ABSTRACT
This Handbook differs from a conventional set of essays on global history. Rather it aims collectively to document, evaluate, and hence to relativize, varied ideas, frameworks and methodologies that have characterized economic history as it has emerged in different parts of the world. By introducing an eclectic and rich repertoire of traditions past and present, and particularly by exposing insights that are ignored or sidelined in the English-speaking literature, it is hoped that the volume might encourage greater pluralism of approaches in the subject and promote an interpretive framework that is, above all, sensitive to time and place. The specific purpose of the Handbook, and the focus on economic and social history, makes it complementary to earlier and concurrent projects such as Iggers and Wang (2008), Sachsenmaier (2011), Woolf (2011), Barnett (2015) and the Oxford History of Historical Writing (2011–15).
