Modern Historiography in the Making deals with the creation of a German sense of the past, examining this process as it emerged in various ways through recent historiographical disputes. Its principal aim is to challenge the received understanding of historicism and, by rediscovering overlooked parts within the history of historiography, to provide fresh glimpses into how its modern concept, in the author's assessment, evolved and developed together with German historical consciousness between the early Enlightenment and the twentieth century. Concerning this ambitious and admittedly Rankean historiographical program, Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen's contribution also questions the credibility of historicism's master narrative, while offering alternatives for its revision.

In this sense, the approach of the book relies on the anti-theoretical interpretation of German historiography, which tends to see historical development in its practical and methodological implications, rather than in its theoretical basis. Eskildsen's interest in historical praxeology is rooted in his engagement with scholarship on the history of knowledge, well-illustrated by his thoughtful and profound publications on the German protagonists of historical thinking (Ludewig, Thomasius, Gatterer, Ranke). These names not only recur in the book's modernist narrative, but they are constitutive components of the author's argument and the book's synthetic scope. In this respect, what Modern Historiography in the Making offers to its readers is a reappraisal of the most essential points of the last decade's comprehensive research, rather than a radically new interpretation.

Apart from the introduction and the epilogue, Eskildsen's book comprises seven concise chapters. Each follows a chronological order and examines the stages of how modern historiography was created, aiming to reconstruct how interest in historical practice evolved and expanded in the multifaceted scenes and stages of the scholarly world. In this sense, the book is consistent in inspecting its subject through the lenses of contemporary contributions to evince how the practice of history determined historical consciousness.

In this progressive and genetic narrative, chapters 1 and 2 recall the findings of German Enlightenment scholarship with special regard to the impact of Thomasius's circle on historical practice and consciousness. By relying on the assertion of Notker Hammerstein and Ian Hunter, Eskildsen argues that, with the integration of history into moral education, Thomasius's eclectic philosophy had not only ideological (anti-clerical) but also practical consequences. By giving public lectures in private spaces, Thomasius brought together (the) critical reading (of historical documents) and self-training to promote and elevate the historical lecture as the second eye of wisdom. Although the impact of Thomasius’ engagement with the historical method could be noticed in the members of his circle (Heumann, Arnold, Cassius, Benthem, etc.), the book does not properly explicate how this influential intellectual initiative was intersected by the triumph of Wolffian philosophy, which seemed to step backward when it reinstalled the old scholastic image of history. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the first appearance of archivalism and antiquarianism in historical inquiry. While the first trend justified the use of archival documents not only for legal-political purposes but also for historical reconstructions, the second one laid the ground for a new type of engagement with the past. Namely, when historical reality sets the standards for the present circumstances. By using the critical historical method, while the early archivalist's aim (Ludewig, Gundling) was to address imperial history on the grounds of official documents (diplomas, charters, acts, etc.), the debate on antiquarianism (Klotz, Herder, Raspe) had different intellectual stakes, since it tended to explain the relevance of the historical past from the non-textual sources and materials.

Chapter 5 continues with the Enlightenment debate on auxiliary sciences. It offers glimpses into Johann Christoph Gatterer's efforts to set history on the grounds of pure methodology and to develop it into an independent field of knowledge (apart from jurisprudence and philosophy). In doing so, even Gatterer was forced to use the Wolffian epistemology to defend his method against his critics, the German Humes, Robertsons, and Voltaires. Relating to the author's inspiration for historiography, chapter 6 stands out from the other parts of the book with its careful contextualizations and elaborated explanations. It reconstructs how the early nineteenth-century centralization of state archives affected the young Ranke's archival turn and how these experiences brought him to declare history as inseparable from archival research. Ranke's overarching influence on the narrative of modern historiography gains a new dimension in chapter 7. In Eskildsen's narration, due to the influence of Ranke's scholarship, which not only challenged philosophical history but also decisively departed from the romantic idea of returning to the Holy Roman Empire, history became independent and instrumental for serving political purposes. On this intellectual base, the chapter discusses the transition through which historical exercise (Ranke, Waitz, Arndt) was institutionalized and depoliticized in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Eskildsen points out, due to its bureaucratic routines, standardized formats of teaching and research, and institutional divisions of labor, this line of educational reform instigated strong resistance among academic historians, while unintendedly undermining the moral grounds of the historical discipline by the twentieth century.

The disappearance of the moral-political character and the mediatory role of modern historiography (between past and present) is the main concern of the book's epilogue. Eskildsen concludes that making modern historiography was a project of political modernity, which, despite its intention, separated historical scholarship from its inherent moral-political purposes. The distinction between politics and science which, on the one hand, encouraged historians to write history for its own scientific sake, on the other hand, corresponded with the general tendency of professionalization and affected other disciplines, too. From this perspective, however, the author's final deduction about the renewed interest of twenty-first-century historiography in political debates seems less convincing for two reasons. First, because it does not reflect on the problem that the division of politics and science posed as the product of a modernist image of scientific positivism, which despite its dominance had never become fully accepted beyond Europe. Second, the book does not reckon with the performative force and the deficits of the Rankean perspective. One of the consequences of this perspective is that, while the book intends to forge a genetic narration and narrows its focus on explaining a bottom-up emancipation process through which historical practice earned its place against its theoretical grounds, it simply escapes any reconsidering of the impact of the philosophical and methodological debates of the Enlightenment (especially the framework of theory and practice) on the disciplinarization of historical practice. Even if Eskildsen's argument relies on a comprehensive understanding of practical implications, this maneuver might have been beneficial, as it could have provided further rhetorical and structural evidence concerning not only the complexity of rising historical practice, but also the question of why practice needed theory in order to establish itself in the Enlightenment scholarly world and beyond.

Overall, Modern Historiography in the Making: The German Sense of the Past, 1700–1900 is a rich and colorful collection of ideas, which courageously puts the modernist narrative of German historiography to the test and meticulously marks its theoretical bias against its own practical footage. By the provocative arguments and the choice of the subject, the book merits scholarly attention and will hopefully lead to constructive debates on the overlooked implications of modern historiography. However, the book's approach and perspective can only offer a partial explanation of the challenges the architects of modern historiography had to cope with to master their practice. The greatest merit of the volume are the glimpses it offers into the main historical trends that shaped the rising field of history and made it interdependent upon theory and practice from the early Enlightenment onwards. The author guides their readers with considerable confidence and compassion over the book's seven chapters, which, due to the short but concise discussion of each topic, read easily. Thanks to its subject and elegant prose, the book could be of interest to expert and non-expert readers alike and would also be easy to use for educational purposes.