Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more

Recommended product

Popular links

Popular links


Modernizing England's Past

Modernizing England's Past

Modernizing England's Past

English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870–1970
Michael Bentley, University of St Andrews, Scotland
January 2006
Available
Paperback
9780521602662

    What came before 'postmodernism' in historical studies? By thinking through the assumptions, methods and cast of mind of English historians writing between about 1870 and 1970, this book reveals the intellectual world of the modernists and offers a full analysis of English historiography in this crucial period. Modernist historiography set itself the objective of going beyond the colourful narratives of 'whigs' and 'popularizers' in order to establish history as the queen of the humanities and as a rival to the sciences as a vehicle of knowledge. Professor Bentley does not follow those who deride modernism as 'positivist' or 'empiricist' but instead shows how it set in train brilliant new styles of investigation that transformed how historians understood the English past. But he shows how these strengths were eventually outweighed by inherent confusions and misapprehensions that threatened to kill the very subject that the modernists had intended to sustain.

    • The first full account of English historiography from 1870-1970
    • The first study to define modernism as a distinctive approach to historical studies
    • Essential reading for students studying historical theory and method and for anyone interested in our changing understanding of the English past

    Reviews & endorsements

    '… energetic …' History Today

    See more reviews

    Product details

    March 2006
    Adobe eBook Reader
    9780511144875
    0 pages
    0kg
    This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.

    Table of Contents

    • Prelude: after the Whigs
    • Part I. The Whig Legacy:
    • 1. Constitution and nation
    • 2. Church and state
    • 3. Empire and war
    • 4. Ghosts and intimations
    • Part II. Modernist Investments:
    • 5. New historians, new histories
    • 6. The new eighteenth century
    • 7. Ideological environments
    • 8. Modernist method
    • Coda: after the modernists.
      Author
    • Michael Bentley , University of St Andrews, Scotland

      Michael Bentley is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is the editor of the Routledge Companion to Historiography (2002) and the author of Modern Historiography: An Introduction (1999).