Other Actors, New Plots, Alternative Narratives:
A Historiographical Overview of Trends and Debates in European History
Nazan Maksudyan, PhD
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Berlin)
Since the professionalization of historical studies and their concentration in universities,
in other words since the emergence of history as a “scientific” discipline in the nineteenth
century, many assumptions regarding historical research and writing have been questioned and
altered. The first groundbreaking transformation coincides with the passage from Rankean
narrative, event-oriented historiography in the nineteenth century into social science-oriented
forms of historical research, that were generally associated with the Annales School, in the first
half of the twentieth century. The new approaches challenged the old historiography from
various angles. First, it was noted that the focus on individuals, mostly “great men”, and events
as the subject matter of history neglected the broader context. This criticism implied the
expansion of historical research from politics to social and economic factors. Such a history
necessitated a shift from events and individual leading personalities to social conditions,
impersonal structures and processes.
Historians in France, Belgium, the United States, Scandinavia, Germany, and Marxist
historians in general turned to particular conceptions of social science as integral to the work of
historians and, thus, increasing attention was given to social history. However, in the 1960s,
during a period of awareness for non-Western peoples, subordinated groups, minorities, the
disadvantaged in general, social-science oriented historians were challenged for applying
scientific rationality to the progress and ordering of society. New historiography criticized social
science approaches for placing great impersonal structures to the center and failing to question
the existing power relations. This shift also coincided with the questioning of the “grand
narratives” and, thus, enforced the formation of new historical narratives, which reinterpreted sofar-ignored population groups as relevant historical actors, foremost among them working
classes, women and ethnic minorities. The newer histories went beyond political and social elites
and attempted to write “a history from below”, “below” being continuously redefined parallel to
historiographical developments. If we assume that the social science-oriented history replaced
“politics” with “society”, the new history introduced “culture”, which defined the conditions of
everyday life.
During the course of the twentieth century, what constituted “historical” and therefore
“history” expanded enormously. European historiography expanded towards new plots,
welcomed new protagonists and embraced other forms of narrative. From event-based,
journalistic, chronological political and military history; to structure-oriented, longer term,
economic and social history; to increased sensibilities for different social groups, cultures, and
life experiences; to fine-tuning with extremely detailed analysis as in the case of micro-history
and the consequent “return of the narrative”... In that respect, this paper offers both an analytical
survey of the “historian's craft” in the twentieth century and an exploratory journey to the
frontiers of history writing in the new century.