MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY.
I. The Era of Discoveries and the "Com mercial Revolution."— Inasmuch as history down to very recent times has been regarded as primarily the domain and province of the theologian or /ittlroteur, it was but natural that either the Reformation or the Renaissance should be taken as marking the origin of the modern phase of the development of historiog raphy. Now that it has come to be generally conceded that, in its broadest interpretation, history is a branch of social science and related generically to the whole body of science, it has become necessary to search for the causes which brought modern historical writing into being in the results of that great period of transformation which marks the beginnings of the present social and intellectual order, namely, the 'Commercial Revolution.* By this term is meant that vast movement of exploration and discovery, which occurred in the three cen turies from 1450-1750, and its almost incal culable social and intellectual consequences. The isolation, repetition, stability and provin cialism of the old order could not endure in the face of the widespread contact of different cultures — that most potent of all in arousing intellectual curiosity and promoting radical changes of every sort.
The reaction of the commercial revolution upon historiography was in no way more not able and far-reaching than in regard to the scope of the historian's interest. The narrow ness and superficiality of the field of historical investigation since the canons of Thucydides and Orosius had come to prevail could no long er endure unimpaired; it meant the beginning of the return to the field that Herodotus had to some extent marked out for the historian. Writers to some degree ceased to be absorbed by those most superficial phases of political and ecclesiastical history, which had hitherto claimed all of their attention, and became for the first time interested in the totality of civ ilization. It meant a much greater impulse to that broadening and secularizing process which had been revived by humanism. Not only were there great stores of knowledge to be obtained from the contact with the older civilizations of the East, but in the natives, historians and phi losophers at last found the °natural man,* who had hitherto only existed in the mythical period before the 'Flood.* No greater contrast could be imagined than the vast difference in the type of subjects which interested such an historian as Pufendorf and those with which Oviedo con cerned himself. Again, the new range of his torical interests offered some opportunity for originality of thought; there were fewer er roneous notions to handicap the writer at the outset. Neither Thucydides, Polybius and Livy,
nor Augustine and Aquinas had provided the final authoritative opinion on the marriage cus toms of Borneo or the kinship system of the Iroquois. The only exception in this respect was the prevalent doctrine of a 'state of na ture,* which had come down from the Stoics and Roman lawyers and now seemed to have practical concrete confirmation.
While the influence of the commercial revo lution upon historiography was most effective indirectly, through the intellectual and social changes which it produced, and the reaction of these changes upon historical interests and methods, there were some important immedi ate and direct results apparent in historical writing among those who dealt with the record of the discoveries. In the first place, there were radical changes in style and exposition. The old arrangement in the form of annals was no longer suitable; what was needed now was a vehicle for comprehensive description and not for chronological narration. The majority of the early historians of the movement of explora tion and discovery were practical men of af fairs and wrote in a direct and unpretentious style. Though there was later, with such writers as Herrera, a tendency to lapse into the lit eral canons of humanism, an important breach had already been made with both the form and the style of the conventional historical litera ture. The content of historical products was also greatly altered by these writers; political and ecclesiastical intrigues were replaced by a comprehensive account of the manners and cus toms of a people. This tendency reacted strong ly even on those writers'who dealt exclusively with European affairs. The (Chronicle' of Eusebius or the genealogy of reigning mon archs, as the introduction to historical works was generally displaced by a description of the land and its inhabitants. Excepting only the feeble advances of IEneas Sylvius and his numerous German disciples, for the first time since the days of the Ionic historians of the 5th and 6th centuries B.C., ethnography and geog raphy began to make a feeble appearance in his toriography. Finally, though the earlier of the members of this school of writers Were prima rily collectors of descriptive information, they later became speculative, and with Voltaire and Herder there appear attempts at a world his tory conceived according to the new orientation and possessing some degree of comprehensive ness and grasp of causal forces.