Shaping the Transnational Sphere

The ‘age of nationalism’ is no more. Instead, scholars have turned their attention to histories of the late modern period that no longer fit into the established pattern of the rise of nationalism. Seeking out the murky beginnings of connections and networks, transnational history has become more than a mere stylish intervention in the area of modern history. Davide Rodogno, Bernhard Struck and Jakob Vogel’s edited volume adds to this burgeoning field with a collection of essays that showcases a new chronology for understanding the emergence of transnational networks. Together, the contributions trace this transnational sphere back to the 1840s, while leaving the end in the 1930s somewhat open. In a wonderful introduction, the editors frame the volume as an exploration into the rise of ‘networks of experts’ (p. 1) and indeed a ‘transnational consciousness’ (p. 3) which was to influence profoundly public policy and national politics. The editors refer to this process (transnational expertise shaping national spheres) as ‘contradictory’ (p. 3), and yet it is this tension that makes the volume’s overall picture persuasive. As the individual contributions to the volume make clear, it was precisely the sharing of knowledge across, and irrespective of, national borders that formed an important nexus for national developments. Prison reforms, as highlighted by Martina Henze in her chapter, did not develop independently in discrete nation-states, but relied on shared expertise over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Media studies · Nationalism · Nexus (standard · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · ROWE · Sociology · Engineering · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law