Abstract
The transcendence of political boundaries, moving beyond one’s self-enclosed unit, is the necessary condition for thinking history globally. How to move beyond boundaries is, therefore, of crucial importance. As such, this movement deserves its own chapter, which seeks to explain and exemplify at length the two methods of transcending enclosed boundaries. The 12 branches can be clustered once again by their inclinations toward these methods: comparisons and connections.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
C. Vann Woodward, ed., The Comparative Approach to American History (New York: Basic Books, 1968).
David Russo, American History from a Global Perspective (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003).
Ian R. Tyrrell, Transnational Nation: United States History in Global Perspective since 1789 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Philip D. Morgan and Molly A. Warsh, eds., Early North America in Global Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2014), 4.
Shinu Anna Abraham, Praveena Gullapalli, Teresa P. Raczek, and Uzma Z. Rizvi, eds., Connections and Complexity: New Approaches to the Archaeology of South Asia (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2013), 154–55.
Ronald Syme, Colonial Elites. Rome, Spain and the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958);
P. A. Brunt, “Reflections on British and Roman Imperialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 7 (1964–65): 267–88;
Frederick J. Teggart, Rome and China: A Study of Correlations in Historical Events (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1939);
William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (New York: New American Library; London: New English Library, 1963).
James Lang, Conquest and Commerce: Spain and England in the Americas (New York: Academic Press, 1975);
Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the Worlds: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain, and France, c.1500–c. 1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
C. E. Black, The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).
André Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (New York, 1969).
Otto Hintze, The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze, ed. Felix Gilbert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975);
A. A. van den Braembussche, “Historical Explanation and Comparative Method: Towards a Theory of the History of Society,” History and Theory 28 (1989): 2–24;
George M. Fredrickson, “Comparative History,” in The Past before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States, ed. Michael Kammen (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980);
Victoria E. Bonnell, “The Uses of Theory, Concepts and Comparison in Historical Sociology,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980): 156–73;
Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980): 174–97.
B. Z. Kedar, The Changing Land: between the Jordan and the Sea: Aerial Photographs from 1917 to the Present (Israel, 1999);
John H. Elliott, Richelieu and Olivares (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 6.
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
John Stuart Mill, Philosophy of Scientific Method (New York, 1950 [1843]), Book 3, ch. 8, 211–33.
R. Graham, Independence in Latin America: A Comparative Approach (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994).
Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, trans. S. Solovay and J. H. Mueller (New York and London, 1938 [1895]), ch. 6, 125–40.
Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (London, 1934), 2, 259–61, 289–97.
L. Hartz, The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964).
Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion (Leiden, 1978), 240–64;
Niall Ferguson, Civilization The West and the Rest (New York: Penguin Press, 2011).
Uri Ram, The Globalization of Israel: McWorld in Tel Aviv, Jihad in Jerusalem (New York: Routledge, 2008).
Fritz Redlich, “Toward Comparative Historiography. Background and Problems,” Kyklos: International Review of Social Sciences 11 (1958): 362–88.
J. Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond,” History and Theory 42 (2003): 39–44;
J. Kocka, “The Uses of Comparative History,” in Societies Made Up of History, ed. Bjork Ragnar and Molin Kare (Sweden, 1996), 197–209.
Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York: Russell Sage, 1984).
This table and many of the ideas that it summarizes were previously published in Olstein, D. “Comparative History: The Pivot of Historiography”. In New Ventures in Comparative History, ed. Kedar, B.Z. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2009), 37–52.
M. Paul Lewis, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig, eds., Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 17th edition (Dallas: SIL International, 2013).
W. McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (New York: New American Library, 1963).
J. McNeill and W. McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Diego Olstein
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Olstein, D. (2015). Thinking History Globally: Comparing or Connecting. In: Thinking History Globally. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137318145_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137318145_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-47338-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-31814-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)