The Oxford History of Historical Writing ─ 1400-1800

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.

Jose Rabasa teaches in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. His publications include: Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism (1993); Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of New Mexico and Florida and the Legacy of Conquest (2000); and Without History: Subaltern Studies, the Zapatista Insurgency, and the Specter of History (2010).


Masayuki Sato was born in 1946 in Japan. He read Economics, Philosophy, and History at Keio University and Cambridge University. After teaching in Kyoto, He was invited to Yamanashi University and is now Professor of Social Studies in the Faculty of Education and Human Sciences. He was President of the International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography (2005-10) and a Programme Officer of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2007-2010). His latest books are Historiographical Time and Space [Rekishi ninshiki no jiku] (Tokyo, 2004) and Time in World History [Sekaishi ni okeru jikan] (Tokyo, 2009) .

Edoardo Tortarolo was born in Italy. Educated at the University of Turin, he has taught at several Italian universities, at the University of Leipzig (1997-8), and at Northwestern University (2010). In 2006 he was a member of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton. He is the author of several books on the political culture of the European Enlightenment.


Daniel Woolf was born in England and grew up in Canada. Educated at Queen's University and Oxford, he has taught at several Canadian Universities, including Dalhousie, McMaster, and the University of Alberta. In 2009 he was appointed Professor of History at Queen's University in Kingston, where he is currently also serving as Principal and Vice-Chancellor. General Editor of The Oxford History of Historical Writing (and co-editor of volume 5 in the series) he is also the author or editor of several previous books and many articles and book chapters. He previously edited the two volume Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing (1998). His single volume textbook, A Global History of History, was published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press.