ABSTRACT

On the basis of the contributions in this edited volume, and inspired by the workshops organized on behalf of the RSA Research Network on Regional Economic and Policy History (ReHi), this final chapter elaborates again on the interrelationship between history and regional studies. It delineates a field of research in which regional historians exchange knowledge with colleagues from the social sciences, such as geographers, economists, political scientists and sociologists. The field, programmatically described as ‘New Regional History’, is demarcated by four points of departure or ‘corner flags’. The first corner flag argues that every multidisciplinary exchange should start from a societal problem or challenge. The second corner flag stands for the idea that history and regional studies should together increase our understanding of how regions were constructed, by whom and on the basis of what kind of arguments. The third corner flag introduces multidisciplinary exchanges between regional and historical studies as a rule of conduct and the fourth commands a comparative approach and a preference for analyzing the transfer of people, ideas and commodities between regions.