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Machiavelli in the 19th Century

Features of 19th Century British Historiography

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Modern History in mid- 19th Century England Prior to the early nineteenth century, most programs of historical study in England were confined to classical, or what is now called ancient history. In early nineteenth-century England (as well as in France), imperialist ambitions and a set of general reforms adopted to rid the university of its Medieval roots promoted the study of Modern History as a tool vital to the nation's health and well-being. Thomas Arnold, a lecturer in modern history at Oxford for example, argued in 1842 that
...if the life of every society belongs to history, much more does the life of that highest and sovereign society which we call a state or a nation. And this in fact is considered the proper subject of history ; — insomuch that if we speak of it simply, without any qualifying epithet, we understand by it not the biography of any subordinate society, but of some one or more of the great national societies of the human race, whatever political form their bond of connexion may assume. And thus we get a somewhat stricter definition of history properly so called ; we may describe it not simply as the biography of a society, but as the biography of a political society or commonwealth.
Many other scholars of history argued along the same lines, stressing how valuable it was to learn the story of the nation, with the express purpose of defending and promoting it. In 1872 William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford, founded an entire School of Modern History at Oxford, which offered a set program of postclassical historical study. Although Modern history studies in Britain were far from standardized in these early days, some common features do appear in the historiography.
As we shall see, many of these same features re-appeared in historical writings from Italy, where attention to the nation state had been a pre-occupation of the elite inhabitants of the peninsular from the earliest years of the nineteenth century.