Introduction: Current Challenges of Global History in East Asian Historiographies

Abstract

The origins of this book, being the first in the new series on Palgrave Studies in Comparative Global History, date from the early projects and common synergies that Lucio de Sousa and I started respectively in Japan and China. The GECEM project, funded by the ERC, and the Global History Network in China (GHN) has contributed with no doubt to embark on such new project to better understand the disparities between East Asia, mainly China and Japan, and the West. The use of new empirical evidence and cross referencing Western and Eastern sources is a paramount element to reframe the debate of the great divergence and the new directions of global history. New case studies and new questions are crucial to overcome in the West the harsh critics to global history, the so-called Eurocentric exceptionalism, but also to outdo the prevailing Sinocentric focus regarding China studies. This project places a special emphasis on the polycentric economic areas of the world, not only from China, Japan and Europe, but also the Americas. Therefore, the ultimate aim is to analyse economic growth from a local to a global perspective without repeatedly making emphasis in core areas that traditional historiography has done in the past to praise national histories.