Dipesh Chakrabarty, "From Globalization to Global Warming: A Historiographical Transition"

The 2014 Toynbee Prize Lecture was delivered by Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago) on Saturday, January 3, 2015, at the 2015 American Historical Association Annual Meeting. In his lecture, entitled "From Globalization to Global Warming: A Historiographical Transition," Professor Chakrabarty offers his reflections on the field of global history today. Prior to the talk, recorded and available below via YouTube, Toynbee Prize Foundation Vice-President Darrin McMahon (Dartmouth College) awards Professor Chakrabarty with the Toynbee Prize and introduces him. 

Dipesh Chakrabarty, who has taught at Chicago since 1995, is a scholar of South Asian history, postcolonial studies, and global history. Perhaps best known for his 2000 volume Provincializing Europe, Chakrabarty has made major contributions to the historical fields at the core of the Toynbee Prize Foundation's concerns. Epitomizing the mixture of breadth and depth that distinguishes major historians, he is currently at work both on a book project on the implications of the science of climate change for historical and political thinking as well as two other future projects on democracy and political thought in South Asia and the cultural history of Muslim-Bengali nationalism. Chakrabarty received his BSc honors degree from Presidency College, University of Calcutta, a postgraduate Diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and a PhD (history) from the Australian National University.

The Toynbee Prize was established to recognize social scientists for significant academic and public contributions to humanity. Currently, it is awarded every other year for work that makes a significant contribution to the study of global history. Previous winners include Albert Hirschman, Raymond Aron, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Natalie Zemon Davis; its most recent recipients prior to Chakrabarty are John McNeill and Michael Adas. 

Many thanks to Andrew Cohn, Toby Philippe and Tahir Patankar with technical support for the event.