The Matter of History
How Things Create the Past

The Matter of History links the history of people with the history of things through a bold new materialist theory of the past.

Timothy J. LeCain (Author)

9781107134171, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 September 2017

364 pages, 15 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.4 cm, 0.61 kg

'The Matter of History constitutes the first successful attempt to create an historical narrative truly grounded in a non-anthropocentric ethos, both in terms of its theoretical premises and of its methodological choices.' Caludio de Majo, Global Environment

New insights into the microbiome, epigenetics, and cognition are radically challenging our very idea of what it means to be 'human', while an explosion of neo-materialist thinking in the humanities has fostered a renewed appreciation of the formative powers of a dynamic material environment. The Matter of History brings these scientific and humanistic ideas together to develop a bold, new post-anthropocentric understanding of the past, one that reveals how powerful organisms and things help to create humans in all their dimensions, biological, social, and cultural. Timothy J. LeCain combines cutting-edge theory and detailed empirical analysis to explain the extraordinary late-nineteenth century convergence between the United States and Japan at the pivotal moment when both were emerging as global superpowers. Illustrating the power of a deeply material social and cultural history, The Matter of History argues that three powerful things - cattle, silkworms, and copper - helped to drive these previously diverse nations towards a global 'Great Convergence'.

1. Fellow travelers: the non-human things that make us human
2. We never left Eden: the religious and secular marginalization of matter
3. Natural born humans: a neo-materialist theory and method of history
4. The longhorn: the animal intelligence behind American open range ranching
5. The silkworm: the innovative insects behind Japanese modernization
6. The copper atom: conductivity and the great convergence of Japan and the West
7. The matter of humans: beyond the Anthropocene and towards a new humanism.

Subject Areas: Material culture [JFCD], Environmental archaeology [HDP], Social & cultural history [HBTB], General & world history [HBG]