Globalization is usually understood as a set of economic, social, and cultural processes of interdependence and integration which marked the world since the 1970s onward. This course aims to investigate them within a long-term historical dimension, starting from the nineteenth century. Additionally, it intends to explain methodological and historiographical perspectives for analyzing and interpreting features and dynamics of expansion and crisis of the globalization.
Attending students are required to rely on notes taken over the course as well as on documents available on Moodle and to prepare on one of the books of group (a) and on one of the books of the group (b). Non-attending students are required to prepare on the two books of group (a) and on two of the books of the group (b):
a.
S. Conrad, Storia globale. Un'introduzione, Carocci, Roma 2015
J. Osterhammel, N. Petersson, Storia della globalizzazione. Dimensioni, processi, epoche, Il Mulino, Bologna 2005
L. Di Fiore, M. Meriggi, World History. Le nuove rotte della storia, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2012
b.
C. Aydin, Il lungo Ottocento. Una storia politica internazionale, Einaudi, Torino 2019
C. Bayly, La nascita del mondo moderno, 1780-1914, Einaudi, Torino 2007
S. Beckert, L'impero del cotone: una storia globale, Einaudi, Torino 2016
D. Bloxham, Lo sterminio degli ebrei: un genocidio, Einaudi, Torino 2010
R. Boyce, The Great Interwar Crisis and the Collapse of Globalization, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2009
J. Burbank, F. Cooper (eds.), Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2010
I. Clark, Globalizzazione e frammentazione: le relazioni internazionali nel 20. secolo, Il Mulino, Bologna 2001
V, De Grazia, L'impero irresistibile. La società dei consumi americana alla conquista del mondo, Einaudi, Torino 2006
N. Ferguson, C. Maier, E. Manela, D. Sargent (ed.), The Shock of the Global: the 1970s in Perspective, Harvard UP, Cambridge 2011
H. James, Rambouillet, 15 novembre 1975. La globalizzazione dell'economia, Il Mulino, Bologna 1999
S. Lorenzini, Global Development: A Cold War History, Princeton, Princeton University Press 2019
C. Maier, Leviathan 2.0: la costruzione dello Stato moderno, Einaudi, Torino 2018
C. Maier, Dentro i confini. Territorio e potere dal 1500 a oggi, Einaudi, Torino 2019
J. McNeill, Qualcosa di nuovo sotto il sole. Storia dell'ambiente nel XX secolo, Einaudi, Torino 2002
M. Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present, Penguin, London 2012
K. Patel, Il New Deal: una storia globale, Einaudi, Torino 2017
K. Pomeranz, La grande divergenza. La Cina, l'Europa e la nascita dell'economia mondiale moderna, Il Mulino, Bologna 2010
S. Pons, La rivoluzione globale. Storia del comunismo internazionale, 1917-1991, Einaudi, Torino 2012
R. Service, Compagni. Storia globale del comunismo nel XX. Secolo, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2008
L. Sondhaus, La prima guerra mondiale: una rivoluzione globale, Einaudi, Torino 2018
A. Tooze, The Deluge. The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916-1931, Penguin, London 2014
A. Tooze, Lo schianto, 2008-2018. Come un decennio di crisi ha cambiato il mondo, Mondadori, Milano 2018
O. A. Westad, La Guerra fredda globale. Gli Stati Uniti, l'Unione Sovietica e le relazioni internazionali nel Ventesimo secolo, Il Saggiatore, Milano 2015
T. Zahra, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World, New York, Norton, 2016
In agreement with the teacher, the students may ask for other texts.
Learning Objectives
The course aims to provide the students with the fundamental instruments for understanding the methodological and historiographical problems of global history, world history, transnational history and postcolonial studies, by focusing on some key issues of the history of dynamics of globalization and de-globalization. Notably, the course will offer a broad, critical overview of the national and euro-centric perspectives and highlight the analytical and interpretative potentials of approaches intended to contextualize events, phenomena and processes on global scale and to investigate their connections and interactions.
Teaching Methods
The course will be based on frontal lessons.
Possibly, a part of the course will be held in form of presentation and discussion of texts (a paper about a book or some articles) by the students. A both oral and written presentation of one text (about a book or some articles) will allow to solve the preparation of the point b for the final examination.
Type of Assessment
The final examination is oral. It aims at assessing the acquisition of the knowledge in the history of globalization and of the main methodological and historiograhical questions related to global history, world history, transnational history and postcolonial studies. Possibly an oral and written presentation of a text (a book, some articles) will concur to the definition of the final mark at the moment of the final examination.
Course program
Today's world is in many ways a product and a mirror of globalization. However, a recent wave of studies has understood this outcome as anything but “natural”, and has focused on the complex and often contradictory historical forces and features of globalization. As a matter of fact, over time, since the sixteenth century onward, diverse forms of global integration have played out at economic, political, social and cultural levels. On the other hand, globalizing dynamics of different degrees have intertwined with, or opposed to, different pushes and trends (processes of fragmentation or deglobalization).
This course is articulated into two parts. The first part will investigate the theoretical and historiographical questions of global history, world history, transnational history and postcolonial studies with special attention to the Anglo-American and German debates and to their international circulation. All these approaches tend to overcome the nationally-focused and euro-centric narratives, and they will be analyzed in the light of their applications to the economic, political, social and cultural history, to the history of the environment and of the international relations. The second part will inquiry into a series of specific issues related to the history of the processes of globalization and deglobalization in the nineteenth and twentieth century (from the Empires to the world wars, from revolutions to migrations, from capitalism to communism, from colonization to decolonization, up to the Cold War and beyond), which have been reconsidered by recent innovative methodological and historiographical perspective. Traditional objects of historical research such as the biography of a single individual, the process of production and distribution of a good, the relationship between concepts and practices of territoriality, identity and sovereignty, as well as political and social conflicts, movements and projects of modernity, can be understood within a completely new horizon of connections and networks, such as the global one.