Using foreign historiography to refocus one's views

One of my favourite occupations is to exploit the resources of the internet to gain access to the works of historians based outside the U.K. or North America who have worked on the history of these islands. Fortunately, using translation software enables me to understand what they have written and how they view episodes and trends in the historiography of the periods and places in which I am interested. This all started in c.2015 when I began investigating the cult of Christopher Hill, my own former thesis supervisor at Oxford University, and the appeal his works had for historians in South America and eastern Europe. I thought then that there was some degree of organisation to this interest in his corpus of works. Nonetheless, I discovered that there was much more to external interest in British and Irish history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that, although much of it was composed from a reading of secondary works, it had considerable interest. That was because differences of perception made me think again about the views I held and about how and why I had come to those views. I should add that one should not underestimate the intelligence and insights of such historians working at a distance. They have often made me think again, a process for which I thank them. 

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