History reading lists

Summer reading lists for some of our history courses.

We are very much looking forward to welcoming you to Edinburgh in September to begin your postgraduate journey. We will be in touch with Offer Holders over the summer with details of course choices and information about Welcome Week. If you have any questions about your History programme, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Dr Jeremy Dell (Jeremy.Dell@ed.ac.uk).

We want to remind you that it's never too early to start thinking about your dissertation. While you will of course have a busy summer preparing your move and the start of your postgraduate studies, do challenge yourself to start thinking about what are the topics and methods that you may wish to explore for a dissertation. If you do not have a topic, then the summer can be an opportunity to consider what you may wish to examine. Read widely and follow your interest. Also consider what will be practical for a primary-source based dissertation. Will there be sufficient sources that you will have access to (either digitally or physically)? When you have a topic that you are interested in, read a little deeper – what are historians disagreeing over in the more recent journal articles? Where are the frontiers of research on this topic? What methodologies are they employing?

In the meantime, if you are keen to start exploring your chosen degree topic further, we have put together a list of some preparatory reading. Please do not look to purchase many of the books listed below. They are suggestions and not exhaustive. Many libraries will have copies of these books and Amazon and Abebooks will hopefully have cheap second-hand copies of other works. Many of them are available as ebooks from the University Library, via the online catalogue: http://discovered.ed.ac.uk

MSc in History

It is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:

James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebook
Alastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skill
Antoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)
Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)
Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)
Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)
Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:

Historical Research: Skills & Sources

The core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:

Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)
Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)

The following are also of use:

Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.
Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebook
Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)
Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebook
Laura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebook
Joan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebook

Historical Methodology

There are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:

Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)
Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)
Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)
David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University Library
E.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, above
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)
Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebook
Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)
Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebook
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2^nd ed. (2008)
Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebook
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3^rd edn. (2021)

The following articles may also be of interest:

Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19
Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457
Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483

MSc in American History

It is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:

James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebook
Alastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skill
Antoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)
Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)
Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)
Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)
Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:

Historical Research: Skills & Sources

The core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:

Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)
Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)

The following are also of use:

Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.
Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebook
Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)
Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebook
Laura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebook
Joan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebook

Historical Methodology

There are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:

Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)
Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)
Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)
David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University Library
E.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, above
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)
Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebook
Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)
Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebook
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2^nd ed. (2008)
Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebook
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3^rd edn. (2021)

The following articles may also be of interest:

Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19
Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457
Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483

General

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, The Americas: A Hemispheric History (New York, 2003)
Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (New York, 2019)
Daniel Immerwahr, How To Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (New York, 2019)

Colonial America

Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York, 2001)
J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven, CT, 2006)

The Caribbean

Marisa Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (Philadelphia, 2016)
Sasha Turner, Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Slavery in Jamaica (Philadelphia, 2017)

Latin America

Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999)
Victoria Langland, Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and the Making and Remembering of 1968 in Military Brazil (Durham, NC, 2013)
Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998 (Durham, NC, 2009)
Kirsten Weld, Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala (Durham, NC, 2014)

Race

Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA, 1998)
Robin Blackburn, The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights (London, 2003)
Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940 (New York, 1998)

The nineteenth century in the United States

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York, 2007)

Foreign policy and the Cold War

Campbell Craig and Frederik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (New Haven, CT, 2009)
Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT, 1987)

Twentieth-century U.S. conservatism

David Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ, 2010)
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ, 2001)

Some recent books by staff at the University of Edinburgh

David Silkenat, Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War (UNC Press, 2019)
Diana Paton, The Cultural Politics of Obeah: Religion, Colonialism and Modernity in the Caribbean World (Cambridge, 2015)
Fabian Hilfrich, Debating American Exceptionalism: Empire and Democracy in the Wake of the Spanish-American War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
Francis D. Cogliano, Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson's Foreign Policy (Yale, 2014)
Jacob Blanc, Before the Flood: The Itaipu Dam and the Visibility of Rural Brazil (Duke: 2019)
Mark Newman, Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic Church in the South and Desegregation, 1945-1992 (University Press of Mississippi, 2018)
Robert Mason, The Republican Party and American Politics from Hoover to Reagan (Cambridge, 2012)

MSc in Contemporary History

It is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:

James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebook
Alastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skill
Antoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)
Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)
Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)
Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)
Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:

Historical Research: Skills & Sources

The core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:

Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)
Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)

The following are also of use:

Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.
Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebook
Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)
Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebook
Laura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebook
Joan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebook

Historical Methodology

There are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:

Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)
Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)
Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)
David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University Library
E.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, above
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)
Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebook
Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)
Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebook
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2^nd ed. (2008)
Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebook
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3^rd edn. (2021)

The following articles may also be of interest:

Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19
Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457
Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483

Contemporary History readings

Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (1966)
Brian Brivati, Julia Buxton, and Athnony Seldon, eds., The Contemporary History Handbook (1996)
Peter Catterall, 'What (If Anything) is Distinctive about Contemporary History?', Journal of Contemporary History 32, 4 (1997): 441-52
Timothy Garton Ash, History of the Present: Essays, Sketches and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s (2000)
Robert Gildea and Anne Simonin, eds., Writing Contemporary History (2008)
Jan Palmowski and Kristina Spohr Readman, 'Speaking Truth to Power: Contemporary History in the Twenty-First Century', Journal of Contemporary History, 46 (July 2011): 485505
Kristina Spohr Readman, 'Contemporary History in Europe: From Mastering National Past to the Future of Writing the World', Journal of Contemporary History, 46 (July 2011): 506-530
Anthony Seldon, ed., Contemporary History: Practice and Method (1988)
Marc Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method (2006)
John M. MacKenzie, "Edward Said and the historians." Nineteenth Century Contexts 18, no. 1 (1994): 9-25.
Alon Confino, "Collective memory and cultural history: Problems of method." The American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (1997): 1386-1403.
Marcus Colla, “The Spectre of the Present: Time, Presentism and the Writing of Contemporary History,” Contemporary European History 30 (2021), 124-35.

MSc in Intellectual History

It is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:

James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebook
Alastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skill
Antoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)
Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)
Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)
Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)
Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:

Historical Research: Skills & Sources

The core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:

Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)
Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)

The following are also of use:

Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.
Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebook
Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)
Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebook
Laura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebook
Joan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebook

Historical Methodology

There are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:

Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)
Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)
Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)
David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University Library
E.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, above
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)
Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebook
Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)
Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebook
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2^nd ed. (2008)
Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebook
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3^rd edn. (2021)

The following articles may also be of interest:

Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19
Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457
Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483

Intellectual History readings

Antony Grafton, ‘The History of Ideas: Precept and Practice, 1950-2000 and Beyond’, Journal of the History of Ideas 67/1 (2006), pp. 1-32.
Stefan Collini, ‘Intellectual History’, in: Making History, online: https://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/intellectual_history.html
Richard Whatmore, What is Intellectual History?, (Cambridge 2016).
Samuel Moyn / Andrew Sartori (Eds), Global Intellectual History, (New York 2013).
Jacques Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan, (Oxford 1993)
Riccardo Bavaj, Intellectual History, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte (2010), online: https://docupedia.de/zg/Intellectual_History
Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956, (Berkeley 1992).
Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption. Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, (New York 1991).
Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Conceptual History, Memory and Identity. Interview by Javiér Fernández Sebastián’, Contributions to the History of Concepts 2.1 (2006), pp. 99-127, online: http://www.javierfsebastian.com/wp-web/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/entrevista-CONTRIBUTIONS-KOSELLECK.pdf
Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Series: Cultural Memory in the Present. Translated by Todd Samuel Presner, (Stanford 2002).
Peter Gordon, ‘What is intellectual history? A frankly partisan introduction to a frequently misunderstood field’ (2012), http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/harvardcolloquium/pages/what-intellectual-history
Annabel Brett, ‘What is intellectual history now?’, in: David Cannadine (ed.), What is history now? (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 113-131.
‘Ideas in Context: Conversation with Quentin Skinner’, by Hansong Li, in: Chicago Journal of History, Vol. VII Autumn 2016, online: http://cjh.uchicago.edu/issues/fall16/7.12.pdf

Important academic journals with contributions to intellectual history include:

Intellectual History Review
Modern Intellectual History
History of European Ideas
Journal of the History of Ideas

MSc in Medieval History

It is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:

James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebook
Alastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skill
Antoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)
Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)
Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)
Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)
Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:

Historical Research: Skills & Sources

The core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:

Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)
Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)

The following are also of use:

Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.
Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebook
Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)
Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebook
Laura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebook
Joan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebook

Historical Methodology

There are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:

Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)
Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)
Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)
David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University Library
E.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, above
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)
Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebook
Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)
Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebook
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2^nd ed. (2008)
Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebook
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3^rd edn. (2021)

The following articles may also be of interest:

Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19
Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457
Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483

Medieval History readings

Texts available online via Edinburgh University Library are marked *

The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 2: 400‐1400, edited by Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson, Oxford, 2012 (*available online)
Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe, edited by Joel T. Rosenthal, London, 2011 (*available online)
John Arnold, What is medieval History? Cambridge, 2008
Marcus Bull, Thinking Medieval: An introduction to the study of the Middle Ages, Basingstoke, 2005 (*available online)
Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (ed.) Historiography in the Middle Ages Brill: Leiden, 2002. Nancy Partner, ed., Writing Medieval History, London, 2005

MSc in Scottish History

It is always a good idea to think about how to go about writing history:

James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012) – ebook
Alastair Bonnett, How to Argue (2012) – an essential skill
Antoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005)
Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds. What is History, Now? (2021)
Jim Cullen, Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write and Think about History (2012)
Ann Curthoys & Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read (2011)
Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

Reading for the ‘Core’ courses:

Historical Research: Skills & Sources

The core course textbooks are available as ebooks from the University Library:

Miriam Dobson & Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from 19th and 20th Century History (2009)
Sarah Barber & Corinna M. Peniston‐Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2008)

The following are also of use:

Saidya Hartmann “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, 26 (2008): 1-14.
Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009) – ebook
Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (2012)
Joel T. Rosenthal (ed.), Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe (2011) – ebook
Laura Sangha & Jonathan P. Willis (eds.), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (2016) – ebook
Joan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (2013) – ebook

Historical Methodology

There are many ‘primers’ written for history students, none are without fault, but all are of some value. Here is a small selection:

Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt & Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (1994)
Stefan Berger et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2009)
Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001)
David Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (2004) – ebook available from the University Library
E.H. Carr, What is History? (1962) – rather showing its age, but still a useful starting point, should be read in conjunction with Cannadine, above
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, (2007)
Jo Guildi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (2014) - ebook
Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (1989)
Keith Jenkins, Re‐thinking History (1991) – ebook
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2^nd ed. (2008)
Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1999)
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (2002) – ebook
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonial Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3^rd edn. (2021)

The following articles may also be of interest:

Roger Adelson, ‘Interview with Mary Beth Norton’, The Historian, Vol. 60, no. 1 (September 1997), pp. 1‐19
Oliver Daddow, ‘The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism’, Rethinking History, Vol. 8, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437‐457
Todd Shepard, ‘“History is Past Politics”? Archives, “Tainted Evidence”, and the Return of the State’, American Historical Review, Vol. 116 (April 2010), pp. 474‐483

Scottish History readings

Three textbooks that cover the whole of Scottish history in one volume:

Michael Lynch, Scotland: A New History (2nd edn., 1992)
R. A. Houston and W. Knox (eds.), New Penguin History of Scotland (2002)
Jenny Wormald (ed.), Scotland: A History (2005)

Two important books on social and economic history:

T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560-1830 (1969)
I. D. Whyte, Scotland Before the Industrial Revolution: An Economic and Social History, c.1050-c.1750 (1995)

Three major books covering the modern period:

Ewen A. Cameron, Impaled Upon the Thistle: Scotland since 1880 (2010)
T. M. Devine and Jenny Wormald (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (2012)
T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation: A History, 1700-2007 (2nd edn., 2006)

Multi-volume series ‘New Edinburgh History of Scotland’, also listed on the Edinburgh University Press website (focusing on political narrative): https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-new-edinburgh-history-of-scotland.html

Multi-volume series ‘New History of Scotland’, listed on the Edinburgh University Press website (this series was originally published between 1981 and 1984; some of the original volumes have been updated and others have had new volumes published to replace them, but the originals remain in print): https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-new-history-of-scotland.html

The ‘Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation’ series:

Bob Harris and Alan R. MacDonald (eds.), Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c.1100-1707, vol. i: The Scottish Nation: Origins to c.1500 (2012)
Bob Harris and Alan R. MacDonald (eds.), Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c.1100-1707, vol. ii: Early Modern Scotland, c.1500-1707 (2007)
Bob Harris and Alan R. MacDonald (eds.), Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c.1100-1707, vol. iii: Readings, c.1100-1500 (2006)
Bob Harris and Alan R. MacDonald (eds.), Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c.1100-1707, vol. iv: Readings, c.1500-1707 (2007)
Caroline Erskine, Alan R. MacDonald and Michael Penman (eds.), Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c.1100-1707, vol. v: Major Documents (2007)

The ‘Modern Scottish History: 1707 to the Present’ series:

Anthony Cooke, Ian Donnachie, Ann MacSween and Christopher A. Whatley (eds.), Modern Scottish History 1707 to the Present, vol. i: The Transformation of Scotland, 1707-1850 (1998)
Anthony Cooke, Ian Donnachie, Ann MacSween and Christopher A. Whatley (eds.), Modern Scottish History 1707 to the Present, vol. ii: The Modernisation of Scotland, 1850 to the Present (1998)
Anthony Cooke, Ian Donnachie, Ann MacSween and Christopher A. Whatley (eds.), Modern Scottish History 1707 to the Present, vol. iii: Readings, 1707- 1850 (1998)
Anthony Cooke, Ian Donnachie, Ann MacSween and Christopher A. Whatley (eds.), Modern Scottish History 1707 to the Present, vol. iv: Readings, 1850 to the Present (1998)
Anthony Cooke, Ian Donnachie, Ann MacSween and Christopher A. Whatley (eds.), Modern Scottish History 1707 to the Present, vol. v: Major Documents (1998)

Those who are new to Scottish history may feel in need of a brief introductory survey:

E. J. Cowan (ed.), Why Scottish History Still Matters (2012) James Halliday, Scotland: A Concise History (2nd edn., 1996) Christopher Harvie, Scotland: A Short History (2002)
R. A. Houston, Scotland: A Very Short Introduction (2008)
Rosalind Mitchison (ed.), Why Scottish History Matters (2nd edn., 1997)

Reference books:

Michael Lynch (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (2nd edn., 2004)
P. G. B. McNeill and H. L. MacQueen (eds.), Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (1996)

This article was published on 24 May, 2023