ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, historians have gradually tended to focus their attention on phenomena such as transfer, movement, dissemination, flows and exchanges between different spaces.1
The increase in studies, conferences and publications – including keynote books or published series – dedicated to the history of the mechanisms of internationalisation is undoubtedly due to the perceived pervasiveness, over the past decades, of phenomena linked to globalisation. Whether a matter of concern or an opportunity to rejoice in the creation of a global village, globalisation has inspired and prompted the renewal of research and input in the social sciences. As for historians, who are certainly more accustomed than their colleagues in the humanities to limiting their field to national territories and contexts, they took their time before getting excited about internationalisation.2 Since the 1990s, however, they have definitely caught up, and their enthusiasm has resulted in an increase in approaches, perspectives and conceptions about processes that go beyond national boundaries. Whether labelled histoire croisée, connected or entangled history, world-global-transnational history or even, more recently, histoire à parts égales,3 cross-border phenomena are a focus of attention for scholars. These simultaneous currents remain anchored in specific approaches and methodologies, resulting in quite compartmentalised issues and agendas. Many questions are thus raised about the rationale that inspires or resists these flows and
1 Historians of education have already been particularly sensitive to approaches in terms of transfers and circulations. For example, an international conference dealing with worldwide aspects of internationalisation in education was held in Geneva, in June 2012, under the patronage of three societies: the International Standing Conference for the History of Education, the Society for the History of Children, and Youth and the Disability History Association. 2 See, in particular, Akira Iriye’s remarks in Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Benedikt Stuchtey and Eckhardt Fuchs, eds., Writing World History, 1800-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Pierre Grosser, “L’histoire mondiale/globale, une jeunesse exubérante, mais difficile”, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 110, no. 2 (2011): 3-18; and A. Caillé and S. Dufoix, eds., Le tournant global des sciences sociales (Paris: Bibliothèque du Mauss, La Découverte, 2013). More generally speaking, see Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, eds., Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009). 3 Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, eds., De la comparaison à l’histoire croisée (Paris: Seuil, 2004); Pierre-Yves Saunier, Transnational History: Theory and History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Romain Bertrand, L’histoire à parts égales: récits d’une rencontre Orient-Occident: XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Paris: Seuil, 2011); Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World (Cam-
contacts, the impacts they trigger on both sides of connected spaces, or the territories and actors that kindle them (or, conversely, who suffer from them). Such overflowing enthusiasm does not go without occasionally fostering perfunctory studies or hasty conclusions, a risk clearly underlined by recent critical assessments.4 All the same, the increasing interest in transnational dimensions of economic, social and cultural phenomena evidenced thanks to these new approaches has not only boosted the way history is studied, but has also affected our understanding of the phenomena they reveal.
