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  • All in the Family Again? Political Historians and the Challenge of Social History
  • Romain Huret (bio)

"In short, by the mid-1980s the status of the political historian had sunk to somewhere between that of a faith healer and a chiropractor. Political historians were all right in their way, but you might not want to bring one home to meet the family."

—William Leuchtenburg

In many ways, the dawn of the twenty-first century has turned out to be a central juncture for political history. The collective book The Democratic Experiment, edited by Meg Jacobs, Julian Zelizer, and Peter Novak, has been a good example among many others of the current revitalization of American political history.1 Since the 1990s, many articles advocating a "new" political history have been published and the idea is now widespread in the profession not only in the United States but also in Europe and in France.2 Every period of American history is concerned with such a renewal: from the Early Republic to the end of the twentieth century, books, articles, and discussions on the Internet have tried to promote a new political history.3 In France too, theoretical discussions and collective books have revitalized many fields of political history, from the French Revolution to the collapse of the Third [End Page 239] Republic or the Vichy regime.4 This concern, however, raises a question on the very nature of political history to be written in the future—to what extent does it fit with other disciplines in the field of history? To put it differently, is it possible to reconcile the tendencies among many American historians that seem to focus entirely on race, class, and gender with the study of ordinary politics associated with the political system of elections, legislation, and administration?

Today, many historians complain that ordinary politics is part of the given and does not need to be explained. In a recent book on the new political history in the field of the early Republic, William G. Shade cannot help but note that it would be better "not to send a student to this book to find out about the Whiskey Rebellion (not mentioned in the index) nor the Alien and Sedition Acts (treated briefly in several sentences in the introduction) or Hamilton's economic policy."5 Indeed, many hope to qualify the symbolic and professional domination of social historians, who have paid little attention to the short time of elections, presidential orders, and political cycles. It is no coincidence that those new calls for a new dynamic among political historians should occur in a time of crisis of epistemological models both in Europe and in the United States.6 To go beyond the current crisis in history, some scholars contend that social historians and political historians should stop walking on different tracks. In 1999, in her fresh comment at a roundtable for the Journal of American History, Paula Baker argued that political history had entered a midlife crisis, that "political historians seem arthritic and slow."7 Facing the challenge of social history, political history appeared as an old-fashioned way of writing the history of the American past. As Baker advocates, "A reassessment of how new work on gender, class, race and consumption might reshape what has become traditional political history is therefore welcome."8 A closer look at French and American political history proves that Paula Baker is right: political historians cannot avoid facing the challenge of social history. But, and that is the purpose of this article, a true revitalization should come more from a dialogue with other social scientists, including political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and economists, than from an attempt to integrate ipso facto the main concepts of social history. One of the most important legacies of social historians has been their ability to use other social sciences to produce a rich and vivid account of the past.9 As far as political historians are concerned in France and in the United States, they mainly tap on political science to shed new light on current historical debates. Indeed, a real attempt to reintegrate social history should [End Page 240] move ahead in tandem with other social sciences...

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