Presentation

The currents of world history, global history and connected history play an increasingly important part in the historiography of Anglo-Saxon countries, first, and more recently and with some difficulty in that of France. After presenting these new trends, their methods and epistemological challenges, this course will present and analyse, through case studies, the advantages of a decentered approach to history in which the phenomenon of globalization is studied in the long term. The approach will therefore be twofold: we will examine the histories and perceptions of the different regions of the world from a connected, transnational and comparative perspective, on the one hand,  and shall study exchanges and globalization processes on the other. The aim is to develop a "History in equal parts"— as phrased by Romain Bertrand. This approach will also involve focusing on the relationships between these historiographical trends and other trends in contemporary historiography: post-colonial studies, gender studies, subaltern studies...

Recommended Prerequisite(s)

A good geographical (human geography) and geopolitical knowledge would also be preferable. Students should provide themselves with a historical atlas. There exist several very good ones while none is really authoritative.  Among those we can recommend are: Christian Grataloup and Gilles Fumey (dir.), Atlas global, Paris, Les Arènes, 2014.

Bibliography

• Bertand (Romain), L’Histoire à parts égales. Récits d’une rencontre Orient-Occident (XVI^e – XVII^e siècles), Paris, Le Seuil, 2011
• Boucheron (Patrick), ed., Histoire mondiale de la France, Paris, Le Seuil, 2017
• Brook (Timothy), Le Chapeau de Vermeer : le XVII^e siècle à l’aube de la mondialisation, Paris, Payot et Rivages, 2010
• Burbank (Jane), Cooper (Frederik), Empires, de la Chine ancienne à nos jours, Paris, Payot et Rivages, 2011
• Pomeranz (Kenneth), Une grande divergence - La Chine, l’Europe et la construction de l’économie mondiale, Paris, Éditions Albin Michel, coll. « Bibliothèque de l’évolution de l’humanité », 2010

Educational formula

This course will alternate between a presentation —often based on documents such as articles, etc. — of the main historiographical and epistemological debates and their current developments and more concrete case studies (e. g. comparison between European and Chinese processes of globalization in the 17th century; anglobalization of the world in the 19th century...)