Abstract

Alfonso Botti, Christoph Cornelissen, Gilles Le Béguec, Alberto Masoero and Richard Vinen discuss the state of the field of political history in five national historiographies: Spain, Germany, France, Russia and Great Britain. What emerges is a diverse situation, in which political history does not appear to be in crisis, except perhaps for France. But the most significant result of the roundtable is the firm belief of the discussants that only through contamination of approaches and methodologies political history can be able to remain at the center of the historiographical scene. In this light, political history could become today the standard against which the level of integration between the different components of historical research should be set.