Wolf Schäfer, 1993. "Global History: Historiographical Feasibility and Environmental Reality."

Conclusion

The history of the world since the Second World War forced a "genuinely global perspective upon us," observed Eric Hobsbawm in 1989, adding, "'world history' is no longer the Western scholar's polite concession to UNESCO, but the only history that can be written" (Hobsbawm, 1989). In this vein, I have tried to distinguish World History from Global History and to present some compelling arguments in favor of the latter — which is, I suppose, the history Hobsbawm meant when he referred to "world history" with apt rhetorical overstatement as the "only" and most relevant history today. I have also tried to spell out what it means to write global history "adequately." The answer, I am afraid, has to address the paradox that Global History must be big enough to capture the planetary processes of our time and small enough to satisfy the requirements of normal academic research, beginning with doctoral dissertations. Traditional World History easily meets the first but hardly the second condition and is, perhaps, more a calling than a craft. However, the issue is not World History or Global History; rather, it is the distinction between the two and the understanding that Global History is a piecemeal history for global processes.

Note

A first draft of this paper was discussed at the Bellagio Conference on Global History, convened by Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens, on July 8-12, 1991.