IF: COUNTERFACTUAL AND CONDITIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

Conditionals are a feature of historiography. Despite this, historiographical research is focused predominantly on one kind of conditional, counterfactuals. New trans‐Atlantic contributions to this research by Catherine Gallagher and Richard J. Evans highlight the rich history of counterfactuals in Western thought, and their use by individuals and groups to imagine a present and a future that addresses regrets about the present. Their intimation of a flattening out of history through counterfactual nostalgia is not supported by the artistic expression of Tacita Dean, and new contributions to the philosophy of conditionals, building relations, and causal relations by Karen Bennett and Anthony Kwame Appiah. This review teases out the layered, causally tainted, and metaphysically agnostic world posited by Karen Bennett and conjoins it with David Lewis's reflections on possible worlds to suggest that conditional and counterfactual operators in historiography are building restrictors. This takes us away from Niall Ferguson's argument for the use of counterfactuals as a recognition of the underdetermination of history, and reminds us of the need to—as Appiah argues so succinctly—understand the pervasive role that idealizations play in helping us to manage the world and ourselves. The review rounds out by highlighting the computational implications of our conditional world, inviting historians to be at the table as fairness is debated and coded. In this way, the gap in research on the ethical need for historiographical conditionals in the twenty‐first century is highlighted.     

陈黻宸的史学“四独”“五史”论

在挖掘中国传统史学的精华和吸收消化西方史学思想的基础上,陈黻宸糅合中西,提出了自己的"四独""五史"的史学思想。这些史学思想中既有对史家的要求,也包括了对读史之人的要求,其中处处透露着陈黻宸对史学性质的认识和"新史学"的影像。     

Analysis of Japanese influence on the three major historiographical trends in early modern China

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the intrinsic relationships between Japanese historiography and the three great historiographical trends of New Historiography, Debates on Ancient History, and Marxist historiography, from the macroscopic perspective of the transformation, development, and early modern growth of modern and early modern Chinese historiography, exploring how Chinese historical researchers selected, deviated from, and assimilated Japanese historiography, while also particularly focusing on how the recipients utilized Japanese historiographical methods and concepts as well as the achievements of Japanese scholars in researching Chinese history to construct their own interpretation of Chinese historiography, in a study of the academic trend of indigenization.     

新中国建立后十七年“中生代”史家群体与马克思主义史学

新中国建立后十七年,那些出生于1910年代前后、具备扎实的史料考证基础、已经有一定学术地位、正处于学术生命旺盛期的"中生代"史家群体,在马克思主义史学居主导地位以及学习马克思主义理论的形势下,经历了从史料考证研究为主到运用唯物史观、融实证研究与理论指导于一炉的研究路向的转化。他们参加重大历史理论问题的讨论和大规模史料整理工作,在各自的研究领域多有新的创获,成为中国马克思主义史学队伍中的一员。新中国建立后中国马克思主义史家群体得以充实和扩大。     

Adwa: From monument to document

To the Italian historian the Battle of Adwa in March 1896 has offered a field of interpretation which has been heavily marked by the events that occurred between (and within) the two countries—Ethiopia and Italy—before and after the battle. Adwa has been variously depicted by Italian historiography of the liberal period as a major military defeat, a political mistake by Crispi's expansionist government and the result of deep contrasts within the newly born state over the 'colonial burden'. Fascist historiography painted Adwa as proof of liberal decay and political inefficiency. Adwa's name could be avenged only in the battlefield, which was done during Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36. From the Ethiopian point of view, Adwa's image changes no less. Until recently, the Battle of Adwa was painted as the landmark for Ethiopian unification and independence during the colonial era. Menelik's momentous victory at Adwa crowned his bid for power in the national arena, while his successful ability to stave off external colonial pressure appeared to cancel, or rather conceal, the internal policy of expansion and consolidation of his country's rule in the region. Today's insistence on Adwa as an African victory appears to be the dominant historiographical representation. The different interpretations all contain elements of truth, yet all, if frozen into historiographical truths, become embarrassing to the historian who needs documents, rather than monuments, as tools of analysis. To many historians both in Italy and Ethiopia, Adwa's respective symbolism of victory/defeat has been transformed into an icon, an historiographical monument, unassailable and immovable. The centenary of Adwa allows us to reconsider historical events of a shared past as critical documents and biased representations reflecting their own culture and time. This article attempts to deconstruct the historiographical monument of Adwa in Italian society so as to transmit such a heavily coded event to the critical examination of future historians in both Italy and Ethiopia.     

What Time Is Japan? Problems of Comparative (Intercultural) Historiography

Rather than reflect on the process of an alleged "modernization" of historical scholarship, an intercultural comparison of historiography should take the European origins of academic history as its starting point. The reason, as this article argues, is that in non-European countries the European genealogy of the discipline of history continued to structure interpretations of the past. Both on the level of method, but more importantly on the level of interpretive strategies, "Europe" remained the yardstick for historiographical explanation. This article will use the example of postwar Japanese historiography to show that historians resorted to a European model in order to turn seemingly unconnected events in the Japanese past into a historical narrative. This is not to imply, however, that Japanese historiography passively relied on concepts from Western discourse. On the contrary, Japanese historians appropriated and transformed the elements of this discourse in the specific geopolitical setting of the 1940s and 1950s. This act of appropriation served the political purpose of positioning Japan with respect to Asia and the "West." However, on an epistemological level, the priority of "Europe" persisted; Japanese historiography remained a "derivative discourse." Studies in comparative historiography, therefore, should be attentive to these traces of the European descent of academic history and privilege the transnational history of historiography over meditations on its internal rationalization.     

Putting Geography in its Place

Work on the history of geographical knowledge and practice frequently draws inspiration from theoretical insights developed elsewhere in the academy. After briefly touching on some of these historiographical matters, I argue that geographers might make some telling interventions into this debate by attending to some of their own key concepts – space, site, location – and disclosing their significance for elucidating the history of intellectual traditions. The fact that historians of science have begun to remark on the role of ‘place’ in knowledge production and consumption further confirms the value of this ‘geographical turn’. Subsequently I dwell on the implications of a spatialised historiography for work on the history of geography itself, and urge that ‘the history of geography’ might profitably be reconceptualised as ‘the historical geography of geography’.     

Comparative Historiography: Problems and Perspectives

Just like history, historiography is usually written and analyzed within one spatio-temporal setting, traditionally that of a particular nation-state. As a consequence, historiography tends to localize explanations for historiographical developments within national contexts and to neglect international dimensions. As long as that is the case, it is impossible to assess the general and specific aspects of historiographical case studies. This forum, therefore, represents a sustained argument for comparative approaches to historiography. First, my introduction takes a recent study in Canadian historiography as a point of departure in order to illustrate the problems of non-comparative historiography. These problems point to strong arguments in favor of comparative approaches. Second, I place comparative historiography as a genre in relation to a typology that orders theories of historiography on a continuum ranging from general and philosophical to particular and empirical. Third, I put recent debates on the “fragmentation” of historiography in a comparative perspective. Worries among historians about this fragmentation—usually associated with the fragmentation of the nation and the advent of multiculturalism and/or postmodernism—are legitimate when they concern the epistemological foundations of history as a discipline. As soon as the “fragmentation” of historiography leads to—and is legitimated by—epistemological skepticism, a healthy pluralism has given way to an unhealthy relativism. As comparison puts relativism in perspective by revealing its socio-historical foundations, at the same time it creates its rational antidote. Fourth, I summarize the contributions to this forum; all deal—directly or indirectly—with the historiography of the Second World War. Jürgen Kocka's “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg” examines the so-called “special path” of Germany's history. Daniel Levy's “The Future of the Past: Historiographical Disputes and Competing Memories in Germany and Israel” offers a comparative analysis of recent historiographical debates in Germany and Israel. Sebastian Conrad's “What Time is Japan? Problems of Comparative (Intercultural) Historiography” analyzes the conceptual linkage between Japanese historiography and specific interpretations of European history. Richard Bosworth's “Explaining ‘Auschwitz’ after the End of History: The Case of Italy” charts in a comparative perspective the changes since 1989 in Italian historiography concerning fascism. All four articles support the conclusion that next to the method of historical comparison is the politics of comparison, which is hidden in the choice of the parameters. Analyses of both method and politics are essential for an understanding of (comparative) historiography.     

NEPALESE HISTORY IN A EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE: A CASE STUDY IN TRANSCULTURAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

In March 2013, a group of German, Nepalese, and Swiss historians, Indologists, and an architectural historian gathered for a workshop in Nepal to develop a new approach to the understanding of South Asian historiography, especially the Nepalese chronicles from the nineteenth century. The outcome is the present collaboratively written article. It is argued that, in the past, the analysis of South Asian historiography has been preoccupied by arguments based on an understanding of history that highlights facts and events. A transcultural and multidisciplinary approach, however, would overcome the common dichotomies of factuality and fictionality, history and myth, or evidence and truth. Recognizing the specificity of South Asian historiography, the article develops an approach to bridge asymmetries and entanglements in the academic use of the past in a way that also opens up a new perspective on Western historiography. By analyzing the religious, spatial, literary, and historical, and contemporary or context‐related aspects of a nineteenth‐century chronicle and by using “fieldwork” as a methodological tool for studying historiography, it is proposed to understand the framing of time and the making of sequences and historical periods as an open process that results in the constant and synchronic creation of chronological spaces.     

Herzl and the Palestinian Arabs: Myth and Counter-Myth

According to conventional Zionist historiography, Herzl thought little about Arabs, and what he did have to say about them reflected benign and progressive, albeit paternalistic, sentiment. Critics of Zionism, on the other hand, claim that underlying the paucity of Herzl's comments on Arabs was a conspiracy of silence, for already in 1895 he was allegedly planning the expulsion of the Palestinians, although he only confided this dark scheme to his diary. This essay throws new light upon Herzl's attitudes towards Palestine's Arabs. It explores a variety of historiographical questions raised by the gulf that separates the camps of scholars who have written on this subject, and it critiques the way that historians have read Herzl's diary and privileged it over his other writings.     

论史学理论与史学史之间的关系

史学理论与史学史在学科结构中属于同一个二级专业,这其中反映了二者具有紧密的内在联系。探索史学理论与史学史的关系,首先应当跨过一个理念的门坎,即区分“历史理论”与“史学理论”。确认史学理论是对历史学的概括和总结,而不是研究客观的社会历史。厘清这种概念上的区别与联系,大有利于史学理论与历史理论的研究。如20世纪80年代中历史认识论研究的兴起,即得益于此。这里,需要防止像西方某些史学流派那样割断史学理论与历史理论的关系,批判那种取消历史理论研究的说法。在当今,史学史研究的可靠成果,应是史学理论研究的基础。揭示史学发展的规律,是史学史学科与史学理论研究共同的任务,将二者结合在一起的探索,大有学术开拓、理论创新的广阔前景。     

The Un-European Idea: Vichy and Eurafrica in the Historiography of Europeanism

Imperialist and collaborationist conceptions of Europeanisms have generally been excluded from mainstream historiography with reference to their alleged un-Europeanness. However, by discussing the ideas and writings of two French Europeanists—Louis Le Fur’s and René Viard’s—in the years 1940–41, I argue that it is precisely their Vichyite and imperialist conceptions of Europeanness that underpin their political ideas of a united Europe. Their works therefore call into question a prevailing historiographical narrative of Europeanism as a benign counterpoint to a dark European past. Since, as demonstrated in this article, French Europeanist visions have often been bound up with both collaborationist and imperialist interests, I argue for the need to develop a more inclusive and critical historiographical perspective on the history of Europeanism.     

梁启超、胡适、郭沫若史学特点之比较及其学术关联

本文认为,梁启超、胡适、郭沫若是中国史学近代转型进程中最有代表性的史家。他们先后引领了三大史学思潮,体现了史学近代转型的阶段性进步。他们都以"但开风气不为师"为旨趣,在多个学术领域尽显才华,是"球形的发展"式的天才学者。他们之间还有学术关联,彼此之间存在不少学术争论,又反映出其治史特点的差异。胡适、郭沫若均受到梁启超的影响。梁、胡有直接的学术交往,梁、郭则没有。胡、郭的学术交往反复曲折,学术论争中夹杂着政治和个人义气的因素。文章最后对近年来贬损郭沫若史学地位的倾向作了辨析。     

MIGRATION AND NARRATION: HOW EUROPEAN HISTORIANS IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES TOLD THE HISTORY OF HUMAN MASS MIGRATIONS OR VÖLKERWANDERUNGEN

Historians’ interest in the history of human migrations is not limited to recent years. Migrations had already figured as explanatory factors in connection with cultural and historical change in the work of classical and ancient studies scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the writings of these scholars, migrations acted as historical landmarks or epochal thresholds and played a key role in the construction of geo-historical areas. This model has been called “migrationism” and cannot be explained simply on the basis of the history of individual disciplines, but must be seen in its complex interaction with scientific and historical contexts. However, “migrationism” does not relate to fixed political and scientific positions or movements. For this reason, it cannot be explained adequately by using a historically or ideologically based approach. Relying on narratological approaches, this article examines migration narratives that historians of this period used to explain the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. Referring to contemporary historiographical representations of the ancient Near East, it distinguishes three main narratives that are still common today: narratives of foundation, narratives of destruction, and narratives of mixtures. In this sense, analyzing older migration narratives helps us to sharpen the critical view on the genealogy of our own views on the history—and present—of human migrations.     

HERBERT BUTTERFIELD AND THE ETHICS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

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