UNESCO’s eight-volume General History of Africa (GHA) was a politically engaged but scholarly endeavor that aimed to Africanize the writing of African history. It did so partly through an expulsion of historical explanations that hinged on the idea that greatness had been transported into Africa from the outside. This article shows how the GHA developed scholarly standards while at the same time grappling with the political tension inherent in a move away from European colonialist historiography. It was specifically during the editing of the chapter written by Cheikh Anta Diop on the origins of the ancient Egyptians that political imperatives seemed to clash with standards of academic rigor and scholarly methods. This article offers an analysis of reports produced by the GHA during the editing of the series to show how the GHA navigated these tensions and why they chose to include the Diop chapter even if not all historians working on the GHA agreed with it. The article thereby shows how a decolonization of history took place in historiographical practice.
{"title":"Multiple Hamitic Theories and Black Egyptians: Negotiating Tensions between Standards of Scholarship and Political Imperatives in UNESCO’s General History of Africa (1964–1998)","authors":"Larissa Schulte Nordholt","doi":"10.1086/715866","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715866","url":null,"abstract":"UNESCO’s eight-volume General History of Africa (GHA) was a politically engaged but scholarly endeavor that aimed to Africanize the writing of African history. It did so partly through an expulsion of historical explanations that hinged on the idea that greatness had been transported into Africa from the outside. This article shows how the GHA developed scholarly standards while at the same time grappling with the political tension inherent in a move away from European colonialist historiography. It was specifically during the editing of the chapter written by Cheikh Anta Diop on the origins of the ancient Egyptians that political imperatives seemed to clash with standards of academic rigor and scholarly methods. This article offers an analysis of reports produced by the GHA during the editing of the series to show how the GHA navigated these tensions and why they chose to include the Diop chapter even if not all historians working on the GHA agreed with it. The article thereby shows how a decolonization of history took place in historiographical practice.","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45349276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how a new history of the postwar humanities could be written. Drawing on approaches from the history of knowledge and other adjacent fields, it outlines a study of the conditions of the circulation of knowledge in the public sphere during the 1960s and 1970s. By introducing “arena of knowledge” as an analytical concept, the essay highlights certain media platforms where circulation of knowledge occurred, such as newspapers, paperback series, and early television. All in all, the essay underlines the importance of the humanities for a kind of public knowledge during these years, thereby challenging a crisis narrative of the humanities of the postwar period that is prevalent in established historiography.
{"title":"Circulating Knowledge in Public Arenas","authors":"Jan Östling","doi":"10.1086/715945","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715945","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how a new history of the postwar humanities could be written. Drawing on approaches from the history of knowledge and other adjacent fields, it outlines a study of the conditions of the circulation of knowledge in the public sphere during the 1960s and 1970s. By introducing “arena of knowledge” as an analytical concept, the essay highlights certain media platforms where circulation of knowledge occurred, such as newspapers, paperback series, and early television. All in all, the essay underlines the importance of the humanities for a kind of public knowledge during these years, thereby challenging a crisis narrative of the humanities of the postwar period that is prevalent in established historiography.","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46415922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the early 1920s, J. G. Andersson discovered the Yangshao culture of prehistoric China and, in the name of science, reiterated the age-old postulation that “Chinese culture had a ‘Western’ origin.” In Andersson’s time, archaeology was frequently explained using the framework of diffusionism to understand human prehistory and civilization. To the hyperdiffusionists, civilization was perceived to have originated in the Middle East before it spread elsewhere and acquired regional variations. The archaeological work at Anyang from 1928 onward substantially changed scholars’ understanding of human civilization in general and Chinese civilization in particular. Is Chinese civilization a secondary and derivative one, with its ultimate origin in the Middle East? Should the Chinese civilization be properly comprehended in the singular, referring to the Han civilization only? Is it correct to conceive of the origin of Chinese civilization—and of its central layer, huaxia—from a decentralized perspective? By investigating early archaeological endeavors in China and related historical discourses, this essay shows how human civilization, Chinese civilization and huaxia civilization eventually became decentralized in the scholarly understanding, particularly regarding their origins. In this decentralization of the origins of civilization, the underlying archaeology was driven by both science and politics, both rationalism and nationalism. Archaeology during the Republic of China (1912–49), which had the special mission of reconstructing Chinese national history, was guided by this dual tendency.
{"title":"Decentralizing the Origin of Civilization: Early Archaeological Efforts in China","authors":"P. Peng","doi":"10.1086/715935","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715935","url":null,"abstract":"In the early 1920s, J. G. Andersson discovered the Yangshao culture of prehistoric China and, in the name of science, reiterated the age-old postulation that “Chinese culture had a ‘Western’ origin.” In Andersson’s time, archaeology was frequently explained using the framework of diffusionism to understand human prehistory and civilization. To the hyperdiffusionists, civilization was perceived to have originated in the Middle East before it spread elsewhere and acquired regional variations. The archaeological work at Anyang from 1928 onward substantially changed scholars’ understanding of human civilization in general and Chinese civilization in particular. Is Chinese civilization a secondary and derivative one, with its ultimate origin in the Middle East? Should the Chinese civilization be properly comprehended in the singular, referring to the Han civilization only? Is it correct to conceive of the origin of Chinese civilization—and of its central layer, huaxia—from a decentralized perspective? By investigating early archaeological endeavors in China and related historical discourses, this essay shows how human civilization, Chinese civilization and huaxia civilization eventually became decentralized in the scholarly understanding, particularly regarding their origins. In this decentralization of the origins of civilization, the underlying archaeology was driven by both science and politics, both rationalism and nationalism. Archaeology during the Republic of China (1912–49), which had the special mission of reconstructing Chinese national history, was guided by this dual tendency.","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46908528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article traces the circulation of the pedagogical notion of formale Bildung from Germany to Sweden during the first decades of the nineteenth century. At that time, educators and scholars agreed that the goal of secondary education was not to provide practical knowledge, but to train the mind and cultivate moral character. This notion, formulated in full by Friedrich Gedike in the late eighteenth century, proved resilient and shaped Swedish educational policies for much of the century. Yet Gedike was never identified as the source, not by his contemporaries nor by later historians. Moreover, the questions of how, when and why this knowledge appeared in Sweden and how it became part of a general consensus have never been explored. In this essay, it is argued that an important node of circulation between Germany and Sweden was influential educator Carl Ulric Broocman and that the concept of circulation offers a means of revealing previously obscured patterns of knowledge.
{"title":"From Germany with Love","authors":"Isak Hammar","doi":"10.1086/715942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715942","url":null,"abstract":"The article traces the circulation of the pedagogical notion of formale Bildung from Germany to Sweden during the first decades of the nineteenth century. At that time, educators and scholars agreed that the goal of secondary education was not to provide practical knowledge, but to train the mind and cultivate moral character. This notion, formulated in full by Friedrich Gedike in the late eighteenth century, proved resilient and shaped Swedish educational policies for much of the century. Yet Gedike was never identified as the source, not by his contemporaries nor by later historians. Moreover, the questions of how, when and why this knowledge appeared in Sweden and how it became part of a general consensus have never been explored. In this essay, it is argued that an important node of circulation between Germany and Sweden was influential educator Carl Ulric Broocman and that the concept of circulation offers a means of revealing previously obscured patterns of knowledge.","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42008112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Approaches equivalent to philology developed in different textual traditions. While Chinese scholarship, especially as it developed since the seventeenth century, has long been described as being similar to European philology, no comparative study of the European and Chinese practices has been undertaken yet. This article compares philological texts from China and Germany written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and shows that there is a significant overlap between the two: in both traditions, one finds challenges to the idea of a recoverable urtext, detailed examinations of the layer structure of received texts, and a focus on lexical analysis. These questions are constitutive of two of the most important traditions of philology, and their emergence can be explained as a reaction to extended histories of textual transmission. This comparative study therefore helps us refine how we characterize philology and builds toward a global research framework.
{"title":"A Comparative Approach to Textual Philology: Germany and China around 1800","authors":"D. Stumm","doi":"10.1086/715934","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715934","url":null,"abstract":"Approaches equivalent to philology developed in different textual traditions. While Chinese scholarship, especially as it developed since the seventeenth century, has long been described as being similar to European philology, no comparative study of the European and Chinese practices has been undertaken yet. This article compares philological texts from China and Germany written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and shows that there is a significant overlap between the two: in both traditions, one finds challenges to the idea of a recoverable urtext, detailed examinations of the layer structure of received texts, and a focus on lexical analysis. These questions are constitutive of two of the most important traditions of philology, and their emergence can be explained as a reaction to extended histories of textual transmission. This comparative study therefore helps us refine how we characterize philology and builds toward a global research framework.","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46390967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay addresses what I take to be a paradox in Africa’s constitution as a scholarly object of inquiry. The study of Africa renders Africa both visible and invisible. When the humanities—and the social sciences—appear beleaguered, solving this paradox may hold the key to understanding what we need to say we are studying for us to say what we are good for. What is left over when we remove Africa from the stock of knowledge the humanities produce?
{"title":"Unmaking Africa—the Humanities and the Study of What?","authors":"Elísio Macamo","doi":"10.1086/715863","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715863","url":null,"abstract":"This essay addresses what I take to be a paradox in Africa’s constitution as a scholarly object of inquiry. The study of Africa renders Africa both visible and invisible. When the humanities—and the social sciences—appear beleaguered, solving this paradox may hold the key to understanding what we need to say we are studying for us to say what we are good for. What is left over when we remove Africa from the stock of knowledge the humanities produce?","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46440944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
he Anthropocene has become the latest master narrative that challenges the very foundations on which the humanities have been built. Even though this new “Age of Humanity”might, by definition, encourage a new emphasis on humanities scholarship, the concept of the Anthropocene places upon “humanity” the responsibility for having radically and profoundly changed the ecology of the planet, to a point where several tipping points may soon be breached with incalculable but likely catastrophic consequences for the future of the Earth. An essential part of this epochal consciousness is the realization thatmany of the categories used to grasp the relationship between humans and nature have become obsolete. In this way, the Anthropocene asks us to rethink the principle that has traditionally formed the core of the humanities (as the study of human civilizations and culture): the verum/factum principle, as it was envisioned by Giambattista Vico (1668–1744). Since Vico, the humanities have staked their fundamental claim to be disciplines characterized by the same scholarly rigor as the sciences, and their right to exist as distinguished from the natural sciences, on the
{"title":"Haunted by Historicism:","authors":"Jilt Jorritsma","doi":"10.1086/715947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715947","url":null,"abstract":"he Anthropocene has become the latest master narrative that challenges the very foundations on which the humanities have been built. Even though this new “Age of Humanity”might, by definition, encourage a new emphasis on humanities scholarship, the concept of the Anthropocene places upon “humanity” the responsibility for having radically and profoundly changed the ecology of the planet, to a point where several tipping points may soon be breached with incalculable but likely catastrophic consequences for the future of the Earth. An essential part of this epochal consciousness is the realization thatmany of the categories used to grasp the relationship between humans and nature have become obsolete. In this way, the Anthropocene asks us to rethink the principle that has traditionally formed the core of the humanities (as the study of human civilizations and culture): the verum/factum principle, as it was envisioned by Giambattista Vico (1668–1744). Since Vico, the humanities have staked their fundamental claim to be disciplines characterized by the same scholarly rigor as the sciences, and their right to exist as distinguished from the natural sciences, on the","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41692128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Early European attempts at writing a comprehensive history of the world struggled in particular with China, whose greater antiquity was difficult to accommodate with the biblical chronology of Creation and the Flood; the Chinese might also have traveled to the Americas before the Europeans. The fulcrum of this debate was the Dutch Republic, where innovative schools of historiography and biblical criticism went hand in hand with interest in East Asian material culture, antiquities, and books. Around 1650, Jacob Golius, Georg Hornius, and Isaac Vossius quarreled about China in relation to Egypt, Israel, and the Americas. The debate flared up again fifty years later when Nicolaes Witsen and Gijsbert Cuper confronted the Republic of Letters with a rare bronze mirror from Han Dynasty China. Dutch attempts to engage with Chinese written and material sources, and even with a handful of early Chinese visitors to Europe, arguably made this exchange an early example of global history.
{"title":"Saint Confucius, the Chinese Adam, and a Broken Mirror: Writing World History in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands","authors":"T. Weststeijn","doi":"10.1086/715867","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715867","url":null,"abstract":"Early European attempts at writing a comprehensive history of the world struggled in particular with China, whose greater antiquity was difficult to accommodate with the biblical chronology of Creation and the Flood; the Chinese might also have traveled to the Americas before the Europeans. The fulcrum of this debate was the Dutch Republic, where innovative schools of historiography and biblical criticism went hand in hand with interest in East Asian material culture, antiquities, and books. Around 1650, Jacob Golius, Georg Hornius, and Isaac Vossius quarreled about China in relation to Egypt, Israel, and the Americas. The debate flared up again fifty years later when Nicolaes Witsen and Gijsbert Cuper confronted the Republic of Letters with a rare bronze mirror from Han Dynasty China. Dutch attempts to engage with Chinese written and material sources, and even with a handful of early Chinese visitors to Europe, arguably made this exchange an early example of global history.","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45381021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay examines how modern Chinese scholars came to terms with “scientific” Buddhology as a European knowledge system in the early twentieth century. Unlike Japan, where some leading Buddhists who were educated in Europe attempted to transform Buddhism into a modern religion and even a unique national spirit to accommodate the needs of Japanese modernization, in modern China, Buddhism in crisis was considered less of an intellectual and spiritual resource for reviving the national spirit. By focusing on Chen Yinke, a pivotal scholar of modern Buddhology, the essay looks into the intermingling of Orientalism and cultural nationalism among Chinese intellectuals who faced the challenge of modern European humanistic knowledge as compared to Chinese traditional knowledge on Buddhism and India.
{"title":"From Orientalism to Cultural Nationalism: Decentralizing European Buddhology in Early Twentieth-Century China","authors":"Huaiyu Chen","doi":"10.1086/715936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715936","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines how modern Chinese scholars came to terms with “scientific” Buddhology as a European knowledge system in the early twentieth century. Unlike Japan, where some leading Buddhists who were educated in Europe attempted to transform Buddhism into a modern religion and even a unique national spirit to accommodate the needs of Japanese modernization, in modern China, Buddhism in crisis was considered less of an intellectual and spiritual resource for reviving the national spirit. By focusing on Chen Yinke, a pivotal scholar of modern Buddhology, the essay looks into the intermingling of Orientalism and cultural nationalism among Chinese intellectuals who faced the challenge of modern European humanistic knowledge as compared to Chinese traditional knowledge on Buddhism and India.","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42419720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Focusing on a quotation by Mortimer Wheeler from the year 1955, when he called the ruined Swahili stone town of Kua on Juani island in the Mafia archipelago in today’s Tanzania “potentially the Pompeii of East Africa,” this article unravels some of the many layers encapsulated in this statement. The article contextualizes the passage by Wheeler with regard to the history of archaeology, colonialism, and tourism in the region. It interrogates ways how the discipline of art history can contribute to studies of the built environment along the East African coast. And it illuminates both the necessity and the potentials of decentralizing studies of the humanities on empirical-historical and methodological levels for future scholarship on the art and architecture along the Swahili coast as well as within the field of transcultural art history more generally.
{"title":"“Potentially the Pompeii of East Africa”:","authors":"Vera-Simone Schulz","doi":"10.1086/715865","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715865","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on a quotation by Mortimer Wheeler from the year 1955, when he called the ruined Swahili stone town of Kua on Juani island in the Mafia archipelago in today’s Tanzania “potentially the Pompeii of East Africa,” this article unravels some of the many layers encapsulated in this statement. The article contextualizes the passage by Wheeler with regard to the history of archaeology, colonialism, and tourism in the region. It interrogates ways how the discipline of art history can contribute to studies of the built environment along the East African coast. And it illuminates both the necessity and the potentials of decentralizing studies of the humanities on empirical-historical and methodological levels for future scholarship on the art and architecture along the Swahili coast as well as within the field of transcultural art history more generally.","PeriodicalId":36904,"journal":{"name":"History of Humanities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47946252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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