Andrew Dury's map of the present seat of war,between the Russians,Poles, and Turks (1769)

Abstract

The chance assembling of a number of different impressions of Andrew Dury's Map of the present Seat of War between the Russians, Poles, and Turks (1769) in the British Library led the authors to examine the map's carto‐bibliographical history. Nine states of the map, two of which were sometimes sold with printed paste‐ons, have been identified to date. The two earliest states of the map are now in the State Historical Museum, Moscow. Although both are best described as proof, or pre‐publication, impressions, each bears evidence of intensive use at the highest levels of the Russian army command. Indeed, the circumstances leading to the creation of the map by Andrew Dury and Peter Bell and to a succession of different versions over the three decades or so of intermittent Russian‐Turkish hostilities highlight the interplay of international politics, individual initiative and commercial factors in late eighteenth‐century map production in London.     

Crossing the Great Divides: Hans Aarsleff's Lessons for Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Historians

SUMMARY

This essay discusses Hans Aarsleff's long battle to demonstrate the importance of the French and British thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century to the development of modern linguistic thought. Contesting claims that German scholars were the first to develop historicised theories of language, Aarsleff, along with his Princeton colleagues Lionel Gossman and Anthony Grafton, helped pioneer longue durée studies of the history of philology and of historiography that cross national boundaries as well as the so-called Sattelzeit (stretching from about 1780 until 1820). Although the importance of his work was, for a long time, little appreciated by modern intellectual historians, this essay argues that it is time that we fully learned Aarsleff's lessons.     

Eavesdropper on the Past: John W. Burrow (1935–2009), Intellectual History and Its Future

Summary

Focused on the much-debated historiographical and academic status of intellectual history, this article addresses for the first time and in detail the methodological views of the British historian John Wyon Burrow (1935–2009). Making use both of his published works and of unpublished material left to the University of Sussex Library (including lectures, letters, academic projects and biographical sketches), its goal is to provide a thorough account of an original and eclectic intellectual historian and, at the same time, cast new light on the role of the discipline in the scholarly context of the last few decades in Europe and the US. More specifically, the following pages will illustrate Burrow's work and career, with particular attention being paid to his insistence on narrative, imagination, irony and style; present his writings as an original instance of the anti-methodological practice of intellectual history; and study his opinions of what it means to carry out the métier d'historien. Finally, by examining Burrow's idea of the intellectual historian as a creative ‘eavesdropper’ on the ‘conversations of the past’ and as a ‘translator’ of past dialogues, this article will both pose some central questions and advance some proposals concerning the future of intellectual history.     

Written Differently: A Survey of Commonwealth Constitutional History in the Age of Decolonisation

ABSTRACT

This article provides a survey and definition of the field of Commonwealth constitutional history since 1918, especially during and after global decolonisation. It asks what is Commonwealth constitutional history and how it differs from its English and Imperial counterparts. The article puts forward a working definition of Commonwealth constitutional history and introduces key and diverse writers who illustrate the range and potential of this history. The article provides an historiography and survey of constitutional history in the Pre-Commonwealth and Post-war Commonwealth periods while also assessing the opportunities of Post-British Commonwealth constitutional history. The objective of this article is to show how Commonwealth constitutional history can contribute to the historical study of state power and to see its worth to other disciplines and fields of history. Commonwealth constitutional history is a necessity to examine the politics, power and consequences of the British empire during the long age of decolonisation.     

Pure and impure gestes: the generation of history in Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated the place in medieval historiography of Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors, a universal history in celebration of Liège written in French around 1399. The abundance of Old French epic material in a chronicle that, according to its author, contained translations of only Latin sources, was once a source of outrage. The Myreur now holds significant interest, however, for its evidence of late medieval narrative strategies. This study demonstrates the Myreur's deliberate adaptation of epic material to glorify Liège. The author reimagines the Carolingian past as a source for future historical narratives by knowingly altering the genealogical framework of the chanson de geste universe. Carrying tales of sexual impurity, he describes the demise of the Carolingian line and transforms figures from epic to function within his linear history. This inventive approach allowed him to create a new hero- and history-generating lineage for his universal history.     

Using Archaeology to Teach Australia’s ‘Difficult’ Indigenous Past

Abstract

The inclusion of the topic ‘Ancient Australia’ in the new Australian Curriculum is causing teachers to rethink the way they teach history in schools. Year 7 students are now required to understand that Australian ‘history’ began with the arrival of the First Australians around 50,000 years ago, not with the arrival of the British First Fleet in 1788. Consequently, a number of epistemological, historiographical, and ethical challenges have emerged. In this paper I discuss the implications of this reconceptualization of Australian history in the curriculum and explore ways in which archaeology can address the ‘difficult’ history of the First Australians.     

HISTORIOGRAPHY: A FIELD IN SEARCH OF A HISTORIAN?

Richard Kirkendall's collection of essays, The Organization of American Historians and the Writing and Teaching of American History, examines the history of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) from its founding to the present, using that history to illuminate how the writing of American history has changed over the last hundred years. The book provides coverage of all the major dimensions of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association's (MVHA) and the OAH's activities, ranging from the work of its scholarly publications, the Mississippi Historical Valley Review and the Journal of American History, to its role in promoting the teaching of American history. Overall, the essays in the volume tell a story of the organization's progress toward greater inclusion and democracy, falling prey to a Whig interpretation of historiography. In doing so, the book is part of a larger tendency in the way that historians have approached historiography, which in turn reflects their ambivalence about their relationship to the historical process. Thus, even as the very enterprise of historiography is premised on the recognition of how historians are themselves the products of the historical process, historians have revealed the limits to that recognition in their approach to the subject. This essay shows how deeply rooted this duality has been in the study of American historiography and illuminates some of its sources by placing Kirkendall's book in the context of how the MVHA and the OAH have treated historiography over the course of the organization's history.     

A mid-18th-century mikveh unearthed in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam

Abstract

In 2006 archaeological research was conducted in the New Synagogue, part of Amsterdam's Ashkenazi Synagogue complex, built between 1671 and 1752, which now houses the Jewish Historical Museum. The most remarkable find was a mid-18th-century mikveh or ritual bath, used for ceremonial purification by immersion; such baths played a key role in Jewish life. The excavated example was well preserved and retained its water supply and heating system. Although it served in a specific Jewish ritual context, the structure followed the everyday construction principles of Amsterdam builders.     

History and theory: the paradox in Francesco Patrizi

ABSTRACT

Patrizi's Ten Dialogues on History bring the Renaissance humanist discourse on the meaning of history to a new level. First, he emphasizes narrativity as the fundamental structure of history. Then he asks for the essence of history, which hinges on the creativity of the narrator, who organizes the facts to be told. With a focus on the Third Dialogue, we see that, for Patrizi, history is elapsing time preserved beyond time and human knowledge enacted in time or reenacted in events. A theory of history shows that history is the connection between contingency and truth.     

An Irish Party and the British Parliament: Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party

This essay reassesses the importance of Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party, 1880–90, originally published in 1957, with particular reference to its significance in the history of the British parliament. While establishing the book's continuing relevance, both as a study of a specific political phenomenon and as a model for analysing political movements, the essay questions aspects which do not hold up in the light of subsequent research. In particular, O'Brien's account and interpretation of Parnell's behaviour in 1890–1 in the aftermath of the O'Shea divorce case is shown to be inadequate in the light of more recent research and writing.     

‘I draw a line here and open a new chapter’: The Bagrow-Almagià Correspondence 1947–1955

ABSTRACT

The Imago Mundi archives, held in the Map Library of the British Library in London, contain the correspondence between Leo Bagrow, the founding editor of Imago Mundi, and the Italian geographer and historian of cartography Roberto Almagià. Their correspondence, which continued throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, brought out the worst in their very different characters, at times to an almost comical extent. The exchanges reveal Bagrow’s somewhat brusque editorial methods but also show his vision for Imago Mundi and demonstrate his total dedication to the history of cartography. The letters also provide a revealing commentary on the immense difficulties of international communication and research in the immediate post-war years, and the persistence of the cultural nationalism that dominated the history of cartography as an academic pursuit in this period.     

Reading versus Seeing? Winckelmann's Excerpting Practice and the Genealogy of Art History

From his arrival in Italy in 1755, Winckelmann's work is infused throughout by a fundamental antinomy: reading versus seeing. This antinomy possesses for him a decidedly epistemological significance: it allows him to present himself as the father of a discipline deserving of its name, i.e., the history of art. In Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), he claims to break with a long tradition of art discourse which had been primarily supported by ancient texts, basing his book instead on the direct observation of the artworks. The aim of this paper is to critically examine this antinomy. How does seeing relate to reading in his working method? What relationship does art history, in the empirical dimension Winckelmann wanted to give it, have to book knowledge? Winckelmann's excerpts collection provides valuable answers to these questions. Following an old scholarly tradition, Winckelmann used to write down passages of his readings, constituting a vast handwritten library of excerpts which never left him. The result of this intense excerpting practice consists in some 7,500 pages, which allow to better define the share of empirical observation and book-based knowledge in his approach to ancient art.     

Turning International: Foundations of Modern International Thought and New Paradigms for Intellectual History

Summary

This essay provides an overview of the disciplinary and analytical significance of David Armitage's Foundations of Modern International Thought in the context of the new international history, and the so-called ‘international turn’. It then goes on to discuss the significance of the absence of women in this new sub-field of intellectual history.     

The Philosophy of a Persona

Summary

The essay collects Ian Hunter's central theoretical and methodological arguments from their various interpretative contexts and restates them in order to consider criticisms, real and imagined. Is Hunter's criticism of common forms of philosophical history itself open to such criticism, making its validity dependent upon prior adoption of a philosophical stance? Is his empirical intellectual history a form of ‘social’ reductionism?     

On Not Reading The Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service

This essay focuses on Garnet Wolseley’s controversial war instruction manual, The Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service (1869). While the Pocket-book’s contribution to discussions of reading and soldiers’ education has carved out a significant place for it in Victorian military history, in its day it was constantly contested and undermined by contradictory representations, as a book much talked about but little read. This essay is an exercise in tracing these eccentric reception histories, as an acute reminder that books may well have vibrant intellectual lives without actually being read. To examine the literary and material circulation of the Pocket-book in the late nineteenth century, it draws on archival research in the Macmillan Archive and Wolseley’s private papers to discuss the genesis of the text not just as a compendium of information but also as an object that is handled, carried, and exchanged. I juxtapose these considerations with episodes in the representation of the Pocket-book: in an anti-war pamphlet; an anonymous satirical drawing found in Wolseley’s personal scrapbooks; and in Kipling’s short stories about British soldiers in colonial South Asia. In all of these, the Pocket-book is characterized as a dubious, even dangerous text – one that was neither read, nor should be. The examples demonstrate three of the different trajectories through which the Pocket-book emerged as an unread book in the Victorian imagination: through encouragements not to read, rejection, and misappropriation.     

AN IMPERIAL SYLLABUS

Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire, edited by distinguished historians Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr, brings together ten essays on individual books with a substantial methodological introduction. Covering the full geographical expanse of the Empire, the volume seeks to unify book and imperial history through careful accounts of the circulation, recycling, and uptake of each of the books under consideration. The upshot is an invaluable overall work with important individual contributions. At the same time, the project's methodology and mode of presentation raise questions for the writing of history, particularly at the nexus of the histories of empire and of the book, that are reiterated but never queried within the volume itself. Specifically, in its focus on the moment of the circulation of texts, Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire reflects a general condition in the human sciences: a resistance to narrative, to causality, and to critique, which this essay attempts to describe and briefly explain.     

Sovetskaya Arktika journal as a source for the history of the Northern Sea Route

This paper is about reading and using the Soviet texts published in the 1930s on the Northern sea route (NSR) and the Arctic in general. The history of the NSR exploration and exploitation and its current potential as a round-the-year transportation waterway connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic is outlined. Specific features of the 1930s’ sources for the study of the NSR are explored using the example of the journal Sovetskaya Arktika (The Soviet Arctic), published between 1935 and 1941. The representation of the Northern Sea Route in this journal is described from two perspectives: what was presented (and what wasn't) and how it was presented. Special characteristics of the language used are considered to be interesting examples of the Soviet version of “totalitarian language” (newspeak, langue de bois). Historical sources written in this kind of language require special skills and special caution to read, interpret, and use.     

Syriac Sources for Seventh-Century History

Abstract

In view of the paucity of other sources for this century, so momentous in the history of the Near East, the Syriac materials take on a particular importance for both Byzantine and Islamic historians. While some of these sources, such as Michael's Chronicle, are well known to all, others lie as yet unexploited and ignored. The purpose of the present article is to collect together in convenient form details of all the main Syriac sources available for the seventh century, listing standard editions, translations and the more important discussions. Fuller information on authors and secondary literature can readily be found by reference to the following works: A. Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur (Bonn, 1922); I. Ortiz de Urbina, Patrologia Syriaca, 2nd ed. (Rome, 1965); C. Moss, Catalogue of Syriac Printed Books and Related Literature in the British Museum (London, 1962); S. P. Brock, ‘Syriac Studies 1960–1970: a classified bibliography’, Parole de l'Orient, IV (1973), 393–465. For the topographical history ot the area now covered by Iraq, J. M. Fiey's Assyrie chrétienne, 3 vols. (Beirut, 1965–8), is an invaluable compendium.     

Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy

Summary

The issue which I wish to address in this paper is the widespread tendency in Anglophone philosophy to insist on a separation between the history of philosophy and the history of ideas or intellectual history. This separation reflects an anxiety on the part of philosophers lest the special character of philosophy will be dissolved into something else in the hands of historians. And it is borne of a fundamental tension between those who think of philosophy's past as a source of ideas and arguments of interest to the present, and those who hold that the philosophy of the past should be studied on its own terms, in relation to its immediate context, without reference to the present. The challenge, then, is to re-historicise the history of philosophy, and to keep the philosophers onside.