Attempts to reframe the Age of Revolutions as imperial in nature have not fully integrated the French Revolution. Replying to this gap and criticisms of the Revolution's global turn, this essay positions the Revolution as both a moment of imperial reorganization and a sequence of political reinvention that exceed our current categories of empire and nation-state. These arguments open a forum comprising five contributions set in transimperial contexts that span from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean. The forum offers some points of reflection regarding the narratives, periodizations, and concepts that guide historians of the French Revolution as they navigate the global turn.
L'effort historiographique consistant à placer l’ère des révolutions dans leur contexte impérial n'est pas encore parvenu à pleinement intégrer la Révolution française. Cet essai propose de pallier ce manque tout en répondant aux critiques émises à l'encontre du « tournant global ». Il invite à interpréter la Révolution à la fois comme un moment de réorganisation impériale et comme une séquence de réinvention politique, dont le contenu déborde les catégories contemporaines d'empire et d'Etat-nation. Cet essai introduit cinq articles qui analysent la Révolution française dans une variété de contextes transimpériaux, des rives de l'Atlantique à celles de l'océan Indien. Le forum propose quelques points de réflexion critiques sur les récits, les périodisations et les concepts qui informent les modalités d'après lesquelles la Révolution française se voit « mondialisée » par les historiens.
During the period of decolonization and the Cold War, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and US development agencies promoted free trade zones to developing countries. However, other zones emerged prior to and apart from these policy models, some of which, including India’s early zones, took on features of this model only by the 1980s. To make sense of zones within and beyond a UNIDO model, this article understands them through their connection to the rise of nation-state territoriality around the world. The zone is thereby a spatial strategy used in processes of state (re)territorialization to rearticulate state spatiality under the global condition. This article explores such a perspective by situating the history of India’s early free trade zones comparatively.
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