Historiography as a Challenge

Historiography as a Challenge is the result of research published over the last six years, significantly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The essays and studies published here deal with issues concentrated into three thematic sections: social history, historical memory and the politics of memory, and the personalities of Central European historiography from the 1950s–1980s. Alongside analytical studies dedicated to the genesis of such significant concepts as Taborite communism, bourgeois revolution, or the poor and the rich, the author critically examines the scholarly contributions of four prominent Czech historians (Jaroslav Mezník, František Šmahel, Josef Válka, Robert Kalivoda) to European scholarship. In addition, the book contains programmatic reflections on the contemporary challenges of social history and the forms of the politics of memory, or rather, the conscious abuse of the politics of memory in the Czech Republic. Historiography as a Challenge follows on from the author's two previous works on the history and theory of 19th and 20th-century historiography: Historiography between Science and Politics: Reflections on 19th and 20th Century Historiography (2007) and On the Waves of History: Past, Present and Future of Czech Historiography (2020).