Until recently almost all histories of historiography have focused on national developments or at best introduced a comparative note from a limited Western perspective. Only in the last few years have there been serious attempts to transcend these borders. The present volume examines turning points in historical thought in a variety of cultures. The essays in the first half of the book deal with fundamental reorientations in historical thinking in the pre-modern period since Antiquity, specifically in ancient Greece and China and in medieval Christian Europe, the Islamic world and again China. The essays all proceed from the premise that historical thought in none of these cultures was static but underwent profound changes over time. The essays in the second part deal with historical writing beginning with the professionalization of history in the nineteenth century. National history researched and composed around a master narrative constituted a major turning point in this period. Although the new paradigm emerged in the West, it was broadly accepted by historians throughout the world.in the twentieth century. Individual chapters deal with conceptions of scientific history in the West, a comparison of national histories in Japan, France, and the United States, and the invention of Chinese, African and Indian national histories; finally the critiques of the modern paradigm in postmodernist and postcolonial theory and a consideration of the shortcomings of these critiques.

Contents

1 Introduction

2 The Invention of History: From Homer to Herodotus Francois Hartog

3 The Ch'in Unification (221 B.C.) in Chinese Historiography Chun-Chien Huang

4 From Ancient to Medieval Historial Thinking Ernst Breisach

5 New Directions in Northern Sung Historial Thinking (960-1126) Thomas H.C. Lee

6 Turning Points in Islamic Historical Practice R. Stephen Humphreys

7 The Historicization of Classical Leaning in Ming-Ch'ing China Benjamin Elman

8 Conceptions of Scientific History in the Nineteenth-Century West Eckhardt Fuchs

9 National Histories and World Systems: Writing Japan, France, and the United States Christopher L. Hill

10 China's Search for National History Q. Edward Wang

11 Nationalism and African Historiography Toyin Falola

12 The Subaltern School and the Ascendancy of Indian History Vinay Lal

13 A Critique of the Postmodern Turn in Western Historiography Kevin Windschuttle

14 Postmodernism and Chinese History Arif Drlik

15 Postscript Richard T. Vann