EVELINA BARBASHINA HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
EVELINA BARBASHINA HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
The writing of history, and the reconceptualization of the idea of history itself, were central to the unfolding self-identity of the leading nineteenth-century nations. The sense of the emancipatory and character-building capacity that knowledge of the past might provide was inherited from the Enlightenment, and linked to the emerging profession of the intellectual. In this period were written many of the most important national histories of the modern era, often by political conservatives, such as FRANÇOIS GUIZOT’S History of Civilisation in France (4 vols, 1830), HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE’S History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century (1879–96), William Stubbs’s The Constitutional History of England (1874–8) or Henry Hallam’s conservatively Whiggish Constitutional History of England (1827), but also by liberals, like George Bancroft (1800–91) in the USA (History of the United States, 10 vols, 1834–74). As earlier, popular history in particular often served nationalist aims, becoming increasingly jingoistic in the last decades of the century. The biography of great figures remained both
a scholarly and popular focus of historical interest; US historiography commences with Jared Sparks’s editing of Washington’s works in 12 volumes (1833–7). The growth of literacy helped to make history a widely popular subject for the first time. And though some, like Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) in Germany, and BENEDETTO CROCE (1866–1952) in Italy, denied that history could rise to an equivalent level of generality as natural science, this was for historians in particular the great age of ‘scientific history’, in which laws could be discovered and methods applied that would bring certainty and even predictability to historical study. Academic and pro fessional history, while obsessed with the unique qualities of the age, endeavoured increasingly to earn for the subject the coveted legitimacy attached to the natural sciences, and with it the right to claim universal application and validity based upon an established uniformity of human experience and an agreed interpretation of what ‘evidence’ was suitable for generalization.
The institutionalization and professionalization of history in both the public and academic realms that mark the century had a great impact on its conceptualization, notably through the confrontation with theology by the application of historical methods to the study of religion, especially by examining the life of Jesus and through biblical criticism. By the end of the century, the study of historical method had been greatly systematised; see, e.g., for France, the Introduction to the Study of History of Charles
Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 268
V.Langlois and Charles Seignobos (1898), or for Britain, Edward Freeman, Methods of Historical Study (1886). A few individuals, notably LEOPOLD VON RANKE (1795– 1886) in Germany, who wrote extended studies of Prussian, French and British history, were able to exert a profound influence as teachers upon the creation of academic history; of considerable academic influence in Britain was LORD ACTON (1834–1902), who insisted that history had ‘to be critical, to be colourless, to be new’.
By the beginning of the period, notable attempts had already been made to integrate national histories into a secular scheme of human evolution generally, notably by Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803; Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menscheit, 1784–91) and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–94; Esquisse d’un tableau des progress
de l’esprit humain, 1795). By 1900 disciplinary subdivision had established economic, social, intellectual, political, legal, comparative and technological histories, amongst others. ‘Modern history’ as such had come fully into its right, for instance in the work of JULES MICHELET (1798–1874), whose Chronological Table of Modern History appeared in 1825. All of the major interpretations of history in the period acknowledge the centrality of commercial and industrial developments, and their fundamental redefinition of many of the parameters of human life. European historians tend to focus also on the nature and effects of the French Revolution, with THOMAS CARLYLE (1795–1881) its greatest historian in English. This article will survey the chief trends in the period, focusing particularly on Britain, France and Germany. It will examine theories of history as such, rather than advances in particular forms of evidence, such as philology, archaeology and palaeontology, the opening and cataloguing of archives, or reappraisals of the problems of bias or objectivity, and in reference to theories of the modern period, rather than medieval or classical scholarship.
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» Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Thought
» ANTI-COLONIAL MOVEMENTS AND IDEAS
» SIMON J.POTTER ARNOLD, MATTHEW (1822–87)
» S.JONES BERNSTEIN, EDUARD (1850–1932)
» THE BODY, MEDICINE, HEALTH AND DISEASE
» BONALD, LOUIS DE (1754–1840)
» PAMELA PILBEAM CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795–1881)
» CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE (1768–1848)
» CHINESE THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
» CIESZKOWSKI, AUGUST (1814–94)
» JOHN MORROW COMBE, GEORGE (1788–1858)
» ALAN R.KING COMTE, AUGUSTE (1798–1857)
» The conservative reaction to radical natural-rights theory
» French conservatives and the challenge of the revolutionary past
» Institutional continuity and intellectual and moral discontinuity in British conservatism
» JOHN MORROW CONSIDÉRANT, VICTOR (1808–93)
» CONSTANT, BENJAMIN (1767–1830)
» CLIVE E.HILL DEMOCRACY, POPULISM AND RIGHTS
» PAMELA PILBEAM DEWEY, JOHN (1859–1952)
» DILTHEY, WILHELM (1833–1911)
» DOSTOEVSKY, FEODOR (1821–81)
» CHERKASOVA DU BOIS, W.E.B. (1868–1963)
» Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism
» Other forms of non-Marxian socialism
» GREGORY CLAEYS EMERSON, RALPH WALDO (1803–82)
» ENFANTIN, BARTHÉLEMY-PROSPER (1796–1864)
» Revolutions, citizenship and sexual difference
» Socialism, labour, evangelical reform and public speaking
» Women’s rights at mid-century: an international movements
» KATHRYN M.TOMASEK FEUERBACH, LUDWIG (1804–72)
» FOURIER, CHARLES (1772–1837)
» KARINE VARLEY FREUD, SIGMUND (1856–1939)
» GREGORY CLAEYS GANDHI, MOHANDAS K. (1869–1948)
» GARIBALDI, GIUSEPPE (1807–82)
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN GEORGE, HENRY (1839–97)
» GOBINEAU, JOSEPH COMTE DE (1816– 82)
» LYMAN TOWER SARGENT GREEN, T.H. (1836–82)
» EVELINA BARBASHINA HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
» From conjectural history to the Whig interpretation of history
» The critique of the idea of progress
» HUMBOLDT, WILHELM, FREIHERR VON (1767–1835)
» TIM KIRK HUXLEY, T.H. (1825–95)
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN IMPERIALISM AND EMPIRE
» SIMON J.POTTER INDIAN THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
» INDUSTRIALISM, POVERTY AND THE WORKING CLASSES
» INTELLECTUALS, ELITES AND MERITOCRACY
» Tanzimat and the Ottoman Empire
» Other responses to colonialism and modernity
» Opening of the country and the Meiji Restoration
» CHUSHICHI TSUZUKI JEFFERSON, THOMAS (1743–1826)
» JEVONS, WILLIAM STANLEY (1835–82)
» One person, many faces: an introduction to a resonant life
» Stages on Life’s Way: from aesthetic, via ethical, to religious
» Intermission: the Corsair affair
» KROPOTKIN, PIETR (1842–1921)
» LABRIOLA, ANTONIO (1843–1904)
» LAMARTINE, ALPHONSE DE (1790– 1869)
» Continental liberalism FRANCE
» GREGORY CLAEYS LIEBKNECHT, WILHELM (1826–1900)
» LOMBROSO, CESARE (1835–1909)
» MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON (1800–59)
» Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
» Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche
» GREGORY CLAEYS MAISTRE, JOSEPH DE (1753–1821)
» MALTHUS, THOMAS ROBERT (1766– 1834)
» MARSHALL, ALFRED (1842–1924)
» GREGORY CLAEYS MARX AND MARXISM
» The development of Marxism to 1914
» GREGORY CLAEYS MAURRAS, CHARLES (1868–1952)
» MEINECKE, FRIEDRICH (1862–1954)
» MICHAEL LEVIN MILL, JOHN STUART (1806–73)
» THE NATION, NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONAL PRINCIPLE
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH (1844–1900)
» DAN STONE NOVELS, POETRY AND DRAMA
» The development of Owen’s thought after 1820
» The development of Paine’s thought
» DAVID GLADSTONE PARETO, WILFREDO (1848–1923)
» Alternatives to classical economics
» Utilitarianism and the marginal revolution
» ANTHONY BREWER PROUDHON, PIERRE-JOSEPH (1809– 65)
» ‘Psychology has a long past but a short history’
» ‘Time present and time past’: James’s Principles
» RANKE, LEOPOLD VON (1795–1886)
» Biblical criticism and moral critiques
» TIMOTHY LARSEN RENAN, JOSEPH-ERNEST (1823–1892)
» GEORGIOS VAROUXAKIS RICARDO, DAVID (1772–1823)
» ROMANTICISM, INDIVIDUALISM AND IDEAS OF THE SELF
» Individualism, individuality, the self and psyche
» From alienation to Romantic love
» Critique of Political Economy
» Nihilism, populism, anarchism and early Marxism
» Religious and moral developments in Russian literature and philosophy
» SAINT-SIMON, HENRI DE (1760–1825)
» SAY, JEAN-BAPTISTE (1767–1832)
» RICHARD WHATMORE SCHELLING, F.W.J. (1775–1854)
» SCHLEGEL, CARL WILHELM FRIEDRICH VON (1772–1829)
» CLIVE E.HILL SIEYÈS, EMMANUEL-JOSEPH (1748– 1836)
» RICHARD WHATMORE SIMMEL, GEORG (1858–1918)
» DAN STONE SISMONDI, JEAN-CHARLES-LÉONARD SIMONDE DE (1773–1842)
» Social Darwinism and politics
» Social Darwinism, secularism and religion
» MICHAEL LEVIN SOREL, GEORGES (1847–1922)
» SPENCER, HERBERT (1820–1903)
» CLIVE E.HILL STEWART, DUGALD (1753–1828)
» TIM KIRK STRAUSS, DAVID FRIEDRICH (1808–74)
» TAGORE, RABINDRANATH (1861–1941)
» S.JONES THEORIES OF EDUCATION AND CHARACTER FORMATION
» THEORIES OF LAW, CRIMINOLOGY AND PENAL REFORM
» JOHN PRATT THEORIES OF THE STATE AND SOCIETY: THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
» THIERS, LOUIS-ADOLPHE (1797–1877)
» GEORGIOS VAROUXAKIS THOREAU, HENRY DAVID (1817–62)
» ALAN D.HODDER TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE (1805–59)
» EVELINA BARBASHINA TÖNNIES, FERDINAND (1855–1936)
» Middle and late nineteenth-century utopianism LIBERALISM, CONSERVATISM AND UTOPIANISM
» LATER NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOCIALISM
» GREGORY CLAEYS WASHINGTON, BOOKER T. (1856–1915)
» CLIVE E.HILL WEBER, MAX (1864–1920)
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