ABSTRACT
Both history and cultural theory share a profound interest in the concept of power. Power is close to the heart of history as a field of study. Indeed, one could argue that it is the study of power that organises the historical field as a whole, not only political and social history but also, less obviously, economic history and the history of ideas. The three-dimensional view of power, identified here with the theories of Gramsci and Habermas, have been influential in social, cultural and political history. Gramscis concept of hegemony informed a series of debates in the 1970s and 1980s about the possibility of a reinvigorated Marxist history, the formation of power in modern states since the eighteenth-century and the character of relations of dominance and subordination. The study therefore accorded with Foucault's injunction to analyse the exercise of power instead of those who are deemed to hold it.
