The international turn in Intellectual History

Abstract

Historians in all fields have more recently been moving towards studies they describe variously as international, transnational, comparative, and global. Their efforts have not been identical in scope, in subject matter, or in motivation, nor is there any consensus on how these non-national approaches to history should be distinguished from each other. The family resemblance that links these approaches is the desire to go above or beyond the histories of states defined by nations and of nations bounded by states. Taken together, these projects comprise the international turn in historical writing. In this case, the best way to proceed is to return to the roots of intellectual history itself in the period before historiography had been adopted as a handmaiden of national states.