Modern History

Grace Aguilar

In the modern era the purpose of history was to obtain as accurate and objective an account of what really happened as possible.  German historians Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Leopold von Ranke developed an empirical framework for history that included philosophical and psychological lines of inquiry.  Through their influence standard practices for employing scientific method in historical research were adopted in universities with history departments.  This theoretical approach transformed the profession of history in the nineteenth century.  Subsequently, new methods were imported from the fields of sociology and anthropology.  Theories are emerging in the fields of quantum physics and feminist theology that may be transformative of the profession of history in the present age.   The fundamental aim of history has always been to make the truth about the past known in the present, but perspectives differ about which version of the truth matters the most and whose perceptions warrant recording.  Female historians first began to produce scholarly accounts of history in the early nineteenth century.  Like women emerging in other professions at that time they had difficulty publishing their academic work, and it was hard to find an audience for their ideas.  The earliest female historians, like the Jewish historian Grace Aguilar and the Shaker historian Mildred Barker, focused on writing religious history.  Others, like Mary Ritter Beard and Mary Wilhelmine Williams, focused on women’s rights and political history. In the late nineteenth century Karl Marx proposed a new social structure and formulated a political strategy to achieve his vision of a communist economic order.  His views had a far-reaching impact on the practice of political science, social theory and history.  Ultimately, his belief that the communist economic system would inevitably replace capitalism failed to deliver on its promises, but his ideas about social change led to a new way of thinking about history from the perspective of the economically oppressed.