Donald Bloxham, “Why History? A History”
– Provides the most comprehensive study of the question ‘why do we study the past?’ by examining the way in which historians and many others have answered that question over the last two and a half millennia
– Allows a reconsideration of the development of the historical discipline over the long term, recasting many familiar historiographical debates in new terms
– Goes well beyond looking at the attitudes of individual historians and historical schools to set the development of the discipline into the context of intellectual, cultural, and political changes
Description
What is the point of history? Why has the study of the past been so important for so long? Why History? A History contemplates two and a half thousand years of historianship to establish how very different thinkers in diverse contexts have conceived their activities, and to illustrate the purposes that their historical investigations have served. Whether considering Herodotus, medieval religious exegesis, or twentieth-century cultural history, at the core of this work is the way that the present has been conceived to relate to the past. Alongside many changes in technique and philosophy, Donald Bloxham’s book reveals striking long-term continuities in justifications for the discipline.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Classical History between Epic and Rhetoric
2. History, Faith, Fortuna
3. The ‘Middle Age’
4. Renaissances and Reformations
5. Society, Nature, Emancipation
6. Nationalism, Historicism, Crisis
7. Turns to the Present
8. Justifying History Today
Bibliography
Author Information
Donald Bloxham, Professor of Modern History, University of Edinburgh
Donald Bloxham has taught at Edinburgh University since 2001. He was appointed Professor of Modern History in 2007 and given the established Richard Pares Chair of History in 2011. Beyond his work on the history and philosophy of the discipline of history, he is a specialist in the study of genocide and the punishment of perpetrators of genocide. His book, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford, 2005), won the Raphael Lemkin Prize for genocide scholarship. He has also been a recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize and is currently on a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.
Reviews and Awards
“On the whole, Why History? is a marvel of both clarity and erudition…the footnotes and bibliography…are treasure troves and I found myself repeatedly stopping to take note of an essay or monograph I’d not run across.” — Professor Daniel Woolf, Queen’s University, Reviews in History
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/why-history-9780198858720?lang=en&cc=us#