HI 3230

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Examinations: Summer 2003

HISTORIOGRAPHY
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Time allowed: 3 hours

Answer THREE questions, two from Section A and one from Section B

Answers should NOT include an significant amount of material already presented in ANY assessed essays.
Read carefully the instructions on the answer book and make sure that the particulars required are entered on each answer book.
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SECTION A

1 'Just another humanist history'. Assess this verdict on Machiavelli's Florentine Histories.

2 To what extent were Guicciardini's historical writings affected by his political affiliations?

3 Assess the contribution of Paolo Sarpi to church history.

4 Was Edward Gibbon a typical 'philosophical historian'?

5 Assess the implications for historical practice of Ranke's assertion that 'every age is immediate to God'?

6 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please.' Discuss, in relation to The 18th Brumaire.

7 'By stressing religious ideology, Weber's Protestant Ethic underestimates the role of social forces in the rise of capitalism'. Do you agree?

8 In what sense was the Annalist project, as represented by Marc Bloch, concerned to transform history into a science?

9 'At the core E. P. Thompson's work lies a drama of economic change: but the actors are not "economic men"'. Discuss.

10 'Anthropology may have helped historians to deepen their understanding of culture, but only at the cost of diverting them from their true task of explaining how cultures change.' Discuss in relation to Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic AND/OR Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre.

11 Is there any room for human agency in the analysis of the workings of power offered by Foucault AND/OR Said?

12 'The key historiographical impact of feminism was to redirect the attention of historians from the making of societies to the making of selves.' Discuss in relation to Barbara Taylor AND/OR Judith Walkowitz.

SECTION B

13 'No historian can live by facts alone.' Discuss.

14 Do you agree that historians are better at describing historical change than at explaining it?

15 'The personal is political.' Discuss, historiographically.

16 What of value has been lost by the abandonment of grand narratives of history?

17 'Cultural history has now substantially replaced social history.' Do you agree?

18 'The truths contained in post-modern theory are largely obvious; the novel elements are largely false.' Comment on this verdict.

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HI 3230
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Examinations: Summer 2002
HISTORIOGRAPHY

_________________________________________________________________

Time allowed: 3 hours

Answer THREE questions, one of which MUST be from Section B

Answers should NOT include an significant amount of material already presented in ANY assessed essays.

Read carefully the instructions on the answer book and make sure that the [particulars required are entered on each answer book.

_____________________________________________________________________

SECTION A

1. ‘Insensitive to cultural change, and without much respect for sources, Machiavelli used history primarily to supply answers to current political problems.’ Discuss.

2. How does Guicciardini’s History of Italy differ from traditional humanist historiography of the Renaissance?

3 Does Ranke’s belief in divine intervention in history mean that his approach has little to offer to the 21st-century historian?

4. ‘In The 18^th Brumaire it is more the weight of old ideas than the clash of economic interests that restricts the capacity of men to make their own history.’ Discuss.

5 Does Weber’s Protestant Ethic explain the role of religious ideology as a prime mover in history?

6. To what extent does The Historian’s Craft anticipate developments in historical method during the second half of the twentieth century?

7. What did Edward Thompson think could be learned from the study of popular protest in the past?

8. EITHER

Is Darnton’s ‘Great Cat Massacre’ a good example of the new cultural history?

OR

‘For Keith Thomas in Religion and the Decline of Magicanthropology may provide useful questions about popular beliefs, but it provides no answers.’ Discuss.

9. EITHER

Does Said's Orientalism provide a convincing account of the operations of power?

OR

‘For Foucault the essence of power is self-regulation.’ Discuss.

10 ‘Walkowitz is a historian who has taken the linguistic turn.’ Discuss with reference to City of Dreadful Delight

Section B

1. Is history a social science or a literary genre?

2. ‘Historical questions of importance can never provide certain solutions, only probable ones.’ Discuss

3. ‘Now that all the grand narratives of history have been abandoned, historians can only find interest in microhistory.’ Do you agree.

4. Can a historian be a structuralist?

5. ‘All history returns to the political.’ Discuss.

6. ‘In post-modern times all historians are post-modernists’. Discuss.