Eurocentrism and the Politics of Global History by Alessandro Stanziani

Eurocentrism and the Politics of Global History by Alessandro Stanziani

Author:Alessandro Stanziani
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783319947402
Publisher: Springer International Publishing


History Writing: Philology Against Philosophy

The writing of history reflected this trend; historians tended to follow writers and embrace their nationalism. Ranke and his followers promoted philology and language; they succeeded in imposing their particular use of language as the only acceptable way to write history. The distinction between primary and secondary sources made it possible to separate archives from oral traditions as well as from existing historiography. This differentiation, Ranke claimed, would enable future historians, unlike their predecessors, to present facts rather than opinions. In other words, archives were simply equated with “facts” and historical truths but without any critical reflection on principles governing archive development or the selection of documents by historians.75 Eurocentrism, already present in the seventeenth century and consolidated during the eighteenth, became so dominant in the nineteenth century that it was easily exported outside Europe. Reformers in Japan,76 Russia, and Indonesia77 as well as in the Ottoman Empire78 and Latin America were eager to produce European-style history, based on its methods and adopting its categories as universal. In Japan, Chinese historiographical influences and eventually even Enlightenment thinkers were for the most part rejected in favor of Ranke.79 In the late nineteenth century, a similar reversal took place in China, where German influence took on similar importance.80 Imperialist Eurocentric thinking ended up producing its opposite: the defenders of local and national languages contrasted the enthusiasm of certain more or less Europeanized reformers.

In reality, internationalism, the globalization of history and its languages, and the defense of national or even regional languages and histories were components of one and the same process. In the nineteenth century, the writing of history relied increasingly on national languages; these languages had replaced Latin, once the lingua franca of scholars, which had virtually disappeared. Publications multiplied in German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, and so on. History became institutionalized: universities were founded in most countries and chair professorships in history were created, especially during the second half of the century, when the discipline gradually became specialized by time period and geographical area.81 In the 1800s, it was no longer simply a question of “we” and “others”; this distinction was combined with another, which divided history into nations. Positivist history actually strengthened a crucial aspect of the very mythological and literary history it condemned: the role assigned to the nation. The nation became at once the subject matter and the principal source of history.82 Ranke in Germany, Macaulay in Great Britain, and Michelet in France all wrote monumental national histories.83 The boundaries of history coincided with those of national territory.84 Piedmont and Prussia were viewed as components of Italy and Germany, respectively. What was later described as “Whig history” stressed Britain’s modernizing role, anticipating modernity through the Glorious Revolution in 1688. Such historiographical currents tended to associate “Britishness” with British history, emphasizing the Crown, the Parliament, and other institutions as factors in the modernization process. Italian historians both before and after unification focused on ancient history and therefore on the connections between history, archaeology, and philology.



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