Fact and Relevance: Essays on Historical Method

by M.M. Postan

A collection of fourteen essays in which Professor Postan draws together for the first time his contributions to the debate on historical method, and discusses from a variety of different angles, the inter-relation of history and the social sciences. After making, in his first three essays, a direct statement of his point of view, the author deals with two main aspects of the time sequences and theoretical relevance of facts. He then proceeds to exemplify his point of view more particularly with relation to macro-economics and to certain specific issues within economic history as well as to economic history in general. In the final two chapters, one is on Karl Marx, the other on Hugh Gaitskell, he seeks to describe the intellectual climate in which the debate on methodology was held and in which his opinions on the subject were formed. The essays contained in this book will be of interest to all those involved in the social sciences, economics and history, as well as to those specifically concerned with historical methodology.

188 pages, Hardcover

First published February 26, 1971

About the author

Sir Michael Moissey Postan FBA was an economic historian specialising in the economic history of medieval Europe.

He was born to a Jewish family in Bendery, Bessarabia, in the Russian Empire, and studied at the St Vladimir University in Kiev, leaving the USSR after the October Revolution and settling in the UK. He had positions at University College London and at the London School of Economics, before being appointed Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge, from 1937. He was known worldwide as an economic historian of medieval Europe.

He was married first to historian Eileen Power, then after her death he remarried to Lady Cynthia Rosalie Keppel.