The chapter begins with the observation that global history has an ambivalent attitude towards explanation. In many cases, the mere presentation of sources and voices from many different parts of the world seems sufficient to justify a global approach. The need for explanation is ignored or even denied. In other cases, global explanation is eagerly pursued, but often at the expense of more complex explanatory models that incorporate factors at different scales. In this perspective, global explanations are claimed to be inherently superior and a privileged way of explaining historical phenomena. After a cursory survey of current positions on causality and explanation in general methodology and ‘formal’ historical theory, the chapter proposes a brief typology of explanatory strategies. It goes on to discuss the peculiarities of explanation within a framework of connections across great distances and cultural boundaries. The much-exclaimed concept of narrative explanation is found to be of limited value, as it underestimates the difficulties of producing coherent narratives on a global scale. Concepts offered in the social science literature, such as the analysis of mechanisms and temporal sequences, could be helpful in refining purely narrative approaches to explanation.

The introduction outlines the volume’s main impetus: to encourage historians, global and not, to reflect on ‘their daily task’, as Marc Bloch put it – on their methods, craftsmanship, and conceptual basics. It is an invitation to rethink the field’s forms of inquiry and argumentation and the tacit assumptions underlying its practice, at a time when the ground under global historians’ feet – with globalisation in crisis – is moving fast.

Global history and other relational approaches to history, the introduction holds, have methodological implications and require theoretical reflection: because many of the classic analytical instruments commonly employed by historians require some reduction of complexity – to explain, to periodise, or to compare – a task naturally more difficult when scholars deal with an unusual abundance of factors; because the field’s assault on Eurocentrism requires reflection on the matter of perspective and authorial vantage point; or, indeed, because of the field’s inherent teleology, with its understanding of history inseparable from the telos of continuously increasing global integration.

This chapter analyzes the interconnections between energy policy and security and defense policies in Estonia with respect to energy transition. After explaining the key characteristics of energy and security regimes, it examines administrative interaction and policy coherence. The interconnections pertaining to energy transitions and security are visible via three cases: the oil shale phaseout and stability of Ida-Viru County, wind power expansion and the defense radar operation, and the desynchronization of the electricity network from Russia. Russia has formed the prevalent landscape pressure on the energy regime, although other landscape pressures have been noted, for example, climate change. Administrative coordination between energy and security has often relied on informal means, which are employed for agility but lack transparency. The security implications of the expanding energy “niches,” such as solar and wind power, have been little covered, although this has clearly increased via newly emerging attention on critical materials.

In this chapter, I explore the imaginaries of prosperity underlying the European Union’s (EU) approach to industrial law and policy. Long considered a taboo in European politics, the EU began to rediscover industrial policy after the 2008 great financial crisis, gradually increasing its ambitions when it came to shaping the relations between the state and the market. Having reviewed an array of EU measures, starting with the 2010 industrial policy and including the more recent burst of legislative proposals (Chips Act, Batteries Act, Critical Minerals Act, and Net Zero Industry Act), this chapter aims to do two things. First, it identifies shifts in the background understanding of political economy, including the role and appropriate objectives of markets, politics, law, and government, that lie behind successive policy interventions. Second, this chapter sketches the contours of the new synthesis of prosperity that emerges from these recent proposals and measures, while at the same time, and in no ambiguous terms, drawing attention to its considerable limitations.

This chapter analyzes the interconnections between energy policy and security and defense policies in the UK, zooming in on Scotland. It explains the energy and security regimes and analyzes policy interplay. The links between hydrocarbon energy, energy transition, and security are complex, with relatively fragmented governance in place. While some instances of policy integration were found, broader policy coherence regarding security and the zero-carbon energy transition was lacking. Before 2022, coordination efforts were focused on external, global energy questions instead of domestic energy. Domestic energy security was driven by market-based values. Post-2022, security and energy transition links pertaining to domestic energy production and use became more important in political and policy agendas. Scotland has had a differing worldview on security in relation to energy transition than the rest of the UK, with more focus on the environmental and health security effects of energy policy choices and just transitions, evident, for instance, in its opposition to nuclear power.

How did devout followers of a saint respond when a dominant reform organisation deemed their beliefs and ritual practices as impure? Did they abandon all the ‘impure’ beliefs, or did they find ways to navigate the influence and power of the reformist ideology? In such circumstances, faith begins to operate through acts of concealment and secrecy, which become potent tools for managing societal and religious pressures. Some of these practices of concealment/secrecy among the Muslims of Mewat ran afoul of the puritanical Tablighi Jamaat, which discouraged the veneration of saints as bidat (innovation/heresy) and shirk (polytheism), considering them as antithetical to Islam. Concealment and secrecy practices represent a significant form of social knowledge that helps sustain social institutions and human relationships (Simmel 1906).

Fluidity across religious boundaries between ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Islam’ is not a new idea; it has been analysed in a large number of scholarly works (Amin 2016; Assayag 2004; Bigelow 2010; Flueckiger 2006; Gilmartin and Lawrence 2000; Gottschalk 2000; D. Khan 2004a; Mayaram 1997a). While these works effectively display the flexibility of religious boundaries, they fail to delve into the implications when reformist groups arise and promote the notion of a rigid, uniform and pure religious boundary. In Mewat, as in other parts of India, reformist groups strongly emphasised the segregation of religious communities based on their identities and ritual practices. However, little attention has been given to the phenomenon of resistance to, or passive negotiation with, these powerful reformist forces that oppose religious blending.

Many Meo and non-Meo Muslims, mostly women, still venerate these saints, although they conceal their devotion to evade the wrath of Meo men and other Tablighis. Their stories of concealment reveal intricate processes of contestation and accommodation between the Sufi and Tablighi Jamaat ideologies, the divergent beliefs of male and female in a family, and different dynamics of the relationships between the powerful and the powerless. To operate effectively, secrecy as a type of societal knowledge relies on three essential elements: individual actors who engage in concealment; an audience, from whom the secret is concealed; and a power structure that the secret undermines or challenges.