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Tendencies in Historical Study in England1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2016
Extract
In examining what seem to me to have been significant fields (or significant concentrations) of study in recent times, I wish to show how these have reacted on our conception of general history and how our very notion of the historian's universe has been undergoing a subtle transformation. In attempting to discuss some of the points where pressure has been exerted on historical study by war and international crisis, I wish to show how the very nature of history and the results of historical analysis prescrjbe to the historian his role when the momentous-ness of the contemporary world confronts him with claims and challenges. It will be useful to hold the figure of Lord Acton in the background, in order to measure the modern version of the human drama, and the modern view of the historian's function in the world, against the one which he so explicitly formulated.
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- Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1945
Footnotes
page 209 note 1
A paper to be read at the annual Conference of Irish Historians on 10 April 1945 at the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin.
References
page 209 note 2 Professor Hayek's article, ‘ The historian's responsibility ‘, is in Time and Tide, 13 Jan. 1945. He quotes Acton on ‘ that garrison of distinguished historians who prepared the Prussian hegemony together with their own and now hold Berlin like a fortress mainly represented by Sybel, Droysen and Treitschke, with Mommsen and Gneist, Bernhardi and Duncker on their flank almost entirely given to maxims which it has cost the world so much effort to reverse ‘
page 210 note 1 See Acton's reports to the syndics of the Cambridge University Press in The Cambridge modern history : An account of its origin, authorship and production (Cambridge, 1907). Cf. Cambridge modern history, i (1902), introduction ; and extracts from Acton's instructions to contributors printed at the end of his Lectures on modern history (London, 1926).
page 210 note 2 Acton, The study of history, pp. 7—8 : ‘ I describe as modern history that which begins four hundred years ago, which is marked off by an evident and intelligible line from the time immediately preceding, and displays in its course the specified and distinctive characteristics of its own. The modern age did not proceed from the medieval by normal succession, with outward tokens of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it founded a new order of things, under a law of innovation, sapping the ancient reign of continuity.’ Cf. Acton's treatment of the opening of modern times in his Lectures on modern history; cf. also the sudden way in which modern times are presumed to begin in the Cambridge modern history, i, where, though Acton had intended to have an opening chapter on ‘ The legacy of the middle ages ‘, even on this original plan it would hardly have been possible to do justice to the nature of the transition taking place between 1300 and 1700.
page 211 note 1 E.g. Temperley, H. W V, The Bulgarian and other atrocities, 1875–8, in the light of historical criticism (British Academy, London, 1932)Google Scholar ; Lee, Dwight E., Great Britain and the Cyprus convention (Harvard Historical Studies, xxxviii, Cambridge, Mass., 1934)Google Scholar; Seton-Watson, R. W, Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question (London, 1935)Google Scholar; Wirthwein, Walter C., Britain and the Balkan crisis, 1875–8 (N.Y., 1935)Google Scholar; Harris, D., A diplomatic history of the Balkan crisis of 1875–8, vol. i, “The first year’ (Hoover War Library Publications 11, Stanford Univ., Calif., 1936)Google Scholar; Sumner, B. H., Russia and the Balkans, 1870–80 (Oxford, 1937)Google Scholar ; Medlicott, W N., The congress of Berlin and after, 1878–80 (London, 1938)Google Scholar ; Stojanovic, M. D., The great powers and the Balkans, 1875–8 (Cambridge, 1939)Google Scholar ; Harris, D., Britain and the Bulgarian horrors of 1876 (Chicago, 1939).Google Scholar
page 213 note 1 Acton, Lectures on modern history, p. 21
page 215 note 1 See article by Bernadotte Schmitt, E. in American Historical Review, Jan. 1938, pp. 321–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar The resolutions of the historians were published in France and Germany in 1937 and are translated in the above-mentioned article.
page 215 note 2 von Wegerer, Alfred, Der Ausbruch des Weltkrieges (2 vols, Hamburg, 1939)Google Scholar ; reviewed by Bernadotte E. Schmitt, ‘ July 1914 once more ‘, in “Journal of Modern History, 1941, p. 225.
page 215 note 3 Temperley, H. W V, Research and modern history (London, 1930), p. 15.Google Scholar
page 217 note 1 Meinecke, Friedrich, Preussen und Deutschland im 19 und 20 Jahrkundert (Munich and Berlin, 1918), pp. 462–71Google Scholar : ‘Die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und die modernen Bedürfnisse ‘, reprinted from Die Hilfe, 6 Apr. 1916.
page 218 note 1 Acton, Lectures on modern history, p. 33 : ‘ For History must be our deliverer, not only from the undue influence of other times, but from the undue influence of our own, from the tyranny of environment and the pressure of the air we breathe. It requires all historic forces to produce their record and submit to judgment and it promotes the faculty of resistance to contemporary surroundings by familiarity with other ages and other orbits of thought.'