The special section “Knowledge Quests in the European Periphery” attempts
to explore the different ways in which conceptual history’s methodologies
could be applied to disciplines with which traditional conceptual historians
have not previously engaged, such as the history of science, political economy,
Enlightenment studies, postcolonial history, and transnational history. This
special section, when read as a whole, opens up a multidisciplinary space in
which center-periphery tensions are examined in the context of conceptual
transnational exchange. Coming from different geographical places and cultural
spaces within the European periphery, the three case studies draw their
methodological background from conceptual history and aim to reflect on
the center-periphery dichotomy by asking how historians from different historiographical
traditions could take advantage of the methods and theories
of conceptual history, as well as how conceptual history could take advantage
of the coming together of disciplines that traditionally do not communicate
with each other.
Introduction