Writing Global History (or Trying to)

Abstract

Writing global history confronts the historian with a series of chal- lenges, some new, some (on closer inspection) quite familiar. This article examines several of the more obvious of these and attempts to explain how far the author took them into account in constructing an account of world history over the longue duree in After Tamerlane: the rise and fall of global empires 1400–2000 (2007). It also presents a necessarily brief summary of some of the criticisms that the book’s reviewers have made.