History

Two figures stand at the origins of modern historical writing: Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), who is widely credited with establishing the critical method that underpins the discipline, and Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897), the Swiss scholar who championed reading the past through its culture. Both still shape how historians work today. Ranke is often remembered for political history and Burckhardt for cultural history, a pairing that has become familiar enough to seem obvious.

Felix Gilbert, a distinguished historian, argues across five essays that this neat division hides more than it reveals. Each essay leads naturally into the next as he traces the shared intellectual soil of the first half of the nineteenth century, when both men formed their ideas and when their earliest major works drew broad attention. The book also takes up the basic questions historians face about their own craft.

Gilbert's treatment of Ranke sets his ideas against the period in which they took shape, showing how much they differ from eighteenth-century notions of history and why that gap matters. His account of Burckhardt, who is often described as an isolated thinker, places him within the intellectual currents of his day. The slim volume suits readers interested in how history became a distinct academic field. This Princeton Legacy Library edition is a print-on-demand reissue of a 1990 book, with the original text preserved.