Writing History: Theory and Practice

Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
Contributors
Introduction to the third edition
Part 1: Rankeanism and the professionalization of history
	Chapter 1: The new scientificity in historical writing around 1800
		1.1 Experientia aliena
		1.2 The rise of useful knowledge
		1.3 Making and knowing: The world as a machine
		1.4 The rise of empirical knowledge
		1.5 History as human science
		1.6 Some conclusions
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 2: The Rankean tradition in British historiography (1840 to 1950)
		2.1 The historical writings of Leopold von Ranke
		2.2 The writing of history in nineteenth-century Britain
		2.3 Acton, Stubbs and Rankeanism
		2.4 The very partial triumph of Dryasdust (I): Herbert Butterfield (1900–79)
		2.5 The very partial triumph of Dryasdust (II): Namier and Namierization
		2.6 Conclusion
		Notes
	Chapter 3: The professionalization and institutionalization of history
		3.1 Conditions and motives
		3.2 The nationalization and internationalization of history
		3.3 A global discipline? Expansion and crisis after 1945
		3.4 Conclusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
Part 2: The social turn
	Chapter 4: Marxist historiography
		4.1 Classical Marxism: The materialist conception of history
		4.2 Convergences and openings
		4.3 The British Marxist historians: Shaping an intellectual culture
		4.4 Maturity and diffusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 5: History and the social sciences
		5.1 Enlightenment, science and historicism
		5.2 Positivism
		5.3 Social theory and history: British limitations
		5.4 Staatswissenschaften and Max Weber
		5.5 Durkheim and structural sociology
		5.6 The new history and social theory in America
		5.7 Structuralism in the French social sciences and history
		5.8 Talcott Parsons and structural-functionalism in America
		5.9 Modernization theory
		5.10 Conclusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 6: The Annales
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
Part 3: The cultural turn
	Chapter 7: Poststructuralist and linguistic methods
		7.1 Postmodernism and poststructuralism
		7.2 Structuralist linguistics
		7.3 Poststructuralism: Textual and worldly
		7.4 Derrida, deconstruction and history
		7.5 The critique of ‘modernist’ historiography
		7.6 Textual postmodernism: History as postmodern art
		7.7 Worldly poststructuralism and historical writing
		7.8 Method
		7.9 Conclusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 8: From women’s history to gender history
		8.1 Feminist historians and the ‘new’ social history
		8.2 From women’s history to gender history
		8.3 Gender history and poststructuralism
		8.4 Gender and history in a post-poststructuralist world
		8.5 Conclusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 9: Postcolonial history
		9.1 Subaltern studies
		9.2 Orientalism and the ‘Age of Said’
		9.3 Hybridity and creolization
		9.4 The ‘imperial turn’ and the new imperial history
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
Part 4: The eclecticism of contemporary historical writing
	Chapter 10: Psychoanalysis and psychohistorical methods
		10.1 Some Freudian concepts
		10.2 British object relations and Melanie Klein
		10.3 Lacanian psychoanalysis and feminist modifications
		10.4 Prospects for a new psychohistory
		10.5 Conclusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 11: Historical anthropology
		11.1 The late convergence of historical science and anthropology
		11.2 Anthropology as an interdisciplinary centre of gravity
		11.3 From human nature to human knowledge
		11.4 Self-descriptions and practices
		11.5 The historicality of ‘human nature’
		11.6 Traces, things, symmetrical anthropology
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 12: Environmental and animal history
		12.1 An environmental frontier in American national history
		12.2 Ecological histories
		12.3 A cultural turn
		12.4 Towards a more-than-human history
		12.5 Animal histories
		12.6 Environmental history in South Asia
		12.7 Conclusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 13: History and material culture
		13.1 Objects, meaning and history
		13.2 The fall and rise of material culture
		13.3 How to approach an object? Handling a Tudor cap
		13.4 Conclusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 14: Comparative and transnational history
		14.1 Different kinds of comparisons
		14.2 The promises of comparative history
		14.3 Problems and pitfalls in comparative history
		14.4 Transnational history and comparison
		14.5 The practice of comparative and transnational history
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
Part 5: Some case studies
	Chapter 15: Political history
		15.1 High politics and the history of ideas
		15.2 Elections and popular politics
		15.3 New political histories
		15.4 Reintegrating political history?
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 16: Social history
		16.1 A genealogy of pendulum swings
		16.2 Theoretical cornerstones of ‘traditional’ social history
		16.3 Social history’ under attack
		16.4 What future?
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 17: Cultural history
		17.1 What is culture?
		17.2 Social histories of culture
		17.3 Making meaning: Anthropology and microhistory
		17.4 The linguistic turn and the New Cultural History
		17.5 Cultural history now: Workarounds, intermingling and gains
		17.6 What is cultural history?
		17.6.1 History, representation and fiction
		17.6.2 Subjectivity and experience
		17.7 Conclusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 18: Economic history
		18.1 Economic theory and history: Two sorts of approaches
		18.2 The history of economic history: origins
		18.3 The history of economic history: expansion and diversity
		18.4 The history of economic history: The 1950s and 1960s
		18.5 The ‘new economic history’
		18.6 Achievements and problems of econometric history
		18.7 Economic history since the 1980s: The rejection of Marxian analysis and the challenge of postmodernism and poststructuralism
		18.8 Economics and history in the twenty-first century
		18.9 Economic history and economics: the challenge of alternative economics
		18.10 Economic history: contrasting examples and a conclusion
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
	Chapter 19: Intellectual history/history of ideas
		19.1 Introduction
		19.2 Antecedents and precursors
		19.3 Theory 1: Aims and purposes
		19.4 Theory 2: Methods
		19.5 Practice 1: Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism
		19.6 Practice 2: Annabel Patterson, Early Modern Liberalism
		19.7 Conclusion: The future
		Notes
		Guide to further reading
Glossary
Index