Edmund Burke: History, Politics and Polemic
The first of the Romantic historians or a disgruntled propagandist of counter-revolution? Jeremy Black investigates how far Edmund Burke was a child of his times and had a political rather than an academic vocation.
Edmund Burke (1729 – 97) is not generally thought of as a significant historian. Turn to the index of a book on historiography or historical method, and you will indeed find Burke, but, in place of the political Edmund, it is the scholarly Peter who is indicated. And yet it was Lord Acton who saw Burke as a great historian, the first of the Romantic historians, and praised his sensitivity to the Middle Ages.
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