ABSTRACT
Throughout the nineteenth century the great majority of historians spent their time writing books on the history of governments, “wars, treaties, the rise of nation states, the development of political institutions and the history of law. There were, for example, few historical studies of the peasants, and almost no serious analyses of the economy. History was about narrative; it told a story, based on documents. It was about “facts”, and the German historian, Ranke, was the model. Many documents were published by learned societies, but they were all chosen for publication by men with largely the same preoccupations, the same idea of history.
