In this reissued collection of essays, first published in 1985, Paul Q. Hirst assesses the limits of the Marxist theory of history in its various versions. It begins with an extended critical discussion of Perry Anderson and Edward Thompson, and includes chapters on G.A Cohena (TM)s attempt to re-state the Marxist theory of history in terms compatible with analytic philosophy, on R.G. Collingwooda (TM)s theory of history, on Andersona (TM)s work on Absolutism, on Thompsona (TM)s Poverty of Theory, and on the contemporary politics of democratic socialism.

What are the humanities? As the cluster of disciplines historically grouped together as "humanities" has grown and diversified to include media studies and digital studies alongside philosophy, art history and musicology to name a few, the need to clearly define the field is pertinent. Herman Paul leads a stellar line-up of esteemed and early-career scholars to provide an overview of the themes, questions and methods that are central to current research on the history of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century humanities. This exciting addition to the successful Writing History series will draw from a wide range of case-studies from diverse fields, as classical philology, art history, and Biblical studies, to provide a state-of-the-art overview of the field. In doing so, this ground-breaking book challenges the rigid distinctions between disciplines and show the variety of prisms through which historians of the humanities study the past.

This book provides a critical examination of over 300 historical works about the French Revolution, published in Europe (in particular in France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia) as well as in the United States between 1789 and 1989. It also goes on to examine recent trends in French Revolution historiography and consider where histories of this landmark event may go in the future. By emphasizing the elements which have been valued or hidden, exalted or silenced, Historicizing the French Revolution shows how reflections on 1789 are always fundamentally tied to the times in which they are formulated. Antonino De Francesco looks at the ways in which these historical accounts can be seen to support and, at times, contrast with the formation of political modernity - both in national and international contexts - as it has taken shape in the hundreds of years that have followed this key moment in world history.

This is a first attempt to present an approach to Ukrainian history which goes beyond the standard 'national narrative' schemes, predominant in the majority of post-Soviet countries after 1991, in the years of implementing 'nation-building projects'. This is an unrivalled collection of essays by the finest scholars in the field from Ukraine, Russia, USA, Germany, Austria and Canada, superbly written to a high academic standard. The various chapters are methodologically innovative and thought-provoking. The biggest Eastern European country has ancient roots but also the birth pangs of a new autonomous state. Its historiography is characterized by animated debates, in which this book takes a definite stance. The history of Ukraine is not written here as a linear, teleological narrative of ethnic Ukrainians but as a multicultural, multidimensional history of a diversity of cultures, religious denominations, languages, ethical norms, and historical experience. It is not presented as causal explanation of 'what has to have happened' but rather as conjunctures and contingencies, disruptions, and episodes of 'lack of history.'

Bringing together a team of history and media researchers from across Britain and Europe, this volume provides readers with a themed discussion of the range and variety of the media's engagement with history, and a close study of the relationship between media, history and national identity.

Peripheral cultures have been largely absent from the European canon of historiography. Seeking to redress the balance, Monika Baar discusses the achievements of five East-Central European historians in the nineteenth century: Joachim Lelewel (Polish); Simonas Daukantas (Lithuanian); Frantisek Palacky (Czech); Mihaly Horvath (Hungarian) and Mihail Kogalniceanu (Romanian). Comparing their efforts to promote a unified vision of national culture in their respective countries, Baar illuminates the complexities of historical writing in the region in the nineteenth century.
Drawing on previously untranslated documents, Baar reconstructs the scholars' shared intellectual background and their nationalistic aims, arguing that historians on the European periphery made significant contributions to historical writing, and had far more in common with their Western and Central European contemporaries than has been previously assumed.

When studying the origins of the First World War, scholars have relied heavily on the series of key diplomatic documents published by the governments of both the defeated and the victorious powers in the 1920s and 1930s. However, this volume shows that these volumes, rather than dealing objectively with the past, were used by the different governments to project an interpretation of the origins of the Great War that was more palatable to them and their country than the truth might have been. In revealing policies that influenced the publication of the documents, the relationships between the commissioning governments, their officials, and the historians involved, this collection serves as a warning that even seemingly objective sources have to be used with caution in historical research.

This book, an international collaboration sponsored by the Commission on the History of Historiography, is devoted to historians of the 19th and 20th centuries. Offering dictionary entries for historians from more than 35 countries, the editors have sought to illustrate specific domains of history and focus on those scholars who were important to particular cultures and histories. Consultants from each area suggested historians for inclusion, thus providing a unique national perspective.

The volume begins with an explanatory preface and a detailed introduction to the time period covered. The entries are then arranged by national or geographical areas, and alphabetized within each regional section. As a general rule, the editors have excluded living historians from the dictionary. Cross references are indicated within the text for those individuals who are also the subjects of separate entries, and the editors have provided both an index of historians and a general subject index. English translations of books and articles in non-Western languages are also cited. This book will be an important reference source for studies in world history and historiography, as well as a significant addition to public, college, and university libraries.

One of the best known consensus or synthesis historians, Daniel J. Boorstin crosses disciplinary boundaries by writing about universities and students, lawyers and historians, history of science and everyday phenomena, material and popular culture, libraries and literacy, film and theater, statistics and words, airwaves and highways, and generally speaking, the past, present, and world to come. This bibliography brings together works by and about Boorstin, showing the volume, range, and importance of his contribution to the study of American history.

With more than 1,300 entries, the bibliography records a history of Daniel Boorstin in print and non-print from 1930 to 1999. It covers a multitude of types of entries, including monographs, book reviews by and about Boorstin, newspaper and scholarly articles, manuscript and archival material, videocassettes, sound reels, Websites, and CD-ROMs. Entries are selectively annotated, in many instances using direct quotes from Boorstin, to give the reader a snapshot understanding of the works cited. This book will be the definitive Boorstin bibliography.

This book outlines and illustrates a new approach to intellectual history, the history of "concepts". In distinction to the study of more traditional units of analysis, (authors, texts, traditions, discourses), conceptual history stresses historical contexts, seeking to combine systematically the history of ideas and language with social history.

In this radical reassessment, Alun Munslow challenges conventional notions of history and offers a new vision of historical thinking and practice. Deploying a range of concepts such as scepticism, aesthetics, ethics, standpoint, irony, authorship and a new understanding of truth, The Future of History examines history as a form of knowledge in itself, arguing that in the future the multiple forms of its expression will be as significant as its content. This thought-provoking, challenging and unique book offers a way forward for history after postmodernism and is essential reading for anyone asking the question 'what is history?'.

Historical revisionism, far from being restricted to small groups of 'negationists, ' has galvanized debates in the realm of recent history. The studies in this book range from general accounts of the background of recent historical revisionism to focused analyses of particular debates or social-cultural phenomena in individual Central European countries, from Germany to Ukraine and Estonia. Where is the borderline between legitimate re-examination of historical interpretations and attempts to rewrite history in a politically motivated way that downgrades or denies essential historical facts? How do the traditional 'national historical narratives' react to the 'spill-over' of international and political controversies into their 'sphere of influence'? Technological progress, along with the overall social and cultural decentralization shatters the old hierarchies of academic historical knowledge under the banner of culture of memory, and breeds an unequalled democratization in historical representation. This book offers a unique approach based on the provocative and instigating intersection of scholarly research, its political appropriations, and social reflection from a representative sample of Central and East European countries.

In this book, J.H. Plumb investigates the way that humankind has moulded the past to give sanction to their institutions of government, their social structure and morality. The past has also been called upon to explain the nature of our destiny in order both to strengthen the objectives of society and to reconcile us to our lot.

Bringing together a team of history and media researchers from across Britain and Europe, this volume provides readers with a themed discussion of the range and variety of the media's engagement with history, and a close study of the relationship between media, history and national identity.

At a time when the problems of the past have come to haunt many societies, the question of the social responsibility of the scientist and scholar, and of the historian in particular, has also once again become a topical one. In this volume seven internationally known historians consider this important question. DIOGENES LIBRARY

Silent Teachers considers for the first time the influence of Ottoman scholarly practices and reference tools on oriental learning in early modern Europe. Telling the story of oriental studies through the annotations, study notes and correspondence of European scholars, it demonstrates the central but often overlooked role that Turkish-language manuscripts played in the achievements of early orientalists. Dispersing the myths and misunderstandings found in previous scholarship, the book offers a fresh history of Turkish studies in Europe and new insights into how Renaissance intellectuals studied Arabic and Persian through contemporaneous Turkish sources. This story hardly has any dull moments: the reader will encounter many larger-than-life figures, including an armchair expert who turned his alleged captivity under the Ottomans into bestselling books; a drunken dragoman who preferred enjoying the fruits of the vine to his duties at the Sublime Porte; and a curmudgeonly German physician whose pugnacious pamphlets led to the erasure of his name from history. Taking its title from the celebrated humanist Joseph Scaliger's comment that books from the Muslim world are 'silent teachers' and need to be explained orally to be understood, this study gives voice to the many and varied Turkish-language books that circulated in early modern Europe and proposes a paradigm-shift in our understanding of early modern erudite culture.

In 2004, world attention was focused on Ukraine's 'Orange Revolution', which appeared to herald a new and promising era for independent Ukraine. Though such hopes proved over-optimistic there is no question that Ukraine has embarked on the process of nation building. But a new nation needs a national history and in this sphere, there has been sustained debate over the interpretations of the recent past. David R. Marples examines these narratives through a wide variety of books, scholarly and newspaper articles, and school textbooks, focusing on some of the most difficult events of the Stalin years in narratives from 1988 to 2005.His focus is on some of the most tragic events of the 20th century: the Famine of 1932-33, the consequences of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, integral nationalism and the war roles of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and the Ukrainian-Polish conflict of 1943-47. How has this new history been formed? To what extent have the villains of yesterday become the heroes of today? And how does the modern state view these events and to what extent to they define the national outlook of contemporary Ukraine?

Certain to engender debate in the media, especially in Ukraine itself, as well as the academic community. Using a wide selection of newspapers, journals, monographs, and school textbooks from different regions of the country, the book examines the sensitive issue of the changing perspectives - often shifting 180 degrees - on several events discussed in the new narratives of the Stalin years published in the Ukraine since the late Gorbachev period until 2005. These events were pivotal to Ukrainian history in the 20th century, including the Famine of 1932-33 and Ukrainian insurgency during the war years. This latter period is particularly disputed, and analyzed with regard to the roles of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) during and after the war. Were these organizations "freedom fighters" or "collaborators"? To what extent do they constitute, are they the architects of the modern independent state?

"Regions of memory" are a scale of social and cultural memory that reaches above the national, yet remains narrower than the global or universal. The chapters of this volume analyze transnational constellations of memory across and between several geographical areas, exploring historical, political and cultural interactions between societies. Such a perspective enables a more diverse field of possible comparisons in memory studies, studying a variety of global memory regions in parallel. Moreover, it reveals lesser-known vectors and mechanisms of memory travel, such as across Cold War battle lines, across the Indian Ocean, or between Southeast Asia and western Europe. Chapters 1 and 6 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

In the past decade, Jeffrey Olick has established himself as one of the world's pre-eminent sociologists of memory (and, related to this, both cultural sociology and social theory). His recent book on memory in postwar Germany, In the House of the Hangman (University of Chicago Press, 2005) has garnered a great deal of acclaim. This book collects his best essays on a range of memory related issues and adds a couple of new ones. It is more conceptually expansive than his other work and will serve as a great introduction to this important theorist. In the past quarter century, the issue of memory has not only become an increasingly important analytical category for historians, sociologists and cultural theorists, it has become pervasive in popular culture as well. Part of this is a function of the enhanced role of both narrative and representation - the building blocks of memory, so to speak - across the social sciences and humanities. Just as importantly, though, there has also been an increasing acceptance of the notion that the past is no longer the province of professional historians alone. Additionally, acknowledging the importance of social memory has not only provided agency to ordinary people when it comes to understanding the past, it has made conflicting interpretations of the meaning of the past more fraught, particularly in light of the terrible events of the twentieth century.

Olick looks at how catastrophic, terrible pasts - Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa - are remembered, but he is particularly concerned with the role that memory plays in social structures. Memory can foster any number of things - social solidarity, nostalgia, civil war - but it always dependson both the nature of the past and the cultures doing the remembering. Prior to his studies of individual episodes, he fully develops his theory of memory and society, working through Bergson, Halbwachs, Elias, Bakhtin, and Bourdieu.

Recently, we have witnessed a rearticulation of the traditional relationship between the past, present and future, broadening historiography's range from studying past events to their later impact and meaning. The volume proposes to look at the perspectives of this approach called mnemohistory, and argues for a redefinition of the term 'event'.

This volume marks the transformation of the International Journal of Oral History from a journal publication to an annual. The objective of the publication remains the same: providing a forum for articles on oral history methodologies and research perspectives. This year thirteen articles are presented. Following Ronald Grele's overview introduction, the world of the Japanese silk weaver is explored by Tamara Hareven. Selma Leydesdorff examines the making of a collective identity among workers in Amsterdam, while John Bodnar looks at the Polish immigrant experience. Issues of black South African working class and nationalist experience are the subject of pieces by Isabel Hofmeyr, Ari Sitas, and Glenn Adler. Florence Charpigny and Jenny Gregory raise issues of methodology and interdisciplinarity. Consciousness and political involvement are the concerns of essays by Lu Ann Jones, Alessandro Portelli, Michelle Palmer et al. Issues of political involvement and the ways in which oral history can document that involvement are the subject of articles by Pamela Grundy and Sherna Berger Gluck. As with the earlier issues of the Journal, this volume will be essential reading for scholars and researchers involved with oral history methodology and with working class and ethnic history.

Global biographies provides an advanced and comprehensive analytical framework for historians to use biography as a method to write global history. Moving beyond the state-of-the-art, the volume defines and operationalises three uniquely tailored approaches to global biographies: 'time and periodisation', 'exceptional normal' and 'space and scales'. From Icelandic communists and Jewish medical students, via Zambian Third Worldism and Albanian nationalism, to the Black/White Atlantic and Australian internationalists, the volume tests the prospects and pitfalls of the approaches it launches. -- .

This collection of essays and addresses epitomize the thinking of Kohn on how he regards the history profession, how he interprets the events of his time, and how he applies his understanding of liberalism, nationalism, and the supranational order.

Victor Ambrus has selected some of the key 'Time Team' excavations over the last three years to show how it has been possible to reconstruct snapshots of the past. His evocative drawings cover everyday life in the country and the towns, trade and industry, warfare, crime and punishment, disease and death.