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.
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.
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
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.
These works of outstanding scholarship are of value to anyone
curious to consider the uses and pitfalls of history in a present
forever parasitic on the past.
*Alexandre Leskanich, TLS *
Bloxham's study is outstanding in its grasp of two and a half
millennia of historiography, and he traces his subject through time
and space seemingly effortlessly.
*Konrad Hauber, German Historical Institute London Bulletin*
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*
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