Historiographical Approach Research Articles

Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories, by Barbara Black

Reviewed by: Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories by Barbara Black Eloise Moss (bio) Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories, by Barbara Black; pp. x + 245. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2019, $64.95, $34.95 paper, $29.95 ebook, £54.95. The grand hotels of Victorian London provide the spatial crucible for Barbara Black's fascinating investigation of the role of hotels in shaping ideas of citizenship, national identities, morality (including discourses of crime, anonymity, and sexual fantasy), as well as global cross-cultural encounters since the mid-1800s. Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories is crammed full of literary and cinematic references to hotels and to the memoirs of both staff and famous guests—though predominantly focusing on the latter, particularly literary greats such as Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Ouida. The hotel magnates of the era, César Ritz and Richard D'Oyly Carte, are also afforded plenty of scrutiny here for effectively bringing the metropolis's hospitality industry up to the same standard as its Parisian and American counterparts, ensuring that London's hotels could become future "palaces" for luxury stays by exiled kings, diplomats, and celebrities (65). As such, one of the important contributions of this book (hinted at in its title) is to lay the groundwork for exploring the crucial role of hotels in determining the future course of international politics, gesturing toward the powerful motor of commercial hospitality spaces in the history of global diplomacy. [End Page 308] Hotel London is, however, a deep interrogation of hotel stays as a form of cultural psyche rather than a social history, although the second chapter, "Hotel Individualism," does offer architectural and social biographies of five case-study hotels: Brown's, Claridge's, the Langham, the Midland Grand, and the Savoy. Black argues that her focus on the similarity between hotels and the literary project, including the motifs of hotels as spaces of personal reinvention and arbiters of exclusion and inclusion in these texts (and in real life), shifts away from existing historiographical approaches to these buildings often written in an American history context. While scholarship on hotels in modern British history has been largely undertaken from a social historical perspective (particularly in work by John Walton and Kevin James, whose extensive scholarship on late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century British hotels does not feature in this book), literary scholar Charlotte Bates's oft-cited article about the interwar hotel, "Hotel Histories: Modern Tourists, Modern Nomads and the Culture of Hotel Consciousness" (2003), reached very similar conclusions to Black's work, with a comparable blend of disciplinary approaches—though some might simply call this cultural history. Emma Short's excellent recent book Mobility and the Hotel in Modern Literature: Passing Through (2019) is another example of this, though, being published in the same year as Hotel London, one could not expect Black to have drawn upon it. Where Black's work ranges more widely is in the dazzling set of connections it draws between hotels' cosmopolitanism—material, in the form of international goods and services, as well as human in these institutions' diverse populations—and the enduring power of London itself as a nexus of the global consumer economy, explicitly situating hotels as part of the dynamic trends outlined in Judith Walkowitz's study of pre-World War II Soho, Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (2012). Black charts how Victorian women's access to hotels as spaces of leisure and sociability, having been coaxed into hosting tea parties and dinners at hotels rather than at home by savvy hoteliers, is an important contribution to the history of the democratizing effects of these commercial spaces. Power and inequality recur as key themes (though are much less developed in relation to race and ethnicity), and are assisted by Black's deft integration of a wide range of theoretical essays on the transitional, experimental nature of hotels by authors such as Wayne Koestenbaum, while the presiding spirit of the text is Walter Benjamin. This elegant conceptual framing of hotels as homes away from home, yet inherently transitional spaces, accompanied by...

Passing for History

This essay will realize an intersectional historiographic approach to the career of Ina Ray Hutton, one of the most important band leaders during the rise and fall of the swing era. Hutton was known as the “blonde bombshell of rhythm,” an appellation that was critical not only to her popular notoriety but also to her success performing a sustained act of racial passing, the full public awareness of which has arrived in a belated and untimely fashion (absent from her obituaries). Although her passing was likely known within certain delimited communities, it was hidden from the larger dominant white culture of the day and from the popular memory of her trans-media audience. This study will focus on the contexts of her work at the beginning of her career, and end with her late career on local and network television as sites that provide new speculative interventions to recognize the significance of this singular performer.

STOLYPIN PETR ARKADYEVICH AND THE BASIC COMPONENTS OF HIS PROGRAM MODERNIZATION OF RUSSIA: BUILDING A LEGAL STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY

The article provides separate facts of the biography of the great Russian reformer Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, some of the components of his program for the reconstruction of Russia stand out. Based on the results of research by L.Yu. Kazanina, which are based on an empirical and theoretical, historiographic approach to the study and analysis of the periodical press, which presented the main socio-political views of the early twentieth century; documents that make up the concept of reforms of P.A. Stolypin; programs of the main political parties of Russia of the specified period; materials of the I and II State Duma, the State Council of Tsarist Russia, containing the basic components of the modernization of Russia, developed by P.A. Stolypin. Emphasis is placed on certain provisions for building a legal state, civil society, which are part of the program for the modernization of Russia.

Gazi Husrev-beg u kontroverznim historiografskim perspektivama

While former Yugoslav historiography had a kind of schedule of scientific research centers (Zagreb for Latin work, Sarajevo for work in Turkish, and Belgrade for work on Visant sources) the end of the 20th century developed new national historiographies that approach the history of the Ottoman period from its point of view. Since this period constitutes a common past of the people of large part of the Balkans, today we can analyze how and what extent regional historiographies explore common historical figures and events. Although historiography can be followed by Gazi Husrev-bey's life and military journey through the Balkan territories, the perception of his character and work remained within the margins of the basic facts of the historical reality of the 16th century. Given the areas where the mention of Gazi Husrev's name and works remained widely present, the research corps on this topic is diverse, but in the foreground based on samples of archival material and representative units of domestic and foreign historiographic literature. The basic thesis I would like to present is that even the most established facts of the past cannot avoid contradictions and debatable interpretations, largely dependent on the point of view or focus shaped by stereotypes, exclusive hypotheses through the paradigm of social awareness as well as the interests of time and politics in some historiographic circles. Through sel examples of research approaches, it can be noted that they are related to the lack of involvement of scientists in incorporating research results into the education system. In addition, the Bologna system has narrowed research topics and they are mainly related to today's borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is absurd for the processing of the Ottoman period of the Bosnian Ayalat, which formed one of the administrative units of the Ottoman State. Changes to the borders with the collapse of the Ottoman state have left a large part of the Bosnian people in other Balkan areas. Their collective memory and attitude towards historical figures are mostly about folk songs, while the research of historical facts on the same topics is left to national historiographies that still retain antagonistic attitude towards the Other. This is best seen through the revitalization of theories about the „dark Turkish times“ and „haters of Christianity“. Due to numerous gaps in knowledge and material traces of the past, younger generations of researchers in the neighborhood, however, are asking logical questions such as: Why renounce the Ottoman heritage because of the collective aversion to the State which once they were part of. This presentation is just a small example of these common historiographical wanderings. According to what has been researched and known about the character and work of Gazi Husrev-bey, this historical personality can be a pattern of local and regional research tendencies. Persistence in such approaches seriously calls into question the responsibility of historians. Bosnia and Herzegovina's experience of a historiographical approach to the topic of famous personalities and events is increasingly indicating self-isolationism.

Pour une historiographie des identités nationales


 
 
 
 Among the new critical approaches in modern historiography, the most successful enterprise is undoubtedly the project of the French “Lieux de mémoire” led by Pierre Nora, published between 1984 and 1992, and followed by other similar European projects. Nowadays, memory seems a less relevant issue. We wonder whether is it still legitimate to stigmatize the historiographies of national identities and consider all national memoirs as agglomerations of invented traditions. The founding myths of the Armenian people make a good issue. influenced the development of Armenian historic thought, and contributed to its spiritual continuity.
 
 
 

Marzocco and Shir o Khorshid. Origin and decline of the Medici Persian diplomacy (1599-1721)

Diplomatic relations between two states are never simply bilateral relations as there is always a broader context in which they can be framed and, very often, they do not arise from nothing but are the result of specific events. Like all human vicissitudes, they have a beginning, a development and an end. The relations between Medici Tuscany and Safavid Persia have unfortunately never been the subject of extensive enough studies that go beyond the few things already known from decades ago. However, the continuous search for sources and their analysis in the light of a different historiographic approach can provide a new understanding of certain events and a more precise chronological and historical framework.

Antiquity in the history of music: A critical review of the music textbooks for secondary education in Spain

The history of music is shaped through narratives that sometimes contain a number of issues regarding cultural stereotypes, historiographic approaches, Eurocentrism or colonialism. For this reason, its transmission and the way it is taught must be the object of study and careful consideration. The present research analyses – on the basis of narratological and organological premises – the contents that shape the discourses underlying the coverage of the ancient period by music education textbooks used in the Spanish compulsory secondary education stage. To this effect, an ad hoc instrument was designed and implemented on 24 coursebooks. The results confirmed that the chronological narrative is the most widely used strategy and that in more than half of the textbooks under examination the history of music begins to be told after Antiquity. Other findings were that the construct of the ‘foundational’ civilisations of the West is still perpetuated and that an organological narrative is proposed which is inspired by a diffusionist approach. In conclusion, we detect patterns that are controversial and need to be subjected to revision at a time when educational textbooks are a decisive resource that adapts the official curriculum and mediates between the latter and music education teachers.

Opposition, comparison, and associativity: On Luis J. Prieto as a reader of the Cours de linguistique générale

This paper aims to show the role played by the relations of comparison and associativity, as they are introduced in Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale, in the theories of Luis J. Prieto. This is done, first, on the basis of a historiographical approach, and second, on the basis of an exegetical approach to Prieto’s works. Thus, the paper first presents and analyses three programmes, corresponding to three courses Prieto gave at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba during the early 1950s. The analysis of these programmes will show the centrality of Saussure’s Cours in Prieto’s linguistic theorizing. After this, an attempt will be made to show the continuity between the theoretical tenets presupposed by the courses’ programmes and the main proposal advanced in Prieto’s article “Classe et concept. Sur la pertinence et sur les rapports saussuriens ‘de comparaison’ et ‘d’échange’”. By constructing this continuity we attempt to show: (1) the constant influence the Cours exerted upon Prieto’s thinking throughout his whole career, and (2) that such influence is manifested in the fact that Prieto did not generalize linguistic principles as such, but rather posited that linguistic principles were instances of more general semiotic ones.

Popularity of the cult of Asclepius in the times of the Antonine Plague: Temporal modeling of epigraphic evidence

The research presented in the article tests quantitatively the existing hypothesis from the academic debate that the Greco-Roman cult of Asclepius was more popular in the times of the Antonine Plague which spread in the Roman Empire approximately in the years 165–180 CE. This hypothesis is based on the rationale that the god of medicine, Asclepius, could have been more appealing to the Roman population in times of health crisis. However, there are also voices in the debate arguing that there is no indication of an increase in popularity of the cult of Asclepius during the Antonine Plague. The article explores this question quantitatively by means of temporal modeling of epigraphic evidence from the Roman Empire, i.e., the primary material source for arguments in the academic debate on the topic. By employing Monte Carlo algorithms to simulate the temporal distributions of Latin inscriptions from epigraphic databases, the article demonstrates that there is no observable increase in the number of inscriptions dedicated to Asclepius in the times of the Antonine Plague that would deviate significantly from the temporal distribution of a) general epigraphic trend as represented by epigraphic databases Epigraphic Database Heidelberg and Clauss-Slaby Epigraphic Database, and b) inscriptions dedicated to other deities such as Apollo or Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The hypothesized increased popularity of the cult of Asclepius during the Antonine Plague is thus not supported by the results on the level of epigraphic trends. These findings have a significant potential to push forward the discussion which is divided by mutually opposing hypotheses that were constructed mainly by traditional historiographical approaches. The article also reveals the applicability of quantitative approaches in overcoming temporal uncertainties in archaeological data.

Portrait of a commercial traveller (photographic): George Jobson (1862–1925)

Recent work in the study of photographic technology and the UK photographic industry has touched upon national distribution networks in addressing relationships between manufacturing and retail. Facilitating these networks was a small number of specialised commercial travellers. As a case study toward understanding these individuals, it is discussed here how George Jobson, with an early career as a typical photographer’s assistant of the Victorian era, went on to develop two additional careers as an inventor and as a commercial traveller specialising in photographic equipment and supplies. Some of Jobson’s forgotten work as a professional photographer is also identified and contextualised by drawing on a large number of primary sources. It is discovered among other findings that he worked in the US for the prominent Syracuse NY photographer Philip S. Ryder. Jobson’s subsequent contributions to photographic technology are discussed and contextualised. While the historiographical approach applied is individual, personal (familial), chronological, and empirical, I suggest that this study can be viewed as an indicator of the strengths and weaknesses of an interdisciplinary (photographic, patent-based, and industrial) approach as a means of understanding figures like Jobson, for whom photographic, archival and other records are scarce and fragmented.

Causation, historiographic approaches and the investigation of serious adverse incidents in mental health settings.

To improve the safety of healthcare systems, it is necessary to understand harm-related events that occur in these systems. In mental health services, particular attention is paid to harm arising from the actions of patients against themselves or others. The primary intention of examining these adverse events is to inform changes to care provision so as to reduce the likelihood of the recurrence of such events. The predominant approach to investigating adverse incidents has relied on the cause-and-effect conceptualisation of past events. Whilst the merits of approaches which are reliant on cause-and-effect narratives have been questioned, alternatives models to explain adverse incidents in health settings have not been theoretically or empirically tested. This novel article (i) examines the notion of causation (and the related notion of omission) in the context of explaining adverse events in mental health settings, and (ii) draws on a long-established discipline devoted to the study of how the past is interpreted (namely historiography) to theoretically investigate the innovative application of two historiographical approaches (i.e. counterfactual analysis and historical materialism) to understanding adverse events in mental health settings.

The past as battlefield

What is the practice and the role of the historian? What does it mean to dig into marginalized and silenced histories? What does it mean to reactivate the contents of past insurgent moments? And who has the power to do it? These are some of the important questions that my generous interlocutors raise in their comments regarding the methodology, and the historiographical and political approach of my book. Indeed, Insurgent Universality outlines an alternative historiography capable of reactivating the histories of the struggling oppressed by putting their past attempts of liberation at the service of political and social alternatives to the present. The task of my historiography is to present the past as a battlefield, which begins from the very political assumptions that often operate behind the historian's back, and to provide a new viewpoint from which other political trajectories of modernity can be disclosed.

Using the “Sociocultural Identity of Russia” Category in Teaching Humanities to Pedagogical Universities Students

Problem and Aim. The article actualizes the problem of using the category of Russia’s socio-cultural identity in the process of teaching humanitarian disciplines to students studying at pedagogical universities. The purpose of the article is to present the effectiveness of using this category for the formation of social, pedagogical and professional competencies of bachelor, master and postgraduate students. Tracing the reflection of this category in the works of Russian thinkers, focused on the issues of civilizational identity, historical paths and destinies of Russia, the teacher contributes to the realization the educational potential of the domestic humanities, which contributes to the establishment traditional values in the Russian youth national self-consciousness. Methodology. An interactive dialogue with participants in the educational process (lectures, laboratory classes, special courses, special seminars and webinars, research presentations) made it possible to determine the degree to which students master the methods of comparative and retrospective historiography, functional and civilizational approaches inherent in research in the subject area of intellectual history, as well as methodology and philosophy of history. In conclusion, it is concluded that the use of the category of socio-cultural identity of Russia as an interdisciplinary one in its discursive status allows students of pedagogical universities to form competencies in several areas of modern historical education (professional, educational, pedagogical, research) at once.

On history, business, and management: a review of the literature and research agenda

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to conduct a systematic review of the literature on business history and management history in specialized journals in the area. Design/methodology/approach – We conducted a systematic review of the literature in the journals: Business History, Business History Review, Journal of Management History, and Management & Organizational History, between 2011 and 2020. In all, we analyzed 231 articles using the open, axial coding technique, and selective. Findings – We answered two central analytical questions about the researchers' theoretical-methodological choices and summarized the results in six research lines. Historiographic approaches are presented from the epistemologies, theories, methods, contributions, limitations, and research problems chosen by the researchers in their articles. Originality/value (mandatory) – The article is contributory when it assumes the central premise that the understanding of the researchers' theoretical-methodological decisions results in the historiographic approaches adopted in business and management research. Also, we offer a research agenda concerned with problems about (1) marginal empirical contexts, (2) the comparative approach to history; and (3) the perception of the past as a historical narrative.

The Buton Sultanate Fortresses in Eastern Indonesia: A Trace of the Sultanate's Military Supremacy

Archaeological remains in the form of fortresses are found in Southeast Celebes. These forts are spread across the islands. The existence of these forts cannot be separated from the narrative of the Buton Sultanate in Southeast Celebes. The fortresses are located in the Barata territory of the Buton Sultanate. These fortresses marked the military triumph of the Buton Sultanate as a maritime empire in the eastern Indonesia archipelago. However, in the historiography of Indonesia, the Buton Sultanate is not recorded as one of the major maritime powers in eastern Indonesia. This research aimed to detail the existence of the fortresses of the Buton Sultanate to demonstrate their significance using an archaeological and historiography approach. These fortresses are evidence of the supremacy of the maritime power of the Buton Sultanate in the archipelago. In revealing the traces of its military supremacy, this research demonstrates the significance of the Buton Sultanate as a maritime empire.
 Keywords: fortresses, Buton Sultanate, military, maritime

‘The Azure Generation’: Liberal Youth Politics in Greece and the Politicization of Music, 1982–1984

This article focuses on the years 1982–1984, which witnessed the first systematic effort to establish a moderate right-wing youth organization in Greece during the Cold War. It shows that the invention of the political songs of the Liberal youth ONNED underpinned its mass mobilization in 1982–1984. In this vein, our analysis enriches recent historiographical approaches that focus on cultures of Conservatism and on political and cultural changes in post-authoritarian Southern Europe in the 1970s to 1980s. Those political songs were linked to both the rhetoric and the practices of ONNED cadres and members. Their lyrics conveyed anti-Communist post-memories of the Civil War in Greece (1943/1946–1949), as reconfigured and filtered through the experiences of ONNED cadres and members in the aftermath of the 1967–1974 dictatorship and the electoral victory of the Socialists in 1981. Thus, the study of the Liberal youth complements the analysis of moderate right-wing subjects in Spain, for whom the Civil War was no reference point after democracy was restored in 1975. Simultaneously, the article enriches research on the Greek Liberal youth so far, which has neglected how this subject reconfigured its approach to the Greek Civil War in comparison to the Right in the preceding decades. Our article also shows that the songs under study accompanied a wide range of ritualistic and prosaic practices of ONNED cadres and members. Listening to and singing those songs was part of a double demarcation process between ONNED cadres and members and their left-wing opponents, as well as within ONNED. For instance, in Thessaloniki, the more Conservative members embraced those songs in their leisure activities and their everyday spaces. By contrast, the more centre-right members were more critical, but still tolerated such music. The everyday life and spatial history approach is crucial to illuminating the varying reception of the political songs of ONNED within this organization.

The concrete numbers of “primitive” societies: A historiographical approach

From the 19th century onwards, some mathematicians and philosophers (G. Peacock, L. Conant, L. Lévy-Bruhl, L. Brunschvicg et al.), analyzed the numerical systems in use in so-called primitive societies as having a more “concrete” (or less “abstract”) character than those developed in more “advanced” societies. This article aims to better understand—and compare—what this opposition between “abstract numbers” and “concrete numbers” actually meant for these authors, as well as the characteristics of the “primitive mentality”—which they believed—this opposition would highlight.

Mandalay’s hydraulic system –a historiographical approach to the regional spatial structure

ABSTRACT No city could survive without stable supply of water, which is true for many of ancient to modern cities. In this study, geographical and historiographical studies led to the visualization of a hydraulic system of Mandalay on a map. The hydraulic system established in this research consisted of intaking (a weir); transportation (canal); and storage and distribution (tank/reservoir/moat). As a result, the hydraulic system was found to have been formed and transformed over the twelfth century, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to date, but the basic characteristics of the hydraulic system remained unchanged – i.e. 1) gravitational flow without pumping/harnessing, 2) multiple purposes for water supply, irrigation and others; and 3) dual supply sources for Palace for the security of supply. These findings about formation and transition of the hydraulic system of Mandalay explains how the Burmese Royal Cities were planned and implemented from the hydraulic aspect.

Albanian Nation-Building and Austria–Hungary. The Development of a Southeast European People into a Modern Nation

Diplomatic, political, economic, cultural, and scientific relations between Hungary and Albania date back to before 1918. At the time, Hungary was considered to possess and control half of a great power: the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The Austro-Hungarian Joint Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ballhausplatz) played a crucial role in the strengthening of the Albanian national movement at the turn of the century and in preparing the members of that movement for the tasks to be performed as leaders of an independent nation-state. Based on archival sources yet to be published and relying on previous literature, the present study takes a historiographical approach in demonstrating how the so-called Albanian question gained increasing importance and became a priority of foreign policy for the Ballhausplatz while the interests of the Albanian national movement intertwined with the aspirations of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as a great power. The paper also shows what roles the experts of the Austrian and the Hungarian part of the Monarchy and certain members of the Albanian national movement played in this joint venture. The paper concludes that the Austrians played a key role in building the Albanian statehood, while Hungarian scholar Lajos Thallóczy, representing Hungarian political and historical thought, made an unparalleled contribution to the modern Albanian nation-building process.

Elementi evropskog i nacionalnog u stvaralaštvu beogradskog arhitekte Dušana Živanovića (1853-1937)

The subject of this research is the architectural work of the Belgrade architect Dušan Živanović (1853-1937), with the primary focus being placed upon a systematic analysis of European and National elements, their (inter-)relationships and parallel (co-)existence within it. A review of Živanović's works, with individual descriptions and stylistic analyses of key objects, and placing an emphasis on his sacral opus, contributes to its necessary valorization, while at the same time helping to formulate a clearer and more complete picture of its positioning on the domestic architectural scene and its role in the emancipation and development of the architecture of Belgrade and Serbia. Attention is further paid to the explication of the politico-historical and socio-cultural framework in which Živanović lived and worked, with this being utilized as an analytical subtext of the primary subject of study. The methodological framework of this study adopts a synthesis of the biographical and historiographical approaches, with sporadic comparative analyses. Relying on previous research, as well as primary and secondary sources, this study aims to potentially deepen and complement existing analyses, and open up a number of new perspectives and issues that will lead to further elucidation of the topic. This work further presents itself as an important contribution to studies on the Belgrade architectural scene and the distinction and recognition of the dominant creative impulses of the capital and its architects in the design of buildings throughout the Serbian interior.