Read more
What is the point of history? Why has the study of the past been so important for so long?
Why History? A History contemplates two and a half thousand years of historianship to establish how very different historians have conceived their activities, and to show the purposes that their work has served.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Classical History between Epic and Rhetoric
- 2: History, Faith, Fortuna
- 3: The 'Middle Age'
- 4: Renaissances and Reformations
- 5: Society, Nature, Emancipation
- 6: Nationalism, Historicism, Crisis
- 7: Turns to the Present
- 8: Justifying History Today
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Donald Bloxham has taught at Edinburgh University since 2001. He was appointed Professor of Modern History in 2007 and given the established Richard Pares Chair of History in 2011. Beyond his work on the history and philosophy of the discipline of history, he is a specialist in the study of genocide and the punishment of perpetrators of genocide. His book, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford, 2005), won the Raphael Lemkin Prize for genocide scholarship. He has also been a recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize and is currently on a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.
Summary
What is the point of history? Why has the study of the past been so important for so long? Why History? A History contemplates two and a half thousand years of historianship to establish how very different historians have conceived their activities, and to show the purposes that their work has served.
Additional text
Bloxham's study is outstanding in its grasp of two and a half Millennia of historiography, and he traces his subject through time and space seemingly effortlessly ... Why History? is a remarkable contribution to the History of historical writing that transcends traditional accounts
