Historical Method and Historiography Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The name is Maurice Dobb.

The British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb wrote Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946), which started the famous debate on the transition from feudalism to capitalism.

Edward Gibbon wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, R.G. Collingwood the philosophy of history in The Idea of History, and Johan Huizinga the cultural history The Waning of the Middle Ages. None of them is associated with the study of capitalism.

Answer: A

The correct matching is i-b, ii-a, iii-d, iv-c.

Two pairs settle it. Alexander Gerschenkron wrote Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (i-b), and Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory divides states into core, periphery and semi-periphery (ii-a). Only one option has both.

It also pairs Eric Hobsbawm with 'real socialism', the actually existing socialism of the Soviet bloc that he analysed in The Age of Extremes (iii-d). Fernand Braudel, of the Annales school, studied history across the longue duree, history seen at a distance over centuries (iv-c).

Answer: D

The chronological order is (c) (d) (b) (a).

1. Colonial historiography: British writers such as James Mill (History of British India, 1817).
2. Marxist historiography: from the historical materialism of Marx and Engels in the mid-nineteenth century.
3. Annales School: founded by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre with their journal in 1929.
4. Subaltern School: launched by Ranajit Guha with Subaltern Studies in 1982.

Each of the other options puts the Subaltern or Annales school before older traditions.

Answer: D

The book was written by E.P. Thompson.

Edward Palmer Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963) is a founding work of 'history from below'. It argues that the English working class made itself through its own experience and struggles between 1780 and 1832, and sets out to rescue ordinary people from 'the enormous condescension of posterity'.

Asa Briggs wrote social histories of Victorian England, Eric Hobsbawm the 'Age of' series, and C. A. Bayly worked on Indian and global history, as in Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars.

Answer: C

The historian who did not work on the pastoral nomads of Maharashtra is Romila Thapar.

Romila Thapar is a historian of ancient India, best known for her work on the Mauryas, early Indian social history and historiography.

The others studied the pastoral cultures of Maharashtra. D. D. Kosambi's Myth and Reality traces cults such as Vithoba and Khandoba back to pastoral groups. Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer's Pastoral Deities in Western India studies the Dhangar herders and their gods. Anne Feldhaus has written on the religion and sacred geography of Maharashtra, including its pastoral traditions.

Answer: A

The correct matching is (i)-(b), (ii)-(a), (iii)-(c), (iv)-(d).

Vico's Scienza Nuova (1725) set out a cyclical theory of history. Augustine's De Civitate Dei (early fifth century) contrasts the earthly city with the city of God. Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1918-22) compares the life cycles of civilisations. Croce's Filosofia dello Spirito grounds his idealist view that all history is contemporary history. Each other option misplaces at least two works.

Answer: C

The author is Edward Gibbon.

Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, and is one of the great works of Enlightenment historiography.

Voltaire wrote on the age of Louis XIV and on universal history, William Robertson on Scotland, Charles V and America, and Charles Beard on the economic interpretation of the American Constitution.

Gibbon traced the decline over thirteen centuries, from the Antonine age to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and blamed it partly on the rise of Christianity and barbarian invasions.

Answer: C

Secondary sources are used because they help us avoid duplication of work.

Reading the existing secondary literature, the books and articles of earlier historians, tells the researcher what has already been studied and established, so that new research can build on it, address gaps and avoid repeating work already done.

First hand information is the mark of primary sources, not secondary ones. Easy availability is not the reason they are necessary, and no secondary source contains all the information on a topic.

Answer: C

The secondary source is Mahatma Phule's biography by Dhananjay Keer.

A secondary source is a later account written from the primary evidence. Dhananjay Keer's biography of Phule, published long after the period, is such an interpretation.

The annual reports of the Satya Shodhak Samaj are its own records, and the Sarvajanik Satya Dharma Pustak is Phule's own book, both primary sources. Vishnushastri Chiplunkar's Nibandhamala was a contemporary periodical of the 1870s and 1880s, so for this period it too is a primary source.

Answer: D

The incorrect statement is John Stuart Mill argued in On Representative Government that India was ripe for parliamentary democracy.

In Considerations on Representative Government (1861), J. S. Mill argued the opposite: that representative government was not suitable for peoples such as Indians, who in his view must be governed despotically, for their own good, by a more advanced nation.

The other statements are accepted: James Mill's History of British India (1817) denied Indians historical sense; Hegel held that India had no history in the true sense; and Marx's articles of the 1850s described Indian society as stagnant and vegetating.