ABSTRACT
In 1890 a writer in the Saturday Review expressed the opinion that ‘of all dull books a conscientiously compiled parochial history is the dullest.’ Arnold Toynbee maintains that historians have been occupying themselves too exclusively with the fortunes of the national state. He shows that the life of England, and more obviously the lives of France, Germany, Spain, have been profoundly affected at all the crucial points by forces operating from outside the national frontiers. Toynbee sometimes uses expressions which could be taken as implying that it is a waste of time to study national history. The business of the local historian is to re-enact in his own mind, and to portray for his readers, the Origin, Growth, Decline, and Fall of a Local Community. Multifarious are the questions the local historian will put to himself as he tramps the field paths or scrutinizes antique parchments.
