The chair covers the period between 1800 and 1945 and combines European history with the history of transnational and global interdependencies.
Are there new approaches to European history? What is global history? Economic history as cultural history?
- The European history of the long 19th century allows us to understand processes that shape our world today, and to historicize fundamental analytical concepts like nation, society or progress. European history is not understood as simply a sum of individual national histories, but as a history of relationships that questions the crisis-like formation of "modern" societies. It is argued that the history of Europe between 1800 and 1945 cannot be understood without exploring its relationship to the non-European world.
- In recent years, global history has established itself as a new field of research within the historical sciences. Research in global history is able to show that so-called globalization is by no means a new phenomenon but has antecedents that go back to the early modern period. Approaches of postcolonial theory point to new possibilities of looking at the past beyond narrow Eurocentric views.
- Currently voices are being have raised ever more frequently to pursue economic history as part of a culturally and historically oriented social history. The history of capitalism in particular shows that the economy as a social subsystem is always integrated into cultural and societal contexts and is based on interactions that often have a global reach.
