Untitled - Istituto di Storia dell'Europa Mediterranea - Cnr

Afterword
499
second factor, as I have already stated, was research in the Roman
archives. This began almost by happenstance in 1974, only a few
months after my return to Italy from Toronto. The Holy See opened
up a new world for my historical imagination. This research combined
sound and apparently little-used documentary evidence with a new
global perspective. In the early modern era, the Holy See was in fact
an international institution par excellence, no less so than any other
European capital with Atlantic interests. 4
By making this book focus on North Atlantic historiography, I
made the conscious choice not to include research articles. By these I
mean articles that try to answer old and new questions by re-reading
well-known evidence or finding new one. In fact, there is almost
nothing in this collection that is related, in a direct way, to the archival
research that –– since 1974 and for the ensuing thirty-five years or so
–– has brought me not only to Rome, but also to France, Switzerland,
England, Ireland, the United States and Canada. It was archival work,
however, that made it possible for me to experience first-hand
historical vicissitudes with the eyes of the people of the past. Without
it, I wonder whether I would have had the courage –– the ability is not
for me to judge –– to enter the domain of historiography and to review
other historians' writings, as shown by the articles collected in this
book.
In spite of its being rather cliche, the expression "Little did we
know that..." has always struck me as being at the core of the
historical profession. It means, quite simply, that there is such a thing
"Leftist School" until 1975, but not later. See Part IV, Ch. 1, "On the Witness Stand:
A Prosopography of North American Historiography in Italy in the Post-World War
II Decades, 1945-78," 371-372 n28.
4 My last article in the field of the French and English conflict in North America, a
field that I had originally borrowed from American historian Francis Parkman, but
had been later revised via Eccles, was Codignola, "Montcalm, Vaudreuil e la guerra
per bande, 1754-1758," in Canadiana. Aspetti della storia e della letteratura
canadese, ed. Codignola (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 1978), 41-55. This was a
follow-up on Francis Parkman, Scritti scelti, ed. Codignola (Bari: Adriatica, 1976);
and Codignola, Guerra e guerriglia nell'America coloniale. Robert Rogers e la
Guerra dei Sette Anni, 1754-1760 (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 1977).