Global Intellectual History (2025)

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

14/01/2025

As we approach our tenth anniversary we thought it was a good moment to update our "Aims and Scope" to better reflect how conversations in the field have developed over the last decade. The new version is now live, read it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rgih20/about-this-journal -and-scope

10/01/2025

To celebrate our 10th anniversary and reflect on the past and future of the field we will be sharing highlights from past issues across the year. We have asked these selected authors to offer thoughts in retrospect on their this research, its evolution, and future. We begin with Francesco Campagnola (then Ghent, now Lisbon) co-editor with Li Man (Ghent) of our 2016 special issue entitled "Paradigms of Change in Modernising Asia", the third issue of our very first volume. The introduction to the issue has amassed over 35,000 views. Here are Campagnola's thoughts in retrospect:

"'Paradigms of Change in Modernising Asia' was the inaugural part of a broader project, which then went on with the conference 'Paradigms of Change in Modernising Asia and America' (Ghent, 2017), funded by FWO and Fulbright. This project encapsulates the Zeitgeist of a period which started with the 1990s and began to wane with the onset of the pandemic—Wang Hui's participation is quite symbolic of this. However, this does not suggest that the research initiated through 'Paradigms of Change', or, more generally, global intellectual history as a discipline, lost momentum or lacks relevance in today’s deglobalising geopolitical landscape. My (with Guylian Nemegeer) most recent book project, Pan-Movements, Regeneration, and Ideas of Empire, offers a continued exploration of these themes".

Read the original introduction here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2016.1332866

20/12/2024

News! From next year "Global Intellectual History" will increase from 6 issues to 8 issues per annum. Thank you to all who contributed to, read, & shared our articles & reviews over the year. More broadly, we wish everyone who celebrates across the globe a happy holidays, winter snows or summer sun!

18/11/2024

We are also on Bluesky! In the last week our number of Bluesky followers has tripled and we now have over double what we have on X, formerly Twitter. Thank you to everyone that has followed us. Make of it what you will, but the migration is real. Do consider checking it out! We remain on both platforms. Find us here: https://bsky.app/profile/global-ih.bsky.social

12/12/2023

News! We are very happy to say that Global Intellectual History has been accepted for inclusion in the Web of Science Emerging Sources Index (ESCI) and expect our first Impact Factor in 2024!

01/12/2023

New issue! "Do you know what a Free port is?" Read about it in a special issue on "The Global History of the Free Port". In a range of studies introduced by Koen Stapelbroek (James Cook Universiy) and Corey Tazarra (Scripps College), the issue traces the free port, its form & function, from the 1500s to present, & its relations with space(s), capitalism, empire, and more https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rgih20/current

Global Intellectual History