Oxford University Press American Historical Association

The Challenge of Modern Historiography
Author(s): Bernard Bailyn

Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Feb., 1982), pp. 1-24
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The Challenge of Modern Historiography
BERNARD BAILYN
GORDON WRIGHT, speakingfromthisrostruma fewyearsago, warned thatthose

who have the honor of perpetuatingthe Association'sritual of presidential
addresses "mightdo well not to take theirpronouncementsas the voice of God or
the crystallizedwisdomof theages,"and he wonderedifitwerenotsignificant that
the presidentis allowed onlyone partingshotto speak excathedra,"notat theoutset
of his termof officebut at the veryend, only forty-eighthours beforehe 'passes
into history,'as the sayinggoes. By thattimeit is much too late forhim to make
promises,to influencetheAssociation'sfuturecourse,or even to be held to answer
forhis stewardshipor forsuch sophistriesas his swan song maycontain."Having
thustakenthe curse offany excathedra pronouncementsthatmightfollow,Profes-
sor Wrightproceeded to pronounce on one of the most elevated,difficult, and
controversialissues thatfaces historianswho thinkabout what theydo-namely,
the degree to whichhistoryis a moralscience.1I admirehis courage,but I take my
lead fromhis warning.What followsis nothingmore thana generalconsideration
of certainproblemsof modern historiography encounteredby a workinghistori-
an-a historian,as it happens, just emerging from a considerable period of
researchand planningfora large-scaleproject.This projectis an effortto describe
as a singlestorythe recruitment, settlementpatterns,and developingcharacterof
the Americanpopulationin the preindustrialera. It coversa long period of time-
the two hundred years from the early seventeenthcenturyto the advent of
industrialism.Further,it involvespopulationmovementsover a vastgeographical
area-an area stretchingfromthe bleak island of Foula offthe westcoast of the
Shetlandsat the latitudeof Greenland to the Lunda Kingdom deep in equatorial
Africa,fromthe Balticportof Flensburgand fromGorlitzon the German-Polish
border to Natchez and Pensacola. And, finally,the problems it involves lead
naturallybeyond historyitselfto other disciplinesas they relate to history:
This presidentialaddress was deliveredat the Ninety-SixthAnnual Meetingof the AmericanHistorical

held in Los Angeles,December28-30, 1981. I presentedsomeinitialthoughtson thethemes
Association,
ofthisaddressat a conferenceon Historyin the80s,held in Bellagio,Italy,June1980.I wouldliketo thank
Barbara DeWolfe forher expertand diligenthelp on the researchthatis reflectedin thispaper. I am
indebted,too,to severalcolleagueswho read and criticizedthe paper in draft.
1Wright,"Historyas a Moral Science,"AHR, 81 (1976): 1.

2 BernardBailyn
anthropology,demography,and, particularly, culturalgeography.Yet, despitethe

breadth of thisproject,I am painfullyaware thatany general statementsI make
about contemporaryhistoriography and itsproblemsas a wholeare severelylimited
bymyknowledge,bymyprimaryemphasison Anglo-Americanhistoryof theearly
modern period,and bythe kindsof studiesI happen to have made in the past and
am engaged in now.
My emphasis on the early modern period of North American and Western
European historydoes, however,have an advantage.In recentyearsthistransition-
al period betweenour distantand our immediatepasthas enjoyedan extraordinary
growthin scholarship.This segmentof historiography has simplyexploded since
World War II, and, instead of subsiding after great tumultuous blasts, the
explosions continue. Books and articleson the three hundred years after the
European discoveryof America drop fromthe presses in heaps, and essays of
general interpretationmultiplyendlessly.The topics of currentinterestcannot
easilybe catalogued. Anyone interestedin the whole range of innovativescholar-
ship in the early modern historyof the Westernworld is involvedin the latest
refinementsin the studyof the discoveriesand explorations,in parishrecordsof
France and England, in family,community,and demographic studies from
everywherefromUppsala to Florence,in theevolutionof royalcourts,stateoffices,
and parliamentary bodies,in mobilitypatternsand migrations, in theeverydaylives
of workersand witches,in race conflicts, the uses of leisure,sex
socialstratification,
practices,burialcustoms,magic,mentalitesand ideologiesof all kinds,and attitudes
to everything: to birth,to life,to work,to age, to death,and to lifeafterdeath. Only
a besotted Faust would attempt to keep up with even a large part of this
proliferating literaturein any detail.
What is happening in thisarea of contemporaryhistoriography I
is distinctive,
believe,in its magnitude,variety,and speed of growth;but in lesser degrees the
same thingis happeningelsewhere.Modern historiography in generalseemsto be
in a stage of enormous elaboration.Historicalinquiriesare ramifyingin a hun-
dred directionsat once, and there is no coordinationamong them. Even if one
reduces the mass of new writingsin theearlymodernperiod to theAmericanfield,
and stillfurtherto thepublicationsof card-carrying historians,thesheeramountof
the writingnow available is overwhelming.But limitationslike thatare arbitrary.
Fields and problemsthatwere once discreteand rathereasilycontrollablemerge,
lose definition,reveal depthsbelow depths.EarlyAmericanhistory,once a neatly
delimitedfieldof study,seems now boundless; it is incomprehensiblein isolation
fromWesternEuropean and Africanhistory.Further,some of themostinteresting
studieswithinitare beingcarriedout byscholarsin otherdisciplines:geographers,
who findin historicaldata a richfieldof inquiry;economistswho are interestedin
the developmentalaspectsof the creationand distribution of wealth;methodolo-
gists,who are mainlyconcernedwithperfecting techniques,largelyquantitative, for
inquiriesin a broad range of social sciences;theologiansand philosopherswhose
studies are rooted in the great texts of this period; and anthropologistsand
sociologistswho understandthe fundamentalimportanceof timedevelopmentfor
theirown properwork.In otherfieldsof history, too,nonhistorians, whose studies

The ChallengeofModernHistoriography 3
bringtheminto contactwiththe recordsof the past and whose viewof theirown

subjectsgivesheavyweightto developmentthroughtime,contributesteadilyto the
bulgingdimensionsof historyas it is now written.We learn fromthem,theylearn
fromus; paths cross and identitiesmerge,and historiography growsever broad-
er-and, one would have thought,deeper and more meaningful.But depth of
understandingis a function,at the least,of coherence,and theone thingabove all
else thatthisoutpouringof historicalwritinglacks is coherence.
THE GREAT PROLIFERATION OF HISTORICAL has servednot to illuminatethe

WRITING
centralthemesof Westernhistorybut to obscurethem.The mostvenerablestruc-
ture of Anglo-Americanhistoryknownin itsnarrowestformas the "whig"inter-
pretation-politicalin essence but fleshedout withsocial and economichistory-
whichexplained the presentin termsof an inferiorbut improvingpast, has long
sincebeen so severelyeroded thattheturningpointsand theoverallcontoursofthe
storyhave almost entirelydisappeared; and no new general interpretationor
approach of equal comprehensivenesshas developed in its place. A few isolated
strutsare lefthere and there,while ever more learned detailed studies pile up
haphazardlyall around. For a timeit seemed thatin the area of social historythe
concept of "society"had become a general organizingprinciple.2It promised to
transformthe traditional,looselydescriptiveSittengeschichte-"a disorganizedmass
of halftruths,"it was once called, "dealingas it does witha sortof chaos of habits
and customs,waysof living,dressing,eating,and the performanceof thedutiesof
existence"3--into a sharplyfocusedexplanationof how traditionalWesternsociety
of the late medieval period evolved into the modern social order we know. That
conceptremainsessentialto suchcoherenceas socialhistorynow has. But studiesof
aspects of "society"'in the past-classes, estates,communities,families-have now
so increased that the subject,even withinthat definition,seems to be beyond
comprehensivecontrol.Detailed communitystudiesmultiplywithsuch speed in so
2 E. J. Hobsbawm,"FromSocial Historyto theHistoryof Society," in M. W. Flinnand T. C. Smout,eds.,

Essaysin SocialHistory (Oxford,1974), 1-22.
3 Charles M. Andrews,"On the Writingof Colonial History,"William and MaryQuarterly, 3d ser., 1
(1944): 31-33. Andrews'sessay,a posthumously publishedapologiaforhisprodigiousaccomplishments in
Anglo-American history,centerson the conceptualproblemsof social history.Andrewsdescribedhis
framingideas in writingTheColonialPeriodofAmerican (1934-38) and thenexplainedthathe had
History
intended to go beyond these four volumes focused on the institutional "frameworkof constituted
authority" to a volumeon "coloniallifein theeighteenth century,. . . an omnium gatherumofeverything not
political,institutional, But how was such a volume to be organized?He confessedhimself
or military."
perplexed.He could see no structure to thesubjectin acceptablehistoricalterms-thatis,as development,
process,evolution.Two approaches seemed possible,neitheracceptable.On the one hand, the subject
could be conceivedof as "whatis vaguelycalled the 'socialsciences'"; but history, he wrote,is notscience:
"'scientific'treatmentalwaystends towardover-rigidity and a mechanicalinterpretation of the subject
matterthattakesno accountof thebaffling complexity of thehumanequation,and ignores-whatcannot
be ignored-the inevitablepresenceofmuchthatis casual and inexplicable."On theotherhand,itcould be
seen simplyas the chaoticaccumulationof "habitsand customs,waysof living,dressing,eating,and the
performance of the dutiesof existence."And that,too, was unsatisfactory, havingneitherstructurenor
development.Some synthetic, structural,and above all developmentalthemewas needed,he realized,and
the best he could offerwas thatof "a progressivemovement. .. indicativeof what may be called an
Americanizingprocess." It was preciselythe concept of "society"that he lacked, and his struggleto
extemporizesome approximationto thatconceptionis instructive.

4 BernardBailyn
manyplaces based on such disparatedata thatsynthesis intoa coherentwhole,even

forlimitedregions,seems almostimpossible.The latestwriteron the subjectstates
flatlythat "the intensivestudyof early modern European social historyby the
currentgenerationof historianshas broughtforthno general agreement-and
verylittletheoreticalanalysis-of the social structureof pre-industrialEurope."4
One grasps,firmly, a methodologically splendidinstance-a solid littlepiece of the
beast, but whetherof its nose or itstail one does not know. Historiansseekingto
understandsomethinglargerthan the painfullyassembledlocal example sensibly
attemptgeneralizationsbybringingtogetheran arrayof other,local examples; but
the empirical"base" is usually thin enough to be quicklyunderminedby other
studiesusingsomewhatdifferent data or simplybyreinterpretations of theoriginal
data.S
Yet, if the proliferatinginformation,much of it quantitative,generated by
inquiriesintoaspectsof past societiesproduces no coherentwhole,it does seem to
induce a wonderfuleuphoria. The mere glimpse of the great possibilitiesof
quantitativeanalysis,which enables one to analyze the characteristics of whole
populations and of social structuresin times past, leads to dizzyingvisions of
rewritingthewholestoryof man'spast.6The visiontendsto fade,however,withthe
discoverythat the range of inquiryis ultimatelylimitedby the veryquantitative
techniques that made it possible in the firstplace, and that the comfortof the
apparent clarity,precision,and definitiveness of numbersstimulatesthe produc-
tion of ever greater mountains of information,more and more difficultto
scrutinizecriticallyand bring into a coherent whole. A poignant moment in
modern historiographywas reached recentlywhen an encomiastof the Annales
school, contemplatingin rapt admirationFernand Braudel's adaptation of Levi-
Strauss'sthree-levelgeneral communicationstheory,concluded thatin the end,
when the whole businesswas broughtup to date and put into historiographical
operation, there would be " 16,777,216 subsystems"-no big job for a decent
computerto handle,theauthorassuresus. But one smallproblemremains:"who,"
he asked, "would read the enormousnumberof printouts?"7
Braudel: -everyone knowsof Braudel's trulyheroic attemptto introducean
olympianprincipleof coherenceintothevastmassof historicaldocumentation.His
aim was to writea "total"historyof an entire"world"-to includeeverything from
pots and pans to politicsand fromgeologicalfoundationsto culturalachievements.
He soughtto do thisbygroupingtheaffairsof mankindintoeventsof threedistinct
4 ArmandArriaza,"Mousnierand Barber:The TheoreticalUnderpinning of the'Societyof Orders'in
EarlyModern Europe,"Past & Present, no. 89 (1980): 39.
5 See, for example,James Henretta'sinteresting effortto generalizeacross the firstgroup of early
Americancommunitystudies-Henretta, "The Morphologyof New England Societyin the Colonial
Period,"JournalofInterdisciplinary 2 (1971): 379-98-and thecriticism
History, of thateffort,based on new
data froma regiononlya fewmilesto thenorth,just thenbeingassembled-DarrettB. Rutman,"Peoplein
Process:The New HampshireTowns in the EighteenthCentury,"Journal ofUrbanHistory, 1 (1975): 268-
92. For a completeinversionof conclusionsreachedbyauthorsof notablerecentcommunity studies,see
W. R. Prest, "Stabilityand Change in Old and New England: Clayworthand Dedham," Journalof
Studies,6 (1976): 359-74.
Interdisciplinar
6 Thus, ArthurImhofhoped to see the whole of Germansocial historyrewritten througha massive
reconstruction of familyand community lifeover the past fourto fivehundredyears;see his "Historical
Demographyas Social History:Possibilities in Germany," JournalofFamilyHistory,2 (1977): 305-22.
7 Traian Stoianovich,FrenchHistorical Method:TheAnnalesParadigm(Ithaca,N.Y., 1976), 100.

The ChallengeofModernHzstoriography 5
timedimensions,dealt withseparatelyin threebooksbound in one: eventsthatare

deeply circumstantialand most slowlymoving (climatologicaland geographical
history);the more rapid movementsof change in social structureand economic
patterns;and the swift,hectic,day-by-daymovements,the "nervousoscillations,"
of men in action-that is, politics.He wrotehis famousthree-layered book on the
Mediterraneanin the sixteenthcenturyas if the interpenetration of the spheres
would somehow happen automatically.In fact,ithappened onlyto the extentthat
Braudel violated his own abstractscheme. Braudel's Mediterraneue has been justly
celebrated for its wealthof information, much of it esoteric,and its revealing,at
timesbrilliant,descriptionsof thewaypeople lived;butitshould be knowntoo for
its ahistoricalstructure,whichdrains the lifeout of history.For the essence and
drama of historylie preciselyin theactiveand continuousrelationshipbetweenthe
underlyingconditionsthatsettheboundariesof humanexistenceand theeveryday
problems with which people consciouslystruggle.The goal of historyis not to
separateout eventsof thesedifferent dimensionsat a particularpointin timebut to
show their continuous interactionin an evolvingstory.The drama of people
strugglingwiththe conditionsthatconfinethemthroughthe cyclesof limitedlife
spans is the heartof all livinghistory,and thedevelopmentof thatdrama itself,not
a metahistorical schemeof classifying events,mustprovidethe frameworkforany
effectiveinterpretation of history.8
There have been other kindsof effortsto bringaspectsof the growingmass of
historicaldata intosome degree of meaningfulorder.At a fewcentersof historical
research,data bearingon particularranges of problemshave been systematically
collectedand conflated,studieshave been undertakento fillin evidentgaps, and
reports of various dimensions have been issued summarizingthe state of the
inquiryas it develops. But thiskind of systematically cumulativeand cooperative
research is in fact rare, and it is in its nature preparatory.All of thiswork will
ultimatelyprove to be onlyas importantas the historianscan make it who willone
day use the resultsof thisteam researchtogetherwithall the restof the available
evidence to write,not researchreports,but history-thatis, narrativeaccountsof
large segmentsof thegeneralstorythathelp explainhowthepresentworldcame to
be as it is.
The Marxists,of course, have introduceda powerfulframeworkof coherence
intohistoricalwriting.Whatevertheirweaknesses,Marxisthistoriansdid seek-do
seek-above all to relate conditions,circumstances, to the strugglesand achieve-
ments of mankind and to bring togethermaterialsfromall sides into a single
coherentaccountof how the presentemergedfromthe past.They see underlying
forcesshaping men's lives fundamentally, eitherdirectlyor through"dominant
ideologies,"and have soughtto depictboth the basic forcesand the structuresof
8 See Bailyn,"Braudel'sGeohistory-AReconsideration,"Journal ofEconomic History,11 (1951): 277-82.
The literatureon Braudel is,of course,voluminous.For a generaldiscussionof hiswriting, see theJournal
ofModernHistory, 44 (1972): 447-539. For some generalthoughtson theAnnalesphenomenon,see Bailyn,
"ReviewEssay,"JournalofEconomic History,37 (1977): 1028-34. For an explanationof whythe Annales
historians,led byBraudel,have concentrated on "motionlesshistory" ("histoireimmobile")at theexpense
of historicalevolutionand theprocessofchange,see H. L. Wesseling,"The AnnalesSchooland theWriting
of ContemporaryHistory,"Review[Binghamton, N.Y.], 1 (1978):-185-94. Cf. EmmanuelLeRoy Ladurie,
"MotionlessHistory,"trans.JohnDay, SocialScienceHistory,1 (1977): 115-36.

6 BernardBailyn
social and culturallifewithina comprehensiveschemethatconcentrateson critical

transitions.The Marxists'visionremainsa powerfulforcein our awarenessof the
past,whateverour approach to historyhappens to be. But long beforethe present
explosion of social data, theirschemeprovedto be too inflexibleto encompassthe
vast arrayof available historicalinformation;theycould not allow sufficiently for
the shapingrole of ideas, of individualdecisions,and of accident;and theirconclu-
sions have too often been shown to be wrong. The more technicallystrictthe
Marxistinterpretation, the less comprehensivethe coverageof the data is likelyto
be; the more comprehensivethe coverage, the less strictlyMarxist-the more
diffuse-the interpretation willbe. We are all Marxistsin thesenseof assumingthat
historyis profoundlyshaped byunderlyingeconomicor "material"configurations
and by people's responsesto them;fewof us are Marxistsin the doctrinalsense of
believingthatthese forcesand these responsesalone are sufficient to explain the
course of human affairs.
But the absence of effective organizingprinciplesin modernhistoriography-its
shapelessness,its lack of general coherence-is not simplythe resultof the im-
mense increasein writing.It stems,I think,fromdeeper roots.Many of the most
energetichistorianshave forsakenthe generalgoals of historyfortechnicalprob-
lem-solving,and not fortrivialreasons.Anyonewho has struggledwiththe mind-
absorbing,soul-entrappingdifficulties of subjectingscrappysocial data of the pre-
statisticalera to computer analysis will know how captivatingand strangely
satisfying, yethow severelyvision-limiting, thatkindof technicalworkcan be. Ab-
sorption in the fascinatingtechnicalproblemsof historyis no new thing.It is as old
as modernprofessionalscholarship,It happened first, perhaps,to some of themost
giftednineteenth-century historiansof the ancientworld forwhom epigraphical,
prosopographical,and legal studies-ever more sophisticatedand demanding-
became ends in themselves,addressed with increasingelegance and rigor to a
decreasingaudience of experts.There was onlyone Mommsen (untilSyme) who
could advance general historicalunderstandingin a large-scalehistoryand at the
same timedominatethe worldof technicalanalysis.It happened later,differently,
to the Namierites,who tackledwithbrilliantsuccessproblemsin theorganizationof
politicsin eighteenth-century Britainthatfewhistorianshad ever glimpsedbefore.
But for all theirtechnicalskillNamier and his small group of folloWersfailed to
keep theircarefullycollecteddata on the minutiaeof political"interest"in balance
withthe evidenceof the beliefsthatswayedmen'smindsand thelargerallegiances
thatoverrodethe ubiquitousfactions.Namierunderstood,correctly, thathis tech-
nical studiesof theorganizationof politicswould recastBritishhistoriography, but
he never knew preciselyhow, or whatthe dimensionsof thisnew historicalworld
would be, since he wrote learned research reports,monographsjammed with
quotationsand studded withcitationsto manuscripts, and essaysof vastsweep,but
not the general narrativehistorywithinwhichhis technicalanalysesfell.He never
saw,therefore,theboundariesof thepicturehe soughttocompose,thelimitsof the
hithertounsuspectedtruthshe unearthed;nor did his followers,who confidently
and incautiouslyextended his analysisbackwardin time.9
9J.H. Plumb,TheGrowth inEngland,1675-1725 (London,1967),xiv,xv. Namierwas

ofPoliticalStability
aware of the problem.He had originallyintendedto writea narrativeaccountof the British"political

There is somethingabout theadvancingmovementof historicalscholarshipthat

inducesthisperiodicabsorptionof creativemindsin technicalproblem-solving-an
alternatingdipping and soaringmotionof the mindas it drops down to scrutinize
puzzling,tangled details,then struggles,not alwayssuccessfully, to rise again to
view the landscape whole. Perhaps thatis the way historicalunderstandingmust
grow. But, whetheror not thatis so, large areas of history,includingsome of the
most intensivelycultivated,have become shapeless, and scholarshipis heavily
concentrated on unconnected technical problems. Narratives that once gave
meaningto the detailshave been underminedand discreditedwiththe advance of
technicalscholarship,and no new narrativestructureshave been constructedto
replace the old. Few historianseven attemptnow to incorporatethe mass of
technicalfindingsand the analyticalstudiesthatdominatemodern researchinto
historicalnarrativesthat explain how the world-or some large segmentof it-
evolvedin thewayitdid. Yet thehistoricalmeaning,therelevanceand significance,
of the technicalwritingscan onlybe foundwithinand as partof such comprehen-
sive,developmentalaccounts.
To writesuch essentialnarratives-dominatedby a sense of movementthrough
time,incorporatingthe technicalstudies,and devotedto showinghow the present
world was shaped by its emergence from a very differentpast and hence
concentratedon criticaltransitionsfromthe past towardthepresent-seems to me
to be the great challenge of modern historicalscholarship.We will continue to
need, and willcontinueto have,innovativetechnicalstudies;theyextendtherange
of our knowledgeand emergenaturallyfromtheinnerpropulsionsof professional
scholarship.And we will need and will continue to have analyticalworks that
and eventsin depth.But thecriticalneed, itseems
explore keyissues,personalities,
to me, is to bringorderintolargeareas of historyand thusto reintroducehistoryin
a sophisticatedformto a widerreadingpublic,throughsynthetic works,narrative
nation"during the AmericanRevolution,concentrating on "thatmarvellousmicrocosmos," the British

House of Commons.BRut he foundthatif he attempteda narrative, "howevermuchof generalanalysisI
put intotheintroductory chapters,lengthydigressionsand appendicescould notbe avoided-too muchin
eighteenth-century politicsrequiresexplaining."So, instead,he wrotethetwo-volume StructureofPoliticsat
theAccession ofGeorgeIII (1929), a staticanalysisof eighteenth-century politicsas itexistedat one pointin
time.He continuedto believethatthismagisterialbook was, "in a way,introductory to mymain work";
StructureofPolitics,1: vi,vii.Laterhiswifeand biographerexplainedNamier'sperceptionoftheproblemhe
faced in apt metaphoricalterms.Namier,she wrote,saw twochoicesopen to the historian."The one he
likenedto followinga streamas a diariston themovemight,notingdaybydayitstwists and turnsfromthe
source,sayin thehills,throughbarelybillowingland to thedeltathatfansout to thesea. The otherwas to
buildacrosstheriver'scoursetwodamsand settledownto studythatsection'ssignificant detail;whichstudy
shouldincludeanalysesof thewaterand theriverbed. Suchwas hischoicein 1924,"whenhe startedout on
TheStructure ofPolitics.JuliaNamier,LewisNamier,a Biography (London, 1971), 187.
It was thissacrificeof narrativeto structure, as wellas Namier'srejectionof beliefsand ideas as forces
in history,thatstimulatedHerbertButterfield's bitterattackson him;see especiallyButterfield, GeorgeIII
andtheH storiam (London, 1957),bk. 3, sec. 3. In criticizingNamierpersonallyforhishandlingof political
history, Butterfield anticipatedthe generalproblemof historiography thatdevelopedlaterand thatis the
main themeof thisessay."Over and above the structureof politics,"Butterfield wrote,"we musthave a
politicalhistorythatis setout in narrativeform-an accountof adulthumanbeings,takinga hand in their
fatesand fortunes, pullingat thestoryin thedirectiontheywantto carryit,and makingdecisionsof their
own.We musthave thekindof storyin which(no matterhowmuchwe knowaboutthestructure of politics
and the conditionsof the time)we can neverquite guess,at any givenmoment,whatis goingto happen
next.... Perhapstheideal kindof historyis thekindin whicha storyis givenand eventsare presentedin
motion,butthestoryis re-toldso to speak'in depth,'so thatitacquiresa newdimension;itis bothstructure
and narrativecombined.... Wherehistoryis botha storyand a study,one maygaina profounderinsight
intoboth the waysof men and the processesof time."Ibid.,206-07.

8 BernardBailyn.
in structure,on major themes,worksthatexplainsome significant partof thestory

of how the presentworldcame to be the way it is.'0 There is no prescriptionfor
such works, no obvious list of themes of appropriate magnitude. The most
successfulsuch narrativeI knowof is Ronald Syme'sTheRomanRevolution, which
retellsthe storyof thegreattransformation of theRoman stateand societybetween
60 B.C. and A.D. 14 in termsof "thecompositionof theoligarchyof government."It
is a narrative,politicalin a complexsocial sense,thathad to be drawnfroma body
of technicalstudiesof familyhistoryso "overwhelming" in bulk,so reconditeand
detailed, that,Syme wrote,it "almostbafflesexposition."" Such narrativesmay
develop in intellectualor economichistoryas wellas in socio-politicalhistory;they
are most likelyto develop, as Lord Acton understood and as Oscar and Mary
Handlin demonstratedin consideringthe historyof liberty,in a combinationof
areas.12
These narrativehistorieswillbe difficult to writeinsofaras theyincorporatea
rangeof technical,analyticalfindings.Their structureand theordersof eventsthey
describewillfollowno standardform.And the difficulties willbe compounded by
the growingimportanceof certainbroad tendencies,certaininnermovements,that
are developingwithinthe mass of currentscholarshipwithoutrespectto fieldand
thatseem to be creatingnew dimensionsaltogether.These developmentswere not
planned. They reflectno methodologicaldoctrine,historicalschool,or programof
research.They have emerged in manysubjectareas simultaneously, impelled by
the dynamicsof scholarshipitself-by the stimulating effecton sensitivemindsof
the great increase in documentationin familiarfields,by the influenceof ideas
developed in other disciplineson historiansseekingnew approaches and deeper
understanding,and by opportunitiesfor new departuressuddenly glimpsed by
young historiansin areas left behind by the once innovativework of older
historians.But, whatevertheir origins,these trends in currentscholarshipare
importantin themselves, worthisolatingand worthexaminingparticularly fortheir
bearing on the general narrativesconcentratedon major transitionsthatwill,one
hopes, eventuallybe written.
And so, mindful of Gordon Wright'swarning not to mistake one's own
observationsforthe voice of God or the wisdomof the ages, and withapologies in
advance forthe severe limitations of myunbalancedemphasison certainkindsof
Anglo-Americanstudies only marginallyextended into Continental European
history,I would like to sketchthese trendsAs I see them emergingfromrecent
10
I agree withmuchin LawrenceStone'sarticle,"The Revivalof Narrative," whichI read afterdrafting
thisessay. But while,in tracinga resurgentinterestin narrativehistoryof all kinds,he was cautiously
attemptingonly to "chartobservedchanges in historicalfashion,"I am incautiouslydoing what he so
carefullyavoided, making"value judgmentsabout what are good, and what are less good, modes of
historicalwriting" in certaincircumstances; I am attempting to suggestwhy,in thisera of greatadvancesin
highlyprofessional,highlytechnicalscholarship,narration,accessibleto a broad public, is peculiarly
necessary.Further,I am moreconcernedthanhe seemsto be aboutthesheerdisarrayand confusionin the
proliferation of analyticalhistoriography. Finally,I do not thinkof narrativehistory, in the broad sense I
am usingthatterm,as incompatible withanalyticalhistory.In myview,itis thegoal of narrativehistory, of
the dimensionnow called for,to incorporatethe analyticalfindings.Stone,"The Revivalof Narrative:
Reflections on a New Old History,"Past & Present, no. 85 (1979): 3-24.
11Syme,TheRomanRevolution (Oxford,1939), vii,viii.
12 Handlin and Handlin,TheDimensions ofLiberty(Cambridge,Mass., 1961); GertrudeHimmelfarb, Lord
Acton:A Studyin Conscience and Politics(London, 1952),chap. 6, esp. pp. 142, 145.

historicalscholarship-trendsthatare likelyto shape anycomprehensivenarratives

thatreflectthe knowledgeand analyticalskillswe now have.
THE FIRST BECOMES CLEAR througha considerationof theimportanceof quantifica-

tion. Quantificationin historyis easily misunderstood.As David Herlihy has
explained,itis distinctfromcomputationand theformalanalysismade possibleby
computers.Much confusionhas resultedfromthe failureto observethisdistinc-
tion.13Further,as Oscar Handlin and othershave shown,ifitis not practicedwith
carefuldiscrimination and by historiansotherwiseinformedof historicalreality,it
can destroythe foundationsof historicalunderstandingby limitingquestionsto
availablenumericalanswers,byendowingwitha spuriousrigorclaimsthathave no
basis in fact,and by divertingattentionfromthe centralthemesof an evolving
inquiry.'4 But,beyondall of that,theinnovationsthatare claimedforquantification
are exaggerated.Historianshave alwaysused numbers,whentheycould getthem;
theyhave alwaysattemptedto conveymagnitudesin numericalas well as verbal
terms.Yet thereis somethingin the currenteuphoricdevelopmentof quantifica-
tionin historythatis new and thatwill,I think,greatlyaffectthefutureevolutionof
historiography generally.
Some terms borrowed from Freud and the sociologistsbut used here in a
somewhatdifferent waymayhelp one see thecharacterof thedevelopment.15 It is
reasonable, I think,to say that almost all historywrittenbefore the twentieth
centurywas essentiallymanifesthistory.That is, historywas the storyof eventsthat
contemporarieswereclearlyaware of,thatweremattersof consciousconcern,were
consciouslystruggledover, were, so to speak, headline eventsin theirown time
even iftheircauses and theirunderlyingdeterminants wereburiedbelow the level
of contemporaries'understanding.And this could hardlyhave been otherwise
since, quite aside from what historiansmighthave thoughtwas important,the
availabledocumentationwas derivedlargelyfrompublicrecords,fromthe person-
al archivesof great men much involvedin the headline eventsof theirown time,
and fromliteraryaccountsof other kinds variouslyfocused on manifestevents.
Underlyingcircumstances,however skillfullyand imaginatively described,were
secondaryconcernsintroducedas prefatory matteror interleavedhereand thereto
help explain the main events,whichformedthe structureof the story,or to help
createa realisticpictureof theera in whichtheeventstookplace. Sometimesthese
prefatoryor contextualdescriptionswere remarkablyeffective:Macaulay's third
chapter,forexample, or HenryAdams's opening six chaptersof his Histo?yofthe
UnitedStates,or David Cecil's fourteen-pagepointillist
depictionof the social world
13 Herlihy,"Numerical'andFormalAnalysisin European History," JournalofInterdisciplinay

History, 12
(1981): 115-19.
14 Handlin, "The Capacityof QuantitativeHistory,"Perspectives in AmericanHist y, 9 (1975): 7-26,
expanded in Handlin,Truthin History (Cambridge,Mass., 1979),chap. 8.
5 Freud'suse of "manifest content"in dreamanalysishas been takento mean "thedescriptivenarrative
thatthesubjectputsforwardat a timewhenhe does nothavethefullmeaningof hisdreamat hisdisposal";
"latentanalysis"forFreudwas "a description foreverythingthatanalysisgraduallyuncovers";J.Laplanche
andJ.-B. Pontalis,TheLangge ofPsycho-Analysis, trans.D. Nicholson-Smith(London, 1973), 243, 235. Cf.
RobertMerton,"Manifestand LatentFunctions,"in SocialTheoryand SocialStructure (Glencoe,Ill., 1949),
chap. 1, esp. pp. 51, 61-81.

10 BernardBailyn
of theeighteenth-century Whigaristocracy withwhichhe began hisMelbourne-one

of the mosteffective vignettesof social historyever written.But, howevereffective
these passages may be, they form an accompanimentto, a commentaryon, a
background for, the essentialforeground,which remains the storyof manifest
events.
What is new,itseems to me,about thecurrentworkin quantitativehistoryis not
thatnumbersas such are beingintroduced,or more precisenumbersthanwe have
had before,but thatthekindof numbersbeingintroducedis makingpossiblea new
rangeof inquiryintowhatmightbe called latent events-that is,eventsthatcontem-
porarieswere not fullyor clearlyaware of,at timeswere notaware of at all, events
thattheydid not consciouslystruggleover, howevermuch theymighthave been
forced unwittingly to grapple withtheirconsequences,and eventsthatwere not
recorded as eventsin the documentationof the time.No one in the seventeenth-
centuryChesapeake coloniesknewthatpopulationgrowthwas slowingin Britain
and that labor marketswere shiftingin ways that contractedthe flowof white
indenturedservantsto the colonies;the plantersonlyknewthattheyfound them-
selves relyingmore and more on the labor of black slaves. The latenthistoryof
population growthin seventeenth-century Britainwas uncovered by twentieth-
centurystudentsof populationhistoryusing quantitativeanalysis,who also estab-
lishedthe factthatitwas onlyin themid-1680s,and notbefore,thatblacksformed
the majorityof the Chesapeake region's labor force.'6 Similarly,no one in the
Tuscan countrysideravaged by the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century
associated that fearfulmanifestationof God's wrathwithan earlier population
decline thathad been in motionfora centurybeforethe plague struckEurope. It
was David Herlihywho uncoveredthislatentevent,enteredit,so to speak,intothe
record,and associateditwiththe manifestdevastationof the plague; and he could
discoverthisearlierdeclineonlyin statistics whichhe createdout of themanuscript
tax records of the countrysideof Pistoia and the great Florentinesurvey,the
Catasto,of 1427.17
Other examples easilycome to mind,especiallyin connectionwithpopulation
history:shiftsin sex ratios,in age at marriage,in birthratesand death rates,in age
and in mobilitypatterns.But such keyeventsin population history
distributions,
are only the most obvious of thisnew range of historicalepisodes. Eventsof the
same order are now being discoveredfrequentlyby historiansworkingon quite
differentquestions:occupationand wealthdistributions, churchmembership,pat-
ternsof landholdingand typesof land usage, livingarrangements.It is not simply
that quantificationis makingpossiblea more precisedescriptionof these events.
The eventsI am referringto were known,ifat all, onlyvaguelybycontemporaries
or byprevioushistoriansto have beenevents;theyare beingdiscoveredas particular
happeningsnow forthe firsttime.Taken together,theyforma new landscape-a
16
Russell Menard,"From Servantsto Slaves: The Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System,"
Southern Studies,16 (1977): 355-90; and H. A. Gemery,"Emigrationfromthe BritishIsles to the New
World, 1630-1700: InferencesfromColonial Populations,"in Paul Uselding,ed., Researchin Economic
History,5 (1980): 179-231.
17 Herlihy,"Population,Plague,and SocialChangein RuralPistoia,1201-1430,"Economic History
Review,
2d ser., 18 (1965): 225-44.

landscape like thatof the ocean floor,assumed to have existedin some vague way
by people strugglingat the surfaceof the waves but never seen before as actual
rocks, ravines, and cliffs.And like the newlydiscovered ocean floor-so rich,
complex,and busy a world in itself-the worldof latenteventscan be seen to be
partof,directlyinvolvedwith,the manifesthistoryof the surfaceworlditself.And
thatis mypoint.
One of the mostimportantdevelopmentsin currenthistoriography, it seems to
me, is the emergingintegration of latentand manifestevents.I do notmean simply
thata deeper pictureof the contextof publiceventsis appearing,althoughthatis
indeed happening,but thateventsof one order are being broughttogetherwith
events of another order. The resultingconflationis beginningto produce the
outline of a general historydifferentfromwhat we have known before. Major
public events will, of course, remain in their key locations,but when seen in
connectionwiththeclarifying latentlandscape theyappear to occupyratherdiffer-
ent positions than heretofore.The American Revolution,for example, trans-
formedAmericanlifeand influencedthe courseof eventselsewherein the world.
That manifesteventwillnotbe obscuredbydiscoveriesof eventsof anotherorder,
but explanationsof the origins,development,and consequencesof the Revolution
are beginningto take on quite different formsin the lightof latenteventsthatare
now being uncovered.For theextractionof quantitativeinformation fromrecords
thatwere neverintendedto providesuch data makesit possibleto detecteventsin
the population and migrationhistoryof the pre-Revolutionary years that pro-
foundlyaffectedgovernmentpolicy,settlement patterns,and attitudesto authority,
all of whichhelped shape the originsand outcomeof the Revolution.How could
the treatmentof slaveryhave been uniformthroughoutthe newlyindependent
Americanstatesgiventhe different balances of Creoles and Africansthatwe have
recentlydiscoveredexistedand giventhe different degrees and formsof assimila-
tion thatwe now know developed and thathave only recentlybeen located with
some precisionon the chronologicalmap of Americanhistory?18
THE INTEGRATION OF LATENT AND MANIFEST EVENTS was notplanned. It was no one's
"researchdesign."It is emergingfromtheinnerlogicof historiography itself,which
is to say, from the convergenceof the effortsof many historiansworkingon
different problemsand withdifferent kindsof materials.Similarly,
thereis nothing
preconcertedor designedin a second generaltendencythatis nowrapidlydevelop-
ing. It concernsspatialrelationshipsratherthantherelationshipbetweendifferent
orders of events,and it maybe approached historiographically.
One of the mostremarkableaspectsof recenthistoricalscholarshipis the speed
withwhichcertainkeydevelopmentshave sweptthroughcentersof researchand
among individual scholarsthroughoutthe Westernworld. The studyof family
historyin its modern form is usually thoughtto have originatedwith French
scholarsbuildingon a long traditionof researchin demography.The subjectwas
18
WilliamW. Freehling,"The Founding Fathersand Slavery,"AHR, 77 (1972): 81-93; Ira Berlin,
"Time, Space, and the Evolutionof Afro-American
Societyin BritishMainlandNorthAmerica,"ibid.,85
(1980): 44-78.

12 BernardBailyn
picked up in England,whereDavid Glassand othershad been studyingpopulation

trendsin earlymodern historybut withoutfocusingon the sociologicalquestions
probed by the French,and was then developed withremarkableenterpriseand
imagination-promoted,indeed, withmissionaryzeal-in Cambridge University.
From there it spread to the United States,where some of us had already been
consideringthe same questionsof structureand magnitudesand what mightbe
called the social psychologyof the family.But lackingquantitativemeasuresor a
techniquefordevelopingthem,we had reliedon theearlier,prestatistical writings
of theBritishhistorians(whichtheythemselvessoon thereafter rejected,along with
the workof thoseof us who had been so naive as to believethem)and on studies
done by sociologistswho had no idea of whathad actuallyhappened in the past.'9
Once thesignalsfromabroad became morereliableand a techniqueforassembling
statisticalinformationbecame available,researchin the historyof the familytook
offin Americaand has now developed, in typicalAmericanfashion,intoa decen-
tralized,undisciplined,highlyidiosyncratic,butcreativeacademicindustry.20 All of
thiscumulatingworkin familyhistoryhas mostrecentlyreached Germany,whose
records-especially the excellentgenealogicalrecords,enhanced by the Nazis' ex-
traordinaryOrtssippenbiicher writtento document "pure Aryan"blood lines-will
make possiblea new levelof accomplishmentin thiskindof study.21
What happened in familyhistoryhappened,too,in historicalcommunitystudies,
in the historyof populationtrends,in thestudyof modernization,in the historyof
social structures,and in the excavationof the burieddetailsof eighteenth-century
political thought. Discoveries in one country,in one scholarlyculture,quickly
affectedscholarshipadvancingin othercountries.22 Studentsof Americanhistory
19Bailyn,Educationin theForming ofAmerican Society

(Chapel Hill, 1960), 15-17, 21-29; Peter Laslett,
Household and Familyin Past Time(Cambridge,1972), 10-11, 1In.
20 For an effortto summarizeand interpret thevirtuallibraryof writings on Anglo-American familylife
in theearlymodernperiodthathas appeared in thetwenty yearssinceI attempteda "hypothetical" sketch,
based on theinformation thenavailable,inEducation intheForming ofAmerican Society,
see VivianC. Fox and
MartinH. Quitt,Loving,Parenting, andDying:TheFamily CycleinEnglandandAmerica, PastandPresent (New
York, 1980), pt. 1.
21 See Imhof,"HistoricalDemographyas Social History." On theOrtssippenbiicher,originallyprojectedas
thirtythousandvolumesof local historytracingkinassociations, to establish"pure" blood lines,fromthe
sixteenthcenturyto the present,see John Knodel, "Ortssippenbucher als Quelle fur die Historische
Demographie,"Geschichte undGesellschaft,1 (1975): 288-324. An excellentexampleis theOrtssippenbuch of
the Palatinevillageof Lambsheim:HeinrichRembe,ed., Lambsheim: Die Familienvon1547 bis1800. . ..
volume 1 of the HeimatstellePfalz'sBeitradge zur BevolkerungsgeschichtederPfalz (Kaiserslautern,1971).
Excerptsfrom this volume related to the Americanmigrationof the eighteenthcenturyhave been
publishedin translation byDon Yoder in Pennsylvania 23, no. 2 (1973-74): 40ff.
Folkdlfe,
22 Communicationhas become almostinstantaneous. So PeterLaslett,visitingthe UnitedStatesafter
havingcompletedthe manuscriptof his Householdand Familyin Past Time,was shown the draftof an
imaginativemonographicarticlebyan Americangraduatestudenton thelifecyclesofAustrianhouseholds
in the 1760s. He saw the article'srelevanceimmediately, and hastilyamended his manuscriptto take
accountnot merelyof the new information but of a new pointof view,a new dimensionof the subject,
whichthereuponbecamebuiltintotheliteraturein a permanentway.See Laslett,Household and Familyin
Past Time,21, 71, 150-51. The manuscriptwas thatof Lutz Berkner,publishedas "The Stem Familyand
the DevelopmentalCycleof the PeasantHousehold: An Eighteenth-Century AustrianExample,"AHR, 77
(1972): 398-418. Berkner,however,was by no meanssatisfiedthatLaslettincorporatedintohis thinking
the main idea of thatessay-the idea that,studiedas dynamic,livingorganisms,familieswere neither
extended nor nuclearin structure;at certainphases of theirdevelopmenttheywere nuclear,at others
extended.The basic argumentof Household and Familyin Past Time,Berknerwrote,remained"thatthe
familyhas been nuclearin mostwesternsocietiesin thepast,"buttheevidenceproducedin thebookproves
"nothingof the sort."Berkner,"The Use and Misuseof CensusData fortheHistoricalAnalysisof Family
Structure,"Journal ofInterdisciplinary
History,5 (1975): 738.

have good reason, fortheirown properwork,to examine PierreGoubert'shistory

of the Beauvaisis,JohnPatten'sstudiesof East Angliantowns,R. A. Butlin'ssurvey
of Irish towns,and Gerald L. Soliday'sreporton Marburgin Upper Hesse;23 to
compare local communitycontrolsin Germany,as described in Mack Walker's
GermanHome Towns,with those of England described in Peter Clark and Paul
Slack'svolumesand inJohnPatten'sbook on thesame subject;to considerEtienne
Francois's account of the lower classes and povertyin the Rhenish court towns
togetherwithOlwen Hufton'sThePoorofEighteenth-Century Francewhen assessing
Alice Hansen Jones'sWealthofa NationtoBe;24to examineas a basisforcomparison
with theirown materialsboth the publicationsof Sune Akerman and others in
Uppsala on migrationpatternsin Scandinaviaand theessayson Spanish migration
byMagnus Morner,PeterBoyd-Bowman,and GilbertDin;25and to ponder Franco
Venturi'smanywritingson Beccaria'sOn Crimes andPunishments (1764), so popular
and somehow "relevant"in late-eighteenth-century America,thoughit originated
as a polemicin the altogetherdifferent worldof Habsburg Milan,dominatedby a
hereditarypatriciateallied to the nobilityand the CatholicChurch.26
There is nothingnew in kind in thistransnationalcommunicationand interac-
tion.Historicalscholarshiphas alwaysbeen an international enterprise.But seldom
has communicationbeen as directand continuousas it now is. And, more impor-
tant,never,as far as I know,has the availabilityof comparableinformationfrom
far-distantareas in itselfreinforcedso naturallya major analyticalconcept. For
whatis emergingfromall of thistransnationalcommunicationof parallelinforma-
tion is not merelya catalogue of differencesand similaritiesand not simplya
progressivesophisticationof techniqueby the applicationof manymindsworking
in differenttraditionson similarproblems,but somethingmore important:the
sense of large-scalesystemsof eventsoperatingover variousareas. A rescalingof
perspectivehas begun to take place in whichthe basic unitof discussionis larger
than any of the traditionalunitswithinwhichresearchbegan. Large-scaleorbits
developingthroughtimehave become visible,and withinthempatternsoffiliation
and derivation.
Since my interestsfocus on the Anglo-Americanworld in the early modern
period, I naturallybecame aware of thiskind of configuration in thatconnection.
23
Goubert,BeauvaisetleBeauvaisisde 1600 d 1730, 2 vols.(Paris,1960); Patten,ed., Pre-Industrial
England
(Folkestone,Kent, 1979), chaps. 2, 6, and Rural-UrbanMigrationin Pre-Industrial England (Oxford
University,Schoolof Geography,ResearchPaper no. 6, 1973); Butlin,ed., TheDevelopment oftheIrishTown
(London, 1977),chap. 3; Soliday,"Marburgin Upper Hesse: A ResearchReport,"Journal ofFamilyHistory,
2 (1977): 164-68.
24 Walker,German HomeTowns:Community, State,and GeneralEstate,1648-1871 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971);
Clark and Slack,eds., Crisisand Orderin EnglishTowns,1500-1700 (London, 1972),and EnglishTownsin
Transition(Oxford, 1976); Patten,EnglishTowns,1500-1700 (Hamden, Conn., 1978); Fransois,"Unter-
schichtenund Armutin rheinischen Residenzstadten des 18.Jahrhunderts," Sozial-und
Vierteljahrschriftifur
62 (1975): 433-64; Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century
Wirtschaftsgeschichte, France, 1750-1789
(Oxford,1974);Jones,Wealthofa NationtoBe: TheAmerican ColoniesontheEve oftheRevolution (New York,
1980).
25 Harald Runblom and Hans Norman, eds., From Swedento America:A Historyof the Migration
(Minneapolis,1976); M6rner,"SpanishMigrationto theNewWorldpriorto 1810: A Reporton theStateof
Research,"in Fredi Chiappellietal., eds., FirstImagesofAmerica:TheImpactoftheOld Worldon theNew,2
(Berkeleyand Los Angeles,1976): 737-82; Boyd-Bowman, "SpanishEmigrantsto the Indies, 1595-98: A
Profile,"ibid.,723-35; Din, "SpanishImmigration to a FrenchLand," LouisianaReview,5 (1976): 63-80.
26
On the circulationand receptionof Beccaria'sessay,see note 39, below.

14 BernardBailyn.
My firstinklingof whatwould develop in thisaspectof historicalstudycame over

twenty-fiveyearsago in casual conversationswitha colleagueexpertin the Scottish
Enlightenment.It became apparentto us as we talkednotsimplythattheleadersof
RevolutionaryAmerica and of EnlightenmentScotland shared certainideas but
developingculturesin the twocountrieswere fundamentally
thatthe distinctively
shaped by similarrelationshipsto a single,centralculturalcore, in London. This
common marginality-a similardistance from and involvementwith the same
central core-was a shaping element in the growthof each of these provincial
culturesand was necessaryto explain both. We tried,rathertoo ambitiously,to
draw out theimplicationsof thisobservationin an essayentitled"England'sCultur-
al Provinces:Scotland and America."27We were convincedthatthe formulation
was correct,but we did not then realize the magnitudeof the issues. We did not
know how our literarydata relatedto an overallBritishAtlanticsocial systemor
whatotherkindsof eventsand documentationmightbe seen to be involvedin this
system.Indeed, we did not knowwhatkindof a system,one smallcornerof which
we were examining,thisreallywas.
At about the same timeDavid Quinn began publishingsome unusuallysugges-
tivestudiesof England'soverseasexpansionand settlementin the sixteenthcentu-
ry.In themhe noted,first,thatmanyof thosewho were involvedin settlements in
Ireland werealso involvedin settlementsin America;and, second,thattheattitude
of the English to nativesencounteredin thesetwo colonial areas was remarkably
similar,and thatexperience gained in one area was automaticallyapplied in the
other.28From Quinn's writingalone one began to see thattheoriginsof England's
overseas empirewere partof somethingmore comprehensive,whichincludedthe
BritishIsles themselvesas well as overseas territories.
What was involvedwas an
expansionof theEnglish,laterBritish,worldfromitscore in southeasternEngland
out intoa seriesof expandingalien peripheries-Wales and the NorthCountryof
England in the sixteenthcentury,Scotland, Ireland, and North America in the
seventeenthcentury.Phrases linkingvarious Britishoverseas territories, scarcely
noticedbefore,suddenlytookon heavymeaning:Ireland was describedin a travel
book of 1617, forexample,as "thisfamousislandin the Virginian sea."29 One could
envision a huge, outwardlyexpanding peripheralarc sweeping northand west
fromLondon and the Home Counties into Wales and Lowland Scotland,across
Ireland, southwestthroughNewfoundland,thendown the NorthAmericancoast
through Nova Scotia, New England, the Chesapeake, and the Carolinas, and
ending in the many Anglo-Americansettlementsin the Caribbean. This arc was
27JohnClive and BernardBailyn,"England'sCulturalProvinces:Scotlandand America,"Williamand

MaryQuarterly, 3d ser., 11 (1954): 200-13.
28 Quinn, Raleighand theBritish Empire(London, 1947), esp. chap. 5, and TheElizabethans and theIrish
(Ithaca,N.Y., 1966). For laterdevelopments of thistheme,see NicholasP. Canny,"The Ideologyof English
Colonization:FromIrelandto America,"William andMaryQuarterly, 3d ser.,30 (1973): 575-98, and "The
PermissiveFrontier:The Problemof Social Controlin EnglishSettlements in Irelandand Virginia,1550-
1650," in K. R. Andrewset al., eds., The Westward Enterprise:
EnglishActivities in Ireland,theAtlantic,
and
America, 1480-1650 (Liverpool,1978);JamesMuldoon,"The Indian as Irishman,"EssexInstitute Historical
Collections,111 (1975): 267-89.
29 FynesMoryson,An Itinerary (London, 1617), as quoted in Quinn, TheElizabethans and theIrish,122
(italicsadded).

nothingso simpleas thetraderouteof an empirein thetraditionalsense,commer-

cial or territorial.
Nor was itmerelyan expandingfrontier line. It was nota line,an
edge, comprehensiblein Turnerian termsas such, but a ring of territories, of
marchlands,separated in importantwaysfromthe territories on eitherside of it.30
In these linked territoriesa central culture encountered a varietyof different
human and physicalenvironmentsand formeda varietyof new subcultures,all of
which were contained withina single overall systemthat mightbe designated
"British."But,even broadened out to all ofthesemagnitudes,one's visionprovedto
be too restricted.It remained forJ. G. A. Pocock,a New Zealander educated in
England and long residentin the United States,to suggestthatthisentireinterac-
tiveAtlanticculturesystem,thishuge band of variantmarchlands,was in itselfonly
a segmentof a globalsystemthatultimately reachedSoutheastAsia,Australia,New
Zealand, and other partsof the Pacificworldas well.3'
The ramifications of such a view-applicable to farmore thanthe Britishworld
or to the other world empires-are extensiveand important.Issues arising in
variouslocationswithinthe periphery,whichonce seemed disparateand discrete,
can now be seen to be closelyrelated,and therelationshipshelp explainthecourse
of events.In thisperspective,forexample,itbecomesapparentthatofficialBritish
policy,promulgatedin London, restrainingthe settlementof the trans-Appala-
chian westin Americawas shaped in partbyattitudesto Scotlandand Ireland-the
fear of Scottishand absentee Irish landlordsin high officein London that their
lands would be depopulated bytheextensionof settlement in Americaand, hence,
thattheeconomicstability of theirliveswould be threatenedas Americansmigrated
westinto areas fourthousandmilesfromWhitehall.32 One suddenlyunderstands
the reach and penetrationof Dr. Johnson'simaginationwhen he observed,on his
tour of the westernScottishislands in 1773, thatthe attractionof the American
frontierto discontentedHighlanderson the Scottishfrontierwas a threatto the
survivalof Britishculture.Highlandersrelocatedon thefarwesternBritishperiph-
ery, he said, will simplybe lost to the nation: "For a nation scatteredin the
boundless regionsof Americaresemblesraysdivergingfroma focus.All the rays
remain but the heat is gone. Their power consistedin theirconcentration:when
theyare dispersed,theyhave no effect."33 Was such a dispersaloutwardfromthe
centerto the margins,withitsattendantloss of "concentration," wise?Could it be
stopped? Could Britishlaw be used to preventthe circulationof Britishpeople
along the peripheriesof Britishterritory?Whatshould be theproperrelationships
of the outerboundariesto each otherand to thecore?These problems,whichtake
on meaning only insofaras one grasps notjust the eighteenth-century American
30
DenysHay made thispointpreciselyin hisessayon theScottishmarchlands, "England,Scotland,and
Europe: The Problemof the Frontier," Transactions
oftheRoyalHistorical
Society,
5thser.,25 (1975): 77-91,
esp. 80.
Pocock,"BritishHistory:A Plea fora New Subject,"Journal ofModernHistory,47 (1975): 601-2 1. Cf.
MichaelHechter,InternalColonialism: TheCelticFringeinBritish
NationalDevelopment,
1536-1966 (London,
1975), and the exchangeof viewsbetweenPocockand HechterfollowingPocock'sarticle,pp. 626-28.
32 Bailyn," 1776: A Year of Challenge-A WorldTransformed,"Journal ofLaw andEconomics, 19 (1976):
458-59.
33 SamuelJohnson,AJourney totheWestern
IslandsofScotland,
ed. MaryLascelles(New Haven, 1971),94-
99, 131.

16 BernardBailyn
frontierbut the Britishworldsystemin itsentirety, werebeingdiscussedactivelyat

the highestlevel of the Britishgovernmentin Novemberand December 1773 and
were at the pointof resolutionin a controversialproposal thatParliamentprohibit
furtherBritishmigrationto America,when the conflictbetweenBritainand the
colonies put an end to the discussion.34
Migrationand the problemof the imperialconstitutionare two aspects of the
general issue of core-periphery relationsin the earlymodern Britishworld; there
and politicalideas whoseoriginslayin theheartland
are others.Politicalinstitutions
took on differentformsin the differingperipheralsettings.It was the peculiar
impactof Americancircumstances on politicalformsand ideas emanatingfromthe
metropolitancultureof Britainthatdeterminedthe shape of publicinstitutions in
the United States.35But thispan-Atlantic Britishsystemof theearlymodernperiod
cannot be understood in isolationfromcertainother large systemsof the time.
withother systemsmovingdiscretelywithintheir
Essential to it are intersections
own patterns.
An explanationof the populationhistoryof BritishNorthAmericain the prein-
dustrialperiodalso involvesthedepictionof a CentralEuropean systemconcentrat-
ed in the upper Rhinelandbut spreadingout northeastto the Danish border,east
to Bohemia, and southeastthroughthe Danubian basin to southernRussia. Spin-
offsfromthatdistinctiveand independentlyevolvingsystem,whose major flows
were eastwardinto Prussia,the Habsburg lands,and Russia,entereddirectlyinto
the British galaxy of the eighteenthcenturyas the firstof some seventy-five
thousand "Germans" (in fact,Swiss and French Protestantsfromthe region of
Montbeliardas well as subjectsof the German princes)began movingdown the
Rhine, transshippingat Rotterdamand Cowes to reach the Inel, as it was some-
timescalled in the Rhineland,ofBintzel-vannier (Pennsyl-vania).36 Not onlycan one
plottheintersection of thecentralEuropean populationsystemwiththeBritish,but
34 Rumorscirculated continuously in 1773thatparliamentary legislationwasbeingdraftedto prohibitall

furtheremigrationto America,and in November 1773 two London newspapers(Lloyd'sEveningPost,
November15-17, and the PublicAdvertiser, November16) finallycarriedthe supposed textof a radical
seven-pointplan "tobe proposedat thenextmeetingof Parliamentto preventtheemigration ofour people
to America."Issued, no doubt, as Franklinsurmised"to feel the pulse of the public,"it elicitedfrom
Franklina carefullyreasonedreply,whichhe apparentlyneverpublished,and touchedoffheated public
debates not onlyin the metropolitan areas of Britainbut in some of the provincesas well.[Franklin]The
Papersof BenjaminFranklin,20, ed. WilliamB. Wilcoxet al. (New Haven, 1976): 522-28. Althougha
prohibitory billwas neverenacted,actionsofotherkindswereundertaken.Some ofthemostpowerfulmen
in Ireland (includingFranklin'sbetenoir,theformersecretary ofstateforthecolonies,Lord Hillsborough),
whoweresupportingprohibitory legislation,
formedan associationtolowerrentswheretheywerefeltto be
oppressive.And in Scotland,theLordJusticeClerk,Thomas Miller,begana parish-by-parish surveyof the
magnitudeof the exodus, an inquirythatwas eventuallyextended by the Britishgovernmentto the
registration of everyBritishsubjectwho leftBritainfromDecember 1773 to March 1776. The subjectis
discussedin generaland a statistical analysisof the resultingregisterof Englishand Scottishemigrantsis
presentedin myforthcoming Voyagers totheWest.
35 Bailyn,IdeologicalOriginsoftheAmerican Revolution(Cambridge,Mass., 1967),esp. chaps. 5, 6; Gordon
S. Wood, Creation oftheAmerican Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969), pt. 2.
36 Otto Langguth,"Pennsylvania German Pioneersfromthe Countyof Wertheim,"[Yearbook of] The
Pennsylvania German Folklore
Society,
12 (1947): 169-70. There is no comprehensive accountof the Central
European population movements.For a briefsketchof these flowsas theyrelate to the migrationto
Pennsylvaniaand for referencesto a few of the manyGermanwritingson the subject,see Marianne
Wokeck,"The Flow and Compositionof GermanImmigration to Philadelphia,1727-1775,"Pennsylvania
MagazineofHistory and Biography, 105 (1981): 274-78.

one can identifyindividualswhose role it was to forge links between the two
independentlymovingorbits.Benjamin Furly,WilliamPenn's friendand agent,
long residentin Rotterdam-merchant,intellectual, land developer,and defender
of liberalcauses-was the firstof thesekeyfigures.But the intersections were not
limitedto Europe; theyinvolvedWestAfricaas well.For theWestAfricanpopula-
tionsystem,too,spilledover intosegmentsof theBritishAtlanticworld,whichwas
spreadingdeep intothe Ohio and MississippiValleys,along the Floridacoasts,and
withinthe maritimeprovincesof Canada.37 To see the whole of the entireset of
interrelatedsystemsthat impingedon preindustrialAmericaone would have to
circlethe globe likea satelliteand note thesimultaneousmovementof peoples and
culturesacross a vastarea-an area stretching fromthe Elbe to the Mississippiand
fromthe NorthSea to the Congo.
Such a synopticviewdevelops mostreadilyfromthe studyof populationmove-
ments. But the concept of inclusivesystemswith centersand margins,whose
integrityas systemsis essentialto understandingtheindividualpartswithinthem,is
applicable in many spheres.The heartof the transformation of the Roman state
and societythatSyme narratedin TheRomanRevolution lay in the reconstitution
of
thegoverningclassbyrecruitment fromtheprovinces."The strengthand vitality of
an empire,"Symewrote,"is frequently due to thenewaristocracy fromtheperiph-
ery."From Roman Spain, he explained,local notables
migrateto thecapitalin permanence;theypurchasemansionsat Rome,villasand estates
in thefashionable theyinvadethehighstrataofsociety;theycontract
vicinity; marriage
allianceswithItalianfamilies,
and even withtheold Romanaristocracy; and also, and
naturally, fromotherprovinces.... Theybeganas
withsimilargroupsof risingfamilies
clientsof theCaesarsand theyend bysupplanting them.
And, in an interestingsketch,Syme discussed the failureof this recruitment,
reinforcement, and fresheningfromthe overseas peripheriesin the case of the
Spanish and the firstBritishempires.38
A similarlysynopticviewhas proved effective in intellectualhistoryas well,most
notably two series of distinguishedpublications.The firstis Franco Venturi's
in
sensitivedescriptionof the radiationsof the Enlightenment fromitscenterin Paris
to the near peripheriesin WesternEurope-Spain, Italy,Corsica,Austria,Germa-
ny,and England-and then to the outer marginsin EasternEurope, Russia, and
NorthAmerica.Withhisexceptionallinguisticabilityand hisbroad vision,Venturi
has been able to show not merelythe generalpenetrationof reformideas intothe
remote provincesof the Westernworld but also the specificadaptationsof these
ideas thatwere made in different cultures.His elaboratetracingof the circulation
of Beccaria'sOn Crimes andPunishments fromitsoriginsin Milan throughthewhole
of Europe showsthepossibility of thiskindof study.The second isJ. G. A. Pocock's
elaborate tracingof a singlebody of politicalthought-the peculiarlanguage and
grammarof "civichumanism"-fromFlorenceto England,Scotland,and America.
37 WilliamI. Hull,BenjaminFurlyandQuakerism inRotterdam (Swarthmore, Pa., 1941),and William

Pennand
theDutchQuakerMigration toPennsylvania(Swarthmore, Pa., 1935),esp. 328-45; PhilipD. Curtin,Economic
Changein PrecolonialAfrica:Senegambia
in theEra oftheSlaveTrade(Madison,Wis.,1975),chaps.2-4.
38
Syme,ColonialElites:Rome,Spain,and theAmericas (London, 1958),4, 13.

18 BernardBailyn
"A 'language' is uncoveredin sixteenth-century Florence,"Pocockwrotein a recent

summary,"and shown becomingfirstPuritan,then Whig, then American"as it
circulated"away fromEurope, towardswhatis least European in the Anglophone
(or 'Atlantic')world."39
In a differentvein,closerto theapproach of FrancoisFuretand hiscollaborators
in thecollectiveinquiryLivreet Societe,is RobertDarnton'sbook on thepublishing
historyand distribution Through an exhaustiveexaminationof
of theEncyclopMdie.
the marketingof thequartoeditionof theEncyclopedie,Darntontracedthedistribu-
tionof thiskeyworkof theEnlightenment-and,hence,to a significant degree the
diffusionof the Enlightenmentitself-from the center in Paris to the French
provincesand thenout to theLow Countries,theRhineland,"thenorthEuropean
plains to the Scandinavianfiordsand the Russian steppes untilfinallyit reached
remote outposts like Lex's bookshop in Warsaw and Rudiger's in Moscow."
Through Darnton's eyes we can picturevolumes being "hauled across the snow
fromLeipzig [to St. Petersburg]bysled,"and movingup theElbe and the Moldau,
across the Alps to Turin, down the Rhone to Marseillesand Genoa, and along the
Danube to Pest,"where,"Darntonwrote,"Parisseemed centuriesaway in contrast
to the immediacyof the Ottoman Empire and the unremittingwarfareon the
easternfrontof westernculture."40 comprehensiveviewenabled Robert
A similarly
Palmer and, to a lesserextent,Jacques Godechot to grasp as a singularconcatena-
tion of eventsthe pan-European and Americanexplosionsof "democraticrevolu-
tions"of thelate eighteenthcentury.The possibilitieshave been shownto be richin
other spheres as well-in analyzing the historyof domestic politics (notably
AmericanPopulism)and a wide rangeof contemporaryphenomena: international
relations, political geography, the value systemsof organized society,urban
environments,and the disseminationof art forms,both fineand applied. And
otherorbitscan be envisionedin otherconnections:newsdissemination,technical
expertise,literaryforms,businesspractices.41
THUS, IT SEEMS TO ME, IN THE WELTER of historicalpublications,thereare not only

signs of a deepening interpenetrationof latentand manifesteventsbut also the
outlinesof systemsof filiationand derivationamong phenomena thatonce were
39 Much of the argumentof Venturi'sthree-volume Settecento (Turin, 1969-79), whichtraces

riformatore
thespreadof Enlightenment ideas throughout theWesternworld,is summarizedin hisUtopiaandReform in
theEnlightenment (Cambridge,1971) and in his"Churchand Reformin Enlightenment Italy:The Sixtiesof
the EighteenthCentury,"Journalof ModernHistory, 48 (1976): 215-32. He began his trackingof the
circulationof Beccaria's ideas in a reportto an international conferenceon Beccaria convenedby the
Academyof Sciencesof T urinin 1964 (theproceedingsof whichwerepublishedbytheacademyin 1966)
and broughthis worktogetherin an editionof Beccaria'streatise,whichreprintsthe workitselfin 104
pages and thenpresentsas a 547-pageappendixa documentary historyof theoriginsof thebook in Milan
and itsreceptionin Italy,France,England,Spain,Switzerland, Austria,Germany,Denmark,Sweden,and
e dellepene(1764), ed. FrancoVenturi(Turin,1965; 3d edn., 1973); fora
Russia.Cesare Beccaria,Dei delitti
summary,see Venturi,Utopiaand Reform in theEnlightenment, chap. 4. Pocock,TheMachiavellian Moment:
FlorentinePoliticalThought and theAtlantic RepublicanTradition(Princeton,1975), and "TheMachiavellian
MomentRevisited:A Studyin Historyand Ideology,"JournalofModernHisto7y, 53 (1981): 71.
40 Darnton,TheBusiness ofEnlightenment: A PublishingHistory oftheEncyclopedie, 1775-1800 (Cambridge,
Mass., 1979),530, chaps.6, 10,apps. B, C, and "The EncyclopedieWarsof Prerevolutionary France,"AHR,
78 (1973): 1346-52. Cf. FrancoisFuretetal., Livreetsocietg dansla Francedu XVIIIe siecle,2 vols. (Paris,
1965-70).
41 R. R. Palmer,The Age of theDemocratic Revolution, 2 vols. (Princeton,1959-64); and Godechot,La

The ChallengeofModernHIstoriography 19
discussedin isolationfromeach other.And, third,thereis also in motionin current

historicalwritingan intensifying effortto relate the world of interior,subjective
experiencesto the course of externalevents.
Long beforeit became fashionableto talkabout the studyof mentalitt, and well
beforeWilliamLanger had challengedhistoriansto take as theirnextassignment
the applicationof psychoanalyticprinciplesto historicalproblems,42 historianshad
attemptedto describethe stateof people's awareness.They had soughtto depict,
however crudely, not only people's ideas and beliefs as expressed in formal
discoursebut theirdeeper, interiorlife:the assumptions,attitudes,fears,expecta-
tions,and aspirationsthat togetherformedpeople's privateconstructionof the
world, their personal map of reality,theirsystemof orderinglife,of imposing
meaningon the streamof experience.But ithas alwaysbeen extremelydifficult to
probe the strangeinteriorworldsof the past,partlybecause the historianhas no
means of inquiringdirectlyintotheconditionof people's awareness,partlybecause
in the end historiansare more interestedin communitiesof people thanin unique
individuals.The characterizationof a community'sinteriorlife, even when its
membersstandalivebeforeone, availableforinterviewing, polling,and participant
observation,is problematicforthe anthropologists, sociologists,and psychologists
who design methods preciselyfor such studies. For historians,lacking living
subjects and dependent on random documentation,all of the difficulties are
compounded.
Occasionally there has been a Huizinga capable of paintinga more or less
convincingpictureof a greattransitionin a society'sperceptionof the worldbyan
impressionisticstudy of art formsand by imaginativeprojectioninto the likely
experiencesof everydaylife.And therehave been books likeOscar Handlin's The
Uprooted(1951) that trace, throughempathyand intuitionas well as through
documentation,the innerlivesof generationsof people adjustingto new environ-
ments.But mostsuch efforts turnintoa vague literaryimpressionism thatrevealsas
much about the author as about the past,or into a studyof formaltextsthatare
GrandeNation:L'Expansion r6volutionnairedela Francedansle monde, de1789 et1799, 2 vols.(Paris,1956). On

Populismas a movement"on the frinige of the metropolitan culture,"see JamesTurner,"Understanding
the Populists,"Journalof American History, 67 (1980-81): esp. 370-71. For twelvewide-rangingessays
applyingthisconcept,coveringpoliticalgeographyin general,America'splacein theworld,theregionalism
of social change in Italy,nation-building in southeasternEurope, newlyindependentisland clusters,
bilingualismin Montreal,a "geoethnic-geoeconomic-geopolitical model of differentiationwithinwestern
Europe," and the splinteringof statesin Eurasia, see Jean Gottmann,ed., Centreand Periphery: Spatial
Variations in Politics(BeverlyHills, 1980). On value systemsand social organization,see Edward Shils,
"Centreand Periphery," in TheLogicofPersonual Knowledge: EssaysPresented
toMichaelPolanyionHis Seventieth
Birthday,IIth March1961 (London [1961]), 117-30. For an attemptto use thisconceptto explain"capitalist
agricultureand the originsof the European world-economy in the sixteenthcentury,"see Immanuel
Wallerstein,TheModernWorld-System, I (New York, 1974); in the second volume(New York, 1980), the
same schemeis used in an effortto explain"mercantilism and the consolidationof the European world-
economy,1600-1750." For orbitsof culturaldissemination, see, forexample,MiltonNewton,"Cultural
Preadaptationand the Upland South,"in H. J. Walkerand W. G. Haag, eds., Man and CulturalHeritage,
volume5 of Geoscience andMan (Baton Rouge,La., 1974), 143-54; RobertD. Mitchell,"The Formationof
Early AmericanCulture Regions: An Interpretation," in James R. Gibson,ed., EuropeanSettlement and
Development in NorthAmerica:Essayson Geographical Changein Honourand Memory of AndrewHill Clark
(Toronto, 1978), 66-90; C. Lee Hopple, "Spatial Developmentof the SoutheasternPennsylvaniaPlain
Dutch Communityto 1970,"Pennsylvania 21 (1971-72), no. 2: 14-40, and no. 3: 36-45; E. Estyn
Folklife,
Evans,"The Scotch-Irish: Their CulturalAdaptationand Heritagein theAmericanOld West,"in E. R. R.
Green,ed., Essaysin Scotch-IrishHistory (New York, 1969),69-86.
42
WilliamL. Langer,"The NextAssignment," AHR, 63 (1957-58): 283-304.

20 BernardBailyn
supposed somehowto add up to a pictureof the"mindof the Middle Ages,"l'esprit

lazque, or l'esprit Even in what would seem to be the most manageable
bourgeois.
aspectof theproblem-in thebiographiesof keyhistoricalfigureswhoseindividual
actionsunquestionablyshaped eventsand about whoma greatdeal is known-the
difficultiesof exploringinteriorworldsof subjectiveexperienceare great. In any
case, collectivebiographyis most oftenthe main question for historians,and to
probe beyondwhatpeople did, wrote,and said to whattheyexperienced,how they
felt,and how theycomprehendedtheworldremainsa majorchallengeto historical
investigation.
In certainareas historicalscholarshiphas showngreatprogressin recentyearsin
reachinginto subjectiveexperience.While technicalpsychohistory is stillmore a
matterof theoreticaldiscussionby social scientiststhan of scholarlypracticeby
historians,wayshave been foundto explore publicopinionin thepast,attitudesof
various kinds,and the pervasivenessand circulationof certainkey notions.The
range of such studieshas been broad. Politicalthoughthas providedan important
entree. Workingout fromthe strictgenealogyof ideas to the broader aspects of
politicalthoughtwhere ideas connectwithmore general social assumptionsand
attitudes,historianshave been able to enter privateworlds otherwiseclosed to
them. So Gordon Schochet's Patriarchalism is ostensiblya study in "political
thought,"but,in fact,itrelatesa keyconceptin politicalthoughttodeep-lyingsocial
attitudesshared as interiorexperiencesby whole populationsin the seventeenth
century.W. H. GreenleafsOrder,Empiricism, and Politicsis also explicitlya studyin
politicalthought;butin factitexplorescertainpresumptionsconcerningthenature
of realityin the broadestsense, the "greathinterland"of beliefs,attitudes,ideas,
and assumptionsexperiencedby whole populations.So too, in different ways,do
the books and articlesof a whole squadron of writerson political"ideology"
involvedin the American,French,and Russian Revolutions.43
And other,even more originaland imaginativewayshave been found to enter
the realm of interiorexperience.Some of the mostinterestinghave reached into
nonverbal expressionsof privateexperience and establishedsubtle connections
betweennonverbaland verbalcommunication.Carl Schorske'sFin-de-Siecle Vienna,
in which aspects of interiorworlds are uncovered throughexaminationof the
connectionsamong a varietyof expressionsof art forms,has set an-attractive new
stylein scholarship.Schorske'sdeliberatefusingsofurbanarchitecture and political
attitudes,of paintingand "theliberalego," and of the descriptiveand metaphoric
meanings of the garden-these connectionsamong art formsand public life,
constructedinto a general pictureof a community's"psyche,"are already being
emulated and seem destined to shape the work of many historiansof culture
seeking a deeper understandingof human experience than traditionalhistorical
analysis provides. Schorske'sstylewas, in fact,influentialeven before his book
(New York,.1975),esp. chaps. 3, 4; Greenleaf,

in PoliticalThought
43 GordonJ. Schochet,Patriarchalism
Order,Empiricism,and Politics:TwoTraditions 1500-1700 (London, 1964). For a
ofEnglishPoliticalThought,
reviewofsuchwritings on Americanthemes,see RobertE. Shalhope,'Toward a RepublicanSynthesis: The
Emergence of an Understandingof Republicanismin AmericanHistoriography," Williamand Mary
3d ser.,29 (1972): 49-80.
Quarterly,

appeared. Six yearsearlierhisstudentWilliamMcGrathpublishedDionysian Artand

PopulistPoliticsinAustria,whichnotonlydemonstratesthecommonpan-Germanis-
tic roots of both ViktorAdler's socialismand Gustav Mahler's music and "meta-
musicalcosmos" (passages fromthe score of Mahler'sThird Symphonyprecede a
chapteron the Liberals' Linz Program)but locatesthe exact originsof all of these
diverginglines of historyin the shared outlook,the common interiorworld,of a
particularcircle of studentsin the 1870s, a circle that firstformed in a single
secondaryschool, Vienna's Schottengymnasium, and then in a politicalclub at the
Universityof Vienna.44These writingson the German-speakingworldof the late
nineteenthand early twentiethcenturies,writingsthat are beginningto forma
genreof theirown, mayone day be broughtintousefulcomparisonswithaccounts
of similarcirclesin othercultures:Bloomsbury,Yeats' Dublin,or Herzen'sworldof
Russian exiles in London, forexample,circleswithdistinctive and highlyarticulat-
ed sensibilities,attitudes,and worldviews.And, indeed,itmaybe possibleto depict
the culturalhistoryof an entireera in termsof key"circles"of shared feelingsand
outlooks.
Studies likeSchorske'sViennaand McGrath'sDionysian Arthave concentratedon
art forms in probing perceptionsof the world, orderings of reality.But the
perceptionsand orderingsthattheydepict are thoseof highlycultivatedindivid-
uals whose relationto ordinaryexperiencemaybe remote.Effortshave also been
made to compose picturesof the inner experiencesof less cultivatedpeople-to
map the privateworldsof ordinarypeople. Recentstudiesin popular culturebased
on nonverbal,behavioralexpressionshave been revealing-studies like those of
Natalie Davis on the festivalsof misrulein sixteenth-century France,of RhysIsaac
on the politicaltheatreof eighteenth-century Virginia,and of John Brewer on
popular mock elections in Georgian England, a work whose main sources are
satiricalprints.45 But the mostextremeand impressiveexamples are found in two
areas. The firstis in nineteenth-century French history:in Theodore Zeldin's
extraordinary accountof "thecommonbeliefs,attitudesand valuesof Frenchmen,"
their "unspoken assumptions,"their "ambitions,human relationshipsand the
forceswhichinfluencedthinking";and in Guy Thuillier'sexplorationof thecolor,
sound, taste,pace, and tactilefeel of the lifeof ordinarypeople in Nevers-the
invisible
quotidien of existence,seen in theuse ofwater,personalhygiene,thepattern
of risingand retiring,the "archaeologyof gestures,"all of whichhe drew froma
great mass of documentsburied accidentally,like tinychips of stone,in the vast
landscape of the past. The second area lies in the exploration of religious
sensibilitiesin thewidestand subtlestsense,rangingfromNormanCohn'sPursuitof
theMillennium, on medievalchiliasticmovements,and PerryMiller'svolumeson the
anatomyof the New England mind,to the remarkablestudiesby Keith Thomas
44 CarlE. Schorske,Fin-de-SiecleVienna:Politics (NewYork,1980);William

andCulture J. McGrath, Dionysian
Artand PopulistPolitics in Austria(New Haven, 1974).
45 Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culturein EarlyModernFrance(Stanford,1975), chap. 4; Isaac,
"Dramatizingthe Ideologyof Revolution:PopularMobilizationin Virginia,1774-1776,"William andMary
Quarterly,3d ser., 33 (1976): 357-85; Brewer,"Theatreand Counter-Theatrein GeorgianPolitics:The
Mock Electionat Garrat,"RadicalHistory Review,22 (1979-80): 7-40.

22 BernardBailyn
and Alan Macfarlaneon the psychologyand sociologyof witchcraft and magic in

earlymodernEngland.These are pathbreakingbooks,richand carefullynuanced.46
At the level, then, simply of the depiction of interiorworlds-patterns of
attitudes,beliefs,fears,and aspirationsthattogetherorganizepeople's engagement
withtheexteriorworld-progress has been made,and thereis no question,itseems
to me, thatwe willsee much more of thiskind of history,rangingfromfurther
studiesin politicalideologyto an expanded cartography of theinvisible
quotidienand
of religioussensibilities.But in the end the questionhistoriansmustansweris the
relationof theseinteriorworldsto theexteriorworldof palpable historicalevents.
How is this area of privatehistory,reflectinginteriorstatesof awareness,to be
related to the externalcourse of eventsin the past,eventsof a public nature?To
leave theseprivateworldsisolatedfromthe public-to keep the internalseparated
fromthe externaland to ignore the problemof the effectsof the one upon the
other-is to evade the centralobligationof history,whichis to describehow and
explain whythe course of eventstook the path it did.
There is no issue of principlehere. Obviouslywhat people did was related to
what they carried about in their heads: their feelings,their attitudes,their
constructionof reality.This is obvious in studyingindividuals,but in studying
"peoples" thequestionskitters offinto"climatesofopinion"vaguely,ifat all,related
to the determinationof specificevents.The problemis inescapable,however,and
more and more,in the yearsahead, historianswillseek answers.They will,thatis,
seek connectionsbetweeninteriorworldviews-shared attitudesand responsesand
"mind-sets"-and the course of externalevents.But, as responsesto recentforays
into thisterrainat the ratherobviouslevelof exploringthe "ideologicalorigins"of
certainmajor politicaleventshave indicated,establishingthe relationof outward
eventsto the submergedworld of privateawarenessis difficult and bound to be
controversial.
THUS, WITHIN THE GREAT MASS OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORIOGRAPHY there are, it

seems to me, at least threegeneral trendsin motion,threelines of development
generatedby the forceof scholarshipitself,whichwillin varyingwaysenrich,but
also complicate,anycomprehensivenarrativesthatare written:the fusionof latent
and manifestevents;the depictionof large-scalespheresand systemsorganizedas
peripheriesand cores; and the descriptionof internalstatesof mind and their
relationto externalcircumstancesand events.None of this,ofcourse,is whollynew.
Each has anticipationsand earlyformulations. The Marxistshave alwaysstruggled
to construehistoryas the manifestationof latentevents.Toynbee's construction of
history,withinhis leading notionof challengeand response,is thatof centraland
marginal orbits of world civilizations.And not only did Burckhardt in his
46
Zeldin,France,1848-1945, 2 vols.(Oxford,1973-77), 1: 2, 8; Thuillier,Pourunehistoire
duquotidien
au
XIXesiecleenNivernais(Paris,1977); Cohn,ThePursuitoftheMillennium (New York,1957); Miller,TheNew
EnglandMind:TheSeventeenth Century(Cambridge,Mass., 1939),and TheNewEnglandMind:FromColony to
Province(Cambridge,Mass., 1953); Thomas,Religionand theDeclineofMagic(London, 1971); Macfarlane,
Witchcraftin Tudorand StuartEngland(London, 1970). See also EmmanuelLeRoy Ladurie, Montaillou,
villageoccitande 1294 a 1324 (Paris,1976), translatedintoEnglishbyBarbaraBray (London, 1978).

Civilizationof theRenaissancein Italy(1860) examine world views,attitudes,and

intellectualstyles,but a centuryago Karl Lamprecht,once a fiercelycontrover-
sial figureand now largelyforgotten,advocated a historiography explicitlyand
"scientifically"
concentratedon collectivepsychologyand internalstatesof aware-
ness. Lamprecht's search for the "Seelenleben, the psychiclife, psychicactivity,
psychicstate" of the German Volkled him into studies of individualas well as
collectiveconsciousnessand of external artifactsof all kinds as expressionsof
subjectiveexperience.47But these anticipationsof the presentfermentin history
were eitherisolated,programmatic,or metahistorical, or theywere caught up in
headydelusionsabout historybecominga "science"-a notionthathas persisted,in
varyingforms,fromLamprecht'stimeand beforethroughthe New Historiansof
the early twentiethcenturyto the more enthusiasticAnnalesscholarsof our own
time,to receivewhatone hopes willbe itsterminalapotheosisat the hands of our
colleague, RobertFogel.48
What distinguishesthe presentdevelopmentsI have sketchedis that theyare
substantive, not methodologicalor merelyexhortative.Further,theworksinvolved
are not isolated probes by uniquely imaginativeindividualsbut the cumulating
workof manyscholars,mostof whomare unawarethattheyare contributing to a
general development. And, above all, they are rich enough in contentto bear
directlyon the fulfillment,at a new levelof sophistication,
of the ultimatepurpose
of all historicalscholarship,comprehensivenarration.The greatestchallengethat
47Toynbee's sweepingperspectivegave him range to perceivethe existenceof such orbitslong before

therewas evidencewithwhichto describethemaccurately;hiswriting on thisthemeis,therefore, at times
quite fanciful.See, for example,his discussionof "Scotland-Ulster-Appalachia," in A StydyofHistory, 2
(London, 1934): 309-13, whichis in generala perceptivesketchof the Britishmarchlandsof the early
modernperiodbutwhichcontainssuchwonderfulpassagesas thefollowing: "theAppalachian'Mountain
People' at thisday are no betterthan barbarians.They are the Americancounterparts of the latter-day
Whitebarbariansof theOld World:the Rifisand Kabylesand Tuareg, theAlbaniansand Caucasians,the
Kurds and the Pathansand the HairyAinu." But, despitesuch analogies,Toynbeewell understoodthe
relationof thedomesticBritish"Volkerwanderung" and interiormarchesto theNorthAmericanfrontier.
He drewsome remarkableinsightsfroma book nowlongforgotten thatanticipatedwithsurprising clarity
theideas of Quinn,Canny,and Muldoon:WilliamC. Macleod,TheAmericanIndianFrontier (London, 1928),
chap. 13: "Celt and Indian: Britain'sOld World Frontierin Relationto the New." Toynbee,A Studyof
History,1 (London, 1934): Annex,pp. 465-67. Three decades later,Toynbeeenthusiastically introduceda
neweditionof WalterPrescottWebb'sTheGreatFrontier (Austin,1964),a bookin whichWebb,magnifying
FrederickJackson Turner'sinterpretationof Americanhistoryto globaldimensions, wroteof theinterplay
betweenthe Great Frontierin the colonial territories and the Metropolisin Europe as "thedrama of
westernhistory."For Quinn, Canny,and Muldoon,see note28, above.
On Lamprecht,see KarlJ.Weintraub,VisionsofCulture(Chicago, 1966), 167, chap. 4; and Annie M.
Popper, "Karl Lamprecht,"in BernadotteSchmitt,ed., SomeHistorians ofModernEurope(Chicago, 1942),
217-39. Lamprecht'sideas, whichcreateda stormin Germany,were rejectedthereand his prodigious
efforts(includinghis twenty-one-volume Deutsche writtenoffas a tissueof errors,hopelessly
Geschichte)
schematicand methodologically unsound. But he was honoredby historiansin the United States,who
found-in the broadlybased psychogenetic Kulturgeschichte
he advocated and wrote-elemcntsof the
reformprogramthatwouldbecomeknownas the New History.(The name itselfseemsto haveoriginated
in a favorablereviewessay:E. W. Dow, "Featuresof the New History:Aproposof Lamprecht's'Deutsche
Geschichte,'"AHR, 3 [1897-98]: 431-48.) Carl Becker was particularlyintriguedand puzzled by
Lamprecht'sideas. They seemed to supporthis interestin climatesof opinionbut yetto vergeon sheer
fancy.Lamprecht'sconcentration on the"one commonunderlying psychicmechanism"in thehistoriesof
nationsand cultures,Becker wrote,threatenedto transformthe real substanceof historyinto "social
experiencedepositedin nervecenters."Becker,"Some Aspectsof the Influenceof Social Problemsand
Ideas upon the Studyand Writingof History,"American JournalofSociology, 18 (1913): 673-74.
48 Robert W. Fogel, "'Scientific'Historyand TraditionalHistory," in L. J. Cohen et al., eds., Logic,
Methodology, and thePhilosophy
ofScience,6 (Amsterdam,1980).

24 Bermard
Bailyn
will face historiansin the years ahead, it seems to me, is not how to deepen and
furthersophisticatetheirtechnicalprobesof lifein the past (thateffortwill,and of
course should, continuein any case) but how to put the storytogetheragain, now
witha complexityand an analyticdimensionneverenvisionedbefore;how to draw
together the informationavailable (quantitativeand qualitative,statisticaland
literary,visual and oral) into readable accounts of major developments.These
narrativeswillincorporateanecdote but theywillnotbe essentiallyanecdotal; they
willincludestatic,"motionless"portrayals of situations,
circumstances, and pointsof
view of the past, but theywill be essentiallydynamic;theywill concentrateon
change,transition, and thepassageof time;and theywillshowhow majoraspectsof
the presentworldwere shaped-acquired theircharacter-in the processof their
emergence. No effectivehistorianof the futurecan be innocentof statistics, and
indeed he or she should probablybe a literateamateur economist,psychologist,
anthropologist,sociologist,and geographer.In the end, however,historiansmust
be, not analystsof isolated technical problems abstractedfrom the past, but
narratorsof worldsin motion-worldsas complex,unpredictable,and transientas
our own. The historianmustre-tell,witha newrichness,thestoryof whatsome one
of the worldsof the past was, how it ceased to be whatit was, how it faded and
blended intonew configurations, how at everystagewhatwas, was the productof
whathad been, and developed intowhatno one could have anticipated-all of this
to help us understandhow we came to be the waywe are, and to extend the poor
reach of our own immediateexperience.


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The Challenge of Modern Historiography

Author(s): Bernard Bailyn

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GORDON WRIGHT, speakingfromthisrostruma fewyearsago, warned thatthose

This presidentialaddress was deliveredat the Ninety-SixthAnnual Meetingof the AmericanHistorical

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anthropology,demography,and, particularly, culturalgeography.Yet, despitethe

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bringtheminto contactwiththe recordsof the past and whose viewof theirown

THE GREAT PROLIFERATION OF HISTORICAL has servednot to illuminatethe

2 E. J. Hobsbawm,"FromSocial Historyto theHistoryof Society," in M. W. Flinnand T. C. Smout,eds.,

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manyplaces based on such disparatedata thatsynthesis intoa coherentwhole,even

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timedimensions,dealt withseparatelyin threebooksbound in one: eventsthatare

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social and culturallifewithina comprehensiveschemethatconcentrateson critical

9J.H. Plumb,TheGrowth inEngland,1675-1725 (London,1967),xiv,xv. Namierwas

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There is somethingabout theadvancingmovementof historicalscholarshipthat

nation"during the AmericanRevolution,concentrating on "thatmarvellousmicrocosmos," the British

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in structure,on major themes,worksthatexplainsome significant partof thestory

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historicalscholarship-trendsthatare likelyto shape anycomprehensivenarratives

THE FIRST BECOMES CLEAR througha considerationof theimportanceof quantifica-

13 Herlihy,"Numerical'andFormalAnalysisin European History," JournalofInterdisciplinay

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of theeighteenth-century Whigaristocracy withwhichhe began hisMelbourne-one

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picked up in England,whereDavid Glassand othershad been studyingpopulation

19Bailyn,Educationin theForming ofAmerican Society

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have good reason, fortheirown properwork,to examine PierreGoubert'shistory

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My firstinklingof whatwould develop in thisaspectof historicalstudycame over

27JohnClive and BernardBailyn,"England'sCulturalProvinces:Scotlandand America,"Williamand

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nothingso simpleas thetraderouteof an empirein thetraditionalsense,commer-

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frontierbut the Britishworldsystemin itsentirety, werebeingdiscussedactivelyat

34 Rumorscirculated continuously in 1773thatparliamentary legislationwasbeingdraftedto prohibitall

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37 WilliamI. Hull,BenjaminFurlyandQuakerism inRotterdam (Swarthmore, Pa., 1941),and William

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"A 'language' is uncoveredin sixteenth-century Florence,"Pocockwrotein a recent

THUS, IT SEEMS TO ME, IN THE WELTER of historicalpublications,thereare not only

39 Much of the argumentof Venturi'sthree-volume Settecento (Turin, 1969-79), whichtraces

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discussedin isolationfromeach other.And, third,thereis also in motionin current

GrandeNation:L'Expansion r6volutionnairedela Francedansle monde, de1789 et1799, 2 vols.(Paris,1956). On

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supposed somehowto add up to a pictureof the"mindof the Middle Ages,"l'esprit

(New York,.1975),esp. chaps. 3, 4; Greenleaf,

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appeared. Six yearsearlierhisstudentWilliamMcGrathpublishedDionysian Artand

44 CarlE. Schorske,Fin-de-SiecleVienna:Politics (NewYork,1980);William

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and Alan Macfarlaneon the psychologyand sociologyof witchcraft and magic in

THUS, WITHIN THE GREAT MASS OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORIOGRAPHY there are, it

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