Autores

Steffi Marung, Katja Naumann (University of Leipzig, Germany)

Titulo

Provincializing Europe? Transnational Linkages and Global Entanglements of Europe in the historiography of the last decade

Resumen

The paper addresses the question in which way the transnationality within Europe and its entanglements on the global scale have been dealt with in recent historiographical studies, namely in two fields, in histories on the European Union and in world or global history writing.

1) In the reconstruction of the development of the European Union the processes of political integration have for a long time been historicized without any reference towards linkages with other world regions. Europe, especially the EU-Europe appeared ­ in short terms ­ either as the result of regional-continental dynamics (like for example the ‘German-French motor) or as in essence initiated by individual agents, like Robert Schuman and Jean Monet. Only since the end of the Cold War these patterns of interpretation began to loose its plausibility, was the perspective slowly broadened to include non-European aspects and were first steps made to develop new narratives, which describe the inner-European integration also as reaction to global constellations and entanglements.

2) Within the world and global history writing cross-cultural and trans-continental encounters and linkages, and also the connectivity of

Europe with other parts of the world, received more attention. During the last decade the impact of imperial and colonial constellation on European societies has been examined as various efforts have been made to challenge those Eurocentric perspectives, which describe the worldwide integration as brought about and pushed forward by Europeans. In all these studies aiming at "provincializing Europe", i.e. conceiving it as one region or area among others, there are, however, hardly any approaches, which focus on inner-European processes and link them with interactions across the continent’s borders.

The slow opening of the EU-historiography towards transnational and/ or global dynamics and the marginalization of Europeanization processes in newer world and global histories provide the ground for our assumption that he integration of both research strands could offer several suggestions for a fresh and more thorough reconstruction of the global dimension of Europe’s territorialisation. In parallel the relative isolation of both perspectives and research interests raises the question, whether there are conceptual and theoretical differences in the background, which provoke a tension and incompatibility of both approaches. The paper seeks to shed light on both, the potentials and the limits of bringing these two historiographies closer together.