Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 03/2009

"Transnations" Among "Transnations"? The Debate on Transnational History in the United States and Germany

Kiran Klaus Patel

January 2008

Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University

Abstract

Comparing the rise of transnational history in the United States and Germany is difficult, mainly because of the many connections between these historiographies. Still, the article argues that the paths into a transnational historiography were quite different on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from similarities and connections, the text therefore highlights the intellectual as well as institutional differences of the debates in the U.S.A. and Germany. Writing American history in Germany has always also been about America in Germany and vice versa, thus making these fields transnational endeavors right from the beginning. The same holds true for the debate on transnational history in both countries. It is impossible to separate a purely “German” from an equally immaculate “American” discussion. Who would count as what? Is, for example, Michael Geyer who was educated in Germany and has taught at North American universities for over thirty years, to be counted on this or on that side? And are German scholars of American history part of a transnational community of Americanists, or do they belong to German historiography with its specific traditions, takes and theories?