2. New Developments In the Study and Interpretation of History.— Important as has been the further development of earlier tenden cies in historiography during the 19th century, this has been dwarfed into insignificance by the great advances made in totally new directions or in channels which had been only slightly foreshadowed and anticipated in earlier epochs. The critical political historians provided modern historiography with its accurate methods of research and its vast compilations of primary sources. But, as Professor Shotwell has very aptly said, these scholars were so intensely ab sorbed in the task of perfecting the method ology of research that they failed to discrimi nate in the importance of the events which they narrated. It has become the task of an ever-increasing group of progressive historians to promote the synthetic tendency in the hope of giving history a more natural content and a better balanced body of subject-matter. While there can be no doubt that the basis for many of the new developments was laid by the progress of earlier periods in the way of creating the national constitutional state, ex panding the European consciousness throughout the world by the commercial revolution, and en croaching upon the field of the mysterious through the great scientific discoveries in the field of natural science during the 17th and 18th centuries, there can be no question that most of the novel elements introduced into the writ ing and the outlook of the historian in the last century were the product of the vast transformations in social conditions and intel lectual interests and attitudes since the first quarter of the 19th century. The chief reason for the great transformation in the historical outlook in the last century has been the fact that the °Industrial Revolution* and the pro gress in natural and social science have com pletely altered not only the material conditions of human life, but also the whole °Weltan schauung° of the civilized world. A more com plete reconstruction of the whole mode of life and of the intellectual orientation of civilized peoples has been achieved in the last century than had previously taken place since the be ginning of the Christian era, and this great change could not but affect historical concepts viewed as an important branch of intellectual interests.
By the industrial revolution, which was effected between 1750 and 1850, the whole basis of life was profoundly modified and the former ideas and interests quite uprooted and dis located. The old period of rural stability and repetition was broken up and with the growth of cities the possibilities of invention, imitation and progress were immensely increased. The changes in the centres of population and in the, mode of life gave rise to new and strange social problems on a scale hitherto unknown, and demanded the provision of some adequate °science of society* to serve as a guide in their solution. As in the period of the so-called °Renaissance,* humanity again loomed larger than the state and social rather than purely political interests forged to the front in his torical as in other social sciences.
Not less consequential and epoch-making were the notable advances in natural science in the 19th century which were much more destruc tive to the traditional philosophy of life than the great discoveries of the 16th and 17th cen turies, in that the scientific work of the earlier period centered chiefly in the realm of mechanics and other fields which did not directly concern the problem of the origin and destiny of man, while those of the 19th century had a direct and inevitable bearing upon the interpretation of the derivation and origin of the human race and its relation to the rest of the organic world. Lyell and his fellow geol ogists revealed the undreamed-of antiquity of the earth and of various forms of animal life. Lawrence, Lamarck, Chambers, Darwin and Wallace, working from both geology and biology, suggested and later proved the gradual and development of man from the lower varieties of the animal kingdom. The chronology of Africanus, Eusebius and Jerome was discredited for all time through the revela tions of pre-historic archaeology in the hands of Boucher de Perthes and Sir John Evans, and the 'Chronicle) of Jerome was replaced by the 'Classification ethnologique) of de Mori! let. °Adam° was reduced, in the new perspec
tive of time, from the originator of the race to a fairly close contemporary of Darwin himself. Man was revealed as the product of natural causes and not of a mysterious creation, in the old and obscurantic sense of the term, and he became, thereby, a legitimate subject for analysis, particularly at the hands of psy chology. Along with this progress in natural science went a much further development of critical philosophy and the subjection of scrip tural authority and sacred history, already weakened by the established conclusions of scientific investigations, to the same candid and critical investigation which has been accorded to secular history much earlier. The spirit of Voltaire, Hume and Gibbon had at last per manently come to its own.
It was inevitable that these sweeping altera tions in man's outlook upon life should pro foundly affect his attitude toward the study of the past, as well as his interests in the present and future. In view of the fact that the indus trial revolution was the prime mover in the social transformations of the period it was not surprising that the first vigorous reaction again3t the conventional political historiography should come through the avenue of a greater emphasis upon the economic factors and the commonplace facts of daily life, the primary importance of which was demonstrated by the historical events of the 19th century. To be sure, the rationalist school had laid considerable stress upon eco nomic influences, Heeren had shown the im portance of the commercial activities of antiq uity, and Moser had insisted upon the vital re lation of economic factors to the development of political organization, but these were only Isolated instances of more than the usual con temporary insight and profundity which were almost totally overshadowed and engulfed in the episodical and biographical historiography of ro manticism and in the political bias of national istic historiography. Economic history, as a general and universal movement of revolt from the narrow political historiography, dates from the publication of Karl Marx's pamphlet enti tled, the (Holy Family,' in 1845, and his joint work with Engels three years later, the 'Com munist Manifesto.' While few of the leading figures in modern economic history would de fend the economic determinism of Marx, they would at least contend that economic events have an historical significance not second to any other category of facts, and that to pass over them in silence, as did writers like Droysen and Sybel, Stubbs and Freeman, and Burgess and Hoist, is to miss much of the significance of any period and inevitably to yield but an im perfect and distorted picture of any epoch. It is important to note that the new economic history was not a break with the exact scholar ship of the school of Ranke, but was rather an application of critical scholarship to the recov ery of our knowledge of the economic life of the past in its relation to the totality of civili zation. In the names of Roscher, Knies, Inama Sternegg, Nitzsch, Sohmoller and Bucher in Germany; of Rogers, Cunningham, Ashley, Gib bins, Hammond and Webb in England; of Le vasseur, LePlay, Leroy-Beaulieu, Avenel and Jaures and his associates in France; of Koval evsky and Vinogradoff from Russia; and of Bolles, Veblen, Bogart, Coman, Dewey, Clark, Commons, Gay, Callender and Day in America, the student of historiography recognizes scholars worthy to rank with the best disciples of Ranke in the field of critical methodology. In addi tion to the epoch-making work of the avowed economic historians, this new emphasis upon economic factors in history has filtered into the works of the orthodox school, and few serious historical works are now attempted which do not give at least grudging recognition to the im portance of the industrial and commecial life of a people.