Georg Iggers Books

The book delves into the evolution of historical thought and historiography, focusing on the transition from classical approaches to modern methodologies influenced by social sciences after World War II. Iggers highlights the impact of postmodernism in the last two decades, prompting historians to reassess their relationship with historical subjects and the notion of objective history. He argues that contemporary historiography has become a hybrid, embracing microhistory and cultural history while maintaining a commitment to capturing reality and a logical inquiry process.

Even before the revolution in 1989, East German historians had moved away from purely Marxist conceptions of economic and social conflict and started to explore methods and approaches ranging from empirical, sociological and demographic analysis to the study of mentalities and popular culture akin to those pursued in the West, thus initiating an active dialogue between historians in East and West. This volume presents important contributions by some of the leading East German social historians in English.

A broad perspective on historical thought and writing, with a new epilogue.

So far histories of historiography have concentrated almost exclusively on the West. This is the first book to offer a history of modern historiography from a global perspective. Tracing the transformation of historical writings over the past two and half centuries, the book portrays the transformation of historical writings under the effect of professionalization, which served as a model not only for Western but also for much of non-Western historical studies. At the same time it critically examines the reactions in post-modern and post-colonial thought to established conceptions of scientific historiography. A main theme of the book is how historians in the non-Western world not only adopted or adapted Western ideas, but also explored different approaches rooted in their own cultures.

Georg G. Iggers ; Inhaltsverzeichnis ; Inhaltsverzeichnis ; Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- 2010.26575

This is the first text on historiography to adopt a comparative, global perspective for the modern era looking not only at developments in the West but at other historiographical traditions in East Asia, India, the Middle East, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa as well. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, the book examines the impact of Western ideas of history on historical writing elsewhere and their interaction with the local traditions in an age of imperialism and colonialism. The authors argue that Western ideas of history were nowhere directly adopted but were accommodated to long standing intellectual and cultural traditions facing the challenges of modernization in an increasingly global environment. The book follows these developments into the current period and discusses the criticisms of postmodernism and postcolonialism of the modern historical profession and the reactions and resonances of historians around the world today. Originally published in 2008, this is not a direct translation of the English edition but a careful revision and updating taking into account the discussions of recent years, With this in mind certain sections have been rewritten, particularly those dealing with global history, feminist and gender history, history and memory, Marxism, and Latin America.