Modernizing England's Past
English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870-1970
1st Edition
Published on 16. March 2006
978-0-511-14487-5 (ISBN)
Description
What came before 'postmodernism' in historical studies? By thinking through the assumptions, methods and cast of mind of English historians writing between about 1870 and 1970, this book reveals the intellectual world of the modernists and offers a full analysis of English historiography in this crucial period. Modernist historiography set itself the objective of going beyond the colourful narratives of 'whigs' and 'popularizers' in order to establish history as the queen of the humanities and as a rival to the sciences as a vehicle of knowledge. Professor Bentley does not follow those who deride modernism as 'positivist' or 'empiricist' but instead shows how it set in train brilliant new styles of investigation that transformed how historians understood the English past. But he shows how these strengths were eventually outweighed by inherent confusions and misapprehensions that threatened to kill the very subject that the modernists had intended to sustain.
Reviews / Votes
'... energetic ...' History TodayMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Cambridge University Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
File size
2,04 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-511-14487-5 (9780511144875)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2006
Cambridge University Press
€104.10
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Book
01/2006
Cambridge University Press
€56.50
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Person
Michael Bentley is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is the editor of the Routledge Companion to Historiography (2002) and the author of Modern Historiography: An Introduction (1999).
Content
Prelude: after the Whigs; Part I. The Whig Legacy: 1. Constitution and nation; 2. Church and state; 3. Empire and war; 4. Ghosts and intimations; Part II. Modernist Investments: 5. New historians, new histories; 6. The new eighteenth century; 7. Ideological environments; 8. Modernist method; Coda: after the modernists.
