Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Third Edition / Edition 3

by Ernst Breisach

Overview

In this pioneering work, Ernst Breisach presents an effective, well-organized, and concise account of the development of historiography in Western culture. Neither a handbook nor an encyclopedia, this up-to-date third edition narrates and interprets the development of historiography from its origins in Greek poetry to the present, with compelling sections on postmodernism, deconstructionism, African-American history, women’s history, microhistory, the Historikerstreit, cultural history, and more. The definitive look at the writing of history by a historian, Historiography provides key insights into some of the most important issues, debates and innovations in modern historiography.

Praise for the first edition: “Breisach’s comprehensive coverage of the subject and his clear presentation of the issues and the complexity of an evolving discipline easily make his work the best of its kind.”—Lester D. Stephens, American Historical Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226072821
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/30/2007
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	500
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Ernst Breisach is professor emeritus of history at Western Michigan University and the author of several books, including American Progressive History: An Experiment in Modernization and On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and Its Aftermath, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Preface 
Introduction
 
1  
The Emergence of Greek Historiography

 2
 The Era of the Polis and Its Historians

 3
 Reaching the Limits of Greek Historiography

 4
 Early Roman Historiography: Myths, Greeks, and the Republic

 5
 Historians and the Republic’s Crisis

 6
 Perceptions of the Past in Augustan and Imperial Rome

 7
 The Christian Historiographical Revolution

 8
 The Historiographical Mastery of New Peoples, States, and Dynasties

 9
 Historians and the Ideal of the Christian Commonwealth

 10
 Historiography’s Adjustment to Accelerating Change

 11
 Two Turning Points: The Renaissance and The Reformation

 12
 The Continuing Modification of Traditional Historiography

 13
 The Eighteenth-Century Quest for a New Historiography

 14
 Three National Responses

 15
 Historians as Interpreters of Progress and Nation—1

 16
 Historians as Interpreters of Progress and Nation—2

 17
 A First Prefatory Note to Modern Historiography


 18
 History and the Quest for a Uniform Science

 19
 The Discovery of Economic Dynamics

 20
 Historians Encounter the Masses

 21
 The Problem of World History

 22
 Historiography Between Two World Wars (1918–39)
 The Twentieth-Century Context
 Challenges to Historians
 Historicism: From Dominance to Crisis
 Historians and the War Guilt Debate

 23
 History Writing in Liberal Democracies (1918–39)
 American Historiography after the “Great War”
 England: Historiography in a Fading Empire
 French Historians: The Revolutionary Tradition and a New Vision of the Past 

 24
 Historiography and the Grand Ideologies  
 Italian Fascism and historiography (1922–43)  
 German Historians in the Weimar Republic and Hitler’s Reich  
 The Soviet Union: The Imagined Future as the Guide for History  

 25
 American Historiography after 1945  
 New Realities and Traditional Horizons  
 Historical Repercussions of America’s New Status  
 Historiography as Call for Reform  

 26
 History in the Scientific Mode  
 History in the Language of Numbers  
 Reshaping Economic History  
 Growing Dissent: Narrativism  
 Psychohistory: Promise and Problems  
 
 27
 Transformations in English and French Historiography  
 Voices in the War Guilt Debate  
 History Writing in Post-imperial England  
 Traditional and New French Historical Perspectives  

 28
 Marxist Historiography in the Soviet Union and Western Democracies  
 The Problems and the End of the Soviet Union’s Marxism  
 Marxist Historical Theory in the West  

 29
 Historiography in the Aftermath of Fascism  
 Historical Perspectives in Post-war Italy  
 History for and of a New Germany  

 30
 World History Between Vision and Reality  
 The Multiple Cultures Model  
 Progress and Westernization  
 World System Theories  

 31
 Historiography, Postmodernity and Prospects  
 Historiographical Adjustments to a Turbulent Context  
 History and Visions of a Postmodern Future  
 The New Cultural History  
 Prospects