This book traces the development of historiography from the days of Herodotus to those of postmodernism. It covers the ancient, medieval and the modern aspects of the subject and offers easy comprehension, clear and precise guidance and immediate utility. The author provides a balanced view of competing ideas and leads the reader into the vast arena of the subject. Two thousand five hundred years of historiography, including Indian historiography and the poststructuralist critique of history, constitutes this clear, analytical work.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

This book examines the nature and function of history-writing in India by focusing on early modern traditions of historiography with particular reference to Bengal. Situating distinctive cultures of history vis-à-vis their relevant political and cultural contexts, it highlights the richness, variety and politically sensitive character of a range of oral and textual narratives. Kumkum Chatterjee also makes a significant contribution to the intellectual and cultural history of early modern India by exploring interactions between regional, vernacular cultures on the one hand and the Islamicate, Persianized culture of the Mughal Empire on the other. Strongly grounded in primary sources, The Cultures of History in Early Modern India re-examines the concepts of authority, evidence and method in early modern historiography. It also discusses the debates surrounding the culture of history writing in India.

Volume 4 of The Oxford History of Historical Writing offers essays by leading scholars on the writing of history globally from 1800 to 1945. Divided into four parts, it first covers the rise, consolidation, and crisis of European historical thought, and the professionalization and institutionalization of history. The chapters in Part II analyze how historical scholarship connected to various European national traditions. Part III considers the historical writing of Europe's 'Offspring': the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, and Spanish South America. The concluding part is devoted to histories of non-European cultural traditions: China, Japan, India, South East Asia, Turkey, the Arab world, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This is the fourth of five volumes in a series that explores representations of the past from the beginning of writing to the present day, and from all over the world. This volume aims at once to provide an authoritative survey of the field, and especially to provoke cross-cultural comparisons.

Volume III of The Oxford History of Historical Writing contains essays by leading scholars on the writing of history globally during the early modern era, from 1400 to 1800. The volume proceeds in geographic order from east to west, beginning in Asia and ending in the Americas. It aims at once to provide a selective but authoritative survey of the field and, where opportunity allows, to provoke cross-cultural comparisons. This is the third of five volumes in a series that explores representations of the past from the beginning of writing to the present day, and from all over the world.