Books & ideas

A Conversation Between Africa and the World

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch — 2024-05-28T12:35:47Z

Religious dialogue, trade, slave mobility, knowledge circulation, pilgrimage and intellectual exchange, colonization, resistance, creolization: Africans have been connected to the rest of the world in every possible way.

Writing the History of “Natural” Disasters

Lukas Schemper — 2019-12-30T08:00:00Z

Though they are called “natural”, disasters such as earthquakes have a social, political and economic dimension; it is therefore possible to write their history. The 111^th anniversary of the Messina earthquake is an opportunity to reflect on the multi-dimensionality of the event and to outline avenues for historical research on natural disasters.

The Avant-Garde System

Pamela Bianchi — 2017-02-16T08:00:00Z

In a desire to write a total history, Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel proposes a novel sociocultural and transnational approach to the artistic avant-gardes. Beyond a mere history of styles, the avant-gardes appear in her book as genuine political and social events, caught in complex networks of influence.

The Return of Economic History?

Guillaume Calafat & Éric Monnet — 2017-01-30T08:00:00Z

The recent success of books on economic history – at a time when this specialism often seems disregarded in universities – coupled with parallel developments in both history and economics gives hope for new links between the two disciplines.

African Independence Reconsidered

Alden Young — 2014-09-08T07:00:00Z

Denouncing the neglect of the independence era by African historians, Frederick Cooper asserts that a continent of nation-states was not the inevitable outcome of decolonization.

History in the Making

Cristelle Terroni — 2014-08-11T07:00:00Z

Books&Ideas presents a second summer selection, in which contemporary historians tell us about the future of history as a discipline, about how they research and write history, and the way history affects their bodies and minds.

Are Historians Guilty of Short-term Thinking?

Nicolas Delalande — 2014-06-25T13:29:14Z

The hyper-specialisation of historical studies is not inevitable. For Harvard Professor David Armitage, intellectual history urgently needs to rediscover its taste for the longue durée. Otherwise, naturalist approaches may end up dominating what we now know as Big History.

Interweaving Eastern and Western Perspectives

Christian Joschke — 2013-05-02T08:44:48Z

In Florence and Baghdad, Hans Belting writes a new history of the human gaze based on its symbolic value in relation to the image. His starting point is the cultural transfer between the East and the West, leading to the invention of perspective in the 16^th century. The author examines two different forms of cultures of the gaze and lays the groundwork for a global art history.

Narrating the World

Jacques Revel — 2011-10-17T12:16:18Z

On the basis of a comparison between Asia and Europe, the anthropologist Jack Goody denounces what he calls “the theft of history”. He criticizes Elias, Braudel, Needham, and others for having contributed to the widespread narrative that has turned Europe's historical experience into an exception, and the measure by which we appraise the history of the rest of the world. According to Jacques Revel, this criticism is legitimate and useful, but rests on judgments that are, sometimes, as sweeping as those it intends to oppose.

The Persistence of Empires

Jane Burbank & Frederick Cooper — 2011-02-14T08:00:00Z

Empires are not necessarily the obsolete political form that the historiography likes to condemn. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper offer a global and long term history that convincingly shows their relevance and complexity. Should not the European Union look at empires of the past to define its sovereignty?