Creating a "People": A Case Study in Post-Soviet History-Writing

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Solonari
Keyword(s):  
History Writing ◽  
Soviet History

Gujarat in the History of the Indian Ocean

2019 ◽  
pp. 52-67
Author(s):  
Lakshmi Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Maritime History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
History Writing ◽  
New Methods ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean

This chapter takes a stock taking exercise of the history writing on Gujarat and Indian maritime history over the last five decades. It identifies the major shifts and emphases that mark the nature of historical knowledge. What these hold for the discipline of history in general and how these inflect the case study of Gujarat in particular are examined. The intention of such a stock taking exercise is also to consider the importance of recovering and reading new and local archives and of incorporating new methods into standard historical work. The author also explores the most significant shifts that have emerged in the recent historiography of the Indian Ocean and of maritime Gujarat: study of law and piracy and Muslim seafaring and sailing practices in the western Indian Ocean.

R. G. Skrynnikov: The Historian and the World – the World of the Historian (An Attempt at Reconstruction)

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-274
Author(s):  
Gyula Szvák
Keyword(s):  
Peculiar Feature ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Soviet Historiography

It is time to study the man himself and not just his work. This brief study would like to sketch out this problem. To understand Ruslan Skrynnikov and his work, we must have a clear picture of Soviet history writing. It is a peculiar feature of his life and career that he had to struggle for acceptance and recognition even within his own restricted world. Skrynnikov’s works of the 1960s were still framed by the determinative Engelsian conception of centralization. Ruslan Grigor’evich followed the mainstream path of Soviet medievalists until the fall of Soviet regime, though Soviet historiography would prove to be his Procrustean bed; in the 1990s he experimented with breaking free of it. We have no reason to ignore the scholarly ethos in Skrynnikov’s new books, and his efforts to discover democratic values in the Russian past. The scholarship of Ruslan Skrynnikov has assumed a permanent place in world historiography. A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky, B. A. Romanov, R. G. Skrynnikov: three generations, one school, The Petersburg-Leningrad school of Russian-Soviet historiography.

The Limits of Erudition

2019 ◽  
pp. 218-239
Author(s):  
Simon Ditchfield
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Experienced Teacher ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Giacomo Leopardi

This chapter uses the case study of the volume on the English mission in Daniello Bartoli’s unfinished, multi-volume Istoria della Comagnia di Giesu (1653–73) to examine whether or not a specifically Jesuit ‘way of proceeding’ can also be discerned in the Society’s history writing. It is argued that in order to understand the rhyme of Bartoli’s reason one needs to integrate his history writing with both his prior experience as a star preacher for the Society and as experienced teacher of rhetoric as well as with his wider interests in natural philosophy. By doing so, it is possible to understand better Bartoli’s intensely visual language as well as his command of such a ‘huge multiplicity of styles and almost distinct languages’ which so impressed Giacomo Leopardi (for whom Bartoli was ‘the Dante of baroque prose’) but which can make the Jesuit such a challenging read today. In the final analysis, notwithstanding his use of archival and manuscript evidence, Bartoli subordinated historical scholarship to rhetorical priorities in his mission both to celebrate his order’s achievement as well as to defend it from attack from within.

Claims to Fame

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-172
Author(s):  
Özpinar
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media

Since the day it was inaugurated in 2004, the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art has assumed a pivotal role in re–establishing the history of modern and contemporary artistic practices in Turkey. The major all–woman exhibition titled ‘Dream and Reality: Modern and Contemporary Women Artists from Turkey’, which was opened in late 2011 at Istanbul Modern, constitutes an important case study to prompt deeper exploration into the narrative frameworks within which the art museum reproduces differences. This chapter revisits the institutional and the curatorial discourse of ‘Dream and Reality’ by examining the statements released in the media and in catalogue essays with a view to comprehending the allegedly conflicting notions of gender and feminism on which the exhibition was premised and how differences were articulated against the politics of the state and art history writing. With this reconsideration, the chapter addresses the reverberations of these framings in the art histories of Turkey but also relocates them within the debates of art’s new transnational landscape.

Pathos with a Point

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-103
Author(s):  
Lisa I. Hau
Keyword(s):  
Red Sea ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Modern History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Third ◽  
Diodorus Siculus

This chapter discusses accounts of violence in so-called tragic history and suggests that this Hellenistic subgenre may better be understood as an attempt to write experiential history. It begins with defining what characterized ‘tragic’ or ‘sensationalist’ accounts of violence and atrocities, taking Diodorus Siculus’ account of the sack of Selinus (Diod. Sic. 13.57) as its case study, comparing it with passages of Thucydides and Polybius to illustrate the differences. The second part of the chapter examines the possible purpose with such experiential representations of atrocities. It proceeds by examining Polybius’ famous criticism of Phylarchus for confusing history and tragedy (Plb. 2.56) as well as fragment 21 of Agatharchides’ On the Red Sea, which discusses the correct way to write about disasters, and finally some of Diodorus’ many remarks on the didactic purpose of historiography. It concludes that the ‘tragic’ historiographers, like Thucydides and Polybius, considered their works (moral-)didactic and believed that certain things can best be learned through an experiential representation. In the third and final part of the chapter, this ideal is compared with modern history writing and parallels are drawn both with the presentist/experientialist movement and with the call from some quarters for historians to take a moral stand on their subject matter, particularly when writing about atrocities.

scholarly journals In Defiance of Discipline: Antiquarianism, Archaeology and History in Late Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-133
Author(s):  
Richard Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Material Evidence

The nineteenth century is often seen as the period in which old-fashioned antiquarianism gave way to modern archaeological science. Whilst that is certainly the case, this article argues that in Scotland that new emphasis on material evidence and prehistory remained part of a broad antiquarian sphere until the early twentieth century. Even towards the end of the 1800s, antiquarianism continued to encompass the study of both material culture and documentary sources. It was also, for a time at least, a major influence on narrative history-writing. Throughout this period, it was primarily in Scotland's antiquarian community, rather than its academic or professional institutions, that collective understandings of the nation's history were advanced. The article thus uses the Scottish case study to question common assumptions about the decline of polymathic antiquarianism and the rise of specialist disciplinarity in the later part of the nineteenth century.

The leadership of the historiographical field in late socialist Romania. A case-study on the year 1985

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-85
Author(s):  
Ionuţ Mircea Marcu
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
Leadership Position ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
The Individual

"The leadership of the historiographical field in late socialist Romania. A case-study on the year 1985. The aim of this paper is to analysis the historiographical field in late socialist Romania, by looking at those historians having high institutional positions within the field in 1985. Our goal is not to discuss the individual themselves, but rather to use this case-study in order to define and characterize the milieu of history-writing as a social and professional structure. Our theoretical and methodological apparatus is built on the works of Pierre Bourdieu, using extensively concepts such as field, capital, habitus, strategy and autonomy, while taking into account their limitations when applied to a socialist system. The research design of this paper implied creating a biographical database, consisting in information regarding the biography of each dean and director, active in their leadership position in 1985. Therefore, information was gathered about Ion Agrigoroaiei, Dumitru Berciu, Gheorghe I. Ioniţă, Camil Mureşanu, Ştefan Pascu, Mircea Petrescu-Dâmboviţa, Ion Popescu-Puţuri, Constantin Preda, Ştefan Ştefănescu. Keywords: historiography, sociology of history writing, intellectuals in late socialism, academic careers, and institutions. "

scholarly journals Resettlement strategies and Han imperial expansion into southwest China: a multimethod approach to colonialism and migration

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 6751-6781 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaotong Wu ◽  
Anke Hein ◽  
Xingxiang Zhang ◽  
Zhengyao Jin ◽  
Dong Wei ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Southwest China ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Story Line ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Multimethod Approach ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
In The Beginning

Abstract Discussions on colonialism are pervasive in western scholarship but are hardly ever applied to the archeology of China. The present paper shows how concepts of colonialism and migration research can be successfully applied to understand Han imperial expansion into southwest China and how the Chinese material can in turn contribute to developing theories and methods of colonialism research further. Taking the Shamaoshan cemetery as a case study, the present paper combines archeological, textual, environmental, and isotope data to gain insights into strategies and processes of Han imperial expansion into southwest China. The insights gained here show that the long-accepted story-line of simple “Sinicization” and political control is far from accurate. Instead, it took over a century of cross-cultural exchange with immigrants and locals adopting each other’s customs to varying degrees. While in the beginning the Han seem to have taken a top-down approach to “civilizing” the region through their elites, the present study suggests that in the end it was the lower levels of society that intermingled most intensively and helped integrate migrants and locals successfully. Moving away from the exclusive focus on exceptional graves and large sites, the present study thus shows the great value of approaching small, poorly equipped graves with new methods, combining isotope research with a nuanced analysis of burial remains. Evaluated together with the evidence from the well-known exceptional graves, lesser-known settlement material, and historical accounts, the Shamaoshan case study has made it clear that various types of contact, colonial and otherwise, play out quite differently within different social groups and historical situations. This study thus proposes a multisource, multimethod approach that moves away from a narrative dominated by the history-writing elite segments of the colonizing force to a multivoiced account integrating local and outside perceptions at various social levels, an approach that might successfully be applied in other parts of the world.

Killing in Style

Mnemosyne ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (6) ◽  
pp. 931-954 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sviatoslav Dmitriev
Keyword(s):  
Roman Period ◽  
Rhetorical Education ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Rhetorical Tradition ◽  
Historical Tradition

This article reconsiders divergent accounts of the events leading to the death of Demosthenes, and suggests to explain their coexistence by attributing them to either the historical tradition from Hellenistic times or the rhetorical tradition of the Roman period. The latter should be traced to progymnasmata, or fictional rhetorical compositions, which manipulated historical evidence and continued to surface in the writings of students of rhetoric. When put together, the stories of the death of Demosthenes offer a case study on how history writing and rhetorical education mutually influenced each other in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods.

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