Anglo-American Historiography Research Articles

Klostersturm and Secularization in Central Europe: What Happened to the Libraries?

Unlike the secularization of church property--including libraries--in England during the Reformation, the far greater secularization of church and monastery libraries that took place in Catholic Europe between 1773 and the early-to-mid 1800s has received little attention in Anglo-American historiography. This essay presents an overview of mostly German-language scholarship, including many older studies, dealing with the dissolution and disposition of monastery libraries across German-speaking Europe during these decades. It also considers research suggesting that modern library science arose from efforts to manage the flood of books that came into state possession during these years.

Holy War, Crusade and "Reconquista" in recent anglo-american historiography about the Iberian Peninsula

In contemporary Western societies, who are going through a neo-romantic stage, the Crusades have led to an immense literature and a remarkable popularity. In the scientific field, this phenomenon has encouraged the debate on the ideological and cultural issues surrounding Crusade. Since that in the Iberian Peninsula had developed fights between Muslims and Christians before 1096, it is inevitable that historians have wondered about the influence of the reconquest in the origins of the crusading movement. In this paper, we critized the widespread view among Anglo-Saxon historians, according to which secular piety and spirituality were instrumental in the development of the First Crusade, and struggles carried out in the Iberian Peninsula did not influence in the extraordinary adhesion of the European nobles to this issue. In addition, other concepts that may help to explain the intensity of the response, such as “aristocratic networks,” and at the same time help to understand the weight of the Hispanic experience in this movement.

Modern Housing: Heritage and Vitality

One of the main subjects in contemporary architecture is how to deal with the physical and intellectual requirements of transforming modern housing. Joan Busquets points out in his contribution to this issue, that the special effort made by modern architects and progressive housing politics during the 20th century must be reinterpreted and followed today. Intentionally, this issue brings a special focus on the Iberoamerican world, specifically Spain, Portugal and Latin America, with the aim of relocating it in a cultural world of predominantly Anglo-American historiography. In any case, it presents a very wide spectrum, including North America, Switzerland and Great Britain. For this reason the projects are presented as case studies, both housing politics in different countries, and paradigmatic architectural examples, either positive or negative.

Continuity and Discontinuity in the Anglo-American Historiography of the Norman Conquest of the Second Half of XX century

Continuity and Discontinuity in the Anglo-American Historiography of the Norman Conquest of the Second Half of XX century

Hospital Politics in Seventeenth-Century France: The Crown, Urban Elites and the Poor (review)

Reviewed by: Hospital Politics in Seventeenth-Century France: The Crown, Urban Elites and the Poor Laurence Brockliss Tim McHugh . Hospital Politics in Seventeenth-Century France: The Crown, Urban Elites and the Poor. The History of Medicine in Context. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2007. ix + 191 pp. $99.95, £55.00 (978-0-7546-5762-0). Since 1970, when Jean-Pierre Gutton published his groundbreaking study of poverty in the generality of Lyons, there has been a continual stream of publications about the poor and their confinement in early modern France. Much of the best work has been done by anglophone historians, such as Olwen Hufton and Colin Jones, and the work under review is a further contribution to a well-established Anglo-American historiography. McHugh's focus of attention is the role of the crown and the central government in the incarceration of the able-bodied poor in hôpitaux généraux in the course of the seventeenth century. The orthodox view is that the initiative for the grand enfermement, as it is called, came from above and was part of the campaign to bring order and peace to the French state after seventy years of civil war. It is also assumed that the policy of confinement was operated uniformly. McHugh argues that the orthodoxy is wrong on both counts. By looking at the history behind the foundation of the hôpitaux généraux in Paris and in two very different provincial towns, Montpellier and Nîmes, he demonstrates that the initiative for the incarceration of the able-bodied but unemployed poor came from local lay elites and was a response to local circumstances. Thus the establishment of the hôpitaux général in 1656 in Paris was the work of the city parlementaire elite who shared the views of Counter-Reformation reformers that the poor were godless as well as idle. The catalyst, however, was not religion but the social dislocation brought about by the Frondes of 1649–53 that had brought large numbers of beggars into Paris from the countryside. Similarly, the foundation of hôpitaux généraux in Montpellier and Nîmes in 1680 and 1686 was closely connected with specific socioeconomic problems in Languedoc, which had brought increasing numbers of destitute into the town. In Montpellier and Nîmes, too, the poor were only partly confined in the new hospitals; many continued to receive outdoor relief. In Nîmes this reflected the strength of the underground Huguenot population even after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. It was accepted that inmates would undergo relentless [End Page 787] religious proselytization, and the elites running the hospital were unwilling to antagonize the Protestants, who still dominated the mercantile community. The role of the crown in the grand enfermement was in fact very limited. It facilitated the foundation of hôpitaux généraux by the edict of 1662, which called for other towns to copy what Paris had done. But it provided no funds and sometimes made it difficult for towns to levy local taxes to maintain them. Essentially, the Crown, as it always had, thought that poor relief was a local responsibility. McHugh's study is based on detailed archival study and a close and intelligent reading of some key documents. It confirms the work of a number of recent historians of the reign of Louis XIV, notably William Beik, who have emphasized the extent to which the Crown worked with rather than against local elites. Its contribution to the history of medicine is more tangential. McHugh places the hôpitaux généraux in the broader context of French hospitals and compares their activities with those of the existing hôtels-dieu that took in the sick poor. This leads him to a discussion of the medical services that became attached to more and more French hospitals from the mid-sixteenth century, and the peculiar role played by the Paris Hôtel Dieu in training surgeons. In so doing, he seeks to rescue the Paris hospital from the obloquy that has been its lot since Jacques-René Tenon's famous diatribe in the 1780s. He makes a good point that the...

Yorkshire Lasses and Their Lads: Sexuality, Sexual Customs, and Gender Antagonisms in Anglo-American Working-Class Culture

Fiction and historical tests carefully positioned in Anglo-American historiography provide new perspectives on the elusive world of female working-class sexuality. Working women are portrayed, not as victims or objects, but as active players in gender and class conflicts. Yorkshire lasses and older women used their sexuality to define their female adulthood through sexual experimentation during courtship, to discipline male aggressiveness and patriarchy, and to advance their status as working women. These antagonisms included sexually charged customs and behaviors, such as the ritual of sunning: the sexual humiliation of young men by working women, and new meanings for female agency in premarital sexual activities. The behaviors and customs of Yorkshire working-class women reveal their uses of individual and collective activities to confront on their own terms both gender and class conflicts in the family, the workplace, and the trade union. The threatening power of female sexuality exercised collectively, openly, and dramatically was a reminder to all that the private world of sexuality and the workplace were deeply intertwined but not always at the expense of women.

Was There an "Early Russian Liberalism"? Perspectives from Russian and Anglo-American Historiography

Nineteenth-century liberalism has traditionally occupied prominent in study of intellectual and political history. Presently there is an extensive historiography on liberalism, but specialist's attentive gaze will easily discover yawning gaps, foremost of which is early stage in development of liberalism, 1850s. Research into any historical phenomenon, including intellectual history, compels scholar to address problem of origins. When and how did formative process of tradition in Russia take place? What was first variant of liberalism? The answers to these questions, in my estimation, are to be found in history of mid-19th-century socio-political thought. Tradition demands that we should give liberalism's firstborn name, to show that this was initial period in history of This circumstance alone should cause us to adopt term in universal and familiar scholarly use-early liberalism. Identifying early liberalism as an independent stage will help us in constructing periodization for entire history of liberalism, whose initial pages remain to be written. This approach will also help us come to terms with liberalism by separating it from mid-19th-century radicalism and conservatism. Interest in mid-19th-century liberalism arose, most likely, in connection with study of concrete historical topics such as well-known Westernizer--Slavophile debate, Great Reforms (1860s-70s), and zemstvo movement. Yet early liberalism has hardly been considered as an independent intellectual phenomenon for very long. The genesis of liberalism has often been tied either to Westernism or to so-called liberalism and zemstvo activity. Westernism was platform for heterogeneous ideological elements, however, primarily of radical and bent. Westernizers included A. I. Herzen, V. G. Belinskii, T. N. Granovskii, K. D. Kavelin, and other thinkers who laid foundations in 1840s of both radical and traditions. Meanwhile, concept of gentry liberalism-centered around estate identity and devoid of precise meaning-has acquired little currency among intellectual historians, while zemstvo movement did not appear until 1860s. By contrast, 1850s remain an understudied period. Thus, early liberalism continues to be topic of discussion in scholarly community. The goal of this article is to study fundamental scholarly approaches to early liberalism in both and Western historiography. In historiography, two phases are evident in study of liberalism's beginning stage. In Soviet phase, which extended from mid-1950s to early 1990s, it was commonplace to acknowledge mid-1850s as formative years when liberalism became significant social trend. (1) The earliest works devoted to genesis of tradition in Russia emphasized that the further formation of ideology and its political program took place after Emperor Alexander II (1855-81) had ascended throne in a time of heightened social tension. (2) The membership of liberal family in 1850s was also established: in addition to K. D. Kavelin and B. N. Chicherin, V. P. Botkin, A. V. Druzhinin, and P. V. Annenkov were added to roster. (3) At same time, various facts entered into historiographical circulation that subsequently gained universal acceptance among specialists. In particular, intelligentsia circles in two capitals were identified as most important centers of movement that was forming in mid-19th century-the Moscow circle of A. B. Stankevich and K. D. Kavelin's group in St. Petersburg 4 Additionally, appearance of manuscript literature and its publication abroad in series of articles in Golosa iz Rossii was acknowledged as an important event and is usually referred to as Russian liberals' first public pronouncement. …

Gerald Brenan's concept of anarchism as the ‘most Hispanic thing south of the Pyrenees’

As indicated by its many editions and print runs, Gerald Brenan's The Spanish Labyrinth has become one of the most popular histories of modem Spain in the English-speaking world.1 Its depiction of the anarchist movement as ‘the most Hispanic thing south ofthe Pyrenees’ has arguably been Brenan's most influential and enduring legacy, to the extent that many scholars have uncritically accepted his romantic and impressionistic interpretation, thus perpetuating some of the more questionable premises and conclusions of his work. This paper focuses primarily on the influences that shaped Brenan's views and on the personal biases that underpin his interpretation of the Spanish anarchist movement. It argues that these influences and biases coloured his assessment of its social base, distorted its numerical strength, and overemphasised its spiritual dimensions. Nevertheless, the exotic appeal of Brenan's interpretation has exerted an extraordinary influence on Anglo-American historiography; an influence that continues to inhibit closer examination of old myths and cliches, despite the existence of a growing body of research, carried out mostly by Spanish scholars, that makes them untenable.

Power and Agency in Newfoundland and Labrador's History

IT IS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE a more important historical question than who or what actually makes history. English-Canadian historiography, like Anglo-American historiography generally, long cherished the notion that powerful elites did most of the making. The flourishing of social history since the late 1960s has meant that those old, treasured notions must take into account the importance of a popular agency in history. In the case of the writing of Newfoundland and Labrador's history, it is surprising to see that the older ideas are still alive, in the work of Jerry Bannister. Equally astonishing, Bannister's work draws on Gerald Sider's anthropological reordering of Newfoundland history. Sider's Between History and Tomorrow is ostensibly interested in the concepts of culture and class which dominated social history. However, his imposition of what Marx called a supra-historical theory of merchant capital bears little similarity to history. Although a much better researched work than Sider's, Bannister's The Rule of the Admirals argues that only the propertied classes, and their state functionary allies, are important in understanding the history of 18th-century Newfoundland. According to its title page, Sider's book is the significantly expanded and updated second edition of Culture and Class in Anthropology and History: A Newfoundland Illustration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986). The author promises that he has expanded on his original analysis of merchant capital in Newfoundland fishing communities to show its relevance in understanding the subse-

When men lost faith in reason: reflections on war and society in the twentieth century

New Perspectives of the Twentieth-Century History? The First World War: Deadlock and Hatred The Second World War and Anglo-American Historiography The Destruction of Values, 1945-1974 Doctrine as the Danger on the Utmost Edge of Hazard

Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising

Inspiration for this essay came from an influential article that Edmund S. Morgan published more than forty years ago. The American Revolution: Revisions in Need of Revising might best be classified as a think piece, reflections on the current state of eighteenth-century Anglo-American historiography.1 Morgan's observations like those advanced here -were meant to have a speculative quality, the goal being to provoke constructive debate about major interpretive issues. In that spirit he readdressed familiar questions and challenged dominant orthodoxies, suggesting how people writing about colonial society on the eve of national independence might push the field in productive new directions. In his review of the current literature, Morgan posited, among other things, that colonial American scholars had lost touch with a rapidly changing English historiography. Their basic assumptions about the character of the British Empire in the mid-eighteenth century relied on scholarship that had been completed more than a generation earlier. But during the postwar years bold new studies had appeared. According to Morgan, Sir Lewis Namier, then England's most distinguished political historian, had almost single-handedly transformed the interpretive landscape. Namier's iconoclastic writings depicted an empire governed by narrow-minded, complacent country gentlemen who defined politics almost solely as a scramble for patronage.2 Morgan noted that if Namier and his followers had correctly described the mentality of the English ruling class, then historians of late colonial America might as well take up more rewarding research topics on this side of the Atlantic

Frederick York Powell and Charles A. Beard: A Study in Anglo-American Historiography and Social Thought

Frederick York Powell and Charles A. Beard: A Study in Anglo-American Historiography and Social Thought

Oman's Muret

Previous articleNext article No AccessOman's MuretHoffman NickersonHoffman Nickerson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 6, Number 4Oct., 1931 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2849512 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1931 The Mediaeval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Laurence W. Marvin The Albigensian Crusade in Anglo-American Historiography, 1888-2013, History Compass 11, no.1212 (Dec 2013): 1126–1138.https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12122