Global History and Migrations (review)

Several scholars, most notably Bruce Mazlish and Wolf Schafer, have argued that globalization has become a dominant force in the past few decades, altering many aspects of life, and that it will accelerate in the future, with major consequences for all societies. There is much to be said for this insight. But they also contend that globalization has created a new awareness, even a new subfield of history, which they call global history. Global history, they claim, transcends nation-states and is markedly different from other fields, including world history. This is a much more debatable proposition. Global History and Migrations is offered as a contribution to the emerging study of global history. It is the latest product of a useful book series at Westview Press edited by Mazlish and several colleagues.

That human migration is a central, and probably understudied, theme in world history can hardly be doubted. Migration on a large scale goes back into the densest mists of prehistory and was already a pronounced pattern in ancient times, when various Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Phoenicians, Indo-Europeans, Greeks, Han Chinese, and Paleo-Indians, among others, expanded or relocated from their ancestral homelands. The process continued for millennia. Today, Americans, Canadians, and Australians—to name just a few—live in increasingly multicultural nations, filled with immigrants and their descendants from the four corners of the globe. Immigrants are rapidly transforming cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, Miami, Vancouver, Toronto, Honolulu, and Perth into international hubs of world culture and com-merce. Latin American, Southeast Asian, Japanese, Caribbean, and African businesses and cultures are penetrating into once provincial heartland towns.

Global History and Migrations provides an excellent collection of essays edited by Wang Gungwu, a specialist on China. Wang's valuable introduction integrates the study of migration and globalization into his own restless sojourning. Born in colonial Malaya to immigrant Chinese parents, Wang was educated in Malaya, China, Singapore, and London before pursuing a distinguished academic career with stays in Kuala Lumpur, Canberra, Hong Kong, and most recently Singapore. Spending much of his life in places with substantial or predominantly immigrant populations has understandably enhanced Wang's appreciation for the importance of migration as a theme in world history. The Minangkabau people of Sumatra, he points out, have a long tradition of merantau (leaving home temporarily or permanently), but this could be a widespread pattern. And although Wang does not attempt to differentiate world history from global history, he believes that a broader approach, a global perspective, can help in understanding general migration patterns, as well as local situations and adaptations. His essay ranges over various case studies from the long histories of China and Southeast Asia, showing how the movement of peoples has generated change, as well as how local contexts have influenced immigrant societies.

For world historians three essays stand out. History teachers should be particularly grateful for Philip Curtin's lengthy analysis of African migration patterns. He casts a wide net, from the movements of proto-humans through the Bantu diaspora and the Atlantic slave trade to contemporary labor migration. Curtin suggests that Africa has long had the world's most mobile population and still does today. The essay provides an excellent summary of many African developments and relates them to larger issues in world migration history. Robin Cohen's subject is diasporas and their relationship to nation-states. He traces the history and recognition of diasporas (or dispersals) all the way back to Babylonian times, showing how "Babylon" came to be a code word among Hebrews and later African American and Afro-Caribbean peoples for oppression in exile. Readers will learn much about various episodes, including the modern experiences of Jews, Armenians, and Lebanese. Yash Ghai examines the relationship among migrant workers, transnational markets, and the law as evidence of globalization, survey-ing the changes from African slavery in the Americas through nineteenth-century...