Historiography in the Twentieth Century
From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge
Sales Date: 2005-02-28
A broad perspective on historical thought and writing, with a new epilogue.
In this book, now published in 10 languages, a preeminent intellectual historian examines the profound changes in ideas about the nature of history and historiography. Georg G. Iggers traces the basic assumptions upon which historical research and writing have been based, and describes how the newly emerging social sciences transformed historiography following World War II. The discipline's greatest challenge may have come in the last two decades, when postmodern ideas forced a reevaluation of the relationship of historians to their subject and questioned the very possibility of objective history. Iggers sees the contemporary discipline as a hybrid, moving away from a classical, macrohistorical approach toward microhistory, cultural history, and the history of everyday life. The new epilogue, by the author, examines the movement away from postmodernism towards new social science approaches that give greater attention to cultural factors and to the problems of globalization.
Preface and Acknowledgements
I. Introduction
II. The Early Phase: The Emergence of History as a Professional Discipline
1. The Middle Phase: The Challenge of the Social Sciences
2. History and the Challenge of Postmodernism
3. Epilogue: A Retrospect from the Twenty-First Century
4. Notes
5. Suggested Readings
6. Index
GEORG G. IGGERS is an internationally recognized authority on intellectual history and comparative international historiography. He is the author of New Directions in Historiography (1975, 1985) and The German Conception of History (1968, 1983), both published by Wesleyan University Press. Iggers is Distinguished Professor of History emeritus at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
"No one looking for a well-informed introduction to some of the key views of history adopted by professional historians over the last century or so...could find a better one than this."
~Richard J. Evans, History and Theory
""The new book has all the virtues one associates with Georg Iggers – lucidity, detachment, balance and the ability to reveal the relation between trends in historical writing and their political and cultural contexts.""
~Peter Burke, Cambridge University
""The book has all the virtues one associates with Georg Iggers—lucidity, detachment, balance, and the ability to reveal the relation between trends in historical writing and their political and cultural contexts.""
~Peter Burke, Cambridge University
"The book has all the virtues one associates with Georg Iggers—lucidity, detachment, balance, and the ability to reveal the relation between trends in historical writing and their political and cultural contexts."
~Peter Burke, Cambridge University
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