Global History and International Relations

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between global history and International Relations (IR) with the aim of showing how a closer engagement would enrich both disciplines. The chapter begins by charting the multiple forms that global history takes, highlighting some of the key issues at stake in the global turn. It then examines the ways in which IR has engaged with, or failed to engage with, these histories across a variety of theoretical approaches. The final section outlines two possibilities for how engagement between IR and global history can be developed further in the future: a minimalist vision premised on the generation of synthetic historical-theoretical work, and a maximalist vision based on the construction of new, non-Eurocentric histories of transboundary encounters and entanglements.