¹ It is difficult to determine the number of history journals, not least because disciplinary boundaries are fuzzy. In 2006 the European Science Foundation surveyed 1,100, of which 291 were English-language journals. The Royal Historical Society Bibliography of British and Irish History surveys 580. The East-Central European equivalent surveys 1,800 and the French over 3,000. The Cambridge University Library catalogue has 335 titles having the words ‘history’ or ‘historical’. See Ian Archer, ‘Towards a closer union: European historical bibliographies’, Royal Historical Society Newsletter (Autumn/Winter 2007), pp. 2–5.

² The 76 per cent includes Irish and British imperial history.

³ There is the singular exception of Helen Cam, a member of the board of the predecessor CHJ from 1938 to 1948.

⁴ In the late 1990s the circulation levels of Past and Present, the English Historical Review, and the Economic History Review were around 3,000 each: Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 Aug. 1998, p. 19. In 2006 History had a circulation of 900.

⁵ See Table 10.

⁶ Norris, Pippa and Crewe, Ivor, ‘The reputation of political science journals: pluralist and consensus views’, Political Studies, 41 (1993), pp. 5–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Table 11 below.

⁷ Figures courtesy of John Morrill.

⁸ E. A. Wrigley, ‘The Review during the last fifty years’: www.ehs.org.uk/archive/pdf/ehr, p. 18.

⁹ Le Goff, Jacques, ‘Past and Present: later history’, Past and Present, 100 (1983), pp. 22–3Google Scholar.

¹⁰ William Gibson, Archives, 24 (1999), p. 75. Figures here and above for the ‘golden triangle’ need to be put in the context of their proportion of total UK university history staff, which currently stands at 24 per cent. Teachers of history in the universities of the United Kingdom (London, 2008) gives c. 2,950 staff, of which c. 700 are in the ‘triangle’. But of course, the relevant cohort for comparison is not merely British.

¹¹ Whaples, Robert, ‘A quantitative history of the Journal of Economic History and the cliometric revolution’, Journal of Economic History, 51 (1991), p. 298CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² See Table 9.

¹³ This was the view taken by the HJ in 1958, so Derek Beales tells me; he recalls that, ironically, it was the medievalist Ullmann who was emphatic on this point. It was also Ullmann who proposed the ‘majestically simple’ title ‘Historical Journal’, thinking perhaps of Historische Zeitschrift, ‘and no doubt of trumping or rivalling the English Historical Review’.

¹⁴ Review essays are of two types: ‘historiographical reviews’, which survey a broad field and not necessarily only the most recent publications, and carry no list of specific books reviewed at the head; and ‘review articles’, which critique a group of specified recent books.

¹⁵ See Tables 13–15. For commentary on citation indices in the humanities see ‘Peer review: the challenges for the humanities and social sciences’ (British Academy, 2007): www.britac.ac.uk/reports/peer-review.

¹⁶ An HJ review essay can find itself called an ‘olympian historical survey’: Ian McBride of Toby Barnard, ‘Farewell to old Ireland’, 36 (1993): Times Literary Supplement, 19 Feb. 1999.

¹⁷ See n. 43 below.

¹⁸ Jonathan Clark, ‘Protestantism, nationalism, and national identity, 1660–1832’, 43 (2000), pp. 249–76; Times, 17 June 2000.

¹⁹ Chris Anderson, The long tail (London, 2006).

²⁰ www.ahrc.ac.uk/about/knowledge_evaluation; ‘Historians decry journal rankings’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 4 Jan. 2008.

²¹ In discussing their proposed new journal (Past and Present), the Communist Party History Group noted, in 1950, the need for a venue for topics which would ‘rarely find space in EHR, etc.’ (Labour History Archive, Manchester: CP/CENT/CULT/5/11). Incidentally, it is not the case that Marxist historiography regarded Past and Present as its peculiar home, for the bibliography of anglophone Marxist historical writing shows that a greater number of Marxist articles appeared in Economic History Review than in Past and Present: Lionel Munby and Ernst Wangerman, Marxism and history: a bibliography of English language works (London, 1967). This bibliography includes no items in the HJ, but two in the CHJ.

²² 7 (1964), p. 154.

²³ 8 (1965), pp. 271–81; 16 (1973), pp. 205–8.

²⁴ Eric Stokes, ‘Late nineteenth-century colonial expansion and the attack on the theory of economic imperialism: a case of mistaken identity?’, 12 (1969); still one of the most read articles: Table 14.

²⁵ Stone, Lawrence, ‘The revival of narrative: reflections on a new old history’, Past and Present, 85 (1979), pp. 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Le Goff referred to ‘political, military, and diplomatic history of a hopelessly out of date narrative type’: ‘Past and Present’, p. 23.

²⁶ P. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, and T. Skocpol, eds., Bringing the state back in (Cambridge, 1985).

²⁷ Ten articles and thirty book reviews, including those in the Cambridge HJ, 1951–93.

²⁸ Table 16 gives the names of editors; but the tone of the Journal can be influenced by members of the editorial board who were never editors. Elton sat on the board from 1961 to 1994.

²⁹ The CHJ was founded by the Cambridge Historical Society, which sold its successor, the HJ, to Cambridge University Press in 1971. Its members are still entitled to a discounted subscription, but the Society has no other connection with the journal, and it has not been mentioned on the verso of the cover since 1975. Nor does the HJ have any formal connection with the Cambridge Faculty of History, though it has its office in the Faculty building, rented by Cambridge University Press. In 2009, for the first time, the HJ acquired an editor who did not hold a post in Cambridge.

^{30 30} Times Literary Supplement, 6 Jan. 1956.

³¹ It is satisfying to find Betty Behrens's remark that, for Elton, the historian ‘is not an intellectual but a technician’: 12 (1969), p. 193. Behrens was a particularly energetic and astute reviewer for the HJ in the 1960–70s.

³² Michael Bentley, Modernizing England's past: English historiography in the age of modernism, 1870–1970 (Cambridge, 2005), esp. ch. 8. See also Peter Novick, That noble dream: the ‘objectivity question’ and the American historical profession (Cambridge, 1988).

³³ Peter Mandler, History and national life (London, 2002), ch. 3. Contrast, more recently, a small cultural shift that occurred in 2000 when HJ board members began to be listed on the verso of the cover by their bare names (and with forenames instead of initials) without the earlier paraphernalia of academic ranks, degrees, and honours.

³⁴ Bentley, Modernizing England's past, p. 229. The notion that the HJ publishes only specialist work is of course a caricature. For examples of formidably broad-brush interpretative essays, see: D. C. Coleman, ‘Mercantilism revisited’, 23 (1980); and Theodore Rabb, ‘The expansion of Europe and the spirit of capitalism’, 17 (1974).

³⁵ Taylor, Miles, ‘The beginnings of modern British social history’, History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), pp. 156–76Google Scholar; MacDonagh, Oliver, ‘The nineteenth-century revolution in government: a reappraisal’, HJ, 1 (1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; G. Kitson Clark, ‘Statesmen in disguise: reflections on the history of the neutrality of the civil service’, 2 (1959); Neil McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood and factory discipline’, 4 (1961); Peter Mathias, ‘The brewing industry, temperance and politics’, 1 (1958).

³⁶ David Cannadine, ‘The Macaulay of the welfare state’, London Review of Books, 6 June 1985.

³⁷ J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Burke and the ancient constitution: a problem in the history of ideas’, 3 (1960).

³⁸ For Elton's anti-constitutionalism, see ‘Parliament in the sixteenth century: functions and fortunes’, 22 (1979).

³⁹ Cowling published once in the HJ: ‘Disraeli, Derby, and fusion: October 1865 to July 1866’, 8 (1965).

⁴⁰ For this theme in its Cambridge setting, see Mark Goldie, ‘The context of The foundations’, in Annabel Brett and James Tully, eds., Rethinking the foundations of modern political thought (Cambridge, 2006).

⁴¹ Herbert Butterfield, George III and the historians (London, 1957), p. 205. Apropos Butterfield's influence, it is fair to say it could be as protean as a jellyfish, since J. G. A. Pocock, John Brewer, and J. C. D. Clark could all claim lineage.

⁴² See, inter alia, articles by Christopher Andrew, Richard Langhorne, John Rohl, Norman Stone, and Beryl Williams in the 1960s–70s. (The record for the longest span of publication in the HJ is held by a diplomatic historian, Zara Steiner, who first published in 1963 and last in 1999.)

⁴³ See, inter alia, Ruth Bettina Birn, A nation on trial: the Goldhagen thesis and historical truth (New York, NY, 1998); idem, Unwilling Germans? the Goldhagen debate (Minneapolis, MN, 1998); Moses, A. D., ‘Structure and agency in the Holocaust: Daniel J. Goldhagen and his critics’, History and Theory, 37 (1998), pp. 194–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and innumerable websites.

⁴⁴ The Journal achieved especial prominence in this area in a celebrated, combative, and, for the editor concerned, painful, controversy between J. S. A. Adamson and Mark Kishlansky. See Kishlansky, ‘Saye what?’, 33 (1990); Adamson, ‘Politics and the nobility in Civil War England’, 34 (1991).

⁴⁵ J. A. Guy, ‘The origins of the Petition of Right reconsidered’, 25 (1982); Mark Kishlansky, ‘The army and the Levellers: the roads to Putney’, 22 (1979).

⁴⁶ Notably: John Dunn, ‘Consent in the political theory of John Locke’, 10 (1967); Quentin Skinner, ‘History and ideology in the English Revolution’, 8 (1965); Skinner, ‘The ideological context of Hobbes's political thought’, 9 (1966).

⁴⁷ Published as The growth of political stability in England, 1675–1725 (London, 1967).

⁴⁸ John Brewer, ‘The misfortunes of Lord Bute: a case study in eighteenth-century political argument and public opinion’, 16 (1973); Linda Colley, ‘The loyal brotherhood and the Cocoa Tree: the London organization of the tory party, 1727–1760’, 20 (1977); also John Money, ‘Taverns, coffee houses, and clubs: local politics and popular articulacy in the Birmingham area in the age of the American Revolution’, 14 (1971).

⁴⁹ Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: the official mind of imperialism (London, 1961). In the field of imperial history see, inter alia, articles by Ronald Hyam, Andrew Porter, and Eric Stokes in the 1960s–70s.

⁵⁰ Data courtesy of Cambridge University Press. Figures relate to institutional subscriptions; there continue to be about ninety individual subscribers.

⁵¹ See Tables 13–15.

⁵² The ambitions of the editors can be judged by the wide ambit of fields of history professed by the members of the editorial board and, since 2000, by the international advisory board.

⁵³ British university historical staff grew about three-and-a-half times during the HJ's first fifty years, while the Journal grew six times; it had, however, already grown five times by 1980. See Table 1.

⁵⁴ Figure for British and Irish history, from the Royal Historical Society Bibliography of British and Irish History. Information courtesy of John Morrill.

⁵⁵ ‘Many historical journals … have been deserted by senior academics and become the province of narrow specialist articles by doctoral students and aspiring young lecturers’: Martin Pugh, Times Literary Supplement, 14 Nov. 1997.

⁵⁶ In 1994 the average age of the editorial board was sixty-one; it has declined since.

⁵⁷ E.g. Alan Cromartie, 33 (1990); Colin Lee, 35 (1991); Paul Readman, 42 (1999); Jacqueline Rose, 48 (2005); Michael Ryder, 25 (1982); Stephen Taylor, 28 (1985), Stephen Thompson, 51 (2008).

⁵⁸ The CHJ contained such impedimenta of the house journal as obituaries and lists of current Cambridge Ph.D. topics.

⁵⁹ For commentary on journal peer-reviewing in the humanities see the British Academy report cited in n. 15.