Episode 1: Sebastian Conrad on Global Histories

Hello and welcome to the premier of the History and Theory Podcast - a student-led project that aims to make historical theory easy and accessible. In each episode we talk to a different historian about their theoretical background, the historical practice and the significance of history within society. For the first episode, we invited Sebastian Conrad, head of the "Centre for Global History" at Freie Universität in Berlin. As a historian he has published widely on Japanese history, coming from a background of postcolonial history. From there he made the jump to the field of global history, and in 2013 published his book Global History. An Introduction (original title: Globalgeschichte. Eine Einführung, Munich 2013). In this episode we'll be discussing two of his Sebastian's articles: first, "Enlightenment and Global History. A historiographical critique", published in the American Historical Review in 2012, and second, "Nothing is the way it should be: Global Transformations in the time regime in the nineteenth century", published in 2018 in Modern Intellectual History. As well as that, we'll be talking about what Global History is, and how it - and history in general - relate to the wider world and historical practice.



"Enlightenment and Global History. A historiographical critique", American Historical Review 117 (2012), pp. 999-1027.

 "Nothing is the way it should be: Global Transformations in the time regime in the nineteenth century", Modern Intellectual History 15 (2018), pp. 823-848.

Globalgeschichte. Eine Einführung, Munich 2013.

While many assume that his latest "Global History. An Introduction" is merely a translation of the German original, Sebastian Conrad told us after the interview that this is not the case. In fact, the English publication focusses much more on the theories behind his conception of the global, in comparison to his other work.

What is Global History?, Princeton 2017.