Jan De Vries
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265321
- eISBN:
- 9780191760495
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265321.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
What difference has global history made to non-national historical agendas such as regional studies and studies based on ecological zones? The methods of regional history have many parallels with ...
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What difference has global history made to non-national historical agendas such as regional studies and studies based on ecological zones? The methods of regional history have many parallels with global history. Both transcend questions of boundaries and engage in methods of connection and comparison. Conceiving a polycentric early modern world challenges us to cross mental boundaries.Less
What difference has global history made to non-national historical agendas such as regional studies and studies based on ecological zones? The methods of regional history have many parallels with global history. Both transcend questions of boundaries and engage in methods of connection and comparison. Conceiving a polycentric early modern world challenges us to cross mental boundaries.
Spencer R. Crew
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199790562
- eISBN:
- 9780199896820
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790562.003.0032
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter explores the “clash of values” between academic and public historians. It defines the similarities and differences between them and the reasons for the formation of separate ...
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This chapter explores the “clash of values” between academic and public historians. It defines the similarities and differences between them and the reasons for the formation of separate organizations for public historians and suggests that the American Historical Association responded more positively to the challenge from public historians than the Organization of American Historians has until recently.Less
This chapter explores the “clash of values” between academic and public historians. It defines the similarities and differences between them and the reasons for the formation of separate organizations for public historians and suggests that the American Historical Association responded more positively to the challenge from public historians than the Organization of American Historians has until recently.
G.A. Bremner and Jonathan Conlin (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780197265871
- eISBN:
- 9780191772030
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265871.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–92) was one of the founding fathers of the discipline of academic history in Britain, known to medievalists in particular on account of his multi-volume History of the ...
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Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–92) was one of the founding fathers of the discipline of academic history in Britain, known to medievalists in particular on account of his multi-volume History of the Norman Conquest (1867–79). He was also known in his own time as an influential thinker on empire and federalism, as well as a fierce and acerbic critic of all things relating to history and politics. As his most famous quote ‘history is past politics, politics present history’ demonstrates, Freeman had a way of collapsing barriers of time and a gift for making his readers feel part of history rather than merely its student. Today he is regularly cited with respect to scholarly debates over British identity and historical method. In the thirty years since John Burrow and Arnaldo Momigliano first addressed it in the 1980s, the tension between Freeman’s attention to constitutional institutions on the one hand and racial character on the other has divided scholars. In the absence of a modern biography, however, gaining the full measure of Freeman’s thought has been difficult: his lifelong interests in architecture and antiquarianism in particular have been sidelined. This volume is the first attempt to bring Freeman the medievalist, political commentator, religious thinker, and student of architecture together. Freeman emerges from this analysis as a leading public intellectual of his age.Less
Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–92) was one of the founding fathers of the discipline of academic history in Britain, known to medievalists in particular on account of his multi-volume History of the Norman Conquest (1867–79). He was also known in his own time as an influential thinker on empire and federalism, as well as a fierce and acerbic critic of all things relating to history and politics. As his most famous quote ‘history is past politics, politics present history’ demonstrates, Freeman had a way of collapsing barriers of time and a gift for making his readers feel part of history rather than merely its student. Today he is regularly cited with respect to scholarly debates over British identity and historical method. In the thirty years since John Burrow and Arnaldo Momigliano first addressed it in the 1980s, the tension between Freeman’s attention to constitutional institutions on the one hand and racial character on the other has divided scholars. In the absence of a modern biography, however, gaining the full measure of Freeman’s thought has been difficult: his lifelong interests in architecture and antiquarianism in particular have been sidelined. This volume is the first attempt to bring Freeman the medievalist, political commentator, religious thinker, and student of architecture together. Freeman emerges from this analysis as a leading public intellectual of his age.
Laura Jockusch
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199764556
- eISBN:
- 9780199979578
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764556.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Historiography
The conclusion examines similarities and differences among the featured commissions and documentation centers and evaluates their importance for Holocaust studies. It argues that part of the reason ...
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The conclusion examines similarities and differences among the featured commissions and documentation centers and evaluates their importance for Holocaust studies. It argues that part of the reason why the early postwar documentation initiatives did not receive the attention of historians who were not survivors themselves was that their methods at the time were anathema to the rules of academic history writing which came to dominate the study of the Holocaust. For decades, the latter remained perpetrator-focused and regime-centered, taking a “top-down” perspective on the Jewish catastrophe. By contrast, the survivors’ popular and interdisciplinary approach relied on testimony and memory and focused on writing the history of everyday life and death of European Jews under Nazi rule from the bottom up. Only in the past two decades did similar approaches enter the academic study of the Holocaust and historians begin to consider both victim and perpetrator source to write an integrated history of the Holocaust.Less
The conclusion examines similarities and differences among the featured commissions and documentation centers and evaluates their importance for Holocaust studies. It argues that part of the reason why the early postwar documentation initiatives did not receive the attention of historians who were not survivors themselves was that their methods at the time were anathema to the rules of academic history writing which came to dominate the study of the Holocaust. For decades, the latter remained perpetrator-focused and regime-centered, taking a “top-down” perspective on the Jewish catastrophe. By contrast, the survivors’ popular and interdisciplinary approach relied on testimony and memory and focused on writing the history of everyday life and death of European Jews under Nazi rule from the bottom up. Only in the past two decades did similar approaches enter the academic study of the Holocaust and historians begin to consider both victim and perpetrator source to write an integrated history of the Holocaust.
Laura Doan
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226001586
- eISBN:
- 9780226001753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226001753.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter analyzes the structure, logic, and political uses of the genealogical project as a most useful form of historical investigation of sexuality, first, to clarify why, in its various ...
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This chapter analyzes the structure, logic, and political uses of the genealogical project as a most useful form of historical investigation of sexuality, first, to clarify why, in its various permutations, the genealogical project has been ineffective in persuading academic history generally of sexuality’s crucial importance as a category of historical analysis. A second aim is to articulate how the genealogical project differs from what some professional historians continue to regard tacitly as “proper history,” that is, a historical practice uninterested in finding the origins of identity or gauging how what is familiar to us now differ.Less
This chapter analyzes the structure, logic, and political uses of the genealogical project as a most useful form of historical investigation of sexuality, first, to clarify why, in its various permutations, the genealogical project has been ineffective in persuading academic history generally of sexuality’s crucial importance as a category of historical analysis. A second aim is to articulate how the genealogical project differs from what some professional historians continue to regard tacitly as “proper history,” that is, a historical practice uninterested in finding the origins of identity or gauging how what is familiar to us now differ.
Dipesh Chakrabarty
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226100449
- eISBN:
- 9780226240244
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226240244.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Surveying more than 1,200 letters that two famous Indian historians, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) and his collaborator Govind Sakharam Sardesai (1865-1959), wrote to each other in the first half ...
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Surveying more than 1,200 letters that two famous Indian historians, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) and his collaborator Govind Sakharam Sardesai (1865-1959), wrote to each other in the first half of the twentieth century, this book develops a two-tiered argument about the modern and academic discipline of history. At one level, it demonstrates how the basic concepts and practices of the discipline (such as those relating to historical evidence, historical truth, or even ideas of research and practices of archiving) were formulated in colonial India through vigorous, sometimes bitter and hurtful debates in public life, bypassing the institutional authority of the university. This “public” life of the discipline was necessitated by the colonial officials’ unwillingness to make official historical documents available to Indian researchers; it was also enabled by the fact that nationalist Indians interested themselves in historical research long before history became a researchable subject in Indian universities. Sarkar, with fraught support from Sardesai, played a central role in introducing Indian researchers to Rankean models of historical research while indigenizing the model in significant ways. Sarkar and Sardesai’s struggle to give early modern Indian history an academic form shows how unavoidable debates in public life shaped the discipline, even after historical study finally gained an academic status in India. Chakrabarty also develops a larger proposition about the discipline of history generally, arguing that, being non-technical in nature, the discipline remains open to the pressures of its “public life,” in addition to those emanating from its “cloistered” life in the university.Less
Surveying more than 1,200 letters that two famous Indian historians, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) and his collaborator Govind Sakharam Sardesai (1865-1959), wrote to each other in the first half of the twentieth century, this book develops a two-tiered argument about the modern and academic discipline of history. At one level, it demonstrates how the basic concepts and practices of the discipline (such as those relating to historical evidence, historical truth, or even ideas of research and practices of archiving) were formulated in colonial India through vigorous, sometimes bitter and hurtful debates in public life, bypassing the institutional authority of the university. This “public” life of the discipline was necessitated by the colonial officials’ unwillingness to make official historical documents available to Indian researchers; it was also enabled by the fact that nationalist Indians interested themselves in historical research long before history became a researchable subject in Indian universities. Sarkar, with fraught support from Sardesai, played a central role in introducing Indian researchers to Rankean models of historical research while indigenizing the model in significant ways. Sarkar and Sardesai’s struggle to give early modern Indian history an academic form shows how unavoidable debates in public life shaped the discipline, even after historical study finally gained an academic status in India. Chakrabarty also develops a larger proposition about the discipline of history generally, arguing that, being non-technical in nature, the discipline remains open to the pressures of its “public life,” in addition to those emanating from its “cloistered” life in the university.
Mark Salber Phillips
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300140378
- eISBN:
- 9780300195255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300140378.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter examines the sentimental mode in more popular forms of historical representation. It discusses the notion that an openly affective approach to the past is the sure mark of work written ...
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This chapter examines the sentimental mode in more popular forms of historical representation. It discusses the notion that an openly affective approach to the past is the sure mark of work written for a popular audience and suggest that one of the striking features of historical representation in the late decades of the twentieth century is the convergence of popular and academic histories on the ground of feeling. It also considers the interest of academic publishers in the so-called cross-over market of popular and academic histories.Less
This chapter examines the sentimental mode in more popular forms of historical representation. It discusses the notion that an openly affective approach to the past is the sure mark of work written for a popular audience and suggest that one of the striking features of historical representation in the late decades of the twentieth century is the convergence of popular and academic histories on the ground of feeling. It also considers the interest of academic publishers in the so-called cross-over market of popular and academic histories.
Roger Cooter
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300186635
- eISBN:
- 9780300189438
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300186635.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
A collection of ten chapters paired with substantial prefaces, this book chronicles and contextualizes the author's contributions to the history of medicine. The book critically examines the politics ...
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A collection of ten chapters paired with substantial prefaces, this book chronicles and contextualizes the author's contributions to the history of medicine. The book critically examines the politics of conceptual and methodological shifts in historiography. In particular, it examines the “double bind” of postmodernism and biological or neurological modeling that, together, threaten academic history. To counteract this trend historians must begin actively locating themselves in the problems they consider. The chapters and commentaries constitute a kind of contour map of history's recent trends and trajectories—its points of passage to the present—and lead both to a critical account of the discipline's historiography and to an examination of the role of intellectual frameworks and epistemic virtues in the writing of history.Less
A collection of ten chapters paired with substantial prefaces, this book chronicles and contextualizes the author's contributions to the history of medicine. The book critically examines the politics of conceptual and methodological shifts in historiography. In particular, it examines the “double bind” of postmodernism and biological or neurological modeling that, together, threaten academic history. To counteract this trend historians must begin actively locating themselves in the problems they consider. The chapters and commentaries constitute a kind of contour map of history's recent trends and trajectories—its points of passage to the present—and lead both to a critical account of the discipline's historiography and to an examination of the role of intellectual frameworks and epistemic virtues in the writing of history.
Helen M. Dingwall
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748615674
- eISBN:
- 9780748653355
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748615674.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Scottish Studies
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to add to the academic history of surgical institutions, medicine in general, and of Scotland itself, as well as celebrating ...
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This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to add to the academic history of surgical institutions, medicine in general, and of Scotland itself, as well as celebrating 500 years of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh' continuous existence. It then provides an overview of the history of the College, which falls into two main divisions: ‘The Incorporation’ and ‘The College’, and then turns to theories and professions.Less
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to add to the academic history of surgical institutions, medicine in general, and of Scotland itself, as well as celebrating 500 years of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh' continuous existence. It then provides an overview of the history of the College, which falls into two main divisions: ‘The Incorporation’ and ‘The College’, and then turns to theories and professions.
David Pearson
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198870128
- eISBN:
- 9780191912955
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198870128.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Describes in more detail the kinds of libraries typically formed by academic or professional people, or by members of the gentry and aristocracy; these constitute about 90 per cent of the evidence ...
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Describes in more detail the kinds of libraries typically formed by academic or professional people, or by members of the gentry and aristocracy; these constitute about 90 per cent of the evidence base of documented book owners of the seventeenth century. Trends in size over time, and in the kinds of books typically found in these kinds of libraries, are explored, based on a number of case studies. The wider European context is considered. A broad spread of subjects is commonly found in seventeenth-century libraries of any size, with a gradual increase in the proportion of British-published material as time progresses. It is very common to find significant proportions of theological or devotional books, most obviously in clerical and academic libraries, but also (if in smaller proportions) in the houses of the landed classes.Less
Describes in more detail the kinds of libraries typically formed by academic or professional people, or by members of the gentry and aristocracy; these constitute about 90 per cent of the evidence base of documented book owners of the seventeenth century. Trends in size over time, and in the kinds of books typically found in these kinds of libraries, are explored, based on a number of case studies. The wider European context is considered. A broad spread of subjects is commonly found in seventeenth-century libraries of any size, with a gradual increase in the proportion of British-published material as time progresses. It is very common to find significant proportions of theological or devotional books, most obviously in clerical and academic libraries, but also (if in smaller proportions) in the houses of the landed classes.
Irena Backus
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199891849
- eISBN:
- 9780199392865
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199891849.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Chapter 6 gives a rapid survey of existing literature on Leibniz as historian and examines the hitherto little-explored question of him as historian of the sacred. In fact Leibniz’s account of sacred ...
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Chapter 6 gives a rapid survey of existing literature on Leibniz as historian and examines the hitherto little-explored question of him as historian of the sacred. In fact Leibniz’s account of sacred and profane history in the early 1680s and later integrates perfectly into his philosophical system. Its importance and particularity lies in its accent on the high profile of history as truthful revelation of God’s design within Leibniz’s system as well as the close links that obtain between sacred and profane history and the essential role that (in Leibniz’s view) history plays in the concordance of academic disciplines. While this is partly an answer to historical skepticism of the time, it also shows that Leibniz, as opposed, for example, to Newton, is not a church historian but a historian of the sacred.Less
Chapter 6 gives a rapid survey of existing literature on Leibniz as historian and examines the hitherto little-explored question of him as historian of the sacred. In fact Leibniz’s account of sacred and profane history in the early 1680s and later integrates perfectly into his philosophical system. Its importance and particularity lies in its accent on the high profile of history as truthful revelation of God’s design within Leibniz’s system as well as the close links that obtain between sacred and profane history and the essential role that (in Leibniz’s view) history plays in the concordance of academic disciplines. While this is partly an answer to historical skepticism of the time, it also shows that Leibniz, as opposed, for example, to Newton, is not a church historian but a historian of the sacred.
John Herson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719090639
- eISBN:
- 9781781708385
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090639.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The conclusion begins by reviewing how family history can reveal the lives of immigrant families and their descendants as well as their identities and family strategies. It argues that collective ...
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The conclusion begins by reviewing how family history can reveal the lives of immigrant families and their descendants as well as their identities and family strategies. It argues that collective family biography can bridge the gap between ‘academic’ social history and antiquarian family history, to the benefit of both. The distinctive and determinant features of long-term transient, integrating and terminal families are discussed. It is argued that for Irish migration studies the work offers new evidence on the diversity of migrant experiences and the forces promoting identity and ‘ethnic fade’. The significance of women’s roles is emphasised and the argument is in favour of the ‘active opportunist’ rather than the ‘passive exile’ perspective on Irish migrants. The book concludes with some implications for family studies. The family strategy concept is seen as valuable especially by focusing on the role of women. The evidence undermines simple views on the transition to the nuclear family. There is some sustenance to the Marxist feminist perspective of the family as an ideological construct whose role was to keep people functioning and reproducing in spite of stresses in the external environment.Less
The conclusion begins by reviewing how family history can reveal the lives of immigrant families and their descendants as well as their identities and family strategies. It argues that collective family biography can bridge the gap between ‘academic’ social history and antiquarian family history, to the benefit of both. The distinctive and determinant features of long-term transient, integrating and terminal families are discussed. It is argued that for Irish migration studies the work offers new evidence on the diversity of migrant experiences and the forces promoting identity and ‘ethnic fade’. The significance of women’s roles is emphasised and the argument is in favour of the ‘active opportunist’ rather than the ‘passive exile’ perspective on Irish migrants. The book concludes with some implications for family studies. The family strategy concept is seen as valuable especially by focusing on the role of women. The evidence undermines simple views on the transition to the nuclear family. There is some sustenance to the Marxist feminist perspective of the family as an ideological construct whose role was to keep people functioning and reproducing in spite of stresses in the external environment.