Introduction: Impressions of a Century of Historiography

Abstract

The three fine essays that follow and the recent turn of the century provide the occasion for an assessment of the state of the early modern social welfare history endeavor. What do we know now about the poor and poverty relief in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the great policy historians of the early twentieth century did not know? Why? What methodological assumptions and foci have emerged over the past hundred years, and how have they deepened our understanding of social welfare? What are the current points of research departure? With such a potentially vast historical literature to consider, I must dismiss at the outset any claim to complete thoroughness. I have, rather, organized the essay around eight clusters of work that have shaped the historiographical corpus.