Transnational history and the colonisation of a profession 

Transnationalism is not a term that comes tripping from the tongue, but it describes one of the major tendencies in academic historical work in recent years. In essence, transnational history seeks to break with national contexts and criteria, and to look at the past in terms of global alternatives. Thus, the emphasis is on migration, trade, cultural interchange and other such causes and consequences in a world that, in contrast with older perspectives that are held to be nationalistic, is now seen as thoroughly transnational.

This has been both fruitful and over-egged. The study of interchange opened up many interesting instances of the diffusion of ideas, practices and peoples, but also could lead to an underplaying of relationships that were those of conflict. Thus, I drew attention in my history of the Mediterranean to the tendency, when considering the relationship between Christendom and Islam, to underplay conflict in the quest to offer a more benign account.

Transnationalism owed much to a liberal assault on nationalism and much of the discussion was flavoured accordingly. However, from my perspective as an historian who had devoted much attention to global military history, transnationalism was a matter both of stating the obvious and of helping others to shape a broader approach. More specifically, I have always been interested in the spread and success of imperial powers (see my War and the World) and been wary of technological interpretations (War and Technology; Beyond the Military Revolution). I have emphasised repeatedly the need, in studying war, to move from output to outcome in the shape of eliciting consent and grounding empire in support.

Military systems, as with the Manchu in China or the British in India, operated as shared enterprises, and the extent to which empires were transnational systems presented a way to offer a modish intellectual approach to these obvious points. So also with the Indian Ocean and Atlantic slave trades, which worked their grim designs and processes through co-operation between “outsiders” and “insiders”.

This approach, however, scarcely accords with the blame game that is significant for those keen to “decolonise” past and present. For them, empire — indeed all relationships, both international and domestic — are part of structures of command and control, and are to be anatomised accordingly.

The quest might well be of interest, but the problem is that the answer is there rather than the questioning. Thus, instead of looking at why empire worked, there is the automatic tendency to decry it, and to discredit imperial purposes and means in terms of a standard series of epithets, starting with “racist”. To describe this kind of analysis as unhelpful is beside the point. The radical approach instead is very helpful to its progenitors in validating their own views.

For the historian, it is instructive, as ever, to see poor practice at play, but also to consider why it emerges. Two factors are at work at present. First, in an echo of the Cold War, this is a radical critique of positions that are at once liberal and conservative. Secondly, there is a situation that a Namierite or a Marxist would readily understand: the working of a patronage system to valorise particular viewpoints in order to deliver career outcomes in a context of acute competition. That element certainly deserves serious attention. The historical profession is being colonised by those who assert a particular viewpoint.

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