Search results

History and Wonder is a refreshing new take on the idea of history that tracks the entanglement of history and philosophy over time through the key idea of wonder. From Ancient Greek histories and wonder works, to Islamic curiosities and Chinese strange histories, through to European historical cabinets of curiosity and on to histories that grapple with the horrors of the Holocaust, Marnie Hughes-Warrington unpacks the ways in which historians throughout the ages have tried to make sense of the world, and to change it. This book considers histories and historians across time and space, including the Ancient Greek historian Polybius, the medieval texts by historians such as Bede in England and Ibn Khaldun in Islamic Historiography, and the more recent works by Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray and Ranajit Guha among others. It explores the different ways in which historians have called upon wonder to cross boundaries between the past and the present, the universal and the particular, the old and the new, and the ordinary and the extraordinary. Promising to both delight and unsettle, it shows how wonder works as the beginning of historiography. Accessible, engaging and wide-ranging, History as Wonder provides an original addition to the field of historiography that is ideal for those both new to and familiar with the study of history.

Hester Lynch Piozzi's Retrospection is little discussed in the historiography of world history. This article explores Piozzi's composition, publication, and repeated reinscription of the work from the mid 1780s to her death in 1821, and locates it within her varied efforts at describing a social index of affinity and cohesion. Drawing out this dimension of the work highlights the opportunity to connect textual annotation with another nineteenth-century textual expression of social relationships—photography—and thereby provides an avenue to expand John Sutton's research on physical "exograms" through a consideration of desired as well as actual relationships. In this way, Retrospection —and world histories—are seen as opportunities for authors to bind themselves to the "middlebrow" communities of friend-readers, and thus as works of far "smaller compass" than traditional analyses of imperial and national themes would suggest.

The idea of universal history is conventionally associated with nineteenth-century writers and the project of imperialism. This article presents an expanded definition of universal history, one that covers unified histories of the known world or universe, histories that aim to illuminate universal principles, histories of the world unified by the workings of a single mind, and histories of the world that have passed down through unbroken lines of transmission. Encompassed in the broader range of this definition are works by authors who are conventionally seen as marginalized by nineteenth-century historiography. Using the works of two African American authors—Robert Benjamin Lewis and William Wells Brown—as a case study, this article highlights the complexities and cross currents of universal history writing by those on the margins, and the importance of voluntary associations in the production and circulation of their texts.

History from Loss challenges the common thought that ""history is written by the winners"" and explores how history-makers in different times and places across the globe have written histories from loss, even when this has come at the threat to their own safety.

A distinguished group of historians from around the globe offer an introduction to different history-makers' lives and ideas, and important extracts from their works which highlight various meanings of loss: from physical ailments to social ostracism, exile to imprisonment, and from dispossession to potential execution. Throughout the volume consideration of the information ""bubbles"" of different times and places helps to show how information has been weaponized to cause harm. In this way, the text helps to put current debates about the biases and weaponization of platforms such as social media into global and historical perspectives. In combination, the chapters build a picture of history from loss which is global, sustained, and anything but a simple mirror of history made by victors. The volume also includes an Introduction and Afterword, which draw out the key meanings of history from loss and which offer ideas for further exploration.

History from Loss provides an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and general readers who wish to put current debates on bias, the politicization of history, and threats to history-makers into global and historical perspectives.

"This book introduces students to ethics in historiography through an exploration of how historians in different times and places have explained how history ought to be written and how those views relate to different understandings of ethics.

No two histories are the same. The book argues that this is a good thing because the differences between histories are largely a matter of ethics. Looking to histories made across the world and from ancient times until today, readers are introduced to a wide variety of approaches to the ethics of history, including well-known ethical approaches, such as the virtue ethics of universal historians, and utilitarian approaches to collective biography writing while also discovering new and emerging ideas in the ethics of history. Through these approaches, readers are encouraged to challenge their ideas about whether humans are separate from other living and non-living things and whether machines and animals can write histories. The book looks to the fundamental questions posed about the nature of history making by Indigenous history makers and asks whether the ethics at play in the global variety of histories might be better appreciated in professional codes of conduct and approaches to research ethics management.

Opening up the topic of ethics to show how historians might have viewed ethics differently in the past, the book requires no background in ethics or history theory and is open to all of those with an interest in how we think about good histories."

1. Good Histories2. Universal Histories and Virtue Ethics3. Collective Biographies and Utilitarian Ethics4. Philosophical World Histories and Deontological Ethics5. Little World Histories and Sentiment Ethics6. Global Histories and Cosmopolitan Ethics7. Microhistories and Social Contract Ethics8. Slice Histories and Infinite Ethics9. Big Histories and Information Ethics10. Non-Human Histories and Entanglement Ethics11. Indigenous Histories and Place Ethics with Anne Martin12. One Angel? Scaling the Ethics of History