STUDENT'S ANNOTATED CHRONOLOGY
AND SYSTEMATIC BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Central Pedagogical Component of KIMBALL FILES
A Long webpage (ca. 20 screens in length) but with Vital Explanation and Guidance
© Alan Kimball
STUDENT'S ANNOTATED CHRONOLOGY
AND SYSTEMATIC BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Central Pedagogical Component of KIMBALL FILES
A Long webpage (ca. 20 screens in length) but with Vital Explanation and Guidance
© Alan Kimball
Table of Contents of this webpage =
STRUCTURE OF SAC
HOW TO USE SAC
*--Linking with a LIBRARY
*--SAC GLOSSARY
*--FIND function
*--Chronological LOOPS
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ABOUT SAC
THEMATIC CONSTANTS
Table of Contents of the NINE MONSTER SAC WEBPAGESREMEMBER THIS BIT OF ADVICE ABOUT HOPPING BACK AND FORTH ON THE INTERNET =
"Click" on a hypertext link
(such as in the Table of Contents just above)
and "hop" to a promised site.
"Hop back" to your launch point by pushing "ALT+left arrow".
[ALT & <-- at the same time]
Reverse the "direction" of the hop by pushing "ALT+right arrow".
This is the quickest way to hop back and forth within and among webpages and websites.You may also click a "BACK" or "FORWARD" button, usually in the upper left-hand corner of your web navigator screen. But I recommend the key combo "ALT+Arrow left or ALT+Arrow right". It keeps your hands on the keyboard where a creative and productive internet writer and user like you wants them to be. Free yourself from the "mouse" when you can.
You can take many hypertext hops in sequence, frequently moving back [ALT+Arrow left] and forth [ALT+Arrow right]. Your machine will "remember" and be able to lead you back over all previous hops to the point of your original hop, even if the hops take you across different webpages.
Practice keeping mental track of your hops. At first you might want to keep notes on your hops in your JOURNAL [ID], at least a very brief note on each hop. It is important to monitor your movements back and forth. This will soon become natural to you and will facilitate quick and focused internet "surfing", even without recording the sequence in your JOURNAL. It takes some practice not to "get lost", but this is no more difficult than an easy internet game.
Become adept at surfing the internet. What you want to do is become an active rather than a passive surfer. Take charge, stand up and ride the waves of the vast internet ocean. You are the navigator....
NB! WHEN YOU OPEN A FAVORITE WEBPAGE (i.e., one you visited earlier), YOUR COMPUTER SOMETIMES REMEMBERS AND SERVES UP THE PAGE OUT OF ITS OWN MEMORY RATHER THAN OUT OF THE MATRIX SITE (directly off the web). SINCE SAC PAGES ARE FREQUENTLY EDITED AT THE MATRIX SITE, YOU NEED TO DEVELOP THE HABIT (a good general habit) OF REFRESHING EACH FREQUENTLY VISITED ("favorite") WEBPAGE Y0U OPEN SO AS TO HAVE BEFORE YOU THE LATEST VERSION RIGHT OUT OF THE MAINFRAME.
STRUCTURE OF SAC
SAC employs several almost iconographic symbols =
The definition of "ENTRY" in SAC is all text between the brightly colored symbols "<>" and "<>".
SAC entries are filled with "HYPERTEXT LINKS". Click on these and you will hop to another place. The hypertext link is presented in the form of an underlined word or passage, distinguished from the surrounding text by color (nearly always blue).
"Hypertexted" key words and phrases throughout SAC, other than bibliographical entries (see next paragraph), let you hop to the next appearance of the keywords and phrases. The next appearance might be on the current screen, further down the current webpage, or on a following SAC webpage. That next appearance is nearly always chronologically "later". You can immediately hop back [ID] to where you just came from, or you can read on until you come across the next hypertext hop on your original keyword(s). SAC designates a sequence of hypertexted keyword(s) or phrases as a "LOOP" [ID].
Hypertexted bibliographical entries are different. They hop to the UO KNIGHT Library electronic catalog or, in some cases, to the text itself
What is the meaning of the symbol [ID], used three times just above? Read on =
The symbol [ID] (=identification) indicates a hypertext link, one hop to a location with a brief identification of the term immediately preceding the symbol.
The hypertexted symbol [EG] (meaning "for example", written conventionally "e.g." [abbreviating the Latin expression exempli gratia]) indicates a hypertext link, one hop to an example of the issue or term that [EG] immediately follows.
As with [ID], so also with [EG], the hop from these symbols will often be to a single and sufficient entry
- The hop may be to an earlier or later entry
- Sometimes the hop is to an entry that offers further hops on the keyword(s), a series that SAC calls a "LOOP" [ID]
- Most of the time one hop from [ID] or [EG] is sufficient, and you will hop right back to where you came from, fortified by the informational refresher
Examples of the previous two symbols, as well as of other hypertext features of SAC = [EG] and [ID].
The symbol [F//] (=find), suggests that you launch your own "FIND search" on any webpage. This is a powerful tool on any world-wide-web site. Right now, hop for a moment to the description of the FIND search, then return here [ALT+Arrow left]
For example, if you see "[F/Novgorod/]" or "Novgorod [F//]", you are invited to launch a find search for every appearance of the word Novgorod from that point on the webpage to the bottom of the webpage. The FIND function will not transition to another webpage.
The symbol [pix] (=photo) indicates a hypertext link to an illustration [EG#1] [EG#2] [EG#3]
The symbol [TXT] (=text) indicates a hypertext link to an electronic text found on the SAC website [EG]
The symbols [E-TXT] (=text) and [W] (=website) indicate hypertext links to texts and webpages on an independent websites beyond KIMBALL FILES. If there are more than one such link at any point, then the following form might be followed [E-TXT#1], [W#1], [W#2] etc. [EG]
Links "to the outside" or "beyond SAC" will sometimes fail. I try to keep them current, but be patient with the vast, unstable, ever-changing world wide web.
Each chronological entry in SAC strives to follow a predictable and recognizable form
As a rule, each entry outlines "answers" to the following six questions =
- when?
- where?
- who?
- what?
- why?
- how [do we know]?
These are the classic "Five Ws & H" of good newspaper reporting.
When?
Chronological entries are separated by double angle brackets = <>. Each opens with the date (year, month & day, or season, in that order) followed by a colon. If the entry covers an extended period, a terminus ad quem [time up to which the entry extends] is then entered followed by a semi-colon and space. [EG]
Months and seasons are abbreviated, but recognizable. For example, au=August and no=November. June is "je", July is "jy", spring is "sp", for example. As in "au01" above, single-digit dates have a zero in front of them to format nicely with the double-digit dates. Given the uncertainties about early history, few are the early times that can be defined down to the level of months and days.
NB! a peculiarity of the Russian historical calendar [SAC ID].
Where?
As a rule, the place of the action follows the time of the action. Many entries are worded in such a way that the opening of the narrative statement identifies place. I have employed an unconventional practice in which I use "USSR" and "USA" as nouns and adjectives when they appear at this point in the chronological entries.
Occasionally a hypertext iconographic figure "[g]" will follow a place. This allows a hypertext hop to the page titled "Geography" with a geographic table of the most important river drainage systems relating to Russian history [ID]. Our course will ask you to develop a mental image of where the most important river drainage systems are on any map, such as you might find on the web or in the MAP ROOM [ID]. You want to be able to locate them on a map, old or new, pre-Soviet, Soviet or post-Soviet, even a mental map. Borders and certain names change, but high points (mountains), rivers and other drainages out of these high points, and finally the low pools (the seas into which these drainages flow) change very infrequently. Knowing them, you are set, no matter how many superficial place-name changes might be made over the centuries. [Read more about this, ten brief paragraphs on the GEOGRAPHY page]
Who, What and Why?
Here in SAC entries, a brief statement follows about the historical episode. Who did what and (occasionally) why are given brief answers.
Some of the text is underlined and in a different color. Underlining signifies a "hypertext" link. You may "click" on underlined text to hop to a location relevant to the word or words underlined. Often links are proper nouns but sometimes simple keyword phrases.
When hypertext links appear in the narrative of a SAC entry, you can usually hop from there to the next significant chronological moment in which the hypertext item plays a role.
Titles of publications and coded sources in brackets are another matter, and they are taken up in the section that follows directly, where we ask the sixth essential historical question =
How [do we know]?
Whether historian, journalist or "just" citizen, we all must cultivate the habit of asking of informants clear indication of sources -- and we in turn must give the same to those we seek to inform. Statements about and interpretations of "what happened" must be underpinned by evidence and sources. That's why historians use footnotes and bibliographies.
We have to learn to distinguish two types of sources = primary sources and secondary sources [ID].
Of course, "how do we really know" is a far more complicated question than suggested by this simple distinction between primary and secondary sources. But at this point we need to concentrate on practical questions relating to "how do we use SAC" =
HOW TO USE SAC
Schematic rendering of a SAC entry
showing answers to the six questions
when, where, who, what, why &
"how do we know what we think we know" [more above]<>TIME:PLACE | PERSONS, INSTITUTIONS, EVENTS, PLUS SOURCES
*--LINES within the main angle-bracketed entry (sub-entries) are prefaced mainly in three different ways =
(1) *-- [asterisk, dash, dash]
(2) Asterisk and date, EG= *1917oc25:
(3) Bullets or numbers [EG]
SAC entries link to primary and secondary sources [ID]
and give guidance to library locations in several different waysIn SAC entries, hypertext links to primary and secondary sources [ID] are found typically at two spots =
- PRIMARY SOURCES in brackets are typically at the end of lines within SAC entries
- Primary sources (usually presented in 3-stroke code) link you with the SAC GLOSSARY [ID] where the codes are identified, and with hypertext hops to UO KNIGHT Library listings
- Primary sources are embedded in the chronological SAC entries according to a standard form =
- EG#1= [VSB,1:27]. Click on "VSB" and you hop to the Glossary identification of the full title of the publication. The comma and number that follow VSB indicate volume. The colon and number indicate page
- EG#2= [DMR2]. Notice how this citation is followed directly by a number to indicate which edition
- SECONDARY SOURCES are typically found at the end of SAC entries, following "\\"
SAC is saturated with sources because bibliography is at the heart of any acceptable answer to the question "how do I know what I think I know about history?" [ID]. Here is a summary of the several different ways SAC links you to primary and secondary sources =
- Coded or brief titles with hypertext overlay invite you to hop to SAC GLOS entries which define the full title [EG]
- At the end of many SAC entries there appears a section divided off from the narrative entry by "\\". This lowest section of any entry contains one or more hypertext secondary source publications [ID] related to the entry [EG]
- Throughout SAC the three hypertext symbols [TXT], [E-TXT] and [W] allow direct hop to digitized texts of primary and secondary sources
Follow these nine steps =
- Create a permanent TAB on your computer for the electronic library catalog you use most
- THIS IS THE NEW UO KNIGHT LIBRARY SITE
- SELECT for library search the full title or, if title is generically indistinct (EG=History of Russia), search for author plus title from SAC or any other electronic bibliographic site. "Select" means press SHIFT + Left or right arrow to move cursor over selected full title (thus laying in a dark background over the selected material)
- Here is an example of a title to practice on as you proceed through these steps = Nicholas Riasanovsky, A History of Russia
- COPY full selected title ["Copy" means press CONTROL + C]
- Now click to open your pre-established library website TAB [point #1 above]
- INSERT (aka "PASTE") full selected and copied title (stages 1 & 2 above) in your Library website's request "window" ["Insert" means press CONTROL + V]
- EXECUTE [aka ENTER] your request, according the requirements of your library website
THE FAULTY NEW UO ELECTRONIC CATALOG INEXPLICABLY LISTS REVIEWS AND ARTICLES BEFORE E-TXTs AND PRINT-COPIES. YOU OFTEN HAVE TO SCROLL DOWN THE ELECTRONIC CATALOG REPORT UNTIL YOU COME TO THE ENTRY LABELED ON THE LEFT AS "Print Book". Be patient
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "How small that part we all endure / Is given to librarians to cause or cure"- Once you locate your source in the catalog, you have to go get it in the library. Yes, you have to get up and walk
Sometimes a bibliographic link in SAC will bypass the library and hop directly to a digitized text. That is always so for [W]. SAC calls a directly available digitized text TXT or E-TXT. EG=An excerpt from Joyce's Finnigan's Wake here on the SAC website = [TXT], or to an electronic text beyond SAC, EG=Lenin's "April Theses" [E-TXT]. Now you are invited to read the source right there on your screen without messing with the 9-steps just above
Sometimes a SAC bibliographical link takes the form of a bracketed guide to primary-sources, often presented in acronymic form. When "clicked", such a link allows you to hop to a fuller exposition in the SAC GLOSSARY, EG= [VSB,1:200]. Increasingly I am adding Library of Congress "call-numbers" so that you can search and locate precisely the title in the SAC GLOSSARY. Once you have the full title or call-number, continue with point 5 above.
Let's try another experimental click on a coded hypertext abbreviation in order to hop to a more complete bibliographic citation in the SAC GLOSSARY. Here is an extremely helpful reference work, an encyclopedia, better than most textbooks on specific focused topics = [MERSH].
MERSH is more fully presented on a page devoted to recommended self-directed library tours = Russian History in the KNIGHT Library Reference Division (first floor shelves).
Do not let yourself be disheartened by the fact that hypertext source abbreviations link to SAC bibliographies rather than to indicated texts themselves. Most often, SAC bibliographical entries identify the coded reference, and shows you where you can find and read the text itself. I say this elsewhere, but let me say here too =
The authentic study of history requires a lot of time with good, old-fashioned printed texts. Only recently have a few electronic texts been made easily accessible. It is the library that makes the journey down our internet information highway useful as well as entertaining.Still, I have to say that SAC Editor finds new [E-TXT], [TXT] and [W] every few days. Thus increasingly course readings are being made available on the web in direct digitized form.
A hint = The "importance" of an entry is often indicated by a large number of primary and secondary sources attached [EG].
SAC chronologies contain a lot of useful information. But here's the rub = The best information you get from any SAC entry is about where to go to read primary and secondary sources about indicated topics, (1) in the library or (2) in electronic texts = [TXT], [E-TXT] or [W]. You cannot read everything, but you will have plenty of time this term to select those entries or groups of entries that interest you the most and seem most relevant to the big issues raised by the syllabus.
Development of your ability to determine the best relationship of the specifics in the syllabus with the rich store of information on SAC is one of the pedagogical goals of this course. An ability to determine this sort of relationship is a life skill. Dig into the syllabus and SAC. Use your 9 hours per week beyond class meetings to build a general sense of our historical "course", but also to satisfy your own interests in focused research topics of your own. You can find out more about this by checking the syllabi of individual courses [ID].Some entries contain GO-guides to related SAC locations. For example, "GO 1223" invites you to check the entry for the year 1223 for related material. GO-guides may or may not provide hypertext linkage. When they do not provide hypertext linkage, the point to which you are invited should be an easy SCROLL [the "down arrow" key], usually only a few <>Entries later on the same webpage.
An entry presented in very small script suggests marginality or an unfinished status. Large and bold script suggests broad significance or centrality. However, the number of primary and secondary sources attached to an entry is clearer indication of significance [EG].
FIND
Hypertext links and GO-guides, as shown above, are not spread uniformly throughout SAC. They are intended to get you started working on systematic ways of your own, using the FIND Function, to thread through the chronologies, over and again, following certain themes, hopping over unrelated entries. The FIND Function gives you personal control over long and/or complex internet pages =
Most web browsing systems allow you to search with keyword(s). Usually they do that in the following way = Simultaneously push "CONTROL" and the letter "F" ("f" will do as well). A menu box will open somewhere on your screen. Here you enter the word or phrase that you want to find. The machine is absolutely literal, so choose your keyword(s) and type carefully. In one way the FIND function may not be literal = It may allow you to search for a word or phrase without regard to lower or upper case. With some adjustment, the find function can be made to match case exactly, to be "case sensitive".
You don't always need my goad or guidance to use the F// function. Try your own FIND searches. Every epoch will have entries that contain certain universal keyword(s), for example, F/everyday life/ F/church/ F/war/ F/state/ F/government/ or F/serf/ etc. The FIND function allows you to search for any word or phrase within any page on your screen (whether an internet page, like one of our own SAC pages or a word-processing page). Note that searching from top to bottom of a SAC page gives you the word or phrase in its chronological order. As you do this, remember that a FIND search terminates with the last keyword(s) found on any given webpage. To continue a given FIND search on any SAC page, you must link to the next SAC page in chronological order and launch the FIND search again. At the bottom of each SAC page you will find a hypertext hop to the next chronological SAC page. It is sometimes difficult to get back to the launch point of a FIND search, so keep track of where you begin.
If you F/Moscow/ in SAC to 1682, you will come upon every entry devoted to that important princely stronghold, and in chronological order.
Sometimes it is good to think of FIND [CONTROL+F] as a search for an essential "morpheme" rather than a whole word. Here are some examples of what I mean =
For better or worse, all epochs yield rich results with F/war/. Now, of course, you will catch every use of words with the morpheme "war" within them, EG= "forward", "Edward", or "Warren". However, you can move quickly past those instances, and most hits will be on entries about war, and they will be in chronological order.
There are many "princes" and a number of "princesses" in the pre-Petrine period of Russian history (up to 1682). SAC yields a list of the most important ones when you F/prince/ (without matching upper and lower case). You will catch all princes and princesses, capitalized or not.Similarly, if you F/German/ in SAC 1904-1917, you will come upon every entry containing the words "German","Germans" or "Germany".
F/Turk/ (to catch "Turk", "Turks", "Turkey", and "Turkish", as well as every reference to Seljuk and Ottoman Turks), etc.
F/Chin/ to catch "China" and "Chinese"
F/Russi/ and F/Japan/ to get all standard English variations
F/Engl/ to get "England" & "English"
Be alert for some of the standard pitfalls, EG= "Spain" & "Spanish", "France" & "French". I strive for uniformity, but, for example, "Islamic" and "Muslim" are both used at different points. Be clever and be patient.
LOOP
I am always working on SAC to create hypertext "LOOPS" on important keyword(s). A chronological LOOP threads several points in time together in sequence and hops freely from SAC page to SAC page in order. When followed, a LOOP will carry you through a full chronological description of a given keyword topic, allowing you in a final entry (the terminus ad quem) to return to the earliest moment (the terminus a quo).
Hopping to a chronological entry on a LOOP, you read until you find the next appearance of the hypertext keyword(s) that define(s) the LOOP. The next appearance might be early in the entry, or it might be toward the end. Sometimes you will read through three or four chronological entries [<>] in sequence before you locate the next appearance of the hypertext keyword(s). Everything you read before you find the next hypertext keyword(s) should be relevant. Be careful to read to the end of the entry with your hypertext keyword(s), even if the keyword(s) appears early in the entry. Again, the definition of "entry" is all text between "<>".
Once you complete a LOOP you can use "ALT+left arrow" [<---] to move chronologically backwards through each previous hop in the LOOP. You will soon return to your starting point. Now you may use "ALT+right arrow" [--->] to repeat the LOOP. Repetition is the mother of learning.
When the syllabus links to a LOOP, or when you come upon one yourself, it might not be at either terminus a quo or terminus ad quem. You might find yourself brought in somewhere in the chronological middle. In all cases, following the LOOP will take you on a complete chronological circle, or you can stop at any point and back up to where you came from, using "ALT+left arrow" [<---].
Most web browsers keep a "memory" of such travel, so variations on the BACK or FORWARD function allow quick repetition of any LOOP. I say again, "Repetition is the mother of learning". At terminus ad quem you can click backwards in time to terminus a quo and move forward, back to the point of original entry.
As you make these LOOPs, notice also that you sometimes cross other LOOPs. This device allows for suggestive intersecting LOOPS. Switching onto another LOOP brings you eventually back to the switch point where you can take up the original LOOP again. This does require some keeping track of your own movements through SAC....
Here is a thoughtful article in the journal ProPublica on the intellectual use of LOOPS to gain mastery over certain topics [E-TXT]
Try a quick couple of hops on one or two of these LOOPs =
- Notice that you drop in at a middle point on the Byzantine LOOP
- The "Era of Great Reforms" LOOP circles from the beginning in 1855
- The LOOP on Fascist Italy begins in a cluster of LOOPS relating to the years 1927:1937
FIND searches, LOOPS and other linkages in SAC and in individual course syllabi help overcome the greatest problem of simple chronology, which is this = A chronology tends to be a list of one d----d thing after another, and that is not history.
Each link, LOOP, and FIND episode yields a micro history related to the keyword(s). Thus threading and rethreading your way through the complete and complex chronologies, searching out keyword(s) as guided by the course syllabus and lectures, you will discover useful detail and connections on all important topics, as well as reading suggestions, in library or on the internet. You will build a very solid sense of history, topic by topic. So, I say a third time, "Repetitio est mater studiorum".
SOME IMPORTANT CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ABOUT SAC
I feel strongly that all students of history at all levels, but particularly at university level, need exposure to the daunting complexity of our business [TXT], its foundation on a rich vein of primary documentation and an even more extensive secondary literature. No one -- specialist or not, freshman or professor -- has exhausted this richness. No one person could. At the same time, I am convinced that university students at all levels respond to the challenge of search and the pleasures of personal discovery.
A major pedagogical goal here is to extend the virtues of this fine research university down into the undergraduate curriculum, to move into primary and secondary sources, to expand the syllabus a notch or two higher than Blackboard outlines and budget-busting plastic-paper textbooks, to move out of the Land Rover into the actual jungle.
SAC entries are a bit "telegrammatic. They are meant to supply seed-like detail for your own cultivation, for tending to your own expanded narrative garden. SAC is meant for the active learner. Is authentic challenge and disciplined response in the university now limited to the football field, higher mathematics courses, and laboratory sciences?
Employing SAC to this end places a dual burden on me to help you adjust to the jungle, to reconcile yourself to the dark abyss of history, to find contentment and significance in those many dark facets you yourself are able to illuminate. Of course, I will be your guide and protector through this daunting woods called history. Oh, yes, along the way I do not shirk from sharing in lectures (and occasionally on these pages) my own hrumphetic reconciliation, contentment, and illumination.
In the spirit of Johan Huizinga [ID] and Werner Jaeger [ID], allow yourself in this electronic realm to be a bit playful. Electronic gaming skills could serve you well. Think of SAC as intellectual "Dungeons and Dragons". Enjoy!
By the way, Dungeons and Dragons came back into the news recently [E-TXT]
Remember always that SAC and related syllabi, however vast, are just parts of a larger picture. This course locates itself in four places = electronic blogospheric SAC, lectures, library, and the lobes of your brain.
You will be surprised to discover how powerful your memory and understanding of history can become when you develop the habit of remembering the "when" and "where" (the TIME:PLACE) of major occurrences. You can build on this toward the habit of conceptual distinctions between types of historical experience [ID]. Then you can develop a taste for thinking about the many ways these different types of historical experience might be thought to relate to one another. Along with this comes the habit of conceptual distinctions among the many different interests [ID] that motivate and shape human experience, and among the many different sorts of human groups [ID] who are variously motivated and shaped, and who thus experience events so very differently. My hope would be that these habits would then help you to read primary historical documentation for pleasure as well as instruction. Maybe these habits will contribute to your understanding of your own interests, and that's an important step toward understanding all humankind. History can nurture citizens.
Another thing = Entries here touch on many different national histories. One of the great lessons of our era is this = fully satisfactory national history cannot fix its attention on only one nation-state. History cannot be confined within single national borders.
For example, "Russian" history, in its complexity and completeness, is also the history of many non-Russian peoples [ID]. Add to this demographic complexity the following big feature of Russian history = unparalleled geographic extent [ID] (the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union represented one out of every seven square miles of the earth's dry surface -- roughly equal in extent to the face of the full moon). Russia today has dry-land or water borders with more than two dozen sovereign states, including the USA. Two of the features that distinguish Russian history = rich multiculturalism of the population and the world's largest inventory of sovereign states along borders that stretch further than any other nation's. We must take a "world historical" approach to Russia.
We should take a world historical approach to all national histories. We should acknowledge that many varieties of historical experience are "shared" among various historical peoples, and these experiences cannot be understood except in a multicultural setting.
This is not altogether a new idea. We are used to thinking that "Western Civ" and "Europe" have coherent and integrated histories, though neither of these terms are very distinct and neither refers to a single nation-state. Increasingly we are befuddled by the phrase "Middle East". And we are beginning to ask if there isn't a "world" or "global" history out there for us to discover. I have myself been bold to create another of these sprawling descriptors, a neologism, "AfroAsia" [ID]. These loosely defined regions have an attractive quality. They are "international" or "transnational" (not synonyms). They seem to broaden our horizons, and yet also to make our horizons more precise and distinct.
But we must go further. We need to recognize that those more narrowly focused national histories show traits of broader "shared" experience. Much that we might associate too narrowly with Russian or any other national history and therefore think of as distinctly national phenomena are also characteristics of other people's histories. National histories often fail to capture this truth.
In the other direction, the general traits of "German" or "Russian" or "American"[US] history will always be found to apply only to defined portions of the population living within German, Russian or USA borders. So-called "national traits" or "the national historical experience" are often nothing more than the fond self-image of certain dominant cultural groups within those borders. Yet nation-states are distinct realities in certain regards and they do have their own histories. The challenge is to define just in what regards "nations" are distinct and in what regards they represent broader phenomena.
At the same time the famous "transnational" regions are sprawling. "The world" is too broad for ease of historical narrative. World histories often do no more than draw together interesting episodes from important and varied national histories. There has emerged very few convincing definitions of the over-arching and coherent features of world history.
I've just employed one standard and mind-numbing frame of comparison in European and world histories = "The West" [LOOP]. West has meant selected aspects of a certain clusteration of northwestern European and North American nation-states. The characteristics of the wider world, as described in this "Whiggish" or English Liberal interpretation, have thereby been defined and judged in a narrow and uni-directional manner [W-ID | E-TXT of an interesting article on the "Whiggish interpretation of history"].
This largely unexamined concept "The West" has become a nearly universal transnational analytical tool. Every day our news sources are studded through with that vague and often evasive term.
But there are other tools, and they expand our intellectual horizon beyond "The West". West European and North American histories are themselves in need of broader and multi-directional exploration of "shared histories", just as world history is in need of greater concentration or focus. The West, Europe and the world are all in need of a more balanced integration with widely gathered but specific histories.
So, many chronological entries serve the purpose here of adding depth and resonance, a focused global perspective to the pure chronology of Russian, US, European and other specific historical experiences.
Thematic Constants
I have identified twelve thematic constants in SAC, some of them unconventional. The following statements identify these constants and give SAC users a "heads up" =
- The common expression "The West" is relatively meaningless and often deceptive. I've said this already, but it needs to be repeated here
- Presume “Anthropological Unity” = human nature cannot be shown to have changed over known historical times, nor from one place to the next, though cultures can vary a great deal
- Remember the vital theoretical distinction between history and the past [2 paragraph-ID]
- Use “civilization” as a non-judgmental word meant to distinguish a literate culture from culture in general. Civilization is a type of culture dependent upon written texts
- Avoid equating “the real” with “the actual”, for example =
- Do not confuse abstract grouping words with concrete grouping words
- Maintain and highlight the distinction between “nation” and “nation-state”
- Keep in view the relationship of power to authority
- Seek to understand the structures of distinction within every society -- sometimes loose and sometimes strictly defined and maintained -- a hierarchy of enforced or reinforced behavioral practices and theoretical justifications of "social class" differentiations that can be described as [a] privileges (granted to some and denied to others), [b] exemptions (granted to some and denied to others) and [c] duties (assigned functions and implied justifications of all this differentiation). *2016wi:BBC explanation of the historical "Caste" system in India [E-TXT]
- Do not allow confusion among or between the following distinct concepts = democracy, market economics, freedom, equality
- Seek always to anchor long-term trends in short-term specifics and to contextualize short-term specifics in their long-term significance
- In Jimmy Buffett's song, "Son of a son of a sailor", he sings the following two lines relevant to the larger understanding of SAC =
"Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks,
And I've learned much from both of their styles."
[Thanks to son Will for this reference]
Table of Contents
"A Student's Annotated Chronology and
Systematic Bibliography" [SAC]Go to the top of this SAC explanatory page
