A Global History of Modern Historiography - Softcover

Iggers, Georg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 113894226X ISBN 13: 9781138942264

Publisher: Routledge, 2016

Synopsis

The first book on historiography to adopt a global and comparative perspective on the topic, A Global History of Modern Historiography looks not just at developments in the West but also at the other great historiographical traditions in Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere around the world over the course of the past two and a half centuries.

This second edition contains fully updated sections on Latin American and African historiography, discussion of the development of global history, environmental history, and feminist and gender history in recent years, and new coverage of Russian historical practices. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, the authors analyse historical currents in a changing political, social and cultural context, examining both the adaptation and modification of the Western influence on historiography and how societies outside Europe and America found their own ways in the face of modernization and globalization.

Supported by online resources including a selection of excerpts from key historiographical texts, this book offers an up-to-date account of the status of historical writing in the global era and is essential reading for all students of modern historiography.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Global History of Modern Historiography

Georg G. Iggers and Q. Edward Wang

 

 

 

“It is no longer adequate to tell the story of the history of historical writing as if it were exclusively the creation of the west. This new book is an excellent contribution towards globalizing our understanding of the development of modern historical writing.” Dr Daniel Woolf, University of Alberta

 

"Encyclopaedic in scope and erudition, non-partisan in approach but interested in forging connections across national contexts, this book will do much to enliven and inform contemporary debates in historiography. It represents a truly impressive scholarly achievement."  Dr Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago

 

Has global historical writing and scholarship undergone a process of westernisation over the last two and a half centuries?

How far have historians of other cultures built on their own traditions to adapt, and at times resist, western influences outright?

 

This is the first text on historiography to adopt a comparative, global perspective on the topic, looking not just at developments in the West but at the other great historiographical traditions in Asia and the Middle East, and at more localised historiographical developments elsewhere in the non-Western world, from Latin America to Sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Beginning in the late eighteenth century it examines the various kinds of historical thinking and writing which pre-dated western influence, the impact of western ideas of history as these began to be exported through trade and empire, and the rise of professional and 'scientific' history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The authors argue that what happened here was not a simple process of assimilation, but of adaptation into long standing intellectual and cultural traditions, often in the service of specific ideological concerns, for instance that of nationalism.  Finally the book turns to the twin challenges to the western historical paradigms of 'objectivity' and 'progress' mounted by postmodernism and post-colonialism, critically examining the extent to which these might undermine the commitment of the historian to an honest and truthful representation of the past.

 

Georg Iggers is a distinguished professor emeritus at University at Buffalo (State University of New York).  From 1995 - 2000 he was president of the International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography. Having fled the Nazis as a child, he has been active in the Civil Rights movement in the US.

 

Q. Edward Wang is professor of the History Department at Rowan University in Glassboro New Jersey and secretary general of the International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography.

 

Supriya Mukherjee teaches at the University of Memphis.

About the Author:

Georg G. Iggers is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo. His publications include Marxist Historiographies: A Global Perspective (2015, co-edited with Q. Edward Wang), Historiography in the Twentieth Century (1997) and The German Conception of History (1968).

Q. Edward Wang is Professor of History at Rowan University in the US and Changjiang Professor of History at Peking University in China. Among his publications are Chopsticks: A Cultural and Culinary History (2015), Mirroring the Past: the Writing and Use of History in Imperial China (2005, co-authored with On-Cho Ng) and Inventing China through History: the May Fourth Approach to Historiography (2001).

Supriya Mukherjee teaches at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Her research interests include German history and the history of historical writing in India.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 113894226X
• ISBN 13: 9781138942264
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 390