A Lecture on the Study of History

A Lecture on the Study of History is the inaugural lecture delivered by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, better known as Lord Acton, on his appointment as Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge in 1895. The lecture was published in the same year and has become one of the central documents in the late Victorian and early twentieth century debate about the proper methods and the moral purposes of historical study.

Acton used the inaugural lecture to set out his vision of what serious historical study should aim at. The lecture combines extraordinary erudition with the kind of programmatic statement that the occasion demanded, presenting Acton’s understanding of the development of modern historical scholarship across the previous century and his vision of what English historical writing should be attempting in the years ahead. The argument is wide ranging and includes substantial reflection on the relationship between the historian and moral judgment, the proper handling of religious and political controversy in historical writing, the standards of evidence and documentation that serious historical work requires, and the broader cultural and educational role of historical study in modern intellectual life.

The most famous and most controversial element of the lecture is Acton’s insistence that historians must make moral judgments about the figures and events they study, and that the various conventional doctrines that exempted political and religious leaders from the ordinary standards of moral assessment were essentially defenses of unjustifiable conduct. This position put Acton at odds with various of the dominant currents in late nineteenth century historical writing, including the various forms of historical relativism that treated each period on its own moral terms and the various nationalist and confessional traditions that sought to defend the conduct of particular national or religious heroes against critical assessment.

The lecture was widely read and widely debated in the years after its publication. It has remained one of the central documents in the long argument among historians about the proper relationship between historical scholarship and moral judgment, and it has continued to find readers who admire Acton’s combination of erudition, moral seriousness, and rhetorical power.

The lecture is short and reads as a single sitting. For readers interested in the history of historical writing and in late Victorian English intellectual life, this is essential reading. It pairs naturally with Acton’s Lectures on Modern History and with the broader essays on freedom and power collected variously.