scholarly journals For Oral Tradition (But Not Against Braudel)

1978 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 351-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Vansina
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
World War ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Waves ◽  
Fernand Braudel

One wonders what Fernand Braudel and the school of the Annales have done to become a kind of Trojan Horse for the wholesale condemnation of the historical value of oral tradition. Yet they are the banner raised by W.G. Clarence-Smith in a recent article in his journal to preach jihad against its historical value. Clarence-Smith claims that the historiographical revolution effected by Annales has resulted in the definitive exclusion of oral traditions from the halls of Clio. Oral traditions are at best ambiguous “signs” about the past and are very much of the present. They lack absolute chronology and they are selective, so away with them. If they be worthy of attention at all, let anthropologists and sociologists be concerned, save in a few rare instances where a historian wants to check on some European printed source. And even then, caveat emptor. Significantly, the article is not just the expression of the views of one person; rather it is symptomatic of much of the criticism which has been leveled at oral tradition, mostly by fasionable anthropologists. And it brings this criticism to its logical conclusion.But first a word about Braudel, the Annales, and oral tradition in general. The Annales School was founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch before World War II. Fernand Braudel is its most distinguished exponent. His major theoretical pronouncements can be found in his Ecrits sur l'histoire, a collection of articles reprinted and published in 1969. This and his two major historical works should be read by those who want to know more about his views and ways of dealing with history. The basic tenets that members of the Annales School hold is that the history of events is but the spray of past developments; other time depths tell us more about the waves of the past. There is the time of the conjoncture, the trend, and the even longer time periods -- sometimes many centuries long -- the longue durée or long term. Successful history writing does not liminate the study of events, but analyzes them against the movement of these longer and deeper-running trends.

scholarly journals Aristocratic libraries in Slovakia – status, research, history

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-441
Author(s):  
Michaela Sibylová
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Adverse Impact ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research History ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times

The author has divided her article into two parts. The first part describes the status and research of aristocratic libraries in Slovakia. For a certain period of time, these libraries occupied an underappreciated place in the history of book culture in Slovakia. The socialist ideology of the ruling regime allowed their collections (with a few exceptions) to be merged with those of public libraries and archives. The author describes the events that affected these libraries during and particularly after the end of World War II and which had an adverse impact on the current disarrayed state and level of research. Over the past decades, there has been increased interest in the history of aristocratic libraries, as evidenced by multiple scientific conferences, exhibitions and publications. The second part of the article is devoted to a brief history of the best-known aristocratic libraries that were founded and operated in the territory of today’s Slovakia. From the times of humanism, there are the book collections of the Thurzó family and the Zay family, leading Austro-Hungarian noble families and the library of the bishop of Nitra, Zakariás Mossóczy. An example of a Baroque library is the Pálffy Library at Červený Kameň Castle. The Enlightenment period is represented by the Andrássy family libraries in the Betliar manor and the Apponyi family in Oponice. 

Impossible to Disprove Yet Impossible to Believe: the Unforgiving Epistemology of Deep-Time Oral Tradition

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 127-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henige
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Carrying Capacity ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Of Affairs

This is not a real old time myth but it is what they say now, and it must have been like that.This man from Ulimang was highly skilled in the art of warfare—like Eisenhower.A Tahitian businessman who provides ‘Polynesian’ entertainment for tourists in Hawaii with a young Marquesan man whom he took to Samoa to be tattooed by their artistsfollowing designs recorded by early European visitors.… as for oral Traditions, what certainty can there be in them? What foundation of truth can be laid upon the breath of man? How do we see the reports vary, of those things which our eyes have seen done? How do they multiply in their passage, and either grow, or die upon hazards?Writing about American Indian reactions to their discovery of large fossil remains, Adrienne Mayor observes in passing that “[f]olklore scholars now generally accept that oral traditions about historical events endure for about a thousand years, although some oral myths about geological and astronomical events can be reliably dated to about seven thousand years.” Mayor's chosen task is to demonstrate that American Indian legends suggest that they rightly regarded fossils as the remains of long extinct megafauna populations. In aid of this, Mayor accepts these arguments in her own work. While this claim might seem extravagantprima facie, and while most folklorists would disown Mayor's claim, she is not without support from the work of a relatively small, but not uninfluential (and possibly growing), cadre of anthropologists, mythographers, geologists, and historians, whose efforts on behalf of deep-time oral tradition I address here.Some interesting—even intriguing—things have been happening recently in discussions of the carrying capacity of oral tradition—its long-term historicity, in particular.À laMayor, the thrust of this is to credit tradition with being able to preserve “intact” various pieces of information for as long as tens of thousands of years. To the historian interested in the reality of the past in oral societies, this state of affairs is challenging, perplexing, and no doubt to some, highly promising. If, for instance, it can be demonstrated that certain information in oral data is thousands of years old and at the same time an accurate recollection, then reservations about much later (say, several centuries old) orally transmitted information might need to be reassessed, and with such rethinking would come new ways to approach great swaths of the past.

BCLM: Forging Ahead: building a new urban history of the Black Country

Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Simon Briercliffe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public History ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
World War ◽  
Public Project ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Country Town

Abstract The recreation of urban historical space in museums is inevitably a complex, large-scale endeavour bridging the worlds of academic and public history. BCLM: Forging Ahead at the Black Country Living Museum is a £23m project recreating a typical Black Country town post-World War II. This article uses case-studies of three buildings – a Civic Restaurant, a record shop and a pub – to argue that urban-historical research methodology and community engagement can both create a vivid sense of the past, and challenge pervasive prejudices. It also argues that such a collaborative and public project reveals much about the urban and regional nature of industrial areas like the Black Country in this pivotal historical moment.

The Words that Predict the Outbreak of Wars

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hogenraad
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
World War ◽  
Need For Affiliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Need For Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
War And Conflict

McClelland has shown how passionate reformist zeal for social justice is often the link between an “imperial motivation pattern” (i.e., high need for power and low need for affiliation) and subsequent wars. If we could predict the outbreak of past conflicts from observing the gap between affiliation and power in stories and documents of the past, we could also analyze documents of the present and point at the gap as a signal of alert of future conflicts. With the help of the new computer-readable MOTIVE DICTIONARY, I content analyzed literary stories and real-life documents concerned with war and conflict. The dictionary rests on three axes, which are: the need for achievement, the need for affiliation, and the need for power. Examples of such narratives and documents are William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Tolstoy's War and Peace, a 373-page document produced in Washington in 1944 under the title of Events Leading Up to World War II. Chronological History Of Certain Major International Events Leading Up To and During World War II with the Ostensible Reasons Advanced For Their Occurrence. 1931-1944, and Robert F. Kennedy's Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. With close to impeccable precision, the gap between affiliation and power widens as the conflicts develop, with power higher than affiliation, and narrows if and when serenity resumes.

scholarly journals Polish books production in exile in the years 19391950: statistical and geographical perspectives

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Oskar Stanisław Czarnik
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
World War ◽  
Polish People ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Post War

The subject of this article is an overview of Polish publishing in the exile during the World War II and first post-war years. The literary activity was mostly linked to the cultural tradition of the Second Polish Republic. The author describes this phenomenon quantitatively and presents the number of books published in the respective years. He also tries to explain which external factors, not only political and military, but also financial and organizational, affected publications of Polish books around the world. The subject of the debate is also geography of the Polish publishing. It is connected with a long term migration of different groups of people living in exile. The author not only points out the areas where Polish editorial activity was just temporary, but also the areas where it was long-lasting. The book output was a great assistance to Polish people living in diasporas, as well as to readers living in Poland. The following text is an excerpt of the book which is currently being prepared by the author. The book is devoted to the history of Polish publishing in exile.

scholarly journals The Narrative Reproduction of Contemporary Montenegrin Identity in The Process of Euroatlantic Intergrations (Part II)

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 519
Author(s):  
Branko Banović
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
World War ◽  
Full Extent ◽  
The Past ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
Key Points ◽  
History Of

If we conceptualize reality as a large narrative we “build ourselves into” as social beings, and consider social activities and identities as narratively mediated, the full extent of the capacity of narratives in the creation, shaping, transmission and reconstruction of contemporary social identities, as well as the reproduction of the concept of nation in everyday life becomes apparent. The imagined Euro- Atlantic future of Montenegro demands certain narrative interpretations of the past, which, in latter stages tend to become meta-narratives susceptible to consensus. The linkage of significant historical events to the process of Euro-Atlantic integrations of Montenegro is preformed through different meta-discursive practices, most often through ceremonial evocations of memories of significant events from the recent as well as further history of Montenegro. In this context, celebrations of Statehood Day and Independence Day are especially important, as they serve as reminders of the decisions of the Congress of Berlin, the Podgorica Assembly, the antifascist struggle of World War II and the independence of Montenegro attained through the referendum held in 2006. The clearly defined key points, along with the logical coherence the narrative is based on, provide the narrative with a certain “flexibility” which enables it to take in new elements. Narrative interpretations of the past have a significant role in the reproduction of the nation, as well as the shaping and consolidation of a desirable national identity, while the established narrative continuity between the past, present and imagined Euro-Atlantic future of Montenegro emerges as the “official” mediator in the reproduction of contemporary Montenegrin identity in the process of Euro-Atlantic integrations. In order to fully comprehend this narrative, it is advisable to conceptualize it both in a synchronic as well as a diachronic perspective, as can be shown in two charts which, depending on the context, I have tentatively named “the sovereignty graph” (wherein the “end” of the narrative is a prerequisite for the beginning of Euro-Atlantic integrations) and “the identity graph” (wherein Euro-Atlantic integrations are conceptualized as a dialectic equilibrium of independence and non-independence).

scholarly journals Polsko-rumuńskie konferencje w Suczawie

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 171-196
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Nowak
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Romanian Literature

From 1999 Polish and Romanian humanists face each other on conferences in Suceava (Romanian Bucovina) which are part of “Polish Days” in Romania organized by the Association of Poles in Romania. Polish and Romanian historians, ethnographers, sociologists, politologists and linguists deliver lectures and discuss Polish-Romanian contacts and relations in the past and present. from the Polish part many historical lectures concern the interwar period and the problem of Polish refugees in Romania during the World War II. In the period between1918–1945 the relations between Poles and Romanians were rather friendly and now these topics are discussed most frequently. Among the Romanian historians there are more specialists on the relations between Moldova and the Polish Kingdom till the end of 18th century. Many historians focus on the Polish-Romanian relations in the years 1945–1989. Most of the lectures concerning the political present were delivered by the Poles. Cultural sections of the conference concentrate on mutual language influences, Polish–Romanian literature contacts, translations of Polish literature into Romania and Romanian literature into Poland, the analyses of literary works, Polish studies in Romania and Romanian studies in Poland, the perception of Romanian culture among the Poles and vice versa, the problems of religions, education, libraries, music and tourism. Polish etnographers concentrate on the problems of Polish Bucovinians but the most discussed subject is not the history of Polish Bucovinians but their local dialect. Most of the conference lectures were printed. “Polish Days” in Suceava are the most important event organized by the very active Association of Poles in Romania and they help breaking the stereotypes and enhance the integration between the Poles and Romanians.. In general the conferences in Suceava do not have their equivalent in the contacts between humanists of other countries.

The Evolution of the Arctic Submarine

1984 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 380-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred S. McLaren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jules Verne ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Wilkins

This paper examines the evolution of the arctic submarine and the ever-increasing scientific and commercial potential which have accompanied this evolution over the past 340 years. It is a sporadic history of arctic submarine ideas, concepts and actual experiences with vessels at sea. It happens to be a history that is largely American, with important additions as a result of the experiences of the Germans, Soviets and the British, particularly during World War II. Finally, it is a history in which five early visionaries in particular stand out: Bishop John Wilkins of England; Jules Verne of France; Professor Anschutz-Kampfe of Germany; the submarine designer Simon Lake, of the United States — whose influence extended over four decades until well into the twentieth century; and Sir Hubert Wilkins of Australia.

Long-Term Changes in the Living Arrangements of Children in the Netherlands

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 653-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben van Gaalen ◽  
Frans van Poppel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Living Arrangements ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Term Changes ◽  
The 19Th Century

The demographic and social processes of the past 150 years have radically changed the number of parents that children grow up with. This article uses two unique data sets to illustrate long-term changes in the living arrangements of children born between 1850 and 1985 in the Netherlands. Changes are described in terms of whether fathers, mothers, and stepparents lived with these children at birth and at age 15. A massive shift occurred in the living arrangements of the 1850-1879 cohort compared with the 1880-1899 cohort of children, and there is only a slight return to 19th-century conditions in the most recent birth cohort. Researchers and politicians should be careful when comparing contemporary family life with the extraordinary situation Western families were in just after World War II. To some degree, contemporary complexities are more comparable to those in the 19th century, although the sources of these complexities are different.

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