From Professionalisation to Global Ambitions: the History of History Writing at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, the history of historiography has developed into an increasingly professionalised field within general history writing. At the same time, its narrow focus on national historiography has been acknowledged. This review essay places Daniel Woolf’s A Global History of History (2011) in the context of new directions in global history and the history of historiography. Woolf’s main goal is to rehabilitate the non-European parts of that history of history writing, refuting the traditional Eurocentric, teleological approach in histories of Western thought and the Whiggishness of many intellectual histories of historiography. The great strength of the book, this review essay argues, is that it compares an innovation in one corner of the world with other innovations elsewhere, thus focusing on multiple modernities. Woolf also makes us aware of transnational entanglements, of the simultaneity of concepts and practices in regions far apart as well as the lack of communication between regions geographically closer to each other. Although Woolf does not pay enough attention to the most recent trends in global history writing, his global history of historiography will further nourish comparative studies of historiography.