What is history - a question historians have been asking themselves time and again. Does and "history and " as an academic discipline, as it has evolved in the West over the centuries, represent a specific mode of historical thinking that can bedefined in contrast to other forms of historical consciousness? In this volume, Peter Burke, a prominent and "Western and " historian, offers ten hypotheses that attempt to constitute specifically and "Western Historical Thinking. and " Scholars from Asia and Africa comment on his position in the light of their own ideas of the sense and meaning of historical thinking. The volume is rounded off by Peter Burke's comments on the questions and issues raised by the authors and his suggestions for the way forward towards a common ground for intercultural communication.