Beyond Visible Entanglements: Connected Histories of the International

Abstract

How to write non-Eurocentric histories has long been a concern in the humanities and the social sciences. Attempts at writing non-Eurocentric histories of the international have been trapped in an absence/presence dichotomy and made making present what was absented from the story of the international their main focal point. The article aims to contribute to these discussions through pointing to the limitations of existing approaches that focus on revealing entanglements and offering an alternative framework for writing “connected histories of the international.” The article will proceed in four sections. The first section will provide a definition of Eurocentrism and elaborate on the way in which writing “connected histories” was offered as a solution. The second section will discuss how Eurocentric narratives have been critiqued within history and International Relations through “entangled narratives.” The third section will introduce the notion of “abyssal lines” and underline how the focus on entanglements has impoverished our understanding of Eurocentrism and the solutions on offer. The final section will illustrate the alternative framework being proposed for writing connected histories of the international (co-present and coeval narratives) that underlines the locations and times of progress and change through a discussion of the Haitian Revolution.

Border and im/mobility entanglements in the Mediterranean: Introduction to the special issue

“…The term entanglement has been discussed and criticized, with special attention to the underlying assumption in many uses of the term that what is entangled is the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South', ‘the West’ and ‘the non-West’, ‘Europe’ and ‘the other(s)’ (Çapan, 2020). However, if we multiply the subjects of entanglements, beyond the artificial duality of these categories, we can recover the potential for creative research offered by the concept of entanglement.…”

Worldmaking from the margins: interactions between domestic and international ordering in mid-20th-century India

“…Bringing this originality into our understanding of the emergence and transformation of global order, finally, alters the time and location of progress and political innovation (Çapan, 2020). It provincialises Europe and moves both diffusionist and entangled histories away from the tacit focus on the North Atlantic as the originator of political modernity.…”

“…Instead, it opens the analytical space to decentre the conceptual infrastructure through which the emergence of international order is usually narrated. At the same time, it shows how international order has not one origin (entangled or not), but many beginnings (Çapan, 2020; Said, 1985). Focussing on the case of India, I analyse one of these beginnings to advance a threefold argument.…”

Introduction: Historical International Relations

“…By the turn of the century, enough historically-oriented scholarship was coming forward for observers to comment on a possible "historical" or "historiographical" turn in the discipline (Bell, 2001). The interest and investment in historically-oriented scholarship has continued to grow since this diagnosis was first put forward, and with the growing diversity and globalisation of the discipline, the scope of HIR was broadened significantly by scholars from outside of the traditional "core" of IR (Towns, 2009;Shilliam, 2011;Vitalis, 2015;Nisancıoglu, 2020;Manchanda, 2020;Çapan, 2020). More and more scholars are self-consciously describing their work as historical, grounding it in HIR and engaging in ever more sophisticated theoretical and empirical historical analyses.…”