European Historiography Research Articles

Археологія та етнос: методологічні аспекти реконструкції слов’янського етногенезу

Abstract. Introduction. Contemporary historiography in Eastern Europe is still held captive by a significant number of historical myths. One of them is as if the real existence from the Bronze Age of the so-called «ethnos of Slavs». In the article are analyzed the methodological aspects of the Slavic ethnogenesis reconstruction proposed by contemporary archaeologists within post-Soviet historiography.Purpose. One factor in the extension of the Soviet scientific tradition today is the reluctance of a large part of scholars to rethink the methodological and theoretical foundations of such ethnohistorical reconstructions. We are trying to show this inertia of archeologists in today’s futile attempts to reconstruct the «ethnogenesis of Slavs».Results. It has been determined the weak level of modern understanding by archeologists of the phenomenon of polydisciplinarity and impossibility to applicate the integrated approach in the field of Slavs ethnogenesis at the present stage. It has been described the incorrectness of the methods in archaeological study in modern Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian historiography. It is noted that archaeological culture never reflects the ethnic identity of fossil antiquities in a wide range. Thatїs why, the verification of the ethnohistorical past by means of archaeological materials and techniques is inaccurate and most likely wrong. The methodological arsenal of archaeology is quite vulnerable and cannot give clear, consistent conclusions about the ethnic identity of the members of particular archaeological cultures.The greatest theoretical problem of archeology is the still unexplained correlation of concepts and phenomena such as «archeological culture» and «ethnos». Attempts to impose an archeological culture on a particular ethnic group are also unjustified. The methodological problem remains the disregarding of living culture specifics by archaeologists (so-called «ethnoarchaeology»). The attitude towards this feature of contemporary East-Slavic historiographies by Western experts and archeologists has also been analysed. Their concepts can significantly improve the heuristic possibilities of Eastern European historiographies in exploring the ethnic past Eastern Slavs communities.Conclusion. Contemporary archeology should change its attitude to methodological and theoretical orientations as soon as possible, in particular in an interdisciplinary format.

Child's Play: Multi-Sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan ed. by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall

Reviewed by: Child's Play: Multi-Sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan ed. by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall Mark Jones (bio) Child's Play: Multi-Sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan. Edited by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall. University of California Press, Oakland CA, 2017. x, 302 pages. $39.95, paper. Open Access. The essays in this edited volume present a series of snapshots of Japanese childhood, from the worlds of acolytes in medieval monasteries to aspiring young soccer players during the "lost decades." Not all contributions deal [End Page 544] directly with child's play, as the title seems to suggest, but all do attempt to reinvigorate a floundering field—the history of childhood in Japan. French Annales historian Phillipe Ariès birthed the field known as the history of childhood. Ariès's classic text L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime was published in 1960 and translated into English in 1962 with the title Centuries of Childhood. Ariès's central conceit was captured in the phrase "the discovery of childhood." This phrase posited that at a particular point in the past—the seventeenth century, in Europe's case—the child came to be seen as a being different in nature and need from the adult. The book and the phrase quickly inspired European and American historians. Their goal was less to recreate a child's-eye view of the world and more to explore the adult actors who distinguished the child from the adult, created a public understanding of the child's nature, and built the child's world. These historians adopted the methodology known as social constructionism, and they intertwined the history of the adults who constructed modern childhood, from child psychologists and highly educated mothers to children's authors and toymakers, with a series of important historical transformations in the family, education, consumer culture, science, mass media, class formation, and state building. Despite its prominence in American and European historiography dating back to the 1970s, the history of childhood only appeared in Englishlanguage scholarship on Japan starting in the late 1990s. The monographs of Kathleen Uno (1999), David Ambaras (2005), and Mark Jones (2010) hewed closely to the methodological approach of social constructionism, and together they illuminated the adult interests at work in the development of child day-care centers (Uno), the policing of juvenile delinquency (Ambaras), and the birth of a middle-class version of childhood (Jones).1 After the publication of these three monographs, the following decade witnessed only sporadic interest in children's history. The field appeared to be fading until this volume appeared. Frühstück and Walthall have gathered a group of scholars interested in deepening our knowledge of the construction of Japanese childhood and also taking up thorny and unresolved issues in the field of children's history. A number of solid essays in this volume follow the established methodology of social constructionism, focusing on the adult construction of the child's image and world. Jinnō Yuki examines the material and philosophical struggles of two Taisho-era interior designers, Kogure Joichi and Moritani [End Page 545] Nobuo, to design a child's room in the home that centered on the needs of the child as opposed to those of the adult. In a point that echoes a similar observation by historian Gary Cross in the case of American childhood toys, Jinnō asserts that the ideology of child-centeredness was pivotal in giving birth to a child-centered industry that catered exclusively to children and, thus, contributed to the gradual process of expelling adults from the child's material, spatial, and social world. Harald Salomon's essay on the golden age of childhood film in wartime Japan explores how popular films and their directors shaped the public understanding of the child's nature. Films such as Tsubota Jōji's 1937 Kaze no naka no kodomotachi (Children in the wind) promoted a psychologically nuanced, realistic portrait of the child, whose essence was associated with resilience and cheerfulness as much as fragility and struggle. Salomon concludes that these sunny films, and their corresponding vision of childhood, were...

“The Crimean war in the collective memory”: modern Western European historiography of the Crimean campaign of 1853-1856

The article analyzes the modern Western historiography of the Crimean war of 1853-1856. The authors refer to problems and issues that prevail in the French and British studies of the events of 1853-1856. In the Western historiographical tradition based on researches of the XIX-XX centuries, still remain insufficiently explored aspects of the Crimean war, for example, the siege of Sevastopol, military operations in the Baltic and White seas, in the Pacific ocean, in the Caucasus. Despite the obvious trend existing in modern European science, associated with the study of the Crimean campaign in the context of the first pan-European war, the attention of historians of Western Europe is more focused on the study of the First world war. However, in recent years there has been a clear interest of French, English and Italian authors to the Black sea region, to the history of the Crimea and, as a consequence, to the Crimean campaign. Generalization of modern experience of historiography of the Crimean war allows to define prospects for further researches.

The Mayflower and the Slave Ship: Pilgrim-Puritan Origins in the Antebellum Black Imagination

AbstractThis essay argues that antebellum black writers claimed America in part by reimagining a national rhetoric of Pilgrim-Puritan origins. Various connections have been drawn between the Puritans and early black writers, including a revised tradition of typological identification with Israel, captivity narratives, and, most frequently, the “black jeremiad.” In addition to these scholarly genealogies, black writers struggled more directly with their spiritual genealogies in an effort to reconcile a growing investment in American and Protestant identity with an emergent sense of black roots. Since Paul Gilroy, a growing number of scholars have examined the importance of origins for antebellum black writers in conversation with dominant Euro-American traditions, yet American Protestantism remains a minor presence in these studies. If early black studies of antiquity, biblical history, and European historiography, for example, were crucial to an emergent sense of black roots, they intertwined in complex ways with black writers’ investment in American Protestantism and its vision of history. Ultimately, black writers further radicalized abolitionists’ revolutionary Puritan genealogy as they made it their own, expanding this spiritual lineage to sanction fugitive slaves, black revolutionaries, and eventually the black troops of the American Civil War, imagined as the culmination of a sacred destiny that was both black and American, traceable to the Mayflower and the slave ship alike.

Production, Circulation, and Accumulation: The Historiographies of Capitalism in China and South Asia

In light of the emergent “history of capitalism” field in Euro-American history, this article reviews and critically situates how the category “capitalism” has been debated within the historiographies of China and South Asia. In discussions paralleling European historiography, Sinologists and Indologists explored whether the “prime mover” of capitalism was changes in production or in circulation. The example of South Asian studies shows how, from the 1960s through the 1980s, the dominant production-centered approach—drawing upon Marxist theory—produced stories of economic “failure” in Asia. The example of Chinese history since the 1990s points to the resurgence of a Smithian circulation-centered approach that challenges the Eurocentric story of failure. Each of these approaches emerged out of distinct eras of capital accumulation in the twentieth century: mid-century state-supported industrialization and late-century deregulated globalization. The tension between these approaches points towards a more integrative reinterpretation that sees the core dynamics of capitalism as a cyclical process of “capital accumulation,” one that integrates both production and circulation-centered approaches and also challenges Eurocentric histories of capitalism. This article's conclusion provides speculative thoughts on writing the histories of capitalism for China and South Asia today.

CHALCHIUHNENETZIN—BETWEEN MYTH AND HISTORY: SYMBOLIC ASPECTS OF THE AZTEC NOBLEWOMEN OF THIS NAME

AbstractThe aim of this work is to approach the strategies of transmitting knowledge of the past among the Nahua of the early Colonial period. The alphabetical sources of that epoch present a specific mix of contemporary European historiography and pre-Hispanic Nahua cultural memory. This article focuses on the second aspect, namely cultural memory that was a constant dialogue between the historical facts and the mythical structures into which these facts were “accommodated” to become culturally meaningful. The article analyzes narratives of two Aztec princesses called Chalchiuhnenetzin. The women named Chalchiuhnenetzin appear in two different historical contexts but, as shown in the analysis, the morphology of both stories and the role played by both women are quite similar. Thus, they can be regarded as examples of cultural re-elaboration of history by predominantly oral cultures.

Usos de la guerra y organización militar en la Castilla del siglo XIV

Traditionally, European historiography has considered the fourteenth century as a time of transition between medieval and modern times as far as war tactics are concerned. However, the analysis of war practices in Castilla-Leon during that period does not present any clearly discernible transformations. Nevertheless, on the organizational level it is possible to detect some phenomena that demonstrate the existence of a long and slow process of centralization and reinforcement of military resources in the hands of the monarchy. These phenomena will be the necessary basis for the changes in military use that will become fully visible at the end of the fifteenth century and at the beginning of the sixteenth.

Serbian silver at the Venetian mint in the first half of the fifteenth century

This paper is an attempt to learn more about the inflow of Serbian silver into the Venetian mint based on three account statements sent from Venice to the Kabuzic (Caboga) brothers in Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and on the sets of contemporary data published and discussed by Alan M. Stahl. A reference to the Venetian mint occurs in 1431 in a letter of Christophore Alberto, a citizen of Ragusa, but it is only the fourth page of an extensive account statement drawn by the Venetian Nicolo Grioni in 1435 that refers almost entirely to the mint?s mode of operation. It contains the name of ser Aluvisse, whose responsibility was to add an alloy to silver bullion, and of ser Rafael Barisson maser ala zecha, a mint master. An account statement presented by Marco di Stai to the Kabuzic brothers in 1435 mentions the name of the same mint master and refers to some steps in the operation of the mint but without specifying their sequence. Relying on the data contained in the accounting books of Guglielmo Condulmer, a Venetian merchant, Alan M. Stahl has singled out some fifteen or so names of the persons whose supplies of silver to the mint exceeded 70 kg each, notably Marin di Gradi (165 kg), a member of a well-known noble family of Ragusa. Apart from him, eight more Ragusans may be identified, four from the ranks of nobility and four from the citizen class, who supplied a total of 891 kg of silver to the mint. Serbian silver made its way to the Venetian mint through Ragusan middlemen, which may explain why the silver that largely came from Serbian mines tends to be classified as Ragusan silver in European historiography.

HISTORY, AFRICA, AND DEFAMILIARIZATION: A COMMENT

ABSTRACTAfter initially identifying defamiliarization as a central aspect of Nancy Rose Hunt's essay “History as Form,” this comment reflects on the implications that her reading of Georg Simmel and her emphasis on objects and materiality have for the writing of history. If Hunt suggests, with Simmel, that the form of history is autonomous from history as it unfolds, the claim here is rather that there is no necessary relationship between writing and its topic. Considering how earlier European historiography excluded Africa (in particular) from the domain of history, it is no coincidence that this contingent relation between form and history has been particularly energizing for Africanist historiography—leading to innovations both in practice and theory. The comment concludes by briefly discussing three concepts that have informed such innovation: the vernacular, suturing, and multiple temporalities.

In Portuguese… and Spanish, English, Ditch, French….. Singularities of Portuguese Azulejos within European Historiography

The link between Portuguese tile decorations and the notion of identity(ies) is rooted today in a very wide context, leading to the extensive use of azulejos as cultural and narrative symbols with very different aims. The purpose of the present article is go back in time, to the mid 19th century, and to debate the role played by European historiography in the emergence of the azulejo as an “identitarian” art form, considering its unique characteristics and the main moments and agents that have contributed to the creation and consolidation of this phenomenon.

Editorial

Editorial

The 1913 Ottoman Military Campaign in Eastern Thrace: A Prelude to Genocide?

ABSTRACTThis article argues that the leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) experimented with methods of mass expulsion for the first time during the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913. The success of these methods of mass violence contributed to their renewed application in World War I. Much has been written about the crimes committed against civilians by Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek armies in this period, but little about the Ottoman operations in Eastern Thrace in 1913. Neither European nor Turkish historiography has examined the issue closely, partly because the Ottoman campaign in Eastern Thrace was very short and of relatively little military significance, and partly because historians interested in the study of violence in the late Ottoman Empire have devoted their attention to the Armenian genocide, which began less than two years after the recapture of Thrace. And yet, it is during this brief period, from July to September 1913, that the Unionist leadership of the Ottoman Empire developed a very specific, new and systematic form of violence that would later be used against other Christian populations, including the Armenians. In this context, the 1913 Ottoman campaign is worth examining closely not just as an important aspect of the Balkan Wars, but also as a prelude to practices that would later be tragically used on a wider scale during World War I and World War II.

A Revolutionary Narrative of European History: Bonneville's History of Modern Europe (1789–1792)

A Revolutionary Narrative of European History: Bonneville's <i>History of Modern Europe</i> (1789–1792)

The toponymic legacy of the Tatar expansion period in Ukraine

In European historiography, the influential influence of immigrants from Mongolia on the social, cultural and economic life of the Eurasian people, enslaved by them in the 13th century, is marked by the Latin term Pax Mongolica (Mongolian World). In the twenty-first century, the interpretation of the influence of the Tatar ethnos – the key nucleus of immigrants from Mongolia, on Eastern European history – has changed significantly. The researchers now state the expressive positive effects of Tatar expansion from the XIII to the end of the fifteenth century to Russia. A number of facts concerning the presence of the Tatars in Ukraine led to the establishment of significant differences between Ukrainians and Russians. In Ukraine, the Tatars were less influential than in Russia. The policy of Galician and Volyn princes about the invaders at that time was perhaps the most optimal for the Ukrainian lands and different from the policies of the princes of the Rostov-Suzdal land. In addition, the period of Tatar rule in Ukraine was much shorter (by the middle of the XIV century.). The geopolitical “relations” of Muscovy with the Crimean Khanate in the 15th-17th centuries, in the context of its Turkish vassal dependence, largely determined the fate of the Ukrainian lands in the future. Numerous Tatar raids in the XVI-XVII centuries the Ukrainian lands were accompanied by the destruction of settlements, the destruction of the local population, but almost everywhere preserved their own geographical names that arose before the invasion. The toponymic legacy of the Tatar expansion in Ukraine is represented predominantly by comonomies, hydronyms, dromonyms, and a heavy reservoir is concentrated among microtoponomisms, which requires more detailed research. Taking into account the arguments of historians, ethnologists, ethnographers, with regard to the separation of the Tatar (Kazakh) and Mongolian ethnic groups, it is undoubtedly necessary to abandon the imposed in the nineteenth century, in Russia, the “widely-used” phrase “Tatar-Mongols” (as well as its analogue – “Mongol-Tatars”), not identifying the names of two independent ethnic groups. In Ukraine, there are virtually no geographical names derived from the ethnonym “Mongols”, but much more toponyms, formed from ethnonym “Tatars”. In the context of the policy of de-communization introduced in Ukraine, one should remember the restoration of Tatar names in the Crimea, which were practically totally renamed from 1944–1945 and 1948. Key words: toponymic heritage, ethnonyms, own geographical names, Tatar ethnos, Mongolian ethnos.

SEANCHAS - AN INPORTANT IRISH TRADITION RELATED TO MEMORY, HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

: In most works approaching Premodern historiographical phenomena there is a remarkable silence about Seanchas, an Irish tradition related to old tales, memory, history, historiography genealogy and traditional law. The main purpose of this article is to analyze this issue, pointing out Seanchas is a conditio sine qua non to the comprehension of both Irish History and Historiography from Early Christian to Modern Ireland. Therefore, any attempt to understand Premodern and Early Modern European historiography should also consider this Irish contribution.

THE ORIGIN AND ONTOGENESIS OF ORTHODOX CHURCH BROTHERHOODS IN UKRAINE AND Belorussia IN THE WORKS OF REPRESENTATIVES OF RUSSIAN HISTORICAL SCIENCE (THE 1850s – BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY)

The history of studying of the brotherhood movements in the territories of Western Ukraine has old traditions, but the generalisations and critical analysis of the collected act and historiographic material has started practising but recently. The personalities of many researchers who made a powerful contribution to the investigation of the history of the brotherhood movement remain insufficiently studied. Father Antin Petrushevych (1821 – 1913), a representative of the moskvofil movement, belongs to such unstudied researchers.In the article A. Petrushevych' scientific work concerning the study of church brotherhoods of Kiev metropolitanate on the pages of the “Compiled Galician – Rus’ Chronicle” is analysed. Historiographic problems are found out, the leading directions of the scientist’s historiographic reflexion are defined, a coordination between the scholar’s historical-scientific views and the general theoretical patterns of the European historiography of the middle ХІХ – XX centuries are determined.The scientist in his research paid a major attention to the Lviv Stavropygian brotherhood. On the basis of a considerable quantity of documents and the processed literature, this historian illuminated the origin of this brotherhood, describing its struggle against H. Balaban, Y. Shumlianskyi, etc.In the article the conclusion has been made, that ‑ despite continuous references of the Ukrainian and Russian scientists to A. Petrushevich' activity ‑ his scientific achievements still expect their detailed studying. Summing up the scientists’ inheritance, it is necessary to underline that, in spite of the specified drawbacks in the genre and method, the collected historical, factological and source material has benefited in the further studying of church history: the historians of the ХХ century have used this potential for a more objective and fuller picture of studying of the features, tendencies and prominent characteristics of the brotherhood movement throughout the XVІІ ‑ XVІІІ centuries.

Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou

A locus classicissimus of European historiography, in the history of modern political thought the Mediterranean has often been surprisingly sidelined. With the exception of Mazzini, Gramsci and a few other figures, few names belong to the general knowledge in this field, and fewer still come from the non-European part of the region. This volume, edited by Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, breaks new ground by introducing a wide range of individual intellectual trajectories which gave shape to a variety of political aspirations in the Mediterranean region, from the rise of the short-lived Septinsular Republic in the early 1800s to the decline of the Ottoman Empire. It also reorients the established view of the modern era, which is introduced here not only as an Age of Revolutions and anti-imperial patriotic passions, but also as one of imperial reform and strategic nationalism. The contributions reveal a complex web of conditions within which ideas of nationhood, popular sovereignty and liberty were developed in the region and beyond. The concept of ‘diaspora’ is central, shifting expectations away from the conventional focus on nationalism, patriotism or imperialism and towards a more ‘polycentric world of the nineteenth century’ (p. 7). This is partly a reflection of the focus on intellectuals belonging to populations scattered around the Mediterranean or lacking political sovereignty for other reasons, including Greeks, Jews, Italians and Armenians. But, as the editors put it, the authors also view diasporas more conceptually as encapsulating a ‘synthesis of everything’ and as networks where ‘collective or individual consciousnesses were originally shaped’ (pp. 6–7).

Rolf Grosse &amp; Michel Sot, eds. Charlemagne: les temps, les espaces, les hommes: construction et déconstruction d’un règne. Collection Haut Moyen Âge 34. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, 605 pp., b/w + color illus.

Charlemagne remains a dominant figure in European historiography and memory, one of the few early medieval rulers whose name is known outside academic circles. In March of 2014 the German Historical Institute in Paris held a colloquium to mark the 1,200th anniversary of his death, and the colloquium’s proceedings have now been published. The volume contains 27 essays (twelve in French, nine in English, and six in German, with summaries in English for each essay at the end of the book) distributed across six parts. After giving brief summaries of each essay, I will provide an overall assessment of the book.

«Do you require our responsibility to gentry times?». Ukrainian intellectuals’ of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th century opinions about the role of the heritage of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth in the creation of modern ukrainian nation

European historiography changed considerably during the nineteenth century. Formation of historical source study as a separate science, on the one hand, and awareness of the connection between the historical narrative of the past with political interests, on the other hand, gave impetus to the writing of historical works on national history, the so-called grand narratives. They relied on historical sources, but chose what served the actual political interests, and ignored or interpreted otherwise what they did not fit. The territorial organization of living space has become a priority task of national development in the nineteenth century, and the recognition of land, borders, and people as own should have been historically grounded. The difficulty for Ukrainians was that the traces of Ukrainian-Russ statehood were lost in ancient times, while the neighbors, primarily Russians and Poles, tried to draw both the territory and the past of Ukraine into their own concepts of the creation of modern nation. The creation of the Ukrainian grand narrative was influenced by external factors: the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the collapse of its once unified political, cultural and intellectual space, and the policy of the Russian authorities, aimed to separate «Little Rus’» from western civilization. Russian censorship successfully removed memory of Polish-Ukrainian ties from historical works and replaced it with the image of the invading Poles. The traumatic, post-war experience, idealization of images of Cossack soldiers was the favorable ground for this. As a result, in Ukrainian historical grand narrative the «Polish-Lithuanian» period was interpreted as an external occupation, a break in the «correct» history of Ukraine. The whole complex of everyday life, cultural and political influences of Ukrainians in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth remained beyond history. Its main content was recognized by the Polish-Ukrainian conflicts. The views on the legacy of the Commonwealth in the Ukrainian society of the nineteenth century can also be analyzed from the perspective of the intellectual biographies of their creators and take into account the experience of relations with the Poles, the private image and repression of the Russian government. An unbiased rethinking by professional historians of the past of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the point of view of the interactions of various cultural spaces in the nineteenth century was not a matter of time. Keywords Ukrainian-Polish relations in the nineteenth century, Ukrainian-Russian relations in the nineteenth century, Ukrainian historiography of the nineteenth century, intellectual biography, cultural and intellectual heritage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

History of the Russian State as Personal Project; Vasily Tatishehev and Nikolai Karamzin

This article analyzes the individual projects of Tatishchev and Karamzin as Russian historians. Vasily N. Tatishchev (1686–1750), a civil servant during the Petrine era, spent thirty years creating his Russian History as a set of commentaries on “chronicle records.” Nikolai M. Karamzin (1766–1826) gained entrance to European intellectual culture through his travels around Europe, which served as a source for his Letters of a Russian Traveler and later publication of his journal Vestnik Evropy (1802–1803). The exposure to European intellectual life stimulated Karamzin’s project, the twelve-volume History of the Russian State. This article examines the similarities and differences in the thinkers’ methodologies for constructing history, which relied on European historiography and a substantially different set of personal experiences: one the builder of Empire under Peter, and the other an intellectual educator, writer, creator of the Russian literary language, and professional historiographer in the court of Emperor Alexander I.