What is Political History Now

Of all forms of historical writing, political history is surely the one that needs no justification. Since it treats questions of power and resistance, authority and legitimacy, order and obedience, not only professional historians but everyone hoping to live out their days in a modicum of peace and prosperity has a stake in such scholarship. Questions of the ways in which political systems evolve and gain legitimacy, the character and actions of their leaders, and the conditions and consequences of their breakdown are likely to remain absorbing. Debates over the character of the Nazi state or the causes of the French Revolution will never be declared decisively ‘over’, nor will such subjects cease to form the backbone of our undergraduate teaching syllabus anytime soon.

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