Kenneth Pomeranz has been named winner of the Toynbee Prize for 2021.

Sujit Sivasundaram and Chris Clark discuss the coronavirus pandemic and the history of animal-human encounters.

Toynbee Coronavirus Series: A Global Historical View of the Pandemic

If we are stuck with analogies of war, then these same histories warn us not only that we cannot wait for the pandemic to be “over”, but also that during each major war extensive political and social movements supported intertwined national and multilateral responses to the global dimensions of health and economic challenges. But where invocations of war, of battles against the virus enemy, might offer comfort precisely because they posit a moment of victory—a V-Day—the intersecting global challenges of pandemic, capitalism and planetary destruction we now face allow us no such complacency.

Archival Reflections

Using the register of seventeenth century media anata payments in Manila, Filipinas.

Adam Tooze and Chris Clark discuss the economics of the coronavirus pandemic.

Since its publication in 2016, Sebastian Conrad’s What Is Global History? has been read and debated not only by historians of modern Europe but also by historians of different parts of the world and scholars in different disciplines. Who writes global history? How and for whom? And why now?

When you approach the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) in Mexico City, Mexico, you notice large dark fences, big walls, and intriguing architecture. You typically enter through a massive gate, secured by an armed police officer, near the complex's parking lot. The guards and AGN's structural qualities convey a sense of protection and control. One could easily think that this design is to keep documents safely inside. While that is presently true, the original design was to keep people inside.