Description
Against majority opinion within his profession, Donald Bloxham argues that it is legitimate, often unavoidable, and frequently important for historians to make value judgements about the past. History and Morality draws on a wide range of historical examples, and its author's insights as a practicing historian. Examining concepts like impartiality, neutrality, contextualisation, and the use and abuse of the idea of the past as a foreign country, Bloxham's book investigates how far tacit moral judgements infuse works of history, and how strange those histories would look if the judgements were removed. The author argues that rather than trying to eradicate all judgemental elements from their work, historians need to think more consistently about how, and with what justification, they make the judgements that they do. The importance of all this lies not just in the responsibilities that historians bear towards the past - responsibilities to take historical actors on those actors' own terms and to portray the impact of those actors' deeds - but also in the role of history as a source of identity, pride, and shame in the present. The account of moral thought in History and Morality has ramifications far beyond the activities of vocational historians.
About the Author
Donald Bloxham has taught at Edinburgh University since 2001. He was appointed Professor of Modern History in 2007 and given the established Richard Pares chair of history in 2011. Beyond his work on the history and philosophy of the discipline of history, he is a specialist in the study of genocide and of the punishment of perpetrators of genocide. His book The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (OUP, 2005) won the Raphael Lemkin Prize for genocide scholarship. He has also been a recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize and is currently on a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.
Reviews
Bloxham's book is a call for nuance and self-awareness, arguing that moral judgement is not only important, but is actually inescapable. What matters is how we deploy it - and that we are conscious of doing so. * Jonathan Waterlow, H/Sz/Kult *
It is all too rare that a scholarly book - the product of decades of research and careful thought - emerges at precisely the moment when it is most needed ... Masterfully spanning multiple academic disciplines, Bloxham takes us back to the very foundations of Western thinking, charting the development of our conceptions of core values like 'truth', 'justice', 'responsibility', and 'guilt' ... History and Morality will be immensely useful not only for a generation of historians wary of making value judgements about the past, but also for a new generation who, in their drive to bring morality back into the picture, are sometimes too hasty to appreciate the importance of context and the pitfalls of anachronism. * Jonathan Waterlow, H-Soz-Kult *
The historian's narratives, both as empirical work and as the work of dreamers and poets, contribute in special and very consequential ways to the constitution of societies and of the human family, as well as to self-constitution in the ordinary ways that are common to all persons... Historiography - Bloxham's "History" - is thus useful, a force in the world, but founded on the intellectual exploration of our situation with others and ourselves that we call morality. * Bennett Gilbert, Portland State University *
Not since the days of Cambridge don Herbert Butterfield has an Anglophone historian so interestingly taken up the history of his own discipline and the problem of historical judgment the way that Donald Bloxham does in these twin volumes ... Bloxham should be praised * Samuel Moyn, Intellectual History Review *
These works of outstanding scholarship are of value to anyone curious to consider the uses and pitfalls of history in a present forever parasitic on the past. * Alexandre Leskanich, TLS *
Bloxham['s] digressions and byways are often as rich as the main thread of the argument...History and Morality ought to achieve wide readership. * Professor Daniel Woolf, Queen's University, Reviews in History *
Book Information
ISBN 9780198858713
Author Donald Bloxham
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 161mm * 23mm
About the Author
Donald Bloxham has taught at Edinburgh University since 2001. He was appointed Professor of Modern History in 2007 and given the established Richard Pares chair of history in 2011. Beyond his work on the history and philosophy of the discipline of history, he is a specialist in the study of genocide and of the punishment of perpetrators of genocide. His book The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (OUP, 2005) won the Raphael Lemkin Prize for genocide scholarship. He has also been a recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize and is currently on a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.
Reviews
Bloxham's book is a call for nuance and self-awareness, arguing that moral judgement is not only important, but is actually inescapable. What matters is how we deploy it - and that we are conscious of doing so. * Jonathan Waterlow, H/Sz/Kult *
It is all too rare that a scholarly book - the product of decades of research and careful thought - emerges at precisely the moment when it is most needed ... Masterfully spanning multiple academic disciplines, Bloxham takes us back to the very foundations of Western thinking, charting the development of our conceptions of core values like 'truth', 'justice', 'responsibility', and 'guilt' ... History and Morality will be immensely useful not only for a generation of historians wary of making value judgements about the past, but also for a new generation who, in their drive to bring morality back into the picture, are sometimes too hasty to appreciate the importance of context and the pitfalls of anachronism. * Jonathan Waterlow, H-Soz-Kult *
The historian's narratives, both as empirical work and as the work of dreamers and poets, contribute in special and very consequential ways to the constitution of societies and of the human family, as well as to self-constitution in the ordinary ways that are common to all persons... Historiography - Bloxham's "History" - is thus useful, a force in the world, but founded on the intellectual exploration of our situation with others and ourselves that we call morality. * Bennett Gilbert, Portland State University *
Not since the days of Cambridge don Herbert Butterfield has an Anglophone historian so interestingly taken up the history of his own discipline and the problem of historical judgment the way that Donald Bloxham does in these twin volumes ... Bloxham should be praised * Samuel Moyn, Intellectual History Review *
These works of outstanding scholarship are of value to anyone curious to consider the uses and pitfalls of history in a present forever parasitic on the past. * Alexandre Leskanich, TLS *
Bloxham['s] digressions and byways are often as rich as the main thread of the argument...History and Morality ought to achieve wide readership. * Professor Daniel Woolf, Queen's University, Reviews in History *
Book Information
ISBN 9780198858713
Author Donald Bloxham
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 161mm * 23mm
