Introduction: Provincializing Europe: Historiography as a Transcultural Concept
Author(s)
Fuchs, Eckhardt
Abstract
Our purpose is to provide an initial stimulus for a world history of historiography since the nineteenth century by means of transcultural comparison. We must first map out the terrain with which we are concerned, a terrain that is new and mostly unknown. This approach led to the three particular goals: 1) To learn specific information about the development of the historical discipline in countries belonging to different cultures; 2) to investigate intercultural relations and transfers of historical knowledge between Europe and other cultures; and 3) to address the question of how to overcome a Eurocentric view rooted in the belief of the universal necessity, global validity, and superiority of European ideas of norms and modernization. Thus, a transcultural history of historiography looks at the specific forms of thinking and writing about history in the various cultures and the relationships between them.
