What is history - a question historians have been asking themselves time
and again. Does "history" as an academic discipline, as it has evolved
in the West over the centuries, represent a specific mode of historical
thinking that can bedefined in contrast to other forms of historical
consciousness?
In this volume, Peter Burke, a prominent "Western" historian, offers ten
hypotheses that attempt to constitute specifically "Western Historical
Thinking." Scholars from Asia and Africa comment on his position in the
light of their own ideas of the sense and meaning of historical
thinking. The volume is rounded off by Peter Burke's comments on the
questions and issues raised by the authors and his suggestions for the
way forward towards a common ground for intercultural communication.