Global history is often addressed in the context of unifying master narratives. The paradigm of globalisation focuses on a process of modernisation through the expansion of European dominion. One alternative is to trace globalisation back to earlier periods, to ‘axial ages’ and the spread of universal religions, and to the origin of ‘great divergences’. The COE EurAsia follows a different line of research. The goal is to do justice to the multiplicity of populations, languages and cultures. Our ambition is to do so not by abandoning a common perspective and allowing for a great number of essentially unrelated histories, but to put them into a dialogue and look for their shared conditions and effects. It can rely on, but should go beyond substantial transcultural research on encounters and exchanges, along the Silk Road and elsewhere. The challenge is to transcend our European vantage point and generate an overview of Eurasian diversity from multiple perspectives, and to historicise our approaches and models in a dialogue with the sources.
