John Higham

Imagined histories : American historians interpret the past

PrefaceIntroduction3Ch. 1Exceptionalism21Ch. 2Gender41Ch. 3Economic History and the Cliometric Revolution59Ch. 4The New and Newer Histories: Social Theory and Historiography in an American Key85Ch. 5Explaining Racism in American History107Ch. 6Crevecoeurs Question: Historical Writing on Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity120Ch. 7The Relevance and Irrelevance of American Colonial History144Ch. 8Nineteenth-Century American History164Ch. 9Americans and the Writing of Twentieth-Century United States History185Ch. 10Western Civilization206Ch. 11American Classical Historiography222Ch. 12In the Mirrors Eye The Writing of Medieval History in America238Ch. 13The Italian Renaissance, Made in the USA263Ch. 14Between Whig Traditions and New Histories: American Historical Writing about Reformation and Early Modern Europe295Ch. 15Prescotts Paradigm American Historical Scholarship and the Decline of Spain324Ch. 16The American Historiography of the French Revolution349Ch. 17Modern Europe in American Historical Writing393Ch. 18Clio in Tauris American Historiography on Russia415Ch. 19House of Mirrors American History-Writing on Japan434List of Contributors455Index459

Multiculturalism and Universalism: A History and Critique

Two distinct demands for greater equality run through the history of the Western world in the twentieth century. One opposes discrimination against people on grounds of race, ethnicity, gender, or physical condition. These inescapably given traits are commonly understood as personal, as internal, as part of the very substance of who we are. To use them as devices or reasons for subordinating outgroups affronts our sense of equal justice. Recognition of a moral equivalence of endowment is therefore a fundamental objective in modern society.

The Future of American History.

No one can predict what kinds of history Americans will be writing in the twentyfirst century. It is reasonable to ask, however, what sorts of history Americans are likely to need and what goals might enable the next generation of scholars to address those needs. Should the history of the United States continue to enjoy a high priority? If so, in what form? Must it obstruct the fullest possible development of supranational or world history? How should the national and the supranational levels of history be related? What can be done to connect them? Any response to these questions depends, of course, on value judgments, together with a sense of what is malleable and what may be fixed in the present situation. I take my starting point from a conviction that the nation-state will remain for a long time the strongest political structure in the world. It will also remain the seat of one or more nations, which in much of the world are preeminently encompassing and coercive communities. Nevertheless, in the late twentieth century the state is under siege. In western Europe and North America, the abounding trust it once enjoyed is eroding. Everywhere nations and states are becoming, on the one hand, less capable of dominating the subgroups within their boundaries and, on the other hand, more vulnerable to markets, technologies, and ecological forces that spread wildly across national borders. At the same time new nations are clamoring for self-determination, and old elites are uncertain about how to limit it., To date historians of the United States have done very little to understand these invasive challenges to national identity or to gain some intellectual control over them. The present training of those of us who study American history fails to encourage outreach from local or national experience to transnational patterns. Professors and students alike know that early specialization within American history will bring the best jobs, the easiest teaching, and the quickest advancement. Whatever language or course requirements graduate students must fulfill outside of this central preoccupation are more or less casually chosen and infrequently used in later life.

Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925.

Have leisure times? Read strangers in the land patterns of american nativism 186

Book Review: The Prophetic Minority: American Jewish Immigrant Radicals, 1880–1920The Prophetic Minority: American Jewish Immigrant Radicals, 1880–1920. By SorinGerald. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Pp. 211.

for the undocumented immigrants that business has ceaselessly exploited, or for immigrants who have lived with American racism. Reimers book is well written and thoroughly documented, yet the conclusion cannot be escaped that it provides an essentially conservative and overly kind treatment of its topic. This book, with these limitations in mind, might be most useful for those who wish to examine immigration legislative history following World War II.

Carl Becker on History and the American Revolution@@@Writing American History: Essays on Modern Scholarship@@@Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

The senior seminar is designed to introduce the undergraduate to research and historical thinking on the advanced level. The course is mainly devoted to reading, classroom discussion, and research. (See below.) Students who successfully complete this course will have gained a broad knowledge of historical theory and the history of historical writing. In addition, the student will have gained a number of important skills–in particular, the ability to write clearly and to conduct research in primary sources. Such skills will serve students well, especially those who go on to teaching or who attend graduate, law, library, or divinity school, In addition, the skills that students acquire in this course can be of substantial value in the world of business. Indeed, many successful executive were history majors as undergraduates.