Reflections on Transnational History

Konrad H. Jarausch, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Zentrum für
Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam

During the past decade the concept of “transnational history” has become
increasingly popular, because it promises to address questions beyond the
nation state. In many ways this trend responds to a growing sense of
interconnectedness, stemming from the dynamics of the globalization process.
Especially among younger German scholars, this label has become a rallying cry
for breaking with the negative self-preoccupation and for venturing into
horizons beyond their own nation. The leading electronic network clio-oline has
recently established a special portal for _Geschichte transnational_ that
offers “information about new publications, research initiatives and
conferences about the history of cultural transfer and transnational
interconnections in Europe and the world.” Many American scholars, who are
working from an implicitly transcultural perspective, have been joining the
movement in order to deal more explicitly with the embeddedness of their German
topics within wider contexts. These programmatic texts exude an exciting sense
of discovery, envisaging a broadening of horizons that will finally link German
discussions with the debates of other fields.

This welcome interest in the transnational dimension of Central European
history has been inspired by a number of related intellectual developments. In
his synopsis of the genesis of this development, Matthias Middell lists several
key factors. Chief among them was the frustration with a historical social
science version of comparative history that tended to use the nation as frame
of reference so as to establish similarities or differences between states,
thereby reifying the very category that it set out to transcend. Another
impulse derived the French fascination with cultural transfer processes that
stressed interaction and connection through the concept of a _histoire croisée.
A final source was also the Anglo-American development of a “global history,”
which took up the critical suggestions of Black studies and post-colonial
analyses and projected them upon a world-wide stage. These inspirations have
produced a contradictory mixture of analytical rigor and moral fervor that
makes transnational history something more than a mere extension of subject
matter to a previously neglected area of the past.

The vagueness of much transnational rhetoric, often containing quite different
elements, requires first of all a clearer definition of its actual meaning. In
order to evaluate the potential of this approach, one has to establish what is
exactly meant by “transnational history.” Obviously, the term is a Latin
derivative, combining the prefix “trans” that indicates “across, beyond, to the
other side, through” with the noun “natio,” which in its modern sense has come
to suggest nation or nation state. _Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary_ therefore
defines transnational as “extending or going across national boundaries” and
the German version of the _Wikipedia_ talks about a “relationship that takes
place at the same time in a sub-, inter- and national context,” pointing to
transnational business or civil society as examples. Nation is therefore
constitutive to the definition, not as its center, but as something that has to
be overcome, implying that transnational is a category, covering everything
that is not contained primarily within the nation state. In their collection,
_Das Kaiserreich transnational_, Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel
therefore focus on the analysis of “relations and constellations, which
transcend national boundaries.”

The problem with such a definition is the plasticity of the word “nation” due
to its frequent combination with other prefixes. For instance, “trans”-national
is different from “inter”-national, because the political science understanding
of the latter term connotes relations between states rather than developments
cutting across them. Similarly, the adjective “intra”-national focuses on
internal issues rather than on foreign relations. Moreover, the descriptor
“multi”-national commonly indicates the involvement of many nations whereas the
pair “pre”-national and “post”-national serve to denote chronological periods
as well as mental horizons before and after the nation state. The point of this
somewhat pedantic philological exercise is to emphasize the need for clarity
among the categories that are employed to describe the respective “cognitive
interest of the historian.” Therefore “transnational history” ought to be
understood neither as a particular method nor as a fixed subject matter, but
rather, as Young-sun Hong points out, as a fresh perspective, a set of
questions to be asked about the past that cut across the nation state.

In an effort to delineate some examples of its potential, it is secondly
important to recall that much previous work in economic, social or political
history has already been implicitly transnational. For instance, economic
historians agree that the beginnings of industrialization had little to do with
the nation state, since it originated in particularly favored regions in the
United Kingdom and then spread to other similar areas on the continent, linking
these localities through networks of technology, personnel and trade, before
gaining ascendancy in any single country. Similarly social historians treat
mass migration due to religious intolerance, economic deprivation or political
persecution generally as a transnational topic, since it involves the
experiences of migrants escaping one national context and entering another for
the sake of survival or a better life in the future. Even some political
historians concede that developments that took place within separate nation
states such as the establishment of constitutions, which transformed politics
from monarchical absolutism towards mass participation, could be interpreted as
a transnational process moving from Western to Eastern Europe, because it
seemed to follow a similar pattern everywhere. Hence, transnational historians
should remember that they can build upon an impressive body of scholarship,
produced by the _Gesellschaftsgeschichte of the last decades.

As the contributions to this symposium indicate, the greatest potential of a
transnational approach lies, nonetheless, in the questions, raised by the new
cultural histories. In the high cultural field of letters, Nina Berman reminds
us that much creative endeavor took place before the construction of a German
nation state and that its subsequent borders never completely coincided with
the scope of German-speaking cultural production. Intellectual influences among
authors, stylistic trends among artists, academic exchanges between scholars
almost always transcended official boundaries, even if the nation state time
and again tried to harness these energies for its own legitimation. In the
ethnological area of cultural practice, Young-sun Hong emphasizes instead the
feed-back effects from Cold War competition in the Third World to the
metropolitan centers, focusing on the “construction of national identities in
both East and West” through its mediation by non-metropolitan audiences.
Regarding the traditional field of international politics, Ronald Granieri
argues that even diplomatic history might profit from transnational approaches
by paying greater attention to perceptions of decision-makers and attitudes of
constituencies, shaped by the mass media. Mutual influence, cultural hybridity
and unspoken assumptions seem therefore to be particularly suitable areas for a
transnational perspective.

But a transnational approach, it should thirdly be pointed out, cannot presume
to be a universal wrench that manages fix all historical problems. Even its
advocate Klaus Kiran Patel outlines in his inaugural lecture not only its many
possibilities, but mentions also some of the pitfalls of writing transnational
history. There are large areas of the past which were primarily formed by the
nation state during the last two centuries, such as its own administration,
regime structure, social welfare system, economic policy or promotion of
national culture. All of these aspects were no doubt influenced by external
conditions and responded to outside examples, but their development was
primarily affected by internal considerations. Also the classic area of
“inter”-national affairs, such as diplomacy and war, dealt chiefly with
relations between nation states in the modern era and even efforts at
international cooperation such as the League of Nations were based on the
existence of sovereign states. No doubt some civil society initiatives such as
of the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts or scholarly associations originated in
transnational impulses, but even they were eventually organized once again by
national sections. By questioning the territorial basis of developments, a
transnational approach can recover historical problems that do not fit the
national narratives and thereby also shed a different light back on the nation
state.

It is therefore important to realize that the transnational approach to the
German past also has some inherent limits. Since the brutality and racism of
Wilhelmine colonialism have been neglected, their problematic legacy no doubt
requires further attention. But were the Germans really as deeply affected by
imperialism as their British, French, Dutch, Belgian, Spanish or Portuguese
neighbors, not to mention the Americans? A more profitable alternative might
be, as Philipp Ther suggests, looking at the fantasies of Eastern colonization
that poisoned relations with Poland as well as Russia and provoked the
Holocaust. The recent reemergence of attention to global history is
unquestionably a positive development, because it promises to de-provincialize
both American and German conceptions of the past. But can macro-developments
such as the intensification of economic exchanges, spread of popular culture,
erosion of the welfare state or failure of international governance really be
conflated with a more micro-level understanding of transnational history?
Similarly, the renewal of international history through broadening the scope of
actors and including a cultural dimension can only be applauded. But one might
ask, what is to be gained by subsuming a well established area of scholarship
that is currently somewhat out of favor under a new label of trans- rather than
international history?

Instead of endorsing or rejecting a transnational perspective in principle,
German historians ought to explore carefully what kind of new insights this
additional approach can shed on the Central European past. Heady proclamations
of an impending paradigm change might make younger scholars feel good who are
in search of a generational cause beyond postmodernism, but crossing borders is
not in itself morally superior, since the havoc created by global capitalism,
just to mention one bête noire, is beginning to rival the suffering caused by
the nation state. Only convincing research results presented in a compelling
fashion will justify a new approach in the long run. Based on his experience
with comparative history, Hannes Siegrist, therefore, calls for the elaboration
of criteria which would allow an assessment of the quality of transnational
work. Skeptics will only be convinced by an impressive body of works that
implement the transnational perspective successfully and demonstrate by example
what scholars have been missing by a nation-centered approach.

At a time when the linkages between people in different countries seem to be
increasing rapidly, it makes a great deal of sense to pay more attention to the
antecedents of this _Vernetzung_ in the past. There are many topics, ranging
from smuggling or trade to migration and family networks, from the
dissemination of ideologies like Marxism or Fascism to the spread of
architectural styles like Bauhaus modernism that await a transnational
analysis. Especially the history of contested borderlands like the Alsace or of
social transgressions like interracial unions can profit from such an approach.
From a North American distance, it has always struck this commentator as odd
that scholars should, through their linguistic preparation and academic
training, replicate the national divisions in which continental historians were
trapped as a result of their birth and citizenship. Aware of the multiple
transatlantic connections, historians in the US ought to have fewer
difficulties in embedding German developments into their European and global
contexts. Hence a widening of the scope beyond the nation state offers exciting
possibilities – but it must be accompanied by a clearer definition of its
meaning as well as a more candid admission of its limits.

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