Essays in the Liberal Interpretation of History [antikvár]

Series Editor's PrefaceTo some of our contemporaries, historians are not what they used to be. To others, every day and in every way history gets better and better. But by coincident consent, the works of our forebears that have been winnowed by time have a lasting value, whether as models of historical literature or as milestones in the progress of the profession to its present eminence. To make readily and economically available those histories of this genre that have become difficult of access, the University of Chicago Press herewith inaugurates a series of volumes titled "Classic European Historians,"A "classic," in the context of this series, is defined as a work that satisfies one or both of the following criteria: (a) it has opened up or transformed the substantive history of the European field which it treats; (Z?) it is a landmark in the formal development of historical method and understanding. The series is thus designed to serve the purposes of both history and historiography, the former by restoring the broad canvases of a less monographic age, and the latter by supplying crucial documents for the history of history. In the essay which introduces each of these classics, the volume editor correspondingly establishes guidelines for the assessment of both the history and the historianof the history by distinguishing between the instrumental and the persistent validity of the subject matter, and of the historian by adducing the personal and intellectual factors that converged in his approach to the past. Pursuant to these purposes, the text will cleave as closely to the ideal of complete reproduction as the limits of a single-volume format permit: it is