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In Jeremy D. Popkin’s section on doing history in the nineteenth century, he shows the reader the development of the study in an infrequently understood way. Popkin shows how many aspects of history that we take for granted in the present were all conceived in the nineteenth century. One of the most interesting arguments that Popkin presents that changed my view of historical writing in the past was when he demonstrated how major events of the past changed historical thought. I never connected events of the past with the change in understanding and analyzing the past itself. The chapter also points to a new appreciation of historical scholars that only just began in the nineteenth century.
Popkin organizes his argument by providing many significant examples of events and people that shaped the study of history as we know today. I thought this was very informative because he shows how contemporary occurances affected scholars. An example that he provides that exemplifies this idea was the effects of the French revolution. He explains that the storming of the Bastille, “showed that profound historical changes could be brought about by the collective actions of ordinary individuals” (Popkin). To the modern scholar this idea is commonplace and can be applied to many events in history, but Popkin shows how a single event can bring an entirely new kind of thought. Although the study of history expanded in the ninteenth century, other aspects of writing were different then today due to social practice at the time. armando35 asserts an important notion that men more often than women participated in historical writing in the nineteenth century. I agree that this could affect perception.
One excerpt of the chapter that I found notable was about Walter Scott and his novel Ivanhoe. Critics bashed Scott’s writings because he was accused of blending fact with fiction. This reminded me of Erik Larson’s book Isaac’s storm. While he conducted extensive research on the storm, many sections of the novel are loosely based on facts.