The Footnote: A Curious History by Anthony Grafton Review by: Ernst A. Breisach The American Historical Review, Vol.

103, No. 5 (Dec., 1998), pp. 1553-1554 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2649971 . Accessed: 07/11/2013 09:46
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Reviews of Books

annotations in letters. During long periods of historiography, however, rhetorical considerations lost out to erudition in many historical accounts. That fact was not always witnessed to by footnotes since endnotes also had their advocates. Grafton's examples are nuThis book traces the story of the footnote from the merous: erudites (some of whom let the footnotes 1400s through the 1800s, with selected comments on overwhelm the text in order to prove history's reliabilthe classical and the recent periods. The reader is ity); antiquarians;ecclesiastical historians and editors offered a richly faceted story that interweaves the of document collections; and the scholars who became changes in the regard for and uses of the footnote with combatants in the intellectual wars over the correct general developments in history writing. Anthony religious tradition in the Reformation period. Two Grafton draws on his extensive studies in the relevant scholars enhanced the appreciation for the footnote, historical scholarship, Defenders of the Text: The Tra- each in his own way. In Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire ditions of Scholarshipin an Age of Science, 1450-1800 historiqueet critique (1697), the footnotes were prom(1991) and New Worlds,Ancient Texts: The Power of inent because they offered opportunities for attacks on Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (1992). For traditional knowledge. Jean Le Clerc gave the footnote comparison and corroboration, he uses the rather lean greater theoretical weight as testimony to rationality literature on the footnote, but, in the main, Grafton and accuracy. The inquiry returns to Ranke, who now relies on original texts and documents. After general is seen as a major shaper and advocate but not as the reflections on the uses and abuses of the footnote, he sole originator of the footnote in its modern form. A brief remark in the text and the different titles uses as the starting point for his critical inquiry the widely accepted view that Leopold von Ranke as the that Grafton's work bears in the English, French, and originator of Geschichtswissenschaft also was the first German versions make explicit an important theme of user of the footnote in its modern incarnation. As his book. The slightly whimsical subtitle of the present Grafton traces his steps backwardto the Renaissance, version hints at surprises in store for the reader. with its admiration and imitation of ancient models, However, the German title speaks of Die tragischen the world of the footnote emerges as one far more Ursprienge der deutschenFissnote (1995) and the forthcomplex than expected. Edward Gibbon used the coming French translation carries the title Les origines footnote as the locus of supplements to the text, tragiquesde l'erudition:Uniehistoirede la note en bas de dialogue with other scholars, and sharp barbs directed page. The word "tragic"likens the tension between text at the scholarship of other authors. Yet he would have and footnote in historical accounts to that between the preferred endnotes so as not to disturb the elegant action in a Greek tragedy and the comments on it by appearance of the page and not to interruptthe flow of the chorus. In the face of the seeming solidity of the reading. Here, Grafton's account connects with the text, the footnote serves as a reminder of the continperennial competition between the demands made of gency of life as well as the precariousness of the text's history as the bearer of truth (erudition) and those of construction. Not surprisingly, Grafton regrets the history as narrative with persuasive power (composi- diminution of the footnote to a technical item for tion). The uncluttered page had found its advocates in archival documentation. Even worse, the footnote too the classical period where in-text recourse to past often becomes a mere legitimation of professionalism, authorities sufficed for gaining credibility. Grafton show of learning, and source of drudgery. One wishes offers Francesco Guicciardini as one example of clas- that Grafton had commented on the most recent sical imitators, agreeing on that point with Ranke's winding in the course of the footnote, making it part of sharp critique. Yet the French legist and historian the scholarly apparatusserving not as testimony to past Jacques-Auguste de Thou also abjured footnotes, pre- reality but to the production of the "reality effect." ferring to include commentaries and documentary This is a minor regret about a book that shares with its evidence into the narrative and to create a body of readers elegantly and often wittily the author's learnGENERAL ANTHONY GRAFTON. The Footnote: A Curious Histoty. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1997. Pp. xi, 241. $22.95.

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Reviews of Books
analysis integrates much of the most recent literature, and a lot of the not-so-recent literature, on the history of disease, epidemics, public health, the medical profession, and imperialism. The bibliography and notes are excellent and should prove useful to historians working in any of these fields. In addition, Watts writes clearly and succinctly, even when laying out complex, abstract ideas about the social constructs of various diseases. In a work such as this that builds its argument around the centrality of one agent-in this case disease as it relates to power and imperialism-it is difficult to avoid a tone of determinism, and Watts sometimes succumbs to this pitfall. Occasionally he gets carried away with his own rhetoric, producing perplexing, unsubstantiated statements such as this description of the newly independent population of Haiti: "Content with what they had, Haitians [after 1804] felt there was no need for foreign trade" (p. 239). In spite of such minor flaws, Watts does an admirable job of integrating vast amounts of disparate social, political, and economic data into the story he tells. This book is an important contribution to our understanding of the history of disease, public health, and imperialism, and as such it should be read by historians, students, and the general public. In addition, I would recommend this book as required reading to medical and public health professionals, who all too often operate in an ahistorical vacuum.
SUZANNE AUSTIN ALCHON

ing about an element of historical accounts all too often mistakenlyconsidered to be technical and minor. ERNST A. BREISACH Michigan University Western Disease, Power SHELDON WATTS. Epidemicsand History: and Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1997. Pp. xvi, 400. In this book, Sheldon Watts tackles the challenging task of assembling a comparative history of the relationship between disease and power from the European Middle Ages to the present. The scope of this work is truly impressive, as is Watt's familiarity with the vast literature, both medical and historical, that informs this study. The book's first five chapters are organized around particulardiseases-plague, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, and cholera-while the sixth chapter focuses on yellow fever and malaria. In each case, Watts compares the impact of a particular disease in Europe to its impact in a region experiencing European colonization such as India, Africa, or the Americas. Ultimately these comparisons are extremely useful in revealing the nature and extent of power relations between imperial nations and those they colonize. At the core of each chapter are what Watts terms the "constructs" of a particular disease: that is, the misconceptions and delusions that a society creates surrounding a specific illness, always with harmful consequences for persons considered outsiders or "other." For example, in the chapter on leprosy in medieval Europe and in the nineteenth-century tropics, Watts argues convincingly, as have others before him, that in addition to being a physical disease, medieval elites and later European colonialists successfully employed the construct of leprosy as a dehumanizing form of social control. In Europe between 1090 and 1363, the search for and persecution of individualslabeled as "lepers"was a way to punish and ostracize troublesome persons. Five centuries later, the stigma of leprosy reappeared in conjunction with European colonization of the Pacific Islands, India, the Middle East, and Africa. Given the economics of imperialism, Europeans, and later North Americans, were not interested in investing capital on public health measures designed to benefit the native population, so individuals diagnosed with leprosy were hidden away in detention camps, such as the one on the island of Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands. In a similarway, European and American elites propagated the erroneous notion that Africans were immune to yellow fever and malaria in order to justify their continued economic exploitation, especially in regions that proved unhealthy for European and Asian laborers. And because whites believed that Africans were the primary carriers of these infections-yet another erroneous assumption-blacks were blamed for major outbreaks. One of the chief achievements of this book is that its

University of Delaware
JAN GOLINSKI. MakingNatural Knowledge:Constructiv-

ism and the Historyof Science. (Cambridge History of

Science.) New York: Cambridge University 1998. Pp. xiv, 236. Cloth $54.95, paper $16.95. Press.

The place of the history of science in the academy (in the United States as well as elsewhere, save perhaps for Holland) is appalling. Only a few universities have free-standing departments; where these are lacking, history departments may employ one or two professors in this area. Historians, by trade, know "nothing about science." Thus, although we have learned quite a lot about women and workers, wars, political movements, and other important aspects of ordinarylife, sciencethe muscle of twentieth-century North America-has been understudied and poorly understood. And for a number of reasons. Chief among them is a prevailing epistemology that has lent privileged status to science as pure and objective, largely unsullied by the mess of human subjectivities. Jan Golinski explains how constructivism, which he defines as a methodology that "directs attention to the role of human beings, as social actors, in the making of scientific knowledge" (p. 6), has exploded this foundational belief. Constructivism has historicized science and in so doing has called for analysis of all its associated categories: discovery, evidence, argument, experiment, expert, laboratory, instrument, image,

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