Forum <i>Global Dis:connections</i>

with the idea of dis:connectivity to provide fresh perspective on current phenomena of globalization.Tom Menger (Munich) traces the origins of Europe's current energy crisis back to a fossil fuel shift that occurred in the early 20th century.He shows that the decline of coal as the principal carrier of fossil energy had a direct impact on Europe's position in an increasingly global network of energy distribution, and this led to the emergence of an energy infrastructure that connects just as much as it disconnects.From the perspective of the early 2020s, Valeska Huber (Vienna) takes a fresh look at the role of the Suez Canal in global trade and shipping.In light of the Suez Canal blockade by the container ship Ever Given and its massive repercussions on the carefully-balanced global supply chains, Huber highlights both the connective as well as the disconnective qualities of the canal, which is at the same time both an artery and a chokepoint of global trade.Heidi Tworek (Vancouver) raises a number of crucial questions regarding the role of global communication technologies, both in a historical context as well as in present times.She shows how tightening global communication networks can create new forms of connectivity at times when other forms of connectivity come to a halt.Building on this, Tworek emphasizes how access to global communications itself is unequally distributed regionally and socially, and how this creates a dis:connective tension in itself.Sujit Sivasundaram (Cambridge) examines another particular sort of place that has only been viewed through the lens of global connectivity: the global South port city.Sivasundaram uses the example of the port of Colombo and the Galle Face Green to highlight the much more complicated role that ports and port cities in the global South play beyond shipping nodes and migration hotspots.In doing so, he directly connects the port of Colombo and Galle Face Green to the antigovernment protests in Sri Lanka in the summer of 2022.Simone Müller (Augsburg) stays on the topic of ports and uses the example of the Honduran port of Puerto Castilla to discuss the relationship of the environment and processes of globalization in history.She shows how a once-central trading and shipping hub fell into disuse in the middle of the 20th century and was then rediscovered as a potential dumping site for imported toxic waste.The story of Puerto Castilla exhibits a specific form of global trade that thrives more on the 'getting rid of…' than on the 'getting hold of…', and thus highlights yet another quality of disconnection.Callie Wilkinson (Munich) studies 19th-century practices of war reporting in terms of the need for military secrecy and the right of public disclosure.She uses examples from the British Empire to highlight how notions of what was appropriate to report changed over timenot least due to new technologies of global communication becoming available.Wilkinson relates her findings to the role of social media in current war reporting.In her contribution, Madeleine Herren (Basle) brings the history of international organizations, and thus the level of the supranational, in direct touch with the lives of common people with very local problems (or assumed problems).She emphasizes the afterlife and unexpected impacts that such supposedly place-less organizations can develop even after their actual dissolution.In doing so, Herren provides a very personal example for power that international organizations can wield in times of crisis, when they might appear at first sight to be mere paper tigers.In the closing piece of this forum, Martin Dusinberre (Zurich) ponders the significance of an archival findthe 'N.Y.K. Line: Map Showing the Routes and Ports of Call of N.Y.K. Steamers'.Initially, the map seems to be yet another convincing testimony to early 20th-century global connectivity.Dusinberre, however, takes a step back and allows the map to disorient him.Might there be more to the map than immediately meets the eye of the connectivity-trained global historian?Might it be more than yet another depiction of global entanglements?And might the profession of history eventually turn out to be a 'disconnection discipline?' 10.See for instance:

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