History of Historiography

Negli ultimi anni si è cominciato a studiare la filosofia italiana della seconda metà del XX secolo da nuovi punti di vista, emancipandosi dalle ricostruzioni dei protagonisti nelle quali vibrava, comprensibilmente, una forte nota di carattere autobiografico. Questo lavoro – che ha già dato notevoli risultati, dissolvendo miti storiografici assai resistenti – è stato reso possibile, oltre che dall’accrescersi della distanza storica, dalla possibilità di disporre di nuovi documenti, sia pubblici che privati. Fra questi ultimi spiccano i carteggi, che permettono in molti casi di vedere cosa si agitava dietro le quinte delle discussioni e dei rapporti pubblici, consentendo di individuare la genesi complessa, talvolta tormentata, di lavori che oggi ci appaiono nella veste di classici, quasi estranei al tempo in cui nacquero e in cui vollero invece collocarsi anche come momenti di una battaglia filosofica e culturale, di cui oggi si sono perse le tracce. Il carteggio tra Eugenio Garin e Ugo Spirito è, in questo senso, uno strumento prezioso e indispensabile per la capacità di gettare luce su una lunga, intensa stagione della cultura filosofica italiana attraverso le lettere di due dei suoi principali protagonisti.

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo examinar a produção historiográfica portuguesa sobre Macau em particular e a China em geral, no período coincidente com a derradeira década da monarquia, os anos da Primeira República e a maior parte da existência do Estado Novo (sem esquecer a ditadura militar que o antecedeu). Como limite final, aproximado, escolheu-se o ano de 1960, correspondente, como é sabido, às comemorações com que o regime da época assinalou o quinto centenário da morte do infante D. Henrique ─ cujas repercussões na área de conhecimento estudada foram conspícuas ─, pouco anterior ao início das guerras coloniais, que não deixaram de condicionar significativamente os estudos históricos ultramarinos. As divisões cronológicas correspondentes aos diversos períodos da evolução da vida política nacional poderiam, porventura, determinar a estrutura de uma síntese sobre a temática alvo da minha atenção. De facto, não seria necessário demasiado engenho para detetar e assinalar correspondências entre as ideias preponderantes em cada um dos regimes aludidos e o pensamento expresso em certos livros e artigos que foram dedicados ao passado da presença portuguesa na Ásia. Todavia, a esta constatação sobrepõe-se, quando examinada com 2 relativo pormenor a produção historiográfica em causa, a conclusão de que os traços de continuidade acabam por ser mais determinantes das suas características fundamentais do que os indícios de evolução. A verdade é que, independentemente do regime dominante em cada contexto, tendeu a prevalecer um certo consenso nos meios intelectuais que se debruçaram sobre o passado colonial português acerca da necessidade de sublinhar o carácter glorioso e civilizador da expansão e dos contactos realizados nos séculos precedentes. Tratava-se, aliás, afinal, de uma manifestação particular de uma tendência mais generalizada na sociedade portuguesa, mesmo entre as forças oposicionistas a cada situação política, ao menos aquelas que tiveram possibilidade de se pronunciar historiograficamente. Acima dos particularismos económicos e políticos, afirmava-se o interesse comum de manter as colónias e reforçar a presença dos portugueses dentro das suas fronteiras ultramarinas. De acordo com esta perspetiva, competia aos historiadores a elaboração de um discurso empenhado em legitimar o prosseguimento da política colonial. Monárquicos, republicanos e salazaristas partilharam, no essencial, a perspetiva colonialista cujos reflexos óbvios se encontram abundantemente documentados nas obras de cunho historiográfico. 1 1 Não teve consequências significativas o esboço de oposição ao colonialismo português de que encontramos indícios 3 Sem ter procedido a uma análise minuciosa que permitiria extrair conclusões mais rigorosas e seguras, parece evidente que, na historiografia portuguesa contemporânea, o estudo da ação ultramarina tendeu a revestir-se de um carácter mais consensual, nas suas conclusões relevantes, do que a pesquisa relativa à evolução verificada no retângulo europeu. É certo que, mercê da grande proporção que a historiografia colonial representa no conjunto das obras consagradas ao conhecimento do passado dos portugueses, poderão sobressair as divergências de pormenor na determinação, por exemplo, dos factos relacionados com os descobrimentos. Aliás, num domínio que, como este, foi privilegiado nos esforços da erudição nacional, não poderiam deixar de avultar particularmente as divergências no tocante a eventos em relação aos quais as crónicas e documentos da época se revelam, com muita frequência, durante a Primeira República, designadamente em certos meios ligados ao movimento operário. Esta resistência interna aos interesses coloniais foi estudada por José Castro e José Luís Garcia, "A Batalha e a questão colonial", in Ler História. Revista Quadrimestral, dirigida por Miriam Halpern Pereira, N.º 27-28, 1995, Lisboa, Fim de Século, pp.125-146. Só muito mais tarde, num contexto mundial que conhecera profundos desenvolvimentos, a oposição política portuguesa ligada à tradição liberal e republicana, carecida de apoios internacionais, seria levada a aceitar amplamente as teses independentistas. 4 contraditórios. Todavia, cumpre reafirmá-lo, mais digna de destaque é a propensão generalizada para proceder à glorificação, por vezes mitificadora, da ação colonizadora e missionária portuguesa e para enfatizar a heroicidade, o saber e a abnegação dos pioneiros desse processo. À continuidade e permanência de interesses partilhados por amplos setores da sociedade portuguesa em relação às colónias juntou-se o carácter limitado das transformações ocorridas na historiografia portuguesa durante todo este período. É certo que, já antes de 1960, podemos encontrar as primeiras manifestações de uma renovação das perspetivas de investigação que beneficiaram com as aquisições científicas que se foram verificando nos principais centros de que irradiaram as inovações. Bastará lembrar os nomes de um Jaime Cortesão, de um Luís de Albuquerque ou de um Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, autores de obras de mérito geralmente reconhecido. O certo, porém, é que, se a sua repercussão foi (e permanece), indiscutível, em termos estatísticos o que avulta amplamente são os trabalhos produzidos de acordo com perspetivas antiquadas, quando não arcaicas, que evidenciam um escasso conhecimento das novas formas de conceber e redigir a história. Tal é a tendência preponderante das obras dadas à estampa no período considerado. Assim se compreende, por exemplo, a larga percentagem dos títulos de índole biográfica concebidos com o objetivo de exaltar determinadas figuras de santos 5 e sábios, mas principalmente de heróis, apresentados às novas gerações como exemplos a seguir. Por outro lado, verifica-se ser grande a proporção dos estudos relativos a episódios e temas cujo contributo para a compreensão das características essenciais da colonização portuguesa é bastante diminuto. Retórica excessivamente generalizadora e abuso de minuciosidade erudita foram, com demasiada frequência, os dois polos em que se fixou a escrita da história no período considerado. Iremos encontrar tais características nas obras sobre Macau e a China produzidas em Portugal nas seis primeiras décadas do século XX, como as poderíamos detetar, seguramente, se nos debruçássemos sobre os estudos consagrados a outras regiões. Mais do que insistir nas (em muitos casos óbvias) limitações dessa produção historiográfica interessará, contudo, pôr em evidência as suas temáticas e as ideias expendidas por cada um dos autores.

Any cursory review of the past five years of Italian historiography on fascism obviously would be subject to multiple criticisms and be Condemned for partiality, especially since the time span under investigation is relatively brief and only the work of select Italian scholars can be considered.
Not all the published literature on fascism could be taken into
account, given the enormous attention still given to the subject in academic monographs and journalistic accounts.

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Tafuri published L’architettura del manierismo (1966) in a moment of disciplinary uncertainty in which the historian’s responsibilities to knowledge and society were by no means regarded with clarity. At Venice, Bruno Zevi had until 1963 (and his move to Rome) propagated an idea of history as a repository of lessons to be read in a contemporary key, exploring the twentieth-century legacies of historical figures to project their prescience and enduring utility. The sixteenth century was, consequently, held as a moment of crisis resonating with those of the post-war era: both moments sustaining a loss of universal certainties and loosing, too, a sense of what architecture could offer society as a whole. From the very beginning of the book Tafuri positioned Zevi’s easy parallelism as a source of crisis in architecture’s historiography—a criticism that ran deep in his reading not only of Zevi’s work, but of the entire Crocean tradition in which the legitimacy of historical subjects was tested against their contemporary value. The “moral and political” crisis (as he put it) inflecting architecture as a result of the tumultuous decade bookended by Luther in Wittenburg and the Duke of Bourbon in Rome was Zevi’s subject. Tafuri rendered this as a basic error in architectural history’s purported mission, which he addressed in L’architettura del manierismo by weighing up an intellectual inheritance drawn from the histories of art and architecture. Out of this emerges a sense of architectural history as a disciplinary effort, held together on terms that parallels his analysis of mannerist architecture as a body of work and thought that in its unity overcame its internal oppositions. This is not yet the Tafuri of Teorie e storia dell’architettura, which he would immediately go on to write, but it contains the disciplinary germs of the problems and paradoxes that would define his contribution to the historiography of architecture.

Para tratarmos da pensarmos sobre a nossa historicidade atual com base na  “experiencia do tempo”, pretendemos refletir neste artigo refletimos sobre uma das principais hipoteses relacionadas  sobre as atuais formas atuais de temporalizacao: o presentismo de Francois Hartog. Essa sintomatologia do contemporâneo implica a ponta para uma ruptura substantiva entre o momento historicista-moderno, geralmente situado no seculo XIX, e um "regime de historicidade" emergente que seria substancialmente distinto. Apresentaremos  algumas objecoes a essa descricao e, considerando  e a partir da leitura do capitulo "Temporalidade e cotidianidade" da obra e Ser e Tempo, argumentaremos que certos aspectos do tempo presente considerados apontados como sintomas de uma mutacao historica da experiencia podem ser derivados das descricoes de Heidegger da temporalidade da “abertura” (Erschlossenheit), em particular da dimensao “inautentica” ou “impropria”. Por fim, apresentaremos uma l...

in La mémoire et la cité. Modèles antiques et réalisations renaissantes, Edizioni scientifiche italiane, Perugia, 1997, p. 95-115 1. Démunicipalisation et dépolitisation d'un discours historiographique dépassionné ? 1 Une célèbre monographie consacrée en 1950 à l'ensemble de l'oeuvre de Guichardin par Vittorio De Caprariis analysait celleci comme le témoignage d'un parcours intellectuel "de la Politique à l'Histoire" 2 . Pour éviter d'emblée toute équivoque sur le sens que j'entends donner à cette communication, il ne s'agit pas pour moi de m'inscrire dans une telle lignée interprétative en postulant que cette "démunicipalisation" de l'Histoire irait de pair avec une "dépolitisation" qui ellemême ne serait que la traduction idéologique d'un quelconque discours "dépassionné". Guichardin quand il entreprend de rédiger en 1535 ce qui deviendra la Storia d'Italia n'est pas un homme las et désabusé qui, après l'échec de ses entreprises dans le siècle, se replierait post res perditas sur la consolation de l'écriture historiographique. Cette dernière n'est pas davantage le produit légitime et noble d'un otium cum dignitate contraint et forcé dont la Consolatoria en 1527 serait la première étape. Il est vrai que le "ton" et la "langue" 3 des Storie fiorentine, écrites en 1508, alors que l'auteur n'a que 25 ans, ne sont pas les mêmes que ceux du chef d'oeuvre de la fin de sa vie rédigé à partir de 1535 mais on ne peut pour autant en inférer qu'à une écriture que l'on pourrait qualifier d'"engagée" à non sans anachronisme ou de "florentine" aurait succédé une 1Pour des raisons liées à la nature de cette communication, l'appareil de notes comprend essentiellement les références nécessaires pour la compréhension de mon propos. Je me permets de renvoyer pour des indications bibliographiques complémentaires à la "bibliographie guichardinienne" complète publiée en annexe de la nouvelle édition française de la Storia d'Italia (Guichardin, Histoire d'Italie, édition préparée par Jean-Louis Fournel et Jean-Claude Zancarini, Paris, Laffont, collection Bouquins, deux volumes, 1996). Par ailleurs, cette communication est une des traces d'un travail poursuivi depuis plusieurs années dans le cadre des activités eu Centre d'études et de recherches sur la pensée politique italienne. Mes réflexions guichardiniennes ont été contamment nourries par de nombreuses discussions, notamment avec Jean-Claude 1 Zancarini et Alessandro Fontana. Il convenait donc d'emblée de rappeler que les idées exprimées ici portent la marquent de cette élaboration souvent collective.

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual "Brill" typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface.

The paper focuses on the interpretation of Roman Italy and its geographical borders in the Early Modern period, with particular attention to its rebirth in Biondo Flavio’s work - Key words: Italia romana, historical borders, regiones, Augustus, Pliny the Younger, Decretum Rubiconis, Alpine districts, Augusta Praetoria,  tropaeum Alpium, La Turbie, Aquileia, Histria, river Formio,  Tridentum.

This article describes the sources for, and the origins and uses of, the creole languages in the Dutch colony of eighteenth-century Suriname -those created and spoken among slaves on the plantations, among the free black Maroons in the jungle villages and among the mixed population (freed/slave, Christian/Jewish, French/Dutch, etc.) of the town of Paramaribo. The rich sources derive especially from plantation managers and Moravian missionaries, at their best working with black or coloured collaborators. These creoles, both the Englishbased Sranan and the Portuguese-based Saramaccan, allowed generations of Africans and Surinamese-Africans of diverse background to discuss matters of family, health and religion, to tell stories, to establish intimacy and mount quarrels with each other, to consider relations with masters and settlers, to plot resistance and sometimes to construct a past history. The uses of the creole languages by settlers are described, including their limited employment for religious conversion. The article concludes with the Dutch and Sranan poems published in the seventeen-eighties by a Dutch settler married to a mulatto heiress, poems casting in doubt hierarchies of colour. * This article is a revised version of the plenary lecture presented to the 77th

The relations between metaphysics and physics in Cartesianism is a question of crucial importance for 19th century French histories of philosophy. Hence, in its institutionally dominant version, incarnated by Victor Cousin, this philosophy was understood as a spiritualism concerned with the founding of a psychology relying on a rationalist interpretation of the cogito. In order to achieve this, such a psychology must distinguish itself from the empirical method of psychology inherited from the so-called ideologues. And this required, in turn, that metaphysics must return to its place at the roots of the tree of knowledge, in opposition to a Baconian interpretation considering the history of the mind in prolongation of the natural sciences, and according to the same model. If this ambition proved to be both theoretically and objectively constraining for the « Cousinians », it was, however, not a unique enterprise in the 19th century. Other, alternative trees of knowledge were envisaged, defining other possible readings of the Cartesian philosophy, notably by opening up alleys toward empiricist interpretations. In this paper, I propose a typology of these alternative trees. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the complexity and the tensions between physics and metaphysics in Descartes on the one hand, and, on the other, to stress the decisive importance of 19th century French historiography for our current understanding of these relations.

KEYWORDS
Physics, Metaphysics, Psychology, Spiritualism, Empiricism, Materialism.

In Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and in his Reception. Delphine Antoine-Mahut and Sophie Roux (eds), Routledge, submitted.

Кресін О.В. «Історія Малоросії» Миколи Маркевича: історична праця та політичний трактат // Studia politologica Ucraino-Polona. Т. 7. 2017. С. 271 – 286.
М. Маркевич був людиною свого часу. Як історик він з методологічної точки зору навіть відстав від свого часу, що не пройшло непоміченим для сучасників та нащадків.
На противагу «Історії Малої Росії» Д. Бантиша-Каменського, написаній в об’єктивістському стилі, він створив публіцистичний твір, де історія виступає лише тлом для політичних ідей автора.
До того ж, твір цей насправді, як уже відзначали дослідники, є переважно компілятивним, у якому, до того ж, ступінь обробки запозичень був дуже низьким. Завдяки М. Маркевичу до історичного обігу під виглядом справжніх документів було
введено низку фальшивок та неавтентичних текстів. Дотепер частина істориків продовжує послуговуватися його працею без застережень, як достовірним джерелом. Парадокс полягає в тому, що М. Маркевич відомий як визначний архівіст та археограф
свого часу. В третьому-п’ятому томах «Історії Малоросії» він опублікував низку важливих джерел, проте при підготовці монографічної частини своєї праці Маркевич практично не використовував достовірних документів.
Отже, «Історія Малоросії» М. Маркевича як історична праця не становить особливого інтересу. Ми розглядаємо «Історію Малоросії» як пам’ятку літератури, а також політичної та правової думки, в якій доволі яскраво відобразився комплекс ідей та
естетичних смаків як самого М. Маркевича, так і цілого періоду в історії української культури. Окрім того, ми вважаємо цю працю однією з ключових для розуміння ідейних витоків творчості Т. Шевченка та інших діячів українського національного відродження
ХІХ ст.
Історики української політичної думки мало звертаються до умовного періоду між кінцем XVIII та серединою ХІХ ст. Саме цей час аж донедавна залишався у відповідних дослідженнях практично не концептуалізованим. Певні позитивні зміни сталися з
появою схеми національного відродження східноєвропейських народів у ХІХ ст. М. Гроха, розвиненої і адаптованої до українських реалій Р. Шпорлюком. Згідно з їх висновками, період, у який творив М. Маркевич, в усіх недержавних на той час народів Східної Європи пройшов під знаком впевненості в етнічному колапсі, розчиненні у
великих поліетнічних націях. У Наддніпрянській Україні це виявилося в уявленні про етнічну монолітність єдиного східнослов’янського російського народу, в Галичині – у
австрофільських ідеях.
Перед обличчям такої невідворотності етнографи та історики виявляли бажання зібрати та зберегти для нащадків духовну та матеріальну пам’ять про народ, що зникає. Через це період, який у Східній Європі умовно займав першу половину ХІХ ст.,
називають академічним. М. Маркевич якраз і був виразним представником цього періоду, який зробив важливий внесок у витворення цілісного історичного та етнографічного образу українського народу. Стверджуючи існування зв’язку між
природою, етнологією, історією та політикою, він, можливо навіть несвідомо, поставив під сумнів ідею про можливість повного злиття українського та російського народів.
Цим він проклав місток до наступної фази розвитку української національної ідеї, що розпочалася у 1840-х рр. і відповідала центрально- та східноєвропейським тенденціям, найповніше втіленим у революціях 1848 р., а саме в запереченні концепції
про злиття народів у суперетнічних спільностях, розквіту слов’янофільства та ідеї про слов’янську федерацію тощо.
У такому контексті виразно виступає велич М. Маркевича як дослідника, який доводив, що український народ як окремий та самобутній існував. А молодше покоління – Т. Шевченко, П. Куліш, М. Костомаров на цій основі дали ствердну відповідь на питання про подальші перспективи розвитку українського народу.

umr cnrs 8584 lem) -Alain Dubreucq (Université Jean-Moulin, Lyon III, ciham umr cnrs 5648) -Sylvain Excoffon (Université Jean-Monnet, Saint-Étienne, directeur adjoint du cercor umr cnrs 8584 lem) -Bernard Hours (Université Jean-Moulin, Lyon III, larhra umr cnrs 5190) -Daniel-Odon Hurel (lem umr cnrs 8584, président du pcr La Chaise-Dieu) -Thierry Pécout (Université Jean-Monnet, Saint-Étienne, directeur du cercor umr cnrs 8584 lem) -Ludovic Viallet (Université Blaise-Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, chec ea 1001) ContaCts -Frédérique-Anne Costantini [email protected] -Daniel-Odon Hurel [email protected] -Martine Alet (logistique)

Erschienen in der Klaus Zernack zum 80. Geburtstag gewidmeten, von Robert Traba hg. Festschrift Deutsch-Polnische Beziehungsgeschichte = Historie. Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 4, 2010/2011, S. 117-124] Das Wintersemester 1977/78 war mein zweites Semester. Ich studierte in Köln Germanistik, Osteuropäische Geschichte und Skandinavistik. Die lange Pause zwischen Sommer-und Wintersemester hatte ich in Finnland verbracht, auf einem Bauernhof in Karelien, im Nordosten des Landes nahe der russischen Grenze. In diesem Sommer 1977 lernte ich auch zwei Schriftsteller kennen. Der eine, Jahrgang 1931, stammte aus Ostpreußen, seinem nördlichen Teil, und er lebte seit Ende der fünfziger Jahre in Finnland; der andere, Jahrgang 1905, stammte aus Wien und war Ende der dreißiger Jahre nach einer abenteuerlichen Flucht über Memel, Kaunas, Riga und Tallinn nach Helsinki gekommen und war dort geblieben. Mit der M/S Gryf fuhr ich im Herbst von Helsinki über die Ostsee nach Danzig und dann mit dem Zug über Warschau und Berlin zurück nach Westdeutschland, in den Deutschen Herbst, den Herbst der Ermordung von Hanns Martin Schleyer (dessen böhmische Jahre in den Nachrufen verschwiegen wurden), den Herbst der Entführung der Lufthansa-Maschine Landshut und ihrer Erstürmung in Mogadischu durch die GSG 9, den Herbst der Stammheimer Selbstmorde am 18. Oktober 1977. Am selben Tag wurden in Prag die Initiatoren der Charta 77 zu langjährigen Haftstrafen verurteilt, unter ihnen Václav Havel. Osteuropäische Geschichte hatte ich -neben Germanistik und Skandinavistik -als drittes Studienfach gewählt, weil mich der Osten interessierte und die Rolle, die wir Deutsche dort gespielt haben, im Laufe der Geschichte . Im Sommersemester hatte ich bei Günther Stökl die Vorlesung Von der Autokratie zum Absolutismus gehört und bei seinem Assistenten Hans Hecker ein Proseminar über die Anfänge der polnischen Geschichte absolviert. Jetzt im Herbst ging ich in Stökls Vorlesung über

Čuhová, P. S. (ed.). Podoby faktuálneho naratívu. Bratislava: Chronos, 2017, 71-83. [Transl. Eugen Zelenak]

This paper aims to reflect upon the role that postmodernism has played in the contemporary theory and philosophy of history, taking the work of the Dutch philosopher of history Frank Ankersmit as my case study. The curious fact about Ankersmit's affair with postmodernism is that, back in the 1980's, he was among those theorists who identified themselves with postmodernism, while some years later he joined with those who think that postmodernism was/is just an irresponsible and outmoded trend. My attempt here is to find a reason for that 'Gestalt-switch'. His article of 1989 'Historiography and Postmodernism' , along with the following discussion with Perez Zagorin in the journal History and Theory, was called a 'semi-nal moment' by the British theorist of history Keith Jenkins. Nevertheless, my claim in this paper is that, if we read that article more carefully (as I intend to do here), we will realize that his previous engagement with the postmodernist theory of history was not of a full-blooded type, and if we look further in his intellectual journey, we will see that it lasted just a moment.

If all the world is a stage, then the ancient Indian Buddhists would say that what is being played out in this theatrum mundi is one great tragedy. To the compilers of the One Hundred Parables Sūtra, as well as the Sūtra of the Talented and the Stupid, what is played out is very much a tragicomedy: As with Shakespeare, the tragic and the comical are often inextricably intertwined. To them, this world is not a fool's paradise. But it certainly is a Ship of Fools. Chán texts, as well as Chán practice, are thoroughly Indian-inspired. They combine flamboyantly vulgar Chinese colloquialisms with lexical, as well as syntactic, loans from non-Chinese languages, not necessarily Sanskrit and Pali. It is in China, Korea and Japan that the Buddha tends to smile, not in India.

This study focuses on the affective, epistemic, and social effects of the introduction of computers in European professional medieval history between ca. 1970 and 1995. A study of the reaction of a distinct and relatively small group of (mostly) French scholars to this new and evolving technology over the course of three decades unveils the emotional-epistemological effects of using computer-based technologies in medieval history. This history thus reveals the ways in which medieval history changes in four different dimensions: the self-referential, the physical, the social, and the epistemological. The history of the acceptance of, and resistance to, computers also opens up a new space for reflection on both paradigmatic and gradual change in the theory of history, thereby highlighting the importance of including the history of information in theoretical reflection on history as a practice.

sided over the "Wolfson in the Harvard Faculty Club, which included many outstanding university professors. Numerous honors were showered upon him, but no more than were his due. Throughout his life, Wolfson found security in his Hypothetico-Deductive Method of Text Study developed by him in his twenties, when he wrote his doctoral dissertation at Harvard.

In this article for the HT theme issue I argue that “Peru” is a “historical theory in a global frame.” The theory or, as I prefer, theoretical event, named Peru was born global in an early colonial “abyss of history” and elaborated in the writings of colonial and postcolonial Peruvian historians. I suggest that the looking glass held up by Peruvian historiography is of great potential significance for historical theory at large, since it is a two-way passageway between the ancient and the modern, the Old World and the New, the East and the West. This slippery passageway enabled some Peruvian historians to move stealthily along the bloody cutting-edge of global history, at times anticipating and at others debunking well-known developments in “European” historical theory. Today, a reconnaissance of Peruvian history's inner recesses may pay dividends for a historical theory that would return to its colonial and global origins.

In the second half of the 19th century, comprehensive Histories of Education started to be written in the United States. Especially in their treatment of history from the Reformation onwards, these books «invented a tradition» presenting everything as a preparation to the full realization of the Common School model, overlooking the fact that education in the US was largely made of individual efforts or organized by local communities. This narrative was made popular by its dominance in textbooks for teacher training, being therefore repeated in classrooms. While «revisionist» historians of the 1960’s attributed it to the Progressive Era authors, we argue that it was born much earlier, together with the Common School movement itself, and we analyze the major elements of its narrative, seen as a self-aware technique more than a failed attempt by amateur historians.