Abstract | The paper asks whether in our increasingly interdependent world there is what could be called a 'global memory'. Using data collected in a multilingual world-wide online survey with 5500 valid responses from 116 countries, we seek to find out whether people in different parts of the world hold similar views on which historical events are important, and where these memorable events are localized. Survey participants were asked to name the most important political events in the last 100 years and since the year 2000 as well as the earliest political event remembered in their lifetime. Results show that a small group of historical events is considered important by a large number of people from all world regions. The global congruence of memory is limited, though. We find considerable hierarchies in the extent to which different world regions are represented in people's memories, and also clear differences in the inclination of people from different countries to mention foreign events. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript
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