ABSTRACT
While the historiography of the seventeenth century has not yet really succeeded in absorbing and employing the new insights produced by basic research, that of the eighteenth at times gives the impression of a mildly desperate search for controversies. The main issues, around which debate tends to gather, are two revolutions: that which Namier produced in the history of party politics, and that which took place in the economic life of the time. Unfortunately, both issues are too readily treated as though they were moral ones. Namier’s interpretation, disagreeable to many in its lack of sentimentality, provokes the charge that ‘he removed the mind from history’, while the questions of industrialization are slanted towards an argument about the possible social damage done; and in the outcome, a good deal that one reads seems to be dominated more by moral indignation than by scholarly concern and rigour. However, in both respects there are signs that a phase of controversy is drawing to a close, and that more real issues are moving to the centre of the stage.
