Historiography

Crosby’s findings to newer and more detailed components. The New World Encyclopedia previously mentioned, highlights the illnesses brought along with colonialists but still excludes much research left untold that might have been useful to the historiography. Nearly 10 years after Alfred Crosby’s theory has been proposed, author Soma Hewa sheds a new light on the how the medical system is affected with consideration of ECI spread of diseases to Sri Lanka. This narrative gives a geographical…

Conquest, 1492-1650. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. In this book, David Cook attempts to synthesize all available information about the spread of disease in the new world in one volume. Cook’s main argument is that the traditional historiography on the subject, most notably that written by Bartolome de Las Casas, over-emphasizes the cruelty of the Spanish as the reason behind the massive deaths experienced in Amerindian populations. Cook shows in this book how diseases such…

1960s turned the tides for many historians as this new evidence provided much more valuable information on the subject. With many notable historian’s arguments coming from the last few decades, Murray’s piece is one of the most recent in the historiography. Murray focuses on similar arguments to historians such as; Rohan Butler in ‘New Cambridge Modern History’; A.J.P Taylor in ‘The Origins of the Second World War’; and Sally Marks in ‘Mistakes and Myths: The Allies, Germany, and the…

“Feudalism” as a term has been controversial since its conception. Its origin is the German “feudalismus,” and was first used in the English language in its current meaning in the 17th and 18th centuries. There is difficulty defining this term because of its inherently large scope; a feudal system is one in which there may be a social, economic, or political system of seigniorial landownership and general dues of the peasantry. This naturally describes many societies throughout history, and so,…

the book of Acts are of great importance because it informs the reader on the history of the primitive church at Jerusalem. Fee and Stuart point out that the author, Luke, is a Gentile whose narrative could be seen as a source of Hellenistic historiography, which is a type of history writing that has its roots in Thucydides (ca 460-400BC)[footnoteRef:1]. Such history was not written just for the sake of keeping records of the past, but it was written to encourage, inform, moralise and offer an…

The Dark Continent ideology contributes to the perception of African inferiority because “the colonialist historiography argued a dismal situation in Africa that prompted Europeans to embark on a civilizing mission”. Furthermore, when the historical narrative focused on actual native Africans, “ the premise of colonial historiography was still basically racist and hegemonic”. The Europeans colonists justified their presence through the rationale that they were civilizing…

the literature on the subject stood at the point of the late 1990s. Pérez addresses three main points in his analysis of the historiography of the Spanish-American War. First, he emphasizes that the Cuban insurgents deserved much more credit for their involvement in the defeat of the Spanish, and that they have never received this credit in United States historiography on the subject. Second, The War of 1898 should be labeled the “Spanish-Cuban-American War” since Cuban independence was…

It can at times strive so hard to focus of the overlooked aspects of existing historiography that is misses the big picture. Campbell’s volume, however illustrates the need for a more inclusive approach. The Mexicans in his story are presented as simplistic foes to be vanquished by our hero. His wives are similarly presented as cardboard…

Today, most scholars begin their literature on Latin American colonial art by affirming the obvious- that art produced in Latin America during Spanish colonialism is as a result of the imposition of Hispanic art in a society that had different art forms during pre-Hispanic times. The way in which these societies adopted and assimilated these new art form has been central to the discussion of Latin American history, however, these discussions have been evolving . Today, most scholars agree that…

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder argues that in the geographic region that he entitles “Bloodlands”, the area between Germany and Russia, during 1933-1945 under the Stalinist and Nazi regime resulted in over 14 million deaths committed by brutal regimes. His hope in this book is to look at the two regimes and how they respectively killed so many citizens but also to give Eastern Europe the attention it has not yet received from a historical perspective and…