Volume 30, Number 21 & 22 · January 19, 1984
Class Act
By George M. Fredrickson
Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism
by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, by Eugene D. Genovese
Oxford University Press, 469 pp., $10.95 (paper)
From all sides we hear that historical scholarship is in a state of crisis. The basic premise of historical investigation—that significant knowledge can be gained from studying the past in a sequential way—has come under heavy attack. Fashionable schools of thought in fields like psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and literary criticism deny the relevance of history to any deep understanding of human consciousness and behavior. Clio, the muse that once inspired virtually all humanistic and social-scientific study, is in danger of being exiled to the fringes of intellectual and cultural life.
Review, 3325 words
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