The Local in the Global: The Value in Transnational History

To do transnational or international histories of empire may not obscure the local so much as render it intelligible, locating local developments within an imperial framework. This is not only because the protagonists often thought of themselves as living and working in this broader world, but also because of the crucial role played by imperialism in inaugurating a world where the spread of both ideological formations and the world economy has created a globalised  interdependence  that,  in  different  ways,  implicates  us  all  within  historicised social relations. Here we need to interrogate, as Ann Stoler and Frederick  Cooper  suggest,  ‘the  hierarchies  of  production,  power  and  knowledge that emerged in tension with the extension of the domain of universal reason, of market economics, and of citizenship’.