Z drugiej strony Atlantyku. "Młodsza Europa" w dawnych syntezach amerykańskich (ze studiów nad historiografią Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej w Stanach Zjednoczonych)

Abstract

The present book (as a historiographical monograph) deals with history of East-Central Europe (ECE) as practiced by academic historians in the USA. Its aims are twofold. Firstly, it is a theoretical treatise that strives to work out a broad, systematic and encompassing conceptualization of all the topics related to the area of study mentioned above. Secondly, it is an attempt at source-based research investigating the issue which (according to the results of the aforementioned theoretical reflection) seems to be a necessary starting point for any serious historiographical study on American history of ECE. Therefore, in the first chapter the Author identifies major research questions, as well as research strategies related to the discussed field of study. While discerning the two of its basic dimensions (a subjective one and an objective one), he discusses the utility of various kinds of historiographical source materials as well as possible temporal limits for the investigation. In the second chapter the Author systematically reconstructs an image of ECE outlined within academic textbooks and syntheses o f European history published in the USA between the last decades of 19lh century and the outbreak of World War I, while in the third one he deals with the same image provided by textbooks and syntheses written between the two world wars (1918-1939). The study shows that although a theme of ECE remained a definitely minor one for US scholars writing academic historical textbooks and syntheses of European history, its actual position was evolving significantly in the course of time. Two dimensions of this observation are being discerned: (1) ECE was gaining prominence when the authors were moving from a more distant past toward the present; (2) the authors writing during the mid-war period tended to offer a distinctly broader treatment of ECE than their predecessors in case of each historical epoch.