SPECIALIZATION AND HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS: Lord Acton and Berr

Abstract

[By the end of the last century historians were swamped by the monographic output of their colleagues and by the work of scholars in related fields—sociology, anthropology, psychology, and economics. The individual historian no longer had the command of all of history, or even of that substantial part which his forbears had possessed as a matter of course. The historian, like other specialists too, was in danger of knowing more and more about less and less. To combat these dangers efforts were made to find new syntheses, both by bringing together several specialists in one collaborative effort and by combining several disciplines to arrive at a broader view of the whole.