The Promises and Perils of Periodization in Global History: Lessons from the Inter-War Era

Abstract This article considers the role of periodization in global history through the lens of the inter-war era. The global turn has shifted the ‘metageographies’ of historical practice, focusing historians’ attention on the flows, mobilities and networks that connected peoples and places across the globe. Often left uninterrogated, however, are the ‘metatemporalities’ that structure historical inquiry, resulting in the perpetuation of Eurocentric definitions of historical epochs, particularly in the modern era. Periodizations are not objective or merely descriptive containers for historical events, but are themselves arguments that promote certain historical actors and dynamics from particular places, while relegating others to reactive roles, if not historiographical obscurity. The inter-war era offers a particularly compelling case study that shows how global history methodologies qualify, extend and dissolve inherited temporal frameworks. In place of singular, Eurocentric eras, polycentric global history presents the opportunity to elaborate polytemporal models that advance plural, overlapping periodizations. Aligning multiple global periodizations and becoming attuned to the rhythms they produced allows historians to reveal the particularity of historical eras.