SE Academic Review 2023

42 ST EDWARD’S, OXFORD

5 .

At first sight, the global history approach might seem unpropitious for historians of medieval Europe. The dominant focus of global history to date has been on the period after 1500. Scholars of the field have usually sought to produce comparative and connective studies that eschew national and Eurocentric frameworks, bringing to the fore elements of the past that have been largely overlooked over the past two centuries (O’Brien, 2006; Holmes & Standen, 2018, pp. 1-2). The global turn can thus be explained in terms of the social, cultural, political and economic globalization experienced today, which has prompted historians to investigate the historic origins of these phenomena. Underlying this turn has been an attempt to deconstruct colonial narratives and the ‘myths of imperialist and national pasts’ to produce, instead, scholarship that is more inclusive and framed within a global perspective (Drayton & Motadel, 2018, p. 1). How useful is the global history approach to historians of medieval Europe? By Huw Thomas, Teacher of History and HM of Apsley

Introduction

of medieval Europe carry Eurocentric connotations of time and place that the global turn sought to avoid (Holmes & Standen, p. 1). In what follows, it is argued that the global history approach is not only useful to historians of medieval Europe, but is a methodology of major importance to historians of the period. It shall also be shown that these benefits are reciprocal because global historians of other periods can utilize the scholarship of their medieval colleagues to develop the field of global history more broadly.

For the most part, this agenda has been driven by early modern and modern practitioners, which has created an unintended paradox. Global history has been colonized by its early modern and modern specialists, marginalizing medieval researchers to the peripheries of this field of study. This has occurred for reasons including prevailing assumptions of the Middle Ages as a pre-modern era; notions that globalization started with increased maritime trade around 1500; and post-colonialist concerns that notions