The Oxford History of Historical Writing. Volume 5: Historical Writing since 1945, ed. Axel Schneider and Daniel Woolf

Abstract

This is the final volume of the Oxford History of Historiographical Writing (OHHW) series; it acts as a sequel to Volume 4, 1800–1945, which covered the classical, ‘historicist’ and national era. I shall review this volume as an organic whole but, once questions of the general outline have been treated, I will consider it in the light of the preceding volumes, paying particular attention to the theoretical foundations which underpin the entire architecture of the OHHW. This volume is arranged according to three circles and comprises thirty-two chapters in all. We find an outer ‘theoretical circle’, then a circle comprising several methodological or material ‘field descriptions’, and finally an inner ‘circle of nations’ (i.e. national schools of history). It goes without saying that these three circles are not given a common centre, they are just demarked to serve as overlapping areas. The inner circle is devoted to the still indispensable notion of the ‘nation’ as the driving force behind historiography. Yet this group of twenty-one essays is not constructed as a series of affirmative self-expressions. Either we see foreign authors, mostly Germans, writing an account of other nations, or we observe various smaller nations being crowded into one regional or even continental compartment (Scandinavia, the Balkans, Africa). Thus a nationalistic perspective on national achievements or shortcomings is avoided, yet many local colours have faded away, for example the intrinsic relationship between local language and local histories. Within this circle quality varies. Patricia Pelley gives a precise and well-structured survey of Vietnamese historiography, filling her meagre twelve pages with the utmost economy. Joel Horowitz, in contrast, with eighteen pages at his disposal on Argentine historiography, does not even mention the important issue of that country’s interaction with the rest of Latin America. Understandably, the opulent national traditions of the major European players in the historiographical field at times suffer from violent distortions. Yet this is accomplished with instructive differences. Michael Bentley’s humorous and at times biting report on British historical writing reveals that he is quite aware of the impossibility of his task yet he clearly wants to provide good reading at least. Indeed, he proves the exception rather than the rule, as most of the authors seem to have been weighed down by the formidable task of compression. Moreover, inside this ‘circle of the nations’, explicit remarks on the writing of history itself are made rarely, while the history of historiography is completely absent.