Table of Contents

Introduction: Between Past and Present 1. The Lecture Hall 2. The Field 3. The Princely Archive 4. The Art Cabinet 5. The Study 6. The State Archive 7. The Seminar Epilogue: The Purpose of Historiography Bibliography Index

Promotional Information

An exploration of 18th- and 19th-century German historical scholarship as a modernizing project, born from Enlightenment ideals and aimed at creating a more tolerant and open-minded society.

About the Author

Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen is Associate Professor of History of Science at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is the editor/co-editor of two books in Danish and German and has held teaching, research, and visiting positions at: University of Copenhagen, Denmark; University of Chicago, USA; Harvard University, USA; University of California at San Diego, USA; Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany; and EHESS, France.

Reviews

[S]kilfully written and researched study of the Enlightened foundation of modern German historical scholarship. It is an original addition to the debate about the foundation of historical scholarship, and it contributes particularly to the field of moral and epistemic virtues and its role in Enlightened German historical scholarship.
*Intellectual History Review*

As a shadow, the past is omnipresent. And yet Eskildsen’s fundamental proposition is not to limit history to its possible function as the vicarious agent of a given contemporary agenda, but to engage with history in order to excavate differences in our access to and understanding of the world – be they past, present, or yet to come. This short book offers several reasons why it is worth following our predecessors and engaging in this insightful enterprise time and again.
*International Network for the Theory of History*

Historical scholarship has changed the world and continues to do so. In this groundbreaking book, Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen explores the origins of modern historiography by visiting the places where scholars connected past and present. He moves from the seminar to the lecture hall, from the field to the archive, and from the study room to the art cabinet. Eskildsen’s book is an exemplar for future histories of humanities disciplines – a must-read for anyone interested in the history of scholarship and science.
*Rens Bod, Professor of Digital Humanities and History of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands*

Eskildsen has written a truly remarkable account of how historical knowledge was once made, the sorts of places in which it was made, and why this knowledge mattered. Necessary reading for anyone concerned about what would be lost if academic history is now allowed to disappear.
*Steven Shapin, Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University, USA*

Modern Historiography in the Making is a rich and colorful collection of ideas, which courageously puts the modernist narrative of German historiography to the test and meticulously marks its theoretical bias against its own practical footage. By the provocative arguments and the choice of the subject, the book merits scholarly attention and will hopefully lead to constructive debates on the overlooked implications of modern historiography... The author guides their readers with considerable confidence and compassion over the book’s seven chapters, which, due to the short but concise discussion of each topic, read easily. Thanks to its subject and elegant prose, the book could be of interest to expert and non-expert readers alike and would also be easy to use for educational purposes
*Austrian History Yearbook*

[E]xceptionally lucid ... Eskildsen does a marvelous job of demonstrating how, by the 19th century, leading German historians such as Leopold von Ranke portrayed their writings as objective, even when they were fairly saturated with ideology. ... Highly recommended.
*CHOICE*