Beyond Nation and State? New Approaches to International History - Detailseite

What is international history today? Do the interactions between states and nations still represent a meaningful line of inquiry in an era of transnational, global and entangled histories? Having lost its once pre-eminent status, international history has today become an exciting and innovative area of our discipline. Long having expanded from its narrow emphasis on diplomatic history, to include trade and economics, ideology, propaganda, the interdependence of foreign and domestic policy and many more relevant factors, new approaches continue to emerge to challenge the established patterns of foreign policy centered analysis. Nevertheless, even though the focus, just as in International Relations, has widened to include not only state but also non-state actors and culture based analyses have become as important as the traditional interest based ones; some historians continue to regard international history as an inherently problematic branch of the discipline. This seminar will analyse the historical evolution of international history and will also look at the new developments on the field and discuss its continued relevance to the study of the past.

Finney, Patrick “Introduction: What is international history?” in Finney, Patrick (ed.) Palgrave advances in international history (Basingstoke and New York, 2005)