This chapter studies global histories that consider aspects of the material world. It exposes the – often tacit – assumptions that guide these global material histories and holds them up for careful inspection. Its particular interest is in the grounds on which global material historians associate matter and material culture with a specific scale, context or level of observation: with world-making, the global scale and ‘connectivity’, but also with the concrete, the ‘micro’ and the intimate. In that context, the chapter discusses a wide range of themes, from the risk of fetishising material things – as in, reverencing them for properties, including ‘global’ ones, merely projected onto them – to the inevitability of canvassing some forms of materiality on a global scale: the pollution of air, for instance, or, for the post–Cold War era, the issue of resource shortages. The chapter argues that, like any form of historical writing, global material histories are under the influence of their practitioners’ own times’ socioreligious texture, global imaginary and discursive habits; mindful of the telos and conceptions that pervade their work, they will be better prepared to see the world of matter and material culture in all its changeability, elusiveness and polysemy.

This final chapter compares the country findings and brings together the conceptual and empirical insights presented. It also aims to answer the questions presented in the introductory chapter: What are the security implications of energy transitions? What elements of positive and negative security can be found? How should energy security and security of supply be redefined in the context of the energy transition? Is there a hidden side to policymaking in the energy–security nexus? It first discusses the interplay between energy, security, and defense policies, followed by securitization and politicization. Subsequently, focus is placed on the security implications of energy transitions, and on negative and positive security. The chapter ends by summarizing the key technological, actor-based, and institutional aspects of the country cases, perceptions of Russia as a landscape pressure, and final conclusions.

During his regular Thursday visits to the Sufi tomb of the saint Shah Chokha, Ram Singh, a schoolteacher of the Baniya caste from the town of Punahana, never forgot to donate money to Tablighi Jamaat volunteers. He believed that visiting a Sufi dargāh and providing funds for Islamic education and mosque renovation were acts of service to God. Ram Singh lived close to the Laldas temple in Punahana (Figure 5.1). He or a member of his family visited the temple daily, either in the morning or evening. Ram Singh openly regarded Laldas as a Muslim, saying, hamāre bābā musalmān the par hamen unki pahcān se koi lenā denā nahī (our saint was Muslim, but we do not have any problem with his identity).

In 2015, the new temple of Laldas was built on the premises of an Arya Samaj school. The school building also served as a regional centre for the Arya Samaj. An open courtyard was located in front of the temple. Visitors arrived daily and waited in the courtyard while the Brahmin head priest, made the required arrangements for Laldas's morning and evening prayers. Most of the devotees were shopkeepers in the nearby central market in Punahana and came to the temple for quick prayers to the saint. This market was dominated by Hindus, particularly the Baniyas who owned shops for selling items of daily use. On the outer circle of this market, which separated Punahana from Nakanpur (a very old Meo village that is today part of the Punahana town municipality), there were shops for selling garments, mobiles, and vegetable and fruits, among other items. These shops were predominantly owned by Muslims.

The town was also home to considerable populations of Hindu ‘low castes’ such as Valmikis, Jatavs, Sainis (Malis), Nais and Punjabi immigrants from Pakistan. The everyday dynamics of social life in this town were significantly influenced by the presence of these communities. The demographic numbers of Hindus and Muslims were almost nearly the same, but the region had a Muslim majority. Hindus and Muslims interacted with one another, but there was a sense of insecurity among the Hindus, especially the Baniyas, due to the Muslim majority in the area. Hindu caste communities built strong networks with right-wing organisations such as the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and the Arya Samaj in response to their minority status, anticipating potential conflicts in the future.

Big questions sometimes present themselves in small form. The grand themes of Sri Lanka's contemporary history – its quagmire of nationalist politics, the hampered solution of provincial devolution and the incessant friction between constitutional, administrative and political realities – became manifest in the minutiae of a marginal bureaucratic problem when I was in Colombo in October 2019. For just a moment, all the central concerns of this book were folded into a discussion between a civil servant and a constitutional lawyer about a topic that would never have occurred to me as one of my research interests: the appointment of schoolteachers.

I was attending a seminar titled ‘Thirty Years of Devolution’ at the Galadari Hotel in the historical heart of the capital. Constitutional experts were launching a book (Amarasinghe et al. 2019) to an audience of civil servants: chief secretaries and legal officers from various provinces. The debate centred on the unresolved problems of the provincial council system three decades after its creation. Any talk of fixing devolution felt like a rear-guard battle, though. We all knew that the world outside our elegant conference room had moved on. Whatever had been left of the consultative process on constitutional reform, which had started with much excitement under the Sirisena–Wickremesinghe government in 2015, had been thrown off the rails by the constitutional crisis of 2018 (Welikala 2020). The governing coalition had become defunct. The country was now holding its breath for the presidential elections, which would be in two weeks. Until the race between Sajith Premadasa (United National Party, or UNP) and Gotabaya Rajapaksa (Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, or SLPP1) was adjudicated, all other political matters were on hold. Quite literally so at the provincial level: by now, all councils had been dissolved. Their term had expired, but new elections had been postponed time and again due to a stalemate over electoral system reform. In effect, we had entered a new ‘interim period’ where the provinces were ruled by presidential appointees (the governors) rather than elected politicians (the provincial council and the board of ministers), not just in the north and east this time but in all nine provinces.

The chapter discusses how questions of time and temporality shape and challenge global history, as well as historical studies in general. I take my cue from the specific temporality of global history itself and its role in defining the identity of the field. I move on to show, firstly, why time can be understood as history’s ‘last fetish’, as Chris Lorenz has phrased it, and how this makes itself known among global historians. In a second step, politics of periodisation are analysed as a particular challenge for de-centring history. Here, the recent debate about the ‘Global Middle Ages’ and the longer history of the global proliferation of the ‘medieval’ serve as an example. Finally, I turn to the question of synchronisation and contemporaneity, which presents both a promise and a problem for global historians.