Исторический манифест: Глава 2. “Короткое прошлое”, или отступление longue durée

This is the Russian translation of the second chapter of The History Manifesto by Jo Guldi and David Armitage. The book’s main focus is a critique of the shortage of long-term thinking that, according to the authors, characterizes the social imagination of our time and the dominant mode of history writing. They propose a return to longue durée history as a tool of social analysis directed toward the future. In a crisis of short-termism, Guldi and Armitage claim, our world needs somewhere to turn for information about the relationship between past and future. History – as a discipline and a subject matter – is an ideal candidate for the job, just the arbiter we need at this critical time.

In chapter 2 the authors review the temporary retreat of the historical profession from writing long-term historical narratives during the last decades of the twentieth century. This temporary “retreat of the longue durée” was caused both by the changed political climate and the rise of new types of history-writing, such as microhistory.