Editing Historian (section)

===Enlightenment===
During the [[Age of Enlightenment]], the modern development of historiography through the application of scrupulous methods began.

[[File:Voltaire-Baquoy.gif|thumb|left|[[Voltaire]]'s works of history are an excellent example of [[Enlightenment era]] history writing. Painting by [[Pierre Charles Baquoy]].]]
French ''[[Philosophes|philosophe]]'' [[Voltaire]] (1694–1778) had an enormous influence on the art of history writing. His best-known histories are ''The Age of Louis XIV'' (1751), and ''Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations'' (1756). "My chief object," he wrote in 1739, "is not political or military history, it is the history of the arts, of commerce, of civilization – in a word, – of the human mind."<ref>{{cite book|author=E. Sreedharan|title=A Textbook of Historiography: 500 BC to AD 2000|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jJVoi3PIejwC&pg=PA115|year=2004|publisher=Orient Blackswan|page=115|isbn=9788125026570}}</ref> He broke from the tradition of narrating diplomatic and military events, and emphasized customs, social history, and achievements in the arts and sciences. He was the first scholar to make a serious attempt to write the history of the world, eliminating theological frameworks, and emphasizing economics, culture, and political history.

[[File:Edward Gibbon by Henry Walton cleaned.jpg|thumb|right|upright|[[Edward Gibbon]]'s ''[[The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|Decline of the Roman Empire]]'' (1776) was a masterpiece of late 18th-century history writing.]]
At the same time, philosopher [[David Hume]] was having a similar impact on history in [[Great Britain]]. In 1754, he published the ''[[The History of England (David Hume)|History of England]]'', a six-volume work that extended from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688. Hume adopted a similar scope to Voltaire in his history; as well as the history of Kings, Parliaments, and armies, he examined the history of culture, including literature and science, as well.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Wertz | first1 = S. K. | year = 1993 | title = Hume and the Historiography of Science | jstor = 2710021 | journal = Journal of the History of Ideas | volume = 54 | issue = 3| pages = 411–436 | doi=10.2307/2710021}}</ref> [[William Robertson (historian)|William Robertson]], a Scottish historian, and the [[Historiographer Royal (Scotland)|Historiographer Royal]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.jamesboswell.info/content/poker-club|title=The Poker Club &#124; James Boswell .info|website=www.jamesboswell.info}}</ref> published the ''History of Scotland 1542 – 1603'', in 1759 and his most famous work, ''The history of the reign of [[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V]]'' in 1769.<ref>Sher, R. B., ''Church and Society in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh'', Princeton, 1985.</ref> His scholarship was painstaking for the time and he was able to access a large number of documentary sources that had previously been unstudied. He was also one of the first historians who understood the importance of general and universally applicable ideas in the shaping of historical events.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.aaanet.org/committees/commissions/centennial/history/021hoebel.pdf |first1=E. |last1=Adamson Hoebel |work=American Anthropologist |via=American Anthropological Association |date=1960 |title=William Robertson: An 18th Century Anthropologist-Historian|access-date=2012-12-17 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140108234153/http://www.aaanet.org/committees/commissions/centennial/history/021hoebel.pdf |archive-date= Jan 8, 2014 }}</ref>

The apex of Enlightenment history was reached with [[Edward Gibbon]]'s, monumental six-volume work, ''[[The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', published on 17 February 1776. Because of its relative objectivity and heavy use of [[primary source]]s, at the time its methodology became a model for later historians. This has led to Gibbon being called the first "modern historian".<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yH9rdaF1CckC|title=Theorists of the Modernist Novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf|author=Deborah Parsons|year=2007|publisher=Routledge|page=94|isbn=9780203965894}}</ref> The book sold impressively, earning its author a total of about £9000. Biographer [[Sir Leslie Stephen|Leslie Stephen]] wrote that thereafter, "His fame was as rapid as it has been lasting."