scholarly journals From Metropole to Margin in UNESCO’s General History of Africa – Documents of Historiographical Decolonization in Paris and Ibadan

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 403-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Schulte Nordholt
Keyword(s):  
Research Report ◽  
African History ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of

Abstract:This archival research report details the uses and disuses of UNESCO’s Paris archives of its General History of Africa. By looking in detail at what African historians have been doing as well as writing, we can reach a better understanding of the reality of African history writing in the immediate postcolonial era. That means taking into account the complexity of the archive; and using J.F. Ade-Ajayi’s archive in Ibadan as an example we can see that the vast Paris collection of material relating to the writing of the General History of Africa is complemented by documents scattered across different archives.

scholarly journals Unesco and African Historiography

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 337-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Vansina
Keyword(s):  
Active Member ◽  
African History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Answer ◽  
Large Committee

Unesco's General History of Africa (henceforth GHA) is now nearing completion—seven out of the eight volumes having been published in English, at least—and the time is ripe to draw attention to its role in the historiography of African history, a role very different from that played by the Cambridge History of Africa with which it is often compared. In certain ways the Unesco project has been a unique venture, and not just in African history but, in general, because it broke with old established practice. The work was not guided by one or two editors but by a large committee. History-writing by committee seemed not only distasteful but impossible to achieve to many, both because of the practical difficulties involved and because it seemed incredible that so many editors could agree on a common text, without falling into sheer banality. Now that the volumes are out, readers can judge for themselves. Many among them actually wonder how exactly these volumes and chapters were created. Because I have been an active member of the committee since its creation in 1971 and of its bureau since 1983, I can provide a general answer to this question. But the time has also come to draw attention to the records generated by this project. Future researchers will find a huge mass of papers involving hundreds of historians of Africa that touch on practically all aspects of Africa's historiography between ca. 1965 and today.

‘A disoriented vision of … fact’: Brian Friel, Francis Bacon, and Faith Healer

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-336
Author(s):  
Zosia Kuczyńska
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Faith Healer ◽  
Brian Friel ◽  
History Of ◽  
Composition Process

The Brian Friel Papers at the NLI reveal a long and relatively unexplored history of major and minor influences on Friel's plays. As the archive attests, these influences manifest themselves in ways that range from the superficial to the deeply structural. In this article, I draw on original archival research into the composition process of Friel's genre-defining play Faith Healer (1979) to bring to light a model of influence that operates at the level of artistic practice. Specifically, I examine the extent to which Friel's officially unacknowledged encounter with a book of interviews with painter Francis Bacon influenced the play in terms of character, language, and form. I suggest that Bacon's creative process – incorporating his ideas on the role of the artist, the workings of chance, and the extent to which art does violence to fact – may have had a major influence on both the play's development and on Friel's development as an artist.

THE ROOTS OF MODERN CAPITALISM: A MARXIST ACCOUNTING HISTORY OF THE ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF CAPITALIST LANDLORDS IN ENGLAND

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Bryer
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Accounting History ◽  
Agricultural Revolution ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Industrial Revolutions

A major debate neglected by accounting historians is the importance of landlords in the English agricultural revolution. The paper uses accounting evidence from the historical literature to test Marx's theory that, from around 1750, England's landlords played a pivotal role by adopting and then spreading the capitalist mentality and social relations by enclosures and changes in the management of their estates and tenants. It gives an accounting interpretation of Marx's theory of rent and argues that the available evidence supports his view that the conversion of English landlords to capitalism underlay the later stages of the agricultural revolution. The conclusion explains the linkages in Marx's theory between the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and calls on accounting historians to conduct archival research into the agricultural roots of modern capitalism.

The Invention of Papal History

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
Commissioned Works ◽  
The One ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
The Church

How was the history of post-classical Rome and of the Church written in the Catholic Reformation? Historical texts composed in Rome at this time have been considered secondary to the city’s significance for the history of art. The Invention of Papal History corrects this distorting emphasis and shows how history-writing became part of a comprehensive formation of the image and self-perception of the papacy. By presenting and fully contextualizing the path-breaking works of the Augustinian historian Onofrio Panvinio (1530–68), this book shows what type of historical research was possible in the late Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation. Historiography in this period by no means consisted entirely of commissioned works written for patrons; rather, a creative interplay existed between, on the one hand, the endeavours of authors to explore the past and, on the other hand, the constraints of patronage and ideology placed on them. This book sheds new light on the changing priorities, mentalities, and cultural standards that flourished in the transition from the Renaissance to the Catholic Reformation.

The Subaltern Critique of Dominant Historiography and a Case for Retrieving a Historiography of Dalit Literary Traditions in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-15
Author(s):  
Vandana
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
History Of ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
Longue Durée ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
The Third World

In order to retrieve literary history in India, teleology operates on three levels: ancient, medieval and modern. As per the longue duree approach to the study of history, history is not an event or an object, but like the concept of time, is a configuration and a process. The history of the longue duree gives priority to long-term monumental historic patterns, moments and shifts in society, that is, the slow-paced structural processes which tend to have strong historical consequences. Similarly, languages and literatures, too, marked by historical catastrophes, undergo a process of sedimentation. For this reason, instead of a single literary history of South Asia, Sheldon Pollock proposes the concept of ‘literary cultures’ which allows room for ‘historical individuation’ of each culture rather than homogenising them merely for the sake of historical analysis. The basic questions that I have tried to look into through this study include: Why is it problematic to retrieve literary history in India? Why is it essential to have an alternative literary historiography of Dalit literature? How does Dalit subalternity differ from colonial subalternity? How the Dalit voice is disintegrated from within because of the prevalence of graded inequality? What constitutes the politics of history writing and canon formation in the third world countries like India where retrieving subaltern literary trends remain a problematic discourse?

scholarly journals A Few Issues Surrounding Research into the General History of Chinese Film

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99
Author(s):  
Yaping Ding
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Broad Scope ◽  
History Of

Abstract The practice of film history highlights the value and significance of the researcher. A more comprehensive view of the situation of film history raises several issues. General research into the history of film is directly related to the production of film history. The question of how to reinvent general film history research is necessarily connected to ideologies, cultures, systems and concepts, as well as the broad scope and complexity of film history. Writing a general history of Chinese film demands a combination of innovation and continuing tradition, with an emphasis on the construction of a rational and scientific discipline of film history and historical empiricism. The aim should be a more rational history. The paper expresses my own thoughts and efforts with respect to relevant issues and attempts to deepen and open up general research into the history of Chinese film.

Species and Salvation: Theology of History in the Anthropocene?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Henning Trüper
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Karl Rahner ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Species ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Related Notion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Salvation Theology ◽  
Theology Of History ◽  
Historical Thought

In this article I will discuss various thoughts of a few recent representatives of the tradition of the philosophy of history—Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Ulrich Beck, and finally Karl Rahner—and bring them into a conversation with Dipesh Chakrabarty's work on the problems of human species history and the Anthropocene. The aim of this undertaking is to gain greater clarity on the question of the work that theology continues to do for historical thought. I argue that Rahner's notions about “inclusivism”—according to which the possibility of salvation is vested in the species history of humanity rather than in the history of Christian revelation—and his related notion of an irresolvable tension between “anonymous” and what one might then call “onomastic” histories signal the continuing significance of a theology of the baptismal sacrament for historical thought. Rereading Rahner's thought sheds light on certain quandaries of the Anthropocene discussion, regarding the way in which species history can be related to other kinds of history writing, and the novel opening for theodicy generated by the breakdown of the culture–nature divide.

scholarly journals The reconfiguration of the European Archive in contemporary German-Jewish migrant-literature

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Jessica Ortner
Keyword(s):  
European Archive ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Migrant Literature ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Political Concern ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Jewish

A considerable number of Eastern European migrant authors of Jewish origin are currently lifting Holocaust memory to a new level. Writing in German about events taking place in remote areas of the world, they expand the German framework of memory from a national to a transnational one. By partaking in reconsidering what is ‘vital for a shared remembering’ of Europe, this branch of writing reflects the European Union’s political concern for integrating the memories of the socialistic regimes in European history writing without relativising the Holocaust. In Vielleicht Esther, Katja Petrowskaja consults various national and private archives in order to recount the history of the mass shooting of over 30,000 Ukrainian Jews at Babij Jar – a canyon near Kiev. Thus, she ‘carries’ a marginalised event of the Holocaust into the German framework of memory and uncovers the layers of amnesia that have not only concealed the event amongst the Soviet public but also distorted and for ever made inaccessible her family’s past.

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