ABSTRACT
Periods, eras, and epochs are working divisions of objective historical time used as frameworks of analysis. Any such framework involves the researcher in an act of “colligation”—that is, grouping together diverse events on the basis of some principle (e.g., common context, influence, process, or meaningful logic) that has temporal boundaries. In one approach, a period such as “the Renaissance” itself may constitute an object of inquiry. Alternatively, periods can be identified by major turning points (e.g., the French Revolution, the end of World War II) that the historical researcher argues shift the fundamental ways in which events proceed; a series of such major turning points can be used to identify sequences of historical periods (and, therefore, transitions between periods). Each period may itself be comprised of an internal sequence of events that unfolds from a point of departure to a point of resolution. (Such a sequence might be posited, for example, for the Cold War era from the late 1940s through the early 1990s.) History is thereby colligated as sequences of events that fit within larger-scale sequences of periods, and so on. In this approach, all events within a period do not necessarily share any single characteristic: history is marked by turning points, but a period between turning points does not neces sarily have a coherent character. Indeed, periods only begin or end because of concrete events that are in principle open-ended and contingent: it is the events (and, perhaps, the willful play of historical actors) that establish periods, and not periods that determine events. By contrast, when a period such as the Renaissance is identified as a self-contained object of inquiry, colligation of events need not depend on sequences that nest within other sequences. Instead, events may be held to belong together on the basis of shared characteristics, regardless of whether they build on one another or lead in any particular direction. In this case, the character of a given period may be readily identifiable, while its beginning and ending are more nebulous, since they do not depend on any dramatic turning points. Periodization analysis may focus on causation, in which case beginning and end points are vital, or it may be more descriptive and interpretive in focusing on the issue of internal coherence.
