Writing the Globe from the Edges: Approaches to the Making of Global History in Australia

Global history research has burgeoned in the last decade, as seen in the emergence of journals (i.e., Comparativ, 1990 and Journal of Global History, 2006), publications lists, professional organizations, electronic discussion forums and historiographical collections such as Hopkins Global History and Grantners Globalgeschichte und Globalisierung. There has also been a dramatic shift toward the provision of postgraduate global history programs in schools and universities across the United States, Australia and parts of Europe.1 At the same time, however, it is a reasonably common assumption that Australian historians have done little to shape the historiography of global history or to develop a distinctive approach to the analysis of world events. This assumption appears well founded, for an Internet or database search for publications on global history by Australian academics delivers few returns. But rather than simply concluding that Australians have little to offer to a global conversation on global history, it will be argued that a wider historiographical terminology and view is needed to see past, contemporary and potential Australian contributions to the field.