TY - JOUR
AU - Koranyi, James
AB - The ‘age of nationalism’ is no more. Instead, scholars have turned their attention to histories of the late modern period that no longer fit into the established pattern of the rise of nationalism. Seeking out the murky beginnings of connections and networks, transnational history has become more than a mere stylish intervention in the area of modern history. Davide Rodogno, Bernhard Struck and Jakob Vogel’s edited volume adds to this burgeoning field with a collection of essays that showcases a new chronology for understanding the emergence of transnational networks. Together, the contributions trace this transnational sphere back to the 1840s, while leaving the end in the 1930s somewhat open. In a wonderful introduction, the editors frame the volume as an exploration into the rise of ‘networks of experts’ (p. 1) and indeed a ‘transnational consciousness’ (p. 3) which was to influence profoundly public policy and national politics. The editors refer to this process (transnational expertise shaping national spheres) as ‘contradictory’ (p. 3), and yet it is this tension that makes the volume’s overall picture persuasive. As the individual contributions to the volume make clear, it was precisely the sharing of knowledge across, and irrespective of, national borders that formed an important nexus for national developments. Prison reforms, as highlighted by Martina Henze in her chapter, did not develop independently in discrete nation-states, but relied on shared expertise over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book combines some splendid case-studies and throws up some challenging questions. For a start, its chronology deserves special attention. The collection of essays circumscribes a period that does not neatly correspond to more recognisable time-frames. This is not a volume on networks in the nineteenth century, after 1848, before 1914, the inter-war period or the twentieth century. The editors boldly, and convincingly, claim that their period (very roughly, the 1840s to 1930s) is one that hangs together. Building on the work of Charles Maier and others, this chronology disrupts a European history governed by ‘big events’. Indeed, the chapters contained within the book tell the story of the emergence of more formalised transnational networks out of ‘gentlemanly networks’ (p. 7) of the earlier period. Bringing Christian Müller’s chapter on Democratic Peace Movements in the mid-nineteenth century into dialogue with Dominique Marshall’s piece on the Child Welfare Committee in the inter-war period, it is arresting to see how two seemingly dissimilar movements—in chronology and content—relied on comparable networks and employed the same language. Eighty years apart, and with differing aims, these movements belonged to the same sphere: a transnational one embedded in a new network of experts across Europe. Individuals and organisations that did not easily fit into the national boxes of Europe feature, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite prominently in the authors’ case-studies. Vincent Viaene explores the Catholic ‘Internationalists’ and illustrates the interconnectedness of this religious identity. In spite of the nationalising pressures of the nineteenth century, Catholic Internationalists revived the religious sphere as a transnational one, in which the transfer of knowledge and culture slipped across ever-hardening borders (p. 39). Likewise, Tobias Brinkmann focuses on transnational Jewish philanthropic organisations in an effort to consider the antecedents to contemporary non-governmental organisations (p. 153). Groups who were left out in the cold in the wake of strengthening nationalisms, such as Jews, formed an important backbone to the emergence of transnational connections. This then, Brinkmann contends, led directly to the advent of humanitarian organisations that were concerned with more than just protecting their own national interests (p. 169). There are a number of other intriguing chapters in this volume. Katharina Rietzler investigates transnational research between philanthropic organisations in the USA. Here, we get a real sense of the importance of scientific knowledge for the editors’ claim that there existed a transnational sphere of networked experts in the period under consideration. Damiano Matasci’s contribution on international congresses of education points in a similar direction. This is the tension that the editors wish to foreground: while Europe was being shaped, quite obviously, by the inexorable drive of nationalism, there were these other channels and spaces that both defied and contributed towards this nationalist momentum. The transnational experts to whom we are introduced in the individual contributions existed ‘in-between’ and perhaps as ‘go-betweens’ as the nation-state continued to rise. This is an exciting and challenging volume. Yet it also provokes thoughts on potential blind spots in transnational history. Strikingly, the vast majority of contributions concentrate on western Europe. Poland features in the last chapter on relief and rehabilitation programmes, but only as a passive recipient of ‘transnational action’. The region around the Carpathians gets an honourable mention in Brinkmann’s piece on Jewish philanthropic bodies. Beyond that, the focus of this volume is centred on western Europe. Moreover, the overall focus is on ‘progressive’ movements. Reading history through a transnational lens is not, however, progressive in itself and nor should it be. Transnational history offers different and dynamic perspectives, but there is no political value to it as such. It is worth emphasising, therefore, that transnational history ought not to be a history of western progressive movements, as it would lose its potential for disrupting established modes of writing history. Certainly, it was not within the remit of the volume under review to probe the substantial underbelly of transnational spheres. Mark Mazower already laid the foundations for this in his famous work Dark Continent (1998), but what deserves far greater attention next in this field, so it seems, is the dark side in transnational history. © Oxford University Press 2016. All rights reserved.
TI - Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1940s, ed. Davide Rodogno, Bernhard Struck and Jakob Vogel
JO - The English Historical Review
DO - 10.1093/ehr/cew376
DA - 2017-02-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/shaping-the-transnational-sphere-experts-networks-and-issues-from-the-DcP5Zf9MN8
SP - 177
EP - 179
VL - 132
IS - 554
DP - DeepDyve
ER -