7 - History

Summary

Paradoxically, Historicism established itself as the dominant interpretative mode in British historical thought more gradually than in allied human sciences. The leading British historian of the first half of the century, Macaulay, was not a historicist, although he wrote appreciatively about Ranke. Macaulay was not associated with a university; this amateur status permeated many historical circles in this period. Historicism, very much a professional doctrine, made its initial impact on British historical consciousness through the work of the ‘Liberal Anglican Historians’, all of whom were divines in the Church of England, for whom the religious orientation of German Historicism was especially attractive. Combatively secular social thinkers were critical of Historicism, particularly those heavily influenced by evolutionary theory, such as Bagehot and most defiantly Buc kle, and similarly the leading Positivist, Frederic Harrison The ideal of History as a science continued to be promoted by historians such as Bury into the opening decades of the twentieth century; it was strenuously opposed by the leading academic Historicists, Stubbs at Oxford and Acton at Cambridge, both of whom were resolutely religious. The hegemony of Historicism in History was transitory, fragmenting in the wake of the First World War and increasingly inimical Anglo-German relations.