History of ICHTH

The Commission on Historiography was established at the 15th International Congress of Historical Sciences, held in Bucharest in 1980. The groundwork was prepared by Charles-Olivier Carbonell (France), Lucian Boia (Romania) and Georg G. Iggers (USA), all are well-known scholars in the study of historiography and historical theory. The first Bureau for the Commission consisted of Bianca Valota Cavalotti (Italy), Andrzej Grabski (Poland), Hans Schleier (GDR), Karl-Georg Faber (FRG), as well as the above three scholars. Wolfgang Mommsen (FRG), Jerzy Topolski (Poland), and Zhang Zhilian (China) also worked closely with the Bureau for establishing the Commission and helping organize its activities in the formative period.

    The Commission's first president (1980-1990) was Charles-Olivier Carbonell. In 1982, the Commission launched the journal Storia della Storiografia, edited originally by Valota Cavalotti in Milan and later by the history faculty of the University of Turin, where Edoardo Tortarolo has acted as its chief editor since 1990. From the mid 1990s, Georg Iggers also assumed the editorship of the journal. Publishing articles in English, French, German, as well as in Italian, Storia della Storiografia has become a leading journal in the field of the history of historiography.

    In 1990 Wolfgang Mommsen succeeded Carbonell as president (1990-1995) of the Commission and the Storia della Storiografia also became a free-standing journal whereby its editors were given greater autonomy. Meanwhile the theoretical debates of the 1980s had called for more attention to theoretical issues in the study of historiography. In 1995 the Commission thus changed its name from International Commission on Historiography to International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography at its meeting in Montreal. At the same meeting, Georg Iggers succeeded Mommsen as president (1995-2000) of the Commission. In 2000 when the Commission had its general meeting in Oslo, Richard T. Vann, senior editor of History and Theory, was elected president (2000-2005), along with a re-shaped Bureau. In 2005, at the 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences in Sydney, Masayuki Sato of Yamanashi University in Kofu, Japan became the fourth president (2005-2010) of the Commission. In 2010 at the 21st Congress in Amsterdam, Antonis Liakos of University of Athens, Greece, was elected the fifth president, along with a new, expanded bureau (2010-2015).

    During its first twenty-five years of existence, the Commission has devoted its great efforts to drawing interest in all aspects of historiography and expanding its membership worldwide. At present, the Commission comprises members not only from Euro-America, but also from East Asia and Australia. It provides an important venue for scholars of diverse cultural backgrounds to exchange their work and ideas in advancing the study of historiography and historical theory. In the future, the Commission hopes to promote more of its work and have more participation from scholars in Africa and the Middle East.

Organization

    The Commission seeks to maintain a stable core membership of around 100 scholars. Its administrative work is done by a Bureau of fourteen members elected every five years at the International Congress of Historical Sciences (CISH). At its Oslo meeting in 2000 the Commission decided to construct the Bureau in two parts: an administrative committee of five offices, and other members elected for their distinction and potential contribution to the discussions of the Bureau. The administrative committee now has five officers: President, Vice-President, Secretary-General, Program Director and Treasurer. At CISH's  21st Congress in Amsterdam in August 2010, the Commission held a general assemby in which a new board was elected. The current members of the administrative committee consists of Antonis Liakos (Athens, Greece) as President, Edoardo Tortarolo (Vercelli, Italy) as Vice-President, Q. Edward Wang (Glassboro, USA) as Secretary General and Treasurer, and Ewa Domanska (Poznan, Poland) as Program Director. The rest Bureau members are Frank Ankersmit (Groningen, Netherlands), Stefan Berger (Manchester, UK), Qineng Chen (Beijing, China), Chris Lorenz (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Estevao de Rezende Martins (Sao Paulo, Brazil), Jörn Rüsen (Essen, Germany), Diana Mishkova (Sofia, Bulgaria), Sanjay Seth (London, UK), Hayden White (Palo Alto, USA), and Masayuki Sato (ex officio, Kofu, Japan).

    Since its establishment in 1980, the Commssion has succeeded in organizing and cosponsoring a number of conferences and workshops aimed to help the advance of the study of historiography and historical theory. In the early stages of planning, meetings were held respectively in Greece and China. There were international colloquia in Montpellier in 1983 and Paris in 1988. In 1993 a conference was held in Budapest on the historiography of the former Eastern European and other socialist countries, which also became the theme of one of the sessions organized by the Commission at CISH's Montreal Congress in 1995. During 1995 and 2000 other conferences were held in Budapest, Poznan, and Uppsala; the latter was organized by Rolf Torstendahl, a Bureau member at the time, in preparation for a session he put together for CISH's Oslo Congress in 2000. In more recent years, conferences either sponsored or cosponsored by the Commission were held in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Hungary, China, Estonia, Greece, Taiwan and Poland. The Commission's general meeting and sessions took place at CISH's Syndey Congress in 2005, Amsterdam Congress in 2010 and CISH's 22nd Congress in Ji'nan, China in 2015, ICHTH organized and co-organized 6 sessions during the 23rd Congress in Poznań (2022).