Historisk Tidskrift. Utgiven av Svenska historiska föreningen
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Historisk tidskrift 123:2 • 2003

Innehåll (Contents) 2003:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

Syntetiska ögonblick. En reflexion

Ann-Sofie Ohlander

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Summary

Synthetic Moments. A Reflection

The writing of syntheses never seems to have been a major concern of Swedish historians. Neither theoretical discussions nor historical practice indicate much effort within the field. But does this belief hold true on closer examination? My argument here is that in reality syntheses or at least synthetic moments are far more frequent in Swedish – and other – historical research than one might realise at first sight.

How do I understand the concept of synthesis? Complexity, difference and integration are given as key words in the standard dictionary of the Swedish language. A good example in practice is the British archaeologist Colin Renfrew. In his work Archaeology and Language he tries to combine and integrate recent results from his own discipline with those of linguistics in order to gain a new understanding of the origin and diffusion of the Indo-European languages. Renfrew’s is a conscious and systematic effort at synthesising. But the encounter of knowledge emanating from different sources, processed with different methods and presented in different ways occurs in many other circumstances.

What do (Swedish) historians generally understand by a synthesis? The concept is sparsely mentioned in current theoretical and methodological textbooks written by Swedish historians. General use seems to indicate a rather vague notion where long time spans and national, continental or even global aspirations play a role. Some more specific definitions presuppose, erroneously it seems to me, an organising principle or theory, or include, likewise erroneously, generalisation as an aspect of synthesis.

Historians from the neighbouring countries seem to have given somewhat more thought to the problem, among them the Finnish historian Pentti Renvall and the Norwegian historian Knut Kjeldstadli. For both of them, complexity and possibilities of integration are crucial. They both consider scope as important but not decisive. Economic history as a discipline seems to offer a special case with an inherent problem of synthesising, since it was originally created out of two subject fields, history and political economy.

The fact that the definition includes complexity, difference and integration when applied to actual historical practice seems to give abundant evidence of synthesising, whether intentional or not. The field of Swedish and international historical research has grown dramatically over the second half of the 20th century and this in itself creates situations where synthesising is hardly possible to avoid. Examples include the many different aspects of the process of state formation in the 10th and 11th centuries, the complex background of Swedish absolute monarchy in the 17th century, and the intricate relations between population development, conditions of ownership, the use of natural resources, social structure, and political action in a rural community during the 17th through 19th centuries. Another apparently endless problem is that of integrating women’s and gender history into history proper or the reverse, fundamentally affecting both temporal and other traditionally prevailing structures. There is every reason to pay attention to synthetic moments in historical research. However inconvenient and troublesome they may appear, they may contain new and fruitful possibilities of new understanding.