Global history is often addressed in the context of unifying master narratives. The paradigm of globalisation focuses on a process of modernisation through the expansion of European dominion. One alternative is to trace globalisation back to earlier periods, to ‘axial ages’ and the spread of universal religions, and to the origin of ‘great divergences’. The COE EurAsia follows a different line of research. The goal is to do justice to the multiplicity of populations, languages and cultures. Our ambition is to do so not by abandoning a common perspective and allowing for a great number of essentially unrelated histories, but to put them into a dialogue and look for their shared conditions and effects. It can rely on, but should go beyond substantial transcultural research on encounters and exchanges, along the Silk Road and elsewhere. The challenge is to transcend our European vantage point and generate an overview of Eurasian diversity from multiple perspectives, and to historicise our approaches and models in a dialogue with the sources.

The first EurAsia Conference will explore how to account for the many ways to cope with diversity in Eurasian history, and in modern scholarship and politics. Its goals are, first, to exemplify the cultural multiplicity of Eurasia, from Egyptian papyri and the Turfan documents to the exchanges along the Trans-Himalayan and other corridors, or the ambiguous policies of the Ottoman and Russian Empires. Second, it raises the question how this diversity was perceived, appreciated or rejected in different contexts, and strives to compare the patterns of these reactions. Third, it will address linguistic diversity and multilingualism, especially its various manifestations in Eurasian textual cultures. And fourth, it aims at discussing the present impact of the often-millennial traditions of cultural divides and exchanges, as cultural boundaries are increasingly being redrawn or negated with ideological purposes.

Nach oben scrollen