Transregionality in the history of area studies

The history of area studies is itself transregional and this in two ways. Area studies have, first, produced regions and developed narratives about transregional connections by suggesting not only ‘conceptions of geographical, civilizational, and cultural coherence that rely on some sorts of traits’ but also by assuming certain relationships between them. The second way in which the histories of area studies in different parts of the world have to be understood in a transregional way is in seeing them as the result of transnational and transregional exchange, and again this is in multiple ways. A similar transregional dynamic led to the emergence of African studies as an international field, a process in which again the Cold War competition became entangled with the complexities of decolonization, that is to say the rise of an African intellectual elite, which was in many cases transregional itself, circulating both in old imperial infrastructures and creating new institutional frameworks to develop independent agendas.

Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · History · History, Culture, and Diplomacy