History after Hobsbawm: Writing the Past for the Twenty-First Century

Description

What does it mean--and what might it yet come to mean--to write "history" in the twenty-first century? History After Hobsbawm brings together leading historians from across the globe to ask what being an historian should mean in their particular fields of study. Taking their cue from one of the previous century's greatest historians, Eric Hobsbawm, and his interests across many periods and places, the essays approach their subjects with an underlying sense of what role an historian might seek to play, and attempt to help twenty-first-century society understand "how we got here" They present new work in their sub-fields but also point to how their specialisms are developing, how they might further grow in the future, and how different areas of focus might speak to the larger challenges of history--both for the discipline itself and for its relationship to other fields of academic inquiry. Like Hobsbawn, the authors in this collection know that history matters. They speak to both the past and the present and, in so doing, introduce some of the most exciting new lines of research in a broad array of subjects from the medieval period to the present. Cover History after Hobsbawm: Writing the Past for the Twenty-First Century Copyright Acknowledgements Contents List of Plates List of Maps and Table MAPS TABLE INTRODUCTION 1: The Challenges of History I: NATION AND EMPIRE 2: Gendering Property, Racing Capital ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 3: Writing Europe into the History of the British Empire 4: Indigenous Comparisons THE COMPARATIVE WORLD VIEW HOW MUCH IS A BISHOP WORTH? DRAWING EQUIVALENCES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5: Hobsbawm and Researching the History of Nationalism INTRODUCTION DEBATES IN NATIONALISM STUDIES HOBSBAWM’S CHANGING VIEWS OF NATIONALISM TRANSNATIONAL APPROACHES TO THE HISTORY OF NATIONALISM NATIONALISM AS POLITICAL IDEOLOGY THE CIVIC VERSUS ETHNIC DISTINCTION NATIONALISM AND HISTORY FROM BELOW CONCLUDING REMARKS 6: Decolonization as Tragedy DECOLONIZATION, POSTCOLONIALISM, GLOBALIZATION TRAGEDY THE GHANA REVOLUTION AU BOUT DU PETIT MATIN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT II: MATERIAL ECONOMIES 7: Jiangnan Style: Doing Global Economic History in the Medieval Period ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 8: Global History and the Transformation of Early Modern Europe THE WORLD AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION THE ASIA–EUROPE TRADE: QUANTITIES AND IMPACT HOW WAS THE ASIA–EUROPE TRADE CONDUCTED, AND WHAT WERE ITS LIMITATIONS? KNOWLEDGE ECONOMIES AND INSTITUTIONS GLOBAL MICROHISTORY AND INDIAN MUSLINS CULTURES OF CONSUMPTION OF GOODS FROM THE EAST 9: Industrial History, Working Lives, Nation, and Empire, Viewed through Some Key Welsh Woollen Objects ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY AND MATERIAL CULTURE THE WELSH TEXTILE INDUSTRY: A BRIEF SURVEY THE APPROACH THROUGH OBJECTS The Welsh Wig Flannel Workwear The crys fach Miners’ Drawers Flannel Work Shirts Woollen Jackets, Milled Overcoats, and Felt Hats Women’s Wear The gŵn The Nursing Shawl CONCLUSION 10: Social and Environmental History in the Anthropocene HISTORICIZING ‘THE ENVIRONMENT’ THE ANTHROPOCENE AND SOCIETY THE MATERIALITY OF THE SOCIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11: Material Histories of the World: Scales and Dynamics TRADE AND EMPIRE THE MATERIAL SELF DEMANDING INFRASTRUCTURES, DEMANDING LIFESTYLES THINGS MATTER . . . BUT SOME MATTER MORE THAN OTHERS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III: PEOPLE AND POLITICS 12: Five Swans over Littleport: Fenland Folklore and Popular Memory, c.1810–1978 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 13: Rethinking Gender and Labour History 14: Postcolonial History as War History in the Twentieth Century 15: The People’s History and the Politics of Everyday Life since 1945 THE PEOPLE’S HISTORY THE PEOPLE’S JOURNEY INTO THE 1960s FRACTURED STORIES CONCLUSIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 16: A Visit to the Dead: Genealogy and the Historian CONCLUSION 17: A ‘Slight Angle to the Universe’: Eric Hobsbawm, Politics, and History INDEX