Man of faith and political commitment: Alcide De Gasperi in the history of Europe

Since the early 1980s historians and others have been radically revising established understandings of the Italian south. New research has undermined the notion of a dichotomy between north and south and has begun to challenge the parameters of the Southern Question itself. The books reviewed here reflect, comment upon and drive forward this process of revision. One suggestion is that representations of the south as 'backward', 'picturesque' or fundamentally 'different' are the product of ideological and political elaboration rather than the reflection of any fundamental reality, and should be seen as part of a neo-Orientalist discourse which justified southern subordination. While acknowledging the strengths of this new history of the Mezzogiorno, this article argues that the neo-Orientalist explanation risks simply restating southern difference and subordination in another form. What is needed instead is a new, and less dichotomized, approach to southern Italian cultures and a recognition of the complexities - and hence the importance - of southern identities.     

Catholicisme,protestantisme et laïcité: Réflexion sur la trace religieuse dans l'histoire contemporaine de la France

This article examines the traces of Protestantism in contemporary French history and political culture. After contextualising the legacies of Protestantism and Catholicism and recalling the latter's primary role in conceptions of French identity, the study focusses on how Protestant cultural influences came to bear. The article weighs the contributions of renowned Protestant historians and politicians, in the case of the latter, right down to the contemporary period.     

The history of modern and contemporary Italy: Made in France (from the late 1970s to the late 1990s)

Abstract

Over the past three centuries Italy has been the focus of numerous studies by French historians, who have taken advantage of the great wealth of sources available there. While no new synthesis has yet been achieved, we can identify certain main lines of development in French historiography. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s international relations and, especially, the relations between France and Italy were given the greatest attention, before a new focus on forms of sociability and political pedagogy began to be more common. However, the shifting of focus of historical studies to the centres of political decision making often coincided with less attention being paid to social stratification. Beyond these major themes, some researchers have reconstructed ‘global’ historical models, which have been characteristic of the renewal of post‐war French historiography.     

CONNECTING THE NEW POLITICAL HISTORY WITH RECENT THEORIES OF TEMPORAL ACCELERATION: SPEED,POLITICS, AND THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION OF FIN DE SIÈCLE BRITAIN

The political impact of “social acceleration” has recently attracted much attention in sociology and political theory. The concept, however, has remained entirely unexplored in the discipline of history. Although numerous British historians have noted the prominent position of acceleration in the late‐Victorian and Edwardian imagination, these observations have never expanded beyond the realm of rhetorical flourish. The present paper attempts to build a two‐way interdisciplinary bridge between British political history and the theories of social acceleration that have been posited in the social sciences, arguing that both British political historians and acceleration theorists have much to gain from further dialogue.     

The emergence of french research policy: Methodological and historiographical problems (1945–1970) 1

French research policy has been of interest to historians for quite some time. However, the very notion has become so evident for us that its history is told as an heroic one of the state's progressive awareness of the importance of the scientific field.

Nevertheless, this historiographical tradition appears misleading. The stress put on the search for ancestors obscures many issues. This paper accordingly tries to reconstruct a quite different picture underlining the heterogeneity of the meaning of research policy.

The aim is to give a different status to the notion in the context of post‐war France. Science policy should cease to be considered as an evident entity and be seen as an object which organizes and stimulates reflection around the development of science.

After suggesting important themes needed to tackle anew research policy, this study of the major characteristics of the French case ends with a brief account of the progressive definition of the object “research policy”. Focusing on a kind of historical geography of the use and practices of this object, it stresses discontinuities, oppositions and compromises, and also the important work needed to achieve political legitimacy.     

The periphery revisited: Polish post-war historiography on the working class and the new global labour history

This paper explores the characteristics of post-war Polish historiography on the working class and relates it to current trends in global labour history. Although, in Poland, labour history never existed as a separate field, many historians focused their studies on either working-class history or the history of the workers’ movement. After 1945, Polish historiography was circumscribed by political and ideological considerations; however – except during the brief Stalinist period (1951–56) – Marxist methodology was not imposed or applied uncritically. In fact, discussions about the role of the working class in history that began after 1956 generated research interest in new groups of workers and labour relations. Much of this research concerns recently highlighted aspects of labour history, such as marginal groups of workers or free versus unfree labour. Polish historians’ reinterpretation of Marxist orthodoxy proceeded from their empirical studies of nineteenth-century Polish lands – at the periphery of Western capitalist development – as well as from their theoretical influences. This article argues that some aspects of the Polish historiography on the working class qualify it as part of labour history’s heritage, despite the historiography’s significant limitations.     

The use and abuse of paradigms in the history of political thought

A paradigm is a methodological device which historians of political thought borrow from the history of science. The initial part of this article examines the views of three distinguished historians of political thought—Sheldon Wolin, Alan Ryan and John Pocock—who have borrowed paradigms. Wolin and Ryan are shown to have confused paradigms with weltanschauungen in such a way as to make the former less useful as methodological devices. Pocock, on the other hand, has been successful in his use of paradigms, though he does not sufficiently recognise their methodological limits. He also raises a conceptual problem. The latter part of this article examines the recent history of science in an attempt to clarify the use of paradigms and their limits.     

古典历史的基础:从国之大事到普通百姓的生活

由于古代史料的性质和近代早期历史写作目的的影响,从古代到近代早期的西方,古代史基本为政治和军事史以及大人物所统治,社会经济与普通人遭到忽视。21世纪的古代史写作,大多将政治史排挤到相对次要的地位,普通人及其日常生活成为主要内容,其笔下的古代世界,着重古希腊罗马公民的社会生活以及影响公民生活的诸种政治和经济因素。古代史主题变换与研究转型,既与学者们对史料的认识以及对社会科学方法的借鉴有内在联系,也与西方史学注重公民活动的传统相关。世界古代史研究仍需在掌握语言工具的基础上,更多地借鉴现代社会科学理论与方法,实现从理论、方法到内容的转型,深入古代社会的历史。     

乡村史、气候史及年鉴学派——埃马纽埃尔·勒华拉杜里教授访谈录

法国著名历史学家勒华拉杜里教授在访谈中讲述了三个方面的问题:从乡村史研究上说,他的《蒙塔尤》一书的成功在于他受到美国以村庄为研究对象的人类学的影响,从而得以从一个村庄的角度解读《雅克.富尼埃宗教审判记录簿》;作为最早从事气候史研究的历史学家,他注重探讨气候变化与革命等历史事件之间的关联,并主张对不同国家的气候进行比较研究;作为法国年鉴学派第三代代表人物,他是一个唯物论者,继承了布罗代尔和拉布鲁斯关注物质现象这一传统。     

The "Trial" of Lee Benson: Communism, White Chauvinism, and The Foundations of the "New Political History" in the United States

Lee Benson was one of the first American political historians to suggest a “systematic” revision of traditional political history with its emphasis on narrow economic class analysis, narrative arguments, and over‐reliance on qualitative research methodologies. This essay presents Benson's contributions to the “new political history”—an attempt to apply social‐science methods, concepts, and theories to American political history—as a social, cultural, and political narrative of Cold War‐era American history. Benson belonged to a generation of ex‐Communist American historians and political scientists whose scholarship and intellectual projects flowed—in part—out of Marxist social and political debates, agendas, and paradigmatic frameworks, even as they rejected and revised them. The main focus of the essay is the genesis of Benson's pioneering study of nineteenth‐century New York state political culture, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, with its emphasis on intra‐class versus inter‐class conflict, sensitivity to ethnocultural determinants of political and social behavior, and reliance on explicit social‐science theory and methodology. In what follows, I argue that The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy has its roots in Benson's Popular Front Marxist beliefs, and his decade‐long engagement and subsequent disenchantment with American left‐wing politics. Benson's growing alienation from Progressive historical paradigms and traditional Marxist analysis, and his attempts to formulate a neo‐Marxism attentive to unique American class and political realities, are linked to his involvement with 1940s radical factional politics and his disturbing encounter with internal Communist party racial and ideological tensions in the late 1940s at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.     

TOWARD A MULTIDIRECTIONAL FUTURE OF HISTORIOGRAPHY: GLOBALITY,INTERDISCIPLINARITY, AND POSTHUMANITY

Compared with the survey offered in the New Perspectives on Historical Writing nearly three decades earlier, historical practices around the world today have witnessed a remarkable change on several fronts. First, marked expansions occurred in such fields as gender history, history of memory, history of knowledge, and visual history, resulting in their noticeable transformation (for example, “gender history” to “history of sexuality” and “visual history” to “history of things”). Second, by exploring and presenting the “other(s)” in modern historiography, new areas are opened up in postcolonial history, global history, emotions history, and so on, which have prompted historians to reconceptualize their notions of time and space. Third, menacing global climate change and notable breakthroughs in various areas of modern technology have exerted an unprecedented impact on historical writing, exemplified by the new developments in environmental history, neurohistory, digital history, and animal history. Science and technology help historians to rejuvenate their research methodology and teaching pedagogy, but they have also demanded that historians acquire a better understanding of the interaction and co-evolution of humans and nonhumans in history, or to take the nonanthropocentric and nonanthropomorphic approach. In sum, what lies ahead for historians and history students today is a multidirectional future, which is at once an opportunity and a challenge.     

理解革命发生学的新路径和新视阈——18世纪法国的政治、话语和公众舆论研究

早在旧制度末期,法国启蒙精英阶层就已意识到公众舆论在当时政治与社会中的重要影响。19世纪以来,史学家们也在不断地谈论旧制度末期的社会精神或公众舆论,希图从中找出革命的精神源流。但直到20世纪80年代左右,法国旧制度末期的公众舆论才成为史学家专门关注的对象。西方学者或追踪政治话语的变化,或关注民众的日常言论,或研究旧制度下的公共交往机制,以把握该时期法国社会集体政治意识的转变状况。     

History, Memory, and the Law: The Historian as Expert Witness

There has been a widespread recovery of public memory of the events of the Second World War since the end of the 1980s, with war crimes trials, restitution actions, monuments and memorials to the victims of Nazism appearing in many countries. This has inevitably involved historians being called upon to act as expert witnesses in legal actions, yet there has been little discussion of the problems that this poses for them. The French historian Henry Rousso has argued that this confuses memory with history. In the aftermath of the Second World War, judicial investigations unearthed a mass of historical documentation. Historians used this, and further researches, from the 1960s onwards to develop their own ideas and interpretations. But since the early 1990s there has been a judicialization of history, in which historians and their work have been forced into the service of moral and legal forms of judgment which are alien to the historical enterprise and do violence to the subleties and nuances of the historian's search for truth. This reflects Rousso's perhaps rather simplistically scientistic view of the historian's enterprise; yet his arguments are powerful and should be taken seriously by any historian considering involvement in a law case; they also have a wider implication for the moralization of the history of the Second World War, which is now dominated by categories such as "perpetrator,""victim," and "bystander" that are legal rather than historical in origin. The article concludes by suggesting that while historians who testify in war crimes trials should confine themselves to elucidating the historical context, and not become involved in judging whether an individual was guilty or otherwise of a crime, it remains legitimate to offer expert opinion, as the author of the article has done, in a legal action that turns on the research and writing of history itself.     

The Interplay between History/Memory/Space in Tassadit Imache's: Presque un Frère and Le Dromadaire de Bonaparte

During the last two years media attention has centred on the issue of torture during the Algerian war. An exploration of this debate shows that the deep passions and tensions which have, in the past, bitterly divided the participants in the war and prevented an objective historical investigation or dialogue, are now receding. In France, in spite of a long history of state secrecy surrounding 'sensitive' archives, there has been a quiet but significant liberalisation of access and a new body of research based on this huge and growing body of evidence is dramatically changing our understanding of the war. Although many historians hope to see a growing Franco-Algerian collaboration, the torture debate reveals at the same time how far the current political crisis in Algeria and the authoritarian military regime continue to impede access to archives and a more open research agenda.     

法国的新闻史研究

20世纪40年代法国新闻界欣欣向荣,但是第二次世界大战不仅涂炭生灵,而且也使新闻界遭受严重的打击。战后的历史学家开始反省战争对人类带来的灾难,在他们看来,审视媒体的自由程度是这个重大的历史命题不可回避的主要手段。本文就是从这个角度入手,希望能呈现20世纪40年代以来法国历史学界阐释新闻史的方法和重点,以及历史学家们如何以历史学为阵地捍卫新闻自由乃至民主权利的。最后,新闻史学史的研究还与社会经济史学史的发展轨迹近乎一致。本文试图向读者呈现两种学科的交融与分裂。     

Rethinking Performative Methods in the History of Science

Performative methods have been part of history of science research and education for at least three decades. Understood broadly, they cover every methodology in which a historian or philosopher of science engages in embodied interaction with sources, tools and materials that do not traditionally belong to historical research, with the aim of answering a historical research question. The question no longer appears to be whether performative methods have a place within history and philosophy of science research, but what their place is, could, or should be; when and how they can and cannot be used. Because although performative methods are seen as an enrichment of the field by many, their growing popularity also raises questions: what new insights and challenges has the increased use of performative methods in the history of science brought us? How has it changed the field? Should performative research methods become a mandatory part of the training of new generations of historians of science? In this special issue, historians and philosophers of science for whom performative methods play an important role in their work reflect on these questions from their own research and teaching practices.     

Language and Nationalism in Italy

ABSTRACT. Language is a central gauge of a culture's desire for and ability to articulate a common cultural, and political, identity. As such, historical figures, as well as theorists and historians, often view linguistic standardisation as a critical step on the road to forging a nation. This article explores linguistic standardisation in Italy, focusing on the Cruscan Academy dictionaries, and assesses any links between the standardisation of Florentine and nationalism. It then compares the changing political terminology in Florentine to comparable terms in French and English. The article concludes that (a) unlike the cases of French and English and much current theory on linguistic standardisation, in Italy there was no connection between standardisation and nationalism; (b) the standardisation of Florentine was accompanied by the collapse of political concepts that could have been used to bolster a nationalist movement; and (c) Italian ideas about reason of state are distinguishable from other theoretical justifications of absolutism by the removal of political morality (virtù) from the political realm.     

从社会史到文化史:十八世纪法国书籍与社会研究

年鉴学派应用计量方法研究社会经济史所取得的成功直接推动了18世纪法国书籍与社会史研究。新一代的年鉴学派史家,以系列史方法为指导,研究书籍的社会经济史,解读书籍的社会文化功用,试图勾勒出18世纪法国的书籍社会学。但此后,在后现代主义理论、文化人类学和其他社会科学的影响下,史学家的目光从以统计学为基础的书籍社会学转向强调解读的阅读社会学。因此,对18世纪法国书籍与社会研究,总体上经历了从注重书籍计量到强调文本解读、从书籍社会学到阅读社会学、从文化社会史到社会文化史的转变。     

Geoffrey Holmes and the Public Sphere: Augustan Historiography from Post-Namierite to the Post-Habermasian

This article attributes the relative lack of attention to the 'public sphere' in Geoffrey Holmes's work to the pervasive influence of Lewis Namier and the Namierite conception of political history. Holmes's British Politics can be understood as a product of what might be called the revisionist's dilemma. Because the main thrust of the argument of this work was to challenge the Namierite interpretation of the structure of politics in Anne's reign, Holmes could not fail but to replicate the structures of the original Namierite paradigm. Nevertheless, Holmes's demolition of the Namierite view of Augustan politics also opened up new possibilities for further research; it ultimately widened our understanding of the 'political' and it prepared the ground for the remarkable interdisciplinary dialogue between literary historians, intellectual historians, and political historians. The article concludes with a discussion of how Holmes's successors began to build on his work in ways that can help explain why the Habermasian public sphere paradigm emerged to the foreground of current scholarship in a field where it had been ignored for three decades. Historians are now beginning to build a detailed post-Habermasian understanding of the ways in which the public sphere affected the structures of politics in later Stuart Britain. Work along these lines may well finally help explain the transformation of British politics from an age of Stuart revolutions to the age of Hanoverian oligarchy.