History and Historians in the Twentieth Century

Download or read book History and Historians in the Twentieth Century written by Peter Burke and published by OUP/British Academy. This book was released on 2002-07-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the major intellectual debates at the beginning of the new century concerns the status of accounts of the past. Do historians discover or invent, construct or reconstruct the objects they study? The discussion has been particularly lively in France and in the USA, and it is therefore appropriate that a group of distinguished historians from Britain should now engage with this subject. These ten essays present a historical and critical overview of British historical thought and writing since 1900, focusing on selected periods, regions, disciplines, and themes. This challenging volume will intrigue anyone interested in the process of history writing.