Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:26:07.698Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2011

John W. Wertheimer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In recent years, the conspicuous advance of globalization has inspired many historians to rethink the past in cross-national and comparative terms. Frustration with the limits of traditional, national approaches to history has spawned interesting comparative work in such fields as women's history, labor history, economic history, and imperial history. Although legal history tends to be somewhat parochial by tradition, it, too, has taken a cross-national and comparative turn.

Type
Forum: Racial Determination and the Law in Comparative Perspective
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 465 - 469
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. For definitions of these methodological terms, see Cohen, Deborah and O'Connor, Maura, Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective (New York:Routledge, 2004), ix–xxivCrossRefGoogle Scholar. For evidence that “[r]ecent discussions of ‘globalization’” have prompted historians to transcend traditional national approaches to history, see Bender, Thomas, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Organization of American Historians, “The LaPietra Report: A Report to the Profession” (2000), available at http://www.oah.org/activities/lapietra/index.html.

2. For some examples of cross-national, comparative scholarship from the field of women's and gender history, see Grayzel, Susan R., “Fighting for their Rights: A Comparative Perspective on Twentieth-Century Women's Movements in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States,” Journal of Women's History 11 (1999): 210–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wikander, Ulla, Harris, Alice Kessler, and Lewis, Jane, eds., Protecting Women: Labor Legislation in Europe, the United States, and Australia, 1880–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Maynes, Mary Jo, Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary History (New York: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar; and “Mother India/Mother Ireland: Comparative Gendered Dialogues of Colonialism and Nationalism in the Early 20th Century,” Women's Studies International Forum 25 (2002): 301–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. See Bennett, James, “Reflections on Writing Comparative and Transnational Labour History,” History Compass 7 (2009): 376–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cronin, James E., “Neither Exceptional Nor Peculiar: Towards the Comparative Study of Labor in Advanced Society,” International Review of Social History 38 (1993): 59–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breuilly, John, “Comparative Labour History,” Labour History Review 55 (1990): 6–9Google Scholar; Berger, Stefan and Patmore, Greg, “Comparative Labour History in Britain and Australia,” Labour History 88 (2005): 9–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kealey, Gregory S. and Patmore, Greg, “Comparative Labour History: Australia and Canada,” Labour History 71 (1996): 1–15Google Scholar.

4. See Hatton, Timothy J., O'Rourke, Kevin H., and Taylor, Alan M., eds., The New Comparative Economic History: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey G. Williamson (Cambridge:MIT Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Little, Daniel, “Eurasian Historical Comparisons: Conceptual Issues in Comparative Historical Inquiry,” Social Science History 32 (2008): 235–61Google Scholar; Wong, R. Bin, “Early Modern Economic History in the Long Run,” Science & Society 68 (2004): 80–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trapido, Stanley and Williams, Gavin, “South Africa in a Comparative Study of Industrialization,” Historia 53 (2008): 10–23Google Scholar; Wilkins, Mira, “Chandler and Global Business History,” Business History Review 82 (2008): 251–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cameron, Rondo, “Comparative Economic History,” Research in Economic History (1997, supplement 1): 287–305Google Scholar.

5. See Seligmann, Matthew S., “German and British Imperialism in Comparative Perspective,” German History 20 (2002): 225–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gammerl, Benno, “Subjects, Citizens and Others: The Handling of Ethnic Differences in the British and the Habsburg Empires,” European Review of History 16 (2009): 523–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maier, Charles S., Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keese, Alexander, Living with Ambiguity: Integrating an African Elite in French and Portuguese Africa, 1930–1961 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007)Google Scholar; and Gregg, Robert, Inside Out, Outside In: Essays in Comparative History (New York:St. Martin's, 2000)Google Scholar.

6. For example, the European Society for Comparative Legal History was founded in 2009. See also the Journal of Legal History's special issue on comparative legal history in August of 2004 (vol. 25, no. 2).