Historians Reconsidered: Michelet

W.F. Knapp reappraises a great historian of nineteenth century France.

“Imagine then this period of 1848. Who were those who found themselves on opposite sides, that one can take as types of all the rest? Guizot, Minister of Louis Philippe, on the one hand, Michelet and Quinet, with the students on the other ... (and) I hold it for certain that if you and I had been alive then, you would have been on the side of Guizot, and I on the side of Michelet.”

Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo, 1884.

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