Global Transformations of Time in the Nineteenth Century

The nineteenth century witnessed a fundamental transformation of notions of time on a global scale. Around the world, time-hallowed practices of time measurement and of time-related cosmologies had to come to terms with a new global regime. This new time regime constituted a four-fold revolution, introducing the concepts of standardization, of global synchronicity, of progressive time, and of deep historical time. In this talk, Sebastian Conrad will argue that this temporal revolution cannot be equated with the diffusion of European temporality, but needs to be understood as a multifaceted response to global challenges.