Free Articles from the Journal of the Historical Society

Randall Stephens

The Wiley-Blackwell website has offered five articles from The Journal of the Historical Society free of charge. Under the able direction of George Huppert (editor) and Scott Hovey (managing editor), the journal ranges broadly over time and thematic focus. The JHS is one of the only publications that is accessible to the non-specialist educated reader who is interested in "worldwide trends in historical research." For this reason the TLS wrote that the journal published "essays that represent history as it should be." It also praised the JHS for paying "serious attention to . . . serious subjects." Take, for instance, Herman Ooms’ 2005 essay, "Early Modern Japanese Intellectual History: USA, France, and Germany." Like a number of other articles in the JHS, it is a readable, fascinating account of a field that few non-specialists know anything about:

The field of intellectual history of Japan’s Early Modern or Tokugawa period (1600–1868) as practiced in the United States has a unique characteristic. It has produced what one could call, with only a slight exaggeration, an actual subfield of state-of-the-art reflective writing. An unusual number of scholars are keeping themselves busy, at one point or another, surveying the field or, putting it less technically, sizing up their colleagues. An outsider might wonder whether there are actually not more reflecting scholars than practicing historians. And indeed, one could conclude that the United States is running out of scholars that are available for this peculiar subfield because the last one to engage in it (in 2002), James McMullen, is British. Between 1996 and 2002 over half a dozen publications, averaging one a year, addressed in one form or another the “state of the field.” >>> read the complete article here

See this Wiley-Blackwell page for other free articles.

The Journal of the Historical Society
Table of contents, March 2009

"Was Hitler a Riddle?"
Abraham Ascher

"Government, Press, and Subversion in Russia, 1906–19171"
Jonathan W. Daly

"Santa Anna Never Had an iPhone: Some Thoughts on the Price of Peace and the Financial Misfortunes of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848"
Richard J. Salvucci

"The Great Migration and the Literary Imagination"
Steven A. Reich

"Antebellum South Carolina Reconsidered: The Libertarian World of Robert J. Turnbull"
Raymond James Krohn