> Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
>> Doug wrote:
>>
>>> What do you mean by that? Isn't political history pretty important?
>>
>>
>>
>> Classical political history, also legal and military history, is
>> associated with positivist notions of proof and is now more often
>> called the "great men" school of history. It was blown out of the
>> water beginning with the French Annales school in the 30s.
>
>
> Now I'm confused. I thought the criticism of Hofstadter was that he
> blamed the masses too much for right-wing paranoia and manipulative
> elites too little. Now he's a Great Man theorist, just like the target
> of that Gang of Four song.
>
Well, I think it's important, but Dennis summarized the currently
prevailing attitude toward political history pretty accurately, above. I
was exaggerating a little when I said pol-hist almost doesn't exist, but
there's some truth in it.
Of course, almost all historical topics ultimately relate to politics in some way. But studying politics explicitly (from a Great Man pov or ortherwise) has fallen out of fashion. The cutting edge stuff that's classified as political history these days might more accurately be described as the study of the culture of politics - it involves things like close hermeneutical readings of the multiple meanings of patriotic pageantry in colonial Maryland. Don't get me wrong, it's politics in a very broad sense, but it's not what you'd normally associate with political history.
As for Hofstadter, I think it's safe to say that almost no graduate seminars assign him anymore. And I suspect if you tried out his argument (about the masses and rightwing paranoia) with a room full of assistant profs, the first thing they'd say is that you can't talk about "the masses" because it assumes Americans were all alike. Which, again, has some truth to it, but it's a lens that places pretty firm limits (probably intentionally) on what you can say about American politics.
Seth