Global state is never actually necessary. Functional programming doesn't require global state to be turing complete. So I don't see what you mean by it being unavoidable. Passing it in makes it not global state anymore. As I explained in the mocking example. You can run multiple tests at once while initializing a different mock History object to be passed in for every test.
In my experience, generally when people try to use global handlers, it ends up getting bloated as more and more teams add their quirks and features into those handlers. There are numerous ways to mitigate this but I've found that the easiest way to prevent these issues is to simply move the logic into components. And React context gets rid of the need for prop drilling and removes most of the boilerplate involved with passing data to deeply nested components.
In my experience, generally when people try to use global handlers, it ends up getting bloated as more and more teams add their quirks and features into those handlers. There are numerous ways to mitigate this but I've found that the easiest way to prevent these issues is to simply move the logic into components. And React context gets rid of the need for prop drilling and removes most of the boilerplate involved with passing data to deeply nested components.