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Connected/Global History

Connected history, also called global history, is the scholarly approach that studies societies through their relationships and interactions with one another rather than treating civilizations as isolated units.

Type: Concept Domain: History Social Science Era: 1990 — present

Overview

The framework, developed by Sanjay Subrahmanyam and others, demonstrates that the Silk Road, Indian Ocean trade networks, and long-distance intellectual exchanges transformed all participating societies simultaneously. It fundamentally changed how historians explain causation: events like the Ming dynasty's decline or the Scientific Revolution require tracing connections across continents.

Why it matters

By challenging Eurocentric narratives, connected history showed that modernity was produced through global connection, not European exceptionalism alone. It also revealed that epidemics spread along trade routes, making the history of medicine inseparable from the history of commerce, and that translation networks carried ideas between Arabic, Persian, Latin, and vernacular traditions.

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