Introduction: beyond national history

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

^1.Tyrell, “American Exceptionalism”; McGerr, “The Price of the ‘New Transnational History’”; and Tyrell, “Ian Tyrell Responds.”

^2.Thelen, “The National and Beyond”; Van der Linden, “Transnationalizing American Labor History.” For a valuable survey on progress in the USA, see Tyrell, “Reflections on the Transnational Turn.”

^3.Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World; Reynolds, One World Divisible. Like Eric Hobsbawm's texts culminating with The Age of Extremes, Reynold's work is in a more traditional mould.

^4.“AHR Conversation”; Cannadine, What is History Now?; and Jordanova, History in Practice.

^5.Iriye and Saunier, The Palgrave Dictionary; Iriye, Global and Transnational History; and Saunier, Transnational History.

^6.Mazlish, “Comparing Global History to World History”; Tyrell, “Reflections on the Transnational Turn”; Clavin “Defining Transnationalism”; Institute of Social History, www.socialhistory.org/en/research/global-labour-history; and Stuchtey and Fuchs, Writing World History.

^7.“AHR Conversation”; Greene, “Historians of the World.”

^8. The journal International Labor and Working Class History was published from 1976. Fink, “Preface.”

^9.Fink, Workers Across the Americas.

^10.Lucassen, Global Labour History. The Institute actively encourages collaborative global research in labor history, and the European Social Science History Conference which it organises has, together with its journal, provided a forum for cross-fertilisation of ideas. Van der Linden's transnational travels highlight the benign side of globalisation.

^11.“AHR Conversation,” 1446 (Sven Beckert).

^12.Kirk, MacRaild and Nolan, “Transnational Ideas.”

^13. The papers were collected in special editions of Labour History Review (volume 74, no. 3 (2009) and volume 75, no. 1 [2010]) edited by Nolan, MacRaild and Kirk.

^14.Greene, “Historians of the World,” 13. The Workers Across the Americas collection illustrates the point with different contributors addressing similar phenomena and making similar points under “global,” “transnational” or “world” rubrics.

^15.Kirk, MacRaild and Nolan, “Transnational Ideas.”

^16.Van der Linden, “The Promise and Challenges,” 62 (italics in original).

^17. On the NAFTA controversy, see Hartman, NAFTA. On the complex relationship between the commercial and social aspects of Mercosur, see Gardini, Origins of Mercosur.

^18. See for example Hlatshwayo, “Is There Room for International Solidarity”; Buhlungu and Tshogedi, COSATU's Contested Legacy.

^19. The barbarism of China's twentieth-century revolutions is portrayed in Taylor, The Generalissimo; Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation; and Dikötter, Mao's Great Famine.

^20. To take one example, the ‘Hands off China’ campaign was pushed by the Comintern in Moscow, then allied with Chiang Kai-Shek, but opposed by the Labour Party executive while CPGB proposals for united front work with the ILP on the issue proved in vain. An ephemeral campaign with limited resonance was dropped after Chiang turned on the Communists: Thorpe, The British Communist Party and Moscow, 105–6; MacFarlane, The British Communist Party, 178–80.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Croucher

Richard Croucher is Professor of Comparative Employment Relations and Director of Research at Middlesex University Business School, London, UK.

John McIlroy

John McIlroy is a Professor of Employment Relations at Middlesex University Business School, London, UK.