Zoom-Link: https://univienna.zoom.us/j/65470650042?pwd=KOhSKVFwb0aIkBuXSeMwOkzdaYYTbP.1  
Meeting-ID: 654 7065 0042  |  Kenncode: 218011

What does the writing of world or global history actually look like outside America and Europe? This lecture offers an answer to that question by using the example of world history studies that have developed over the past eighty years in Japan. In retrospect, Hisao Otsuka acted as a key figure in shaping world history research and teaching in Japan in the postwar period. His comparative research on the “West” and Japan was motivated by his interest in how to modernise and introduce democracy into Japan. During the 1960s to the 1970s, the economic growth in Japan strongly influenced historical studies: The grand narrative (Marxism) lost ground, and historians’ interests shifted from political and economic history to social history. From the mid-1980s onwards, the economic growth of whole East Asia motivated economic historians of Asia to revisit the role of East Asia in world history by proposing new theoretical frameworks, thereby challenging Eurocentric narratives. Their works attracted greater attention alongside the rise of global history, which also aims to overcome Eurocentrism in historical narratives. This lecture concludes by considering the current state and future prospects of world history studies in Japan.

Kazuo Kobayashi is a professor of global economic history at Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan). His research is to revise the narrative of the emergence of the modern global economy from the perspective of West African consumers. As one of his major achievements, he published "Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa: African Agency, Consumer Demand and the Making of the Global Economy, 1750-1850" (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). The revised edition for Japanese readers followed in 2021.