Historians' Autobiographies as Historiographical Inquiry

This Element studies historians' autobiographies from a global perspective, containing gender, postcolonial, and trauma experiences.

This Element examines 20 global historians' autobiographies, focusing on their memories, intellectual self-accounting, social activism, classical Chinese and Islamic traditions, modernization, and post-colonial experiences. It offers a literary and historical approach, emphasizing the historiographical dimension and value of these autobiographies.This Element analyses the autobiographies of historians from a global perspective and looks at all eras, from antiquity to the present day. It includes twenty autobiographies: Caesar's and Lucian of Samosata's memories in antiquity; an autobiography of a medieval king such as Peter IV of Aragon; Vico's, Gibbon's and Adams' intellectual self-accounting in modernity; autobiographical revelations and social activism of twentieth century women historians such as Carolyn Steedman, Jill Conway and Gerda Lerner; classical Chinese and Islamic traditions through the autobiographies of Sima Quian and Ibn Khaldun; the perplexities inherent in the modernisation of Japan (Fukuzawa Yukichi), China (Gu Jiegang), India (Nirad Chaudhuri) and Egypt (Taha Hussein); postmodernists such as Rosenstone; and traumatic postcolonial experiences in Africa (Bethwell Ogot), Latin America (Carlos Eire) and Southeast Asia (Wang Gungwu). This Element proposes a literary and historical approach to these autobiographies, emphasising its historiographical dimension and value.