Across Cultural Borders

This innovative work offers the first comprehensive transcultural history of historiography. The contributors transcend a Eurocentric approach not only in terms of the individual historiographies they assess, but also in the methodologies they use for comparative analysis. Moving beyond the traditional national focus of historiography, the book offers a genuinely comparative consideration of the commonalities and differences in writing history. Distinguishing among distinct cultural identities, the contributors consider the ways and means of intellectual transfers and assess the strength of local historiographical traditions as they are challenged from outside. The essays explore the question of the utility and the limits of conceptions of modernism that apply Western theories of development to non-Western cultures. Warning against the dominant tendency in recent historiographies of non-Western societies to define these predominantly in relation to Western thought, the authors show the extent to which indigenous traditions have been overlooked. The key question is how the triad of industrialization, modernization, and the historicization process, which was decisive in the development of modern academic historiography, also is valid beyond Europe. Illustrating just how deeply suffused history writing is with European models, the book offers a broad theoretical platform for exploring the value and necessity of a world historiography beyond Eurocentrism.

This ambitious work offers the first comprehensive transcultural history of historiography. The contributors transcend a Eurocentric approach not only in terms of the individual historiographies they assess but also in the methodologies they use for comparative analysis. Moving beyond the traditional national focus of historiography, the volume offers a genuinely comparative consideration of the commonalities and differences of history writing in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Distinguishing among distinct cultural identities, the contributors consider the ways and means of intellectual transfers and assess the strength of local historiographical traditions as they are challenged from outside. Illustrating just how deeply suffused history writing is with European models, the book offers a broad theoretical platform for exploring the value and necessity of a world historiography beyond Eurocentrism.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Provincializing Europe: Historiography as a Transcultural Concept Chapter 2 Historiography and Cultural Identity Chapter 3 The Authenticy of a Copy: Problems of Nineteenth-Century Spanish-American Historiography Chapter 4 In Search of Lost Identity: South Africa Between Great Trek and Colonial Nationalism, 1830-1910 Chapter 5 India's Connection to History: The Discipline and the Relation between Center and Periphery Chapter 6 Historiography on a Continent without History: Anglophone West Africa, 1880s-1940s Chapter 7 Alternative National Histories in Japan: Yamaji Aizan and Academic Historiography Chapter 8 Across Cultural Borders Chapter 9 German Historicism and Scientific History in China, 1900-1940 Chapter 10 Transfer and Interaction: France and Francophone African Historiography Chapter 11 The Historical Discipline in the United States: Following the German Model? Chapter 12 The Politics of the Republic of Learning: International Scientific Congresses in Europe, the Pacific Rim, and Latin America Chapter 13 Beyond Eurocentrism: The Politics of History in a Global Age Chapter 14 History without a Center? Reflections on Eurocentrism Chapter 15 Africa and the Construction of a Grand Narrative in World History Chapter 16 Modernity and Asia in the Study of Chinese History Chapter 17 Comparing Cultures in Intercultural Communication