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Medieval Studies after the Global Turn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2022

Thomas Ertl  and
Klaus Oschema
Thomas Ertl
Affiliation:
Freie Universität Berlinthomas.ertl@fu-berlin.de klaus.oschema@rub.de
Klaus Oschema
Affiliation:
Ruhr-University Bochumthomas.ertl@fu-berlin.de klaus.oschema@rub.de
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Abstract

This contribution seeks to evaluate the influence of the “global turn” on medieval studies, with an accent on the European Middle Ages. Developing global perspectives for the premodern period constitutes a real challenge. First, the very notion of the “Middle Ages” is a Eurocentric concept and its application in non-European contexts can be criticized. Second, while the observation of far-ranging contacts and networks of exchange has opened important avenues for research in premodern history, the quantitative significance of those contacts remains difficult to evaluate. Third, there is an ongoing tension between different visions of (medieval) history’s function in society. Despite these problems, recent contributions to the “global Middle Ages” have opened up new approaches to phenomena that are equally pertinent for European medieval studies. While the global turn might not entirely reshape the history of medieval Europe, it certainly adds important layers and new perspectives to subjects that not only resonate with contemporary interests but have long been a concern of European medieval history, such as migration, commerce, and religion. In spite of the difficulties and challenges (methodological, linguistic, etc.) that it poses, the global turn has the potential to contribute to the development of new thematic approaches and new forms of cooperation in the field of medieval studies.

Résumé

Résumé

Cette contribution cherche à évaluer l’influence du « tournant global » sur les études médiévales, et notamment sur le Moyen Âge européen. Développer des perspectives globales pour la période prémoderne constitue un véritable défi. Tout d’abord, la notion même de « Moyen Âge » est un concept eurocentrique dont application à des contextes non européens peut être critiquée. Ensuite, si l’observation de contacts et de réseaux d’échanges de grande envergure a ouvert de considérables voies de recherche en histoire prémoderne, l’importance quantitative de ces contacts reste difficile à évaluer. Enfin, il existe une tension permanente entre différentes visions de la fonction de l’histoire (médiévale) dans la société. Malgré ces problèmes, les récentes contributions au « Moyen Âge global » ont ouvert de nouvelles approches à des phénomènes qui sont tout aussi pertinents pour les études médiévales européennes. Si le tournant global ne remodèle pas entièrement l’histoire de l’Europe médiévale, il ajoute certainement des nuances importantes et de nouvelles perspectives à de nombreux sujets qui non seulement résonnent avec les intérêts actuels, mais ont longtemps été une préoccupation de l’histoire médiévale européenne, comme la migration, le commerce et la religion. En dépit des difficultés et des défis (méthodologiques, linguistiques, etc.) qu’il pose, le tournant global a le potentiel de contribuer au développement de nouvelles approches thématiques ainsi que de nouvelles formes de coopération dans le domaine des études médiévales.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , First View , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
© Éditions de l’EHESS 2022

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References

1 For a helpful discussion of different concepts (world history, universal history, global history) from a medievalist’s perspective, see Michael Borgolte, “Mittelalter in der größeren Welt. Eine europäische Kultur in der globalen Perspektive,” Historische Zeitschrift 295 (2012): 35–61, here pp. 35–43.

2 For instance, the Medieval History Journal (since 1998); the Journal of Transcultural Studies (since 2010); Medieval Worlds (since 2014); and the Journal of Medieval Worlds (since 2019). See also Jérôme Baschet, “Faut-il mondialiser l’histoire médiévale ?” in Histoire monde, jeux d’échelles et espaces connectés, ed. Société des historiens médiévistes de l’Enseignement supérieur public (Paris: Éd. de la Sorbonne, 2017), 13–36.

3 Peter Frankopan, “Why We Need to Think about the Global Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval Worlds 1, no. 1 (2019): 5–10, here p. 8.

4 Jeremy Adelman, “What Is Global History Now?” Aeon, March 2, 2017, https://aeon.co/essays/is-global-history-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment. See also Chris Jones, Conor Kostick, and Klaus Oschema, “Why Should We Care about the Middle Ages? Putting the Case for the Relevance of Studying Medieval Europe,” in Making the Medieval Relevant: How Medieval Studies Contribute to Improving our Understanding of the Present, ed. Chris Jones, Conor Kostick, and Klaus Oschema (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 1–29, here pp. 16–17; Damiano Matasci, “L’histoire mondiale : un modèle historiographique en question,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 71, no. 1 (2021): 333–46, here pp. 335–36.

5 See, for example, Otto Gerhard Oexle, Die Gegenwart des Mittelalters (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013); Oexle, “Das entzweite Mittelalter,” in Die Deutschen und ihr Mittelalter. Themen und Funktionen moderner Geschichtsbilder vom Mittelalter (Ausblicke. Essays und Analysen zu Geschichte und Politik), ed. Gerd Althoff (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992), 7–28.

6 On Otto Brunner, see Reinhard Blänkner, “Von der ‘Staatsbildung’ zur ‘Volkwerdung.’ Otto Brunners Perspektivenwechsel der Verfassungshistorie im Spannungsfeld zwischen völkischem und alteuropäischem Geschichtsdenken,” in Alteuropa oder Frühe Moderne. Deutungsmuster für das 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert aus dem Krisenbewußtsein der Weimarer Republik in Theologie, Rechts- und Geschichtswissenschaft, ed. Luise Schorn-Schütte (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1999), 87–135, here pp. 117–19. For alternative positions, see Christian Jaser, Ute Lotz-Heumann, and Matthias Pohlig, eds., Alteuropa – Vormoderne – Neue Zeit. Epochen und Dynamiken der europäischen Geschichte (1200–1800) (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2012).

7 See, for example, Jacques Le Goff, Must We Divide History into Periods? [2014], trans. Malcolm DeBevoise (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

8 Bernhard Jussen, “Richtig denken im falschen Rahmen? Warum das ‘Mittelalter’ nicht in den Lehrplan gehört,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 67, no. 9/10 (2016): 558–76.

9 Geraldine Heng, “Early Globalities, and Its Questions, Objectives, and Methods: An Inquiry into the State of Theory and Critique,” Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory 26, no. 2/3 (2014): 234–53, here pp. 235–39.

10 Michael Borgolte, “Hat sich das Mittelalter erledigt?” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 3, 2018, https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/alternativ-begriff-fuer-mittelalter-eufrasisches-zeitalter-15760171.html. The notion has been recently used in a slightly modified way by Dorothea Weltecke, Minderheiten und Mehrheiten. Erkundungen religiöser Komplexität im mittelalterlichen Afro-Eurasien (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020).

11 Benjamin Z. Kedar and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, eds., The Cambridge World History, vol. 5, Expanding Webs of Exchange and Conflict, 500 CE–1500 CE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1.

12 See Charles West, “‘European History and ‘Eurocentrism’: A Conversation between Dina Gusejnova (LSE) and Charles West (Sheffield),” History Matters, May 12, 2021, http://www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk/eurocentrism-conversation/.

13 See, for example, J. Clara Chan, “Medievalists, Recoiling from White Supremacy, Try to Diversify the Field,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2017, https://www.chronicle.com/article/medievalists-recoiling-from-white-supremacy-try-to-diversify-the-field/.

14 See the MoC website, https://medievalistsofcolor.com/, which indicates a particularly active phase in 2017 and 2018; see also the blog In the Middle, https://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/.

15 See Onyeka Nubia, “Who Was the Ipswich Man?” Our Migration Story, s.d., https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/the-ipswich-man; W. Mark Ormrod, Joanna Story, and Elizabeth M. Tyler, eds., Migrants in Medieval England, c. 500–c. 1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). For the presence of “Saracen” converts to Christianity in thirteenth-century France, see William Chester Jordan, The Apple of His Eye: Converts from Islam in the Reign of Louis IX (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).

16 See, for example, the contributions in Andrew Albin et al., eds., Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019). While the phenomenon of political abuse is by no means new, older publications tended to ignore the effects of this on popular culture. See, for example, János Bak et al., eds., Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.–21. Jahrhundert (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2009).

17 Patrick Boucheron, ed., Histoire mondiale de la France (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2017). See also in the present issue Richard J. Evans, “Global Histories of Modern Europe,” Annales HSS (English Edition) 76, no. 4 (2021): doi:10.1017/ahsse.2022.12.

18 Current debates have a strong background in postcolonial theory and appear particularly vivid in the United States. See, for instance, Cord J. Whitaker, Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).

19 See Jerome Jeffrey Cohen, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2000); Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul, eds., Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of “The Middle Ages” outside Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

20 For a critical analysis, see Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

21 See Michael Borgolte, Der Gesandtenaustausch der Karolinger mit den Abbasiden und mit den Patriarchen von Jerusalem (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1976); Kirill Dmitriev and Klaus Oschema, “ʿAbbāsid Caliphs and Frankish Kings,” in Baghdād: The History of a Metropolis, ed. Jens Scheiner and Isabel Toral-Niehoff (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2022).

22 See Klaus Oschema and Christoph Mauntel, eds., Order into Action: How Large-Scale Concepts of World Order Determine Practices in the Premodern World (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming 2022); Christoph Mauntel, “The T-O Diagram and its Religious Connotations: A Circumstantial Case,” in Geography and Religious Knowledge in the Medieval World, ed. Christoph Mauntel (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 57–82.

23 Klaus Oschema, Bilder von Europa im Mittelalter (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2013).

24 The relation between theoretical ideas of world order and individual or collective action is discussed in Oschema and Mauntel, Order into Action.

25 Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, A.D. 1250–1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

26 Éric Vallet, “L’océan Indien vers 1300. Le ‘monde’ de ‘Izz al-Dīn al-Ḥalabī al-Kūlamī,” in Société des historiens médiévistes de l’Enseignement supérieur public, Histoire monde, 309–25.

27 See, for instance, Kathleen Bickford Berzock, ed., Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); and Eric Ramirez-Weaver, “Islamic Silver for Carolingian Reforms and the Buddha-Image of Helgö: Rethinking Carolingian Connections with the East, 790–820,” in China and beyond in the Mediaeval Period: Cultural Crossings and Inter-Regional Connections, ed. Dorothy C. Wong and Gustav Heldt (Amherst: Cambria, 2014), 171–86.

28 Valerie Hansen, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World – and Globalization Began (New York: Scribner, 2020).

29 See the research program of the Käte Hamburger Research Center in Munich, “Dis:connectivity in Processes of Globalisation” (established in 2021).

30 See, for instance, Michael Borgolte et al., eds., Europa im Geflecht der Welt. Mittelalterliche Migrationen in globalen Bezügen (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012); Borgolte et al., eds., Integration und Desintegration der Kulturen im europäischen Mittelalter (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011); Borgolte et al., eds., Mittelalter im Labor. Die Mediävistik testet Wege zu einer transkulturellen Europawissenschaft (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008).

31 See the introduction to the present issue: David Motadel, “Globalizing Europe: European History after the Global Turn,” Annales HSS (English Edition) 76, no. 4 (2022): doi:10.1017/ahsse.2022.2.

32 Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 1993).

33 Mischa Meier, Geschichte der Völkerwanderung. Europa, Asien und Afrika vom 3. bis zum 8. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2019).

34 Victor Roudometof, Glocalization: A Critical Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2016). See also, with a focus on the early modern period, the methodological observations by Francesca Trivellato, “Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?” California Italian Studies 2, no. 1 (2001): http://dx.doi.org/10.5070/C321009025, and in John-Paul Ghobrial, ed., “Global History and Microhistory,” Past & Present 242, supplement 14 (2019).

35 See Martin Bauch and Gerrit J. Schenk, eds., The Crisis of the 14th Century: Teleconnections between Environmental and Societal Change? (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020).

36 See, for instance, Michael Borgolte, Christen, Juden, Muselmanen. Die Erben der Antike und der Aufstieg des Abendlandes 300 bis 1400 n. Chr. (Munich: Siedler-Verlag, 2006).

37 See, among numerous other contributions, Wolfram Drews and Christian Scholl, eds., Transkulturelle Verflechtungsprozesse in der Vormoderne (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016); and Georg Christ et al., Transkulturelle Verflechtungen. Mediävistische Perspektiven (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2016).

38 Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert, eds., Grenzräume und Grenzüberschreitungen im Vergleich. Der Osten und der Westen des mittelalterlichen Lateineuropa (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007).

39 This is not limited to the medieval period; see Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet and Muriel Debié, Le monde syriaque. Sur les routes d’un christianisme ignoré (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017); and Thomas Ertl, “Repercussions from the Far East: A Comparison of the Catholic and Nestorian Presence in China,” Transcultural Studies 2 (2015): 38–63. For a complementary perspective on Buddhism, see Tansen Sen, “The Spread of Buddhism,” in Kedar and Wiesner-Hanks, Expanding Webs of Exchange and Conflict, 447–79. See also the studies produced in the context of the project “Visions of Community: Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400–1600 CE),” https://viscom.ac.at/home/.

40 The field of “Mediterranean Studies” has been profoundly inspired by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). For a number of pertinent studies see the series “Mittelmeerstudien,” inaugurated by the Center for Mediterranean Studies at the Ruhr-University Bochum. A monumental and ground-breaking forerunner was Shelomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–1993).

41 An important early exception is Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). A new synthesis will soon be published: Michael Borgolte, Die Welten des Mittelalters. Globalgeschichte eines Jahrtausends (Munich: C. H. Beck, forthcoming 2022).

42 See, for instance, Thomas Ertl, ed., Die Welt 1250–1500 (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2009); and Wolfgang Reinhard, ed., Empires and Encounters, 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015).

43 Johannes Fried and Ernst-Dieter Hehl, eds., WBG Weltgeschichte. Eine globale Geschichte von den Anfängen bis ins 21. Jahrhundert, vol. 3, Weltdeutungen und Weltreligionen 600 bis 1500 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010). For court culture, see Ekaterini Mitsiou et al., eds., Courts on the Move: Perspectives from the Global Middle Ages (forthcoming); for dynasties, see Jeroen Duindam, Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); for political communication and practices, see Hilde De Weerdt and Franz-Julius Morche, eds., Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800–1600 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021), and the series “Macht und Herrschaft,” published by the Collaborative Research Center 1167 at the University of Bonn, “Macht and Herrschaft: Premodern Configurations in a Transcultural Perspective”; for endowments, see Michael Borgolte, ed., Enzyklopädie des Stiftungswesens in mittelalterlichen Gesellschaften, 3 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014–2017).

44 Catherine Holmes and Naomi Standen, “Introduction: Towards a Global Middle Ages,” in “The Global Middle Ages,” ed. Catherine Holmes and Naomi Standen, Past & Present 238, supplement 13 (2018): 1–44, here p. 3. See also the review by Roy Flechner, “How Far Is Global?” Medieval Worlds 12 (2020): 255–66.

45 Caroline Dodds Pennock and Amanda Power, “Globalizing Cosmologies,” in Holmes and Standen, “The Global Middle Ages,” 88–115, here p. 105.

46 Borgolte, “Mittelalter in der größeren Welt”; for the perspective of literary studies see Heng, “Early Globalities.”

47 Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 67–72.

48 Monica H. Green, “The Four Black Deaths,” American Historical Review 125, no. 5 (2020): 1601–31.

49 Patrick Boucheron, ed., Histoire du monde au xve siècle, 2 vols (Paris: Fayard, 2009), combines thematic and regional surveys with short essays on individual events and sources.

50 See Boucheron, Histoire mondiale de la France; Matasci, “L’histoire mondiale.”

51 For an example concerning Europe in general, without a specific focus on the medieval period, see Christophe Charle and Daniel Roche, eds., L’Europe. Encyclopédie historique (Arles: Actes Sud, 2018).

52 See Bruce M. S. Campbell, The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late Medieval World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Bauch and Schenk, The Crisis of the 14th Century.

53 Michael Mitterauer, Why Europe? The Medieval Origins of its Special Path [2002], trans. Gerald Chapple (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Eric Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

54 Robert I. Moore, “Medieval Europe in World History,” in A Companion to the Medieval World, ed. Carol Lansing and Edward D. English (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009): 563–80.

55 Robert I. Moore, “The First Great Divergence?” Medieval Worlds 1 (2015): 16–24.

56 See Ian Morris, Why the West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal about the Future (London: Profile Books, 2010).

57 As argued by Thomas Bauer, Warum es kein islamisches Mittelalter gab. Das Erbe der Antike und der Orient (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2018), 11–31.

58 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society.

59 Coined to cover a millennium of mostly European history, the notion’s shortcomings include the homogenization of very different periods (the late Middle Ages having more in common with the early modern period than with the Carolingian era) and regions. See Jussen, “Richtig denken im falschen Rahmen?”; and Peter von Moos, “Gefahren des Mittelalterbegriffs. Diagnostische und präventive Aspekte,” in Modernes Mittelalter: Neue Bilder einer populären Epoche, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1994), 33–63.

60 Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: The New Press, 2016).

61 Adelman, “What Is Global History Now?”

62 Heng, “Early Globalities,” 242–45.

63 See, for instance, Bauer, Warum es kein islamisches Mittelalter gab. This particular effect of the practice of “provincializing Europe” is rarely made explicit, but is often perceptible in the “tonality” of pertinent contributions. See Jennifer R. Davis, “Western Europe,” in A Companion to the Global Early Middle Ages, ed. Erik Hermans (Leeds/Amsterdam: ARC Humanities Press/Amsterdam University Press, 2020), 349–92, especially pp. 359–60 and 378, which underlines the asymmetry in perceptions of contacts between the Abbasid caliphate and the Carolingian courts; or, more explicitly, Richard L. Smith, “Trade and Commerce,” in Hermans, A Companion to the Global Early Middle Ages, 425–75, here p. 425. For the late Middle Ages, see the careful observations by Bernd Schneidmüller, Grenzerfahrung und monarchische Ordnung. Europa 1200–1500 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2011), 226.