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Summary Volume IX of the General History of Latin America analyses Latin American historiography and its main trends, particularly in the twentieth century. This volume is divided into two parts. The first looks at themes such as the historical significance of Latin America in relation to other parts of the world, the notion of periodization as applied to the Latin American context, and quantitative history as seen through various fields of study and primary sources, from the colonial period until today. One chapter in the first part is devoted to new perspectives and problems in Latin American historiography, with the suggestion that in the 1960s there was a radical change in the way history was approached in Latin America, and this left its mark on subsequent thinking, with a shift in focus from economic and social history in the period 1970-1980 to political and cultural themes in 1980-1990.
The second part of the volume investigates important areas such as historical demography, economic history and historical sociology. With ideologies about race and nation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the cornerstone of this section, the various visions of Latin American ethno-history are also questioned. It concludes with a focus on political topics such as the “discovery” of democracy and the emergence of cultural studies in historical research in the region. |
