Global History and International Relations:

Possible Disciplinary Encounters and an Initial Review of Contributions from Latin American Research

Abstract

The Post-Cold War world order fueled discussions in the field of Humanities on theoretical and methodological resources in the very attempt to understand and explain the increasingly multi-polarized and complex international system. While considering the field of History — especially in its attempt to theoretically and methodologically cross borders — and while being active in the field of International Relations, we see possibilities of fruitful encounters between both areas of research, particularly when it comes to recent discussions on what came to be called in the 1990s “global history”. The article initially presents a conceptual definition of global history; then moves on to underpin its claim that History and IR are
entangled disciplines that, despite different theoretical points of departure, not only share similar basic assumptions (state-centrism and the Western intellectual framework of thought) but also have been sharing similar intellectual preoccupations. In the third part, we explore possibilities of writing global history from the Latin-American perspective by discussing three recent contributions to the field. Finally, the text briefly enunciates possibilities of mutual enlightenment between the disciplinary fields of History and IR based on the idea of Global IR.