A Companion to Global Historical Thought - (Wiley Blackwell Companions to World History) by Prasenjit Duara & Viren Murthy & Andrew Sartori

Book Synopsis

A Companion to Global Historical Thought provides an overview of the development of historical thinking from the earliest times to the present, directly addressing issues of historiography in a globalized context. Questions concerning the global dissemination of historical writing and the relationship between historiography and other ways of representing the past have become important not only in the academic study of history, but also in public arenas in many countries. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book considers the problem of "the global" - in the multiplicity of traditions of narrating the past; in the global dissemination of modern historical writing; and of "the global" as a concept animating historical imaginations. It explores the different intellectual approaches that have shaped the discipline of history, and the challenges posed by modernity and globalization, while illustrating the shifts in thinking about time and the emergence of historical thought.

Complementing A Companion to Western Historical Thought, this book places non-Western perspectives on historiography at the center of discussion, helping scholars and students alike make sense of the discipline at the start of the twenty-first century.

From the Back Cover

A Companion to Global Historical Thought provides an overview of the development of historical thinking from the earliest times to the present, directly addressing issues of historiography in a globalized context. Questions concerning the global dissemination of historical writing and the relationship between historiography and other ways of representing the past have become important not only in the academic study of history, but also in public arenas in many countries. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book considers the problem of "the global" - in the multiplicity of traditions of narrating the past; in the global dissemination of modern historical writing; and of "the global" as a concept animating historical imaginations. It explores the different intellectual approaches that have shaped the discipline of history, and the challenges posed by modernity and globalization, while illustrating the shifts in thinking about time and the emergence of historical thought.

Review Quotes

"A Companion to Global Historical Thoughtbelongs on the shelf of every academic library supporting any kind of history programme. The essays are thoughtful, thought-provoking and exhaustively footnoted . . . These essays are excellent end products to enjoy or places to start the journey to study big picture history." (Reference Reviews, 1 October 2015)

About the Author

Prasenjit Duara is the Raffles Professor of Humanities and Director of the Asia Research Institute as well as Director of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences at National University of Singapore. He is the author of Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 (1988), which won the Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association and the Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian Studies, USA.

Viren Murthy is Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, where he specializes in Modern Chinese and Japanese intellectual history. He is the author of The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness (2011).

Andrew Sartori is Associate Professor of History at New York University, USA. He is co-editor of Global Intellectual History (with Samuel Moyn, 2013), the author of Bengal in Global Concept History (2008), and co-editor of From the Colonial to the Postcolonial (with Dipesh Chakrabarty and Rochona Majumdar, 2007). He is also co-editor of the journal Critical Historical Studies.