Global History Wars: Dispatches from the East-Central and Southern European Frontlines

In recent years, there has been a skyrocketing success of global histories of states and regions that have not been the traditional foci of global history. Since 2017, a series of volumes has appeared on the global history of Sicily, Catalonia, Spain, Portugal and Hungary, among others. In this article, we offer some cautionary tales and challenges; we explore emerging directions in the field, as well as its potential limitations, and advocate for a dynamic approach, which allows us to see how East-Central and Southern European societies played a crucial if not always glorious part at specific historical turning points and eras, be it in the first era of globalisation before 1914, during the First and Second World Wars or in the Cold War. In the absence of the Southern and East-Central European perspective, the global history of colonialism, decolonisation or modern warfare is at best incomplete; at worst, skewed.