The editors have brought together a select group of authors to articulate their thesis of a substantial crisis in global history and the need for a new beginning. The crisis postulated in the introduction clearly has various causes, with particular attention paid to the overly narrow, if not tautological, attachment to the globalization euphoria of the 1990s, the resulting lack of clear theory formation, and a lack of methodological rigour. While these three arguments are mainly made by the editors themselves, it is only at the very end of the introduction that other critics are mentioned, namely:

The volume is part of the academic programme for which Jürgen Osterhammel was honoured with the Balzan Prize for History and was written under the difficult conditions of the COVID pandemic in 2021, when only limited communication via videoconferencing was possible. Although this ensured that the eleven authors were able to exchange views on their texts for mutual criticism, a broader debate only took place at two presentations in Duisburg-Essen and at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin. These circumstances may explain the persistent tone of dissatisfaction, which is rather atypical for a work described as “the culmination of a long involvement with questions of historical methodology” (p. x). Many of the issues raised here have characterized global history for some time. To examine whether there have been developments that address them, it would have been worthwhile to consider the substantial body of monographs, articles, and collective volumes claiming to engage with global histories. Instead, the wealth of footnotes is filled with contributions from a literature that is as observant as it is programmatically charged, oscillating between historiographical findings and individual proposals for terminology, concepts, and definitions. This overview of the literature is not without its biases, three of which are particularly striking. First, it ignores the many proposals that have appeared in the introductions and conclusions to monographs and thematically coherent anthologies on individual dimensions of global history and thus the now almost unmanageable diversity of global histories. Second, it primarily reflects an Anglo-Saxon mainstream debate, thereby privileging those authors who refer to the label “Global History” while ignoring historiographical production in other areas that, for a variety of reasons, do not refer to their work as global history, or do so only reluctantly. One example is large parts of the African and Latin American historiography, which nevertheless deal with transregional and global processes; another is the history of Eastern Europe, which experimented with the concept of alternative globalizations at a relatively early stage. Finally, two developments that are important for methodological questions in global history are addressed only to a limited extent. First, the analysis of entanglements and connections has clearly gone beyond the initially important juxtaposition of comparative history and has elaborated the sociocultural practice of comparison as part of the entanglements. It has also insisted more clearly on the difference between studies of impact and influence on the one hand and studies of processes of appropriation on the other hand. Second, the study of spatialization processes has gone far beyond the initially prominent problem of scalarity and has produced a wide range of approaches that include the analysis of commodity and value chains of varying scope as well as transimperial, transnational, and transregional histories.

It is undoubtedly true that these innovations do not all originate from a single centre, but rather illustrate the multiplicity of global histories. It is also true, and here I expressly agree with the call to rethink global history, that these innovations have not yet been integrated into a canon (which could suggest that they cannot be easily integrated because global history is neither homogeneous nor should it be homogenized). Not all of them fit easily into a Weberian understanding of science promoted in the introduction to this volume, and some have been inspired by postmodern thinking that is clearly regarded with some scepticism by the editors. Gänger and Osterhammel are also emphatically correct in saying that global history would do well to steer clear of the triumphalism of the globalization debate of the 1990s. However, has global history truly done so to the extent often claimed, especially by right-wing populists in their attacks on globalists and globalism?

It is interesting to see how infrequently the contributions in the volume explicitly refer to each other. Whether this is due to the coronavirus situation mentioned earlier, which prevented physical encounters between the authors, is difficult to say. However, the volume also invites a comparison of approaches that communicate with each other at most implicitly, in footnotes, or, more frequently, through the diversity of references to the same subject matter. Whether these are national styles or the personal imprint of individual authors remains to be seen, but it is clear that Alessandro Stanziani deals with the risks of reciprocal comparison from a completely different understanding of the relevant literature than Jürgen Osterhammel, who is searching for social science-based explanations as a seal of quality for a future global history. And how refreshing it is to read Sujit Sivasundaram’s plea for an earthy historiography as a further decentred way of writing history, which would have to incorporate the material side (nature) much more strongly than has hitherto been customary into the possible variants of the construction of the global, a view with which Stefanie Gänger concurs. Pim de Zwart, for his part, points out that global history finds it easier when it can respond to hypotheses by collecting and comparing data, because this facilitates the establishment of a nexus of verifiability between different authors. The example of the Great Divergence debate, which surfaces in many articles, would be a case in point. It seems, however, that even within the limited confines of this debate we are far from having adequate empirical coverage of world regions to allow enough cases for further hypotheses to be tested using quantitative approaches.

Jeremy Adelman offers an initially plausible example of problems that have not been solved by global history. He points out that global history remains undecided as to whether it wants to tell the story of shrinking distances through transport technologies and communication tools on the one hand, or insist on the continuing chasms created by war, conflict, exclusion, and discrimination on the other. The rest of his argument clearly shows that global history is not simply a representation of both, but that this dialectic of flows and control occurs in many unexpected constellations, which is precisely what makes it a worthwhile subject for empirical research. Anyone who argues polemically against a definition of global history as the history of ever-expanding and ever-increasing flows risks attacking an already-abandoned position with excessive zeal. Globalization is not a force of nature that becomes a historical actor on its own; it is shaped by people who try to derive advantages from the flows and contain them wherever it suits their calculations (or their fears). To this end, they make use of a wide variety of techniques of spatialization, which are not limited to overcoming distance, but are intended to enable control over distances.

In my opinion, global history as the dialectic of flows and control summarizes the research findings of the last three decades more appropriately than a sole fixation on connections and entanglements. It remains debatable whether this insight is recent or has been resonating in discussions about global history for some time. Valeska Huber sees the shift towards self-criticism as a recent development: “the vocabulary that has helped global history come of age, ranging from connection to integration and from flows to circulation, is now considered problematic by many historians” (p. 140). However, the quoted essay by Michael Geyer and Charles Bright on “world history in a global age”Footnote ¹ (1995, published in outline form as early as 1987Footnote ²) explicitly refers to the violent nature of the transition to the global condition through the synchronization of a multitude of crises and is far from an idyllic picture of global integration.

Finally, at the end of the volume, Dominic Sachsenmaier reminds us that the ambition of decentred history writing should not be confused with the reality of perspective-dependent historiography: “While historians have made an effort to distance themselves from many forms of centrism, centering techniques have certainly not disappeared from the historian’s toolbox […] historical research usually remains centered in terms of its overall composition and the methodologies that come with it” (p. 255). However, this does not mean that all perspectives have an equal chance of being heard and are perceived as plausible by the majority, even if, as in the case of China, they can easily be suspected of representing a new claim to hegemony. Sachsenmaier recalls Chakrabarty’s idea of “asymmetric ignorance” and points out that criticism of conceptual Eurocentrism has not yet been accompanied by a change in historiographical practices, which in many places continue to be oriented towards using Western categories and standards. Here, too, the glass appears to be half full rather than half empty.

In my opinion, it is questionable whether a movement spanning large parts of the global academic landscape can be committed to the principles of a single theorist such as Max Weber. Some aspects of these standards that appear immature and in need of improvement are also due to the fact that explanations can only be improved once the empirical foundation is reasonably sound and sufficient energy has been invested in its investigation. Every step of the process, be it the synthesis of scattered research, the discovery and exploitation of new source series, the collective pooling of knowledge from various case studies, or the formulation of new hypotheses or proposals for categories that help operationalize these hypotheses, has its justification in a global history that is better described as a collective enterprise than as the achievement of individual master thinkers.

It is likely that attacks on efforts to understand the historical emergence of today’s global dynamics will increase, fuelled by enthusiasm for imperial expansion and national isolation. In this respect, rethinking global history also means solidarity and mutual support against such attacks.