Introduction: A Focus on the History of Concepts

Abstract

Th e special section “Knowledge Quests in the European Periphery” attempts to explore the diff erent ways in which conceptual history’s methodologies could be applied to disciplines with which traditional conceptual historians have not previously engaged, such as the history of science, political economy, Enlightenment studies, postcolonial history, and transnational history. Th is special section, when read as a whole, opens up a multidisciplinary space in which center-periphery tensions are examined in the context of conceptual transnational exchange. Coming from diff erent geographical places and cultural spaces within the European periphery, the three case studies draw their methodological background from conceptual history and aim to refl ect on the center-periphery dichotomy by asking how historians from diff erent his-toriographical traditions could take advantage of the methods and theories of conceptual history, as well as how conceptual history could take advantage of the coming together of disciplines that traditionally do not communicate with each other.