Wie planetarisch ist die Globalhistoriografie?

The contribution examines the recent surveys of – mainly early modern – global history by Wolfgang Behringer and Wolfgang Reinhard. In the author’s view, they present a type of historiography that does not approach changing culturally specific perceptions of the world comparatively. Instead, they remain attached to Ranke’s progressistic view when they trace the beginning of planetary network formation to the turn of the sixteenth century. Moreover, they are hardly willing to admit norms regulating world-wide actions, or actions intended to accomplish world-wide effects, unless these norms have been generated in Europe. Therefore they overlook the plurality of partly overlapping, culturally specific traditions of natural law that served as sources for norms with intended universal validity. By contrast, it is argued that global historiography that does not take into account changing perceptions of the world as well as patterns of regulated action is a contradiction in itself. Finally, the article calls for a genuinely planetary historiography which is based on a critical analysis of sources and avoids Eurocentric judgments.