Quote:
Originally Posted by damaci
Meh...One of the many bad turns of the 1980s to say the least (the other bad turns include the current meaningless obsession with "cultural studies" and "identities" as well as the virtual disappearance of good economic history). I very much realize that "event history" is in fashion nowadays: I am a professional historian too. What can I say? In the land of the blind, one-eyed man is the king, I guess. In my better moments I tolerate that kind of history as it may provide context and supplement our understanding of the past and present. In my worse moments, I simply think that it is misguided journalism.
Note: Structuralist approaches to history do not begin with the Annales School. It has a noble pedigree going through Karl Marx to Ibn Khaldun (the fourteen century Arab genius whose work on world history remains, for my money, to be the most important work on history ever written). Braudel readily accepted this pedigree and mentioned those influences in numerous places. His lazy followers are a different matter.
Cheers
Solid post. I love Ibn Khaldun(would absolutely love to use a timemachine to see his discussion timurlane, but i digress)
I think nowadays we get a little bit of everything. We still get social historians but we get event historians as well. Biographers are somewhat less in vogue, which i find sad as a good bio gives a full picture to why individuals act the way they do.(Stalin comes to mind here)
While the majority of history fans begin with military history(which is certainly the most fun but least applicable), the political and economical history is the most applicable to our current days, even if technologically we seem so far away. As Dan Carlin says
''When i hear politicians say that old historical events cannot happen again because things are too different nowadays, i tell them: you think Caesar, Robespierre, Herbert Hoover and the others the past didn't think that too?''