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Preface and Acknowledgments A German version of this book was published in 1993 and in the meantime has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish . The German text had its basis in a paper I delivered at a panel discussion in April 1990 at the Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium on "Rationality and History," which dealt with the question of the postmodernist challenge to historical studies. The English version is not a translation of the German but in many ways a different book, the result of additional reading and discussions as well as the critical distance I have gained from the German text in the past three years. Two observations: Although the book attempts a comparative examination of historical thought that is international in its scope, it restricts itself to languages I can read. Hence the focus is on Great Britain and North America, France and Belgium, German-speaking Central Europe and Italy, with occasional references to Polish and Russian works in translation. But even here, my choice of authors is by necessity highly selective, focusing mainly on historians who exemplify important trends in historical scholarship. I am very grateful to the students and colleagues who during the past six years permitted me to test my theses and who commented on earlier versions of the manuscript. I am particularly thankful to the members of my seminar at the University of Leipzig who read and commented on a draft of the German manuscript during my guest semester there in the summer of 1992 and to a large number of colleagues and friends on both sides of the Atlantic and in Japan who also read the manuscript and offered critical suggestions, including Werner Berthold, Gerald Diesener, Christoph Dipper, Wolfgang Ernst, Dagmar Friedrich, Akira Hayashima, Wolfgang Hardtwig, Frank Klaar, Wolfgang Klittler, Jonathan Knudsen, Iris Pilling, Lutz Raphael, Anne-Katrin Richter, Hans Schleier, Ulrich Schneckener, Fernando Sanchez Marcos, Christian Simon, B. Strath, Rudolf von Thadden, Wiebke von Thadden, Edoardo Tortarolo, Johan van der Zande, and Peter Walther. I wish to thank Ottavia Niccoli ix for her useful suggestions on recent Italian social and cultural history. I found the Max Planck Institute for History in Gottingen a congenial and stimulatingplace to write the major portions of both the German and the English version. The Institute provided me not only access to an excellent library but also an opportunity to discuss the book with researchers there who read all or large portions of the book, includingHans-Erich Bodeker, Alf Liidtke, Otto Gerhard Oexle, Jiirgen Schlumbohm, and Rudolf Vierhaus. Conversations with Jorn Riisen, who invited me to a number of colloquia at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Bielefeld, were also valuable. On the German side, Winfried Hellmann at Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht was a superb editor who met with me repeatedly prior to the publication of the German text and offered trenchant criticisms.I am very thankful to Peter Burke who on very short notice read the English manuscript and made valuable suggestions, which I incorporated, and to Albert Cremer and Steffen Kaudelka at the Max Planck Institute and Patrice Veit of the Mission Historique Frangaise en Allemagne for reading the English version of the Annales chapter . I would like to thank Karl Sieverling at the Max Planck Institute for his computer assistance. Charles Daniello at Lockwood Library at the State University often provided bibliographical information. I am thankful to my Buffalo assistant Song-Ho Ha for the superb secretarial and scholarly assistance he offered me. The State University of New York at Buffalo was very generous in arranging my teaching schedule to permit me maximum time for my research and writing. The Woodrow Wilson Center provided support for a larger project of which this book was a part, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation provided me with the means to spend two half-years in Germany . I am particularly thankful to my wife, Wilma, who carefully read every German and English version for style and logical consistency and prepared a draft translation into English. G. G. I. Gottingen May 1996 x Preface and Acknowledgments ...

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