The Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconfiguration of the British Industrial Revolution as a Conjuncture in Global History

In: Itinerario: international journal on the history of European expansion and global interaction, Volume 24, Issue 3-4, p. 117-134

Abstract

All historical research, however micro and focussed can be represented as part of a process of 'reconfiguration' Research is simply the crafts dominant and traditional activity of transforming archival evidence into printed narratives which validate, qualify and occasionally demolish dominant meta-narratives. Most historians continue to be engaged in Von Ranke's grand project for construction of history by making different, more durable and better quality bricks that are piled up awaiting to be used as more modern architecture for national histories. They agree as a point of discipline (if not belief) that this remains the best way to proceed. Some (as Randolph Churchill remarked of Gladstone) are 'old men in a hurry' and opting.to proceed from the top down by relocating national histories within the wider spaces, larger chronologies and cosmopolitan concerns of global history.