The Internationalization of History

Abstract

THAT HISTORY IS A COSMOPOLITAN DISCIPLINE seems to be accepted today at least as a vision by a large number of historians.Recent presidents of the American Historical Association have alluded to and confirmed this vision.Bernard Bailyn has called historical scholarship "an international enterprise" and noted the increasing "transnational communication of parallel information"; John Hope Franklin has written that "scholarship knows no national boundaries"; and William H. McNeill has spoken of "the moral duty of the historical profession" to cultivate "a sense of individual identification with the triumphs and tribulations of humanity as a whole."1History, it seems, has come a long way in the last one hundred years.When this organization was established, "history" mostly referred to European and especially American history, and the mission of the association was said to consist in the preservation of historical manuscripts and in the promotion of "American history, and of history in America."George Bancroft, president of the association in 1885, declared that the AHA devoted itself "to the affairs of the United States of America."2In the intervening years, as Arthur S. Link noted in his centennial presidential address given four years ago, there has been "growing diversity in the membership and leadership of the AHA," and there has developed a "catholicity of interest" in all aspects of the past and in all parts of the world.3Today, the association's 13,000 members represent diverse methodologies and specializadons, many ethnic groups, nearly all ages, and scores of countries.4This last seems to me to be of special significance, for, although our organization is called the American Historical Association, it has been an international community of historians.From its inception, it has been open to historians of all countries, and today scholars from over forty countries belong to it.More than five hundred members have overseas mailing addresses; while some are undoubtedly American historians residing abroad, their number must be more than matched by foreign scholars living in the United States.Some of the most distinguished 1 Bernard Bailyn, "The Challenge of Modern Historiography," AHR, 87 (February

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