I recently read a work I found fascinating to say the very least. I've known about Jacob Burckhardt's work for nearly a decade, but I only ever read The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1878) years ago.

While re-reading Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), I came upon a mention in the preliminary study (written by Enrique López Castellón, of the Autonomous University of Madrid). According to López Castellón, in 1887, while in Niza, Nietzsche sent a copy of the manuscript to his friend Jacob Burckhardt, with a letter that reads "(...) Also in this fall, I demand of you permission to present you with something of mine, some historical-moral studies with the title For a genealogy of morality, and this time, as in all others, not without a certain restlessness. I know for a fact, perfectly, that every dish that I place upon the table contain harsh, difficult to swallow things, that to invite someone to consume them, and especially, to people like you, constitutes, in fact, a true abuse of friendship"^(1)

Anyone who has read Nietzsche's works can tell that those words, are a rare and rather peculiar show of affection and respect. Coming from one of the harshest thinkers in recent centuries, such praise to Burckhardt's person made me eager to read more of his works. So I set upon that task, and while still re-reading Nietzsche, I started reading Burckhardt's Judgements on History and Historians (1929).

Burckhardt was of course dead in 1929, the book was compiled by historian an archivist Emil Dürr from a series of lecture notes Burckhardt wrote between 1865 and 1885, derived from courses at the university of Basel. To say that I was astonished by the honesty, the ever-changing tone between academic and colloquial, and the insight he had in the intricacies of his time's historiography, as well as that of earlier periods, isn't enough.

It may not necessarily be a work that can compete with contemporary historiography, but for its time, I'm amazed at his critical thinking, as well as his vast knowledge of history up to his day.

The book begins with some heavy criticism to Eurocentric views, a rare sight for a European historian in the XIX Century, as follows "As regards the scope of our subject, this may be observed: Only the civilized nations, not the primitive ones, are part of history in a higher sense. (...) Primitive peoples, however, interest us only when civilized nations come into conflict with them (...) Of the civilized peoples, our discipline does not embrace those whose culture did not flow into European civilization, for instance Japan and China. (...)"^(2)

The book covers the period from Mediterranean antiquity to Napoleon's campaign to Russia. It is a good general introduction to many historical periods and events, with a constant critical analysis of European historicism. There are certain hints of veiled racism in some of his passages but then again, few European academicians of that century were "woke".

A very interesting criticism can be found in On the Evaluation of the Later Middle Ages, in which he denounces prejudices regarding the perceived darkness of the time, saying "Our moral criticism of past ages can easily be mistaken. It has a hard time detaching itself from the conflicts of our own day and transfers present-day desiderata to the past. Furthermore, it emanates from people who live quietly under the protection of an order guaranteed from the outside, necessary to the prevailing industrialism, and who have no conception of a violently agitated and hazardous life"^(3)

All in all, I highly recommend this work, if not for its contemporary academic value, for its value as a compilation of what can be read as short essays on the history of historiography.

^(1) Pp. 14. The translation is my own.

^(2) Pp. 3

^(3) Pp. 81-82

I have three requests for recommendations:

1. recent readings in Global or Imperial History

2. books which describe the milieu of post war society (or society at any particularly interesting moment) similar to Naples '44 by Norman Lewis, Embracing Defeat by John Dower, and Paris After the Liberation by Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper

3. entertaining old style history like Theodor Mommsen, Thomas Macaulay, C V Wedgwood

Thank you!

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Thanks!