Historia global e historia nacional: ¿una relación insalvable?

Abstract

In the past two decades historians appear to have reached a con-sensus that studying the past exclusively from the perspective of the nation state has limitations. This critical historiographical development has featured the emergence of new works aimed at overcoming «meth-odological nationalism» through a range of different angles and analyt-ical frameworks, such as comparative history, transnational history and global history. This article focuses on a new genre within this tendency to move beyond the national framework, namely the so-called histoires mondiales, which first appeared in France in a book edited by Patrick Boucheron. Boucheron’s work has inspired similar approaches from scholars in Italy and Spain as a new formula to rethink national histo-ries. While acknowledging the contributions that such histoires mon-diales have made to the field, the following pages will point to some drawbacks and limitations, and propose some alternatives based on global history. These considerations contribute to a new debate that seeks to unsettle the national perspective that still looms over main-stream Spanish historiography.