Periodisation Is an Argument
Ask a historian in Barcelona when contemporary history begins. They will answer 1789. In Britain, it usually means the era after 1945. These traditions make different claims about which rupture made the present.
Period labels are compressed arguments. This course follows the Universitat de Barcelona convention, covering the late eighteenth century to 1945.
Reinhart Koselleck identified a Sattelzeit, roughly 1750–1850, when basic concepts shifted. The space of experience and the horizon of expectation came apart. People no longer expected the future to repeat the past.
| Scheme | Span | The claim it makes |
|---|---|---|
| Contemporary history (Romance tradition) | 1789 – present | The Revolution begins our world |
| Hobsbawm's long nineteenth century | 1789 – 1914 | Bourgeois Europe is one coherent epoch |
| Hobsbawm's short twentieth century | 1914 – 1991 | 1914 and 1989–91 are the real hinges |
| Koselleck's Sattelzeit | 1750 – 1850 | The break is conceptual |
Sources and Historiography
Historical sources change radically in this era. Historians face mass media, censuses, statistics, and audiovisual records. The methodological challenge shifts from scarcity to abundance.
The historiography developed through key shifts:
- Rankean history: focused on states and diplomacy.
- The Annales school: founded in 1929 to study long-term social structures.
- Marxist history: prioritised class relations.
- Cultural turn: examined language and representation.
- Global history: challenged Eurocentric narratives.
Common pitfall: treating period labels as neutral containers. Every boundary is an interpretive claim.