Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language

This essay forms a case study of the transnational dimensions of Afghanistan's modern intellectual history through a focus on the practice of history. It traces the development of Afghan historical writing between around 1880 and 1940, with an emphasis on the revolutionary historiographical transformations of the 1930s. Prior to this decade, Afghan historians broadly continued the dynastic and genealogical traditions of the Persianate tarikh (‘chronicle’). After discussing several such texts, the focus turns to the new intellectuals associated with the Kabul Literary Society (Anjuman-i Adabi-yi Kabul) in its role as a crossroads for the importation and adaptation of European intellectual disciplines. Drawing on Anglophone and Francophone scholarship in their Dari-Persian publications, the Society's historians forged radically new conceptions of collective identity by adapting European linguistic and archaeological methods. An examination of the writings of two such historians, Ya‘qub Hasan Khan and Ahmad ‘Ali Kuhzad, documents the subsequent rise of the new historical ideology of Aryanism by which Afghanistan and its peoples were linked to the ancient Aryans and their homeland of Bactria qua Aryana.

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Liberty, Property and Popular Politics

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474405676.001.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Intellectual History ◽

French Revolution ◽

British History ◽

Historical Study ◽

Thomas Paine ◽

Parliamentary History ◽

Long Eighteenth Century ◽

Scottish History ◽

The University

Few scholars can claim to have shaped the historical study of the long eighteenth century more profoundly than Professor H. T. Dickinson, who, until his retirement in 2006, held the Sir Richard Lodge Chair of British History at the University of Edinburgh. This volume, based on contributions from Dickinson's students, friends and colleagues from around the world, offers a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century Britain and provides a tribute to a remarkable scholarly career. Dickinson's work and career provides the ideal lens through which to take a detailed snapshot of current research in a number of areas. The book includes contributions from scholars working in intellectual history, political and parliamentary history, ecclesiastical and naval history; discussions of major themes such as Jacobitism, the French Revolution, popular radicalism and conservatism; and essays on prominent individuals in English and Scottish history, including Edmund Burke, Thomas Muir, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. The result is a uniquely rich and detailed collection with an impressive breadth of coverage.

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Conclusion

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430104.003.0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

David Randall

Keyword(s):

Public Opinion ◽

Early Modern ◽

Intellectual History ◽

Fine Arts ◽

James Madison ◽

Modern Conception ◽

Political World ◽

The Enlightenment ◽

History Of ◽

Constitutional Thought

The changed conception of conversation that emerged by c.1700 was about to expand its scope enormously – to the broad culture of Enlightenment Europe, to the fine arts, to philosophy and into the broad political world, both via the conception of public opinion and via the constitutional thought of James Madison (1751–1836). In the Enlightenment, the early modern conception of conversation would expand into a whole wing of Enlightenment thought. The intellectual history of the heirs of Cicero and Petrarch would become the practice of millions and the constitutional architecture of a great republic....

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Essays on Hume, Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415019.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Christopher J. Berry

Keyword(s):

Intellectual History ◽

David Hume ◽

Adam Smith ◽

Detailed Examination ◽

Scottish Enlightenment ◽

Subsequent Work ◽

Retrospective Assessment ◽

The 1960S

A collection of essays by a leading scholar. The work selected spans several decades, which together with three new unpublished pieces, cumulatively constitute a distinct interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a whole while incorporating detailed examination of the work of David Hume and Adam Smith. There is, in addition, a substantial introduction which, alongside Berry’s personal intellectual history, provides a commentary on the development of the study of the Scottish Enlightenment from the 1960s. Each of the previously published chapters includes a postscript where Berry comments on subsequent work and his own retrospective assessment. The recurrent themes are the ideas of sociability and socialisation, the Humean science of man and Smith’s analysis of the relation between commerce and morality.

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Leroi-Gourhan and the Field of Ethnology

Paragraph ◽

10.3366/para.2020.0318 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

pp. 10-44

Author(s):

Christopher Johnson

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Material Culture ◽

Intellectual History ◽

Natural Environment ◽

Human Sciences ◽

Arctic Circle ◽

Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽

Language Technology ◽

Formative Experience ◽

Post War

The work of French ethnologist and prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–86) represents an important episode in twentieth-century intellectual history. This essay follows the development of Leroi-Gourhan's relationship to the discipline of ethnology from his early work on Arctic Circle cultures to his post-war texts on the place of ethnology in the human sciences. It shows how in the pre-war period there is already a conscious attempt to articulate a more comprehensive form of ethnology including the facts of natural environment and material culture. The essay also indicates the biographical importance of Leroi-Gourhan's mission to Japan as a decisive and formative experience of ethnographic fieldwork, combining the learning of a language with extended immersion in a distinctive material and mental culture. Finally, it explores how in the post-war period Leroi-Gourhan's more explicit meta-commentaries on the scope of ethnology argue for an extension of the discipline's more traditional domains of study to include the relatively neglected areas of language, technology and aesthetics.

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