Global Intellectual History (2025)

10/11/2025

For our monthly highlight in November, approaching our 10th anniversary next year, we spoke with Taushif Kara (Cambridge, now King's College London), author of “Provincializing Mecca? (1924–1969)”, published in 2022 (online 2021). Here is what he had to say about this work:

"That article and the special issue ‘Refusing Minority, Recasting Islam’ was an attempt to think comparatively about how minorities remade Islam in the twentieth century, usually by recourse to universalist claims. I have since developed these arguments into a monograph provisionally titled “Vanishing Mediators: A History of Decolonisation,” which narrates that tumultuous but conceptually fertile period from the vantage point of its ostensible victims. It argues that decolonisation was defined by an “immediate” relation to sovereignty that was threatened by the apparently mediating presence and function of minorities, who were often expelled or exiled in the early post-colonial period. Paradoxically, however, it shows how the minorities that were the victims of these ideas also contributed to them, complicating standard accounts and demanding new frameworks."

Here it the original article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2021.1939504

20/10/2025

Another archive highlight for our impending 10th anniversary - Q. Edward Wang (Rowan University) reflects on his "World History on a Par with Chinese History? China's Search for World Power in Three Stages", published in 2022 (online 2020). This is what he had to say:

"Writing this article allowed me to explore how Chinese historiography has long shaped intellectual and political perspectives on China’s role in the world. Tracing the evolution from traditional chronicles, which placed foreign histories as subordinate to China’s own, to the modern elevation of world history as a first-class discipline, I came to appreciate how historiography has been a vehicle for redefining national identity. This research revealed how intellectuals and the government continue to use historical narratives to justify China’s modern aspirations for global leadership while framing its rise as distinct from Western models. The process of writing deepened my understanding of how the tradition of historical writing continues to influence contemporary views of world order and China’s place within it."

Read the original article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2020.1738658

05/10/2025

Another highlight for our 10th anniversary. Bruce Buchan (Griffith University) who wrote "Travels in Space and Time: Progress, War, and the Historical Mobilities of Scotland’s Enlightenment" with us in 2022 (print 2023). We asked him about this work and its future. His response:

'"Travels in Space and Time", and the special issue it appears within, was the product of many years of research on the intellectual, colonial, and global history of Scotland's Enlightenment. Through my collaboration with Linda Andersson Burnett (Uppsala University), that work culminated in the recent publication of our book, Race and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Colonial History 1750-1820 (Yale 2025). Our current work examines the history of scientific instructions, which amplifies the central theme of my research and the 2023 article: that the intellectual history of the Scottish Enlightenment is inseparable from the fraught global mobilities of colonisation, enslavement, and science, that shaped our understanding of humanity.'

Find the original article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2022.2074504

03/09/2025

In case you missed our last highlight! Timo Pankakoski (Turku/Helsinki) contributed “Globalizing the political: German radical conservatives on the structural transformation of the global order” back in 2019 (currently open access! see below). We asked him about this research today. Here is what he had to say:

"I have written on German radical conservatives since, but this remains my main attempt to map their international thought. The text appears as increasingly topical amid the recent revival of nationalism, geopolitics, interest spheres, multipolarity, and conservative radicalism. Eerily, the radical conservatives even mentioned global warming. The tension between the nationalistic roots of “the political” and the globality of the challenges we are facing remains as unsolved as in 1945, and solving the conundrum, if possible at all, necessitates knowing the prehistory of globalization theory and how we came think of globality like we do. I will soon launch a new project on what makes things “political” and hope to push these ideas further by means of constructive concept-formation."

Read the original article here (currently open access): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2018.1461023

09/08/2025

For our latest highlight for our upcoming 10th anniversary, we return to the work of António Ferraz de Oliveira (University of Groningen), author of "Kropotkin's commune and the politics of history", published at Global Intellectual History in 2018. We asked him about this research today. Here is what he had to say:

"As global society braces against a new wave of reactionary carnage, the writings of past democratic socialists, such as Peter Kropotkin, offer a welcome shelter for weary minds – and a wellspring for new hope. Over a century ago, he hoped to inspire a democratic turn away from coercive territorial states to a world of self-governing municipalities. Curiously, in weaving this idealist future, Kropotkin called on revisionist histories, insisting on communalism’s deep roots in medieval cities.

Since writing this article, I have been developing work on anarchist visions of territory into a book manuscript (with Manchester University Press). In recent years, moreover, my research agenda has turned to historicizing interwar geopolitical thought and its ideas of global environmental change".

Read the original piece here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2018.1450616

See also the full issue to which this article contributed, a groundbreaking special issue (and subsequently a book) on "Conceptions of Space in Intellectual History" edited by Daniel S. Allemann, Anton Jäger, and Valentina Mann tandfonline.com/toc/rgih20/3/2

16/07/2025

Our latest monthly highlight! Stefanie Gänger (Heidelberg University) reflects on the various questions grappled with in her work since her "Towards a History of Knowledge for Spanish America", a review article of Nicola Miller's "Republics of Knowledge". Here is what she had to say:

"Since my review article on Nicola Miller’s Republics of Knowledge, I’ve kept thinking about the important questions it raised. Most recently: in Rethinking Global History, a volume co-edited with Jürgen Osterhammel on the theory, method, and epistemology of global history, including the difficulties of comparing, periodizing, and narrating on a global scale. (Link 1) I have also continued to explore on what terms creole, Spanish American and other non-European scholars participated in global scientific networks in the Age of Empire, and sought to better understand the period's global epistemic hierarchies." (Link 2)

Find a link to the original piece below! (Link 3)

Link 1: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/rethinking-global-history/1D010F83188D4571D56C7DD411B9194A -information

Link 2: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/nonwestern-scholars-bourgeois-virtues-and-the-international-scientific-community-in-the-age-of-empire-18701920/7D3E0DD0613E5DB44EEDBE92E0E77EE8

Link 3: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2022.2132173

07/06/2025

Another highlight for our anniversary! Lena Halldenius (Lund University) offers a reflection on her widely read review article examining "Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World" by Samuel Moyn. Here is what she had to say:

'I work in the intersection of political philosophy, human rights, and the history of political theory and have always found the radical late 18th-century republicans to be under-appreciated as philosophical sources for our own time. They saw wealth inequalities as manifestations of rights violating hierarchies. Today, economic rights are typically equated with rights to basic subsistence: if everyone has food and shelter, economic rights have nothing to say about wealth hierarchies. As Samuel Moyn pointed out in his book “Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World”, that is not good enough. Moyn saw no way out of this trap for human rights theory, but I do. Reviewing Moyn’s book for Global Intellectual History prompted new thoughts on these matters. I still benefit from it in my current work on a conception of human rights serving as leverage for socioeconomic equality'.

Here is a link to the latest article on this theme by Halldenius article on this theme: https://de-ethica.com/article/view/6030 see also the original review article (in open access): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2019.1603836

05/05/2025

Another of our highlights from across the last decade is a research article entitled "Modelling Tang Emperor Taizong and Chinese Governance in the Eighteenth-Century German Speaking World" by Hilde de Weerdt (KU Leuven), published in 2023 (online 2022). We asked her about this research and how it has since developed:

'Since the publication of my GIH article, I have developed its argument into a monograph, "The Arts of Governance", forthcoming in the UHP series Perspectives on the Global Past. This book is the first to place the history of medieval Chinese mirrors for princes in a global and comparative historical framework. "The Arts of Governance" interprets medieval political advice literature as an administrative technology attested throughout Afro-Eurasia whose history is shown to have been cross-cultural from inception through the present. It starts with a discussion of the models of governance expressed in medieval Chinese mirrors and their early modern French and German adaptations in text and imagery, and it ends with a critical analysis of the contrasting visions of citizenship articulated in present-day vernacular translations'.

Read the original article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2022.2104741

02/05/2025

For our March highlight we heard from Dag Herbjørnsrud (Center for Global and Comparative History of Ideas, Oslo) who wrote "Beyond decolonizing: global intellectual history and reconstruction of a comparative method" with us in 2021 (online 2019). We asked him about this work and the future. Here, his response:

'My "Beyond Decolonizing" (2019) paper concluded with a caution that the discipline of intellectual history "might become even more alien in a world which, as it moves into the 2020s, may be descending into greater nationalism, tribalism, and increased thinking within—rather than across—borders and boundaries". Unfortunately, this remains a challenge. Yet, over the past five years, new and exciting research has highlighted the often-overlooked interconnectedness and similarities in the world’s history of ideas, spanning Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and the Americas. In the latter half of the 2020s, documenting the interconnectedness and complexity of ideas throughout history seems more crucial than ever. We need this knowledge to understand "where we come from," recognizing that there is "no alien culture" to the human mind. Understanding our global history of ideas as a shared heritage equips us intellectually to face future challenges more effectively'.

Read the original piece here, open access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2019.1616310

13/02/2025

For our monthly 10th anniversary highlight in February we hear from Ann Thomson (European University Institute) who wrote "Colonialism, race and slavery in Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes", published in our second volume in 2017. We asked her about the progress of this work and the future. Here is her response:

"Since this article was published, all the volumes of the critical edition of Raynal’s work have been published, although unfortunately it is not widely available. It reveals the details of the work’s composition, leading to the tensions and contradictions running through it, which reflect the complex views of the period in which it was written. The persistence of both sweeping claims about ‘Enlightenment anticolonialism’ and indignant denunciations of 18th-century thinkers’ colonialism and racism demonstrates that in order to face Europe’s colonial and slave-trading past in as clear-sighted and informed a way as possible, the critical study of past writings remains as important as ever".

Read the original 2017 article by Thomson that forms the basis of these questions here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2017.1370233

Global Intellectual History

10/11/2025

20/10/2025

05/10/2025

03/09/2025

09/08/2025

16/07/2025

07/06/2025

05/05/2025

02/05/2025

13/02/2025

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share