited by Mathias Albert et al., 239–263. Frankfurt am Main: Campus.

    Google Scholar 

  • McNeill, John R. and William H. McNeill. 2003. The Human Web. A Bird’s Eye View of World History. New York: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Middell, Matthias. 2005. “Universalgeschichte, Weltgeschichte, Globalgeschichte, Geschichte der Globalisierung – ein Streit um Worte?.” In Globalisierung und Globalgeschichte, edited by Margarete Grandner et al., 60–82. Vienna: Mandelbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Middell, Matthias and Katja Naumann. 2010. “Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization.” Journal of Global History 5, 149–170.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Murphy, Craig N. and JoAnne Yates. 2009. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO): Global Governance Through Voluntary Consensus. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien, Patrick. 1997. “Intercontinental Trade and the Development of the Third World Since the Industrial Revolution.” Journal of World History 8 (1) 75–133.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien, Patrick. 2006. “Historiographical Traditions and Modern Imperatives for the Restoration of Global History.” Journal of Global History 1 (1) 3–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Rourke, Kevin and Jeffrey G. Williamson. 2000. Globalization and History. The Evolution of a Nineteenth Century Atlantic Economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Osterhammel, Jürgen and Niels P. Petersso. 2005. Globalization: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2008. “Alte und neue Zugänge zur Weltgeschichte.” Weltgeschichte edited by Jürgen Osterhammel, 9–32. Stuttgart: Steiner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2009. Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Beck.

    Google Scholar 

  • Patel, Kiran Klaus. 2009. “‘Transnations Among Transnations?’ The Debate on Transnational History in the US and Germany.” American Studies 53, 451–472.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pomeranz, Kenneth and Steven Topik. 2006. The World That Trade Created. Society, Culture, and the World Economy. New York: M.E. Sharpe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Randeria, Shalini. 2002. “Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Civil Society, Caste Solidarities, and the Post-Colonial State in India.” In Unraveling Ties. From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness, edited by Yehuda Elkana, 284–311. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Revel, Jacques, ed. 1996. Jeux d’échelles: la micro-analyse à l’éxpérience. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Risse-Kappen, Thomas, ed. 1995. Bringing Transnational Relations Back in: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sonnemann, Ulrich. 1990. “Die Ohnmacht des Raums und der uneingestandene Fehlschlag der Zeitentmachtung. Zur Aporetik des Staus.” In Zeit-Zeichen. Aufschu¨be und Interferenzen zwischen Endzeit und Echtzeit, edited by Georg Christoph Tholen and Michael Scholl, 17–28. Weinheim: Bundesrepublik Deutschland: VCH, Acta Humaniora.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stein, Jeremy. 2001. “Reflections on Time, Time-Space Compression and Technology in the Nineteenth Century.” In Timespace. Geographies of Temporality, edited by Jon May and Nigel Thrift, 106–119. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 1997. “Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia.” Asia Studies 31, 735–762.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tyrrell, Ian. 2007. Transnational Nation. United States History in Global Perspective Since 1789. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vries, Peer, ed. 2009. Global History, sterreichische Zeitschrift fu¨r Geschichtswissenschaft 20 (2).

    Google Scholar 

  • Warf, Barney and Santa Arias, eds. 2009. The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wendt, Reinhard. 2007. Vom Kolonialismus zur Globalisierung. Europa und die Welt seit 1500. Paderborn: Schöningh.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wenzlhuemer, Roland. 2010. “Globalization, Communication and the Concept of Space in Global History.” Historical Social Research – Historische Sozialforschung. Global Communication: Telecommunication and Global Flows of Information in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century 19–51. Cologne: Zentrum für Historische Sozialforschung.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wimmer, Andreas and Nina Glick Schiller. 2002. “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences.” Global Networks 4 (2) 301–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zürn, Michael. 2005. Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaates. Globalisierung und Denationalisierung als Chance. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. History Department, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Isabella Löhr

  2. EXC “Asia and Europe”, Karl Jaspers Centre, Heidelberg, Germany

    Roland Wenzlhuemer

Authors
  1. Isabella Löhr
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Roland Wenzlhuemer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Isabella Löhr .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , History Department, Heidelberg University, Grabengasse 3-5, Heidelberg, 69117, Germany

    Isabella Löhr

  2. , EXC "Asia and Europe", Karl Jaspers Centre, Voßstraße, Gebäude 4400 2, Heidelberg, 69115, Germany

    Roland Wenzlhuemer

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Löhr, I., Wenzlhuemer, R. (2013). Introduction: The Nation State and Beyond. Governing Globalization Processes in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. In: Löhr, I., Wenzlhuemer, R. (eds) The Nation State and Beyond. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32934-0_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation