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Citation: Lill, Percy E. Economic interpretation of history. Senior thesis, Kansas State Agricultural College, 1907. ; Morse Department of Special Collections ; Introduction: The careful student of history cannot fail to notice the tendency, quite common among historians, to overestimate the influence of great men in shaping the destinies of nations. They make the story of national life to appear as a composite biography of those who played leading roles in the drama of politics or the tragedy of war. Individuals are made masters of human destiny instead of creatures of opportunity. While the "Great men" theory, and the theory of "Moral forces" in historic interpretation are by no means to be undervalued, the contention is here made, that their importance, as historic factors, has been greatly exaggerated. A casual reader of history will find nothing whatever, in much of it, to give any clue to the reasons or causes of the changes which are chronicled. The historian who narrates the deeds of an Alexander or a Napoleon, is prone to forget the people and conditions which made their careers possible. We rarely read of the years of suffering and misery which these people underwent as a result of their country's having been drained of its resources. History tells of the fall of Napoleon, but it tells only, that his army was defeated, while he, himself, was captured and imprisoned. It does not mention the exhaustion of resources which the country suffered at the time and which made it impossible to raise men and supplies. Nor does it tell of the economic principles which he antagonized when he issued the famous Berlin and Milan decrees, that were so instrumental in alienating the people and capital of the nation from his support. This constitutes the real fall of Napoleon. Before entering into the discussion of this subject, it may be well to…

Why study the history of modern German-speaking Central Europe? If pressed to answer this question fifty years ago, a Germanist would likely have said something to the effect that one studies modern German history to trace the "German" origins of Nazism, with the broader aim of understanding authoritarianism. While the problem of authoritarianism clearly remains relevant to this day, the nation-state-centered approach to understanding it has waned, especially in light of the recent shift toward transnational and global history. The following essay focuses on the issue of authoritarianism, asking whether the study of German history is still relevant to authoritarianism. It begins with a review of two conventional approaches to understanding authoritarianism in modern German history, and then thinks about it in a different way through G. W. F. Hegel in an effort to demonstrate the vibrancy of German intellectual history for exploring significant and global issues such as authoritarianism.

This is a short and succinct summary of the unique position of Roman law in European culture by one of the world's leading legal historians. Peter Stein's masterly study assesses the impact of Roman law in the ancient world, and its continued unifying influence throughout medieval and modern Europe. Roman Law in European History is unparalleled in lucidity and authority, and should prove of enormous utility for teachers and students (at all levels) of legal history, comparative law and European Studies. Award-winning on its appearance in German translation, this English rendition of a magisterial work of interpretive synthesis is an invaluable contribution to the understanding of perhaps the most important European legal tradition of all.

"Americans have vigorously debated and interpreted the role of slavery in American life for as long as enslaved people and their descendants have lived in North America. Contemporaries and later writers and scholars up to the present day have explored the meaning of slavery as a system of labor, an ideological paradox in a 'free' political and social order, a violent mode of racial exploitation, and a global system of human commodification and trafficking. To fully understand the various ways in which slavery has been depicted and described is a difficult task. Like any other important historical issue, this requires a thorough grasp of the underlying history, methodological developments over time, and the contemporary politics and culture of historians' own times. And the case of slavery is further complicated, of course, by changes in the legal and political status of African Americans in the 20th and 21st centuries. Slavery: Interpreting American History, like other volumes in the Interpreting American History series, surveys interpretations of important historical eras and events, examining both the intellectual shifts that have taken place and various catalysts that drove those shifts. While the depth of Americans' historiographical engagement with slavery is not surprising given the turbulent history of race in America, the range and sheer volume of writing on the subject, spanning more than two centuries, can be overwhelming. Editors Aaron Astor and Thomas Buchanan, together with a team of expert contributors, highlight here the key debates and conceptual shifts that have defined the field. The volume will be an e specially helpful guide for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, professional historians new to the field, and other readers interested in the study of American slavery"--

In this chapter, I explore the role of history in Hollywood musicals, from the 1920s through until the present. I intend to begin with a wide-ranging survey of the literature about the genre, highlighting a number of historiographical problems raised by musicals, and then focus in detail on how we might conceive of history in several of the most influential films, including The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Singin' in the Rain and The Sound of Music. Whether we see them as artefacts, or as works of art, Hollywood musicals present unique challenges for historians. Part of the problem is that when we compare them to the western, the war film, or the biopic, the Hollywood musical seems to be the most unhistorical of film genres, playing fast and loose with the facts. The other related issue is that musicals on film are primarily celebrations of singing and dancing; there appears to be little room for the complex narratives or nuanced interpretation we associate with historical insight. What I want to suggest, however, is that Hollywood musicals are neither just entertainment nor are they outside of history. Precisely because of their status as mass-cultural events, with huge global audiences, they frequently take up—explicitly and implicitly—many of the same historical and theoretical themes that we find in modernist art forms, as well as in much political and social analysis. Some of these themes are industrialisation, urbanisation and commodity culture, race and ethnicity, individual and collective identity, nationalism and imperialism, political struggle, popular versus elite, authenticity and nostalgia, and remembering and forgetting. In order to understand how Hollywood musicals develop these themes, and why students and teachers would want to take their historical meaning seriously, my broader claim is that Hollywood musicals enable us to conceptualise the historical imagination in ways that a factual or literal account of the past is unable to do. What I mean by this is that in these films there is a deep structural, or latent, content that is generally poetic and specifically mythic in nature. They speak to and are part of our changing experiences of the past, as well as envisaging and redefining some ideal relationship to the present. My approach in this chapter therefore is that Hollywood musicals do more than just reflect our sense of the past, or distract us from the reality of historical events, but make and remake what we know that past to be about and what we think it means.

In this book Joan Wallach Scott discusses the role history has played as an arbiter of right and wrong and of those who claim to act in its name—"in the name of history." Scott investigates three different instances in which repudiation of the past was conceived as a way to a better future: the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996, and the ongoing movement for reparations for slavery in the United States. Scott shows how in these cases history was not only used to explain the past but to produce a particular future. Yet both past and future were subject to the political realities of their time and defined in terms of moral absolutes, often leading to deep contradictions. These three instances demonstrate that history is not an impartial truth, rather its very meaning is constructed by those who act in its name

A masterfully researched and compelling history of Iran from 1501 to 2009 This history of modern Iran is not a survey in the conventional sense but an ambitious exploration of the story of a nation. It offers a revealing look at how events, people, and institutions are shaped by currents that sometimes reach back hundreds of years. The book covers the complex history of the diverse societies and economies of Iran against the background of dynastic changes, revolutions, civil wars, foreign occupation, and the rise of the Islamic Republic. Abbas Amanat combines chronological and thematic approaches, exploring events with lasting implications for modern Iran and the world. Drawing on diverse historical scholarship and emphasizing the twentieth century, he addresses debates about Iran's culture and politics. Political history is the driving narrative force, given impetus by Amanat's decades of research and study. He layers the book with discussions of literature, music, and the arts; ideology and religion; economy and society; and cultural identity and heritage.

Die Geschichte der Schwarzen grundlegend erklärt.Warum nannte man Ghana das Land des Goldes? Wer waren die blauen Männer aus Mali? Was wurde auf der Berliner Konferenz beschlossen? Wie kam es zu den Unruhen in Brixton? Das innovative Nachschlagewerk beantwortet Fragen über die Geschichte der Schwarzen mit informativen Diagrammen & originellen Grafiken IBM klar und leicht verständlich. Von den frühen Bantu-Völkerwanderungen über die Sklaverei bis hin zur Black Lives Matter Bewegung. Der neue Titel aus der DK Erfolgsreihe Big Ideas! Das grosse Black-History-Buch zum Nachschlagen IBM Zusammenhänge, Theorien & Biografien abwechslungsreich und einfach aufbereitet: Einzigartig: ein globales Nachschlagewerk zu den wichtigsten Meilensteinen der Geschichte der Schwarzen innerhalb und ausserhalb Afrikas Umfassend: von der Wiege der Menschheit über den Trans-Atlantik Sklavenhandel, die Harlem-Renaissance und die Dekolonialisierung bis zur Black-Lives-Matter-Bewegung Informativ: mit zahlreichen Porträts herausragender Persönlichkeiten wie Rosa Parks, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King sowie Nelson Mandela und Alice Walker Fundiert: geschrieben von einem Expertenteam von Autor*innen aus verschiedenen Wissensgebieten IBM Geschichte, Anthropologie, Arabistik, Afrikanistik, Religionswissenschaften, Kunst, Kultur.Topaktuelle Gesellschafts-Debatte: Black History entdecken und verstehen! Ein einzigartiger Überblick über die Geschichte der Schwarzen jetzt in der DK-Erfolgsreihe Big Ideas! (Verlagsinformation)

WHAT WE MAY BE WITNESSING IS NOT JUST THE END OF THE COLD WAR, OR THE PASSING OF A PARTICULAR PERIOD OF POSTWAR HISTORY, BUT THE END OF HISTORY AS SUCH: THAT IS, THE END POINT OF MANDKIND'S IDEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION AND THE UNIVERSALIZATION OF WESTERN LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AS THE FINAL FORM OF HUMAN GOVERNMENT. THE STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION, THE WILLINGNESS TO RISK ONE'S LIFE FOR A PURELY ABSTRACT GOAL, THE WORLDWIDE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE THAT CALLED FORTH DARING, COURAGE, IMAGINATION, AND IDEALISM, WILL BE REPLACED BY ECONOMIC CALCULATTION, THE ENDLESS SOLVING OF TECHNICAL PROBLEMS, ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS, AND THE SATISFACTION OF SOPHISTICATED CONSUMER DEMANDS. IN THE POST-HISTORICAL PERIOD THERE WILL BE NEITHER ART NOR PHILOSOPHY, JUST THE PERPETUAL CARETAKING OF THE MUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY. PERHAPS THIS VERY PROSPECT OF CENTURIES OF BOREDOM AT THE END OF HISTORY WILL SERVE TO GET HISTORY STARTED ONCE AGAIN.