The State and Practice of American Political History at the Millennium: The Nineteenth Century as a Test Case

Abstract

These are very hard times for students of American political history. Not so long ago they were a peppy and optimistic bunch and believed that they had every reason to be. For those scholars who focused their attention on nineteenth-century politics in particular, the avalanche of revisionist work from the quantitatively and behaviorally oriented “new” political historians, beginning in the late 1950s, as well as the constant outpouring of more traditional work in the genre, had expanded the reach, and deepened the understanding, of American political life after 1800. Much the same was true for politics in other chronological eras as well. The energy and example displayed by the generation of political historians active into the 1980s underscored their major, even dominant role in the study of American history. And there were few signs that anything would check the impressive growth and increasing sophistication of their contributions to historical knowledge.

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