This booklet addresses the historiography of arithmetic because it used to be practiced throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries via paying detailed cognizance to the cultural contexts during which the historical past of arithmetic used to be written.

In the nineteenth century, the background of arithmetic was once recorded via a various diversity of individuals knowledgeable in numerous fields and pushed via various motivations and goals. those backgrounds frequently formed not just their writing at the historical past of arithmetic, yet, in a few circumstances, have been additionally influential of their next reception.

During the interval from approximately 1880-1940, arithmetic modernized in very important methods, with reference to its content material, its stipulations for cultivation, and its id; and the writing of the background of arithmetic performed into the final half in particular.

Parallel to the modernization of arithmetic, the historical past of arithmetic steadily developed right into a box of study with its personal journals, societies and educational positions. Reflecting either a brand new expert id and alterations in its fundamental viewers, numerous shifts of standpoint within the means the background of arithmetic was once and is written can nonetheless be saw to at the present time. at first targeting significant inner, common advancements in definite sub-disciplines of arithmetic, the sector steadily gravitated in the direction of a spotlight on contexts of data construction regarding participants, neighborhood practices, difficulties, groups, and networks.

The target of this ebook is to hyperlink those disciplinary and methodological adjustments within the heritage of arithmetic to the wider cultural contexts of its practitioners, particularly the historians of arithmetic throughout the interval in question.