The invisible framework: Antony Black and the foundations of comparative historiography

Abstract

Antony Black's work is distinctive because of its continuous focus on various manifestations of the history of group life, and its theoretical recognition of the fact that one way of comparing and discriminating between political cultures is to use as a common criterion the structures of the relationships that are apparently universal amongst historic (i.e. literate) cultures. The paper argues that his approach offers a theoretically grounded framework for comparative historical analysis which can generate testable hypotheses about the similarities and differences between societies.

Keywords:

• Black
• historiography
• groups
• comparison
• community
• culture

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Antony Black, Terry Nardin, and the anonymous referees consulted by Rethinking History for taking the time to comment on an earlier version of this paper.