Moving on form the socio-economic to the political side of developments during these years, the sixth chapter describes the meaning of unification and the split between Austria and the new imperial Germany, ruled by Prussia, for many Jews and non-Jews. The act of unification was often felt by them as a painful rupture, but at the same time for Jews it also meant their own full integration in the emerging new Germany. Interestingly, this also included their entry into the political sphere, especially the liberal camp. In addition to their fight for final emancipation, they were also part of the efforts to establish Germany as a liberal state, despite and often against its conservative leadership. The life of Eduard Lasker, from Posen through Vienna and London to Berlin, is related in this chapter as an example. Especially interesting is Lasker’s evolvement into Bismarck’s major opponent among the liberals in the 1870s, standing for another, progressive vision of the new state, supported by the majority of the Jews, now torn from their co-religionists south of the new border.

This chapter is a provocation to think less Globally and in a more Earthy fashion about the makings of History. What will it take to move from the globe as artifice in global history, a taken-for-granted signifier, to what lies beyond that sensibility, the Earth as a fissured, crusted, summited, atmospheric and terraqueous platform? I begin by linking the creation of the globe as cartographic model to the modern definitions of History as a discipline, then move to a discrete bit of Earth, the storied rendition of the fabulous island of Taprobane, in order to think beyond the map and model of both science and history, to the signs of the terrain of the past. Taprobane, now Sri Lanka, was and is a materially particular and evolving space which was prone to narrative and historical capture. I end with methodological reflections on current preoccupations in historical writing around environmental history, agricultural history, oceanic history, animal history, and the history of medicine and the extent to which they engage both the Global and the Earth as matter, while concluding with a retrospect on the concept of the Anthropocene, taking global historical practice towards a more materially attentive methodology.

Many global historians do not use quantitative evidence and are sceptical towards the systematic use of numerical data to uncover general patterns in history. Yet as global history concerns itself with questions about the rise and declines of global connectivity and the comparative development of societies across the world, there are clear benefits to quantification. This chapter first reviews the evidence on global trade volumes and commodity prices to suggest that the process of globalisation was already happening during the early modern period. Second, it shows that the most recent evidence and estimates of total economic output and real wages point to an early divergence in comparative incomes between Europe and Asia starting prior to the 1700s. It is shown that historical quantitative data are fraught with difficulties, but that the evidence is constantly being improved upon, leading to an increasingly accurate picture of global connections and comparative incomes in global history. Such quantitative global history complements rather than substitutes qualitative historical research as many historical developments are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify.

Many Jews coming from various parts of Eastern Europe found refuge in Germany, of all places, in huge “displaced-persons camps.” They made up as many Jews as had lived in the country before the war, only they were younger and unexpectedly active. While few German Jews returned to the “land of the murderers,” the new migrants took their place. This chapter tells the tale of their settlement in Germany, parallel to the building up the Federal Republic, especially under the the US military occupation. They could only observe with unease the signs of antisemitism in the new German state, and support the early acts of restitution as well as the financial agreement with Israel signed in 1952. They were also the first to demand some sort of confrontation with the Nazi past. Fritz Bauer, a Jewish jurist who fled to Denmark and later to Sweden during the war and finally returned to Germany afterwards, took it upon himself, as the Prosecutor of the State of Hessen, to organize and then serve as prosecutor in the so-called Auschwitz trials. The chapter ends with his life-story.

This chapter explores the changing epistemologies and scientific practices of crop diversity conservation from the perspective of key institutional players: the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the 1960s and CGIAR since the 1970s. The spread of “modern” high-yielding varieties during the Green Revolution was thought to have induced a process of “genetic erosion” that would wipe out farmers’ varieties in the Global South. This view highlighted the power of the Green Revolution as a homogenizing force as well as a modernizing one and shaped the management of crop diversity. Genetic resources were seen as scattered raw materials concentrated in the Global South, which only scientific specialists could preserve and transform into something valuable as modern varieties. With this framework as its guide, CGIAR led the development of a global gene bank network for more than fifty years. It coordinated collection campaigns and conservation efforts and facilitated breeders’ access to gene bank materials. This chapter traces the historical trajectory of these efforts, analyzing competing rationales that structured dominant and marginalized views on crop diversity conservation.

Of the many CGIAR research centres around the world there is none as historically important to the organization’s international development of wheat and maize interests than the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), headquartered in Mexico. CIMMYT, launched in 1966, is both a local and a global creation. Rooted in Mexico’s approach to agricultural research, CIMMYT’s mission is equally intertwined with international development promises and growing food security concerns of the mid-twentieth century. Initial research that led to Norman Borlaug’s famous high-yielding hybrid wheat seeds took advantage of Mexico’s microclimates – and existing experimental stations – to solve narrower agronomic questions while later programs expanded in focus to include an increased socioeconomic bent and emphasis on the farmer. This chapter examines how CIMMYT, modeled after the successful Mexican Agricultural Program of the 1940s, evolved from a nation-centred agenda to become a mold-breaking international organization, while remaining rooted in and influenced by Mexican realities. The chapter illustrates that to speak of CGIAR is to engage with locally centred histories.

Chapter 5 turns to attempts by French missionaries and envoys to convert the ruler of the most powerful state in Southeast Asia, King Narai of Ayutthaya, in the 1680s. It first lays out the setting into which these proselytisers arrived, playing particularly close attention to the elevation of the king in both divinised and righteous modes and his relationship with the sangha. It then shows how the commercial and administrative functioning of the kingdom pulled in sources of outside strength, which promoted the relevance of religious diplomacy. In the 1680s, a Greek adventurer, Constantine Phaulkon, became the most powerful officer at court, and he fashioned an image to the French of a ruler ripe for conversion, giving rise to a series of embassies received in Versailles and Ayutthaya. The French sought to enhance their prestige through the use of astronomical–astrological science and had a chance at a healing miracle in the 1660s. If this failed the French could take comfort from the fact that Narai was somewhat restless within his ceremonialised role, had tense relations with the Buddhist monkhood, was a cosmopolitan attracted to French culture, and was concerned to maintain the good will of Louis XIV. Some even portrayed him (mistakenly) as moving towards deism.

Follows the further decline of American trade in the Mediterranean and the physical decline and death of the three consuls, all of whom become somewhat disillusioned with the United States and the State Department while unsuccessfully trying to insure that their families can continue to prosper in the Mediterranean.

The conclusion brings together the themes that have emerged throughout the book, provides comparative perspectives, teases out some of the wider implications for the study of gender and suggests directions for future research. It also comes back to the multitude of animals that have appeared sporadically throughout the different chapters, discussing the role they played in gender construction and the potential of human/animal connections to decentre the man in the process of creating male subjectivities.

This chapter offers an overview of historians’ writings about scale and their debates on micro- and macrohistory in the past half century. It is argued that the complex debates between followers of Italian microstoria, members of the Annales school, and social and cultural historians in the Anglo-American world need to be considered in the context of similar discussions and experiments with scale in literary writings, in artworks and especially in the scholarship in human geography. The chapter claims that, in an era of human-made climate crisis, we should reconsider how we conceptualise the role of particles, microbes, parasites, worms, and other animals in historical writing, going beyond the dichotomy of micro- and macrohistory. It is proposed that the geographer Neil Smith’s concept of ‘jumping scales’ is an especially productive way of discussing how hierarchical power structures are established and disrupted by agents operating at levels that range from the microscopical to the global.