Abstract

The "' New History" of which James Harvey Robinson's book of that name was the manifesto, has itself become a proper object of historical inquiry, which needs to investigate the attitudes and premises which underlay it. One important assumption was that adaptation to the world as given is the only "reasonable" position. Robinson argued that the historian must select and construct a "usable past," but the past he constructed was designed to make industrial efficiency the overriding contemporary value and to reconcile the working population to the lot it "'must" accept. One can see by contrast with the "' New History" the possibility of a history which leads to re-thinking rather than accepting the givenness of the present