History and Historians

Abstract

In February 1913, Gooch published History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century, which put him at once in the front rank of historians. In the final volume of The Cambridge Modern History which appeared in 1910, he had already produced a survey of ‘The Growth of Historical Science’ to round off the series.¹ History and Historians displayed a unique degree of learning, reminiscent of Gooch’s friend and mentor Lord Acton himself. Gooch also followed in Acton’s footsteps in the attention he paid to continental European — particularly German and French — scholarship. In summarising and critically assessing the achievement of historical scholarship, he did not hesitate to state his own views on the past, present and future of the discipline.