history, books, lifestyle
At the heart of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities is the insight that one of the most powerful forces in modern history, nationalism, is built on imagination. Published in 1983, this book has become one of the most influential works in the study of nationalism, yet its arguments remain as urgent and contested today as they… Continue reading The Past Through Pages: Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson
In this post, I am going to be looking at John L. Gaddis’s article Intelligence, Espionage, and Cold War Origins. Gaddis is best known as a post-revisionist/orthodox-leaning Cold War historian, but in this article, he specifically analyses intelligence. He asks why it has often been treated as a marginal topic in Cold War scholarship, despite… Continue reading The Past Through Pages: Intelligence, Espionage, and Cold War Origins, John L. Gaddis
In this post, I am going to be analysing Richard J. Aldrich’s Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence Since 1945 article from the English Historical Review. I found this article very interesting as it examines intelligence history while also asking bigger questions about who gets to write history, how secrecy shapes archives,… Continue reading The Past Through Pages: Policing the Past, Richard J. Aldrich
This post is about John Tosh's The Pursuit of History, specifically Chapters 9-11. Within these chapters, he tackles three key themes in modern historiography: the cultural turn, the rise of gender and postcolonial history, and the use of memory and the spoken word. These themes particularly stood out to me as they can all apply… Continue reading The Past Through Pages: The Pursuit of History, John Tosh
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