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The purpose of this paper is to explore the interconnections between Hume's thought as a philosopher, a historian and an economist, illustrated with respect to his thought on history, development and happiness. It is argued that differences in the interpretation of Hume have an epistemological origin, reflecting either a closed-system approach or some kind of open-system approach. These differences are explored in relation to Hume's own epistemology, historiography, theory of economic development and theory of happiness. Patterns are identified in Hume's thought which support a particular, open-system, interpretation of his contributions in each area in terms of interdependent processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together the ideas of three writers from the 1880s who argued for an enhanced status for history in the school curriculum. Although there is superficial agreement between the writers in calling for history to develop children's citizenship and patriotism, each conceives these values differently. Focusing on the teaching of history to children in elementary and third-grade schools, this paper suggests that the considerable plurality of views among advocates of history reflects the underdeveloped disciplinary identity of history in the Victorian academy. However, the paper also contends that, in considering the pedagogic complexity of teaching history to children, these writers were engaging with epistemic debates – about the place of myth-histories and the processes of narrativisation – that would not exercise historical philosophers until the late twentieth century. Then, as now, the school curriculum proved fertile ground for discussion about what history is, and what it is for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue is dedicated to the question of how research on technology and its inherent temporality and materiality can enhance our understanding of geography, culture and history in Central Asia. The articles provide fresh ideas on Central Asia as a region by unpacking the "hard" infrastructural base of its cultural, social, and economic geography. They offer a more inclusive view on Central Asian landscapes, focusing on permanent material structures and vernacular practices that are often overlooked in conventional historiography and social studies research. Finally, they explore how research on technology both supports and challenges the primacy of political history in defining the historical periods and legacies of Central Asia. The papers cover about 150 years of history, with case studies on what are today Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Mongolia. This introductory essay summarizes their key insights, situating them in a wider debate on technology in and beyond Central Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This postscript to the Special Feature describes the explicit and implicit temporalities of gentrification in gentrification theory. It asks whether the papers in this collection affirm or disrupt the accepted understanding of gentrification as a phenomenon that emerged in the postwar years in the context of urban deindustrialization. It argues that a robust definition of gentrification, which identifies the historicity of the phenomenon and its temporal boundaries, is required in order to avoid the co-optation of gentrification definitions and theories and the 'naturalization' of gentrification. And, lastly, it suggests that critical history writing and historiography can contribute to gentrification studies' project of denaturalizing the process by grounding it in long-term processes with a historical dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that history is a large-scale transmedia project that is not understood as such, and this causes friction when history is engaged with through media in which historical research is not usually presented. To do this, I go through Henry Jenkins' ten-step definition of transmedia and argue that history matches the definition very well. This transmedia discussion brings forth the concept of 'world-building', in which narrative is superseded by world-building as the all-encompassing concept and as the beginning point of analysis. In the analysis, history (as a product of historiography) is treated as phenomenon instead of a discipline and compared to other forms of transmedia world-building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Umteteli wa Bantu, launched in 1920, was much more than the moderate, black newspaper most of its contemporaries assumed it to be. Established by the Native Recruitment Corporation as an exercise in "soft power" through propaganda, the split created between its business and editorial functions facilitated editorial autonomy. Umteteli form, a term taken from Kevin Barnhurst and John Nerone's work on newspaper history, included the casual and irregular intermingling of social and personal news with all the other paper content. By sewing people and their activities into the fabric of the paper, Umteteli created a niche and identity for itself as constitutive of black sociality in which the constraints imposed by racial segregation no longer impeded upward social mobility. This playfulness and creativity contradict much of what is written about the paper, usually assessed for whether its political content was supportive or not of African nationalism. Also, through ongoing encouragement and exhortation to its readers, the paper drew readers into a status as co-producers, creating commonality through the relationship of readers to the paper where that commonality might not have existed otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of this paper provides some insights into the problematic nature of the genre “history of ancient Israel”, both in terms of historiography and of historical epistemology. It is argued that the concept “history of ancient Israel” is essentially valid within a particular modern theological or biblical historiographical context. As such, this history of ancient Israel may indeed progress and generate new understandings but is nonetheless seriously limited by its main concern with “biblical Israel”. It is also proposed that in order to overcome these thematic and epistemological historical limitations, a wider history of ancient Palestine or the Southern Levant should be envisioned, into which to understand the epigraphic and archaeological realia of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, together with other contemporary polities in the region, and the later development of biblical traditions and texts. The second part of the paper addresses questions of ethnogenesis, socio-political organization and identity in the light of the previous discussion, setting the stage for an alternative history of Israel and other historical realities in ancient Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1862 until 1874, John Holt lived on the island of Bioko (Fernando Pó), laying the groundwork for a company that would become one of the most influential trading houses in western Africa. During his time on the coast, Holt was almost continually ill with malaria and other tropical diseases, and his illnesses had a major impact on how he experienced and interpreted his life and work in Africa. This paper draws on Holt’s private papers, as well as merchant memoirs and the historiographies of medicine, hydrotherapy and masculinity to explore merchants’ views of illness and how they were deeply embedded in broader assumptions about manliness during a time of rapid imperial expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Freedom Charter represents a desire to create a society that is based on common citizenship and democracy in a society divided in all aspects of its life. This paper problematises and interrogates the Charter’s theoretical and philosophical claim on land. It uses the methodology of Afrocentricity and Africana critical theory to dispute the theoretical and philosophical basis of the Freedom Charter. The paper argues that the understanding, desire and vision of the Freedom Charter are irreconcilable. It concludes that the Charter reconciles the dispossessed with their dispossession, reflecting coloniality and white domination in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the driving forces acting upon the Warwickshire land market between 1284 and 1345, utilizing the feet of fines of this period as its key source. Previous historiographical inquiry has either focused primarily on external factors or else the 'family-land bond', neglecting the concept of individualized property management as an explanation, something this paper seeks to rectify. Firstly the article examines exogenous forces in the form of grain prices to test the popular hypothesis as to whether the land market was 'harvest-sensitive'. Comparative analysis of these prices with land transfers recorded in the fines determines that outside forces played a key role, although this was primarily during periods of economic crisis. The paper then explores the role of the period's most prolifically active individuals, reconstructing their lives through cross-referencing of the feet of fine evidence with other relevant sources. This clearly reveals the powerful influence these property magnates exerted on the land market, often fluctuating according to their personal needs and desires. The result is to build a clear picture of land market dynamics, which draws on both external and internal forces, defining their roles in relation to periods of stability and crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In appreciating and responding to the three symposium papers on “Anarchism, Texts and Children”, a case is made for what John Berger has called “the honour of an alternative”, for affirmation as well as for refusal. Not only should we respond positively and imaginatively to Colin Ward’s call for “counter-history” of our own making, we should also extend our advocacy of alternatives through the adventure of more creative historical methodologies. Lastly, in the spirit of Berger’s writing, this Afterword celebrates the capacity of all three papers not just to speak to issues of enduring human importance, but to do so imaginatively and eloquently, thereby refusing and subverting the increasingly dreary hegemony of academic writing disgracefully in thrall to the diminishing calculus of neo-liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper has two aims: firstly, it sketches the history of language teaching in France and francophone Switzerland over a period of 200 years, with a particular focus on the teaching of German. Secondly, it seeks to shed light on some of the francophone historiographical approaches which have influenced recent research in this area. Historical sociolinguistic studies have highlighted the multilingual nature of the Ancien Régime. Mainstream conclusions from the history of language teaching methodology have been complemented by contributions from sociolinguistics which shed light on the developing status of teachers, their working conditions, their role in educational institutions and their professionalisation during the nineteenth century. From the beginning of the twentieth century, despite the dominance of monolingual ideology, discussion of modern language teaching started to take place transnationally. Today, historians are also working across borders in order to get a more accurate picture of the development of language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the pressing question of why, in Russia, gender studies in history still have to prove their worth in the Russian academic world — and in the general public; why they operate in two discourses, and how common ground can be found between these. The first discourse is that of traditional gender roles which tends to legitimize the role of a woman as important but complementary with regard to the role of a man. The second discourse casts serious doubt on the naturalness or the essentialist predicament of the mutual complementarity of gender roles. The adherents to such a methodological perspective imply a feminist reflection both in posing their questions and choosing their approach to empirical data. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

References to relations between states, regions, communities and cultures have been a staple of historical thinking on the Mediterranean from the nineteenth century to the present day. Weathering changing academic trends and fashions, this vision of the Mediterranean has shaped the development of relevant historiographies, defining assumptions and approaches to an unrecognised extent. Focusing on the trajectory of this “Mediterranean of relations” in the historiography of the medieval Maghrib, this paper outlines some of the effects of its prevalence on the evolution of the concept of Mediterranean and argues for the inclusion of these considerations in the ongoing discussions around the medieval Mediterranean. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A comic book, a graphic research paper, an experiment in image and text – ‘Steal This History’ explores the 1960s (or ‘Sixties’) as it has appeared in various historical and commemorative discourses. For more than forty years, the Sixties has been discussed and debated in the U.S. public sphere. Its political and cultural legacy continues to excite conflict and disagreement. The following pages provide a multi-perspective account of the Sixties that combines allusions to historical events with personal reflection, poetic imagery, symbol and metaphor. Influenced by the ideas of Hayden White, Alun Munslow, Robert A. Rosenstone and others, we became fascinated by the potential of the image as a conduit for innovative, challenging, self-conscious histories. ‘Steal This History’ builds on these ideas and explores ways of developing a graphic philosophy of history. There is no attempt, here, to provide a comprehensive account of the Sixties, nor to cite every key event, person or movement. Rather, what follows is a partial collection of ideas. We hope readers will enjoy the piece, and that it might spark a dialogue on future directions for graphic historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The region around Great Zimbabwe was a theatre of considerable human traffic between c.1750–1850. This period coincided with the disintegration of the Rozvi ‘empire’, which resulted in the formation of dynasties that came to dominate the Karanga cluster. This process was still commonplace in the late nineteenth century and a few European visitors found a number of its prime role players still at work. Very few lived amongst the actors and become a part of the drama itself. Carl Mauch (1837–1875), however, lived in the region in 1871–1872. An even smaller number of literate Europeans recorded these events as meticulously as Mauch and thus his work has attracted the attention of historians. This paper offers a re-interpretation of Mauch's record of African society and politics in the communities around Great Zimbabwe. It argues that it must be appreciated in the wider context of its production, chiefly that his locations were determined on the basis of faulty readings of his geometric instruments, his unorthodox orthography of people and place names, while his account vacillated from fact to fiction depending on his mood or relations with the people around him. Drawing on this reassessment, the paper reconsiders the various historiographical interpretations made of Mauch's work in the history of the Karanga. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Being founded in the wake of the First World War, both Turkey and the Soviet Union followed revolutionary modernizing pathways. At the outset, one could trace many similar patterns in their radical modernization paradigms; however, their development models as well as political and social orders were radically distinct, which became more obvious with the passage of time. The paper discusses the external interpretations of Kemalism by observing the Soviet perspectives on the inception and evolution of Kemalism. Paying more attention to diplomatic, geopolitical and economic complexities of the Turkish-Soviet relations, scholars have rarely problematized the Soviet Union perceptions of Turkish ideological transformations. In reality, since the early 1920s, different state institutions, intellectual schools of thought and research in the Soviet Union closely observed the domestic transformations in Turkey by providing valuable insights on the perspective and the implications of the Kemalist transformation. The article also looks at the question of how the incorporation of Soviet perspectives can enrich the historiography and our understanding of Kemalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cold weather remains one of the least explored environmental phenomena in the historiography of American slavery. By detailing the heightened vulnerabilities of the enslaved during the colder portions of the year and then describing the means by which enslaved people leveraged frigid weather against slaveholders, this paper highlights how slave and slaveholder differently mobilized the cold against one another in contests over power. It argues that in the lives of enslaved women and men in antebellum Maryland, cold weather was both an afflicting as well as empowering force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If historiography is ordered by a series of thematic and methodological turns, then it is not hard to demonstrate that there has in recent years been a turn towards revolutionary histories of South Asia. Scholars have begun to transcend the limitations of Gandhian frameworks in search of more dynamic understandings of Indian pasts that factor in the role of violence, subterfuge and conspiracy in South Asian anti-colonial struggles. But what happens when new methodologies and narratives begin to destabilise or even invert longstanding historical readings that have been the basis for generations of academic knowledge of the past? When, and under what political and institutional conditions, are fresh interpretations of history sayable? Can historical trajectories or interpretations be quickly turned or must they evolve slowly? This paper is a self-reflexive critique of the ways in which radical histories can—or cannot—be written in the post-colonial moment, with reference to the compulsions brought to bear in the writing of revolutionary history. This article considers these historiographical issues alongside compelling evidence of the involvement of Jawaharlal and Motilal Nehru in key aspects of the revolutionary actions of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. Video abstractRead the transcriptWatch the video on Vimeo [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay pursues a pressing question in the study of posthuman rhetoric: Now that distributed agency has, to a degree, been theorized, to what use can it be put by feminists? In attempting one provisional response, the essay argues on behalf of the importance of a posthuman conception of ontic media, recuperating feminist agency not within a particular historical individual but, instead, in the relationships between her mediational networks and their nodes. Taking as its primary artifact Anita Loos’s groundbreaking 1916 filmHis Picture in the Papers, the essay historicizes and articulates Loos’s particular brand of indirect-qua-distributed feminist agency. In doing so, the essay gestures more broadly toward the role of such networks in the recovery of feminist critiques previously resistant to historicization due to their distributed nature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Advances in digital technology have made the recent past seem like a foreign country. Media historians did things very differently in 2002. In the last decade, hundreds of historical newspapers and periodicals have been digitised and made available to researchers via online archives. Whilst the emergence of these resources has generated contrasting responses from historians, an increasing number of researchers are now embracing the new methodological possibilities created by keyword-searchable digital archives. As the first examples of this scholarship begin to appear on the horizon, this paper considers whether media history is on the cusp of a ‘digital turn’. It outlines the existing responses to digital methodologies, deconstructs digital newspapers in order to explore how they differ from their paper originals and uses case studies drawn from my own research into the late-Victorian transatlantic press to demonstrate how new methodologies might be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent political events in Thailand have shed light on a long neglected and dangerous corner of 'Thai' history. An oceanic shift in Thai politics, only beginning to be tracked, now threatens the 'Thai race nationalist model', the foundations of which date back to the early twentieth century. Made near complete under military dictatorship after 1958, and perfected after the bloody crackdown of 1976, this model has enjoyed apparent rejuvenation since the 2006 coup, now with the monarchy at its centre. This paper focuses on the question of Lao ethnicity and the North East of Thailand, or Isan. It shows how a combination of linguistics, a pseudo-science of race and ethnicity and historical revisionism have created the appearance of an ethnically and culturally homogenized 'Thailand'. The paper argues that an ethnic history from the periphery has run parallel to the history of the Thai centre, and its broad contours become ever sharper. 'Thailand', as a nationalist construct, now faces competing 'ethnic' narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of researchers and publications devoted to the history of alchemy has seen exponential growth and diversification in recent decades, to such an extent that some scholars speak of a "New Historiography of Alchemy." On the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, this paper outlines some highlights of the literature since 1990, with a view to identify current trends but also challenges for the future. Some of the most important changes identified are a marked awareness of the risks of presentism, a shift from ambitious histories to contextualised microhistories, a heightened recognition of the internal diversity of historical alchemy, and a greater emphasis on its practical dimensions and its role in the Scientific Revolution. Among the challenges, the paper underscores the potential risks of an excessive historiographical fragmentation, the need for further interdisciplinary training and cooperation, and the responsibilities of alchemy historians towards students and the general public alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore how 'doxa' has influenced the historical study of medieval and early modern Sikhism. In particular the paper focuses on the reign of Guru Hargobind and his intellectual contest with his cousin and spiritual rival, Miharvan. The contest between Hargobind and Miharvan demonstrates how medieval Sikh society was not conveniently divided into 'orthodox' and 'unorthodox' sections. Rather, the Sikh community was influenced by a variety of socio-economic, political and intellectual factors that affected the way in which the community thought about Sikhism. Moreover, the paper examines how dialogical readings of primary sources can enable scholars to develop a more dynamic historical understanding of early Sikhism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research in the history of geography has highlighted the significance of biographical perspectives, of different institutional narratives and the importance of memory and of non-foundationalist accounts in understanding the development of geography as a formal subject. Attention to various practices such as fieldwork, the production by undergraduates of geographical magazines and research-led teaching has further enriched our understanding of the experiences of doing geography. This paper draws upon such work in outlining the 100-year history of geography as a teaching department in the University of Edinburgh. Despite such new perspectives and, perhaps, because of them, and because the history of geography as a department is not the same as the history of the subject, it is not possible to offer a full centennial history of the lives lived within a department of geography. Using evidence relating to Edinburgh's century of geography teaching in a department, the paper questions the extent to which it is ever possible to reconstruct narratives of geography's institutional presence and addresses the implications of this for the history of geography more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the narratives on the Famine in Irish and Ukrainian history textbooks and examines to what extent these narratives are coloured by a nationalist discourse. It argues that the story of the Famine in Irish history textbooks has changed from nationalist propaganda to a more balanced narrative, and that this change was brought about by the social transformations in the 1960s. The paper further observes that the current Ukrainian textbooks display quite a variation in the selection and interpretation of events relating to the Famine. Whereas some show a considerable nationalist bias, others present more moderate views. The trajectory of Irish narratives lends support to a theory that relates politicized historiography to the age of a state and to the consolidation of democracy. The diverse pattern of Ukrainian narratives, however, is difficult to reconcile with theories linking historiography to the wider social and political context. This pattern suggests that young states and/or states emerging from authoritarian rule need not automatically entertain uniformly nationalist or otherwise ideologically coloured discourses in the immediate post‐independence period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper retells the story of Rapanui from the perspective of the 'insider'. Particular attention is paid to cultural mistranslations of pertinent historical documents and the ambiguous and arbitrary nature of popular Rapanui legends and histories in some published texts. The paper examines the conflicting translations of the Rapanui and Spanish versions of the Treaty and Proclamation and their long-term ramifications in terms of land rights and self-determination of the Rapanui. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a case for what it understands to be the ethical imperative underwriting the need to revisit select historical criticisms of psychotherapy. Three broad areas of historical criticism seem particularly pressing in this respect: socio-political critiques, feminist critiques, and concerns over the potentially abusive nature of the transference. The first set of arguments concerns a series of speculations over how psychotherapy may act as an instrument of social control, as a de-politicizing and potentially 'pathologizing' vehicle able to implement normative (or ideological) socio-political values through its clinical procedures. The second set of arguments focuses on psychotherapy's gendering potential, that is, both its construction of gender and its reiteration of patriarchal power-relations. The third focus of the paper brings to the fore questions of the frequently sexualized nature of the psychotherapeutic interaction, particular with reference to the transference. The paper concludes by suggesting that the problems thus posed cannot simply be eradicated; the most appropriate response, by contrast, is that of a broadening ethical sensibility of the potential impact of such issues and their 'thematic variants' upon clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the personal and official papers of an immigration officer, this article highlights his personality, social life, and the quotidian aspects of his work at the port. By placing the officer at the centre, instead of the usual tendency in South African historiography to focus on ethnic immigration histories, one secures broader insights into the administration of policy, such as the writing test (an exclusionary mechanism) and repatriation, which are often associated with state policies against Indians. While the article draws on examples of arrivals at the port from both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, arguing against a focus on only Indian Ocean traffic, it emphasises how arrivals from India played a role in shaping the immigration bureaucracy. While scholars have recently begun to see Cape Town as an important Indian Ocean port, this article points to settler society’s unease with what sea traffic from Bombay and Durban might bring and how Cape Town sought to establish a disconnect with the East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the often implicit assumption by historians working on humanitarian history that their work is being read and used by present-day humanitarian workers. Key characteristics of the modern-day humanitarian sector are highlighted, including the unpredictable and often inadequate levels of funding, stressful working conditions and high staff turnover. The article argues that, to a significant degree, the humanitarian sector is ahistorical and locked into a state of ‘perpetual present’. Two principal obstacles to the greater use of historical knowledge within the present-day humanitarian sector are identified as being the limited accessibility of the available literature on humanitarian history and the perceptions that the work of humanitarian historians is of limited relevance. The paper concludes by describing recent initiatives including the planned humanitarianhistory.org website which is intended to improve the accessibility of the available literature and facilitate engagement and co-production between historians and humanitarian workers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper attempts to examine the prevailing scholarly view on the Young Ottoman and the Young Turk movements, which postulates that the concept of constitutionalism was solely and directly based on the western model, imported by the constitutionalist movements to the Ottoman Empire. As a child of the ‘modernization theory’, this approach mostly concentrates on European impact in an isolated manner, thus overlooking not only the manifold sources of the Ottoman constitutionalism, but also the means of legitimation that the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks cultivated. In view of this, I seek to shed light on the historical context of the Ottoman constitutionalism, by pointing out how the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks perceived the power struggles in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and built continuity between themselves and the political position that aimed to restrict the royal prerogative before the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historians of education wanting to develop culturally responsive historiographies of Indigenous communities should move beyond a reliance on government and church policy documents – with some variegations of testimony from residential school survivors. The unique circumstances of colonisation that were forged by national/settler policies should be investigated in tandem with a traditional knowledge of local meanings of time, landscape and mythos. This work examines the differences in Canadian and American schooling policies – notably the residential schools – from the experiences of the Coast Salish who are a transnational people with a transcendent discernment of their traditional territory bisected by the Canada–US border. Nation-state borders have produced impediments for Indigenous peoples and conceptual problems for historians. This paper, drawing on secondary and primary source documents, oral history recordings and conversations with Coast Salish community members, compares the cross-border educational experiences of the region with suggestions for more place-based historiographies of Indigenous education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Battle of Gökdepe (1881) is considered to be a turning point in Turkmenistan's contemporary historiography. It led to the then independent Turkmen (Akhal Tekke in this case) tribes coming under Russian control. Almost immediately after the event the battle became a controversial point of interpretation starting from Turkmen sources (rarely known to us), an immense number of Russian (mostly military) sources, up to the Soviet historians. The post-Soviet official Turkmen historiography of the event came from these foundations, but used its own mythological approach. As a result, the contemporary narrative of the Gökdepe defeat turned into a victory for the Akhal Tekke (and broadly Turkmen) nation. Additionally, this paper argues that the first and partly the second presidents of Turkmenistan incorporated the battle into their own personality cults, a fact which is still specific to the Central Asian context, albeit not unique in world history. In particular, the first president usurped the myth and connected it with his own historical narrative. The second president continues this in the frames of the already settled political culture in the country, adapting the Gökdepe myth to create his own ideological story. Therefore, the appropriation of the historical event in Turkmenistan represents a specific (albeit not unique) case of this kind and shows the way of thinking about the leader in current Turkmenistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of conquests and territorial expansion, including their interpretation, evaluation, and legitimisation, has been crucial for European national historiographies. Consequently, attempts by the Holy Roman emperors, particularly of the Saxon and Hohenstaufen dynasties, to control Italy and Burgundy were hotly debated among nineteenth-century German historians, while Poland's union with Lithuania, and the annexation of the vast territories of the east which followed, was a central topic for Polish historians of the time. Modern historians of historiography in both countries have carefully analysed these narratives, emphasising their ideological and political contexts, such as their involvement in the Grossdeutsch versus Kleindeutsch controversy and the controversy between the so-called Cracow and Warsaw historical schools. In this paper I propose a comparative analysis of these two discourses which dealt with analogical issues and, as I demonstrate, developed with a parallel dynamic. Such an analysis, I argue, allows an escape from the paradigm of national exceptionalism, and the discovery of what was typical or, perhaps, constitutive of the discourse on territorial expansion of the time, instead of focusing on the uniqueness of the national context. This analysis embraces the conceptualisation, argumentation, and rhetoric of those nineteenth-century German and Polish historians discussing the expansion of the medieval Holy Empire and early-modern Poland. Moreover, it locates their interpretations within an international context of a broader Western historiographical tradition, involving issues of domination, cultural transfer, and colonialism. Finally, it examines the parallel mechanism of searching for, advocating, and perpetuating the idea of uniqueness of national history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

irscholarship in India has focused on the borders, territory and sovereignty of the Indian state, overlooking the rich complexity of interior border formation between colonial and independent India. The paper argues that the study of the princely states under the British paramountcy (1858–1947), neglected so far, is valuable toirscholarship on three grounds. First, in mapping colonial India’s engagement with the outside world, the focus has been solely on British India. The princes were equally participative and perceptive of the outside world. Second, the princely states represent yet another challenge to the Westphalian notion of sovereignty, demonstrating the limited capacity of European categories to understand the ‘non-West’. Third, incorporating the paramountcy system in the genealogy of sovereignty of the Indian subcontinent offers a fresh account of border construction inside the state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper traces long-standing philosophical, sociological and political tensions that have been at the core of narratives about state-funded teacher education, since its inception in England. These tensions are still visible today in debates around the professional knowledge of teachers, such as those described in Furlong (2013). Historiographical evidence leads to questioning the new ‘truce’ being forged at the moment around acceptable ways of settling disagreements about teacher professionalism and teacher education, for example through the discursive redeployment of terms such as ‘common sense’, ‘resilience’ and ‘craft’. From ‘virtuous common sense’, in the mid-19th century, through ‘scientific pedagogy’ near the turn of the 20th century and ‘the science of lighting a fire’ in the mid-20th century, and to the ideological clashes surrounding the turn of the millennium, there have been numerous attempts to construct public accounts of teacher knowledge and attributes, and of teacher education. The absence of teachers as powerful participants in this construction is palpable. Philosophers can contribute to the ‘untelling’ of these stories by carefully picking discursive threads that were not foregrounded in the policy and political filtering of public accounts of teaching, and reconnecting them to traditions of argument about teaching as a practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The idea of interdisciplinarity can be articulated in different ways. The aim of the article is to criticise the view that interdisciplinarity is to be treated as a quality of the historian's approach to his subject-matter, and to argue for a constructivist interpretation of that notion. A constructivist account of interdisciplinarity relies on the thesis that the latter is one of the manifold ways in which it is possible to give sense to the historical records of which the historian wants to gain knowledge. In the paper it is maintained that the function of the notion of interdisciplinarity is to account for the clash of languages that can be found when disciplines converge. This new paradigm is highlighted by taking into consideration the history of American pragmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late nineteenth century several projects for the publication of county and regional history have envisaged a series with complete national coverage (referring here to England only). They have met with varying degrees of success, both in terms of completeness and of quality. Their inspiration has been variously academic or commercial, sometimes ambitiously seeking to satisfy both aspirations, and they have been aimed at different markets. This paper reviews these various series insofar as they have concerned the seven northern counties, seeking to assess their value and to consider both contemporary responses and retrospective appraisals of their merits and defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of critical policy analysis often emphasizes the importance of historicizing the present. However, there is very little guidance for critical policy analysts on the methodical production of histories. In this paper, I meet this need by arguing for the use of methodologies embedded in the production of both cultural histories and microhistories. I show how the historical narratives that are produced by critical policy analysts must be able to reveal patterns of long-term social interactions and domination, while simultaneously showing how people on a smaller temporal scale still disrupt and bend these social structures to their needs. Most importantly, I argue that using such methodologies allows critical policy analysts to practice a form of historicizing that explicitly adheres to an epistemological stance that emphasizes the social construction of knowledge through power relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the later careers of two almost entirely forgotten Bohemian Neo-Latin poets, Venceslaus Clemens (1589-1637), and Jan Sictor (1593-1652). These men were among the many Protestant academics displaced by the Thirty Years War, but unlike some of their better-known contemporaries, Clemens and Sictor were abject failures. Nevertheless, their failure illustrates the miserable lot of the displaced continental academic in the period, unable to adapt fully to new and challenging circumstances. This aspect of the literary and intellectual impact of the Thirty Years War has been understandably underplayed, but stories of failure are nevertheless instructive and indeed essential for a balanced picture of the intellectual impact of war. This study employs archival and bibliographical evidence to reconstruct the biographies and fortunes of these two men as they tried their luck, with very limited success, in the Low Countries and England in the 1630s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief commentary takes its inspiration from the opening address delivered by John Hoffman, and printed in these pages; that is, progress is usefully understood as a contradictory, contested and ambiguous process. But rather than attempt a comprehensive survey of the past 40 or so years of academic analyses of Zimbabwe's pasts, what follows has as its focus the emergence of ‘patriotic history’ and particularly its nationalist antecedents. These are critically examined. Although not concerned with the generality of recent studies that are neither nationalist nor materialist in orientation, this paper sketches in outline the rise, fall and rise of radical accounts. It ends by suggesting how such analyses might be taken forward. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

History of Education has published a steady stream of papers on the history of secondary education over the first 40 years of its existence. This corpus of research has been generated in the context of renewed interest in the history of secondary education that has been stimulated by developments in social and historical inquiry as well as by the contemporary onset of intensive reform of secondary education in many countries. History of Education has made a distinguished contribution to this new literature, especially in relation to an understanding of the secondary school curriculum, elite forms of secondary education, and increasingly in relation to secondary education for girls and secondary education policy. Some other key themes and topics have been generally less to the fore and require further detailed investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alun Munslow distinguishes three approaches to historical knowledge: reconstructionism, constructionism and deconstructionism. This threefold classification proved to be an effective means for him to discuss recent developments concerning such topics as narrative, correspondence, reference, etc. Moreover, his classificatory framework has also been utilized by other authors to interpret various issues of historical work. In this paper, however, I modify his classification and make a distinction between direct realism and impositionalism. I argue that the latter categorization seems to be more appropriate if one wants to follow the most general epistemological and ontological presuppositions of the views on historical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explaining Islamic architecture was a challenge for early modern Spanish historians. Although many of the buildings were highly valued, they nonetheless represented a defeat and 700 years of Muslim presence in the Peninsula. Consequently, the Islamic legacy was sometimes viewed with a wide range of aesthetic, moral and religious prejudices. This paper aims to analyse the role of these unfavourable narratives of Islamic architecture in the negotiation of the memory of the so-called 'loss of the Iberian Peninsula'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alluding to the ghost of Communism which, according to the Communist Manifesto, hovered over Europe as both a threat and a much desired prospect, I contend in the paper that, in like manner, an ideal image of science looms over history as both an enforcer of discipline and a motivational ambition. By revisiting recent writings, mainly by Hayden White, I show that the concern which preoccupied historians and philosophers, at least since modern times, is not only still present, like a ghost, even among scholars who challenge the ubiquitous authority of nineteenth-century science, but also that the image of science they invoke is a rather dated one, at least from the point of view of a historical philosophy of science. I also argue that a number of oppositions, such as the opposition between the literal and metaphorical use of language, between invention and discovery, or between facts and their interpretation, that supposedly mark the difference between history and science collapse once the phantasm of the ideal of scientificity is dissipated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the genesis and subsequent development of the publications that started, in 1984, under the title Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History (JNPH). After commenting on problems associated with the study of newspaper and periodical history, and with the production of serials, it offers an account of the establishment of JNPH, its organization and development from a periodical, to a series of three annual volumes (Studies in Newspaper and Periodical History) and subsequently, in 1998 back to periodical form as the journal Media History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the historiographical trajectory of merchants in Eastern Mediterranean ports, from a commercial bourgeoisie to cosmopolitan citizens. The paper argues that despite recent historiographical trends, class is still a valuable analytical tool, and is compatible with the notion of cosmopolitanism. A class dimension when approaching the history of Mediterranean ports is important because it emphasizes the urban inequalities and intra-communal hierarchies and can explain the inter-communal conflicts that characterized most of these ports in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between the 'Church' and the 'State' in the Visigothic kingdom of sixth- and seventh-century Spain. The authors examine the copious legal material from this period - both church council records and royal legislation - to see what it reveals about the significant degree of interpenetration of the two spheres. For example, the royal laws gave bishops an important role in the supervision of judges, while a church council could not be called without the permission of the king, who often attended along with his officials and set the agenda for the meetings. There has been significant debate on this issue over the past two centuries, and the authors' analysis will be situated accordingly. The extent to which the Visigothic evidence emerges out of late Roman practices and precedents or is independent of it will also be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that Ethiopian history reserves a privileged site for successive states as incontestable sites of knowledge, truth, legitimacy, and national identity. It shows how the state reconstructs memory of its past as total knowledge, and how the state utilizes this 'truth' of the past to command legitimacy. The state-authorized history has been packaged as a foundational knowledge for the nation, national identity, and raison d'etre of state power. As much as Ethiopia's history has been always a totalizing narrative, the historians have also been strategically selective in reflecting the history of the militarily and politically dominant groups. Ethiopian history has been reductionist and history writing has been a state project. This study critically examines how the state's history as a metanarrative claims totality; and how everything else is silently subsumed under its totalized discourse. It excludes marginalized populations, ethnic and religious polities. As much as the state attempts to centralize every outlying domain around its power core, it simultaneously exteriorizes them through state discourses. Moreover, the paper suggests the need to challenge the state historiography, as the dominant unicentric narrative framework, with critical historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the radical publications of the early twentieth century in the Dutch East Indies, referred to by the Dutch colonial state as “wild books” (batjaan liar). Read against both colonial and national historiography, the publications present us with a different historical narrative of the Indonesian nation, emphasizing the class dimension. In mid-1920s the production of batjaan liar reached its peak, as did the burgeoining class-based movements against colonial rule. The climax came in 1926 when leaders of the radical movement decided to launch an uprising and failed. A new type of nationalism emerged and the imagination of the nation was redefined and purged of its radical content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]