THE RULES OF THE GAME IN THE STUDY OF ANCIENT HISTORY

“The Rules of the Game,” expounded in ten remarkably bold theses, can easily be read as a synthetic retrospective or introduction to the formidable oeuvre of Arnaldo Momigliano. Indeed, this piece served as the opening chapter to his Introduzione bibliografica alla storia greca fino a Socrate (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975), and its subsequent reprints as an independent essay in several Italian journals and anthologies signal its importance for Momigliano. In this provocative and occasionally brilliantly witty essay, Momigliano sets forth his programmatic views on the ethos of the historian, as well as on the historical method and its applications in the study of ancient history. Here, as elsewhere, Momigliano is interested in detailing the link between ancient documents and their historical interpretations in later millennia. Ancient sources, he cautions, do not capture ancient realities transparently or completely, but are mediated documents whose historical value hinges, within certain limits, on the historian's analytical questions, inflected as they inevitably are by different ideological commitments. For this reason, he places special emphasis on the comparative method, stressing difference rather than similarity, and advises that historians with various areas of expertise collaborate, a point underscored throughout the essay. What is more, the essay contains the salutary reminder that the historian ought to attend not only to the surviving documents but also to the conspicuous silences and lacunae in the evidence.     

History, the Referent, and Narrative: Reflections on Postmodernism Now

This essay surveys the present position of postmodernism with respect to the effect of its ideas upon historiography. For this purpose it looks at a number of writings by historians that have been a response to postmodernism including the recently published collection of articles, The Postmodern History Reader . The essay argues that, in contrast to scholars in the field of literary studies, the American historical profession has been much more resistant to postmodernist doctrines and that the latters' influence upon the thinking and practice of historians is not only fading but increasingly destined to fade. The essay also presents a critical discussion of the current philosophy of postmodernism in its bearing upon historiography, directed chiefly against its claim that the world has undergone an epochal transition from the modern to a postmodern age; its theory of language and linguistic idealism; its opposition to historical realism and denial of the actuality of the past as a possible object of reference; and its theory of historical narrative as unconstrained fictional construction. This discussion includes a consideration of the work of postmodernist thinkers such as J.-F. Lyotard, of the recent books by David Roberts and Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. which espouse a postmodernist theory of history, and of the narrativist theory of Hayden White. The essay also notes some of the reasons for postmodernism's appeal; and while it does not deny that postmodernist philosophy may have served a useful purpose in provoking historians to be more self-critical and aware of their presuppositions and procedures, it maintains that its skeptical and politicized view of historical inquiry is deeply mistaken, out of accord with the way historians themselves think about their work, and incapable of providing an understanding of historiography as a form of thought engaged in the attainment of knowledge and understanding of the human past.     

The Erasure of the Middle Ages from Anthropology's Intellectual Genealogy

This essay explores the curious absence of Middle Ages from the history of anthropological thought. An investigation of disciplinary histories reveals while anthropology's intellectual origins are often traced to early modernity or classical antiquity, the existence of authentic anthropological inquiry in medieval Europe has been either disregarded or explicitly denied. This historical lacuna is the product of an unexamined temporal logic that presupposes an epistemological rupture between the medieval and modern worlds. This essay challenges several historical myths that have underwritten the erasure of the discipline's medieval legacies, and then outlines the necessity of reintegrating the Middle Ages in anthropology's intellectual genealogy not only for enriching our understanding of pre-professional anthropology, but also for constructing a more holistic and inclusive understanding of the anthropological project.     

THE ORIGINS OF RACISM: A CRITIQUE OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

This essay has two objectives. First, it seeks to engage critically with contemporary scholarship on the origins of racism through the lens of an older debate centered around the history of ideas. Specifically, it argues that Quentin Skinner's influential critique of the history of ideas can help identify the pitfalls of our current fascination with the origins of racism—most particularly when such origins are traced back to antiquity and the European pre- and early modern periods. In pursuing its second objective, the essay turns from histories cataloguing ancient, medieval, and early modern racisms to objections leveled, in these same literatures, against scholarship defending the modernity of race. The defense of a premodern origin to race is, I argue, not just a historical argument but a contemporary politics embedded in a narrative of continuity that insists on the relevance of the medieval past to the racial configurations of our current moment. Rather than demonstrating continuity and sameness, this essay seeks to draw attention to alternative modes of historicizing that are more attentive to the alterity of the past.     

Warfare,Imperialism, and the Making of Modern Chinese History: A Review Essay

This historiographic essay contends that warfare made and unmade the Qing dynasty between 1644 and 1911, and its study has helped to create the field of modern Chinese history during the past seventy years. It advances three principal claims. First, the literature on war, especially interstate conflict, can serve as a synecdoche for the development of the modern China field as a whole since the 1950s. The research interests of late Qing specialists have oscillated along an “external-internal-external” axis that corresponds with three distinct periods of intellectual inquiry, scholarly production, and generational dominance. Second, historians have reached inaccurate conclusions about the state capacity of the Qing Empire after 1840 through a crude analysis of the First Sino-Japanese War, a mistake they can rectify by adopting a longer-term perspective on the state-making process. Third, scholars have deftly traced the changing role of military power in modern Chinese politics but have also adopted the interpretive categories of wen and wu from literati discourse without sufficient critical reflection. In the future, researchers may seek to explore the intersection of warfare and the environment, technology, and ethnic identity, approaches that will continue to move the field in comparative, global, and Inner Asian directions.     

科学史学乎?“科学古学”乎?——傅斯年“史学便是史料学”之思想渊源新探

在现代中国史学史上,傅斯年以其"史学便是史料学"的口号,成为所谓"史料学派"的代表人物。而"史料学派"之推动历史研究的科学化,又常与德国兰克学派的理论和实践相比仿。不过傅氏虽然曾留学德国,但从他的藏书和其它资料来看,其实他在留学期间,对兰克学派及其德国的历史研究,并没有太多接触。相反,傅氏对西方博古主义或古学运动对古典文化的研究,颇有兴趣。他在回国以后所开展的一系列工作,也显示出他之强调史料的扩充和整理,并由此来推广科学史学的做法,介乎于科学主义和博古主义之间。     

Personalities and Institutions in Americanist Archaeology, 1850–1950

Between 1850 and 1950 Americanist archaeology evolved from an inchoate blend of antiquarianism, literature, and field digging undertaken by untrained but enthusiastic amateurs into an increasingly disciplined and institutionalized field of inquiry. While personal speculation and style became less pronounced, institutional (university/museum) support provided financial grounds for long-term research and teaching agendas. At the same time, while institutionalized archaeology certainly did not eliminate strong personality differences and professional disagreements, it did provide channels within which to confront and resolve them. The overlapping generations of Ephraim Squier, Alfred Maudslay, and Byron Cummings clearly demonstrate this trajectory of professionalization.     

The past 20 years of modern Chinese social history

Modern Chinese social history has played an important role in the general revival of Chinese social history. This essay will provide an overview of the major achievements of past 20 years with particular emphasis upon the field of modern social history, the growth of regional social history, and the new research that draws upon field studies. It will also consider the recent debates on “re‐examining political history” and provide an introduction to new works in medical history and environmental/ecological history.     

HYPOTHESES,GENERALIZATIONS, AND CONVERGENCE: SOME PEIRCEAN THEMES IN THE STUDY OF HISTORY

This essay examines the relationship among some key elements of Charles Sanders Peirce's general theory of scientific inquiry (such as final causality, real possibility, methodological convergence, abductive reasoning, hypothesis formation, and diagrammatic idealization) and some prominent issues discussed in the current philosophy of history, especially those pertaining to the role of generalizations in historical explanation. The claim is that, appropriately construed, Peirce's recommendations with respect to rational inquiry in general can provide a reasonable basis for formulating a productive critical method for a responsible philosophy of history. The essay further seeks to reduce the tension between Peirce's interest in epistemic convergence and the arguments that champion the value of historical distance and perspectival pluralism. On the account offered, the kind of methodological convergence envisioned by Peirce need not conflict necessarily with a responsibly construed historical pluralism. On the other hand, the critical perspective of an epistemically disciplined philosophical inquiry may prove indispensable in weeding out wishful but unrealistic ideological perspectives from the writing of history. Hence, the resulting proposal envisions the critique of historical imagination as one potentially viable modality for the pragmatist philosophy of history.     

Tradition and Reform: Aristotle’s Response to Modern Alternatives

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to articulate an Aristotelian alternative to two prominent contemporary ways of understanding human freedom and dependence on the past, and to the implications these understandings have for political life. While a liberal tendency, following Machiavelli’s emphasis on new modes and orders, understands political life to begin with breaking from the past, the more conservative camp in modern thought, following Burke in his emphasis on tradition, understands political life to begin with laws and customs inherited from the past. Aristotle’s teaching in his Nicomachean Ethics on the freedom and responsibility that make human beginnings possible points us, I propose, to a better understanding of political founding than either modern alternative. In the Politics, he connects the city to natural beginnings in the family but also calls the first who founded a city one “responsible for the greatest of goods” (Pol. 1253a31-32). And in the Ethics, he offers his own founding of a way of inquiring about politics, which engages with his predecessors, as a model for politics itself. In this way, Aristotle offers us a deeper understanding of political founding and change, even presenting his own philosophic inquiry in the Ethics as its ground and model.     

Change and the Corporeal in Seventeenth‐ and Eighteenth‐Century Gender History: Or,Can Cultural History Be Rigorous?

This essay is a methodological evaluation of the procedures and presuppositions informing the social and cultural history of gender, as exemplified in recent scholarship about the transformations of sex and gender in Britain from the early modern period through the long eighteenth century. It suggests answers to two questions: how can we write the cultural history of gender while maintaining both rigour in the enterprise and an awareness of its limits? And where might we go when these limits suddenly appear to undermine the very foundational presuppositions on which the whole cultural‐historical project is built?     

A Paper City: On History,Maps, and Map Collections in 18th and 19th Century Paris

ABSTRACT

This essay considers how maps became implicated in historical inquiry, with particular reference to the city of Paris. Three interrelated episodes are discussed, from the early eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, each associated with specific mapmakers and collectors whose activities shaped the early development of map history. These episodes reveal how maps were historicized in different ways in this period, initially as images created in the present to reveal the past and eventually as objects of historical interest in their own right. It is further argued that this intellectual shift was associated with a growing awareness, especially among state officials, that the study and collection of historic maps had important geopolitical implications. In tracing this story across three episodes in a single urban setting, the essay seeks to make larger observations about the relationship between the map as a visual representation, the map collection as an urban ‘assemblage’ of geographical information, and the city as a physical environment.     

The development of a new geospatial framework for the palaeoanthropological site of the Sterkfontein Caves,Cradle of Humankind,Gauteng, South Africa

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) provide an essential element in modern paleoanthropological inquiry through their ability to integrate a diverse range of data within a multidimensional spatial framework which can be used for data storage, analysis and modeling. One of the challenges of creating such a framework is the integration of legacy and new data (collected with digital technologies) at large sites with a long history of research. The Sterkfontein Caves, located in the Cradle of Humankind, is the richest Australopithecus-bearing locality in the world and has been the focus of intense palaeoanthropological research for the past 80 years. A diverse range of spatial data has been collected over this history and future integrative research necessitates the development of a unified, cohesive 3D GIS framework. In this paper we describe three phases of work undertaken to implement such a framework and discuss the next steps in its development and utilization for spatial analyses.     

HAUNTING HISTORY: DECONSTRUCTION AND THE SPIRIT OF REVISION1

This essay explores the ways that the specter of deconstruction has been haunting history over the past thirty years, in particular this specter's effects on the revision of intellectual and cultural history. The essay uses the terms “specter” and “haunting” to express the fact that while deconstruction is repeatedly targeted in attacks against the dangers of postmodernism, poststructuralism, or the linguistic turn, very few historians actively use deconstruction as a historical methodology; in this regard the target has always been a phantom. However, some historians have employed the methods of deconstruction, and by examining their work as well as the attacks on it the essay attempts to explain the historiographical reasons behind these attacks. The goal of the essay is ultimately to indicate some of the ways that deconstruction is useful for the historian, as evidenced in the project of historical revision.     

HISTORY IN THE SIKH PAST1

This article offers a reading of an early eighteenth‐century Punjabi text—Gur Sobha or “The Splendor of the Guru”—as a form of historical representation, suggesting reasons for the importance of the representation of the past as history within Sikh discursive contexts. The text in question provides an account of the life, death, and teachings of the last of the ten living Sikh Gurus or teachers, Guru Gobind Singh. The article argues that the construction of history in this text is linked to the transition of the Sikh community at the death of the last living Guru whereby authority was invested in the canonical text (granth) and community (panth). As such a particular rationale for history was produced within Sikh religious thought and intellectual production around the discursive construction of the community in relation to the past and as a continuing presence. As such, the text provides an alternative to modern European forms of historical representation, while sharing some features of the “historical” as defined in that context. The essay relates this phenomenon to a broader exploration of history in South Asian contexts, to notions of historicality that are plural, and to issues particular to the intersection of history and religion. Later texts, through the middle of the nineteenth century, are briefly considered, to provide a sense of the significance of Gur Sobha within a broader, historically and religiously constituted Sikh imagination of the past.     

A MOST MODERN SUBJECT: THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY AND THE FASHIONING OF NATIONALIST AND OTHER MODERN SUBJECTIVITIES

This book takes an ethnographic approach to its topic by endeavoring to observe how social and disciplinary subjects shaped by modernity go on to constitute modern worlds. Specifically, it attempts to “explore modernity as a contradictory and checkered historical-cultural entity and category as well as a contingent and contended process and condition” (1). Most of the subjects considered are intellectuals and academic disciplines (specifically history and anthropology), although the argument occasionally focuses on artists as well. The book particularly recognizes and analyzes the ambiguities, ambivalences, and contradictions generated within modernity not as mistakes or gaps like so many potholes to be fixed over time, but as constitutive of the modern landscape itself. This accepting acknowledgment, in turn, stands central to the book's endeavor to resist the teleological paradigms inherent in many modern metaphors regarding roads that must be traveled to move from what is backward to what is forward, from a superseded past to a promising future. Central to the volume—and its most original contribution—are various deliberations on the productions of time and space by various subjects. To be clear, by “time” the book means history and temporality whereas “space” suggests tradition and culture. It resists the naturalization of modern constructs such as secularized time and cultural traditions, and forces them under an analytic lens. Critical to these investigations is Saurabh Dube's appropriately insistent claim that these temporal and spatial regimes can exist in tandem and coevally, even when they are seemingly in contradiction. Among other outcomes, the volume prompts further reflection on the manner in which historiography plays a role in the formation of nationalist and modern subjectivities among nonhistorians. This essay seeks to think through the history of history as a discipline emerging during the coalescence of a hegemonic European episteme and the emergence of a popularly embraced scientism. Despite its roots in Europe long preceding modernity and its parallels in South Asia preceding British rule, history underwent a transformation when inflected through European modernity, especially the influence of empirical science paradigms. Although its emergence as a discipline promoted and employed by both the empire and the nation-state created professional historians, an expanding public sphere has meant that research into its role in fashioning modern subjectivities (including nationalist ones) must consider its reshaping and redeployment by those resisting European-originated modernity and promoting alternative modernities.     

THE USES OF WALTER: WALTER BENJAMIN AND THE COUNTERFACTUAL IMAGINATION

Many authors, both scholarly and otherwise, have asked what might have happened had Walter Benjamin survived his 1940 attempt to escape Nazi‐occupied Europe. This essay examines several implicitly or explicitly “counterfactual” thought experiments regarding Benjamin's “survival,” including Hannah Arendt's influential “Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940,” and asks why our attachment to Benjamin's story has prompted so much counterfactual inquiry. It also explores the larger question of why few intellectual historians ask explicitly counterfactual questions in their work. While counterfactuals have proven invaluable for scholars in diplomatic, military, and economic history, those writing about the history of ideas often seem less concerned with chains of events and contingency than some of their colleagues are—or they attend to contingency in a selective fashion. Thus this essay attends to the ambivalence about the category of contingency that runs through much work in intellectual history. Returning to the case of Walter Benjamin, this essay explores his own tendency to pose “what if?” questions, and then concludes with an attempt to ask a serious counterfactual question about his story. The effort to ask this question reveals one methodological advantage of counterfactual inquiry: the effort to ask such questions often serves as an excellent guide to the prejudices and interests of the historian asking them. By engaging in counterfactual thought experiments, intellectual historians could restore an awareness of sheer contingency to the stories we tell about the major texts and debates of intellectual history.     

Gendering the History of Women's Healthcare

This essay examines the genesis and continuing influence of certain core narratives in the history of western women's healthcare. Some derive from first‐wave feminism's search for models of female medical practice, an agenda that paid little attention to historical context. Second‐wave feminism, identifying a rift between pre‐modern and modern times in terms of women's medical practices, saw the pre‐modern European female healer as an exceptionally knowledgeable empiricist, uniquely responsible for women's healthcare and (particularly because of her knowledge of mechanisms to limit fertility) a victim of male persecution. Aspects of this second narrative continue subtly to effect scholarly discourse and research agendas on the history of healthcare both by and for women. This essay argues that, by seeing medical knowledge as a cultural product – something that is not static but continually re‐created and sometimes contested – we can create an epistemology of how such knowledge is gendered in its genesis, dissemination and implementation. Non‐western narratives drawn from history and medical anthropology are employed to show both the larger impact of the western feminist narratives and ways to reframe them.     

HOW NINETEENTH‐CENTURY GERMAN CLASSICISTS WROTE THE JEWS OUT OF ANCIENT HISTORY

This essay considers why Jewish antiquity largely fell outside the purview of ancient historians in the Germanies for over half a century, between 1820 and 1880, and examines the nature of those portraits that did, in fact, arise. To do so, it interrogates discussions of Jewish antiquity in this half‐century against the background of those political and national values that were consolidating across the German states. Ultimately, the article claims that ancient Jewish history did not provide a compelling model for the dominant (Protestant) German scholars of the age, which then prompted the decline of antique Judaism as a field of interest. This investigation into the political and national dimensions of ancient history both supplements previous lines of inquiry and complicates accounts that assign too much explanatory power to a regnant anti‐Judaism or anti‐Semitism in the period and place. First, the analysis considers why so little attention was granted to Jewish history by ancient historians in the first place, as opposed to its relative prominence before ca. 1820. Second, the essay examines representations of ancient Judaism as fashioned by those historians who did consider the subject in this period. Surveying works composed not only for the upper echelons of scholarship but also for adolescents, women, and the laity, it scrutinizes a series of arguments advanced and assumptions embedded in universal histories, histories of the ancient world, textbooks of history, and histories dedicated to either Greece or Rome. Finally, the article asserts the Jewish past did not conform to the values of cultural ascendancy, political autonomy, national identity, and religious liberty increasingly hallowed across the Germanies of the nineteenth century, on the one hand, and inscribed into the very enterprise of historiography, on the other. The perceived national and political failures of ancient Jews—alongside the ethnic or religious ones discerned by others—thus made antique Judaism an unattractive object of study in this period.